Whoa. Too Funny.

and another:



I'll post for real soon. I promise.

Thug Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Alas! They killed U-Turn, who delivered one of the best line I've heard in a while, quoted above.

I suspect most of you, my dedicated readers, don't watch "Weeds," but for those of you who are keeping up with this season, you'll understand, and might enjoy this post on TV Squad. For the rest of you, I promise something with wider appeal soon--or at least, with different appeal.

Paltry Excuses

I'd like to say that the school year has been busy so far, kicking my ass so hard I haven't got time to blog, but that wouldn't be entirely true. More accurate would be to say that yes, school has started, and I have had a surprising number of places to be this week--but more to the point, a few other things have come in the way of blogging:

1. Television. Sad but true. Our L Word marathon somehow whetted J's and my tastes for reruns of Survivorman on The Science Channel, despite the recurrent threat of poisonous spiders and snakes on screen.

2. The Train Game arrived! J is hooked,and I'm recapturing the magic. Rotors to Berlin, anyone? We welcome third or fourth players--let us know.

3. The Cloffice. I'm continuing to set up the kitchen closet as my office, and am on the final (long-put-off) task: filing. Today? Maybe....

4. Playing on the Internet. I just linked to a new blog: a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) is now blogging about her experiences learning how to cook Asian food. Check it out here.

Lancelot Link Revisited

Thanks to Claire for sending me this article from 2003.

Long live Lance Link, Secret Chimp.



The Book I'm Not Reading = The Paper I'm Not Writing.

A Much-Needed Dose of Silliness

After Civilization IV crashed on me this evening, I decided to while away the rest of the evening on YouTube, pretending I don't have reams of work to do. But it's Saturday night, after all, and even a mule needs a carrot.

And oh! What a carrot!

I found several episodes of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, "Mind Your Language," a gem from the late 70s on English television that made its way to the PBS lineup briefly in oh, maybe 1982 or so.




After a bit of that, I decided to see if anyone has transferred another show from the same era to YouTube--"The Bounder." Apparently not, but I did find this. It's top of silly, for sure:

It's About Time

I woke up this morning at an ungodly hour to write a paper due at 2pm today. Unable to start writing immediately, it occurred to me to conduct one of my occasional Google searches for certain things that don't seem to have Internet presences. Mainly, I've been trying to find lore on that 70s show, "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp." Before today, my searches turned up nothing, but now--! Lance Link has arrived (again)! (Complete with some scathing racist overtones toward Arabs and Asians, not to mention the overwhelming Cold War vibe....)

He's on YouTube now, too--here's a musical segment from the program.

Ok...back to the paper....

Good enough for prime time

Hidden in a comment a few posts ago, Rob posted these links to video clips of "My Lovely Horse" on YouTube:

Before
and
After

Good men yourselves, Father Ted & Dougal.

Orange is *not* the new black.

My only real breaks from doing schoolwork today were a brief walk out with J to get some basil for pesto and watching "Top Design" on Bravo. I can now confidently say that if I were a contestant on that show, I would come up with an intentionally bad design just so I could leave!

Everybody say "Good night, Persia."

Good night, you princes of New York, you kings of the South Bronx. Persia has found a new home. Everybody say "Good night, Persia."

Good night, Persia.

There goes one of the two best characters on The (White) Rapper Show--now it all rests on $hamrock.



(Are any of you watching this series?)

The Boob Tube

It's a slippery slope, and I knew that when I agreed that J and I would (a) have a television, and (b) get cable. I had been one of those tiresome people who, nose up in the air, used to say, "Television? Oh, I don't have one of those!" Never mind that I would watch it every chance I got at my mom's house, devouring whatever happened to be on--but particularly those random things that most people seem to bypass, like The Weather Channel and shows about quarrying. My excuse was that I lived in the mountains and wouldn't have gotten any channels anyway without the help of a pricey satellite dish.

Now that we have a TV--well, ok--no proclamations here. But occasionally I find myself--rather, we find ourselves--doing very imprudent things, like staying up very late to watch such gems as Infarto (on Azteca; we can't understand everything that's going on, but it's rather like driving past a car accident--the urge to look is huge).

Last night, after we'd spent the day working, we settled down for The L Word. That's a Sunday night must, and a show about which I'm sure I'll blog more extensively later. Then I insisted we turn off the telly to do a little more work, and around 1am, as a way to segue out of work and into sleep, J turned on the idiot box...and found....

The (White) Rapper Show.

Damn. In the immortal words of Doc Botzer, too cool, man, too cool. It works along the lines of Project Runway, Top Chef, and all those other "reality" shows I like--the ones where people actually do something. A posse of "white" (I'm not sure how they are defining this--it seems to be construed as not-black) wanna-be rappers competing for whatever ultimate prize, and along the way competing in challenges like "Affirmative Reaction," a takeoff on Family Feud with questions about stereotypes of black people. Plenty of cheap laughs here, but it's riveting to see what the contestants come up with for the challenges, and how they construct their own images, from the irritating crazy "ethnic studies" grad student to $hamrock, with his grill in disarray.

The Talkin' Videos blog has a fun description of the "Affirmative Reaction" episode here.

The book I wasn't reading while I watched this stuff: actually, I'm good for today, though after class the Linguistic Anthropology cycle begins again.