? for Apple TV

Of all the great Billy Wilder films out there why is The Fortune Cookie not available? Grrrr.

Ummm…

… has giving infants wine been a problem before? 🤔

Tweet du Jour

A Message to Anti-Vaxxers from Linus Van Pelt, Noted Asshole

 

More Happy Birthday MTV

I declared MTV "dead" over a decade ago:

MTV has been a joke for a long time. But there WERE moments throughout it's history when it could've been so much more. And now they have, to quote one of the more unforgivably shitty piece of shit "bands" they unleashed on us for reasons still not understandable, done it all for the Snooki.

And here's come of my epic stuff on The Real World over the years YOU'RE WELCOME!

Happy 40th MTV

I imagine there will be some celebration of this weekend being the 40th anniversary of MTV, and while it's had absolutely nothing to do with music for decades now I always welcome any excuse to post one of the best sketches from the absolute gem it gave us, The State. 

 

Power Guidance Counselor - MTV's THE STATE from Jacob Voelzke on Vimeo.

Insta du Jour

CBS Fucking Up in the Early 1970s

Any fellow sitcom lovers know the story of when CBS blew up the successful trifecta of The Beverly Hillbillies/Petticoat Junction/Green Acres, ushering in more "modern" classics like The Mary Tyler Moore Show:

It was an empire! A grimy pig pooped doused empire! Nothing could stop this hick town juggernaut trilogy! Except for CBS which ran all three shows. Petticoat Junction was cancelled in 1970. Then in 1971, CBS cancelled the still popular Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies as part of a sweeping move on the networks part to get rid of all its "rural" comedies. Smart programming guys. "Gee, people still love these shows but lets cancel them anyway because they seem to have country appeal and not city appeal. And we want urban viewers not farmers." 

The Beverly Hillbillies was a terrible show, and I've never actually watched Petticoat Junction. But I will put up the brilliant satire of Green Acres against almost anything. That fucker was laugh-out-loud funny and smart.

Stupid CBS!

School Lunches Throughout the Sea of Time

The other day HERE I mentioned the magic of high school pizza, and today there's an image article about the magic of school lunches frozen in time.

The Beatles OTD

I've never understood why at the end of the perfect medley they stuck this shit on, as I bitched a few months ago. Can't people just stop and ask me for decisions about shit like this? Camon, Paul McCartney!

Music fact courtesy Kiko Jones

Indiana Wants....Well, Something

A lot was made last week over whether in Thunder Road Bruce sings "Mary's dress waves" or "Mary's dress sways", because hey we're about important shit here in the US of A. Jon Landau finally ended the "debate", but I find it much more interesting to wonder whether at the end of Xmastime superduperslice Indiana Wants Me R. Deane Taylor says "yeah love, it looks they found me" or "get up, it looks like they found me". I've tried 1 million times and it's somehow maddeningly unclear which it is. Maybe both?

The Kinks du Jour

Imagine being Dave Davies and 60 years later having to explain that you played the lead on You Really Got Me and not Jimmy Page, which was always the urban legend. For fuck's sake, can Jimmy Page come out of his witch's coven and set the record straight or will he continue to be an asshole and let this shit linger? 😡

For the record to clarify any misunderstanding surrounding the recording of @TheKinks You Really Got Me pic.twitter.com/L98j5t4MBf

— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) July 30, 2021

Ted Lasso Season 2 Hot Take

I’m not crazy about Roy Kent’s new hair. There I said it, don’t come at me bros!

40 Years Ago Today!

Most days are forgettable at best, willfully forgettable at worst.  This was not one of them. - XMASTIME

I'm putting the odds of them doing it later that night at exactly 0%. But congrats!

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Waxy, Marley, Xmastime, Dickman

I Am a Wild, Interesting Cat

I assumed he’d been wall-to-wall in my life since forever but I just realized I’ve only seen 5 George Clooney movies. 🤔🤷‍♂️

“You. Disappoint. Me.”

Mac & Whaaaaaaaaat?

As you folks know I loves me some macaroni & cheese. I love ice cream. But I have no earthly desire to try macaroni & cheese ice cream. Which is, apparently....a thing:

People save a very particular kind of revulsion for any ingredient that is conspicuously savory or otherwise controversial in ice cream. In the early aughts, when scoop shops in the U.S. started to experiment with flavors like corn and green tea, there were similar expressions of doubt and confusion. But ice cream — by dint of its dairy-forward ingredients alone — is the perfect foundation for the rich, sharp complement of cheese. Ice cream can be too saccharine and one-note, and cheese provides a savory balance to its potentially cloying sweetness. In Mexican cuisine, there are recipes for queso fresco ice cream that play up the sharp, salty flavors of goat’s and cow’s milk. Even the American brand Cold Stone Creamery sells a kind of cheese ice cream: Their cheesecake variety is made with cream cheese flavoring, whatever that means. 

Okay fuck it they got me I'll try some!

My Apple+ Life Over the Last 72 Hours

Birthday du Jour

Jackie Kennedy was born 92 years ago today. For all the talk about how young JFK was when he died, we seem to have not noticed that Jackie only lived to be 64. I guess I should be grateful she died before I revealed her to only be my #2 Kennedy Lady:

Always had a thing for a young Ethel Kennedy. Over-tanned, teeth out front mingling with the crowd telling knock-knock jokes, always looking at home in a lil tennis skirt. Sigh. Mrs. Xmastime-Kennedy. Still single, I would guess?

Sorry/not sorry, Jackie!

"Thanks Xmastime, guess I'll just make my own birthday cake too. Ass."

Baseball. A Thought.

The crazy thing about being a baseball fan is just when you wanna throw your hands in the air and give up on the season and declare your team to be the worst team in the history of teams you realize it could still work out for the very reason that all the other teams are pretty shitty too. 🤷‍♂️⚾️

Economy of Pitches

I remember watching David Cone's 88-pitch perfect game in 1999 absolutely whiz by in real time, and am stunned Maddox threw a 76-pitch complete game. Wow. That couldn't happen today because it's the law now that if you have 2 strikes on a batter you hafta start dicking around nowhere near the plate. Grrrr.

Netflix Series Idea!

Porn star with a heart of gold overcomes his debilitating stutter to win the hearts of America. Looking for investors!

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I’d pay good money to any NFL player refusing to take the vaccine because of concerns about what goes into his body who could name 50% of the shit his team pumps into his body on a regular basis.

Love is All Around...Maybe Too Much Around

Watching an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where some strange dude walks into Mary’s apartment & asks if he can sketch it and she says yes and I’m like JESUS DID NOBODY RAPE ANYBODY IN THE 70’s????!!!

CAMON Bruv, Too Effin' Easy

1. Brother

2. Tyler

3. Horse

4. Joan Mavis Trotter

5. The Nag's Head

State du Moi

I feel like Saturday was the first time I’d had eggs in a really, really long time. 

Garfield Classic du Jour

Venus in Furs and Venus in Furs

You wouldn't think you'd need an entire article explaining that the name of the book that inspired the amazing Velvet Underground's classic Venus in Furs was in fact Venus in Furs, but here we go:

Lou Reed and his bandmate John Cale were inspired to match the sultry tone of the book with their own sonic equivalent. Scoring the lyrics of “Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather,” with the haunting repetition of Cale’s darkly screeching viola and Reed’s droning guitar. The result is a dark transposition of the novel, that proved that the old musical cliché of calling something “ahead of its time” has more than a grain of truth to it. 

Of course this is just a blatant excuse to listen to a mind-blowingly great song fro what may be the single-greatest debut album of all time. You're welcome!

Ah Yes, Back When I Was Brilliant

When The Ramones Met The Archies

It happened in 2016. At first glance I thought well that's weird, but then I remembered The Ramones were pretty well-known as being comic book fanatics (if they could read at all), and then this of course:

When cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn, and writer/resident punk Roderick ‘Legs’ McNeil started Punk magazine in 1975, they combined punk and comic books. Features on Blondie, The Ramones, and The Dead Boys were surrounded by pages of comics featuring trouble maker Legs and his drunken antics on the streets of NYC. Their first issue was published 40 years ago next year and was the first publication to highlight the CBGB scene. John Holmstrom has called Punk, “the print version of The Ramones.”

Do I own this a copy of this very issue Punk Magazine folks YES INDEED I DO, THANK YOU FOR ASKING!

Bought it on my first-ever trip to NYC in 1992. Went to CBGB's, met the infamously scowling owner Hilly Krystal who was annoyed I was trying to, you know, give him money for stuff.  And yes, seven years later my band The Happy Scene played there, rock you very much.

TFW...

...you've sold out your family's century-long political dynasty for a chance to kiss the ass of the guy who judged the business skills of the singer from Poison to be superior to all others and in return you got…nothing. Sad!

Republicans...

...are now so patriotic they're openly rooting for America to lose at the Olympics. Impressive!

Happy School Pizza Day!

(originally posted in 2011)

OVER AT SLICE they're asking if we remember school cafeteria pizza.  Ummm...what?  OF COURSE I FUCKING DO!  I'm "guessing" I remember more about the cafeteria pizza from high school than I do about any class I took in high school.  I guarantee I could do 20 pages (single-spaced, not that double-spaced faggot shit) on the pizza, and exactly zero on As I Lay Dying, or the four years of mathematics I allegedly took.

Actually it looked pretty much like the one in their picture but with a bucket of grease - if you were lucky, you got one burned to within an inch of it's life so as to add "flavor."  It was filled with those tiny, diced chunks of pepperoni, making that strange mix of cardboard and processed  glue  cheese that for some reason made kids line up out the door to get a slice.  Lunch bags would be left home for the day (or tossed), friends would be offered free slices to show up early and hold spots in line, therein making 3rd period Study Hall the place to be (luckily, I broke the record for Study Hall, so I was the fucking Man.)  All for something that, looking back now, probably shaved years off our lives.  It was like camping out all night for Beatles tickets, and then two decades later and realizing you'd seen The Backstreet Boys.

Also, "Pizza Day" was every Wednesday, which coincided with the other big event in our lives at the time, half-price pizza night at Roma's.  You'd think in such a tiny town they woulda worked something out so we weren't doubling up with pizza on Wednesday; then again, I'm sure there was an unwritten rule with all us kids "any of you motherfuckers blow the whistle on Magical Pizza High Day, I'll fucking cut you."  Funny, we kept a lid on our pizza day, but kids today can't keep their mouths shut when it comes to shutting the fuck up re: hot teachers fucking students.  Christ, this generation is a buncha fucking pussies.

YES!

FINALLY, an oral history of the shoulda-been-a-classic flick Clifford:

Platt: The deliciousness of imagining what Marty would do with that felt like it added to the sinister nature of the kid in a comedic and fun kind of way. It was a way to really give a platform to Marty’s genius.

David Letterman (comedian, Clifford fan): If they’d had a child actor in that role, I’m not going to see that movie. But you put Martin Short in that role, and where do I get my tickets? I’m coming. I’ll be there.

Flaherty: “Look at me like a human boy. You can’t do it.” That’s improvised. That’s Grodin. That’s the moment from the movie that people remember. And then Marty doing that reaction face — his version of what a normal boy looks like, with that dumb look on his face. [Laughs.] So what you got there was the best of Grodin and the best of Marty right in that little moment.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE!

Shout-out to Charles Grodin, RIP.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you and The Short Bus recreate a classic scene from Clifford years ago?"  

Sigh. Yes we did faithful readers, YES we did. You're welcome! 

Tweet du Jour

Shirley pauses for 1.5 seconds to sift through her vast mental catalog of insults in order to find just the perfect one to make Rerun cry. pic.twitter.com/CejMzxsCce

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) July 27, 2021

Wrong Again!

Earlier today when I was talking about Trumpian idiots noble patriots I admitted I had been wrong about them. Now, I saw this on the ol' Twitter:

and am reminded that back in 2008 I said the following about blogs:

Blogs will never be taken seriously until they're called something else. "Blog" in and of itself is a goofy word, and blogging as a viable way of communication/entertainment will not be taken seriously until we come up with something else. 

In 2021 we still call them blogs, without any reason to believe that will ever change.

Always One of My Faves. #goddaughter 🤣🤣🤣

Propers

After the election in November I steamed:

Now that Trump is gone I don’t wanna see Republicans having crises of conscience, claiming their distance from him. For 4 years they were complicit in his racism and corruption; suddenly becoming “brave” after his removal from power doesn’t earn them a chapter in Profiles in Courage. He may be gone but they remain, and it is truly terrifying to imagine what human piece of garbage they will come up with in 2024 that will make Trump seem quaint.  

Total credit where credit is due: Republicans have only increased their fealty to Trump since November, doubling down on begging for his approval and willing to throw anything away - personally or professionally - to do so.

Well done, chaps!

Hold Up...

....the actress playing Diana in the next two seasons of The Crown is 6'3"?  

 

 

Haven't seen anything like this since:

Tinniswood & Lennon

Here is John Lennon's ridiculous letter returning his MBE to the Queen, and no matter how many times I read it, exactly one of his reasons gets a genuine LOL every time. And then in Peter Tinniswood's delightful Except You're a Bird, I see this:

Dear Carter, just a line to let you know I am leaving you for good and all because I hold you responsible for the death of my son and my daughter and will you please remember to iron the tea towels after I'm gone.

Worlds colliding! 🤣

Peter Tinniswood Line du Jour

"The whole trouble with marriage is that nine times out of ten you find yourself marrying a total bloody stranger."

"Or a woman," said Mr. Brandon.

"Certainly," said Uncle Mort. "Marriage is the last thing you'd keep a woman out of."

Thoughts. I Have Them.

If the United States operated with the same intensity Howard Stern does when he's trying to get his guest to admit they always fall in love with their co-stars on movie sets then all of our problems would be solved.

Life. This Guy Gets It.

Update

Hour 6 of desperately trying to not watch the season premier of Ted Lasso yet or accidentally seeing spoilers online going well, thank you very much.

"I see you and appreciate you Xmastime!"

Not Rocking

The internet, for some reason, tells me that David Essex of Rock On fame turns 75 today. Which is a nice reminder that he does, in fact, not rock.

But of course Mr. Essex was a mere harbinger of non-rocking things to come, including the Babe Ruth of the genre, Xmastime buddy Marley himself:

1) Acoustic guitar = not rocking
2) No drummer = not rocking
3) Playing with dude who's over 25 and isn't a movie star who's wearing sunglasses = not rocking
4) Wearing shorts = not rocking
5) Wearing shorts that are obviously Dockers = REALLY not rocking
6) Playing outside = not rocking
7) Playing during the day = not rocking
8) Playing with SUVs in sight = not rocking
9) Staring pensively at the ground along with your partner = not rocking
10) Playing with dude who has his shirt tucked in = not rocking
11) Playing with dude who has his polo knit shit tucked in = not rocking

It's official, Marley: YOU, sir, do not rock!!!

Brilliant Tweet du Jour (#jelly)

waiter: what'll it be?

cow: grass

horse: grass

sheep: grass

pig: *adjusting his bowtie* truffles

— john (@mrjohndarby) July 21, 2021

Thoughts. I Have Them.

One of the few things we can all agree on in this crazy divided country is that nobody is really sure how to pronounce “machinations”. 

Dog du Jour

it's clear who the best player here is
(kiarathevolleydog IG) pic.twitter.com/lkPrQl3NhZ

— Humor And Animals (@humorandanimals) July 20, 2021

Speaking of the Inbetweeners

Years ago I discovered:

The actors who played Roger, Dwayne and Rerun were born in three different decades. You may now consider your mind sufficiently blown. 

And today I learn that none of the four main cast members of The Inbetweeners was born in the same year. Not as crazy as different decades, but was still surprising.

in the meantime, enjoy the always absolutely brilliant Greg Davies.

Top 10 Britcom First Episodes

Fawlty Towers
To the Manor Born
Porridge
Only Fools and Horses
The Vicar of Dibley
The Inbetweeners
The IT Crowd
Yes, Minister
The Green Green Grass
Blackadder

Here's the first episode of The Inbetweeners. You're welcome!

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I think they didn't make a big enough deal for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.

State du Moi

Being alive in 2021 means podcasts let us just skip commercials with a click of a button and you can still bitch and moan about them being there. 🤷‍♂️

McCartney 3,2,1

There are two things that are astonishing about this miniseries doc: Paul McCartney is widely celebrated as the greatest rock & roll bass player ever - certainly the most melodic/creative - but in peeling these songs back to the bass parts, you realize its possible Paul McCartney is fucking underrated as a bass player!!! The stuff he does for each song is crazy. The second thing is that you can only wonder, why did he put so much work and thought into the bass parts in the first place, knowing there's no way in hell people with their shitty little stereos would hear them? Sure we can now with our modern equipment, but nobody back then hearing the songs blasting through the radio would pick up on the brilliance of his playing.

As for Rick Rubin, he has the perfect mix of adoration for McCartney and professional expertise to pull off a thing like this.

All the thumbs up for this one.

On Hulu now!

TV Thoughts. I Have Them.

MAD MEN

Sometimes I worry that as a nation we don't talk about how much Trudy Campbell is tv's greatest wife.  

TED LASSO 

I love that they didn’t make his wife a villain but is any woman with a kid really gonna get divorced because her husband is … too optimistic?

How can Isaac play soccer in the Premier League and yet be, shall we say, "husky"?

Garfield History: 43 Years Ago Today

On July 15, 1978 we were introduced to the fact that Garfield loves lasagna!

Calling Out Bush BS

I had assumed George W. Bush would be the worst president of my lifetime and posted about how awful he was about 1000x a day back in early Xmastime days, but then Trump came into office and was so repugnant it was easy for liberals like me to start thinking of Bush as warm cuddly Pop Pop who just wanted to paint still lifes and be adorable whenever in the presence of Michelle Obama. He stayed silent during Trump's years of being an ogre but has decided to speak up now that Biden has announced withdrawing troops from Afghanistan (which Trump and Obama both claimed they wanted to do as well) and this guy is having none of Bush's bullshit re: worrying about the lives of women left behind in the region:

Did he speak out when his party nominated a man to be president who has been accused by two dozen women of rape and sexual abuse? No. Has he spoken out against the efforts by his party to limit the voting rights of Americans, targeting primarily the voting power of women of color? Of course not.

Bush appointed justices and judges who opposed reproductive rights for women. He blocked aid to international organizations that provided family planning services. He blocked efforts to recruit more women into the intelligence community. And he has remained silent as the American Taliban in his party have sought to do worse.

Bush has permanently disqualified himself from commenting on U.S. foreign policy. He owns the Afghanistan fiasco and should be silent about well-intentioned efforts with bi-partisan support to bring it to a close. (Polls show overwhelming support for the pullout—between 58 percent support in an Economist poll to 77 percent in a CBS News poll.) He offers no better choices because, like other critics, he has none. And if he is going to stand up for the rights of women in the face of systematic efforts by religious extremists to crush them, then there is plenty of work he is going to have to do at home before he has any credibility to comment about what is going on elsewhere in the world.

George, unless you are going to stand up for American women and against errors you yourself made, it would be better for us all if you go back to your painting.

Favorite Person I Share a Birthday With

David Mitchell! He's best known for the brilliant Peep Show but I also have always loved this sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Mind Blown du Jour

I just heard somebody refer to "at the turn of the century" and I automatically assumed it meant 1899/1900 before realizing they meant 1999/2000.

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I don't really care about their music one way or another but Def Leppard's bass player's real name is Rick Savage and I feel like we don't talk about that enough.

Ted Lasso Season 2

Alan Sapinwall's review is in, and yes Virginia, there is a Jamie Tartt in season 2:

Season Two seems to open without any strife at all. Roy is retired and Jamie is starring in a reality dating show, and the Richmond players and management are all on the same page. When Ted arrives in Rebecca’s office each morning, she, general manager Higgins and marketing guru Keeley greet him like he’s Norm from Cheers. The players are constantly smiling, and Ted and assistant coaches Beard and Nate are so in unison they practically communicate with twin-speak. For a hot minute, it feels as if Sudeikis, Lawrence, and company saw how viewers responded to Ted’s goodness and decided to give them more of what they wanted, the narrative necessity of conflict be gosh-darned. If a comedy where everyone gets along all the time can still be appealing and funny, why does anyone ever need to get mad with one another?

Can't wait, people!

Happy Bastille Day!

It’s Easy to Forget How Great REM Is

“Dog Finally Admits He Has No Idea What the Hell ‘Who’s a Good Boy?’ Means”

7/13/1971

50 years ago today the Major League All-Star game featured 22 future Hall of Famers (and Pete Rose, who obviously should be one):

"All your baseball cards came to life," said Joe Torre, who started at third base for the National League team. "It was like walking into the Hall of Fame. You say, 'Wow, all of these guys are all Hall of Famers.' You're still gaga over it.''

No other All-Star Game has featured 20 Hall of Fame players. Let all the names on this field on this one night sink in: Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Luis Aparicio, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Jackson, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Jim Palmer, Johnny Bench, Willie McCovey, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Ron Santo, Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Ferguson Jenkins, Juan Marichal and Roberto Clemente, who would sadly be there for the final time. The managers, the Orioles' Earl Weaver and the Reds' Sparky Anderson, are also in the Hall of Fame.

"It was a huge thrill,'' Jackson said. "I remember it being the first game that two Black men started [on the mound]. It was the greatest players in history, like all the guys with 3,000 hits.''

"It was breathtaking being there, all those players, all those home runs, all in one game,'' Palmer said. "It was unbelievable. It was so good, Pete Rose didn't even start. Tell him I said that.''

Soccer & Me

After hearing about me watching the entire England/Italy soccer match the other day, exactly nofuckingbody hundreds of fans have asked me to repost my classic anti-soccer post from 2006. Enjoy, Earth!

8) Now that the World Cup has started, we gotta start our every-four-years-like-clockwork bullshit about “Soccer is gonna catch on like crazy in America!!” Great. We never learn; soccer will never, ever ever be one of the major sports in the country, for several reasons.

a. When I was in high school, soccer was played by the impish, white skate-rats who wore Vans and listened to Agent Orange and NOT by the real athletes of the school. If you were a real athlete, you played football. If my football Coach was walking by and happened to notice a real athlete playing soccer, he’d simply yell at him to get his ass over to the football field and “quit being a wuss.” So it’s not like any real athletes were being groomed to dominate the game and then go on to college and play before joining the Olympic team.

b. Also, these kids were always the rich/borderline rich kids. It’s tough to become a powerhouse when your base of athletes are rich, kinda spoiled kids. That’s the same reason lacrosse will never get huge; nobody’s interested in rooting for a bunch of future doctors and lawyers running around in their $190 shorts flinging a ball around. We wanna see some poor, tough farmboy who’s hanging onto the team by a thread (thanks to taking shop 3 periods a day) out there cracking skulls in a blind fury. Like, ironically enough, Liza Minelli. Go figure.

c. Which is, ta-da, apparently the total opposite of every other country in the world. In other countries they have kids living in dirt and filth and crafting a ball out of kurds and whey and spittle busting their asses; in America we have the “Soccer Mom.” The Soccer Mom is the housewife who carts her kid back and forth to practice in their 4-miles-to-the-gallon SUV while he and his buddies scream at her to stop at TCBY. You don’t hear about a lot of Soccer Moms in Africa. I’d wager there are more soccer moms chained to my radiator at home right now than there are in all of Kenya. Just a hunch.

d. Hey, I’m only saying, this is why we’ll always suck at soccer: our players are soft. If you spend hours in the weight room or doing plyometrics, you’re gonna play football, basketball or baseball. If you like the way your hair flops up and down while running up and down a field, soccer’s your game. Some of my best friends in high school played soccer. Not once do I recall “oh shit, here comes our star midfielder… please don’t stuff me in a locker please don’t stuff me in a locker please don’t stuff me in a locker please don’t stuff me in a locker please don’t stuff me in a locker…”

e. Of course the real problem is that throughout the 90 minutes of a “match” NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS. Once every 15 minutes someone will break out of the pack with the ball and you do get a little excited “oh shit, he’s gonna score…” there’s nothing between him and the goal for 35 yards, he’s running and…whoops. Dribbled the ball off his leg. Wheeeeeeeeee, great. Hell, in basketball a shot HAS to be taken within 24 seconds of every possession and we bitch about that being too slow. And yes Professor, before you write in with your comments, I know that if I dedicate the next 20 years of my life to studying the game and its many machinations I would have a new respect for what’s going on on the field, but right now all I see is “dude’s at midfield standing there with the ball while the other guys get tanner.” Hey, I’m sure I could spend 20 years studying the intricacies and beauty of sucking a dick, but guess what, it ain’t happening.

f. Finally, what really drives me bananas is that there’s no scoreboard with the time, only the ref knows how much time is left in the game. What the fuck is this? Hey soccer, lemme tell you, having some dude in tight white shorts running around a field of dudes cooing “ooooooooh, I’ve got a secret!” is not helping out your “straight” case, if you know what I mean. Christ.

Sorry, but soccer will never break through the Big Three of football, basketball and giving other dudes titty twisters. Just how it is.

'FOOTBALL AMERICAIN"

















'FOOTBALL'

Live Aid at 36

"The can-do land of America had become a can't-do country. The nation who had put a man on the moon, didn't believe such a show was technically possible."

36 years ago today Live Aid happened; every year I'm reminded how amazing it is they pulled it off.

I was at the perfect age for it - old enough to be taking music "seriously," but still young enough that "music" to me meant a lot of the bands that were a big deal at the time, like Duran Duran or the Hooters. Had it come a year later when I was into The Ramones and The Replacements I prolly woulda pooh-poohed it as "stupid."

 

Still Waiting.

OFAH du Jour

Some lunatic created a Only Fools and Horses Logo set, with tiny details including:

In their living room You can find 2 tv's that Grandad watches most of the time. He also has cheeseburger Rodney got him, even he wanted emperor's burger.

• In front of Grandad on small desk, You can find double headed coin.
• There are lots of boxes they need to sell same as walkie talkies.
• On the desk You can find typing machine Del got for Rodney and calculator.
• There are big shelves with many Easter eggs, and one of them is pocket watch
• In the back there is small bar with lots of drinks and some suitcases they need to sell also
• There is also Rodney's room with a computer and trumpet, and also small easter egg on the wall You can find one of Rodney's GCEs

The Beatles! 1995! Yeah Yeah Yeah!

I can remember breathlessly watching the three nights they originally ran this back in 1995, and thinking "who the fuck on the planet ISN'T watching this?" As the respective albums were released I'd buy them at Sounds at the mall in Oxford, running to the mall shitter to read the liner notes cause I couldn't wait until I got home. - XMASTIME

I've blathered on before many times about how great 1995 was, and in reading about Peter Jackson's upcoming doc Get Back we see The Beatles agree with me:

Nineteen ninety-five was the year in which The Beatles had a full-on resurrection, although they were only partly responsible for it themselves. While the “Anthology” project certainly reignited interest in the band, The Beatles were also a fundamental part of the Britpop DNA and hence unavoidable. Plus, Ian MacDonald’s 1994 book, Revolution In The Head: The Beatles’ Records And The Sixties, had given them the kind of critical reevaluation that was hard to ignore. “A sunny optimism permeated everything and possibilities seemed limitless,” he wrote. “The Beatles were at their peak and were looked up to in awe as arbiters of a positive new age in which the dead customs of the older generation would be refreshed and remade through the creative energy of the classless young.” The book’s commentary was not just encyclopaedic, but its cultural scholarship also painted The Beatles as genuine pop geniuses, and with good reason.

And some good news for Paul!

Nineteen ninety-five also saw the pendulum start to slowly swing back to McCartney, as from hereon it would start to be him who the culture would hold up as King Beatle. It was as if people had suddenly realised that, yes, John Lennon was 15 years dead, but we still had half of the greatest writing partnership in the history of pop walking among us, making records, touring, appearing on TV and influencing an entire generation of musicians and nascent stars obsessed with his old band.

Mostly, I can't fucking wait for Thanksgiving to watch this film:

You’ll see John scribbling down the lyrics for “Don’t Let Me Down”. You’ll see vast amounts of funny interplay and, in one particularly jaw-dropping moment, you’ll see George calmly suggesting that McCartney’s recently unveiled masterpiece “Let It Be” might be improved by a short intro. “What, like this?” asks McCartney, literally inventing the famous introduction right before our eyes. 

"So we run through this song once and then it's on to Arby's, right?" 

Dafuck, Emmys? 😡😡😡

Happy GrizzaDay Everybody!

GrizzaDay (n) - July 13, the day between Mamalizza and Xmastime's birfdays. Also: excuse to eat a whole ice cream cake guilt-free.

The inaugural in 2008!

The sequel in 2010!

And that's been it so far! :)

Sobering Life Moment du Jour

8:55am this morning

(I walk into the kitchen where my nephew, currently on summer break, is)

Me: Ugh, Monday sucks, right?

Him: Not for me.

BLAMMO!

😜

The Great Fetishism Continues

Americans love to do nothing more than fetishize billionaires, probably because we think if we do we'll magically become one ourselves. And today we see this about the Frasier reboot:

Kelsey Grammer described Frasier’s journey in the upcoming season, saying, “He thinks he’s going to go off and do one thing, and sure enough, his life takes him in another direction. And he ends up rich beyond his dreams.” 

Now I love LOVE LOVE LOVE Frasier, but of all the sitcom characters – the snobby Harvard elitist – and during of all times – a global economy derailed by Covid - you'd think this would be the perfect opportunity to turn the tables comedy-wise and see what it'd be like to put Frasier in a position in which he has to scramble to make do for himself on a daily business. But no, in America we demand he go in the opposite direction, making him even richer than before. What the fuck?!?!!?

Euros 2021

Man is England gonna crucify that poor kid who missed the final penalty kick. Or worse, make him play in America.😬

Xmastime Critiques!

This would be one of Saturday Night Live's all-time great sketches, but they blew it by 1) noting that Maine's sense of justice is "unique" in the intro, and then 2) later in the sketch wondering how it all could have happened ("space/time continuum"?) . Acknowledging they're aware of the weirdness of the situation ruins the joke; playing it straight would've stuck the landing perfectly. Who the fuck did not see this when they were making it? Grrr.

A Rethink

I posted this the other day but have spent the entire time since obsessed with why they felt the need to add the word "tiny". Of course the flip-flops would be tiny, are we to possibly think they'd be huge flip-flops? Adding the word in there ruins the goddam joke. Grrr.

Funny du Jour

There's a ton of terrible shit down the YouTube rabbit holes, but this is not one of them. High-concept shit, well-done. Xmastime is jelly!

Makes You Think.

The Office & Wayne Rooney

Keeping The Office love going...Oliver Chris, who played Ricky (and is currently in the delightful Trying), wrote a parody of Let it Be to celebrate English socc-I mean, football great, Wayne Rooney. Enjoy!

Xmastime #OTD 2008

13 years ago today I made this amazing video. However, my style of comedy back then being even more brilliant than even conceivable now, I also made a "blooper" reel, which was OF COURSE even funnier. Sorry for the crappy 2008 video tech. Enjoy, and you're welcome!

Strawman

I'm happy to help the Earth by moving on from plastic straws but paper straws are absolute garbage so I welcome the invitation to use pasta as straws.

GARFIELD du JOUR: Was Garfield Stuck in a Tree for 2 Years?

What is it about the date July 9 that makes Jim Davis go, "fuck it, let's just put the guy up in a tree"?

BBC...Bunnies?

BBC Yeah You Know Me

In honor of today being the 20th anniverary of The Office, I'm updating my list of Britcoms you peple need to watch. You're welcome, Earth!

The 1970s

Open All Hours
The Good Life
Fawlty Towers
To the Manor Born
Porridge
Citizen Smith
Rising Damp
I Didn’t Know You Cared
Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads

The 1980s

Only Fools and Horses
Yes, Minster
Blackadder

The 1990s

The Royle Family
I’m Alan Partridge
Father Ted
The Vicar of Dibley

The 2000s

Extras
The Office
Miranda
The Green Green Grass
Black Books
The IT Crowd
Gavin and Stacey
Peep Show
Coupling
The Worst Week of My Life

The 2010s

The Trip
Detectorists
The Inbetweeners
The Wrong Man(s)
Rev
Whites
Spy
Count Arthur Strong
Vicious
Friday Night Dinner
Back to Life
Upstart Crow
Moone Boy
Derry Girls
Uncle
Cuckoo
Motherland
Benidorm
Chickens
Fresh Meat
Still Open All Hours

The 2020s

Staged
Trying
Back
There She Goes
Breeders
After Life

The Office, III

Today's the 20th anniversary of the debut of The Office, and the internet for some reason is fucking obsessed about wondering if it would be allowed to be made today. Do any search for the show and half of the articles are on that subject, which is fucking tiresome. Stephen Merchant on the oft-asked question if it could be made today:

“I suppose it’s hard to say whether the show would be the same if we did it today,” Merchant says. “There’s part of me that wonders, would it get made, would it get commissioned in the same way now, or would people be too jumpy? I don’t know. Maybe we would’ve approached it differently. I think it’s hard to say.

“I think certainly, woke culture, or whatever you want to call it, is right to bring up things, joke areas or approaches to humour, or storytelling, or whatever that perhaps in the past would’ve been taken as read that you could do. And perhaps we should sort of stop and give it some thought,” he says.

“But the flip of that is that nothing we ever did was without careful consideration,” Merchant adds. “We never put a joke in there thoughtlessly. Everything was considered, at least in terms of, as we could see it through our eyes, what would be offensive and what wasn’t. And we always talked about being able to defend the jokes in the show and the subject matter.”

I spend less time wondering "would such & such show get made today?" and more time just being grateful it was made. Who the fuck cares if it would be made today?

The Office, II

Ricky Gervais on the 20th anniversary.

The Office at 20

I couldn't watch it for years because the accents were so difficult to understand - even for a Britcom connoisseur like myself - but a rewatch this week has confirmed its even funnier than I'd thought the first time. It's not in my personal Top 10, but it's a monster of a show that deserves itself historically in the pantheon along with such giants as Only Fools and Horses and Fawlty Towers. 20 years. Wow.

20 years ago today, The Office launched on BBC Two and we'll be showing the very first episode, tonight at 10pm.

To celebrate here's the very first time we saw @rickygervais as David Brent, in the opening scene of #TheOffice... pic.twitter.com/xWG1XnNpOC

— GOLD (@goldchannel) July 9, 2021

Has Jerry Seinfeld Been Ripping Me Off For Years?

Prognosis? YES!

Xmastime, 2009:

I don't know why people always say "at least he went doing something he loved." What? Why the fuck would that be good? Let's say I'm about to play basketball for an hour, but drop dead as I start playing. That means I am robbed an hour of doing what I love doing. Why is this good? Ever hear anybody say how thrilled they were about having to stop in the middle of doing something they liked? Who's the wizard behind this saying?

I wanna go doing something I HATE, like if I'm staring at a pile of shirts that need to be ironed. If you gotta die, you might as well get out of doing something you hate, right?

Jerry in his 2020 Netflix special, 23 Hours to Kill:

We also like to say things to make ourselves feel better. “Well, at least he died doin’ something that he loved.” Yeah, well, okay… but he’s not doin’ that anymore. Also, not sure how in love with it he would still be… after the very negative outcome. I’d like to die doin’ somethin’ that I hate like cleaning a row of outdoor Porta Pottis. Clutch my chest, drop the brush, keel over, and go, “Fantastic. At least I’m done with that.”

Jerry, I will be expecting a comically fat check, and then we can be bff!

I've Had Worse Ideas

1. Ha ha ha that's funny 2. Wait - did the baby snap its neck on the ground and die? 🤔

Keeping Things in Perspective is Very Important.