Fail Culture

ROFL Con Tomorrow!
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Going Green

Plot: A writer partners with a con man to launder money.
Screenwriter: Douglas Coupland (Generation X)

Quote: "Actually, according to my therapist, I am a masochist. But I can break through the wall. Upgrade from being a masochist to being a doormat."

Paulo Costanzo (Road Trip, Joey, Royal Pains)

Paulo Costanzo as "Ryan"

JR Bourne (l) as "Bryce"

Steph Song as "Ming Yu"

+About
+Review
+Trailer
+Clip: Office Cruise
+Paulo Costanzo interview (vid)
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NEW POSTS
Flickr Fave
Today's Pic

Edinburgh Festival

About

24 Hours at the Edinburgh Festival

+Festival Series
+Faces: Edinburgh Fringe Festival 09

[Pics: Flickr.com / Guardian.co.uk]

SHOWS
Icarus 2.0

Flhip Flhop

Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams

ACCOMODATIONS



+Hotel Missoni Edinburgh
+About
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NEW POST
Matt Bomer

Speed Tweeting

This little birdie can fly.

Conan's on Twitter

If anyone has any doubt about Twitter being the next powerhouse communication tool, consider this: Conan O'Brien posted a single, solitary tweet 5 hours ago and now he has 174,006 followers. Talk about an ego boost. How long, do you think, before he breaks a million? It's no secret we're all waiting for the next Conan project - be it on TV or the Internet - but in the meantime we've got his tweets to keep us going. I hope he keeps it up, cause you know he'll make even walking the dog sound funny. Yes, he's back! And I just want to say, Thank you, NBC, for firing Conan and saving comedy.

Ok, make that 180,567...

UPDATE 1
[02.25.10]
Has my point about Twitter sunken in yet? No? Well then, look at it this way: If Conan had posted a message on his Facebook "wall", there's no fucking way it would've reached over a quarter of a million people in less than 24 hours. None. When it comes to outreach, Facebook's exclusivity bites it in the ass. It's great for organizing parties, but not for organizing events - especially major ones. Let's face it, on the Information Superhighway, Twitter's a bullet train to Facebook's rusty shopping cart with the squeaky wheel that's always veering left.

So, if Conan and his crew put out a casting call for their next project, which medium would get the word out faster and to more people? Facebook or Twitter? And if you - as a writer/comedian/agent - want to get the jumpstart over everyone else, then which medium are you going to monitor more closely? Facebook or Twitter? If you chose the former, then you just lost your place in line, and possibly your shot at the opportunity of a lifetime. These days, who can afford to wait?

Let's make that 340,394...

UPDATE 2
[02.26.10]
Conan on Twitter: 377,647 followers and counting... (after 2 days and 2 tweets)
Conan on Facebook: His largest fan group has 41,709 fans (search results)

From the numbers above, you can see that when it comes to crowdsourcing capabilities, Twitter blasts Facebook out of the water and into outer space. If Conan's smart (and we all know he is), he's working on a project right now with the intent of promoting it no later than the summer. By firing him, NBC gave him the best publicity money can't buy, and he'll want to capitalize on the momentum of public interest before it runs cold. After all, in the age of Twitter, popularity has a shelf life of days, if not hours. I'd say Conan's lucky the entertainment world - in particular comedy - is a stale environment right now. It takes Herculean efforts to launch something on TV and on the Internet there's what? Funny or Die videos? C'mon, he's in the perfect position to blow our minds, and if he's half the "genius" people say he is, he'll do just that (before fall 2010).

UPDATE 3
[03.02.10]
Looks like Conan and his writers are getting ready to tickle our comedy tastebuds once again. From the comments: Are you really going to do a live show? When and where? Boston I hope!

+Conan O'Brien Eyeing Live Tour

UPDATE 4
[03.03.10]
Conan's number of followers has surpassed the half million mark. He now has 503,497 followers after 7 days and 8 tweets. Jay Leno who??
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NEW POSTS
Japanese Bullets
Funki Porcini
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Wild Man
NO B.O.
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You're Not 25

The other night, I had a conversation marathon with the chatty, accident-prone Mr. Kamikaze, who happens to be 12 years my senior. He mentioned the 70s TV show Hawaii Five-O and I immediately got a visual of the opening sequence: tanned guy on surf board riding a huge wave and the lead actor, Jack Lord, in a form-fitting grey suit. I sang the theme song to him - something I hadn't thought about in eons - after which he declared, "You're not 25". Oops, busted! No, I'm not, but thanks to genetics / a relatively stress-free lifestyle / an aversion to sunbathing, I can get away with claiming that I am. Pop culture, however, betrays me every time. Music, TV, movies - my fondest memories are rooted in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and I'm not ashamed to admit that, but I'm extremely wary of betraying a number upon which so many stupid assumptions are based, especially for women. Sad, but true. The convo got me thinking, though, about all of the 70s TV theme songs I remember, and as I combed through them on YouTube, I realized that damn, there were a lot of good shows on when I was a kid and that I was a witness to an era of TV writing that will never, ever be repeated. I believe reality TV has ruined - or at least altered - that part of the TV experience for good. Also, it struck me that there was an abundance of funny ass sitcoms that put shows like How I Met Your Mother to shame. Sitcoms like M.A.S.H. and All in the Family that said something worth thinking about while delivering the laughs. And then there was Three's Company, a toxic pleasure that rotted my brain to the point where, one day, I actually blurted out to my mom that I wished I were a blonde - a feat a million bottles of Clairol and skin-bleaching agents couldn't possibly accomplish. Some dreams are just meant to die, but great theme songs live on forever - until the Alzheimers kicks in, that is.

And so, I'm going to take a trip back in time to when bell bottom pants and platform shoes were a fashion statement and not a punchline. It's worth noting that I didn't grow up watching the Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family or countless other shows because guess who dictated my viewing habits? My parents, of course, so this list is as much a reflection of their taste as it is of mine.

Hawaii Five-O is an American television series that starred Jack Lord in the lead role for a fictional Hawaii state police department. The show ran for 12 seasons, from 1968 to 1980.


Book 'em, Danno!



The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a television breakthrough, with the first never-married, independent career woman as the central character: "As Mary Richards, a single woman in her thirties, Moore presented a character different from other single TV women of the time. She was not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her."

Mary Tyler Moore Season 5 on DVD!
For fans of the show, it’s been a long road between season four and this one, and now it looks like the final brilliant seasons are finally going to be released...it’s a dream cast, and the writing in this season is peerless.

LOVE IS ALL AROUND by Pat Williams
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone
But it's time you started living
It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all


Season 1 opening theme

Welcome Back, Kotter starred comedian Gabe Kaplan as the title character Gabe Kotter, a wise-cracking teacher who returns to his high school alma mater—the fictional James Buchanan High in Brooklyn, New York—to teach an often unruly group of remedial wiseguys known as the "Sweathogs."

Most of the major characters of Welcome Back, Kotter were based on people from Kaplan's teen years as a remedial high school student in Brooklyn.


The TV characters' signature lines became enormously popular catch phrases such as Barbarino's "up your nose with a rubber hose" and Washington's deep-voiced "hi there" and Horshack's wheezing laugh. It wasn't long before the previously unknown actors became hot commodities, particularly John Travolta, the show's breakout star. [Wikipedia]

The popular theme song "Welcome Back," written and recorded by former Lovin' Spoonful frontman John Sebastian, became a #1 hit in the spring of 1976. [Wikipedia]

WELCOME BACK by John Sebastian
Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.

Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.

Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they've turned around.

Who'd have thought they'd lead ya (Who'd have thought they'd lead ya)
Back here where we need ya (Back here where we need ya)

Yeah we tease him a lot cause we've got him on the spot, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.



M*A*S*H is an American television series developed by Larry Gelbart, adapted from the 1970 feature film MASH (which was itself based on the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, by Richard Hooker). The series is a medical drama/black comedy that was produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS. It follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War. M*A*S*H's title sequence featured an instrumental version of the song "Suicide Is Painless", which also appears in the original film.

The series premiered on September 17, 1972, and ended February 28, 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history, with about 106 million viewers. The show is still broadcast in syndication on various television stations. The series, which covered a three-year military conflict, spanned 251 episodes and lasted eleven seasons.

Many of the stories in the early seasons are based on real-life tales told by real MASH surgeons who were interviewed by the production team. Like the movie, the series was as much an allegory about the Vietnam War (still in progress when the show began) as it was about the Korean War.

[EXCERPTS: Wikipedia]
The series creators wanted M*A*S*H broadcast without a laugh track, but the TV network, CBS, refused to allow this. As such, in America the series was shown complete with laugh track, but in the UK it aired as originally intended. However, an exception was made in the American version where scenes in the Operating Room never used the laugh track. For one particular episode, set entirely in the O.R., this meant an entire episode broadcast in the U.S. which had no laugh track.

In the UK, one episode was accidentally broadcast with the laugh track left in, and the BBC announcer apologised for "the technical problems we had" afterwards.

On all released DVDs, both in the UK and America, there is an option to watch the show with or without the laugh track.

Gary Burghoff (Radar)'s left hand is slightly deformed, and he took great pains to hide or de-emphasize it during filming. He did this by always holding something (like a clipboard) or keeping that hand in his pocket. Burghoff later commented that his deformity would have made it impossible for him to be involved in active service.

The 4077th actually consisted of two separate sets. An outdoor set, in the mountains near Malibu, California (Calabasas, Los Angeles County, California) was used for most exterior and tent scenes for every season. The indoor set, on a sound stage at Fox Studios, was used for the indoor scenes for the run of the series...Just as the series was wrapping production, a major brush fire destroyed the entire set on October 9, 1982. The fire was written into the final episode as a forest fire caused by enemy incendiary bombs.

When M*A*S*H was filming its last episode, the producers were contacted by the Smithsonian Institution, which asked to be given a part of the set. The producers quickly agreed and sent the tent, signposts, and contents of the "swamp", which was home to Hawkeye, BJ, Trapper, Charles, and Frank during the course of the show. The Smithsonian has the "swamp" on display to this day. Originally found on the Ranch, Radar's teddy bear, once housed at the Smithsonian, was sold at auction on July 29, 2005 for $11,800.

As the series progressed, it made a significant shift from being primarily a comedy to becoming far more drama-focused. Changes behind the scenes were the cause, rather than the oft-cited cast defections...

Executive Producer Gene Reynolds left at the end of the fifth season in 1977. This, coupled with head writer Larry Gelbart's departure the previous season, stripped the show of its comedic foundation. Likewise, with the departure of Larry Linville after five seasons, the series lost its "straight man" (comic foil).

Beginning with the sixth season, Alan Alda and new Executive Producer Burt Metcalfe became the "voice" of M*A*S*H, and continued in those roles for the remaining five seasons (though Alda and Gene Reynolds became Executive Consultants). By the eighth season in 1979, the writing staff had been totally overhauled, and M*A*S*H displayed a different feel—consciously moving between comedy and drama, unlike the seamless integration of years gone by. While this latter era showcased some fine dramatic moments, the attempts at pure comedy were not as successful as compared to the first five seasons. The quirky, fractured camp of the early years had gradually turned into a homogenized "family"; clever dialogue gave way to puns; and the sharply defined characters were often unrecognizable and lost most of their comedic bite. In addition, the episodes became more political, and the show was often accused of preaching to its viewers. At the same time, many episodes from the later era were praised for its experimentation with the half-hour sitcom format...

Harry Morgan, who played Col. Potter, admitted in an interview that he felt "the cracks were starting to show" by Season 9, and the cast had agreed to make Season 10 their last. CBS decided otherwise, saying that their hit show wasn't going to go away so suddenly. Ultimately, CBS persuaded the cast and crew to produce half a regular season of episodes for the final year (making an official run of eleven seasons) and end the series with a big finale, which ultimately became one of the most watched episodes in television history.

"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was the final episode of M*A*S*H. The episode aired on February 28, 1983, and was 2½ hours long. The episode got a Nielsen rating of 60.2 and 77 share, translating into nearly 106 million Americans watching that night, which established it as the most-watched episode in United States television history, a record that still stands to this day. The only record it did not break was the highest percentage of homes with television sets to watch a TV series, which is still held by the August 1967 final episode of The Fugitive, which was watched in 72% of all American homes with television sets.

M*A*S*H was the first American network series to use the phrase "son of a bitch" (in the 8th-season episode "Guerilla My Dreams"), and there was brief partial nudity in the series (notably Gary Burghoff's buttocks in "The Sniper" and Hawkeye in one of the "Dear Dad" episodes). A different innovation was the show's producers' not wanting a laugh track, as the network did. They compromised with a "chuckle track", played only occasionally.

In his blog, writer Ken Levine revealed that on one occasion, when the cast offered too many nitpicking "notes" on a script, he and his writing partner changed the script to a "cold show"—one set during the frigid Korean winter. The cast then had to stand around barrel fires in parkas at the Malibu ranch when the temperatures neared 100 degrees. Levine says, "This happened maybe twice, and we never got a ticky-tack note again."

"Suicide Is Painless" is a song written by Johnny Mandel (music) and Mike Altman (lyrics), which is best known for being featured as the theme song for both the movie and TV series M*A*S*H. The actual title, as it appears on the sheet music, is "Song from M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)."

Mike Altman is the son of the original film's director, Robert Altman, and was 14 years old when he composed the song's lyrics. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1980s, Robert Altman said that his son earned more than a million dollars for co-writing the song while he only made $70,000 for directing the movie. [Wikipedia]

SUICIDE IS PAINLESS by Johnny Mandel & Mike Altman
Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

[chorus]:

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's too late, and...

[Chorus]

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
so this is all I have to say.

[Chorus]

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat.

[Chorus]

The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger...watch it grin...

[Chorus]

A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
'is it to be or not to be'
and I replied 'oh why ask me?'

Suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.
...and you can do the same thing if you please.



M.A.S.H. Intro (instrumental)

QUOTES
Wikiquote
Hawkeye: You know, we gotta do it someday... throw away all the guns and invite all the jokers from the north and the south to a cocktail party. Last man standing on his feet at the end wins the war.

IMDb
Frank Burns: Why does everyone take an instant dislike to me?
Trapper: It saves time, Frank.

TV.com
Hawkeye: I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got thrown into this war I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.

MORE 70S TV THEME SONGS


AND FINALLY...Three's Company (reenactment)
This was the closest I could find to the original.
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NEW POSTS
Artisan
WTF?

Bits and Pieces

Face Your Pockets

From Cityfile: New York
Jolie Palm dessert

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
If you love Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, you'll be pleased to hear that a third iteration, Top Chef: Just Desserts, will debut on Bravo next year. [via]

Mikhail Prokhorov

Nello Balan Strikes Again
[10-23-09]
The Post reports that Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire close to sealing a deal to buy the Nets, stopped off at Nello's on Wednesday and dropped $19,000 on lunch. What did he spend all that cash on? Miraculously, a crack reporter at the paper managed to obtain the bill:

$825 for three orders of truffle tagliolini
$600 for four orders of truffle carpaccio
$210 for three orders of veal chops with mushrooms
$72 for six large waters
$15 for a bowl of chicken soup
$5,000 for a bottle of vintage 1998 Chateau Petrus
$3,600 for two bottles of 2002 Montrachet Latour
$3,750 in tips

Of course, Nello Balan, the restaurant's bleached-blond owner and one of the city's most relentless publicity seekers, had absolutely nothing to do with revealing any of these details: [...]

Nello Balan: Call Your Lawyer
Nello Balan is the owner of Nello, the exceedingly mediocre Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. He's also one of the city's most shameless—and most notorious—publicity hounds. Balan's latest attempt at drumming up attention, however, now appears to be exploding in his face. Last week, a receipt "surfaced" indicating that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich had spent $52,000 on lunch. (The bill was for $47,000, but TMZ, which first reported the story, said the billionaire had tacked on a $5,000 tip.) But a spokesman for Abramovich tells us the bill wasn't his and the mogul may pursue legal action against Balan for suggesting otherwise. [...]

COMMENT
Why compliment Nello's by saying the food is mediocre when we all know you can get better tasting pasta at a church social in rural Appalachia. The owner of Nello's obviously needs mental counseling and seems to be a compulsive liar. What's really more telling is the stupid people who eat there. It speaks volumes about them. When will Madison Avenue be rid of such a greasy shit hole run by an equally slimy creep?

RELATED
Nello
You might think that a restaurant where $26 buys you four slices of roasted beets and a dollop of baked goat cheese would be a gastronomic paradise, whose heavenly dishes demand sky-high prices. But if you thought that about Nello, a perennial redoubt of the Upper East Side's rich and occasionally famous, you would be wrong. While the food is excellent—not only those beets, perched delicately between sweet and savory, but also pastas like a penne rigate with brightly anise-flavored sausage—eating is not a particularly important activity. What counts at Nello is being seen at Nello: seen in your Chanel, your St. John's knits, your tailored Italian suit; seen canoodling on the banquette with your co-star; seen escorting your grandson to a lunch he'll ignore in favor of watching Spy Kids on his personal DVD player. Not that there's anything wrong with any of this. The culture of celebrity (and of money) is the culture of Manhattan, and if dropping upwards of $100 per person lets you experience for a few hours the life you desire, then a night at Nello can't be, well, beet. — Matt Gross

Cafe Bruxelles fries

DAILYFILE
[10-22-09]
Star chef Alain Ducasse weighs in on New York's best french fries. [via]

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
Jennifer Aniston is reportedly close to signing a deal to host a weekly talk show on OWN, Oprah's long-delayed cable network. Go figure. [via]

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
Bad news for CNN: The network now occupies fourth (and last) place in the cable news ratings. Not only did it fall behind Fox News and MSNBC in October, it also dropped below its sister network HLN as well. [via]
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NOTEWORTHY
Georgina Chapman
WHO
The arm candy of film producer Harvey Weinstein, ex-model Georgina Chapman is also one-half of eveningwear label Marchesa and a small-time movie actress.

OF NOTE
Because the notoriously pushy Weinstein is her husband and backer, Chapman's quick rise to the top has been controversial, to say the least. The movie mogul has pressured the actresses in his movies to wear Marchesa on the red carpet, it's claimed—a charge he's denied. (Although a number of women in Harvey's extended circle, including Cate Blanchett, Renee Zellweger, Sienna Miller, Anne Hathaway, and Jennifer Lopez, have all walked the red carpet in Marchesa gowns.) It also emerged that Weinstein had attended a meeting with Anna Wintour and promised to help Vogue land covers with his actresses if she provided the fledgling label with exposure in the mag.

Jared Kushner
WHO
The son of real estate developer Charles Kushner, Jared is also the proud owner of the Upper East Side's favorite weekly, the New York Observer.

TRUE STORY
Jared's application to Harvard is discussed in detail in Dan Golden's 2006 book, The Price of Admission, which explores the system by which the extremely wealthy donate millions to universities to secure admission for their kids. Cited as one of the most egregious cases of pay-for-play, Golden revealed that Charles pledged $2.5 million to Harvard to gain admission for Jared, despite the fact his academic record hardly warranted it. "There was no way anybody thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen," Jared's high school English teacher told the author.

Shepard Smith
WHO
Fox News Channel host Shepard Smith is famous for his rapid-fire delivery, weird eyebrows, and ambiguous sexuality.

ON THE JOB
Smith consistently performs well in the ratings game—The Fox Report is the top-rated newscast in its slot cable—but he also has a reputation for being blunder-prone. He notoriously jumped the gun on announcing the death of Pope John Paul II, making the proclamation a day before the holy man actually passed away. In another slip-up—one that later became a YouTube sensation—Smith said that Bronx residents were more likely to give J. Lo "a curb job than a blowjob." (He meant to say "block party.")

CRIME FILE
During the 2000 Bush-Gore debates, Smith was arrested in Florida and charged with aggravated battery with a motor vehicle, after brawling with a fellow reporter over a parking space. The charges were later dropped.

PERSONAL
Smith has repeatedly dodged the question of his sexuality, but in 2005 he was outed in a column in the Washington Blade. Kevin Naff, the managing editor of the gay weekly, said that Smith "chatted me up in a New York City gay piano bar, bought me drinks, and invited me back to his place." He lives in a two-bedroom West Village loft that he purchased for $1.87 million in 2004. Fashion designer (and fellow gay) Michael Kors lives in the same building.

Padma Lakshmi
WHO
An ex-model and the ex-wife of novelist Salman Rushdie, Lakshmi is an author, the host of Bravo's Top Chef, and an aspiring brand name.

PERSONAL
Lakshmi met author Salman Rushdie at the 1999 Liberty Island launch party of Tina Brown's Talk. She introduced herself to Rushdie, and he stunned her by proceeding to rattle off a list of facts he already knew about her. (As it turned out, he'd been infatuated with her since he'd read a magazine profile of her years before.) Padma became the fourth Mrs. Rushdie in April 2004, when Rushdie was 56 and she was just 32. Three years later, after months of rumors that their marriage was on the rocks, the couple announced they were divorcing. She's since been linked to a series of older billionaires, including Ted Forstmann—the buyout mogul who also happens to own IMG, the agency that represents her—and Adam Dell, the venture capitalist and brother of Dell founder Michael Dell.

Stephen Colbert
WHO
Adored by smug blue-state yuppies everywhere, Stephen Colbert is the host of the second most popular fake news show on Comedy Central.

BACKSTORY
Colbert could hardly avoid a comedy career, given the laugh riot that was his childhood: He grew up in South Carolina, the youngest of eleven children in a strict Irish Catholic family, and lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash at age ten. [...]

IN PERSON
Speak loudly into his left ear, he's deaf in his right one. He's also a religious Catholic, notwithstanding the fact that his audience consists mainly of godless heathens. He claims to keep Lent, attend church regularly and teach Sunday school.
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Mile High Club
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Close to Home
It's the Upper East Side. This isn't supposed to happen here!
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