Friday, November 7, 2014

HE MUST HAVE BUNS, HON: Next month, Discovery Channel is going to show a dude getting eaten alive by an anaconda while wearing a "snake-proof" suit, boldly GoProing where no man has GoProed (GonePro?) before.

One question: how does he plan on getting out?
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THIS IDEA:  Apparently assuming that Peter Pan: Live! will be a success, NBC is considering broadening the franchise to plays with A Few Good Men: Live!  So, who do you cast?
THE TWO BEST THINGS YOU'LL WATCH TODAY: If you haven't seen it yet, set aside 11+ minutes for "Too Many Cooks" (the less said the better).

And then follow with the most inspired accidental synchronization since Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz...Taylor Swift and the 1988 Crystal Light Aerobics Championships.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO OENOPHILIA CORNER:  My dad plays craps at The Borgata in Atlantic City every week. Thank goodness he's not a wine drinker:
"I asked the waitress if she could recommend something decent because I don't have experience with wine," Lentini said. "She pointed to a bottle on the menu. I didn't have my glasses. I asked how much and she said, 'Thirty-seven fifty.'" 
..."It was okay. It was good," Lentini said of the wine. "It wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. It was fine." 
When dinner was over, the check was handed to the host, who was sitting opposite Lentini at the round table, Lentini said."[The host] was sitting across from me and he handed the bill to person next to him, who handed it to the next person until it got to me," he said. "I showed the gentleman next to me and we were shocked. We couldn't believe it." 
The total bill was $4,700.61, including tax. The bottle of wine, Screaming Eagle, Oakville 2011 -- cost $3,750.  "I thought the wine was $37.50," Lentini said. 
Lentini said he called the waitress over and said there was a problem. He said he explained that he never would have ordered such expensive wine, and repeated that when he asked about the price, the waitress said "thirty-seven fifty," not "three-thousand, seven-hundred-and-fifty....
TURNS OUT BOGDAN KNEW A LOT MORE ABOUT HEISENBERG THAN HE WAS LETTING ON:  The actor who played Bogdan Wolynetz, the car wash owner, is in real life Dr Marius Stan, a research scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

If you on campus at the University of Chicago on November 18, Dr Stan is giving a talk at I-House.

ETA: Of course, this likely makes him one of those rare people with a finite Erdos-Bacon Number.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP (IF INEFFECTIVELY):  Phil Rudd, drummer for AC/DC, has been arrested in New Zealand for attempting to contract a murder-for-hire.

Monday, November 3, 2014

NO, NOT HOMEBOYS IN OUTER SPACE:  To say too much would spoil this delightful piece, in which (in an alternate universe) the most unlikely of television shows becomes a seventeen season-long cultural juggernaut.
DON'T DRIVE LIKE MY BROTHER:  Damn. Tom Magliozzi has passed away at age 77, due to Alzheimer's-related complications.
REENACT ALL THREE ITERATIONS OF RUN LOLA RUN! Watts will be in Berlin (the one in Germany, not the one in Connecticut with all the chain restaurants) from 11/12 - 11/14. What should she, a not-fluent German speaker, be seeing/doing/eating?
AND NOW YOU'RE OLDER STILL:  New York republishes a now twenty-year old profile of then-MTV late night host Jon Stewart, from 1994:
Here in the '90s, when everybody except Chevy Chase has a talk show, Jon Stewart brings three all-important qualities to MTV’s entry in the chat wars: He’s funny. He’s not afraid tackle tough issues with guests like the 7-year-old Olsen twins from Full House. And he has an abundance of body hair. “They have to shave my neck during the hour between taping,” Stewart says. “Is that something I shouldn’t have shared?” 
This is the man who should have been Conan. In fact, Stewart made it to the finals of NBC’s Replace Dave Sweepstakes, only to have Lorne Michaels choose O’Brien, who’d spent as much time in front of a television camera as Doris Duke... 
The modest success of Stewart hasn’t gone unnoticed at NBC, where execs also considered Stewart as a successor to Bob Costas on Later. Says a Lorne Michaels staffer, “Jon would make a good replacement for somebody — you fill in the name.”