Ebert Weighs In

Here's a great article by Roger Ebert telling the whole story of what happened to "At the Movies". The facial surgeries, the firings, the Ben/Ben debacle that forced me to take the show off TiVo (Ben Lyons review of 'Max Payne' was "Sometimes I just don't wanna think.") and the rescue of teh show by Michael Philips and A.O. Scott. It's a fascinating read and eye openeing to anyone who didn't know what happened once Siskel died.

Take a look.

Sideshow Emperor

I am a reformed Star Wars fan. Those prequels made the franchise for someone else, not me. And yet this seems completely awesome.




Oh and strangely enough there's a 13" Darth Vader still on sale. Ah, money. There's so many ways to get rid of you.

Best scrolling ever.

It's nerdy, and stiff and lame. And yet technologically, it's awesome.

Check it out.

Tony Stark Hot Toys

Speaking of Iron Man, I think I need this:

Iron Man 2

So far it's the only movie of Summer 2010. Superhero movies have a tendency to get really, really good in the second installment. And with the new poster, I think that trend will remain unbroken.



Didn't the producers say Rhodey wouldn't have much of a part when they fired Terence Howard? Not much a part if you don't want to be WAR MACHINE!!!

Thanks to actionfigurepics.com for the image.

John and Molly Get Along 2

I went to John and Molly Get Along 3 last night. Fantastic show and I shared a sheepish and awkward smile with Jeaneane Garafalo. Said nothing. Lifelong dream fulfilled.

Here's John and Molly's second video. They premiered the third last night and I think I'll be posting every one they do.

Flight of the Bumblebee 2

If yesterday's wasn't bad enough, friend and shredder extraordinaire Geoff Unger sends us this video. This guy plays the piece three times, the last at 320bps!

Flight of the Bumblebee

Every now and then I see a guitarist that makes me feel bad about myself. Sometimes they're not even famous. Here's a guy on a message board, playing something I can't do on a guitar I now own.

Mo!

I'm cranking on something I couldn't crack over the long weekend. Still not sure if I'm close. But here's the best distraction I can find from Mo Diggs. Mo talks about the 10 most influential comedians of the decade and it's so well thought-out and expertly written I can't even argue about the comics I hate on it.

Check it out!

Rejected Onion Headlines

We've changed the format of Writer's Room from stand-up to readings (I did the Adam West story from this blog). Oddly, the common theme is people reading their rejected Onion jokes. It's given me the confidence to post these.

I got an audition for the Onion earlier this year. I was pretty excited. After three years of stand-up I thought this was my way in to professional comedy writing. I'd had an audition for the Colbert Report early on that didn't pan out so a shot at the Onion was lightning striking twice.

Unfortunately, they didn't pick any of these. I took that as a sign to go back to advertising but after hearing how much great stuff the Onion doesn't pick, I feel a little more loyalty to these jokes.


Report: 70% of Representatives Feel Watching C-SPAN Just As Good As Showing Up

Springsteen Ruins Perfectly Good Halftime Show With Song From New Album

“Book Comes To Life” Movie Produced By Executives Who Don’t Read

Robert Duvall to Use Southern Accent in Every Damn Movie Now

Deathbed Confession Pack of Lies

Board Meeting Not Worth Free Cookies

Producers of Star Trek Movie Promise Fans Way Less "Star Trek"

Expensive SUV Becomes Affordable House

Losing Team's Problem Started With Believing in Themselves

OP-ED: Zoo Animals Just Don't Keep the Paying Customer in Mind

Mother Tells Son Once, Thousand Times

Advertising Agency Avoids Eye-Contact Throughout Horrible Commercial Pitch

OP-ED: Congratulations on Creating the Sexy, Brooding Teenage Vampire, “Twilight” Author! by Joss Whedon

Racist Cartoon Based on True Story

Freak Accident Kills Freak

Writer's Room Tonight!

Everything I said yesterday holds true. But I just finished reading Cormac MaCarthy's "The Road" and it's the saddest thing I ever read. I'm gonna need this show tonight.

Writer's Room Tomorrow!

I've been working here so long I don't know that I'm a stand-up anymore. Fortunately tomorrow, I'll be doing a reading. I know I can still read.

This Month's Writers Room @ The PIT:

Streeter Seidel (College Humor)

Brooke Van Poppeln (The Comic's Comic)

Hari Kondabolu (Comedy Central's Live @ Gotham)

Alex Grubard reading from his children's joke book (literally)

Hosted by Mike Drucker & Jon Clarke

The PIT

Tuesday 11/24/09 9:30

29th St between 7th and 8th.

$5

Yay Fail Blog

Spectacular Spider-Man

I can't believe we have to petition to save a show that has Spider-Man in it.

There's a new Spider-Man series every five years or so. Some have been good, some have been garbage. So in 2007, when "Spectacular Spider-Man" was announced, I was unfazed. I watched a few episodes and liked it enough.

Then I bought the season 1 set and fell in love. seeing all the episodes together made me appreciate how well written the show was. It gets EVERYTHING right. Even Sam Raimi's movies miss some of Spidey's charm, but not this. The humor, the soap opera, the crazy rogues gallery, the science, it's all here. Greg Weisman has done the job at a level only Bruce Timm has attained.

You'd think being a Spider-Man show would give it gratis in the ratings. Yet "Spectacular" has a troubled history. It premiered right when Kids WB gave up. Then it moved way up the dial to basic cable on Disney XD. Disney decided not to run the second season until they had rerun 13 weeks of the first. So the U.S. was the last country to show these episodes. They also took numerous breaks to stagger the episodes for sweeps. The final ones aired last night, 18 months after they should have.

But it's still doing well. Merchandise is selling, kids are waiting. So when's the third season airing? Well now there's the problem of that Disney/ Marvel merger bogging things down. Sure "Spectacular" airs on a Disney channel but one animated series is the last thing on their agenda. And with Sony dropping the Spider-Man tv license, there's a bunch of people no longer involved. So two years after production on season two, none of the staff knows if they'll be called back.

So what do we do? Honestly, I have no idea. There a the typical petitions. I joined the Facebook group. People are writing letters. But this thing is so mired in inter company machinations I think all we can do is raise awareness that there is an audience for the show. Because when the dust settles, Disney and Marvel will want a Spider-man cartoon on the air. And after almost fifty years, they finally have one.

But let's not get too sad. Let's watch some. here's my favorite season one episode that has Spidey in the black costume fighting the Sinister Six. And how awesome is that theme song?

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

Hole in the Bucket

Good, news, bad news, good news.

The new Sesame Street DVD, "40 years of Sunny Days" is out. And it's incredible. Amping up the strategy of the "Old School" sets, these 2 discs hold one 5 1/2 hour clip show that runs chronologically. Everything in it is gold. Renee and I would have bought it even if we had no children. As it is, Ben loved it so much we had to put on a Superman cartoon to calm him down.

Bad news: it's missing the classic "There's a Hole in the Bucket" a slow, strange, goofy segment that, in my recollection, taught nothing. Even as a kid, I wondered what they were thinking. The good news is Sesame Workshop knew it was something special and posted on their website instead. You can't embed from them so I found a Youtube version. Enjoy.

Joss Whedon Wants to Buy Terminator

Dollhouse is canceled but I don't really care as long as he's still full of great stuff like this open letter.

Thanks Ann-Marie Kirby-Payne and all your wonderful hyphens.

The Origin of Oscar the Grouch

Thanks, Ed Murray.



See more of them at www.maneggs.com

How Many Spider-Mans Can Fit Into a Jamba Juice?

Scandals or no, this is why I'll always love Letterman.

"I'm Glad You Saw Jack Benny Fall Out of That Chair"

Bill Cosby got the Mark Twain Prize. Because he damn well deserves it.



Chris Rock and Seinfeld opening is great. Cosby's speech is great. But nothing is better than watching Cosby kill in front of Groucho Marx and Jack Benny.

When Frank Zappa Met Jack Kirby

This is five ways of cool.

Droid is Out

Can I go home now?

Whammy Bar Acoustic

I always wondered why they never made acoustic guitars with tremolos. I still don't know but now I know it can be done.

Droid on Fallon

They spent four minutes talking about Droid on Fallon the other night. That to me is the same as Drucker getting jokes on the show. Which has also happened.

Spider-Man 2 deleted scene

20 seconds that should NEVER have been cut.

U2 on Youtube- Full Concert

Here it is. A full two hours and change. Because when you're U2 you don't have to conform to that 100 MB rule.

Matt McCarthy

If you don't love Matt McCarthy, we are through.



And if you do, I hope you saw him perform the Tom Hanks breakdown scene from "Punchline" at Shtick or Treat Wednesday night. For it was glorious.

UPDATE" Matt just posted it.

Droid Does- Full Site

The full site is up. I wrote like 80 kajillion pages on it. And came up with the dancing dog.

www.droiddoes.com

Shtick or Treat Tonight!

Oboy Oboy.


Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker)
New York, NY
7 p.m.
$7

With:

Richard Jeni (Kumail Nanjiani)
Kumail Nanjiani (Pete Holmes)
Paul F. Tompkins (Sean Patton)
Jim Gaffigan (Luke Cunningham)
Sam Kinison (Mike Drucker)
Johnny Carson (Mark Normand)
Neil Hamburger (Matt Ruby)
Dana Carvey (Adam Newman)
Brian Regan (Jason Saenz)
Cedric the Entertainer (Nick Turner)
Dave Attell (Danny Solomon)
Judy Tenuta (Leslie Goshko)
Jim Carrey (Charlie Kasov)
Carrot Top (Pat Stango)
Don Rickles (Sean Donnelly)
Jeff Dunham (Jay Welch)
Sinbad (Abbi Crutchfield)
Alonzo "Hamburger" Jones (Neal Statsny)
Emo Phillips (Matt Goldich)
Norm MacDonald (Dan Curry)
Jeff Foxworthy (Roger Hailes)
Reggie Watts (Rory Scovel)
Big Jay Oakerson (Jared Logan)
Kristen Schaal (Jamie Lee)
Adam Sandler (Matt Maragno)
Richard Lewis (Dan Mintz)
Eddie Izzard (Dan Fontaine)
Joy Behar (Molly Knefel)
Mitch Hedberg (Mo Diggs)
Brett Butler (Dan St. Germaine)
Rip Taylor (Mike Lawrence)
Dana Gould (Jon Clarke)
Bernie Mac (Dan Wilbur)
Lenny Bruce (Tim Warner)
Orny Adams (Shawn Pearlman)
Bob Newhart (Ross Hyzer)
Joan Rivers (Alice Wetterland)
Conan O'Brien (Chelsea White)
Arj Barker (Chesley Calloway)
Fozzy Bear (Aalap Patel)
Jim Breuer (RG Daniels)
Ron White (Ben Kissel)
Jack Benny (Ray Field)
Steve Martin (Erik Bergstrom)
Albert Brooks (Sean O'Connor)
Todd Barry (Luke Thayer)
Andrew Dice Clay (Rob O'Reilly)

Writer's Room Tonight!

Writers Room returns with a special edition of some of the city's best comedy writers reading their favorite B-side stories, essays, and jokes.

Featuring:

Simon Rich (SNL)

Sara Schaefer (Late Night With Jimmy Fallon)

Jon Friedman (Late Night With Jimmy Fallon)

Sara Benincasa (Sirius, Everywhere)

Emily Gordon

Jon Clarke (McSweeneys)

Hosted by Mike Drucker (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon)

The PIT
29th St between 6th and 7th Ave
$5
9:30 p.m.

U2 on Youtube

How good could this possibly look?

Droid Feedback

The word is out and the internet is a blaze with Droid. I've seen videos where a vlogger read all the copy from the teaser email capture site.

I've never been a part of something that had a huge response before. I'm working way hard to really notice it. In fact, I think I'm losing it since this guy totally appeals to me.