Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Parks and Recreation’ Category

TV Fall 2011

Posted in 2 Broke Girls, Allen Gregory, American Horror Story, Archer, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck, Community, Flight of the Conchords, Free Agents, Gilmore Girls, Glee, Grimm, Hart of Dixie, How I Met Your Mother, How To Be a Gentleman, Kal Penn, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, Mr Show, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Pan Am, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, Suburgatory, Terra Nova, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, The Simpsons, The Walking Dead, Tosh.0, TV 2011, Up All Night, Work of Art on November 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

I was planning to write this post early in the TV Season.  I found out that the TiVo website rather helpfully includes a page of all the premiere dates of shows, which in addition to telling us when shows started, has also turned out to be a good way to keep track of the shows that were cancelled already.  Our goal is basically to get every good show cancelled so that we can watch our poor Netflix DVDs (which now that we had to change our policy we have mercifully fewer discs that we are not watching).  Um, thanks for the hike Netflix?

Anyhow, it’s now  about seven weeks into the season and we’ve already lost a number of shows–some as quickly as two weeks in…which, really?  I mean why bother.  Surprisingly, none of the FOX shows were cancelled yet.  That’s probably because FOX didn’t pick anything cool or interesting enough for me to want to watch–that’s actually not true, they have some good new shows this season, but nothing like Arrested Development.

So, this time I’m breaking it down by day of the week (which is silly since we TiVo everything and watch it whenever).  And this time red shows are shows we have given up on and Green ones are ones that we’re still enjoying. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The Decemberists–“Calamity Song” (video) (2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Colin Meloy, David Foster Wallace, End of the World, Eschaton, Infinite Summer, Newspapers, Parks and Recreation, Short Films, Tennis, The Decemberists, The New York Times on August 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

[WATCHED: August 22, 2011] “The Calamity Song”

I woke yesterday to the news that one of my favorite bands had made a music video which was a tribute to one of my favorite books, Infinite Jest. Colin Meloy was a reader during the Infinite Summer project (one of the more high profile readers, although he didn’t really contribute beyond the first week).  When I saw him at BEA, I asked him if he finished the book and he said that indeed he had. Weill according to this story from The New York Times, Colin liked the book so much that he wanted to use one of the great scenes from the book as the basis of a music video.  And since The Calamity Song has the line “In the Year of the Chewable Ambien Tab” which is an allusion to Infinite Jest‘s Subsidized Time, well why not use that as the song.

The video was directed by Michael Schur (a huge Infinite Jest fan) who is a major figure behind Parks and Recreation. The video is a bare-bones retelling of the Eschaton sequence from the novel. For those who have not gotten to that scene yet, Eschaton is a game of global annihilation played on a tennis court. There are strategic places you are supposed to hit from across the court (so it’s a physical game, not just an academic one) with your 5 megaton tennis balls.   The scene is challenging to read because there’s so much going on, but the video does a very good job of giving you the essence.

Sure, diehards will have lots to quibble about (it’s raining, not snowing; Ann Kittenplan (the girl who gets hit with the ball) is totally hot–not so much in the book; and the scene doesn’t end with someone’s head crashing through a computer monitor).  Most of the quibbles are addressed in the Times article but some are easily answered anyhow–it was filmed in two days, it’s a flat screen monitor (you can’t put your head through that), and why not have a hot Ann Kittenplan, it’s a music video, right?   (more…)

Read Full Post »

TV 2011; the season of cancellations!

Posted in 30 Rock, Andrea Anders, Archer, Arrested Development, Better Off Ted, Better with You, Breaking In, Community, Glee, How I Met Your Mother, Lie to Me, Life Unexpected, Mad Love, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, Mr Sunshine, Outsourced, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Running Wilde, Seinfeld, That 70's Show, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, The Simpsons, Tosh.0, Traffic Light, TV 2011, Wipeout on May 20, 2011| 3 Comments »

I usually try to do a TV post once a season, just to remind myself of what I watched.  For some reason I didn’t write one in the beginning of the year, so I’m catching up now with season enders and mid-season replacements.  And yes I am pointedly writing this just after finding out that several shows (four of them brand new) that I enjoyed quite a bit were cancelled for good.

So I’ll start with the shows that we watched (or tried to watch) that have been cancelled. (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts