Geoffrey H Wood

I never think about watching Jimmy Kimmel's late night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on ABC. I rarely watch late night tv, at all, and I've been in the Letterman camp since back in high school when I read The Late Shift. Conan is funny, too, but I never watched either oh his shows in regularity. 

However, I caught a preview for this which cracked me up:

Combining that with his appearance on Leno and the whole Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon (& Jimmy/Ben Affleck) thing a few years ago, I probably need to tune in more often.

By the way, he sure has great talent booking to get all those Hollywood-folk together for his skits.

We've been in Des Moines for more than six months now and we love it for a ton of reasons. Not least among them is getting to see most of my siblings (Sean lives in Arkansas, so we don't see him) regularly and enjoying inside jokes. One of which took place just last week and was documented on the interwebs.

Since I'm sure you're wondering what it is - I'll let you in. Check out this clip from Saturday Night Live a few months ago. 

We enjoyed it so we shared it at dinner one night. Several weeks later, my wife bought a vegan cookie at the coffee shop up the street...

...and informed the world on Facebook. We promptly jumped in...

 ...which made me laugh.

By the way, the last line is from a previous SNL sketch, a commercial for Jack Johnson's line of "shoes that look like feet" known as JJ Casuals.

We're only a few weeks in 2010 but it seems like alumni of SyFy's now defunct Battlestar Galatica series are all over Fox programming this year. In both regular and guest roles so far I've noticed the following (apparently they cast in pairs):

24 (series regulars)

• Katee Sackhoff, formerly Starbuck, is now Dana Walsh
• Callum Keith Rennie, formerly the Cylon Leoben, is now Vladimir Laitanan

 Human Target (guest roles)

• Alessandro Juilani, formerly Lt. Gaeta, is now some bit character.
• Tricia Helfer, formerly the Cylon Number Six in all her incarnations, is also some bit character. 

On the subject of Human Target, which I first noticed boasted two David E. Kelley "Boston..." alumni in Boston Legal's Mark Valley and Boston Public's Chi McBride, I've watched two episodes and I think that I'm over it. Critic Tim Goodman, who I pay attention to, seems to like it so it's possible I'll come back to it at some point in the future if he presents a compelling enough argument.

CBS's hit comedy "How I Met Your Mother" has long been a favorite of mine but they stepped it up a bit last night in the episode "Last Cigarette Ever" by making a little local connection.

In a storyline about morning show newsanchor Robin's new coworker they mentioned that he is a "veteran of no fewer than 38 local morning shows" and showed shots of their sets in Seattle, Beaverton, and my hometown of Cedar Rapids.

I'm not sure how many people noticed this but I'm sure anyone else from Iowa, like myself, gave a chuckle. It was only on screen for a few seconds but since I had it on DVR, I immediately backed it up and looked at the image behind the anchor desk and noticed that it looked more like Des Moines than Cedar Rapids.

Consulting some quick images on Flickr (see below) it looks like it's definitely Des Moines with the signature 801 Grand missing from the center of the image. The tall buildings on the "Get Up Cedar Rapids" set appear to be (L to R) EMC Insurance, the Financial Center on Walnut, the Ruan Center, and The Plaza. Feel free to read up on them here: Des Moines' Tallest Buildings. Several of the residential loft buildings are also in the image.

Image from bburnett71 on Flickr.com

One on hand, it's cool that the HIMYM production staff went so far as pull a local skyline image for use on the show. On the other hand, it's interesting that they felt Des Moines worked better than Cedar Rapids (which, as you can see below, does have it's own skyline).

Image from Okie Bill on Flickr.com

Other than that ridiculous Sarah Palin rap(1) during last year's election season, former Vice President Al Gore provides the best sketches of any politician I've ever seen on Saturday Night Live. He had some good ones during his presidential campaign and actually hosted back in 2002 but last night's was the best, yet.

Now that he's left elected office in order to lobby for the environment, he was brought in by the SNL staff to fulfill their "Green Week" network requirements. He joined Seth Meyers at the Weekend Update desk to discuss his plans to "out crazy the crazy" in order to get more traction for his cause. The entire sketch is good but my favorite part is the beginning dialog where Gore and Meyers discuss President Obama:

Al Gore: “…[Obama] was elected with an overwhelming mandate. I mean, he won the popular vote, Seth, and we all know that’s the one that counts.”

Seth Meyers: “He won the other vote, too”

Al Gore; “If you say so, I don’t really pay attention to that. I’m a popular vote guy.”

Good stuff.

(1)If the decision to participate in this is discussed in Palin's new book, it may actually be worth reading.

Over the past few days I’ve been watching one of shortest and least highly regarded science fiction series of all time: Galactica 1980.

I think it’s technically a spinoff, but really it’s just the continuation of the original Battlestar Galactica (1) series that ran for one season from 1978-1979. The overall plot for that show is an alien/robot race destroys the twelve planets of man (colonies) and forces them to seek refuge in space as part of a “ragtag fleet” of ships in search of the mythical thirteenth colony (Earth).

The original series was canned at the end of the first season but resurfaced a year later as Galatica 1980, a series based on the fleet finding Earth and comingling with our local population, which was supposed to be cheaper to produce (not having to create sets for spaceships and alien worlds and whatnot).

Anyway, the show was critically panned, shunned by most Battlestar Galatica fans and shut down after only ten episodes.

I’ve been a science fiction fan my whole life and remember watching old VHS tapes of Battlestar Galatica that we had around the house when I was growing up. I loved that series and was always bothered that I never had the chance to see what would happen when they reached Earth. Not having access to IMDb.com(2) at the time (this is 10 years or so after the series aired), I didn’t know anything about Galatica 1980. Now that it has made its way to DVD and therefore Netflix, a mere 29 years later I was able to check it out.

These are my thoughts:

• The three show introduction the tellsthe story of how the Galatica crew contacted Earth and sets up the antagonist was actually pretty good – other than the fact that it involves time travel (the plot device that I hate the most - even in Lost).(3)
• They go back in time to Nazi Germany (weird) in the middle of this story arc. Nazi Germany must have been an interesting time period for series creator Glen Larson since several episodes of the original series dealt with a group of people called “The Eastern Alliance” who were basically other-worldly Nazis.
• The show is set 30 years following the original series, yet, there is no consistency in which characters from the previous show are in this one and which ones are not. Also, other than Starbuck(4), none of these departures are explained which is annoying.
• The protagonist duo ride flying motorcycles in every episode but one. Interestingly, they do observe modern day helmet laws.
• In a mere ten episodes, they actually take on some heady themes(5) such as the aforementioned Nazism, clean nuclear power and the objections to it, environmentalism, family farming, and racism.
• For some reason a gaggle of space kids are involved in almost every episode and they somehow fool the silly Earth people by dressing as Boy Scouts and Little Leaguers. They exhibit super powers, because the Earth’s gravity is less dense than gravity aboard the ships they grew up on. They use this to increase productivity on the farm, hide from the Air Force, and win baseball games.
• The bad robot guys, the Cylons, actually show up in human form in one episode. This is a major part of the reimaged series and I thought they came up with it. Apparently there is value in Galatica 1980 after all.
• Much like the original series, this series’ finally doesn’t wrap anything up (this one doesn’t even involve any of the main show’s characters). This should be required for any show – even if it never airs and it only available online.
• If it’s possible for a ten episode series to “jump the shark” is happens in the episode where they Cyclons go to a Halloween party (see the images below).
• The special effects are at times campy and fun (70’s SciFi kitsch, for sure) and at other times completely horrendous (again, see images below)
• Great group of guest stars in this series, to name a few: Robert Reed (Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch), William Daniels (the voice of KITT from Knight Rider, also Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World), and Dennis Haysbert (President Palmer from 24, Pedro Cerrano from Major League, the All-State Insurance guy, the main guy on The Unit, and many others).

 Who invited the Cylons to the party? Centurions take up the entire back seat of late 70's-era sedans

The Galatica meets a UFO #technologyfail

(1)You’ve probably heard of it from the reimagining of the series that ran on the SciFi channel from 2004-2009 and was pretty awesome. (2)I was not as skilled with the IBM PS2 as Matthew Broderick. (3)Apparently, these shows actually did really well in the Nielsen ratings – the 4th episode and those that followed, not so much.(4) Famous Phi: Dirk Benedict (5)Interweb sources tell me this was broadcast in what the network called an "educational hour" and content had to reflect that.

Chuck Klosterman

It just so happens that a few hours after writing the post yesterday about how I don’t find Larry David to be funny that I read an essay by Chuck Klosterman(1)that mentions David’s comedy in his new book Eating the Dinosaur.

This particular essay, entitled “Ha ha,” he said. “Ha ha.”, is about laugh tracks, the structure of sitcom television, and the human response to comedy.

You could say he’s not a fan of laugh tracks:

“I can’t think of anything philosophically stupider than laugh tracks”

Among other things, Klosterman opines that by omitting laugh tracks, which are used to cue the viewing audience on when a scene is funny, in “sophisticated” comedies, they are guilty of virtually the same ploy. The lack of laugh track is used to cue the audience that their show is “smarter, hipper, and less predictable than traditional versions of the genre”.

To (continue to) quote Chuck:

“Virtually every high end, “sophisticated” comedy of the early twenty-first century – Arrested Development, The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons, 30 Rock – is immune to canned laughter, and it’s difficult to imagine any of those shows supplemented with mechanical, antiseptic chuckling”.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is, of course, the show that I gave up on, yesterday, because I didn’t find it funny. I wanted to like it since it’s critically acclaimed and, as signaled by its lack of laugh track, supposedly “smarter, hipper, and less predictable” than other comedies.

But it IS predictable and that’s what drew my ire to begin with, to quote me:

“Unfortunately, what I found was that almost every episode features virtually the exact same plot:

1. Larry does something stupid
2. Larry tries to get out of it
3. Larry argues with his wife and/or friend
4. Larry seemingly diffuses the situation through lies and/or jokes
5. Larry's stupid move from item #1 comes back to get him.”

Oh well. I know that lots of people love the show (such as my friend Matt who commented on my earlier post in Facebook “Sorry man, you are crazy. Curb is an awesome show. David is a genius.”) and that I’m in the minority. I’ll use that as a cue to move on to other topics. 

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(1)I’ve been a fan of Chuck Klosterman for a few years and will write more about Eating the Dinosaur when I finish it later this week. I refer to Klosterman as a pop culture columnist, though he seems to be the type of guy who would object to any label. The insider cover jacket blurb calls the book “amateur anthropology for the present tense” and I like that description. He’s also my inspiration for using footnotes while blogging.