First of all, let's get the cheap pleasantries out of the way: happy Thanksgiving, safe times, family, friends, blah blah blah. I don't have a problem with hearing people give thanks, but I feel like it's disingenuous for a person to wax rhapsodic about the various things and people they are thankful this one day of the year. In the same way that some people use Valentine's Day as an excuse to be really, extra-special sweet to his or her significant other, this just seems like an excuse to congratulate yourself on being awful nice for this one day. Having said that, Thanksgiving equals turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. For that, I am forever thankful.
Over the last few days, I read Bill Carter's latest entry in the seemingly endless late-night talk-show saga, The War For Late Night. As you may have guessed--if only by the fact that, yes, I am under the age of 50--I'm always going to be on Team Coco, but for the most part, I'd say Carter does a fair and evenhanded job of portraying all the main players, and even a few supporting members of the book's cast. Not much about Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, and others will shock you; Leno is a joke machine, Conan has bouts of depression, Letterman is self-loathing, etc. What frustrated me--aside from Carter's decision to get into the more public information in the final 100 pages, as opposed to spreading it out--is Dick Ebersol. Based on what I've read about him in other books, Carter's either one of a cadre of journalists who have created this weird image of him, or he's just an arrogant jerk.
Ebersol credits himself, more than others, if memory serves, as one of the guiding lights of Saturday Night Live. Certainly, Ebersol was involved, but I think he decided, after also being the show's executive producers for 4 years while Lorne Michaels was off the show, that he was as much a comedy guru as Michaels is or was. Ebersol, in the book and in public, thinks ill of Conan O'Brien for his conduct during the whole debacle in 2009 and 2010. Why, where does he get off thinking that Conan has the 11:35 show? It's not like he was promised it in writing, and Jay Leno said he would quit. Yeah, there's logical justification (at least none provided by Ebersol) for this kind of narrowminded behavior, which is what rankles me. Ebersol knew nothing of comedy; while the decisions are strictly business, I'm still baffled by how surprised the NBC executives were when Conan wasn't just going to go along with their plan. Final point: Conan was kicked out of the 11:35 timeslot because his ratings were not great. Just about 9 months since Leno took over the position, his ratings are as bad or worse than Conan's. And yet he stays. Sigh.
We are apparently the owners of a new cat. A kitten, really. Elyse was alerted to the kitten's presence yesterday at her school, where it was being chased around by teenagers trying to kick it. Ah, to be young, stupid, and have no future at all, as the line goes. We're bringing the kitten to the vet on Black Friday, just to make sure it's healthy (it is frighteningly thin, not just light), but it looks as though, yeah, we're back to four cats. I kind of liked having just the three for a few months, but I'll take the four. The kitten--still not officially sure of the sex, surprisingly--is very cute and scared, so I'm going to come around. But I'm not there yet.
Have movie studios decided that opening movies on Wednesdays is like moving TV shows to Fridays? This month, five movies will have had their opening days on a Wednesday. Can you name them without looking anywhere else online? The movies are, in chronological order, Morning Glory, Tangled, Love and Other Drugs, Burlesque, and Faster. Only Tangled seems like a sure thing, and that's partly because it's a Disney movie, but none of these movies have hit the radar big time. Had Tron: Legacy opened on a Wednesday, maybe it'd be big. But this year, studios have just dumped movies on Wednesdays, and act shocked. I do not know why. No one is aware of these films existing.
Finally, even though it's the night before Thanksgiving, watch Terriers. It's on FX, it's at 10 p.m., it's a dark yet funny buddy-detective show, and it needs to be watched by everyone. Do it.
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