It Is Now Safe To Return To The Angelika

At last! The day has finally arrived! Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire opens in Dallas. I have no interest in seeing this preposterously named film. I'm thrilled that I will no longer be unwillingly subjected to the trailer each time I attend a film at the Dallas Angelika. Seriously, if they had posted a sign at the ticket office along the lines of "Screenings of A Serious Man will be preceded by the Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire trailer I would have passed on seeing the Coen brothers lastest film.

One thing I did learn from seeing the trailer several times is that Mo'Nique looks an awful lot like Tracy Morgan in Episode 3.2 of 30 Rock - "Believe In The Stars." That episode featured Morgan's Tracy Jordan getting into a feud with Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney over whose life is harder: women or black men. Tracy "disguises" himself as a white woman in an effort to prove his point. Perhaps I'm crazy. Judge for yourself:

Changes

I've finally decided to change up the blog a little. I found a layout more conducive to showing photos in posts. The old layout tended to chop the sides off most of the time. Regular visitors will also notice that the 30 Rock clip viewer can now be seen in all its glory. The previous layout did an unwanted trim job on it as well. I'll be messing around with different color combinations over the next couple of days. I know that some of the stuff is difficult to read right now. Fret not...a sense of normalcy will return before week's end.

FEY-dar: "Generalissimo" [30 Rock ep. 3.10]

This is the BEST episode of the season thus far. Alec Baldwin will receive another Emmy nomination for this one.

REMINDER: It's Thursday...30 Rock tonight!!!

And once again I will be taping it since I'll be watching the Browns [hopefully] defeat the Denver Broncos along with the other members of the Browns Backers Worldwide chapter that I belong to.

In case you weren't aware of this...Oprah is on 30 Rock.

Tracy: Winfrey or Billingham?
Jack: You know someone named Oprah Billingham?
Tracy: No.

Ok...so that's not from the script. It's a slight alteration of a Season One scene where Jack mentions Arsenio and Tracy asks "Hall or Billingham?" This was the same episode that contained the following exchange:

Tracy: I'm gonna make you a mix tape. You like Phil Collins?
Jack: I have two ears and a heart, don't I?

FEY-dar - "Do-Over" recap [30 Rock 3.1]

So somewhere around 2am I finally got to see the season premiere of 30 Rock. I had taped [yes...I'm a VCR using luddite] Kath & Kim and The Office as well. It took every ounce of restraint I had to not fast forward through those two shows to get to 30 Rock. I had never seen Kath & Kim before and to be honest I don't see myself watching it again. [On a side note...I'm wondering if Molly Shannon is bothered by the implication that she must look older than she does. She's only eight years older than Selma Blair but plays her mom on the show.] The episode of The Office left me *meh*.

And then there it was... 30 Rock!!! What a nutty way to start off the season. Jack returns from Washington to get his old job back. And he's going to start at the bottom and work his way back to the top! Liz is trying to adopt a child! Tracy's video game has sold 61 million copies! Kenneth doesn't know what "imperative" means! Frank gets solid gold nunchuks!!!

My favorite quotes from the episode:
____________________________________________________________________

Liz: I was arrested once in Germany for public nudity. I thought it was a topless beach. It wasn't. Shipyard.
____________________________________________________________________

Liz: Can I hide this box of penis pasta in your dressing room?
____________________________________________________________________

Tracy: Let's go shopping. TO THE BATMOBILE!!!
Grizz: [to Liz] Don't worry. He's just leasing it.
____________________________________________________________________

Jack: [to three mailroom co-workers] What I'm saying is don't dress for the job you have. Dress for the job you want to have. So now Manny...
Manny: Tomorrow I'll show up for work dressed as a Mexican wrestler.
____________________________________________________________________

Devon: I'm gonna shut [GE] down. I'm gonna shut the whole thing down for two years. Imagine how badly people will want lightbulbs then.
Jack: Are you insane? Think about the jobs. Think about the economy. This is GE.
Devon: It's just "G" now, Jack. I sold the "E". To Samsung. They're Samesung now.
____________________________________________________________________

Jenna: Well I first met Liz in 1993. She was fresh out of college and I had just broken up with OJ Simpson. Can I just say something? Total gentleman.
____________________________________________________________________

Tracy: Petey-Pete...for letting us use the soundbooth please accept this chinchilla coat. You're gonna get so much nice-nice in that you're gonna have to grow another ding-[Liz interrupts]
____________________________________________________________________

Liz: You smell like strawberries.
Jack: That's just the lip gloss [Kathy Geiss] put on me so I could be her fancy boy.
____________________________________________________________________

Jack: Is this the way my life was supposed to play out? The kid who walked four miles every Saturday to caddy because mother said that golf was a game for businessmen. Paid his way through Princeton by working days at that graveyard or graveyard shift at the Days Inn.
____________________________________________________________________

Jack: This job is all I ever wanted and now it hinges on how far I'm willing to go with a woman in Dora the Explorer panties that were clearly made for an obese child.
____________________________________________________________________

Jack: We might not be the best people but we're not the worst.
Jack and Liz [simultaneously]: Magic kids were the worst.
____________________________________________________________________

Devon: [to Tracy] I'm going to sue you.
Tracy: You can't sue me. I'm already being sued. Double indemnity.
____________________________________________________________________

There was also a great sight gag: a woman from the adoption agency [Megan Mullally] is coming to visit the studio. Liz tells Frank to change his baseball cap [it has "HORNY" on it]. Frank shows up later wearing a bowler hat that says "HORNY".

All-in-all a solid episode. Certainly the best season opener thus far. The series has a history of becoming funnier as the season progresses so I have extremely high hopes for this season. I'm confident that they'll be met.

Boys becoming men...men becoming wolves.

To commemorate MN, Halloween, and the season premiere of 30 Rock, I share this with you:

Tonight: 30 ROCK season premiere!!!

The best week ever [well...one of 'em anyway] which started last Thursday spills into overtime with the premiere of my current favorite TV show: 30 Rock. Right now it consistently brings the funny more than any other show [yes, The Office is really good too. But it sometimes trips over its own cuteness].

I urge everyone to take 30 minutes out of your evening to watch the show. And if you won't be at home then tape it or Tivo it or whatever you do to watch a show later [have your brood watch it then act it out for you later].

Like me. I won't be able to watch it as it airs since I'll be at this show:

[I told you the BWE was in overtime!] Hey...tickets are only TEN BUCKS! Dimmu Borgir alone is worth that. But look who else is playing: Moonspell!!! MOONSPELL!!!

So in the coming days you can look forward to recaps of the above concert AND the season premiere of 30 Rock AND a Slurpee review. Yeah...now you're having the BWE!

FEY-dar - Tina on Letterman and SNL

I love Tina Fey. She's cute and witty and clever and seems to be as obsessed with pop culture as myself. But she's married so she and I are probably never going to happen. But I'm content with admiring her via television.
Tina's been all over the place lately. 30 Rock [consistently the best comedy on television since my beloved Arrested Development] recently won several Emmys. The second season was released on DVD a couple of weeks ago to give fans time to catch up before the third season premieres on October 30.

Oh yeah...she's been lampooning Vice President wannabe Sarah Palin quite successfully on Saturday Night Live.

Tina was on David Letterman's show this past Thursday and I couldn't help but feel that she had probably been booked to promote 30 Rock. But Dave seemed to want to talk about the Palin impersonations and Tina seemed fine with that. 30 Rock was almost entirely an afterthought to Dave. Oh well...it's his show so I suppose that gives him the right to talk about whatever the heck he wants to talk about.
Something that came up during their conversation was whether or not the real Sarah Palin would be making an appearance on SNL. Tina said that Palin had contacted the show about dropping in. This certainly wouldn't be the first time that a politician has dropped in on SNL. Earlier this year, Hilary Clinton walked onstage while Amy Poehler was impersonating her. The desired effect seems to be to make the politicians appear more "human" by showing that they have a sense of humor and can laugh with everybody else at the exaggerated spoof of their idiosyncrasies [or, as in Palin's case, their general idiocy].

Jump ahead to Friday. The media is all abuzz with reports that Palin - the real Palin - would be appearing on SNL alongside "Fey-lin". The local NBC affiliate even plugged Palin's upcoming "drop-in" several times during their late news on Saturday night preceding SNL. So now everyone's expecting Palin to show up. Any surprise or spontaneity on the part of Palin or the show is completely sucked away. I think Palin's people were responsible for issuing the alerts. If SNL was in some sort of ratings quagmire I would suspect it of leaking the news. But SNL is experiencing the best ratings it's had in many, many years due largely to the "Fey-lin" appearances.

SNL starts off with "Fey-lin" making a speech during which the show cuts to a backstage shot of Palin standing alongside SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels. Then Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg show up [Baldwin being Fey's co-star on 30 Rock; Wahlberg there to settle a score with Andy Samberg over Andy's Wahlberg impersonation the previous week] and generate the only real surprise of the opening. Palin eventually replaces "Fey-lin" at the lectern and delivers one of the least enthusiastic "Live from New York...it's Saturday Night!"s I've ever witnessed. But she's not finished.
Palin pops up during the "Weekend Update" portion of the program apparently to deliver a witty bit the show's writers have prepared for her. She says that she's not going to do it because she feels it crosses the line. So a very pregnant [and I mean water's gonna break any moment pregnant] Amy Poehler does the bit which turns out to be a rap song about Palin and he kickass life in Alaska. Palin gets so caught up in it that she "raises the roof". Seated. Now I'm no expert on roof raisin'. But I'm pretty sure it can't be done from the comfort of one's seat. To really maximize your roof raisin' you gotta be standing up. But that's just me. I could be wrong [and sometimes am].

So a great big "Way to go!" Sarah Palin. You clearly have a tremendous sense of humor in addition to having your finger on the pulse of popular culture. You truly are a maverick.

[Please note the introduction of this blog's official Sarcasm Color]