The Office: “Secret Santa” There’s something about holiday episodes that always puts the writing staff of nearly any show on their A game. I don’t regularly watch The Simpsons anymore, but I do make it a point to catch their Halloween episodes (and, damn it, “Treehouse of Horror III” and “IV” are shamefully neglected...
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There’ve been a few times in my life when trailers have utterly deceived me. Not into thinking that a bad movie would be good, no, that would be too easy; I’m talking about leaving me befuddled as to even the most base parts of its premise. In 1996, for example, after watching an ad...
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CNN.com recently challenged readers to submit videos describing their year in 30 seconds. This has absolutely nothing to do with this article, but I hate doing lead-ins. Also, the picture accompanying CNN’s headline looked to have some seriously busty girls in it. Correcting someone else’s grammar is one of those faux pas that everybody...
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The Office: “Scott’s Tots” Well, I wanted to see Michael squirm, and here you have it. In his never-ending quest for approval Michael’s promised a lot things to a lot of people, but none so generous nor undeliverable than offering to pay the college tuition of an entire third grade class—the titular “Scott’s Tots.”...
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You kids today don’t appreciate offensive high school stereotypes. Back in my day we had a whole culture based around stereotypes. You’d be assigned your clique and no Presidential pardon nor Papal decree could get you out of it. The table you sat at at lunch was predetermined, and even though no one actually...
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Curb Your Enthusiasm: “Seinfeld” Last episode of Season 7 gives us even more Seinfeld than last week’s “Table Read”; in fact, almost an entire episode plays out while behind the scenes Larry deals with evening the favors owed to studio coffee-jockey Mocha Joe; gets jealous over Jason Alexander’s coaching lessons with Cheryl, and tries...
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Why do people get so passionate over the sports? Given last week’s cascade of fiery Facebook-status-update insults disparaging Ohio State (Chuck’s were easily the best: “GO BLUE!! BUCK THE FUCKEYES!!!!!!”; “GREEN doesn’t even matter……EVER!!!!!!”; and my personal favorite: “Only in that piece of $hit state known as Ohio could a poisonous nut be a good...
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The Office: “Shareholders Meeting” I may be in the minority, but I’m not a big fan of Cringe. Now Cringe humor I enjoy, but Cringe humor makes a joke out of an awkward situation whereas straight Cringe just makes you uncomfortable or, even worse, bored. And more often than not, The Office goes for...
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Note–this is a review of the straight-to-DVD movie that came out on Tuesday, November 17. It’s Christmas in Philly, and to the Paddy’s Pub gang, that means it’s time to break out the holiday traditions, which is to say, relive the traumas of Christmases past and revisit some others that only become traumatic in...
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Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Table Read” I notice the run time on this episode is a slightly longer 30-some minutes instead of the usual 25-plus. Delightfully, I can’t think of any one of those 60 seconds that’s squandered in the season’s best episode so far. I got a little annoyed last week with the...
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