Conan - Jordan Schlansky Counseling

Jordan Schlansky is getting married.... to a human woman. But Conan thinks it's important to get marriage counseling...

Late Night's 100th Episode And I'm Outta Here

On Monday, Late Night with Seth Meyers celebrated its 100th episode. I've watched every minute of every episode and I've tried to post the highlights of the show here. Given that the number of highlights has been maybe one or two clips over the span of 100 hours of television, you can imagine what I think of the show.

The internet is replete with antipathy (or so I've heard). There are "h8ers" and "trolls" and "this person OWNS this other person" and most things seem to "suck" in one way or another. I don't think this iteration of Late Night sucks, I don't even think it's bad. It's just not very funny either.

So I've watched all 100 episodes but I'm stopping here.

The big cautionary tale in this area is when Conan O'Brien took over Late Night. The show was not very funny, Conan got the reputation of not being funny and the show was consistently in danger of being cancelled. And look at him now.

But Conan's failure was a different kind of failure. Conan was trying new and extremely experimental types of comedy and the danger of experiments is that they often blow up in your face. In the early years Conan was striking out but he would go down swinging. If I saw that with Seth Meyers I'd be completely on board. But I don't see that. I don't see anything new, groundbreaking or even very interesting. It's just "safe" and on an even keel all the time. It's middle-of-the-road. It's a type of talk show that takes all the tremendous highs and lows of trying new things - things that may "hit" but may "bomb" - and flattens them all out into comedy that's always slightly amusing.

Seth Meyers' show reminds me a lot of Jack Paar, which means I should love it. But Paar told stories with more emotion which evoked heightened reactions. Paar added weight to the show by inviting politicians on and asking them probing, even challenging, questions (contrast that with the dumbed-down lovefest that Meyers recently had with Nancy Pelosi... or better yet, don't). Most importantly, Jack Paar had Jonathan Winters. And if Seth Meyers ever gets anyone like Jonathan Winters I'll be right there watching again.

Tonight Show - Lip Sync Battle

Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani and Jimmy Fallon battle it out for lip sync supremacy. Nothing's gonna stop us now.

Gaming #1

I recently bought a CRT TV and already owned an NES and SNES so I've been enjoying some retro gaming recently. In addition to playing some of the classics that I own, I've been purchasing other games on ebay and amazon piece-by-piece.

Here's what I started out with...

Obviously it's a classic. There's one weakness though: no saving! Without the chance to save progress, I had to schedule out a Saturday and try to go through it all in a day. I've probably beaten this game several times over the years but this time was different in two ways: 1) It was 1-Player this time and 2) I didn't use any warps or shortcuts.

Any time you re-approach a game after years, you hope that your age will mean you're much better. I was NOT much better. This was hard and I died muchly.

Here's something weird that I never noticed before.... Super Mario Bros. 3 doesn't have any credits. Every game tells you who made it but this one doesn't.

Another classic and another one that I had already beaten several times.

This is where I learned the value of being able to save progress. I could pick this up and play it casually, every now and then, beat a few levels and turn it off.

I beat the game but something weird happened after that... the next time I turned the game on, all my game data was erased. I know that errors happen with computers but I've never seen any data on any nintendo game ever be lost like that. Pretty strange. Fortunately, I had already beaten it anyway.

Lookit how hyped-up that crowd is. That arena is rockin'.

This one is also a classic. It's one of the first nintendo games I ever played and I still love it as much as I did back then... but I've never "beaten" it. I suppose if you play the computer at the highest speed and win, you've beaten the game, in a sense. So far I've managed to win against the computer at Speed 1 but it was tough. USA vs. the USSR, obviously. Classic days. 

I did something that I don't think I ever did in this game... regulation ended with the score tied so it went to a shoot-out. But then the shoot-out ended with the score still tied and it went to overtime. But in the overtime, there are no goalies. That's several layers of weird. I have no idea how to play without a goalie. The best strategy I came up with was just to take a player and try to block the net with him. 

I also found a code that allows you to play with a frictionless surface that I haven't tried yet.

Late Show - Can They Play the Eagles?

Can Dave play any music from the Eagles? And if not, why not and since when?

Tonight Show - The Family Feud

It's time to play the feud!

Teens React to Retro Gaming

I've been playing old NES and SNES games lately so I found it funny that this popped up recently.