Saturday, June 4, 2016

THE GREATEST:  Was there anyone else on earth as easily recognized by such a provocative (and true) appellation? The Ringer has plenty of links with which to remember Muhammad Ali, the most important athlete of the 20th Century.

Friday, June 3, 2016

THEY HAVE SAVED THE MAX:  A Saved by the Bell-themed restaurant, there in Chicago.  As the article says, don't drive Lisa's Mom's car after having a couple.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

IT MEANS SO MUCH TO SO FEW PEOPLE:  Inside the history of "Potato Chip," one of Isaac's favorite SNL skits and well worth rewatching.
WHY WOULD YOU TAKE ICE CREAM OUT OF THE FREEZER?  Silvia Killingsworth ventures a theory on why The Great British Bake Off didn't quite translate to America:
“Bake Off”’s success has less to do with national identity than with national psyche. The show is a reminder that awfully boring-sounding amateur leisure activities — like knitting or building model trains — can be valuable for a well-balanced spirit. BBC Two is in fact doubling down on “Keep Calm and Carry On” television with somehow even more British-sounding programming like “Great British Garden Revival” and “Great Pottery Throw Down.” But in America, where we talk about lengths in football fields and television ratings in fractions of Super Bowls, our entertainment is oriented more toward competition and celebrity rather than deep pleasure in craft....
The original “Bake Off” captures the quirky, gentle competition of a spelling bee, combines it with the urgency of a cooking show, and adds a pinch of provincialism. But more than that, it’s a show about a hobby, and the status quo, and that is the most British thing of all. In her New Yorker profile of Sharon Horgan, Willa Paskin nails the difference between British and American Television. She’s writing about sitcoms, but the heart of the observation is the same: 
U.K. sitcoms tend to be darker than American ones, encouraged by a powerful public broadcasting system whose aim is to serve the varying tastes of taxpayers, not the upbeat preferences of advertisers, and by a national psyche fixated on the immutability of the class system, not on a dream of self-improvement. Americans believe that things will get better. Brits laugh at how things stay the same. To become a hit in the United States, “The Office” not only had to transform the tragic, grating boss into a less tragic, less grating, more well-meaning boss; it had to cast off the message, central to the British original, that work is where you go to waste your life.

WELL, I GUESS HE STOPPED WATCHING SLIDERS:  In an ALOTT5MA Worlds Colliding moment, Cass Sunstein talks to the AV Club about Star Wars.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

PYRAMID SCHEME:  The new $100,000 Pyramid has announced its first bunch of celebrity players, some of whom I fully expect to be pretty great (Terry Crews, Weird Al Yankovic, Yvette Nicole Brown), and some of whom seem like disasters waiting to happen (Snoop Dogg, Deion Sanders, Mario Batali).  Who do you want or not want as your celebrity partner?

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

SHE'S GOING FOR THE PIN: Netflix is doing a behind the scenes comedy/drama set in the world of ladies professional wrestling, from the folks who gave us Orange is the New Black.  Some suggestion that it's going to be a late 80s period piece, which would be awesome.
NOT AS COLD A WAR AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT:The New York Times takes a look at the war between Mister Softee and New York Ice Cream for control of the lucrative Midtown ice cream truck market.
PLYMOUTH ROCK LANDED ON US:  Slate's Aisha Harris and Dan Kois have curated a top-50 canon of films by black filmmakers, and since it includes both Tongues United and Hollywood Shuffle I think I'm happy with it.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

OH MY GAWD, PABST BLUE RIBBON HAS BUSTED CENA WIDE OPEN! Apparently, John Cena's values of Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect may not extend to the Lanham Act.