Forever In You, Jeannie

The New York Times is a hotbed of awesomeness this week. Where do they come up with this great stuff?

From a joint review of memoirs from Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Eden:

As much as television has changed in 50 years, you can trace “30 Rock” directly back through “Mary Tyler Moore” to “The Dick Van Dyke Show”: beneath its oh-so-nuanced emotional firewall and the sophisticated embrace-rejection tango with cynicism, there’s at least as much insulation from the harsher facts of show business and personal misery as when Van Dyke was trading writers’-room one-­liners with Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam. ... “I Dream of Jeannie” is certainly far more anachronistic, yet its infantilism is somehow invincible, imperturbable, timeless.

The joke of the Jeannies and Gilligans is on all of us who even as smart-aleck kids thought they were destined for the dustbin of television. Au contraire: Jeannie long ago transcended the mundane laws of time and space and taste, like Dalí or Bettie Page or Paul Lynde sitting catbird-like in the center square of eternity.

"Sophisticated embrace-rejection tango..." and that last bit throwing Jeannie in with Salvador Dalí, Bettie Page and Paul Lynde? Bless your cotton socks, Grey Lady.

Stars War

You know what's funny? This is.

Guess What I Wear As A Hat?

My favoritest thing of the week.

Subway Blogging! Spoiler Alert!

Someone on the L line has a sense of humor.

Why I Wish I Had $120K Sitting Around

I know somehow I could make millions off of this.

My Personal Venn Diagram Exploded: or, There Goes Another Stritchy Clone

On her new album Laurie Anderson just swiped a joke from Stritchy. (you can stream the album at NPR right here)
It reminds me of the time I saw Stritchy at the Cafe Carlyle, and in the middle of "Send in the Clowns" she sang "We should put some mountains over there. Otherwise what will the characters fall off of?" Or not.

Isn't it? Isn't it just like a performance artist?

iBetty

I mean, this is almost a week old, but it's been a while since we've seen Betty White. And now, shilling for Apple!

Workplace Obsolescence

NPR has this nice story on The Jobs Of Yesteryear, including interviews & such.

I guess it's only logical, but I hadn't thought that there were people at the bowling alleys who would run out and set up the pins.

Type-setting!
In the early 20th century, Lectors were hired to read to factory workers - here's one in 1909 in a cigar shop. Since these were union shops, it was mostly lefty trades that were read aloud. I wish they still had this job today, so Kevin could do it. I bet he'd do the Police in different voices.

Here's some soon-to-be obsolete jobs.




Oh well. Here's hoping we make it to 65 before the kids start downloading content for free right to their eyeballs.

Cavity Creeps! Watch out, Toothopolis!

Thanks, Gawker, for putting together this collection of 80s TV commercials. All my Nostalgia Buttons were tickled simultaneous, or whatever.

Remember My Buddy? Terrified me. IRONY


Teddy Ruxpin was pretty scary too, but that lil' kid was soooooo cute. Why was the narrator (pronounced nar-RAT-er) British?


For at least ten years, my dad woke me up with this line.


Ooh ooh! The Cavity Creeps? Does anyone else find this one a little phallic around the 17 second mark? Or am I just a big perv?


They've got more on the site, including that lady that fell down and couldn't get up and the Flintstones. Thanks, Internets.

iPad because iCarr

Oh David Carr, you poo-poo everything.

A Few Observations from David Carr
Update 1:58 p.m.

This update is from my colleague David Carr:

“Isn’t this awesome?” Jobs says. It is, but everything looks good on stage. Nothing ages faster than the future when you get it in your hands.

UPDATE:
Oh, and someone made this.

Maybe there aren't any ladies at Apple?

History Repeating

I will miss you, magazines.

Some buddy put together this little video of magazine covers from the past decade.



I'm surprised by how many I had a personal memory about, whether it was simply getting it in the mail or a particular story I read or, in some cases, catchphrases I picked up. Google is making us stooped.

I kinda feel bad for all the babies out there who will just read these in zeroes and ones. From where will they cut out their pictures of Candice Bergen and River Phoenix to hang on their bedroom walls?

Just When You Thought This Meme Was Over

Amber & I were LIVE-SQUIRRELIZED!

Because The Knight

I mean, why would someone go to the trouble of creating one's own, bizarro version of the Knight Rider Intro? Well, why not, I guess is the answer.



I don't understand the technology.

Amazing. GRACE.

So I've seen some pretty great concerts in my thirty plus years. The highlights are all the times I saw Blossom Dearie, when Sarah and I saw Dolly Parton at Irving Plaza in Summer 2002, the Blind Boys of Alabama that same year, and the half-dozen times I've seen my chum Carolyn Mark.

Lemme tell you, last night's Grace Jones show at Hammerstein Ballroom is up there, and worth all nine thousand pennies or whatever I paid. I've seen all those lazy-a$$ new kids out there who have their dirty hair and just slouch over their guitars and play their records without even looking up. Not our gal.

Not all the pictures I took were so exciting, but I did a web-trawl this morning over coffee and found some goodies. I think we now have all seven or eight costume changes documented.

For starters, she did the opening song completely under a silk cloak.

Then she popped out wearing what was a cross between her Andy Warhol graffiti outfit of yore, a skeleton suit, and My Little Pony...


A few songs later she put on this glitter outfit for a few numbers - which threw off some pretty fun sparkles when the strobes hit it.

Then what else would you wear for La Vie En Rose, but this fun one? Eat your coeur out, Edith Piaf.

And really, what else would you wear for "My Jamaican Guy," but a Jamaican Flag Costume? I think this was right after she called out her friend "Miss M," aka Bette Midler, who was in the audience. I looked around but she wasn't up at stage right in front of the speaker with me.

"Corporate Cannibals?" This of course:

I was excited to see Grace show her pun side when she danced with a mannequin of herself for "I've Seen That Face Before."

My personal favorite was this costume for "Hurricane" - she sang it while walking into a wind machine with this satin parachute trailing behind.

There were a few more songs and costume changes, then it was time for the encore.

You know when Grace busts out the symbols and the confetti you're dancing to "Pull Up to the Bumper" and "Slave To The Rhythm."

My ears are still ringing, but they do that anyway. And it was worth it.

iSuccumbed

Literal Eclipse of the Heart

I really would be all unpacked by now if I wasn't watching this over, and over, and over...

LOLKATE, or, Suspended in Gif-a

I'm not sure what I could say to add to this awesomeness, which I found through my friend Brian.

This website here is the greatest example of American ingenuity I have seen since the invention of San Loco tacos.


How does one do this? I have no idea, but it involves a .gif file and some Awesomeness.

I mean, who doesn't love Kate Bush videos? But what busy executive has time to watch them all day long?


I haven't been this excited since I found my first Kate Bush fanzine at Tower Records in high school.

This is perhaps more mesmerizing than that sand or those squares.

Ah, moments of pleasure.

Couples, Crimes, & Acoustic Strips

Now, I sure like Vanity Fair, and I don't mean the big boring book. I always used to buy it at the airport before a long flight, and this year my parents got me a subscription for Christmas. Jolly good.

One thing I like is the articles, and one article I recently liked was James Wolcott's "Little Big Screen" article on TV Programs. I liked lots about it, but mostly I liked how many nice things he had to say about Bones.
Series such as ... Bones ... lay down an acoustic strip under the alphabet-soup techno-jargon that correlates to a mental hum, as if the shows were thinking along with us (whereas so many movies are thinking for us, bringing the word down from on high).

How great is that? Laying down an acoustic strip under the alphabet-soup techno-jargon. I think I almost understand what he's saying. I think it means that even though they talk about bones and other boring things, it's fun to watch them chat.

Later he said:

The intimacy of television offers an ideal frame for the sort of teamwork at which Hollywood once excelled, from Nick and Nora in the Thin Man series to Rock and Doris to Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Them days are gone. The rapport and banter have migrated to television, whose matched sets include ... David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel on Bones (the dynamic between Boreanaz’s James Garner aplomb and exasperation and Deschanel’s Gene Tierney–ish fine-etched beauty makes for the most interesting evolving relationship on TV)...

Now, that's a lot of text, but I sure do agree. In fact, except for Asta, they're really all one and the same.


God Bless, Bones. And Asta.