Happy Halloween
Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!
![Charlie Brown's neighbors are a bunch of dicks.](http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e315/tomthedog2/CharlieBrownHalloween.jpg)
I GOT A ROCK!
A blog about all that is worthy in the Culture we call Pop. TV, Comics, Movies, TV, Music, Books, and a little TV as well. Updated every day, in a perfect world. The same world where Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson had not all won Best Director Oscars before Martin Scorsese, J.D. Salinger had been as prolific as Stephen King, and Whoopi Goldberg was locked away where she could never hurt anyone ever again.
Inspired by the AV Club's 24 hour horror movie marathon, as programmed by Eli Roth, I thought I'd concoct my own marathon for this Halloween.
Here's another low effort, cop-out You Tube post for you tonight, to tide you over (and keep my daily posting streak alive) while I prepare an extensive post for tomorrow.
Item the first:
A quick Lost timeline:
Now that all the new Fall shows have debuted, it's time to take a look back and ask, "Why the hell did I do that again?"
You're all a bunch of smart, nice people, so I'm assuming you're already aware of this. But I feel the need to make it perfectly clear.
Did some more tinkering with the sidebar, adding icons to various sections. Just to spruce it up a bit. Not sure if I like it or not. If you have an opinion one way or the other, let me know. Or tell me a story.
Re: Sidebar Update
Viva Laughlin (CBS)
Samantha Who? (ABC)
Why is Sunday night TV so awful? It's one of the most competitive nights of the week, ratings-wise, and advertising dollars-wise. But with baseball preempting the Fox cartoons, there's not a damn thing I want to watch.
After another disgraceful loss from Cal, who are playing like they're allergic to winning, I could use some cheering up. So here's one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. From the first season of NewsRadio: Phil Hartman has quit smoking, and Dave Foley has given up coffee. And Andy Dick picks the wrong moment to interrupt.
When I was attending Cal, I would make near weekly visits to the UC Theater, which is one of the best movie theaters ever. Or was -- faced with having to make $350,000 worth of repairs to meet "seismic upgrade" standards, it closed its doors in 2001. Sad!
Recent TV: I skipped last night's Bionic Woman, just as I promised I would. I have to admit, I felt a nagging urge to watch it anyway, despite knowing how awful it would be. But I resisted, and am a better man for it.
Let's jump right into it:
I'm still so sour over Cal's idiotic loss to Oregon State I can barely even think about the other TV I watched this weekend. I don't normally get this wrapped up in sports. I mean, I get angry when my teams lose (stupid Dodgers!), but this got me so furious it pretty much ruined my whole weekend. I kept feeling like a wrong had been inflicted against me, personally, like I was getting audited or someone had keyed my car or something. Which is crazy, I know, but there you have it. And I kept being surprised by why I was feeling so bad. I would become aware that I was all anxious and upset, and wonder, "Did I bounce a check? Did I lose my keys? Oh, yeah -- fucking Cal lost."
Fantastic news from the world of comics -- coming next February: The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus!
American Elf is a diary in webcomic form, created by James Kochalka. It's updated every single day.
Holy hell. And I thought last week's episode of Saturday Night Live was bad. Tonight's was just atrocious.
Women's Murder Club (ABC)
I said I would post again later today about TV. Well, it's later, but I haven't got much to say.
Hey, you know what else might be fun? Rather than the 87th consecutive post about television? Watching a movie! Like this one:
I already told you what I thought of last night's Bionic Woman. I wasn't very favorably impressed by another of the new shows, Life, either.
"I'm about to get analog on your ass."
I did indeed watch Cavemen and Carpoolers again tonight. I'm a glutton for punishment. Neither of them is any good, still, but I find that, as opposed to my opinion last week, Carpoolers surpassed Cavemen in the second episode. Not by much, but there you go.
Last night's How I Met Your Mother was hilarious, the best of the season so far, involving Ted's efforts to close the deal on "riding the tricycle" with Danica McKellar (reprising her role from the first season's classic "Pineapple Incident" episode) and Busy Philipps, while his friends alternately try to help or "trike block" him. It had more of the quick quip-trading and frantic energy that generally make for good HIMYM episodes, and Barney was at his best, supremely confident and full of jealousy and doubt at the same time. That said, every check in on Robin's storyline brought things grinding to a halt. She's been more separated from the main group than a part of it for the first three episodes this season, and though it worked well in last week's episode, she needs to return to the fold. These characters work best in tandem with at least one other of the crew, not solo.
Last night's TV:
The highlight of yesterday's TV was the crazy NCAA football action. #2 USC gets upset at home by Stanford, of all teams. And #1 LSU comes this close to also being upset at home by Florida (and what a great game that was -- I was rooting my heart out for Florida!). If LSU had also lost, that meant my beloved Cal, sitting in the #3 spot with a bye week, could potentially have moved up to #1 by doing nothing! And how sweet would that have been? As it is, Cal moved up to #2 in the AP and USA Today polls (though they still got zero votes for first place, and the new #3, Ohio St., got two votes for first in the USA Today poll, which is weird -- no respect!), and USC dropped to #7 (ha!) in the USA Today poll, and #10 (HA!!) in the AP. There's still a rough road ahead for Cal -- the Nov. 10 home game against USC is still huge, but before that, they've got an away game against #14 Arizona State (#13 in USA Today), who is currently 6-0 overall. In fact, though Cal is #2 in the nation, they're only third in the Pac-10! Arizona St. is #1, and UCLA is #2 -- they're 3-0 in conference (as opposed to Cal's 2-0), though they're only 4-2 overall.
Pushing Daisies (ABC)