Category Archives: TGIF

TGIF: “The Jeannie Tate Show”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Iw1uEVaQpA

The Jeannie Tate Show, with guest Bill Hader

Soccer mom Jeannie Tate (Liz Cackowski) hosts a talk show from her mini van in this WB web series.  Her troubled step-daughter and co-host, Tina Tate, is played by Parks and Recreation‘s Aubrey Plaza.

After the jump, the Hillary Clinton Election Special edition of the show, an extra credit project for Tina Tate’s civics class.

Jeannie Tate’s website here.

Aubrey Plaza’s video website here.  (Aubrey is scary funny.  Be sure to check out her parodies of MTV reality series in “Daddy’s Little Judge” and “Kaplowee.”)

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TGIF: SCTV

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB6KFa7-6B4&feature=related

SCTV remains one of the watersheds of television comedy almost 30 years after they called it quits.  They were particularly good at satirizing game shows — sort of paleo-reality television.  Above, “Half Wits”.  After the jump, “Night School High-Q”.

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Saturday Night Video: Music of the Third Wave

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liz

Tina Fey as Liz Lemon drunk dialing while singing “You Oughta Know”

On a recent episode of 30 Rock, Tina Fey‘s sitcom that brings the celebration of geek girl ascendancy into the mainstream, the ring tone on Liz Lemon’s cell phone is revealed to be “Fuck the Pain Away” by Canadian electropunk performance artist Peaches.  It’s such an excellent inside joke that this is probably a good time to remind ourselves why everyone should get it.

Third Wave feminism might not have had the broad cultural impact it has without the wide open music scene of the 90s.  And it arguably was helped along in the previous decade by Madonna, who made sure everybody understood that her sexuality was a source of power, not a cause of subordination.  The music of the Third Wave — with its riot grrrl, queercore, and lo-fi, DIY ethic — has done much to make permeable the barriers on female identity.

After the jump, some milestones in the music that has provided the variables for XX.

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TGIF: The Reduced Shakespeare Company

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE9tNBWZ7Hw

The unlikely alignment of Shakespeare anniversaries this week — the first publication of the sonnets yesterday, the death of John Gielgud today, and the birth of Laurence Olivier tomorrow — deserves some sort of commemoration.  So how about the Reduced Shakespeare Company performing Hamlet in under 3 minutes?  And then, for good measure, performing it backwards.

TGIF: “George” — The Movie!

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Crw85HvIFs

In a world where unforgettable moments of well-earned defeat and humiliation in an iconic sitcom can be stripped of their context and re-edited to transform one of the most hapless and selfish of characters into the redeemed hero of a tearjerking melodrama — in only such a world could that hero be. . .George Constanza.

This ingenious re-alignment of the Seinfeld universe brought to you by lorocker.

TGIF: North Minehead By-Election

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg

It’s a hung parliament in Britain, and it’s not yet clear what will happen next.  Here’s the classic Monty Python North Minehead By-Election sketch, featuring Mr. Hilter, Mr. Bimmler, and Ron Vibbentrop.

TGIF: Peter Cook as Satan in “Bedazzled”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8AddFYCnA

When Peter Cook died in 1995, John Cleese said of him that while he needed three hours to write a three minute sketch, Cook could do it in three minutes.  And that, Cleese concluded, is the definition of genius: the ability to do it in real time.

Above is a clip from the lovely little English comedy from swinging 1967, Bedazzled, in which Cook, as Satan, tries to make a Faustian bargain with the hapless Stanley Moon, played by Dudley Moore.  And, in making the argument, he illustrates the principle that it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.