Late Night - Robert Goulet

Goulet!


Aww, another of my uploaded videos gets an official release. This one is kind of unexpected since it was kind of a bit within a bit. But they just cut out the context and ran with it.

It's a little Lover Boy, come on!

Late Night - Will Ferrell is a Sexy Leprechaun

Uh... Not Safe for Work??????

SNL - The Sensitive Drill Sergeant

This is one of those classic SNL skits that I've always remembered but would have trouble tracking down.

Would it be impossible for Will Ferrell to re-join Saturday Night Live?

Space The Infinite Frontier

In honor of staring straight at the eclipse for over an hour today, Space The Infinite Frontier with Harry Caray.

Tonight Show - Will Ferrell is the New Santa

The "Santa" thing is old and tired. It's time for a new hipper, cooler Santa for the new Willenium.

Tonight Show - Will Ferrell is Little Debbie

Uhhh.... well.... I guess, Will Ferrell is Little Debbie.

Tonight Show - Lip Sync Battle

The Tonight Show did a live post-Super Bowl show which included a Lip Sync Battle with Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. Feel the magic.

Tonight Show - The Drum Off

When Will Ferrell was told he looked like Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Will Ferrell replied that he WAS Chad Smith. Chad Smith was a character, he said. This sparked a feud that has lasted for weeks. But in the latest episode of The Tonight Show it was time to finally put an end to this feud with a good old-fashioned drum-off of epicness.

This Peacock Needs to Fly

The Other Guys (2010)

P.K. Highsmith and Christopher Danson (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) are two balls-to-the-wall cops who don't play by the rules. They're the kind of cops who shoot first and, then, when it gets down to the time where they should be asking questions, they're still shooting - walking away from an explosion in slow mo. This film isn't about them. Instead, it's about "The Other Guys" (Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell) - the guys who do paperwork at their desk and have their guns taken away from them because they accidentally shot Derek Jeter. The kind of guys who mount a red police emergency light on top of a Prius as they investigate scaffolding ordinance violations.

"The Other Guys" kind of slipped under the radar this year either because it was going up against dominant competition or people had grown tired of Will Ferrell movies. I can't blame them, his mostly-improvised comedic output has been downhill since "Anchorman". Still, in this case it's unjustified. This is the funniest movie I've seen in a long time - Will Ferrell or otherwise.

The great lines and great scenes of this movie are too numerous to get into. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg give great performances. Michael Keaton and Steve Coogan are excellent surprises in supporting roles and the movie is narrated by Ice-T. In fact, maybe it's just me but I felt like I could actually hear Ice-T crawling on a log as he spoke. This movie actually made me laugh out loud multiple times - an extreme rarity.

That's why I creep.

Brothers In Arms

Recently Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon reminisced about, and played a clip of, the old days where they both were actors on the Canadian soap opera "Jacob's Patience".

Jimmy doesn't even keep a straight face during the setup to the skit.

Oddly, I was recently watching a "Thunderbirds" movie and thinking how strange it was and thinking it was just plain creepy and stupid. This reminds me of that whole "marionette acting" a bit.

The Last Tonight Show

Last night was the last "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" ever. You can still see it for a limited time here.

From June 1, 2009 to January 22, 2010, the show lasted 7 months, 21 days and aired 146 episodes totaling 150 Hours, 52 Minutes of programming (counting commercials). I watched every single show.

I found the last episode oddly emotional. I mean, Conan isn't retiring, he doesn't have a terminal illness, he's still making tons of money, it only lasted 7 months - there isn't that much loss to really "mourn" over but nevertheless, I did feel very sad and nostalgic throughout the entire hour. The montage of great moments was a particular mix of laughter and melancholy. Seeing Wax Tom Cruise and Wax Fonzie being shot out of a cannon, Conan pool cleaning, Conan and Andy boating, the motorized podium, smashing the pumpkin, and so on, was liking looking through a photo album (yes, even though it's only a show that lasted 7 months).

Tom Hanks was good, Neil Young was good, Steve Carrell was funny. Conan's goodbye speech was especially good even though he did just do one 7 months ago. I can't decide if Will Ferrell playing with Beck, Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper and Conan, himself, was epic or kind of a waste of time. Probably it was a little of both. I love the song, the musicians and the return of "more cowbell" but I couldn't help but wish that there was an amazing singer to match the amazing music. The "comedic" aspect of it just didn't seem worth it.

Given that the show runs past midnight, the last show ended January 23, 2010 - the 5 year anniversary of Johnny Carson's death to the day.

There's no telling where Conan will end up - though it looks to me like FOX - or when he'll start airing shows - though all reports speculate that it will be MONTHS - but I'll be watching.

A final note about NBC: I made a joke before about them running their network like "Kruger Industrial Smoothing" and I have to say that doesn't even feel like an exaggeration. When Johnny Carson was on the air NBC basically had 100% of the audience. The other networks didn't even pretend to think that they could compete. When he retired, NBC took the good fortune of having the agreed upon rightful heir to the throne, David Letterman. Faced with a slam dunk, NBC decided to screw everyone and send Letterman to another network. So now they have %50 (let's say) instead of 100%. That's a bad business model and a huge public blunder but they learned an important lesson and moved on. Oh, no, wait, because 20 years later with a new, young, innovative host, they decide to piss him off too and send him to another network and now they can have, at best, 33% of the audience and a major P.R. nightmare where people generally think they (and their "new" host) are evil. A ratings share cut into three, an old and soon to be retired host, an ageing demographic, increased competition, bad press, it all sounds like good, solid planning.

In a nutshell, NBC's decision was "these ratings aren't good enough, let's cut them in half." Until such point that 2+2=5, there's no way that can make business sense. And yet somehow it happened. The most legendary franchise, the home of Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson is officially dead.

Epilogue: A lot happened in over the past week or so and there won't be any more Conan for a while so I'll probably post past clips from the show periodically.