Continue? - The Super Big Game

Want to know who'll win the Super Bowl but don't feel like watching hours and hours of hype and commercials? The guys at "Continue?" have the answer for you. They play Patriots vs. Seahawks in Tecmo Super Bowl 2014 in order to predict the winner in just 20 minutes.

Conan Visits Taco Bell

Based on the flimsiest of setups, Conan visits Taco Bell headquarters to explore their business and product...

Tonight Show - Mets Bucket Hat Guy

The Mets Bucket Hat Guy is back with a brand new invention. While this isn't his first appearance on the Tonight Show, I don't think, his visitations are a little more rare it seems.

Tonight Show - Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman recalls a story when she met Jimmy Fallon for the first time.

Continue? - Home Alone

The youtube video that explains why Home Alone is a perfect(ly constructed) movie.

Tonight Show - Tariq's Famous Latkes

Black Thought (Tarik) shares his famous Hanukkah Latke recipe... link.

Christmas Sweatz

Here's a song to have stuck in your head for all of the holidays.

Of course the problem with me is, I had it stuck in my head all summer and I had to wait for months for it to be topical.

Late Night - Levon Isn't Here

The classic segment of the Late Show with David Letterman where Levon Helm, drummer for The Band, didn't show up.

Tonight Show - Thank You Notes

In this week's edition of Thank You Notes, Jimmy explains why this part of the year brings up some painful memories for him and his family.

Beatles - Junk

The unreleased Beatles song "Junk", also known as "Jubilee"...

Continue? - Rap Jam Vol. 1

How does a video game based on rap music not have music in the game? More importantly, how did I not know that this game existed?!



They don't know who Yo Yo is. I know who Yo Yo is.

Rifftrax - Discovering Setting Up a Room

I love that stuff like this exists. Apparently there's a short film which shows two teachers arranging the furniture within a classroom for half an hour. So now Rifftrax have tackled it.




Give in to the block-putting-away.

The credits list "Helen K. Tritch, Director Day Care Association of Montgomery County, Penna. Ambler Branch" as a consultant for this movie. First off, no one ever uses the abbreviation "Penna." anymore, I think we should bring that back. Secondly, I now HAVE to wonder if one of the classrooms I attended was arranged by one of the "stars" of this "movie".

Continue? - Demon Sword

It's Fantasy Month on Continue?!

Continue? is a weekly web show where three guys play an old-school video game for a while and then say whether they would Continue (playing) or Game Over.

During the month of November, they celebrate Fantasy Month by playing games with a Dungeons and Dragons theme. In this case, though, the front cover lied.

Thug Life.

Tonight Show - Jay Leno

Jay Leno was a guest on the Tonight Show on Friday. It's his first time coming back since he was host. Not only was he a guest (and stayed on the couch for the next guest) but he was invited by Jimmy to do some stand-up as well. Want to see the highlights? Me neither.

The Too Many Cooks Theme

Nothing wrong with a little nostalgia on a Friday. This is the intro/theme from the show "Too Many Cooks".

Conan Reviews Video Games - Call of Duty

Conan gets his hands on the new "Call of Duty : Advanced Warfare" game and plays it. He sees what it would be like to shoot milk.

Conan - Max Weinberg Returns

Those mine shafts are killers.

Mike Tyson vs. Mike Tyson

This is a video a long time in the making. The actual Mike Tyson faces off against Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.



Obviously he's going to lose. Of course. But I was actually surprised by how well he did. As far as we can tell, he's never played the game before in any capacity and he actually lasts longer than I think I would by dodging some of the punches.

By the by, Mike Tyson was on the show to promote his new show "Mike Tyson Mysteries". If you haven't seen the show, it's worth checking out. It's a 70's-style cartoon show (like a "Scooby-Doo" or the Mr. T cartoon) where Mike Tyson travels the country in a van to solve mysteries. Helping him are his 18-year-old Asian daughter, a 19th century English ghost and his pigeon (voiced by Norm MacDonald). If that's not an interesting set-up for a show, I don't know what is.

Tonight Show - Bradley Cooper

This is a great bit of silliness but it can use some setting up.

Bradley Cooper was recently spotted by the paparazzi wearing an Eagles visor and having his hair straight up (he's a big fan). But while his hair is real (or so he says), there are people who sell football visors with fake hair already attached for bald people. Jimmy and Bradley wear such visors for this interview and then try to discuss the very somber play The Elephant Man...

Tonight Show - Word Sneak

Jimmy plays the game "Word Sneak" with guest Steve Carell.

Sim City Attack Ads

It's getting to be that time of year when the political ads start heating up. At stake this November is the Mayorship of Sim City. Both sides have released aggressive attack ads to gain the advantage...

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.

Conan - Before Photoshop

Recently Conan aired an entire episode of rehearsal scraps called "A Scrapisode". This is one of the scraps out of the collection of scraps called "Before Photoshop".



I love the voices. THIS ONE WILL DEFY YOUR EXPECTATIONSSS.

Tonight Show - Marriage Counseling

There are times when the Tonight Show monologue must take a backseat to giving counsel and guidance to married couples. This is one of those times.

Conan - Scrapisode

In the most recent episode of Conan they forewent the usual comedy pieces and guests and aired an entire episode of rehearsal footage when they were just goofing around. It's quite good.

Watch it here.

Conan really likes to cover "Creep". It pops up quite often.

I love that Conan cracks himself up with the phrase "boners and goof-ups". When I was a kid, I got a VHS tape of Sports Illustrated's all-time sports bloopers hosted by Tim McCarver and he frequently refers to errors as "boners". Good times.

Michael Giacchino Interview

I thought this was a really interesting interview about film scores. Michael Giacchino isn't a household name but he did the scores for "Up", "Lost", the new "Star Trek" movies, "Ratatouille" as well as the scores for the "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty" video game franchises.

The interview talks about the art of scoring, how they're written, how they work, why sometimes they don't and so on, and so on. Check it out if you have half an hour.

New Late Late Show Host Named

The new host of the Late Late Show has reportedly been named and it is..... James Corden,

Who?

Pictured: James Corden's reaction to being told he's taking over Callahan Auto Parts the Late Late Show.

Well, allow me to explain. "Corden stars in Disney's “Into the Woods” and can currently be seen alongside Keira Knightley in “Begin Again.” He also starred in 2011’s “The Three Musketeers.”"

Oh yeah, of course! That James Corden!

I was rooting for Norm Macdonald.

Tonight Show - Thank You Notes

This is a great example of how the current iteration of the Tonight Show is different from other talk shows. The bit, "Thank You Notes", is a sufficiently original bit but it's not entirely different from other comedy bits. The difference is the ability of the Tonight Show to veer off the written comedy (or the interview for that matter) and go on a complete tangent for some improvised comedy sillies.

The setup to this comes from a monologue story where a man was selling crack at a McDonald's drive-thru.

Late Show - MacArthur Park

Jimmy Webb performs his 70s hit "MacArthur Park" with the CBS Orchestra.

Conan in a Movie

Conan will make his debut as an actor in the upcoming SyFy movie "Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda" and he's put the entirety of his role online. This is not a joke - "SvP" is a "real" "movie" and Conan is really in it.



You'll note that a lot of the different shots of beaches don't appear to match each other. In "Rifftrax Live: Sharknado" there was the same problem. As the shot would change there was a lot of "Meanwhile on another beach..."

"Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda" airs August 2nd at 9PM on SyFy.

Late Show - Elaine Stritch

Long time character actor Elaine Stritch died recently so the Late Show posted this video to their Youtube channel from the night where she made a very special appearance.



The first time I remember seeing her it was in a very special TWO PART episode of "Head of the Class" in which the school is trying to put on a production of the musical "Hair" but encountering resistance from the school administration. It was dramatic. So every time I saw her thereafter I thought, "That's the woman from 'Head of the Class'".

Game Grumps - Snow, Wind and Bees Every Time

So there's this series of videos on the youtube called "Game Grumps" where two guys play video games. That's pretty much all there is to it. I'm recommending it and you're going to sit there and like it. And there's nothing you can do to stop me.

Conan Joins Tinder

Conan and Dave Franco explore the world of dating with Tinder.



Dave Franco is fine but I was so hoping that the person joining him would be Jordan Schlansky. How great would that be?

Late Night - Keith Morrison

This is arguably the first funny comedy bit on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The premise is: NBC wants Seth to be friends with other people in the NBC family so they set him up on play dates. In this episode, he hangs out with Dateline's Keith Morrison.

Oh nooooooo.

Triumph Enjoys the World Cup

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is in New York to enjoy the World Cup with the international soccer fans.





Part 3 is slightly not-safe-for-work-ish. You can watch it here.

Fargo

They're going to make a TV show out of the classic movie "Fargo"? No way. This is a bad idea.

The thing that got me curious, though, was when I saw the cast list... Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Bob Odenkirk, Colin Hanks, Adam Goldberg, Glenn Howerton(?!) and so on, and so on. OK, I might check it out.

But why do a story that has already been definitively done already? It's a different story with different characters.

Turns out that "Fargo" is a great TV series. Although written and directed by others, it was produced by the same people who made the movie (the Coen brothers) so it obviously had to be good.

One of the things that I loved most about the series were the references to the movie. Like I said, the TV show isn't the same story as the movie but they make certain "nods" to the original every so often as, kind of, Easter eggs. In fact, there's one really big reference to the movie that I won't spoil but it's one of my favorite things I've ever seen on TV. Not only that, but viewers can look for small references to a number of Coen brothers movies. There's at least one nod I saw to "The Big Lebowski" and at least one nod to "Blood Simple".

Of the stellar cast, there are two performances that stand out above all the others. Martin Freeman is fantastic as Lester Nygaard, the "William H. Macy"-type character. Watching him do a Minnesotan accent is a joy to behold. The second is Billy Bob Thornton as a cold-hearted hitman. His character and his performance alone is worth the series.

If you're not sure whether you want to get into it, just check out the first episode. The first episode is basically a 10/10 for me. In fact, a couple of the episodes after that, while still great, felt slightly disappointing because the first episode set the bar so high. If you don't "get" the first episode, you can basically quit and I feel sorry for you.

Tonight Show - The Roots Ride a Rollercoaster

Pretty simple. I think the title says it all.

Conan Visits E3

I'm like Conan in that I'm not up on the latest games or gaming technology but my main question is this.... Why is there a cordoned off section with nothing but women? Is this a real place and can I go there?

Brian Williams Raps - Baby Got Back

Aaaan listen, Brian Williams has a new one...

Conan Reviews Video Games - Super Smash Bros. WiiU

In this very special edition of Clueless Gamer, Conan reviews Super Smash Bros for WiiU, a game that isn't even out yet...



John Adams.

Conan - Return of WikiBear

The WikiBear is back! Yaaaayyyy!

IMDB 250 - Rang De Basanti (2006)

Rang De Basanti (2006)

Awful. Awful. Awful. Paper-thin characters, paper-thin plot, totally unrealistic but here's the good news - they managed to tell it all in just a hair under three hours. There must be lots of scenes left on the cutting room floor. To top it all off, it's a movie that has the audacity to murder. Huzzah! At one point, a guy joins the air-force and it's a total of 5 minutes of screen time later that the news announces his plane crashed. That's probably the world record for quickest Goose. Just tortuous, stupid manipulation.

I won't bother reviewing this movie in the usual way - it's not worth it. I don't even care. There's no way this should be considered even a good movie, let alone one of the best. If there are enough dumb people out there to keep it in the IMDB 250 then we all deserve what we get.

The good news is, this is IMDB keeps yearly "snapshots" of the Top 250 list. I'd seen every movie in every list from 2007-2012 and this is the final movie I had to watch to complete the list for 2013. The only problem is I just looked and they recently added more snapshot lists going all the way back to 1996 so that'll keep me busy for a while.

It's funny to see what the list of 1996 looks like. Keep in mind that the internet was only for nerds back then so that explains why "Star Trek: First Contact" is somehow the seventh greatest movie of all-time. But the nerd factor of the internet can't explain everything so there are quite a few other surprises. There's not one but TWO Wallace and Gromit shorts in the top 10. Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke" at 27. "That Thing You Do" at 35? It's a good movie but how'd that happen? The Transformers movie is on there but not the one you're thinking of... The cartoon from the 80s is on the list. So surreal.

Anyways...

3/10.
Total "Top 250" Movies Seen: 383.

IMDB 250 - The Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug

The Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

In my previous review of the first "Hobbit" movie I said the movie was enjoyable but I didn't understand the whole magic aspect. This movie picks up where the last one left off and runs with it... and from start to finish, I didn't understand a single thing in it. Not a single thing. I don't know why anything happens to anything else. I'm watching it saying to myself "why?", "what?" and "why?" and also "what?".

At one point, the gang is off on their quest doing the whole "quest" business and Gandalf says peace out and just goes off and does his own thing. I even think he says at the time, "This place is dead anyway", but I'd have to rewatch it to be sure. As much as I didn't understand the "A" story, I understood the Gandalf sub-plot even less. Much less. From memory: he goes to a place, he talks with a guy, he sees a vision, he turns the "Lost" wheel and transports to another Dharma station. Is it wrong to think he's bored? Maybe he's senile and wandering aimlessly. I hope he comes back to the movie at some point.

So without any understanding of the larger picture (or any of the specific details), I'm left with the fantasy and spectacle aspects. Even if I don't know why the giant spiders are attacking, between the spiders and dwarves it's easy to know who to root for. There are many "action" scenes in this movie and they work are at least still enjoyable on a simple visceral suspense level. It would be pretty hard to not enjoy a giant battle or a giant dragon or a giant battle with a giant dragon.

6/10.
Total "Top 250" Movies Seen: 382.

Who Cares Wins: Conan Edition

This is more interesting than "funny". In the 1980s, Conan did a training video for music salesmen and, for no reason, he decided to reveal it to the world recently...



Seems like they need to release the full-length video. What customer would actually be placated by the salesman saying, "And I do respect your knowledge about guitars"?