About last night
Apr. 11th, 2003 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenSo I spent last night decompressing, which was of the good. Finished off some great leftovers, watched Will & Grace complete with pop-ups, dipped into a little bit of a Lifetime movie about a teen abusing drugs and then went full force into Penn & Teller's Bullshit, followed by the Daily Show and Tough Crowd.
Bullshit last night was a repeat of last week's episode about the fad diet industry. It was nice but IMO not enough. I mean "The Hollywood diet doesn't work, ho ho ho" isn't really cutting edge. I wish they'd spent more time on asswads like Atkins. From the minimal research I've done it seems like his diet is a great way to kill yourself, yet all we got last night was a quick touch on the fact that for all that you're eating a lot, you're still starving your body.
The bit about the injured athletes was interesting though. It's a shame they couldn't have explored that more.
The second half, where they talked about the issue of hunger, was interesting yet weird. I appreciate the fact that they were trying to point out the problems of spending so much money on weight loss in a world where far too many people can't even have a sandwich, but I felt that, yet again, they spent too much time with the "ho ho ho" and not enough on the actual biting satire to drive this point home. (I'm starting to wonder if the problem is that I've got the premise of the show wrong).
Also, again, I'm frustrated by the fact that they don't cite research and sources enough. Yes they do touch on it from time to time but very often from biased sources. Case in point the episode about increasing the size of your boobs where their official source for claiming that the only treatment that works is plastic surgery was, surprise, a plastic surgeon.
Granted, the report on genetically ehanced food had better sources but still I was frustrated by the blank spots. Like when talking about how Greenpeace influenced Zambia (I believe) to turn down the enhanced corn, I would've liked to see the sources cited for Greenpeace's argument. After all, if those sources were totally bruce, wouldn't it have benefitted the show to show that? Because showing the schmucks picketing the supermarket and then asking me to assume that a country let its people starve because of the same arguments is asking too much on faith. A country preferring to let its people starve rather than eat this stuff is a powerful statement. Take the two seconds to show me that it was the exact same argument that the supermarket protesters were using.
On the flip side, we've got the Daily Show, which rocked as always. This one was esp. interesting for me because Dennis Miller was on. I haven't seen him on a show in a while (I don't get HBO nor do I watch a lot of talk shows) so this was the first time I got to watch him in action since he did commentary on Monday Night Football.
Still, I'm something of a fan so getting one comedian who makes his wage by using his brain and pairing him up with another was just a hot fudge all over my ice cream moment for me.
Until Dennis opened his mouth.
Wow. He is definitely coasting on pre-written material. The entire conversation was him trying to segue back to his bits. In any other interview this would have stood out as intelligent because the interviewer would have never challenged him and the comments would have stood on their own. However Jon is no regular interviewer and even as he laughed at the jokes he totally blew Dennis out of the water. The boy has a brain and its scary how well he knows how to use it.
Tough Crowd was next and boy did I not want to watch but it turns out that Jon was on, so I tuned in to see if that would improve anything.
I tried watching Tough Crowd last week (when Chris Rock was on) as the premise seemed interesting but God does Colin Quinn make the show unwatchable. He's too nervous. I feel my own stomach clenching up whenever he talks. The pre-written jokes are consistantly lame and anything that would've had a chance to be funny is ruined by the fact that Colin is too panicked and rushed in his delivery. I don't even understand why they stick to the written bits when they so obviously never work.
One of the comedians - whose name I forget, but he was the one sitting next to Jon last night - is also an unfunny jerkwad. Now this could work in the show's favor (such as last night when Jon took advantage of that to point out how stupid the guy was and how most of his comments went back to some sort of racial slur, in last night's case against Jews) but without somebody to play off him he's just an annoying blowhard who brings the converstion to a halt because all he wants to do is plop out these dismissing non-funny zingers.
Still, it was interesting to watch Jon handle it. He did better than Chris Rock did, IMO. I got the impression that Chris was only there as a favor to Colin (who's a good friend of his) and that he personally did not have the improvisation skills necessary to try to adapt to the crushing lack of rhythm the show possessed. Chris seemed content to comment when he could, then try to stiffly get through the half hour.
Jon on the other hand recognized the bad writing and pacing and just worked it into his own habit of pretending he doesn't know what he's going to say next while being faux-bewildered. It worked. The show wasn't great by any means, but at least Jon's bits were watchable in spite of that.
I also caught the tail end of Monsoon Wedding which was also fun. I should get that movie on DVD at some point.
In other news I am now whiling away a day at work by myself, to be followed by yet another day at work tomorrow with the boss here. I really need a proper day off in which to do nothing. I fear this won't come until Sunday, when even then I'm only going to get it because I'll be - you guessed it - skipping services. Sigh.
Finally, and here's where I admit to being a bit of a Devon, but who was it that I was talking to at a couple of Connexions panels who was making that nifty red crochet thing? I ask b/c I'm tempted to try making something like that myself except I haven't been able to find a pattern online that looks like it, nor would I even know where to begin. If anybody could give me the hookup that would be great. =)
Bullshit last night was a repeat of last week's episode about the fad diet industry. It was nice but IMO not enough. I mean "The Hollywood diet doesn't work, ho ho ho" isn't really cutting edge. I wish they'd spent more time on asswads like Atkins. From the minimal research I've done it seems like his diet is a great way to kill yourself, yet all we got last night was a quick touch on the fact that for all that you're eating a lot, you're still starving your body.
The bit about the injured athletes was interesting though. It's a shame they couldn't have explored that more.
The second half, where they talked about the issue of hunger, was interesting yet weird. I appreciate the fact that they were trying to point out the problems of spending so much money on weight loss in a world where far too many people can't even have a sandwich, but I felt that, yet again, they spent too much time with the "ho ho ho" and not enough on the actual biting satire to drive this point home. (I'm starting to wonder if the problem is that I've got the premise of the show wrong).
Also, again, I'm frustrated by the fact that they don't cite research and sources enough. Yes they do touch on it from time to time but very often from biased sources. Case in point the episode about increasing the size of your boobs where their official source for claiming that the only treatment that works is plastic surgery was, surprise, a plastic surgeon.
Granted, the report on genetically ehanced food had better sources but still I was frustrated by the blank spots. Like when talking about how Greenpeace influenced Zambia (I believe) to turn down the enhanced corn, I would've liked to see the sources cited for Greenpeace's argument. After all, if those sources were totally bruce, wouldn't it have benefitted the show to show that? Because showing the schmucks picketing the supermarket and then asking me to assume that a country let its people starve because of the same arguments is asking too much on faith. A country preferring to let its people starve rather than eat this stuff is a powerful statement. Take the two seconds to show me that it was the exact same argument that the supermarket protesters were using.
On the flip side, we've got the Daily Show, which rocked as always. This one was esp. interesting for me because Dennis Miller was on. I haven't seen him on a show in a while (I don't get HBO nor do I watch a lot of talk shows) so this was the first time I got to watch him in action since he did commentary on Monday Night Football.
Still, I'm something of a fan so getting one comedian who makes his wage by using his brain and pairing him up with another was just a hot fudge all over my ice cream moment for me.
Until Dennis opened his mouth.
Wow. He is definitely coasting on pre-written material. The entire conversation was him trying to segue back to his bits. In any other interview this would have stood out as intelligent because the interviewer would have never challenged him and the comments would have stood on their own. However Jon is no regular interviewer and even as he laughed at the jokes he totally blew Dennis out of the water. The boy has a brain and its scary how well he knows how to use it.
Tough Crowd was next and boy did I not want to watch but it turns out that Jon was on, so I tuned in to see if that would improve anything.
I tried watching Tough Crowd last week (when Chris Rock was on) as the premise seemed interesting but God does Colin Quinn make the show unwatchable. He's too nervous. I feel my own stomach clenching up whenever he talks. The pre-written jokes are consistantly lame and anything that would've had a chance to be funny is ruined by the fact that Colin is too panicked and rushed in his delivery. I don't even understand why they stick to the written bits when they so obviously never work.
One of the comedians - whose name I forget, but he was the one sitting next to Jon last night - is also an unfunny jerkwad. Now this could work in the show's favor (such as last night when Jon took advantage of that to point out how stupid the guy was and how most of his comments went back to some sort of racial slur, in last night's case against Jews) but without somebody to play off him he's just an annoying blowhard who brings the converstion to a halt because all he wants to do is plop out these dismissing non-funny zingers.
Still, it was interesting to watch Jon handle it. He did better than Chris Rock did, IMO. I got the impression that Chris was only there as a favor to Colin (who's a good friend of his) and that he personally did not have the improvisation skills necessary to try to adapt to the crushing lack of rhythm the show possessed. Chris seemed content to comment when he could, then try to stiffly get through the half hour.
Jon on the other hand recognized the bad writing and pacing and just worked it into his own habit of pretending he doesn't know what he's going to say next while being faux-bewildered. It worked. The show wasn't great by any means, but at least Jon's bits were watchable in spite of that.
I also caught the tail end of Monsoon Wedding which was also fun. I should get that movie on DVD at some point.
In other news I am now whiling away a day at work by myself, to be followed by yet another day at work tomorrow with the boss here. I really need a proper day off in which to do nothing. I fear this won't come until Sunday, when even then I'm only going to get it because I'll be - you guessed it - skipping services. Sigh.
Finally, and here's where I admit to being a bit of a Devon, but who was it that I was talking to at a couple of Connexions panels who was making that nifty red crochet thing? I ask b/c I'm tempted to try making something like that myself except I haven't been able to find a pattern online that looks like it, nor would I even know where to begin. If anybody could give me the hookup that would be great. =)
