Archive for May, 2007
31
May
Brooklyn!!!
Knocked Up hits theaters tomorrow. If the trailer and the initial reviews are any indications, he’s got another hit on his hands.
The New York Times has an excellent profile of Apatow and some insight on what makes him tick.
Wired magazine lets Apatow and some of the stars of his various works give an oral history of his work, starting with Freaks and Geeks.
29
May
Adorable kitty pictures.
Via the Daily Mail
That terrifying Jaws with paws is Odin. He’s a six-year old white Bengal tiger at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Zoo in Vallejo, near San Francisco. And he will be visiting my nightmares this evening.
26
May
Help the police
From the BBC sketch comedy show Rush Hour.
According to one of the many LA Times blogs, Buzz Bands, the man himself will be setting up shop for seven weeks at The Roosevelt Hotel.
What the plans call for: On seven Friday nights starting June 15, the Roosevelt will close off its lobby at 9 p.m. Then, at 11:30 in the Blossom Room in front of 250 seated guests and an undetermined number of standing-room-only patrons, Prince (joined each week by special guests) will give a two-hour performance. At 2 a.m., Prince’s private chef will take over the kitchen of the Roosevelt’s Dakota restaurant, which will morph into an after-hours dinner club. As part of a jazz ensemble, Prince will entertain diners until 4 a.m.
Wow. This is some serious, Rat Pack level, old-school Hollywood shit. Who wouldn’t love to say that they spent the night at the Roosevelt with Prince?
22
May
Patton Oswalt on KFC
Patton Oswalt is one of the funniest comics working today. This is the opening joke from his 2006 CD, Werewolves and Lollipops. A lot of comics could have–and did, I’m sure–come up with this premise, but only Oswalt could have come up with the phrase “failure pile in a sadness bowl.”
Bonus P.O. goodness! The Sound of Young America points us to Patton’s blog, where he ruminates on the end of his day job as Spence on The King of Queens.
21
May
I blame hip-hop.
- Over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since Mos Def stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations had ended.
- Three 6 Mafia has been pressured by their conservative Christian base to give less and less money to groups that distribute condoms in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Jay-Z disenfranchised thousands of black voters in Florida in 2000, and again in Ohio in 2004.
- MF Doom wears a mask because he’s the one kidnapping all these little white girls.
- Talib Kweli failed to take action to protect the citizens of New Orleans even though he had been warned “of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property.”
- Kanye West arrested 800,000 people in 2005 on charges related to marijuana, a substance proven to be significantly less harmful to society than both alcohol and tobacco.
- During the first three years of the Diddy administration, the unemployment rate increased by one-third, 2.2 million jobs were lost, and the country went from a $281 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit.
- Just Say No was Biz Markie’s idea.
- Little Brother brought about mad cow disease and a previously unseen strain of E. coli by feeding corn and the remains of other animals to cows.
- Bow Wow is the reason the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.
- Thanks to Lil’ Wayne, the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.
- Speech from Arrested Development canceled Arrested Development.
One of my daily must-reads is ESPN’s excellent NBA blog TrueHoop by Henry Abbott. They’re currently running a piece detailing Brazilian sensation Leandro Barbosa’s journey to the NBA. Canadian writer Gregory Dole recounts the tale of escorting Barbosa to the US for his round of workouts with NBA teams. Apparently, Dole saw Barbosa’s on a Brazilian basketball mix tape and knew he was an NBA caliber player the moment he laid eyes on him; which is pretty much how the rest of the basketball world felt once they saw him in a Phoenix Suns uniform.
Here’s a taste from part 1 of Rolling with Barbosa:
However buried deep in the goof’s mixtape is a guard who is off the charts. The player’s skill seems almost unbelievable, like a legend of street basketball. I can’t really begin to describe it other than to say that he is off the charts. Off the charts and from some unknown universe. An alien basketball lifeform, unlike anything I have never seen before.
Like all Lakers fans, I’ve seen exactly what he can do in the playoffs for the past two years. If you haven’t had the pleasure, here’s a little taste of what The Brazilian Blur is like on the basketball court.
This folks on the Australian show, The Chaser, hit the streets Jaywalking style to find out what Americans think about the war in Iraq.
13
May
Hitchens v Sharpton
Let’s get it on! (c) Mills Lane
