Life of (Kevin) Reilly
Good lord, thanks to The Apprentice the forums at TWoP are DOWN. Never seen that before.
Then again, after tonights…eventual…we’ll get to it after two hours and thirty minutes of bonus coverage…boardroom scene I’m not really surprised. The decision to cut Bradford came straight from the Mark Burnett School of Reality Television: get people talking, even if the decision was stupid. Trump harped on how it was a mistake for Bradford to relinquish his immunity. Why? His decision was to stand by his team as an equal, to boost morale since they’d lost. He knew he’d done a superb job, which was the truth. Would Trump REALLY fire this guy over the clueless Ivana, the loudmouth Jennifer or the space cadet Stacie? Like Ivana said, he’s a hustler, and Trump should have seen that. The Donald would counter with "I’m Donald Trump and you’re not; when you have my riches and bitches you can argue on my level," but let us not forget how that casino we saw in last year’s finale is currently circling the drain. Not everything this man touches turns to gold.
That being said, it was the right move for the jasminelive show. I wouldn’t be writing this if he had cut any of the other three Apex members. (By the way, my previous employer was Mosaic, so people should cut the jokes about the lame name.) This is Burnett at his finest, generating buzz and controversy to power the show’s first one-hour episode next Thursday (as well as bring a few people to the Saturday repeat to watch the decision again.) Survivor might not be my taste (along with the rest of reality TV save the aforementioned Apprentice) but you have to give the man credit: he’s a top-notch producer. His NBC program already had sky-high ratings, slick production and tons of press coming into the fall, and he manages to improve it by introducing two extra players, crossing genders for the original project managers, allowing termination immunity to the winning PM, and giving the the losing PM permission to bring either two or three teammates with him or her. Genius.
By the way, those people buying the ice cream…most of them totally knew they were on The Apprentice. The contestants may not be able to tell them, but considering this was a group of young, good-looking businesspeople hustling to make money on a simple product (two different teams, divided by sex, doing the same thing) in the middle of Times Square surrounded by expensive cameras shortly after we heard production began on The Apprentice 2…yeah, maybe not all the customers knew it, but plenty did.
Joey is there. Neither good nor bad, the spin-off of Friends inherited the timeslot but possibly not many of its predecessor’s viewers once The O.C. returns in November after The Best Team in Baseball finishes off the Red Sox. That’ll be the case, at least, if it continues to be this mediocre, and given the state of half-hour comedies not named Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle or Scrubs, I’d anticipate no change.
Joey was the perfect character to spin-off, as Matt LeBlanc’s character was most able to create/carry a funny situation without the aid of his five co-stars. Still, even with Drea de Matteo proving she has comedy chops she didn’t show us on The Sopranos and Paulo Costanzo being a game supporting actor (though not quite up to the enjoyable if average performance he carried the film Road Trip with) the show seems flat and unattractive. I’ve watched the first two because A.) I was home and 2.) I was curious, but unlike Scrubs and The Apprentice this isn’t one NBC show I’ll set a tape for. As the aforementioned three comedies continue to revolutionize televisied comedy, Joey’s stuck in 1996; if NBC wants to relive their Warren Littlefield/multiple Emmys/number one network glory days, they should can the Tribbiani crap and give me my Homicide back, Reed Diamond in tow.
I’ve commented on Father of the Pride on the Sunday night radio show, but not here. The Shrek-like animation from Dreamworks is cute, and improving each week. The premise — a look at the behind-the-scenes lives of the animals in Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas show — is quite corny, and as talented as Mound City native John Goodman is, he just can’t lend the program enough credibility to create suitable suspension of disbelief. Siegfried and Roy, on the other hand, save the damn show; Tuesday’s third episode featured a B-plot where the two sped off to 7/11 on Segways while I rolled on the floor, paralyzed by laughter. It’s a shame that the show’s main plot thread, where Goodman suspected his daughter was using catnip (their form of weed, supposedly,) was so awful and humorless. Eddie Murphy pops in this Tuesday reprising "Donkey" from Shrek and Shrek 2; I don’t know whether to antipicate or cringe.
The Simpsons
When you’ve been around this long, your existence becomes a perpetual campaign to prove you’re worthy of all the attention and accolades you receive. Everyone has to share their opinion, and everyone wants to be able to say they were the first to declare a great show no longer relevant, so a group of armchair critics forms, salivating at the chance to shout "Worst. Episode. Ever!" as if their life, or at least the respect of the human race, depended on it.
Such is the life of the greatest show in television history, The Simpsons.
Number 10: The SimpsonsIt’s now been fifteen seasons, 335 episodes and one spoken word from Maggie and Fox’s Sunday night anchor is still ticking. The word on the street is you’re a sucker for watching this dinosaur, as there are far funnier shows on television right now and Our Favorite Family has lost their touch. This must be true, or else there would not be six comedies ahead of The Simpsons on this year-end best-of list. Still, this is comparing the show to the episodes that constantly run in syndication, episodes from its fourth through eighth seasons (give or take a year or two,) a standard set so high that no other show in television history can match it.
Name a show. Any show. You’ll have trouble finding one that has been on longer (we hit those numbers already,) has gotten steady, good ratings (top ten in its first several seasons, slipping only when moved to Thursday opposite The Cosby Show, and now still in the top twenty-five to thirty, not bad considering Duff Beer is just two years younger than Hilary,) brought home a truckload of Emmys (NINETEEN awards out of FORTY-SIX NOMINATIONS, an AMAZING total for fourteen years of work, including a whopping EIGHT awards just for "Outstanding Animated Program"; it’s been nominated in that category every year of its existence except for 1993 and 1994 when the producers submitted it in "Outstanding Comedy" instead) and most importantly, has become an integral part of popular culture, both reflecting and influencing American (and foreign) society to a degree in impact and time not usually seen from a television show.
It’s the greatest show ever. There are shows with more Emmys (though very few,) shows with better ratings than the ones you can watch on www.jasminlive.mobi, shows that have introduced as many catchphrases (think Seinfeld,) and shows that have lasted longer (most of them are Gunsmoke.) None of the shows brings to the table the total package, though, and this is why our friends at 742 Evergreen Terrace reign as the Windsors of the boob tube.
Do the achievements of the previous decade-and-a-half warrant inclusion on this list? No, but what we’ve seen since September helps The Simpsons eek onto the countdown as the tenth-best show of 2004. While the fifteenth season was spotty, as the several seasons before have been, that is, again, in comparison to the show in its prime, and that’s not the comparison we’re making here. Even in its present inferior form, The Simpsons is still one of the better shows on television, as shown by stellar entries such as this year’s history lesson, "Margical History Tour," and a visit from British PM Tony Blair in "The Regina Monologues." The rest of the episodes were nothing to write home about; glancing over the remainder of the season does not give one the happy feeling or sentimental tear in the eye that the fifth or sixth season of the show can provide. Still, The Simpsons was able to deliver twenty-two weeks of good, if not outstanding, laughs, and with the poor state of televised comedy that’s enough to win a spot on the top ten by default if nothing else.
And if this is the last time we find ourselves reminiscing about the show at season’s end, well, then we’ll always have Marge vs. The Monorail. Sniff.
He Dropped The Ball
The Cardinals are now the National League Champions for 2004, or at least they were in my dreams last night. After defeating the Cubs at Wrigley in game seven of the NLCS, they celebrated like I’ve never seen Tony’s club celebrate before.
The uninitiated may have no problem with that last line. Those in the know should. Game seven…at Wrigley? But the Cubs are the wild card, and cannot possess home field advantage in the playoffs. Right?
You’re wrong. The Cubs aren’t the wild card.
How did this happen? In this election year, the Bush Administration is supposed to be focused on maintaining the White House, not ensuring that their buddies in Houston make the playoffs. Out of nowhere, while the Cubs ducked hurricanes and Expos, the Astros have taken over the lead in the NL Wild Card race. This must end now. Thank Pujols the Cardinals play them six more times and can Best Team In Baseball the shit out them.
See how talented I, and the Cardinals, both are? We turned "Best Team In Baseball" into a verb. Behold my wonderous gramattical abilities.
The Grand Am on Route 66 north of Livingston
I hadn’t named my previous car, though I had plenty of time to. Inherited from my (maternal) grandfather when he passed in August of 1995, the ‘94 Pontiac Grand Am was in near pristine condition, with just a few miles (and a very loud backup beeper that was quickly destroyed by my father.) It even came with handicapped plates that, if my mother had not interfered with plans nefarious, would have enabled me to park much closer to the front door of department stores than you can. Meddling trollop.
It ran until it hit just over 187,000 miles, lasting through hundreds of trips to high school (forty miles one way) and college (add twenty-five.) She bore three different license plate numbers (and two different Illinois state designs,) traveled up and down Route 66 in Illinois, made the round trip between Chicago and Detroit in a seventeen-hour span (watching a Tigers/Brewers game in-between) and once attempted to escape from me in a small town along the Mother Road. She lost her passenger side rear-view mirror to a deer attack on Interstate 57 near Benton in the mid-90s, and narrowly avoided losing her entire front end to one on Interstate 66 near Joliet in 2001. The left-side mirror was lost earlier this year. She locked me out of herself perhaps five times, but on each occasion the plastic backup key in my wallet served me well.
Repairs? For the first half of her glorious decade of service she was practically spotless, but in 2000 the first half of AlternatorMania hit. A dead battery at school was recharged only to run out twenty miles later, and a meeting with a tow truck resulted. The alternator went out again three years later, this time on I-55 just south of Springfield. In-between and after, the vehicle saw brake overhauls several times along with a new battery, an alignment to the drivers-side window crank, two repairs to the passenger-side windshield wiper, a new stabilizing rod (or something like that,) and a very expensive patch for leaking antifreeze that billowed out through the steering column (and looked like smoke, convincing me momentarily that my car…my car…my car was on fire. There was a defect and recall for such a problem, one that I was too lazy to have repaired.)
Several weeks ago the Grand Am, with breaks squeaking, oil leaking and such bad rotors and alignment that she shook wildly at 55, was diagnosed as needing around $1600 in repairs. This was before the coolant decided to leak; a tank full of antifreeze and water managed to run dry after just one week and less than 300 miles.
Now we find ourselves with a slick black 2001 Chevy Cavalier, bought for a song from Sparta Ford-Mercury. 74,000, new tires and rear window tint that needs removed so that I can actually see John Law flashing his wig wags in my rear view mirror. The radio I love; my previous car could barely pick up the awesomeness of Radio 720 WGN at night, though I am a mere 300 miles south of the 50,000 watt blowtorch. The Defiant…well, she not only picks up Tribune Tower during the day, but with average conditions last night I was able to pick up 850 KOA-Denver and 1030 WBZ-Boston as clear as KMOX (the 50k-watter that is only a half-hour away.) I want to marry this radio.
As much as I like the new car, and don’t miss the old one that served me so well, I wish she would have had a better end. Bound for the scrap heap, I was given a glorious trade-in amount of $100 for the Grand Am that found every corner of the Land of Lincoln over the past decade. No tears will be shed; now I can actually hit the road again without mistaking my seat for a magic finger mattress. And the Defiant, true to her namesake, has a cloaking device. At least at night. When you kill the lights.
I Hate All Races, Including My Own
The last time I was called for jury duty was in July of 2001, when I doubted that the service would be much of a distraction. Still working at WHCO Radio, my shifts were rather loosely tied down, as I could almost make all my own hours as long as my paperwork and production were completed in time. I informed my idiot boss that I would be unavailable mornings and afternoons for two weeks, and showed up on Monday only to be dismissed after two hours and told not to return.
Set to start training for a new job on chaturbate rooms live stream, I hoped this time would be similar. I almost counted it, since the odds of being one of the few people chosen from a group of over one hundred were slim. This in Randolph County, redneck U.S.A. where traffic reports consist of hogs blocking county highway five. Murder is front page news because it happens once, perhaps twice a year.
It was just my luck that two homicide trials would be occurring as I was called for duty, and mine was not to be the simpler of the two affairs. By all accounts, the other trial, involving a boyfriend killing his girl and declaring afterwards a statement to the effect of, "the bitch had it coming," should have been pleaded out and was so cut-and-dry that the case went past dry and back to wet again. It was a one-day hearing, with the jury taking an hour for deliberations only because there were crackers to be consumed in the jury room.
I was not so lucky. Along with thirteen others (two were alternates,) my trial consisted of reckless homicide, as a (then) seventeen-year-old was involved in a possibly high-speed accident in the middle of the night on a country road, injuring the defendant and killing the only passenger in the car he ran into. This happened almost three years ago, midway through October 2001, and it had taken the State this long to put a case together. They could have done better.
It was obvious (and thusly stipulated by both councils) that the defendant was the driver, and he killed the victim. The question became, "accident, or recklessness?" The kid was drinking. This much was admitted to when the defendant took the stand, but he only claimed to have downed three light beers, hardly enough to put someone of his girth out for the count later that evening. A blood alcohol test was taken, but not until two hours after the accident when half the defendant’s blood had been replaced by saline and lactated ringers from two IV drips. That resulted in a BAC of .04; the legal limit in Illinois is .08. No DUI charge.
The speed: yaw marks were found on the scene, and an Illinois State Police accident reconstruction expert used them to determine that the defendant was going 92 MPH. Or maybe 88 MPH. Well, at least 85 MPH. She couldn’t be sure, much thanks to the fact that she used poor equipment and transposed numbers in her calculations to originally arrive at higher speeds than she should have. The trooper also measured the radius of the curve the accident happened on to determine the maximum speed one could safely travel; her numbers pointed to 90 MPH, but a credible surveyor hired by the defense came up with 114 MPH. Bullshit.
Despite all this, it was obvious the kid was angling for jail time when he set out in his ‘96 Mustang. We had testimony that on a quite foggy night several witness heard the distinctively loud motor on what the assistant state’s attorney repeatedly referred to as his "road rocket" shoot out of town, traveling well over the speed limit while still in the city limits of the tiny hamlet of 3,000. His ex-girlfriend claimed that they exchanged some brief but heated remarks just before this. Pictures of the accident did not portray a crash that was anything near low-speed, with the defendant thrown from his vehicle as the car deflected off of the victim’s vehicle and continued off in another direction. He most likely had more alcohol in his system than he claimed, especially since three beers early in the evening diluted by 3600cc of IV fluid would dull the blood considerably, not to mention the fact that his system had been eliminating the alcohol as the night progressed.
There were two counts on the table: reckless homicide and aggravated reckless homicide. The latter was obviously pretty much the same as the first charge, with added penalties and the stipulation that the defendant was under the influence of alcohol. In our hour of deliberation (the first fifteen minutes of which involved eating crackers and sausage,) we easily decided to find him guilty on the first charge, but the second stuck in the craw of many of the jurists. Unconvinced that the state had proven he was legally drunk, only I and one other gentleman would have been able to cast a guilty verdict on the charge, so we agreed to disagree and return a verdict of not guilty.
I would have like to have found him guilty, but he’s going to jail anyway and will have to carry a felony with the word "homicide" on the label for the rest of his life. Besides, I believe I karma, and there’s more to come around for this family. Though he was supposedly very apologetic to the daughter of the victim shortly before the trial, witnesses heard him recount the accident at school with the phrase, "some fucking bitch ran into my car," and the fact that the police had to be called to stop his mother from cussing out the paramedics on the night of the accident as they attempted to save her son’s life tells me that fate has more anguish in store for this group of losers. I certainly hope so.
The Elite
The glory of the aforementioned "My Favorite 50 Films" countdown starts THURSDAY and you will be here to witness it. This is all assuming that I’ve made my list and checked it twice; every time I think I’m there a five-word thought such as "A League of Their Own!" pops into my head and all of a sudden I have a brand new #17. Oops.
I was thinking that the Trek Films countdown (yeah, I’m waiting for the "exit 670 Top 10 Countdown Lists Countdown" as well) would resume as well, but there’s only a couple on the list, meaning there’ll still be three unaccounted for. We’d left off at number five, and to spoil the fun, from there it goes Generations, Undiscovered Country, Wrath of Khan, and finally the two that are left…you can wait to find out their order (this is the point where you move to the edge of your seat…little more…ah, there you are.)
To hopefully wet your appetite, just the facts, ma’am:
1960’s: 2
1970’s: 1
1980’s: 11
1990’s: 23
2000’s: 13 (2 from 2004)
Comedies: 27 (many could slip to the drama side)
Dramas: 9
Sci-Fi/Action: 12
Musicals: 2
Best Picture Winners: 4
Most prolific director: Steven Spielberg (3)
Most prolific actor: Harrison Ford (4, thanks to the magic of George Lucas franchises)
Starring in multiple films: Star Wars cast (IV-VI), Dan Aykroyd, Thora Birch, Matthew Broderick, John Cho (3), George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Goldblum, Tom Hanks (3), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (3), Michael Keaton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray (3), Catherine O’Hara, Bill Pullman (3), Randy Quaid, Tim Robbins, Gary Sinese, Mena Suvari
Starring and also writing directing or producing: Dan Aykroyd, Zach Braff, Danny Devito, Jonathan Frakes, Mel Gibson, Mike Judge, Leonard Nimoy, Harold Ramis, Ben Stiller