Posts categorized “TV”

Link of the Month:
Popped Culture
A delightful blog that specializes in the mashups of various pop-culture icons. For example, the recent Josey Wales & The Pussycats:

Album of the Month:
Open Mike Eagle: Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes
Just like I did last year, I’ve named Mike Eagle’s new album as my Album of the Month BEFORE it is released! Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long; it’s released on Tuesday 6/7. Here’s a video to tide you over:

It’s gunna be suh-weeet.

UPDATE: Here it be!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rappers-will-die-natural-causes/id442636707

DVD of the Month:
The Middleman: The Complete Series
The Middleman was a small show that kinda slipped under everyone’s radar a few years ago. It quietly aired a dozen episodes on ABC Family, then disappeared. It’s a shame; it’s one of the geekiest, most gosh-darn fun shows I’ve seen in a good long while. It’s a TV show for people who love TV shows, Movies, and Comic Books. It was canceled before they got to make the final episode, so after you watch the series you should pick up the comic book they made of the finalé.

How is it that I have never heard of this show before? ME!? This is the kind of thing that I know about, and yet I had absolutely no idea.

Quark was a 1977, hour-long sci-fi comedy television series (with a laugh track even) that aired a grand total of 8 episodes before being canned. It was the brainchild of the legendary Buck Henry, who had previously created the Get Smart television show. You can watch one of the episodes in its entirety below (divided into 5 sections). This one is “May the Source Be With You” and is technically the 2nd episode, though it kinda serves as the unofficial 2nd Pilot episode.

Here’s more info on Quark at Wikipedia!

Link of the Month:
My Birfday
It’s my birfday next month. Here’s my Wish List. SHAMELESS PLUG.

DVD of the Month:
Max Headroom: The Complete Series
A unique and fascinating 1980s cyberpunk TV show, where the dominant technology is television broadcasting, not computers (though they do play their part). It’s truly a fascinating world where ratings are king, and your boss at the network is sometimes your enemy and sometimes your supporter. Unusual production design and strangely low-budget production values give this show a real alien feel. Not every episode is a hit, but there aren’t very many, and it is endlessly intriguing.

Game of the Month:
Sketch Online
Here’s the premise: imagine playing Pictionary over the internet with strangers, only there’s no board; just drawing. And you have to draw with your finger on a smartphone screen. It may not sound like it, but Sketch Online is ridiculously fun. Sure, every now and then you get some schmo who doesn’t play by the rules or draws something obscene, but for the most part everyone involved seems to actually be trying their hardest. Look for me online: my username is angrybeef (of course).

Link of the Month:
True American Dog
A site about Photoshopping animals into bizarre & surreal scenarios with a strangely patriotic theme? One of the most fun and strange image blogs to join the ranks of Selleck Waterfall Sandwich and THIS IS FUN TO MAKE A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE.

Album of the Month:
19 Action News: Zombie Christmas
A very well-made 4-song EP that re-imagines the holidays in a post-zombie-apocalypse world. After a spoken-word intro about the beginnings of the zombie infestation (caused by Black Friday shoppers), we go into an eerie and fascinating rendition of “I Heard the Bells” with air-raid sirens in the distance instead of bells. The album gives me a vibe like I’m hunkered down in my hideout, desperately scanning the airwaves for any transmission, when suddenly I manage to tune into these songs. Where are they coming from? Are there more survivors out there… somewhere?

DVD of the Month:
Community: The Complete First Season
One of the best sitcoms in years. Not only is it a show about a disparate group of people coming together as a family, but it is also simultaneously a show that goes out of its way to skewer that trope, and any other trope it can get its hands on. It’s my favorite kind of parody; it’s all played completely straight with impeccable comic timing from a fantastic ensemble cast that includes Joel McHale, Donald Glover, and Chevy Chase. Wait until you get to the paintball episode. Man-o-man.

Here are some interesting things I’ve found around teh intarwebs in the past few weeks that never made it into my blog here… until now (I’m pretty sure most of ‘em made it onto Facebook or Twitter, though).

OCTOCAM

If you ever, ever want to know what an octopus is doing right this very second, Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center has installed a camera in the tank of their resident 40-pound Pacific octopus, Deriq.

It is for some reason very enjoyable and relaxing to watch Deriq meander around in his tank.

ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME-TRAVELERS

Artist Alex Varanese has imagined what it would look like if someone from today went back in time and re-created today’s modern electronics—cell phone, laptop, hand-held video game system, mp3 player—using the design aesthetics of 1977.

The results are absolutely fan-frikkin’-tastic.

I was born in 1977, so I completely remember this style of design. Y’all have no idea how much I miss high technology that had a faux-woodgrain finish. Glorious.

EDWARD CULLEN TAMPON CASE

Etsy crafter and all-around awexome human being Taisha McGee made the one piece of merchandise that no Twilight fan should be without.

The product description speaks for itself:

Bella’s most useful accessory. Case is 5.5″ by 2″ and holds two average sized tampons. Edward’s face is sparkly. Tampons not included.

RIVER TAM AND THE FIREFLIES

Holy eff but that is so freakin’ adorable. This is an actual album sleeve that artist Joebot made for a gallery show (happens on July 9th).

But the really cool thing is that you can purchase a print of this picture at his Etsy shop as a gift to send to me! Joebot has some other really cool prints as well, like ones of the Nintendo princesses (and Samus).

AT-AT DAY AFTERNOON

An absolutely adorable short film with seamless special effects animation. Very well done.

THE WORLD’S ONLY NEWSPAPER

This is a fascinating collection of still frames and clips of people reading newspapers in dozens of films and television shows. The exact same newspaper each time. Going back decades. It looks like this:

It’s actually kind of astonishing how wide-spread this newspaper really is.

AQUATIC VIDEOS

Here are a couple of videos of aquatic awesomeness:

WATERMELON TURTLE

This extravagantly cute melon bowl is from my link-of-the month, Host-It Notes.

There are all sorts of other darling little foodstuffs at Host-It Notes, like sheep cupcakes, mushroom radishes, and frosting bees!

That’s about it for now.

Link of the Month:
Dinerwood
A review blog for all of the Los Angeles area’s best and worst diners, breakfast joints and coffee shops. Established May 2007. Written by my pal Mike T., this blog is frequently funny and always honest. Mike has a real love of good diners and good coffee, and this is always an entertaining (and informative if you’re ever in the outskirts of L.A.) blog to read.

Album of the Month:
Three Ninjas is Smarter Than a Lettuce
The 2nd full-length album from nerdcore maestro Three Ninjas shows remarkable technical mastery. Three Ninjas’s sampledelica style is very original and unexpected, as is his vocal style which hovers between spoken-word (Red Underwears) and rhythmically-dynamic hip-hop (Five Finger Discount). There are some problems with inconsistent mixing—the vocals in some songs are mixed too low to be easily deciphered, which is a shame when the nerdcore lyrics are so good, and the overall volume changes from song to song making it so that you have to manually adjust it to keep them all at the same level—making it seem more like a song collection than a coherent album. But the songs cover a huge range, from intensely personal hip-hop songs to fully-sung love songs to incredibly fun and silly songs (hello, Some Li’l Dude). Highly recommended.

DVD of the Month:
Farscape: The Complete Series
This was an easy choice for my DVD of the month considering that it has consumed basically ALL OF MY FREE TIME since I got the DVD set for my birfday. I devoured all 88 episodes in less than a month. This late, great Sci-Fi series about a test pilot/scientist who gets shot through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy succeeds, like most great shows, on the strength of its core characters. It is not without its problems—there were far too many episodes about some something-or-other damaging the ship and threatening to kill them all (especially in the final season, where they seemed really out of place)—but it is an incredibly compelling, dramatic, and wrlyly funny TV show. Don’t forget to watch the movie that serves as the series finale!