‘Deadliest Catch’ captain Phil Harris dies at age 53
Never saw his TV show but he was great as the voice of Baloo in The Jungle Book!
♫ Look for the (clap) Bare Ne-cess-ities . . . ♫
Say hi to Bing Crosby in hell!
[Chris] Berman could go all the way to DirectTV or the NFL Network when his ESPN contract expires? Its probably just a negotiating ploy, but it sure would be neat to see him exclusively on channels my TV doesn’t have.
I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election.
My son and I are watching a TV commercial for Love Happens, which seems to be about a man forced to choose between financial gain and the love of a woman.
This is one of those “teachable moments,” because the boy, who’s 15 now, may someday find himself facing the same choice as the guy in the movie, so I look at him with love and hard-earned wisdom and with a voice of great sincerity, I say:
“Take the money.”
[Dwight] Howard has also expressed the desire to have his own reality show.
Here’s a suggestion: The show should focus on Howard’s learning how to make savvy passes when he’s doubled, how to shoot a short-range jumper and how to make free throws.
That’s the kind of reality that the young man should be interested in.
TV listings: The Prime-Time TV grid in Thursday’s Calendar section mistakenly listed MTV’s “Jackass” show on the MSNBC cable schedule at 7 and 10 p.m. where instead MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” should have been listed.
We’re dropping our 15-year-old son off at LAX. He’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins.
He’s explaining his theory of international cuisine, which is that there’s not going to be any Mexican food in Australia because there are no Mexicans in Australia. On the other hand, they probably have New Zealand food that those of us in the States have never heard about.
“That’s why it’s important to travel,” I say, “so you can learn about things like that. Or you could just stay home and watch the Travel Channel.”
I already knew that, but one of the TV stations at the hotel seemed to be showing nothing but ball hockey — no skates, just guys running around with sticks trying to hit a ball into a net.
I asked a Canadian: “What’s up with all the ball hockey games on television?”
“It’s the playoffs!” he explained.
My son and I are watching a TV commercial for the Resident Evil 5 video game.
“Rated M for Mature,” the commercial says.
“Is anyone who plays video games really ‘mature,’” I ask, using finger quotes to emphasize “mature.”
No reaction from the boy, a video game player himself.
“You see what I mean?” I ask him.
“No,” he says.
I posted something on Twitter about helping my son with The Great Gatsby and got what you might call a spam reply from this girl, who said “have u tried http://shmoop.com for The Great Gatsby?”
Evidently Shmoop, which I’d never heard of, has people hanging out on Twitter waiting for someone to mention a book, at which point they send back a “have u tried …” reply.
Lest you think that’s a totally ineffective thing to do, I actually did click over to the Shmoop entry on The Great Gatsby, which starts off like this:
The Great Gatsby is a delightful concoction of MTV Cribs, VH1’s The Fabulous Life Of…, and HBO’s Sopranos. Shake over ice, add a twist of jazz, a spritz of adultery, and the little pink umbrella that completes this long island iced tea and you’ve got yourself a 5 o’clock beverage that, given the 1920’s setting, you wouldn’t be allowed to drink.
So it’s a little bit more hip than Cliffs Notes. I haven’t seen enough of it yet to know if I really like it, but I like it . . .
Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Morgan Tsvangirai and that guy from the Miller High Life commercials . . .
TORONTO (AP) — Howie Mandel has been hospitalized in Canada with an irregular heartbeat, his publicist said.
OH GOD NO! WHAT WILL BECOME OF “HOWIE DO IT!” THE NEW HIDDEN-CAMERA PRANK SHOW?!
Who CARES about this? Just let me know when he’s dead . . .
The first storm of the season is rolling through Southern California, which means it’s time to bring back the time-honored tradition of sending female TV reporters out to do live weather remotes.
I saw a woman on TV this morning standing in a blizzard to tell me that it’s snowing in the Cajon Pass.
Really?! It always snows in the Cajon Pass. She could have told me the same thing from inside a heated studio.
Some day, one of these women is going to get pneumonia or frostbite and sue this whole sadistic practice out of existence . . .
BOSTON (AP) — Paul Benedict, the actor who played the English neighbor Harry Bentley on the sitcom “The Jeffersons,” has died. He was 70.
It would be like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but the twist is that instead of fixing people’s homes, we’d sneak around under cover of darkness and give homes an extreme makeover by burning them down, blowing them up, felling large trees on top of them, etc.
For added poignancy, the victims will be cripples, retards, members of minority groups, impoverished people with way too many kids, or some combination of the above.
Now that’s great television!
As my kid and I were watching Beverly Hills Cop on VH1 last night, we kept seeing ads for a show called I Love Money, in which fat, unattractive people are having a spitting contest for distance.
Two questions: What is the target market for this — fat, ugly spitters and the people who love them? And a question I wonder about a lot: Were people this stupid before television?
Have you seen this program? My son clicked it on last weekend. The host asked a woman if she knew what a right triangle was.
“Yes,” she said. “The triangle on the right.”
I had to leave the room immediately. I felt like I was losing IQ points just watching it . . .
In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .
Welcome to EppsNet, where the writers are not on strike!
Striking writers are stupid. Pretend you’re a TV executive and your writers are on strike.
Oh dear! What will I do? I’ll have to show reruns and only get 90 percent of the dimbulb audience I’d get showing new episodes. Boo hoo hoo! 
Television is the opiate of the masses, man! People will watch it no matter what’s on. They can’t live without it.
We’ve got TVs in restaurants, health clubs, cars, you name it. They’re ubiquitous!
The number of people like me — who think that if you want to eat dinner in front of a TV set you should stay the hell at home — is very small compared to the number of people who will not leave their homes if it means being separated from a television.
Hey scribes! People are going to turn off their flat-panel LCD high-def TVs — and do what? Read a book? Interact with their families?
Fat fucking chance!
Writers can stay on strike forever for all anybody cares.
That’s why TV shows are so stupid. They’re written by stupid people.
Stars Won’t Attend Golden Globe Awards
Golden Globe-nominated actors and presenters won’t attend the televised award show Jan. 13 because of the writers’ strike, the Screen Actors Guild announced Friday.
Well then . . . that casts things in a whole new light! Actors will not attend the Golden Globes because they’d have to cross a picket line of angry wordsmiths and ink slingers.
OMG! I hope the earth doesn’t stop revolving on its axis and fling us all into space because actors are boycotting the Golden Globes telecast!
What are the Golden Globes anyway? Another excuse for actors to get together and suck each other’s dicks?
Rot in hell, thespians!
