Super Bowl of Avoidance

It occurred to me as I watched the Pro Bowl today that this will be my last chance to see the NFL until next season. This made me sad for two reasons. 1) Nothing that happens in the Pro Bowl can really be described as "football" and 2) due to the current collective bargaining agreement, the wait will probably be longer than "next season". "Next season" will start at least a month late (my estimate) if there's even a season at all.

"But what about the Super Bowl?!", you say, quite harshly. A little too harshly, frankly. If I'm going to write a blog, I really don't need that level of sass and I'm not going to take it. Well, to answer the question, the Super Bowl annoys me. It barely has any more to do with football than the Pro Bowl does. Between the people watching just for the commercials, the halftime show where 'NSync does half a song with Aerosmith, the indifferent crowd and the fact that the public at large watches just because everyone else is, I couldn't care less. If my team were in the game, I'd watch and I'd watch harder than anyone else but until that happens, it's banned.

The question now is how to fill my time. I'd like to do something that stands out so that it can be remembered fondly in the future. Past Super Bowls I've:

• Watched "Follow That Bird"
• Watched "Puppy Bowl I" (play-by-play by Harry Kalas) (the winner was all of us)
• Watched "Muppet Treasure Island"

And even though I had a blog during last years game, I don't remember what I did. If I had to guess, I think I was watching a movie of some sort.

So what to do this year? Not sure. It's something to think about this week. The only rules are that it has to be something slightly off the beaten path (or simply ridiculous) and has to be as "opposite" of the Super Bowl as possible. A couple of the frontrunners so far:

Storage Wars Marathon

Watch "Wayne and Garth's Music A-Go-Go" (if I can get it in time)

Read

Watch "Trading Spaces" (I'd have to find that as well)

8-bit Nintendo Night

That's really all I have so far but I have a week to think about it. I'm sure I'll figure something out. Suggestions welcome.

The good news is this: two weeks until aces and catchers.

Wax Conan Revisited

Conan visits his wax figure made by Madame Tussaud's about a year ago.

This is great because Conan goes in with no material to work with but still improvises a full 6 minute bit. He is to comedy as B.A. Baracus is to machines.

No sign of Wax Tom Cruise and Wax Fonzie.

Letterman-Postian Recursion

Letterman defended Ricky Gervais' performance hosting the Golden Globes on his show.

You can watch the video here.

The New York Post had printed a story about how the performance was so controversial. Letterman held up the story and said Gervais did a fantastic job, reading some of Ricky's jokes from the article. He then predicted that tomorrow's Post would have a story about what he had just done and print a picture of him holding up the Post. The next day he was proven correct as The New York Post did print a picture of Dave holding up the Post. So he held up the Post article which contained the picture of him holding the Post to see if they would publish a picture of that in the next day's edition.

He says his goal is to eventually get a photo printed in the newspaper that represents infinity.

MECHANT!

I'm a big Smerch fan so it was nice to see him on Late Night. He talks about "An Idiot Abroad", "The Ricky Gervais Show", the Golden Globes and even touches on his XFM (radio) days.

His walk on music was "6 Foot 7 Foot 8 Foot Bunch" which goes, uh, "Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch" (so it's not just a clever name). Steve is 6 foot, 7. My prediction for the walk-on music was "Black or White" by Michael Jackson.

Pros and Cons or Something

"Pros and Cons" is a regular feature on Late Night but it's usually kind of a waste of time. "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" is supposed to be about being weird and different. But "Pros and Cons" is the one piece they do that's no different from a million different comedy bits done by a million different talk shows throughout history.

But this one rises above that, due mainly to the amount of derailment and improvisation about the "Old Timey" days of radio and myspace. And also the reference to "Macho Man" Randy Savage.

Regis Retires; Drinking with Betty White

Earlier in the day, Regis Philbin announced he was leaving his show. So Dave calls him to check in:

And later Dave interviews Betty White. Always interesting to hear about the early days of television, etc.

There's always something interesting happening at the Late Show but it's hard to blog about it because the uploaded videos available don't begin to cover them all. Then, when a video is created, it's edited to almost nothing (as seen above). Hopefully two videos almost adds up to one good one.