Betty pubic dyes, now in every color of the rainbow, ladies! (myspace 7/29/08)

I saw what has to be the greatest thing ever on the subway this weekend. We had just finished shooting the rest of the therapy scenes in Asher and I was heading home when a poster caught my eye for Betty brand dyes, for the "gray hair down there." Yep, touch up the graying pubes. I supposed that could help someone feel better about themselves...except for one inexplicable color: hot pink.
Yeah, you read that right. The color makes no sense in any context of the advertisement. If you're getting gray in the crotch you have no business having hot pink hair in the first place. Second, I'm pretty sure no one with hot pink hair has pubic hair anyway, because that would cover up some of her tatoos. The last reason I can think of is that you hope that maybe, just maybe, if the carpet matches the curtains you can make people believe that's your natural color.
Update- it also comes in blue with cut-outs for styling, including a whale!

Today I killed a dozen boys. (myspace 9/15/08)

That's correct. I killed them on the battlefield...with laser's!
My friend, Kirk (see friend's list) invited me to play laser tag here http://combatsportsusa.com/index.html to celebrate his birthday. We ran around in the woods, shooting lasers with, surprise, a bunch of little kids. But it was fun. Started off very rocky for me. I was the first one out on our team in each of the three rounds before we swithced bases with the opposing team. It was a much better position from which to defend. I did OK in the next two rounds which were team elimination. However, I found my position in the final round of capture the flag.
Rather than run around anymore because I am old and give out, as the man says, I stayed to defend the base. I must have shot half of their players, safely ensconsed in my hiding space. My weakness became a strength as I'm pretty sure I was so easily eliminated early due to my height (I'm nine feet, seven inches). But in the base my headgear, which registers your opponent's shots, was up in the ceiling. Our teammate, Billy, came back and we were firing away, picking off kids left and right. We owned the little snots. The referee called time eventually but declared us the winners as the other team couldn't get anywhere near us. Anyway, we left victorious and everyone had a good time. Thanks for the invite, Kirk (as well as the pizza, cake and beer) and happy birthday!

The IT Crowd, ep 2

OK, I gave The IT Crowd a second chance and was still disappointed. While the second episode was not as bad as the first it still suffers from the same flat characterizations, broad comedy and grating laugh track. The wig and glasses on Richard Ayoade still remind me of Andy Millman on When the Whistle Blows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Whistle_Blows#When_the_Whistle_Blows) far too much. The interminable plotline revolving around Jen's obsession with a single pair of shoes to the point of deformity was neither funny nor remotely original. I did get a couple of laughs out of the way Maurice handled the fire situation and the fact that he built his own stress tester when he wasn't allowed to use someone else's. However, the biggest, ripest target, the doctor giving the stress seminar, was entirely wasted on the dullest, simplest of ironies (lol he is really stressed, too!). Roy still has yet to DO anything to make me notice he's in the show.

Nearly all of the time dedicated to Jen's shoes and Maurice's lack of soldering wisdom could have been dedicated to fleshing out the stress therapist for a better delivery on deflating a self help windbag rather than aiming for the low hanging fruit of 'women sure are car-azy about shoes!' and nerds not having any common sense.

What I find most frustrating about this series is its middling sensibilities. It doesn't have enough balls to do a Dada approach and let the situations grow to absurdist proportions like, say, The Young Ones. But it lacks subtlety and depth of character to become a show where you honestly care about what's happening to any of the characters either, such as (to be cliche) The Office. Just when the show looks like it is about to really skewer a target it pulls back and relies upon something safe and easy to digest. For example, the boss character (who's so remarkable I can't recall his name or title) has all the makings of a tyrannical dictator, demanding more and more unreasonable tasks from his crew. Instead he begins to demand these things and then pulls back and threatens to fire everyone. Far too simple a punishment if he's going to make demand such as "you can't have any stress." The show needs to actually follow through on what it begins before it will make any progress.

I'm going to watch the full first series this week or next (I actually do have some packing, travelling and editing to attend to this week) but I'm frankly not expecting much from such a highly touted series. Thus far still unimpressed.

Yo ho ho, I TV critic am I part 2

The IT Crowd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd)

I also caught this pilot episode this weekend on Netflix. I had high hopes for it as it has been talked up for a while by friends of mine, has won an International Emmy for best sitcom and co-stars Richard Ayoade of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh fame. Those hopes were dashed by the end of the first ten minutes. The pilot episode of the first series was dreadfully corny, relying on the worst and broadest of 'IT tech are nerds' stereotypes as jokes and possibly the laziest and most grating application of a laugh track I have ever seen in a comedy series. Well, a British comedy series.
None of the characters are worth recalling anything about. Ayoade plays Maurice Moss, the Revenge of the Nerds style character with thick glasses, fuzzy hair and naivete so thick you can cut it with a knife. He gets very few lines of note, mostly just acting as though he doesn't understand what's going on around him. Chris O'Dowd's Roy is the other kind of geek showcased by this series, the smelly comic book dork with poor social skills and a chip on his shoulder. His dialogue is also quite cliched and trite. He is confrontational where Maurice was clueless. Their inept boss, Jen Barber, is played by Katherine Parkinson. The show begins with her being assigned to run IT by her own clueless and arrogant superior. In an ironic twist (yes, seriously) she knows nothing of computers. Hilarity. A series of sub-Three's Company attempts at sabotage and undermining the boss ensues until Barber's big secret is revealed. Roy attempts to rat her out to her own boss until it is established that everyone on a team will be fired if the team doesn't work together. Yes, that broadly is the manager character written. He's like something from a Monty Python sketch but lacking the depth and likely expected to recur. Eventually all agree it would be in their best interest to stop screwing one another over and work together.

I'm mildly interested to see where the series goes from the dull and clumsy set up. Now they are allies but what does this mean to them? Will they keep attempting to one up one another in a power struggle but with the subtlety not to get then entire dept fired? I am not in the least interested in a single of the only four characters from the pilot but the series began in 2006 and won the Emmy in 2008 so there must be some growth in between here and there. Given the nature of the comedy in the show this could be simply painful to sit through as well. I was hoping for another series on par with Garth Merenghi or Black Books but the pilot was all too much like the fake show "When the Whistle Blows" from Ricky Gervais' Extras.

Yo ho ho, I TV critic am I part 1

I watched a couple of new shows this weekend. Behold my terrifying reviews!

Parks and Recreation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parks_%26_Recreation_(TV_series): The new series from The Office creators is, well, The Office. Instead of desolate midsized Scranton, PA it's set in desolate midsized (and fictional) Pawnee, IN (which is a fantastic name). I will start with what I liked about the show. The characters are very well realized for a first show outing. In half an hour I have a good understanding of who they are, what they are looking to accomplish and what their established relationships to one another are. The cast is very good to great. From Amy Poehler to Aziz Ansari, who I'm very glad to see more of, to newer faces to me, like Nick Offerman and Paul Schneider, everyone brought a lot to their characters' lives and outlooks. There is a sweet moment of sacrifice from one of the characters that I appreciated to establish the tone of this show, giving it a sense of generosity that makes the characters more real and human. At the same time, though, I felt Offerman's Ron Swanson could be the breakout character of the show as the boss of a small government office that believes very, very strongly in privatization of public services. His closing, Bobby Knight-inspired comments were brilliant. Given the nature of the sitcom format this is a very promising beginning. I would be interested to see where these characters take off from this platform. Giving the show the long term goal of establishing a park is a nice plot point and gives the show a solid if loose focus to work toward.

Most of my criticisms of the show are early pilot moments, places where both writers and cast are feeling out their characters. In one amusing moment Ansari's character reveals himself to be a self professed redneck. While funny I hope the series does not rely on these kinds of gags in the long term. My biggest problem with the show was Poehler's character, Leslie Knope. I had heard some initial comparison's to Michael Scott of The Office and for good reason. She is written exactly like that character minus some of the childish belligerence. She's going to need something to move her away from the Michael Scott role to establish P & R as its own series and get it out from under the shadow of its sister program. They are both delusionally optimistic in the face of a dreary, go-nowhere job and react to setbacks in too similar a manner. Much of her dialogue seemed written for Steve Carrel. I don't think this is insurmountable but it is a problem that should be addressed quickly by the producers before Knope simply becomes 'Lady Michael' to viewers.

Overall I find much more of promise than of dread in Parks and Recreation and look forward to the coming episodes of the series. (The pilot can be found at hulu.com)