The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦
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- Ach! I forgot to highlight the latest Kaspar Hauser comedy podcast, wherein Captain Kirk takes some bad acid… (Thingamabob)
- Go, partake of some very funny QI… (Thingamabob)
- Private Snafu on the home front… (Thingamabob)
- Behold the future, and weep… (Thingamabob)
- The entirety of Friends, in 90 seconds… (Thingamabob)
Have a THINGAMABOB? Send it in!
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Not wanting to be out-done by his peers, Snoop Dogg was 
While the seventh season of Seinfeld (Sony, Not Rated, DVD-$49.95 SRP) marked the departure of Larry David, it was also an incredibly jam-packed outing, loaded with the episodes the shine even within the already-stunning firmament of the show – episodes like “The Soup Nazi,” “The Rye,” “The Maestro,” “The Sponge,” and the darkest way to end a marriage storyline, “The Invitations.” After David’s departure, the show lost a bit of its more gothic touches, to be sure, but not until the final season would there be anything even approaching a clunker. As with previous sets, Volume 6 (remember, the first volume featured seasons 1 & 2) is loaded with bonus features – including commentaries, deleted scenes, bloopers, TV spots, exclusive Stand-Up footage, and cast & crew interviews. In addition, there’s a spotlight on Elaine Benes and Julie Louis-Dreyfus, reflections on Larry David’s final season, and more “Sein-Imations” (classic scenes reinterpreted through animation).
I love Boston Legal (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP). I think David E. Kelley has finally found a way to meld the sensibility of his past shows – like Picket Fences, The Practice, and Ally McBeal – without falling into the sometimes overbearing, overblown, schizophrenic pitfalls of the previous series. Oh, and it’s got William Shatner, James Spader, Rene Auberjunois, and Candice Bergen. The 7-disc complete second season set features all 27 episodes, plus a pair of behind-the-scenes featurettes.
Its release was delayed due to MGM’s transfer of its home video distribution from Sony to Fox, but the long-awaited special edition of A Fish Called Wanda (MGM/UA, Rated R, DVD-$26.98 SRP) is finally hitting stores, packed with 2-discs of bonus materials in addition to newly-remastered picture and sound. Those bonus materials include an audio commentary with John Cleese, deleted/alternate scenes, a retrospective documentary, a message from John Cleese, and more.
While not the films that many remember as his classics, the 7-film Paul Newman Collection (Warner Bros., Not Rated/Rated PG, DVD-$59.98 SRP) is a must-have set for the bonus features alone. In addition to the films themselves – Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Left Handed Gun, The Young Philadelphians, Harper, Pocket Money, The Mackintosh Man, & The Drowning Pool – the set features commentaries (from Newman, the late Robert Wise, Martin Scorsese, Robert Loggia, Richard Schickel, William Goldman, Arthur Penn, and Vincent Sherman), vintage featurettes, and trailers. Can you guess what set I’ll be digging my way through over the holidays?
Try as I might, I can’t understand what people love about How I Met Your Mother (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP). I’ve watched every episode, and I love the actors involved, but the writing seems flat and clichéd – I honestly wish it was better, because I want to like it. Is this what it was like for all those people who didn’t “get” Friends, or am I living some kind of sitcom version of They Live, where only I can see the non-funny? The 3-disc set features all 22 first season episodes, plus audio commentaries on select episodes, a blooper reel, and a “Video Yearbook” featurette.
You’d think it wouldn’t have taken so long for one of the highest grossing comedies of all time to get a decent special edition, but it’s taken forever to get one for John Hughes & Chris Columbus’s timeless holiday tale of unintentional child abandonment, Home Alone (Fox, Rated PG, DVD-$19.98 SRP). The new edition features a gag reel, over a half-dozen featurettes, deleted scenes, and – best of all – an audio commentary with Columbus and Macaulay Culkin.
With the 3-disc set collecting season 6 & 7, the end of the original run of Columbo (Universal, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP) on DVD comes to a conclusion with the final 8 tele-movies starring Peter Falk as the memorably rumpled detective famous for his case-solving refrain of “Oh, there’s just one more thing…”.
The fifth and final season of Alias (Buena Vista, Not Rated, DVD-$39.99 SRP) was a bit of a jumbled affair, with the increasingly onerous Rambaldi mythology sort of reaching some kind of resolution, but I wouldn’t exactly call the last adventures of Sydney Bristow a high water mark in the show’s history. Much like The X-Files before it, they were never able to sustain the passion, energy, and mystery that had propelled better times. The 4-disc set features behind-the-scenes featurettes and a blooper reel.
My little nephew has recently been getting into Blue’s Clues, so I sat him down with the new volume of Blue’s Room – Meet Blue’s Baby Brother (Nickelodeon, Not Rated, DVD-$16.99 SRP). As the title suggests, this introduces Blue’s new baby brother… and my nephew approves.
Alright, let’s hope all of you out there helped to continue America’s reputation as the fattest country in the free world, which, ironically, isn’t but that’s neither here nor there. What IS here, though, is a shortened column this week as I am well aware that the numbers of you who are presently reading this equate to nearly zero, the only people genuinely looking at these letters I’m writing right now is the result of what happens when you have a boss who thinks the day after Thanksgiving is a great time to catch up on all that work you neglected from Monday to Wednesday of this week. Believe me when I say I’ve been there. It’s crap for those who have to work today, it’s enough for you to think that yes you need to look for a new job where you get these one-offs every now and then, and instead of just hanging my keyboard up for the week I want to continue what I’ve been doing for you shackled people of the world for the past two years: giving you new content.
I am taking my mother, father and wife to see BORAT.
Besides this situation reflecting why Dave Chapelle is not the great emancipator of comedy like he truly could have been, and why he’s a whiny little girl, this shows why getting together three different people of varied backgrounds was such a neat idea. The questions bounded everywhere in my mind: “What would they find funny?” “Would they feel comfortable laughing at material that is beyond anything their sensibilities have ever been socked with before” “Would they really be offended by the movie’s main thrust?” or “Would they simply write everything off in this film as just sophomoric, and dismiss any grand notions about what this film says about America as simple overreaching on my part?”
Jack. Jack, oh Jack. Dad would’ve peeled his face for the duration, I would posit, if I would’ve also taken him to the above films. He probably would’ve liked the wire-fu of CROUCHING TIGER but, he no doubt, would’ve bitched like a school girl that he had to read the screen. Yes, dad, they’re subtitles; there are some places in the world that don’t speak “American.” He is a guy, however, that any college dude with a predilection for explosions and the desire for there to be nary a trace of any noticable amount of character development could relate with. He loves STRIPES, ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS. He was a fan in recent years of OLD SCHOOL, WEDDING CRASHERS and even the recent release of OVER THE HEDGE had the man in stiches; the man travels every week by plane so many of his cinematic adventures of late have been sanitized for his protection by the airlines. He has zero desire to see anything daring, in my opinion, and would’ve done well in Roman times when it was all about the bread and circuses and not much else. You all know a man like this, especially one like my father who enjoys absorbing himself in DIE HARD and showing-off his pimp surround system to his other WASP-y friends with the first five minutes to TOP GUN. Someday I hope he understands there has been great strides since TOP GUN was remastered and that the lobby scene from THE MATRIX, the club scene from BLADE or even the opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would allow the paternoster of the family to show how good his built-in system (I mean, the guy had the speakers installed INTO the walls and ceiling) really is.
This is what I was dealing with as the lights went down and I hoped at least someone would see what I did; just one would’ve made this experiment worth while.
Dad: “The rodeo. I thought he was going to get killed or beaten up when he started singing his national anthem.”
[Kids, you know you’ve arrived at a certain plateau in your life when you’re able to share in the frivolity of a good breast milk joke with your mother.]
Many people could have directed Deja Vu, the new sci fi romance action thriller with Denzel Washington as an ATF agent who time travels in order to squash a terrorist attack. It’s the sort of idea that would appeal to numerous directors. For example, if Terry Gilliam had directed the film, it would end tragically, with time ineluctable and resistant to revision (as in his film 12 Monkeys), the lovers dying and the explosion going off as planned. If Brian De Palma had directed it, Deja Vu would have devolved into Denzel Washington learning that his best friend had sold out and helped the terrorists, and evil would once again triumph. If Michael Mann had helmed the film, the focus would be on the wear and tear on the team of agents, their exhaustion and the lack of appreciation for their labors. If Tony Scott had directed it, the film would be a non-stop tapestry of visual effects, MTV editing, and even text and other advertising techniques across the screen.
Success and innovation come to those who have a general interest in helping others. Music supervisor Thomas Golubic is an example of this. His own creative innovation has brought about a new sound in cinema and music that hasn’t been heard before. He started a monthly scene in Hollywood, CA called Synchronize Live where he re-scores classic films, putting new songs and mixes in them. A few of the films he’s re-scored are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Requiem for a Dream, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Golubic got his start in the business as a DJ on Los Angeles station KCRW, after having a not so successful internet magazine. “I volunteered at the station because I wanted to help them avoid the mistakes I made from having an internet magazine,” he stated. Being heard on the air eventually landed him the opportunity to be a music supervisor. Some of the projects he’s done music supervision for are the TV show Las Vegas, and the HBO series Six Feet Under.
I can just imagine the pitch meeting.
[CONTENT WARNING] This podcast contains foul language and stale bread crusts.
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Frustrated software designers, angry DJs, glue-addled loop kids: now is your chance to shine. This is the “Code Monkey” remix contest, in which you are all invited to use the source tracks from 
