One look at me, and it’s obvious that food is a big – perhaps TOO big – part of my enjoyment of life. That includes my time on the move, traveling, which I’m preparing to do later this month. Looking at our itinerary, I’m already looking forward to making a couple of stops at places I’ve seen on the Travel Channel.

TC has three shows on their prime time lineup devoted largely to food at various locations around the country and around the world. Two of them – Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” – are really, REALLY good, and encourage me to set my feet and my palate along the paths they have followed. Then there’s then there’s Adam Richman’s “Man vs. Food” … oh, well – two outta three ain’t bad.
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Tags: diatribes, television, travel & foreign lands by Jeff McDonald
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10. So You Think You Can Wassail

9. I Saw Uncle Charlie Kissing Santa Claus

8. The Littlest Angel: You’re Gonna Do What With That Christmas Tree?!

7. When Elves Attack

6. How the Grinch Got Green Genital Warts

5. Sheep in Heavenly Fleece

4. America’s Funniest Home Videos Nutcracker

3. Frosty the Hypothermia Victim

2. It’s a Wonderful Life for the One Percent

1. The Black Friday Special: Assault & Pepper Spray
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, television by Bob Sullivan
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10. Law & Order 2: Electric Boogaloo

9. How I Met Your Accountant

8. Mad Cows

7. The Quantum Field Theory

6. So You Think You Can Play the Accordion

5. Grey’s Biochemistry

4. America’s Funniest Voicemails

3. CSI: Bayonne

2. Extreme Makeover: Prison Edition

1. Dancing with the Has-Beens
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, television by Bob Sullivan
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I realize that the very nature of writing this post is contrary to my big plan but I’m going to write it anyway; because I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “Enough is enough times infinity.”

Over the weekend, the story broke that Kim Kardashian was getting divorced from Kris Humphries. That “news” is so widespread by now that I didn’t even have to look up how long her marriage lasted to confirm that the union lasted 72 days. It is a number that is burned in my brain thanks to all the Twitter jokes and snide Facebook remarks, the links shared and re-shared, the pithy quotes about how much was made per day in this “marriage for money”, and the countless headlines that abound when you dare to search her name in Google. What makes me pause, though, are the comments written beside many of those shared links: “I am so tired of hearing about these Kardashians.” [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, television by Judi Cutrone
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Is Erica Kane dead? It seems her show is, at least on network television. Yesterday was the last episode of All My Children on ABC, and it ended with a gunshot headed in Erica’s direction, followed by a fade to black. Much like its soap opera protagonists, All My Children will be resurrected from the dead, but online. Now two questions remain: who will be in the new version, and who will watch it? [Read more →]

Tags: television by Robert O'Hara
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The recent landscape of American television has been dominated by shows about motorcycle dudes, tattoo shops, vampires, pawn shops, and swamps. It’s like America is suddenly obsessed with the state of Florida (zing!) I am not really into any of those shows, but the Soap Opera Network has afforded me the opportunity to take a not always pleasant trip down memory lane by showing reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s always refreshing to revisit my pimply high school years via a show about good looking rich kids who looked, acted, and lived like they were ten years older than they really were. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, television by Marty O'Connor
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If, say, Descartes were to come back from the grave and host a talk show, I would watch it, daily. I would also occasionally watch an episode of Jerry Springer, but I would never watch Oprah, may her show rest in peace.

I have nothing against Oprah as a person. I have plenty against Jerry Springer as a person and, aside from the annoyingly mathematical miseries he caused for me in my younger days, I have no opinion whatever about Descartes as a dude.  But here’s my problem: If I watch TV, I want either brilliance or absolute melt-into-the-couch drivel — Cops, or World’s Dumbest, for instance. I can’t be bothered with middle-of-the-road quality in a TV show. Oprah is arguably a genius, in a lot of ways, but her show is pretty run-of-the-mill, on the intellectual scale. Not delightfully bad, not intellectually stimulating . . . just . . . there. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, television by Chris Matarazzo
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10. Your play about General Schwarzkopf is called The Book of Norman

9. At least twice a week, another Spidey stuntman is maimed or killed

8. Trying to cash in on jukebox musicals like Mamma Mia and Movin’ Out, your new musical is called Ice Ice Baby

7. The marquee reads “Pauly Shore Is Jean Valjean”

6. Your Feydeau farce features Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn chasing the French maid

5. No matter how good it is, your fifth-grade production of Death of a Salesman is not eligible

4. Instead of “Author! Author!” audience shouts “Boo! Kill!”

3. All the dialogue has been translated into Portuguese, because it loses something in the original

2. Your choreographer is straight

1. Your one-man show dealt mainly with your tiger’s blood, Adonis DNA, and fire-breathing fists

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, television by Bob Sullivan
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I’ve mentioned a time or two that my cousin Ben Schwartz is on the verge of Hollywood fame and fortune. His most well-known role so far is Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation. I’ve told Ben that what I really want to see on TV is Jean-Ralphio with his own spinoff sitcom. Maybe a wealthy relative leaves him a hotel to manage in Pawnee. But, since Ben is in a new show House of Lies on Showtime, I guess Jean-Ralphio won’t be managing a hotel any time soon. Fortunately, someone recently posted a Jean-Ralphio compilation on YouTube:

Tags: television by Scott Stein
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On Sunday, TLC ran two Christmas-themed episodes of the program “Sister Wives,” which follows the polygamist Brown family. The episodes were filmed four months after the Browns “came out,” and were being investigated by the Lehigh County sheriff’s department. It was this investigation that led to the Browns leaving Utah for Nevada, which is presumably less intolerant of polygamy, at least reality television polygamy.

Intercut with a montage of the numerous Brown children dressing their Christmas tree (at a treacherously placed cabin the middle of a forbidding area of snow-covered Utah), father Kody Brown tearfully explains that families convicted of committing the “crime” of polygamy are broken up. Third wife Christine tells us that her grandparents were jailed for polygamy, with the wives separated and children sent off to various foster families, with all contact broken off.

It was about as moving a scene as you can expect from a reality show, but imagine if the Browns lived in Broward County? [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, television by Ricky Sprague
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