Occasionally Wright

Musical Schizophrenia

The FX network has been running commercials for the season premiereof The Shield this week and their main teaser features Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nail's 'Hurt'. It's a great song and it fits the show perfectly, and it continues the show's tradition of using great music, like The Von Bondies' 'Come One, Come On'.

... and then there's the other commercial. The one that uses 'Bad, Bad Man' by WWE superstar John Cena. Oh the humanity. It's like going from... well... Johnny Cash to John Cena. I really can't think of two artists that would be farther apart on the musical integrity scale. A musical legend and a wrestler that fancies himself a rapper. How bad is he? Check out these lyrics:

"Give it to me straight - ain't no chasin it
Check yourself in the mirror - ain't no facin it
Cause you, playin the role and you plannin to fold
This the masterplan, we got the planet on hold
We all over the streets like your favorite sneaker
Breakin up your sound like a drive-through speaker
Everything that I be spittin is strong
After I rock, fast forward through the rest of the song"

Lyrical genius I tell ya. Right up there with Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark, who happens to be a fine actor, but not such a great rapper.

So That's Where She Went...

Random TV trivia for you which you may have already known:

Amanda Walsh (who left her job as a Much Music VJ last summer to pursue an acting career) was in an episode of smallville that aired as a repeat tongiht. She was the skany head chealeeder that developed a love potion in her organic chemistry class. Those crazy cheerleaders...

Hey, isn't that...?

Two of my favourite small-timish actors were on two oy my favourite shows last night. First the craziest of the Baldwins, Stephen, was on 'CSI' playing a southern cocaine dealer. For my money there's no better guy in Hollywood to play a complete nutjob. His appearance on celebrity Fear Factor made for the best reality TV I've ever seen. Right after that Lochlyn Munro was on 'Without a Trace'. Who's Lochlyn Munro? You might remember him best as Jason frm CBC's 'Northwood'. He was also the crazy dorm resident in 'Dead Man on Campus' who had the awesome line "Come on man! Just kick me in the junk!". He was also on 'Charmed' for a while according to IMDB. His current claim to fame is that within the last 2 months he has appeared on 'Las Vegas', 'CSI: Miami', 'NCIS' and 'Without a Trace'. Add a 2003 'CSI' appearance and he's pretty much hit all of my favourite dramas.

Pretty Stupid, Right?

If you don't live in the province of Ontario you probably haven't seen the new stupid.ca anti-smoking ads. I'd link directly to the new one but the whole site is in flash so it's not particularly link friendly. You can see it by going to the "This is Stupid" section of the site and clicking on 'Antlers." Basically the ad shows a teen walking around in the woods in green and brown clothing while wearing a helmet with antlers strapped to it and they're doing this during hunting season. Pretty dumb thing to do, right? Well according to the ad only two people per year die of hunting accidents in Ontario while smoking claims the lives of 16,000.

And that's how the ads go. I'm not really sure who runs the campaign and the website doesn't go out of its way to give any names or contact information but it is supported by the Government of Ontario. My question is this- Who are they targeting? Every smoker I know is well aware of the dangers and health risks of smoking and they still don't quit so how is throwing more stats and firgures at them supposed to make a difference? My guess is that the real target audience isn't smokers non-smokers.Effective anti-smoking campaigns don't try to dissaude smokers from lighting up, they just use brute force to make it next to impossible for smokers to actually smoke. The stupid.ca probably won't help anyone quit but it'll give plenty more ammo to those who would lobby to make smoking in public illegal and my bet is those are exactly the type of people stupid.ca is targeting. They aren't trying to persuade smokers. They're reinforcing anti-smokers.

Canada- Now Communist Approved

Looking for a place to spend your next vacation? Come to Canada, an official tourist destination of the Chinese government.

Seriously though, Chinese travellers will now be able to get tourist visas to visit Canada. What does that mean to us? Well, last year we officially had about 77,000 overnight visitors from China. By 2010 they're expected to have 100 million outbound travellers per year. Even if only 1% of them come to Canada that's still more than a ten fold increase in Chinese visitors to our country. That's a lot of extra tourism dollars.

Block Busted

Wouldn't it be nice if you could tell which commercials aired on American networks applied to businesses in Canada and which ones didn't? For example, Blockbuster USA no longer charges late fees. Blockbuster Canada does. You wouldn't know it from the commercials though, would you?

I'll Take "Sick of Trebek" for $2000

Here's an interesting idea that isn't mine:

Now for a suggestion to Sony Pictures Television. Dump that pompous windbag Alex Trabek and replace him with Jennings. It's painful to watch that show night after            night and see all three contestents stumped on a ridiculous question like who was the 14th ruler of Botswana, and have Alex pop out with the answer in his best John Kerry condescending tone, as though he knew it five seconds before he read the answer off of the screen buried in his podium.

If Jennings were the host, he could come out with the same pompous answer, but America would actually believe Ken knew the answer all along.

Trebek has been around for what feels like forever and he hasn't been very entertaining for a very, very long time. A host change would do the show some good if they got the right person and is there really anyone out there more suited for the job than Ken Jennings?

Some fun Jeopardy! facts:

• Trebek has now won three Daytime Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Game Show Host.
• "America's Favorite Quiz Show" is a registered trademark of the show wchich is properly spelled JEOPARDY!
• According to his bio Alex is a native of Ontario, Canada. The judges have ruled that your response is not specific enough Alex.

As an aside, if you loved the old SNL Jeopardy! skits click here and here. The second one is a pretty big file though so consider yourself warned.

 

Thanks to Eric at Offwing for the links.

Scrubs Goodness

"People aren't chocolates filled with creamy goodness. They're bastard covered bastards with bastards centers."

I love "Scrubs." Heather Graham's character has been a good addition (her actual character, not just her hotness), the character of Dr Cox gets better with each episode and I'm a sucker for Tom Cavanagh who has had a recurring role as JD's brother. After the success of Garden State it goes without saying that Zach Braff is going to be climbing the Hollywood ladder very quickly. Need a "Scrubs" trivia fix? Well did you know that Sarah Chalke, who plays Elliot, was Becky #2 on "Roseanne"? Did you also know she was born here in Ottawa but grew up in Vancouver? She's also in an upcoming movie with Tom Cavanagh named Alchemy which I know nothing about.

Jon Stewart vs Crossfire, Round 2

Last Friday Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" was on CNN's "Crossfire." During the show he took the hosts to task for 'hurting America' by pandering to the party lines and failing to go after the real stories and questions in politics. He also called Tucker Carlson a dick and said the show is unbearable to watch. When Carlson tried to go after Stewart for being soft on Kerry when he was on "The Daily Show" Stewart responded that as professional journalists the "Crossfire" crew have an obligation to ask hard questions whereas he host a comedy show. The full transcript is available here and an AP story can be found here.

Well, if anyone was expecting any sort of apology from Stewart last night on his show they were sadly disappointed. Last night he spent the first few minutes of The Daily Show talking about his experience, saying it was awkward to tell them to their face that their show 'blows' but that it needed to be said. It was a great bit and I wish I could remember more of it. Odds are it won't be posted on the Comedy Central site as his monologues rarely are but a repeat will likely air sometime soon (probably today on the Comedy Network and Comedy Central).

**UPDATE**

Video of the Crossfire interview can be found at iFilm.com. Thanks to Lana for pointing it out.

Running Circles Around CSI

The season premiere of Navy:NCIS is on tonight. For my money it is the best of the crime scene investigation/ missing persons/legal shows. It's even better than Without a Trace which is heads and shoulders above any of the three CSI shows (the New York series utterly failed to impress me last week).

What's so great about NCIS? The cast and the writing. CSI's stories might be great but the dialogue is so bad and so cheesy (especially for the lead characters) it's ridiculous. NCIS takes itself slightly less seriously and in doing so has a whole lot more fun. It's not as dark as CSI can be but it still has its serious moments. On top of that the mix of characters is great. Mark Hammon as Gibbs is everything that William L Peterson and David Caruso aren't as Gil Grissom and Horatio Caine. He's witty, sarcastic and strict without being cheesy or an ass. As Gibbs' underlings the characters of Todd and DiNozzo are fantastic and the interplay between them and Gibbs blows away anything on any CSI series. Throw in Pauley Perrette as a goth lab tech and David McCallum as the oddball bowtie-wearing Scottish ME, Dr. 'Ducky' Mallard and you have an incredible ensemble cast.

Check it out tonight on CBS. It just means you'll have to tape Degrassi: The Next Generation.