Friday, December 22, 2023

The Last 100 Years of Steak

 Guga cooks and tests 100 years of steak:


Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Best of the Worst - Christmas Plinketto

 


For this year's Christmas episode, it's Plinketto! And the results are weird but you already knew that. 

Why they skip over the introduction to "Silent Night Deadly Night 4" I don't know.


Game Grumps - Ice Hockey Returns!

 


The 2023 edition is less manic and therefore not as good as past versions. Still, it's Ice Hockey.

Monday, December 18, 2023

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Christmas with Dennis II: Electric Boogaloo


 

It's been 5 years now since I first celebrated Christmas with Dennis and I have celebrated Christmas with Dennis, perhaps not every year, but many times since.

Well, there is a sequel - canonically entitled "Dennis Awe: An Awesome Christmas." And this edition has a number of guest stars including Pat Boone and Donna Douglas (Elly May from "The Beverly Hillbillies") as well as a giant Shoji Tabuchi-size audience.

The organ playing is excellent, the special has all the quality you'd expect from Dennis. But early on it becomes apparent that there is a strict separation between the performance and the giant applauding crowds. The game within the game is this: will there ever be a shot that establishes the performers and the audience are in the same place? Spoiler alert: it never comes.

At 46:00, it's time for Dennis' sister DyAnne to shine. You don't need me to tell you that her playing charges the special's atmosphere with eroticism.

At 1:35:30 the special completely gives away the game as it tries to pass off a split-screen gag as taking place in front of the "live" audience. There's no question anymore.

Finally, you might go to 1:47:15 to see Dennis do a comedy double-act with someone other than himself. And I won't give it away, but at this point the special sinks to new lows. I was hoping, "Surely, they're not going to do this." But they did it. Oh, they did it.

The Oldest Known Recording of Jingle Bells


 From 1898.

People back then had a much "freer" notion of rhythm, I guess.