by Brett Warner
Throughout the course of human history, men and women have done a lot of crazy things for love. Orlando Bloom caused the Trojan War, Cleopatra and Latin music sensation Marc Anthony both committed suicide, and I’ve sat through at least three episodes of my girlfriend’s favorite reality show, Jersey Shore.
The ongoing misadventures of carrot people Snooki, Pauly D, JWoww, The Situation, Vinny, Ronnie, and Sammi (my spell check just lost its friggin’ mind typing all of that) broke MTV records to become the highest viewed program in the cable network’s decreasingly illustrious history with 8.45 million viewers. Still, watching these unfathomably successful people preoccupy themselves with fighting, fucking, hot-tubbing, and other asinine, “who gives a shit?” circumstances that reality television twists into a botched, Frankenstein version of what the Greeks used to call drama always seems to engage that part of the brain that’ll start flashing sirens when you smoke a cigarette, huff a tube of industrial glue, or take a nap with your head inside the oven – I know this is really bad for me, but I’m going to do it anyway.
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by A.J. Focht
As the New Year begins, a lot of people are looking for ways to cut their spending. If you’re one of these people, you might want to start by scrapping your cable bill. Having any kind of network programming bill (cable, satellite, etc.) is becoming unnecessary. Even in those awesome ‘bundle’ packs you are paying significantly more than you have to, since most of the content included by the cable and satellite companies is now being offered by internet streaming services.
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by Edward Kelly
My friends and I used to hang around in parking lots quite a bit. Loitering was something of a past time, but not because we were latchkey kids or looking for someone to buy us beer. We just always ended up in parking lots. Didn’t matter how cold it was or how many cars were there, we’d be seen standing around talking about whatever for a couple hours. As we grew up we traded parking lots for apartments, bars, and diners.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise when one night a few months ago I, now way beyond appropriate parking-lot-loitering age, and my friend, who also put his parking-lot years behind him, ended up in a parking lot, doing the same thing we did as teenagers: arguing about entirely insignificant stuff. Or in other words, shooting the shit about Star Wars. See, I had had the audacity to suggest the unthinkable – that with the right creative team and a few tweaks, the original trilogy of Star Wars could and should be remade. This, in nerd terms, is the equivalent of videotaping yourself having sex with your best friends’ mother.
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by Nicole Powers
“I think I won a wet T-shirt contest in college.”
– Kristen Schaal
Kristen Schaal has much to hide: She’s somewhat pathological when it comes to winning things, has a wet T-shirt attired skeleton rattling around in her closet, and has a proclivity for the sexy bits in Harlequin romance novels. But as The Daily Show’s Senior Women’s Issues Commentator, she was loud and proud in her support of Hillary Clinton for president. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well (though the Secretary of State gig is not such a bad consolation prize).
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By Edward Kelly
Hank and Britt made their promises. For Hank, it was an understanding with his ex-wife that he would move on. He tore down the evidence he had against Ocean Beach’s movers and shakers and put up a new target: the head honcho behind it all. Britt, meanwhile, promised to be a father to his ex-fiancée’s baby, no matter if the kid is biologically his or not. He asked her to wait until he gets out of prison and watch his dog in the meantime. She agrees.
With their personal lives wrapped up, Britt climbs into the beat up truck and Hank drives him to prison. The two, in typical Terriers fashion, joke about not wanting to be late for Britt’s “first day.” As they reach a crossroads, Hank offers a proposition: what if they hang a left, hit the freeway, motor down to Mexico and spend the rest of their days on the lam. All those promises they just made to their respective women and the community at large? Forget ’em. Mexico or prison. Those are the options. And then: end credits.
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by Nicole Powers
“It’s the old ‘penis-and-two-balls’ trick.”
– John Oliver
A lot of wonderful things happened in 1977: punk exploded, Apple was incorporated, Star Wars was released, transatlantic supersonic flights hit commuter airline schedules, smallpox was officially considered to be eradicated –– and John Oliver was born. 2006 wasn’t such a good vintage however, one of the few redeeming features being that it was the year the thinking woman’s bit of crumpet from The Daily Show first joined Jon Stewart’s band of merry not-news men as their Senior British Correspondent, making something that was already truly awesome even more so.
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by Andrea Larrabee
“I’m old fashioned and modern at the same time,” Rachel Federoff tells me at one point during our phone interview. As a key player in the hit Bravo TV show Millionaire Matchmaker – which is now in its fourth and most successful season to date – Federoff must reconcile her intrinsically alternative self with the always outspoken and often very traditional beliefs of her mentor Patti Stanger, who founded the Millionaire’s Club, the elite matchmaking service upon which the show is based.
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