Today Hollywood.com has the scoop that Jerry Seinfeld will appear in the upcoming season of Louis CK’s (awesome) show, Louie. How they got the scoop is almost as good as the news itself. During an interview with Hollywood.com about Madagascar 3 Chris Rock picked up a phone call from his buddy Jerry, who wanted to talk about his day on the set of Louie.
Even the mention of the word “Seinfeld,” along with word that WTF host Marc Maron will be on the show, is naturally getting fans ramped up for the third season. There’s no word on what role either of the two will play, although it’s reasonable to guess they’ll play a version of themselves. The AV Club wrote today:
“The nature of Seinfeld’s guest role is, of course, similarly unclear, though given Louie’s meta nature, here’s hoping he drops by to gently mock the self-indulgence of a comedian making a loosely autobiographical show about being a comedian.”
The third season of Louie premieres on June 28th on FX.
The grocery store I recently started shopping at plays exclusively Spanish music. I love the maracas and quick tempo, but never understand words beyond the ones that mean “beer,” “love,” or “people.” That’s why when “Call Me Maybe” came on, I stopped in my tracks in the ice cream aisle. That’s when I knew the song, by teenager Carly Rae Jepsen (I feel creepy just typing that), had taken over the world. “Call Me Maybe” is everywhere. People quote it on Twitter, post it on Facebook, and generally just seem to love it un-ironically.
Which brings me to how good the song actually is. It’s not that Justin Bieber-“Baby” nonsense, we’re talking about music here. “Call Me Maybe” might be the best pop song since Britney Spears’ “Sometimes,” even if the music video doesn’t come close to Brit lusting over one of those things where you put in a nickel and can see the nose hair on Mt. Rushmore. “Call Me Maybe” redefines sugary dance pop by bringing using the same format Daft Punk does, leading up to the first drop at about 50 seconds in. Is Carly Rae Jepsen another flash-in-the-pan Hilary Duff? Probably, but she has over 85 million YouTube views and like a ga-zillion iTunes downloads. That and if her song ever came on at a bar, I have to admit I’d be thrilled.
Last month we wrote about how the new Muppets movie acted as an inspiration to revisit the older ones from Jim Henson. Welp, apparently we here at WYPITW weren’t the only ones feeling nostalgic as The Hollywood Reporter just published a scoop about the film version of Fraggle Rock coming to fruition. The show, from Henson and company, aired during the ‘80s and was syndicated through the ‘90s. At the time it seemed like the creepy younger cousin of Kermit and Ms. Piggy. The cave the Fraggles lived in seemed like the dark downside of Jim Henson’s weed smoking (he had to, right?). Who knows? We’re just spitballin’ here but the movie really is happening and a Cartoon Network executive who did some voice work on Rango is working on the script with one of the animators from the The Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
I was going to just post a video of the intro but got stuck in the time waste that is YouTube and found a full episode, it was irresistible.
This afternoon NPR posted an article on their website about some work researchers did trying to find out how the age of an individual affects their smell. Scientists had participants in the experiment wash themselves with odorless soap before going to bed in a T-shirt with absorbent pads in the armpit areas. It turns out when people later smelled the shirts (that sounds like a fun job), they were easily able to tell what shirts were worn by old people. They just described the smell as different, not negative although it’s hard not to wonder if researchers intentionally left off a check box where someone could’ve marked “stale peppermint.” The NPR article speculated that the elderly might smell bad because of a lack of hygiene or the scent of disease, two things that pop up later in life.
It’s not known what causes the smells to be so different as people age but one thing was clear: young men smell especially bad. The scent, probably somewhere between alcohol and old Philly cheese steaks if I had to guess, was also ambiguous but for some reason my girlfriend wasn’t surprised when I told her about the study.
This week the History Channel took a major step in the right direction, backwards. The channel that in recent years has delved into reality shows like American Pickers, Swamp People, and Ice Road Truckers took back its rightful place as TV’s king of history. The much-awaited Hatfields and McCoys miniseries debuted this week and attracted almost 14 million viewers on Monday night, beating even America’s Got Talent.
The linked article above was written by Bill Carter of the New York Times and is worth a read for the amount of information it packs into only a few paragraphs. The most interesting tidbit might be this:
“By comparison, the finale this month of NBC’s singing competition hit, “The Voice,” attracted 10.5 million viewers. Most hit shows on cable are in the range of two million to four million viewers, though “The Walking Dead” on AMC reached what seemed then to be an impressive nine million for its finale in March.”
From the standpoint of this TV viewer and disillusioned History Channel fan, the success of Hatfields and McCoys goes deeper than the numbers. It harkens back to the programming the of the History Channel that used to be, the historic History Channel if you will (sorry, I couldn’t resist). In the place of one night events like the Sherman’s March documentary that’s rarely syndicated there are endless amounts of hillbillies on the History Channel. I’m a Pawn Stars guy, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit disappointed when I heard the show easily brought in 5 million viewers when the new season began. Not because I don’t love that doofus Chumlee, but because I didn’t want History Channel executives to keep burying my beloved documentaries about Ancient Rome in favor of MonsterQuest, which is a cool idea but they literally never find a monster.
Hatfields and McCoys seems to be a kind of middle ground between the America: The Story of Us History Channel and the Let’s-show-these-toothless-dudes-walk-around-a-trailer-park-for-an-hour History Channel. It’s the story of perhaps the most famous American feuding families who, coincidentally, are total hicks. Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton have lent some serious star power to the miniseries and while it may not be the story of how Henry VIII killed his wife, it’s something the channel has really needed.
It’s the Red Scare all over again. If there are students in Brooklyn that play hockey, they should be cowering under their desks with the news that the KHL will play two regular season hockey games in the borough’s new Barclays Center. The Barclays Center, future home of the Brooklyn Nets, will host the teams from the Russian hockey league because the Nets’ ga-zillionaire Russian owner Mikhail Prokhorov really must hate America, and Canada too for that matter. By all accounts hating America is easy for people all over the world, but Canada? Come on, guys.
As a diehard NHL fan (frankly, it’s a little unhealthy), the KHL makes me absolutely sick so you can imagine my reaction when I heard the news they’d be invading the land of the free and the home of the brave. Didn’t we beat them already in Lake Placid back in 1980? This is ‘merica, dammit, and we need to keep those commies out. I hate Russian hockey. They think they’re so sweet with their vodka and dead players and Olympic-sized ice, well guess what? We took all your best players and they dangle here all they want, so go home. Do you think Kovalchuk or Ovechkin would pick the KHL over the NHL? COME ON.
Apparently one of the teams thats being discussed coming to the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD is Avangard Omsk, Jaromir Jagr’s team during his stint in the KHL. What are they trying to do bring him back? Hey Avangargle -my-balls, Jagr might be from Czechoslovakia but he’s our guy now. He chose to come back to the NHL after a few years behind the iron curtain and they can forget it if they’re going to try sneaking him away with them. Good try, we pulled that off when we stole Fedorov way back in the day. You can’t triple-stamp a double-stamp .
