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"Daniel Frank is a very funny guy with a funny weblog." --- Mark Evanier.

Once I bagged six tigers

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Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:52 AM

Wacky Packages are back and better than ever! (Or at least, they're back anyway.) The official Topps announcement and an excellent Wacky Packages site.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:21 PM

I got a legal question: You know that bill that would let Congress override Supreme Court decisions by a two-thirds vote? What would happen if that bill passed, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, and Congress voted to override that decision?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:10 PM

Some quick thoughts on Century City, the law show set in the year 2030.

I wa really disappointed that at no point in the show did a baliff say "Court is in session. The Honourable Edna Kaputnik presiding...in space!"
Law & Order fans will be happy to know that only African-American women are judges in 2030 just like modern times.
A friend asked me "Do hack comedians in 2030 still do 'Hey, it's the future; where's my flying car?' bits?" I told him I had no idea and explained that 2030 is similar to the present in that nobody goes to watch stand-up comedy.

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Monday, March 15, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:37 PM

Heeeeeeey, Abbbbbbbbotttt!!! : Smoking Gun displays an FBI memo discussing Bud Abbott's porn collection as well as another one mentioning Lou Costello's collection (as well as George Raft's disappointingly limp handshake).

What interests me is this page and whose blacked-out name is on the list with Lou Costello and George Raft. Possibly the guy in front of "et. al" in the previous sentence.

UPDATE: Apparently Raft appeared on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour when it was hosted by Abbott and Costello. I refuse to speculate the subject of any discussions they might have had.

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Sunday, March 14, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:09 AM

Friday, March 12th: Entertainment Weekly names Aaron McGruder the 12th funniest person in America.
Saturday, March 13th: The punchline of Boondocks is the hackneyed "I love gay people; more broads for me!"

I guess timing is the most important part of comedy (or, to steal from Buddy Hackett, "Ask me what's the most important part of comedy." "What's the most import..." "Timing!")

The EW list does inspire a new SNL game: Any time Maya Rudolph is in a crappy sketch, say "That's not just funny; that's 20th Funniest Person in America funny!"

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Thursday, March 11, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:34 AM

Speaking of reality shows, a friend and I were discussing the ramifications of the Last Comic Standing brouhaha (which I posted about here). He was wondering if they were going to cut out footage of the judges. I suggested that they might show the judges storming out for extra drama. He thought that it would put a lie to all the standing-in-line footage and auditioning footage. I pointed out that this story has been somewhat widely reported and if people cared, the show would be dropped. My friend made this interesting observation:

When you first wrote that, I thought: there's no way they'll drop it. But yeah, if it's cheap to produce, it's cheap to cut and run.

This is semi-unprecedented. There have been lawsuits that the producers of Survivor convinced contestants to keep the more telegenic contestants. One could argue that the post-Joe Millionaire interviews where Joe says the producers made him choose the winner were responsible for the sequel's low ratings. But I can't think of an instance where a talent show format had claims of fraud. Although supposedly Brian Dunkleman was going to write a tell-all, explosive, behind-the-scenes book about American Idol.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:27 AM

A sign of the decline of reality shows? A New York Times article about how advertisers are dissatisfied with the upfront market, the period in spring when advertisers buy commercial time for fall shows includes this complaint:

And they suggested that the networks limit the replacement of scripted series with reality shows, which have less predictable and more potentially objectionable content.

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Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:32 PM

A woman gets Chris Rock's old cell number with hilarious consequences (Well, not that hilarious since she doesn't try to prank the celebrity callers). (Via Jeff Jarvis)

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:31 PM

The New York Times pulls a Fox News and threatens the author of this satirical page (story on Instapundit who notes that the Times sided with Al Franken in the Fox News suit).

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:07 PM

Lileks ponders the reason the Trix rabbit is not allowed to have any Trix. If one wanted to make this denial of cereal into a metaphor for racism or whatever "ism" one wants, one only needs to cite the commercial where the Trix rabbit nearly gets Trix by dressing up as Bugs Bunny; so famous rabbits were allowed to have Trix. Couple that commercial with the scene from Do the Right Thing where John Turturro sees no cognitive dissonance between his bigoted views and his love of Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson and Prince and you've got a doctoral thesis, my friend.

Lileks cites this site as the first time that the rabbit got to eat Trix. Actually I recollect elections where kids got to vote whether to allow the rabbit to eat Trix. The results for the first one in 1980 never had its results announced. My suspicion is that the rabbit won and that was too radical a departure for General Mills. He officially won the 1984 election but the fine print was that he only got one bowl of Trix which he preceded to gobble up. The kids refused to give him more for the standard reason.

Ruth Shalit wrote two fascinating articles in 2000 (this one and this one) about the lengths companies go to protect their corporate mascots and keep them in character.

Speaking of cereal mascots, I once followed a comic who had a bit about how the cereal mascots could be divided into three categories: those that wanted the cereal but can't get it, those that have the cereal and want to prevent others from getting it, and those trying to convince others to eat the cereal. He stated there were no neutral mascots. I countered with the Quaker Oats man.

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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:16 AM

Leave it to Hollywood to try to cash in on the popularity of The Passion of the Christ. They're re-releasing The Greastest Story Ever Told. The tagline for the poster says "Now with 47% More Anti-Semitism!!"

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Monday, March 08, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:55 PM

Tim Curry as the character of "Dale the Whale" in the season finale of Monk provides a plausible explanation for how the character became so obese; it's from chewing all that scenery.

I'm curious whether the "Monk is going to New York! Yaaaaayyy!" development is intended as a season-wide development or just for an episode or two. It wouldn't be such a terrible thing for an entire season (about 13 weeks): You have an anal-retentive character living in the dirtiest city in the world (at least, pre-Giuliani any way) and you have a city police force who doesn't know Monk and would be less tolerant of his quirks or his kibbitzing.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:45 PM

Story of how Dear Abby has to pull next Monday's column because of a fraudulent letter which resembles the plot of a Simpsons episode.

This hoax (since it got caught before it could be published) is not quite as good as when Snopes sent Ann Landers a letter claiming that the Pharmacist's Daughter legend happened to him.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:38 PM

There had been rumors about this in the comedy community but now the story has been reported mainstream: Celebrity judges of the Last Comic Standing II finals in Vegas stormed out in anger when they realized that they had absolutely no say as to who would be the final ten. ThisE Online story best summarizes the various articles that came out today.

Last year's show had a disclaimer that celebrity judges' decisions would not be the determining factor. Either the celebrity judges were better briefed on the matter or the disparity in talent between those chosen due to non-stand-up criteria and those not chosen is larger this year. The latter is actually believable; what's surprised me in looking into this is the number of B+ to A- list folk who tried out for this thing this year (Perhaps under the theory of "Given how much this show helped last year's contestants, imagine what would happen if a contestant had talent.").

Viewers of last year's show may remember Ant, the comic Carey mentions as someone who undeservedly made the top ten, as the guy Joe Rogan busted for having jokes that were at best hackneyed and were more likely stolen. The most hilarious part of Ant last year was his claim to only have been doing stand-up for a couple of years, a claim belied by his imdb listing.

A friend of mine, noting the Olympics-style tales of hardship and woe on the show, pointed out that these tales contradicted the comics' tendency to shave a few years off of how long they had been performing. "Either it's been a long, hard struggle or you've been comedy for two years; not both."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:04 PM

A belated Happy Blog-aversary to "Billionaire Bill" Sherman.

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