Last night's How I Met Your Motherfinally saw Britney take a meaningful stab at no longer appearing to the public as a drugged-up/sex-crazed ditz by taking on a role as a receptionist/sex-crazed ditz. But in a sweet way! And she was passable, if only momentarily awkward. Let's go to the tape, kicking off with a ghostly collage of Brit images (nice one, YouTube).
If you need context for Britney's airheadedness, watch the whole thing at CBS. Or if you just need to recreate the magic moment in the comfort of your own bra and panties, you can bid in the auction for her HIMYM wardrobe.
Also the show featured Big Star's "Thirteen" in the scene where Ted and the girl from Scrubs (aka Becky #2 from Roseanne) have a two-minute date (she played a single mom so only has time for a two-minute date! [Laugh track!]). It was easily the coolest song played on the show since Your Mothergot Slanted and Enchanted. Also, "How I Met Your Mother" is the name of a piece in David Berman's poetry collection Actual Air. Just sayin' is all.
The Wire is the best television program ever, etc. But aside from the acting chops of Steve Earle and Method Man (and seasonal remixes of "Way Down In The Hole"), we have little reason to think about modern music when shit goes down on the corner. Until this week, when McNulty wants to know what his boys are listening to. "It's Dead Meadow, dad. Geez." ("What's wrong with the Ramones?") It's not the LA psych-rockers' first cameo in West Baltimore, either. They were featured last season, and the guitarist's uncle is show creator David Simon. Grab two tunes at The Leather Canary. The new album (check the vid) is out Tuesday. Got dem spider bags, red tops. (via Vulture.)
Remember the sleepover party video for "All For Swinging You Around"? Imagine how much more fun it would've been if John Kruk was there. Or not. In case you didn't grow up in the Tri-State area, or even if you did but you never watched Major League baseball, Kruk was the hefty San Diego Padres/Philadelphia Phillies first basemen/outfielder, who notoriously pulled himself out of a game in '93 because he ostensibly had the flu, but was later caught buying vendor hot dogs (thanks, Wiki). We didn't know that last "notorious" part on our own, but we do remember his awesome hair and strange tendency to talk to himself in the field (covering his mouth with his glove). There's even a shrine to the current ESPN analyst/Nutrisystem spokesperson. All of this is important if you want to catch the nuances of this scene from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, also starring everyone's favorite Pornographer Neko Case as Chrysanthemum and singer Kelly Hogan as "The BJ Queen." Among Case's first lines: "I'm your fantasy, Carl. There is no credit card required to sleep with us..." Yes, that includes John Kruk. Jump.
Fresh premises don't come easy for a show 19 years into its existence, but hats off to last night's The Simpsons, mining nostalgia for the decade after the show was created. It was That '90s Show: Marge and Homer taught the kids about the decade of Zima, the Soup Nazi, and money machines. The episode's 1990s are before Bart was born, because chronology on the The Simpsons sometimes doesn't make sense.
Anyway! Homer's working for his dad's laser tag arena, and college student Marge Develops a crush on her professor, which leads Homer to reinvent his nu-R&B singing group as grunge bad Sadgasm (two tunes sound like "Rape Me" and "Glycerine"). Also featured: Semisonic's "Closing Time," the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony," and of course a Kurt Loder cameo:
After the jump, a depressed and grungy Homer watches "Weird Al" sing "Brain Freeze" to the tune of the Sadgasm tune that's to the tune of "Rape Me" ("Shave Me") along with a Sadgasm performance of "Margerine" (sounds like "Glycerine") and the explanation of Homer's withdrawal issues.
Kanye's Connect Four thrashing was our excuse to bring up The Wire yesterday. Today's excuse: Tom Waits and Steve Earle. Show obsessives (there are no casual fans, here) know that Steve plays recurring character Waylon, the former addict who's taken a shine to (now-clean!) Bubbles, but Earle ups his involvement for the urban drama's final season by covering the Tom Waits-penned theme song "Way Down In The Hole" (prior seasons saw renditions from The Blind Boys Of Alabama, Tom himself, The Neville Brothers, and Baltimore teen group DoMaJe).
Of course, you already knew Steve was doing the final season's theme music because you regularly read the New Yorker and saw last June's Earle profile (right?), but thanks to the show's OnDemand premiere in advance of Sunday, now there's YouTube of the Steve soundtracked opening montage.
Spotted: C in the back of his limo driving up and down Park Ave. Heard: "One Week Of Danger," one of five songs by the Virgins featured in last night's episode of Josh Schwartz's CW soap Gossip Girl. Yes, star-making music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas has come through in a big way on her promise to feature some up-and-coming NYC rockers. We'll spare you the plot summary, but know that Blair Waldorf's 17th birthday featured sushi, plastic guitars, and drama. Here's the opening scene with the aforementioned Virgins tune:
The band's other songs in episode 8 ("Seventeen Candles") -- "Fernando Pando," "Radio Christiane," "Rich Girls" and "Love Is Colder Than Death" -- make up the rest of their 07 EP. You can stream three of 'em at MySpace and purchase at iTunes.
This is a New York based show (exploring the lives of rich Upper East Side kids), so Patsavas says "we'll definitely be using some New York-based bands." Betcha this page gets 1,000 friend requests overnight. Predictions for bands that'll appear on the show? Here's ours.
Meanwhile, a friend tells us that the Gossip Girl book series eventually had Chuck coming out of the closet and getting a pet monkey (really). So things are about to get interesting for Miss Waldorf.
As mentioned yesterday morning before our little site malfunction, a recent night in PJs watching a bygone Gossip Girl (the Ivy Week one, where all the kids vie to escort Ivy League school ambassadors to a ritzy cocktail function) got surreal for a quick sec as the camera panned past Dan Humphrey's dad's band and we caught a glimpse of a dude who was a dead ringer for bountifully locked Sam Champion bassist Jack Dolgen. Turns out omg, it totally was Jack, lolz! We even have this slightly blurry screen cap to prove it (slightly blurry 'cause the camera pans past him faster than Chuck Bass can find another girl to date rape).
[Left to right: Dan Humphrey's dad, some dude, Jack Dolgen]
Considering this was probably the most access we'd ever get into the set of the show we didn't expect to be watching this far into the season but still totally are, we shot a couple of quick questions over to Mr. Dolgen about how this all happened and about the cutest girl with the most absurd fictitious name in television.
Gotta love Tracy Morgan, right? Well, even if you haven't in his SNL past -- which we find hard to believe -- dude nails it with this seemingly unending, "sweaty," riffing Halloween and Judaism tune, which started out as an aside on 30 Rock regarding a video he'd done for a song, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah." Key line: "I nearly dropped the Torah when my hands turned into paws." (As scary as a $10 million bat mitzvah with the Aerosmith and Eagles in attendance?) Okay, there are others: "Boys becoming men. Men becoming wolves!” The lo-fi visual montage (wolf, Bar Mitzvah, Michael J. Fox, etc.) really adds to the hair-raising experience.
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