BLUE MAG

Just got an email from my good friend Albert Gore… looks like Current.com, formerly of Current.tv, has launched/relaunched. I liked Current.tv better as a URL but in general I really dig what Current is doing.

Yo, Al G… the layout is jacked in Opera 9.23… which is probably a highly used browser by your audience…

Remember “Babylon Fields,” the zombie pilot that didn’t make CBS’s fall lineup? Some videos from the ill-fated pilot have surfaced today courtesy of TV Week and they are frigging nuts. One of the clips has 2 male zombies discussing having sex with normals!!! It is also a crime procedural where zombies ask the main character to solve their own murders — which sounds like “Pushing Daisies.”

However weird that sounds, the clips are actually kind of boring. A more silly visual approach might have worked better.

“Mac is a Serial Killer,” a new episode of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is available on the MySpaces. Season two starts early, September 13 to be exact.

Good video here from “Superbad” viral marketing…

Continue reading What *does* it mean to be Superbad?

Wes Anderson fans will be delighted to see the trailer for The Darjeeling Limited, Wes and Co’s next movie due out in September. I think it looks pretty good.

While watching “Extras: Season 2″ on DVD it became necessary to develop a technique for laughing hysterically but silently. Like most great comedies, it is possible to miss great laughs whilst recovering from the previous laugh. It almost makes one miss the laugh track, which provides a built-in laugh buffer. I call my technique “circular laughing” as a nod to circular breathing, the technique musical instrument players use to be able to breathe in and out simultaneously to provide a constant sound.

It’s a simple trick, really: All you have to do is laugh with the same vigor as you would normally, only you don’t make any sounds. Even with the long awkward pauses that make Ricky Gervais’s comedy so great, you still miss too much when you’re picking yourself off the floor. The need came to a head in the scene which follows, when Sir Ian McKellen is explaining to Gervais’s Andy Millman his acting “method.” Practice for yourself…

Continue reading Circular laughing: A Ricky Gervais survival technique

Reader Uncle Meatball tipped me off to this slick video preview of all the Fall TV shows. Here are some random observations from my viewing:

One to look out for might be “The Big Bang Theory.” I think the dude from “Roseanne” might actually work as a geek straight man. If it is even just OK, it’ll be between “How I Met Your Mother” and “New Adventures of Old Christine” which are the 2 best stock sitcoms on TV and 2 of the funniest shows period. The clip is just OK though….

If Ray Wise as the Devil is half as creepy as Ray Wise as Bob that could help “Reaper.” I don’t really understand what is going on from the clip, it’s way too choppy….

The “Chuck” clip has some real laughs. That could be a lot of fun. “Life” looks boring but I like the guy from “Band of Brothers.”

The Amy Sherman-Palladino show with Parker Posey is a sitcom? I don’t know if that will work. How is the laugh track supposed to do its thing when the characters don’t stop talking?

Thoughts from anybody else? That are not about Chris Brown?

I don’t post enough music on BLUE MAG, so here is Elvis Perkins backed by Dearland from earlier this week on Late Show. I think this is the most beautiful song I’ve heard in a long while.

My brother just sent me a link to a bunch of clips of Mr. Show, which should make for some great Friday time-wasting. Included is the “audition” sketch in which David is performing a monologue about an audition. I think that might be one of my favorite Mr. Show sketches.