Culture Surfing

Currently in its second season, “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” on Atlanta’s Cartoon Network offers a likable throwback to the light-hearted, silly Caped Crusader of the 1950s and 1960s. As long as we can still have Batman stories as weighty as The Dark Knight, we can enjoy more frivolous takes on the character, too. At its best “The Brave and the Bold” reveals a sharp sense of the absurd (I particularly like the romance between Babyface and Mrs. Man-face). The show kicks its hip credentials up a notch by casting everybody’s favorite, Neil Patrick Harris, as a bad guy called The Music Meister, who anchors a special musical episode airing at 7:30 p.m. tonight. It sounds like a cross between the “Once More, With Feeling” installment of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog.” This music video of the rock-operatic “Drives Us Bats” number features numerous cameos you’ll recognize:

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Considerable discussion of Spike Jonze’s hit Where the Wild Things Are concerns whether it’s too frightening for kids. The Maurice Sendak adaptation features some admittedly suspenseful, night-time scenes of the (mostly harmless) wild things pursuing a young boy. Of course, often such questions beg the answer, “It depends on the kids.” Some young ones can witness unspeakable acts on screen without batting an eye, while others can shriek at seemingly innocuous figures like, say, disembodied Jambi from “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” The wrong scene at the wrong time can create phobias that linger for decades.

Children’s entertainment offers countless examples of spooky, potentially traumatic moments, including many early Disney features, the Dementor scenes from the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akzaban and a close-up corpse grinning in a ghastly rictus in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. (And they can be much scarier in a loud, cavernous theater than on video). Recently Cracked.com ran down some horrifying moments from classic kids movies and included the one that I think lingers the most: it’s relentless, hallucinatory and seems out of context of the rest of the film. Plus,the scene supports the idea that the 1970s were the scariest decade ever. The freak-out kicks in around the 2:10 mark. “You’re going to love this… just love it.”

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During a tumultuous downer of a decade, it’s been awfully decent of the British to deliver up so many great comedy teams to distract us from out troubles. Like Abbott and Costellos or Laurel and Hardys for the 21st century, double acts emerging from the U.K. include Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of “Spaced” and Shaun of the Dead, along with “Extras’” Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant (who co-created a little show called “The Office” with Gervais). Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding of “The Mighty Boosh” master the same deadpan banter of their contemporaries, but routinely bend space-time to enter hitherto unknown comedic dimensions.

A new boxed set, released Oct. 13, traces the various incarnations of the “Boosh” and how Barratt and Fielding’s bizarre flights of fancy spring from the interplay of their alter egos. Originating with stage shows and then radio plays before the three seasons of the TV series, “The Mighty Boosh” follows two mismatched chums: Howard Moon (Barratt), a mild-mannered yet pompous intellectual with a weedy mustache, and Vince Noir (Fielding) a happy-go-lucky fashionista obsessed with retro clothes and his haircut. Their typical interplay finds Vince taking the piss out of Howard’s self-importance, as shown in the introductory scene of “The Mighty Boosh’s” first episode:

Continue reading ““Mighty Boosh” takes deadpan jokes through time and space” »

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This lil’ number played at the end of the “Tonight Show” last night. It’s probably NSFW if you’ll get in trouble for animated butt cracks. But then again, everybody loves a string dance.

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You may have heard that NASA is launching a spacecraft to crash into the moon today. Here you can see it happen and consider the question, “Why?”

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The nation’s top-ranked college football team picked a great time for an off week. The Florida Gators watched Saturday as the world’s most famous virgin quarterback got his clock cleaned.

Tim Tebow lay motionless before finally being helped off the field at Kentucky in a 41-7 win over SEC East foe Kentucky. The senior was later hospitalized and released after being diagnosed with a concussion. We’re not accustomed to watching Tebow receive more punishment than he usually gives out.

He’s part man, part bulldozer – and all nice guy. The former Heisman winner will have two weeks to heal before facing fellow top-10 foe LSU. We’re betting the Tigers won’t be laying off while Tebow takes time to heals.

Here’s hoping Gator coach Urban Meyer allows enough time to pass before letting Jesus in Cleats back onto the field. (Just think of all the children that would go uncircumcised.) Until Tebow is back on his feet, please enjoy the following animated gif. We don’t know how to express our feelings without badly edited images of Rich Brooks and Lane Kiffin.

Continue reading “A Tebow-mas Story: The Tim Tebow animated Gif” »

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Amid the Emmy Award presentations last night, host Neil Patrick Harris was interrupted by, well, himself as his nefarious alter ego from the Emmy-winning “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog:”

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I didn’t see this one coming: it’s a video mash-up of clips from the Hayao Miyazaki’s delightful family fable Ponyo to the tune of The Lonely Island’s “I’m On a Boat.” It works hilariously well, but know that the hip-hop braggadocio is totally unsafe for kids.

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Though notorious as the cursed “Scottish play,” Macbeth has been lucky for Rick Miller. The Canadian actor/comedian’s popular one-man show MacHomer casts the Shakespearean tragedy with about 50 voices from “The Simpsons.” Miller brings MacHomer to Georgia Shakespeare Wed.-Sun., Aug. 26-30. He discusses the show’s cocktail of high and low culture and why casting Barney Gumble as Macduff is more than just a pun on Duff Beer.

Where did the idea come from?
In 1994, I was playing the lowly role of Murderer No. 2 in a theatrical version of Macbeth. I’d done it all summer long, and at the cast party I decided to show off with a 10-minute version called “MacHomer,” imitating the other actors in the show who reminded me of “Simpsons” characters. This was when the show was really starting to take off, and I decided to take it one step further and make it a larger show. Since then, it’s gone through several phases — I think we’re up to MacHomer 5.0 now — since I’ve tinkered with it to make it bigger and better.

Continue reading “Speakeasy with MacHomer’s Rick Miller”

(Photo courtesy WYRD Productions)

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Rifftrax, the movie heckling project by alumni of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″ (and not to be confused with the other post-”MST3K” venture, Cinematic Titanic), storms America’s movie theaters on Thursday, Aug. 20. RiffTrax LIVE is a simulcast of Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy mocking Plan 9 From Outer Space, Ed Wood’s hilarious flop about grave robbers from another planet. The live performance originates in Nashville, and beams to cinemas across the country, including Regal Hollywood 24, Perimeter Pointe, Barrett Commons and Discover Mills in the Atlanta area. RiffTrax is known for making fun of films ranging from obscure educational shorts to hits like Twilight, and in an interview with The Onion A.V. Club, Michael Nelson explains that they picked Plan 9 From Outer Space partly because

This is something we hope people will go to a theater at night and go, “Oh hey, look at that on the placard, there, I think I’ll check that out.” So the movie needed its own marquee appeal. There’s not a lot of movies that do that, in terms of the movies we like to use. If we did Voodoo Man, which is an old Bela Lugosi one we like, that’s not gonna draw in a lot of people. Plan 9’s got a lot of appeal, and it’s a lot of fun on its own.

Apparently “all event attendees will receive free exclusive digital goodies, including a never-before seen downloadable short, an autographed digital photo of the guys and a song by the RiffTones!” If you really want to get in the mood, watch Tim Burton’s Oscar-winning Ed Wood biopic beforehand. Or watch Youtube’s seven-minute “highlight reel” of Rifftrax ravishing Plan 9:

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Award-winning stand-up comedian Doug Stanhope doesn’t just crack jokes about inflammatory topics like abortion or child pornography, he cracks funny jokes about such material. His uninhibited advocacy for drugs and booze (“Did you ever try to sleep sober? It’s impossible!”) can disguise his rigorous support of individual rights and willingness to attack any religion for “retardation of human intellectual progress.” You may recall Stanhope from telling a filthy joke to a baby in The Aristocrats, co-hosting Comedy Central’s “The Man Show,” or briefly running for U.S. president as the Libertarian Party candidate in 2008. He performs Aug. 8 at Relapse Theatre, and wants the word to get out that the show is BYOB: “Most of my audience are raging alcoholics, so I don’t want them to get the DTs.”

Sometimes you talk about soul-crushing corporate jobs. I was wondering, what was your most boring job?
I had so many. I had jobs that were as short as an hour and a half. One was putting circulars into newspapers, and I worked at it for 90 minutes before I said “I’m going to the bathroom” and never came back. I never spent a lot of time at a boring job. I’d either quit, or I’d try to make it fun and they would try to fire me. When I worked for a collections agency, I’d fuck with people until it became like a Jerky Boys routine. My bosses would tell me, “You’re still supposed to get the money from them.”

Continue reading “Speakeasy with Doug Stanhope”

(Photo by Brian Hennigan)

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I know cat-based Youtube viral videos are the biggest cliche of the decade, but I thoroughly enjoy the “Simon’s Cat” animated shorts by English animator Simon Tofield. As an animator, Tofield has an appealingly simple, deadpan style, and as a pet owner, he’s clearly a close observer of feline behavior. The newest one, “Fly Guy,” went up on July 24, and though it’s not quite as funny-ha-ha as “Cat Man Do” and “Let Me In,” it’s still pretty amusing. I particularly like the way the cat swells its chest with pride when it presents its “prize.”

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2012 is a real movie coming out November 13. Director Roland Emmerich previously helmed such disaster-porn flicks as ID4 and The Day After Tomorrow, but 2012’s apocalyptic tale looks to be the, uh, porniest. Someone took the money shots from the real trailer and turned it into a delightful, 1970s-style cheese-fest that embraces the project as a guilty pleasure.

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It seems almost everyone in these parts has a favorite memory of the Georgia Theatre, the iconic Athens, Ga., landmark that burned to the ground last Friday morning. For me, it was David Byrne’s 2001 solo show. Never has running in place been so fun.

In honor of all the good times had, and in the hope of good times to come, Georgia Theatre benefits are popping up all over. The Whigs, Dead Confederate and the New Familiars played a benefit show last Tuesday at Athens’ Melting Point and Venice is Sinking is donating all proceeds from its in-progress third album to the Theatre. In a similar vein, Atlanta comedy club the Laughing Skull Lounge is hosting a fundraiser comprised of a series of performances by Marshall Chiles and 10-ish comedians doing 5-7-minute bits each. Shows start tonight, June 25 and run through Sun., June 28. Show times: Thurs.-Sat., 8 and 10 p.m.; Sun., 7 and 9 p.m. Prices: Thursday and Sunday: $15; Friday and Saturday: $20.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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