Parks and Rec

For a longer look, go to amctv.com.

iPhone 4S Siri

My crazy schedule hasn't allowed me to do one of these for the past couple of weeks, but luckily I had some help from Siri.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Louie & Bob's Burgers

It's good to be back.

And another.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Michael Imperioli is Confused About Best Buddies and Conversation (The Tequila Files, Vols. III & IV)

Here's the last two of these for now. There might come a time where I can throw one more together from the scraps, like the final season of Chappelle's Show, so until then...

and (my favorite one)...

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Michael Imperioli is Confused About Drinks (The Tequila Files, Volume II)

Have another round on me.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Michael Imperioli is Confused About Men (The Tequila Files, Volume I)

Seeing as how Mad Men is coming back in less than three weeks, I guess it's time to warm up this old machine again.

Here's the first installment of The Tequila Files.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com.

No Room For Old Men

The Coen Brothers very famously used a minimalistic score for their Academy Award winning film, No Country For Old Men. Since there's really no music track to interfere with any other music track I may want to mash it with, I decided to see what scenes from the movie would sound like with the goofy score from Tommy Wiseau's 2003 classic, The Room. As it turns out, I didn't have to do any work at all. I just put the music down underneath without any cutting. Here's the result:

I think I may do more of these. Maybe with other movies too.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Easily the Funniest Thing That's Ever Happened to Me

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LIFE IS AWESOME!!!

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Kevin Smith Tweet Rant Supercut

And now here is a visual super-cut of Kevin Smith's massive Twitter response to what happened at Sundance last night. My eyes hurt.

flick flick our little $4mil flick flicks sell a flick Askewniverse flicks flick YOUR flicks flicks THEIR flicks flicks Indie flicks flick dug the flick flick HIS flicks flick see the flick flicks

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

The Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award (1/11-1/14)

And the Weekly Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award, a weekly award that will go to the person, animal, or anything else that best exemplifies the awesomeness of Jeff Goldblum that week, goes to......

......Me!

Ever since I started this site, I've been coming up with some revolutionary ideas that are constantly disrupting the space-time continuum and winning all sort of awards. As a result, I've realized that there are probably people out there who get super jealous of me and wanna steal all my genius ideas for their own gain. For example, SNL and John Mulaney did this back in October with great success. Now it's happened again, only the turnaround was much quicker this time.

This past Monday, I debuted a creepy new video entitled Andy Rooney Breathes where I put together a supercut of all of the breaths from 3 separate Andy Rooney 60 Minutes segments. Well, much to my not-at-all surprise, yesterday a video premiered called, "Palin's Breath":

Look familiar? YyyyyyuPPP.

Since its debut yesterday, it has racked up over 320,000 views. That's quite impressive. Yet another massively popular thing influenced by yours truly. I'm pretty awesome. Clearly, I'm speaking to the right people out there. Or at least the right ONE person.

The user who took my brilliant idea and made it super popular also has another video similar to one I did years ago - a spoof on the There Will Be Blood trailer.

His is here:

Mine is here:

See?

The only question is, what's the next thing I'll do that someone will copy and achieve worldwide fame? Stay tuned.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

Skins

In honor of MTV's upcoming premiere of the US version of Skins on Monday the 17th, let's take a look back at the original UK version.

Andy Rooney Breathes (UPDATE)

So I caught some of 60 Minutes last night, and while I was watching Andy Rooney's segment at the end I wondered what a super-cut of his super-loud breathing in between words would sound like. Here is the result:

UPDATE: Now with ticking!

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

The Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award (1/3-1/7)

And the Weekly Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award, a weekly award that will go to the person, animal, or anything else that best exemplifies the awesomeness of Jeff Goldblum that week, goes to......

......Dr. Ian Malcolm!

I can't think of a better winner to start off the new year and welcome this site back from my two week vacation to LazyTown. Congrats, Malcolm! You are clearly the, ahh, coolest Chaotician or whatever to ever live!

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

The Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award (12/20-12/24)

And the Weekly Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award, a weekly award that will go to the person, animal, or anything else that best exemplifies the awesomeness of Jeff Goldblum that week, goes to......

......Our Weird Duet of White Christmas with Taylor Swift!

I am deeply sorry for this, but Merry Whatever, everyone!!!

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

The Best Worst Monkey

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

A Brief Analogy

IS TO

AS

IS TO

That is all.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com.

The Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award (12/13-12/17)

And the Weekly Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award, a weekly award that will go to the person, animal, or anything else that best exemplifies the awesomeness of Jeff Goldblum that week, goes to......

......The American remake of Skins!

This past Monday, I had the pleasure of heading down to MTV HQ in Times Square with some other fans to watch a press screening of MTV's remake of the popular British series, Skins. While there, we received a signed copy of the first script by both original, and American creator, Bryan Elsley, and got to watch both the first and fifth episodes of the series that premieres on MTV on January 17th. It was a great day all in all (then later got much better when Cliff Lee signed with the Phillies), and as a fan of the original series and of TV in general, let me take a long time to tell you why I think this remake will work and be worth your time.

Remaking successful shows from other countries for American television is a tricky thing (not the best sentence, but I'm lazy). Actually, just creating a successful show in the first place is a tricky thing, unless of course it's a show on CBS, where any stupid idea someone comes up with is a (s)hit that runs for 10 years. There are always many factors as to why some shows do well and why others don't in terms of audience or critical reception, but a lot of times it really just comes down to luck. Some shows just seem to come along at the right time and change the landscape (Lost), while others take us to a certain place and show us the potential of the medium (Mad Men), or just fill a sickening, sugary hole that we didn't know needed filling (Glee*, ugh).

Remakes are a whole different animal, though. Throughout the history of scripted television there have been many attempts at remaking or adapting other shows from different places in America, and few have worked. Let's take a look at two recent American remakes of British tv shows (one that worked, and one that didn't) and I'll show you my formula for why I think that MTV's version of Skins will work.

1. The Office: This one has clearly worked, but why? Well, first of all, let's look at the setting. Recent studies have shown that 415% of people all across the globe work in offices. Another poll shows us that 823% of humans living or dead like things that relate to them. Also, people like comedy. While many of us might agree that the US version of The Office didn't really hit it's stride until its 2nd season, the first shortened season of just six episodes really laid the groundwork of what the show would become. Sure, the pilot was pretty much identical word for word with the British pilot (much like the Skins remake is on MTV), but in the other episodes the show was able to move past the original series and develop its own identity, even though the characters all had their blueprints. As for the characters, The US Office did a great job with casting mostly unkowns. This way, the characters felt more authentic and it was very believable that these people could work at a paper factory in Scranton, PA.

2. Life On Mars: The original Life On Mars is one of my favorite series of all time, American or otherwise. It was a perfect little gem of a series that only lasted for two seasons and told its story of a modern detective in a coma traveling back in time to 1973 and teaming up with other detectives to solve crimes and figure out if all of this was happening or was in his head. It had a start and a finish, but most of all, it had charm. British charm. Imagine if Mad Men was a British detective show in the early 70s. It's a great idea. People like to cite the writing and acting of Mad Men as to why it's so great, but for a lot of people, they just like that they're being transported back in time and seeing odd salt shakers they might remember from their youth, or some old timey hat or telephone. This is what Life On Mars had going for it, and on top of that it was decidedly British, much more than The Office (though many have complained that they can't get into because they don't understand anything that's being said). So why didn't ABC's remake of a couple years ago work? Well, first of all, we had seen much of the cast before, whether it was Michael Imperioli or Harvey Keitel or Gretchen Mol. While they are all fine actors, on of my theories why remakes need a largely unkown cast is because we already know the characters, so it helps if we aren't pigeonholed into seeing well-known actors play their own obvious versions of the new ones. If characters are going to stay the same, you need fresh faces and different takes. Another reason why this didn't work is because we already had Mad Men and we don't need to go to the 60s and the 70s.

I think I hear what you're saying at this point - "Ok, well I understand your character/actor-freshness theory, but isn't Skins just going to be like other teen drama on tv, kinda like how Coupling didn't work cause it was a Friends ripoff?"

Well, I hear you, but this is where things change completely. Teen dramas historically have a very short shelf-life. Teen shows are only really interesting when they first start out and the characters are in high school. Then they're strong and fun for one or two years (see The OC, Gossip Girl), but things start to get stale and they run out of storylines, and then the characters separate and go off to college, or magically stay in the same town. The original Skins has found a way around this and managed to keep things interesting by getting rid of its characters every two seasons so the setting stays the same, not the characters. I have no reason to believe that (if it makes it this far) this one be the same in MTV's version.

So now finally, let's talk about the remake and what I saw. First of all, Skins is nothing like any other teen show on tv aside from the fact that it involves teenagers. While they do more or less party every week, it's not some lame costume party or some charity benefit. These kids party like I'm assuming really teenagers party these days. In terms of television realism, think more of The Wire than Gossip Girl. Also, like I said before, even though the first episode is almost exactly the same, the second episode is completely different and introduces a character not in the original series. Also, while the 5th episode deals with some of the same things that the original did, it has a different take on things and stands on its own, which from what I've seen will make this American version more like The US Office.

While I recognized storylines and characters in the Skins remake, I saw them as their own characters, much like I did with The Office. I was nothing more than reminded of the original Skins version, and many times I even went as far as forgetting it because I was so involved in what I was watching on the screen. The actors and the writers have done much more than just "Americanize" Skins - they've appeared to make it their own thing and have shown signs that they will separate from the original and just use the blueprint of the characters to tell new and different stories. I get the feeling it'll be more of an adaptation than a straight up remake.

So I'm gonna watch it, and I think you should too, even if you've seen the original before. If you feel differently after two episodes, then oh well, but give it a shot. It's not your typical MTV show.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

*it should be noted that I've never seen more than one minute of Glee and that I hate it

In the Next Parliament

A few months ago, YouTube introduced a new feature in some of its uploaded videos where it transcribes the audio and makes closed-captions. Since it's still in the process of being tweaked, it rarely works but often produces hilarious results. Up until last week, I had never noticed that any of my videos had this feature as an option. Well, as it so happens, a couple of my videos now have this feature and I went ahead and took some screencaps so you could see the weird and totally wrong results. So let's have some fun with YouTube's Transcribe Audio shall we?

Here's the video again. Click on the "CC" button and then select "Transcribe Audio" to see for yourselves on this video, or any other. It's worth it for a couple minutes at least.

For a longer look, go to amctv.com

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Good grief!

The Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award (12/6-12/10)

And the Weekly Jeff Goldblum of the Week Award, a weekly award that will go to the person, animal, or anything else that best exemplifies the awesomeness of Jeff Goldblum that week, goes to......

......Salsa Dog! Clearly.

Maybe it's just because I'm lazy and don't want to put any effort into deciding this week's winner, or maybe it's because I'd be doing the world a disservice by not honoring Salsa Dog, but here we are anyway, so let's accept it and move on. Congratulations, Salsa Dog. The only person that could've beaten you this week was Man Getting Hit By Football. It really does work on a lot of levels.