House, M.D. has been cancelled!

Just kidding, readers. That was a Halloween trick, if you will, much akin to a traditional suburban egging. Or a hearty BOO! from a sheeted figure waiting around the corner. Or the use of a slit condom, discovered after an All Hallow’s Eve lovemaking session in a shaving cream and pumpkin gut covered alley. Boy was I a cheeky trickster that year!

Instead, I bring up House, M.D. to briefly mention that last Saturday’s episode of SNL was, by far, the best of the season. Sure, first time host Hugh Laurie benefited from the strength of a cold open courtesy of Borat himself. But he also had decades of experience to fall back on, and the entire show was rife with his trademark BBC humoUr. It is beyond imperative that you go here to hear Hugh’s protest song before the Peacock’s internet police make them take it down. (Sorry, Peacock, if it was on SNL’s site or I Tunes, I would have sent them there first and greased your feather covered palm.)

And now, we turn to the other side of today’s most frequently invoked dichotomy for a Halloween TREAT: daytime television’s... COSTUME PALOOZA!

The fun started bright and early this morning, as Today's Matt Lauer and Al Roker got their Jack Sparrow and Davey Jones on. I was really surprised that Matt changed into a suit before his interview with former GE chairman Jack Welch. Sure Jack Sparrow may not scream journalistic integrity, but I thought the pirate's presence during an interview with a former captain of industry re: the current state of our nation's dismal employment sitaution could have taught the housewives of the midwest an important lesson in symbolism. Oprah's book club could have been revolutionized! I was also surprised when Al's face tentacles prevented him from finding his own mouth during a segment on Halloween candy. For a while now, I had believed that doctor's inadvertantly placed a food magnet in Al's stomach, as opposed to the initally requested gastric band.


Only across town, but what I am beginning to believe is a parallel universe, on Live with Regis and Kelly, Regis did his best Howie Mandel while Kelly Ripa was one of the suitcase toting models from Deal or No Deal. At one point, Kelly pretended to speak like a foreigner and have no clue what was going on. HA! Did I say pretended? Unfortunately, couldn't land any images of this shit show, so unlike with the kids plugging books on Reading Rainbow, you actually will have to take my word for it.

Marth Stewart deemed today black cat day. Sure you'd think this might be a tribute to the lure surrounding these mysterious felines, but insiders know this is a tribute to the gang she joined in lock down, the Black Pussies. And boy those lead tattoos must have gone to her head, because in teasers, Martha told us we would be seeing the Pussy Cat Dolls, but all we got were these gals, minus the astonishing Raven.

By the time The View rolled around, you may think that I was costumed out. Quite the contrary, my friends. I was fit as a fiddle and ready to take in the ladies dressed as famous queens throughout history. Take a look here as they interview the reigning queen of rock. Hot topics, however, have never been more disturbing, as guest host Kathie Lee Gifford as Catherine the Great sat stroking a toy horse. WHA WHA WHA WHAT?! If you could ACTUALLY handle horse cock, Kathie, maybe Frank wouldn't have had to rent out Motel 8 rooms for him and the local Applebee's hostess.

If your time was more valuable than mine today and you missed daytime television's COSTUME PALOOZA, but you're still in the mood for a Halloween treat, don't miss tonight's Late Night with Conan O'Brien in skelevision.

And if you're joining the boob tubers for the first time, courtesy of our nod on Cinematical, WELCOME and KEEP READING! Every time we get a hit, a Malawian orphan gets adopted.

"Love makes you do the wacky." --Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Too right you are, Buffy, especially when the love in question is for two dead guys. Today, as part of the brilliantly-themed Vampire Blog-a-thon, sponsored by Nathaniel of The Film Experience, I will tackle the age-old question that has tormented academics and fangirls alike: Angel or Spike? (Or, if you prefer, Tall, Dark, and Forehead or Captain Peroxide?)



I'd just like to see [Angel] grow. Honestly, everything he's done so far I've enjoyed, so there's not really one thing. Maybe, like, golfing or something." --David Boreanaz
There's nothing I love better than one of these completely insane one-liners. Unfortch, Angel the character lacked much of Boreanaz's off-the-wall charisma. In my mind, Angel didn't grow much on Buffy. He had two wildly different states of being, yes: guilt-plagued, brooding good guy and nasty, rage-filled bad guy. The most he could do was flip-flop between those two and occasionally make Buffy cry. Perhaps the problem is that Angel was too much a part of Buffy's central metaphor that became the show's framework in the first few seasons. That is, High School Is Hell. Sometimes you sleep with a guy and he becomes a totally different peson. We all knew Buffy and Angel's relationship was doomed from day one, because so much was set in stone. If Buffy sleeps with Angel, giving him one moment of true contentment, he will revert to the evil Angelus. And in the Buffyverse, as in our world, there's not much hope for a partnership with those kind of sexual high stakes. Once Angel goes from a mopey repenter to Angelus, we've seen everything he can do. (That is, until his spin-off.)

"The truth is, I like this world. You’ve got – the dog racing, Manchester United, and you’ve got people: billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs." --Spike
Spike, however, remained an unpredictable presence for much of the series. Unlike Angel, he didn't have a split personality - no soulless doppelganger. Soulless Spike was not very different from Soul-Having Spike, so there were much fewer rules dictating his behavior. We saw from the beginning that he was a different sort of vampire, cut from a more romantic, Anne Rice-ish mold. The Judge told Spike and his highly irritating girlfriend, Drusilla, that they had too much humanity in them. "Yeah, what of it?" Spike said. Spike never seemed evil so much as a juvenile delinquent in arrested development. He took a manic glee in creating havoc for havoc's sake and had some of the best one-liners ever uttered on television. Unlike Angelus, who was a by-the-book villain, Spike was much more self-aware; he turned the bad guy cliches on their head. He also was incredibly sensitive, even without a soul: see season five's "Fool For Love" to see how quickly Buffy breaks the guy who has "always been bad."

"I love syphilis more than you." --Spike
Sigh. It's no surprise that Buffy should fall for either of these cradle-robbing creatures of the night, despite Angel's massive forehead or the fact that Spike's hair makes his head look like a Q-tip. But Angel is ultimately a eunuch, or the forbidden fruit if you prefer something less emasculating. Angel will always be Buffy's first love, but their relationship is a dead end.

In season four, Spike is rendered impotent by a microchip the Initiative places in his brain; in one episode, in which Buffy and Faith switch bodies, Faith-as-Buffy humiliates him sexually with some vivid dialogue. (I seem to remember "make you pop like champagne" being said at some point.) In season 5, Spike has an epiphany after having an erotic dream about Buffy. Turns out, all that fighting they've done is kind of like third base for Spike. And so begins some of the most perverse sex ever aired on network television. We all thank you, Spike.

Her relationship with Angel forces Buffy to become independent. She discovers when she must kill Angel, that at the end of the day she has only herself to rely on. Spike, on the other hand, forces Buffy into more existential dilemmas about herself, the nature of her job, her baser wants and instincts. And I don't know about you all, but exploring those baser wants and instincts were far more fun than watching Buffy swoon in Angel's arms.

Advantage: Spike.

Sex and the City Pre-Election Day Special

Voters go the polls in two weeks from today, and both houses of Congress are up for grabs. I was reading expert pollster Charlie Cook's website today as I am wont to do around election time and was reminded of Sex and the City.

Cook predicts Democratic takeovers of the House and Senate, an analysis I wish I could agree with. It is true that recent polling looks good. But Cook, like many political analysts in 2002 and 2004, neglects to consider the vastly superior GOP turnout operation - the Repubs know how to get their voters to the polls (I assume it involves promising them free vials of orphan blood or something) and they cheat (a recent gambit involved distributing pamphlets in poor, under-educated precincts in Mississippi that said Republicans should vote on election day while Democrats should vote on November 8th "in order to avoid long lines"). Usually the combination of high turnout and shameless cheating gets Republican candidates 2-5 extra points over what they're polling prior to the actual voting.

Sex and the City ignored a similar gaping political inconsistency sometime back. You may recall the early episodes of Season 3 in which Carrie dated a candidate for City Comptroller (also known as the guy with the urine-in-the-shower fetish - a phenomenon which deserves a blog post in and of itself). She expressed enormous ambivalence about the political process in a conversation with the gals, clearly betraying her as an unregistered voter. Okay. Fast forward to episode 80, "Hop, Skip, and a Week"...Carrie has JURY DUTY! Perhaps Darren Star would like to explain how an unregistered voter gets jury duty. Uh huh...I'm waiting.

Un. Fucking. Believable.

In an age when 15 year old girls are as likely to get excited about civics as Pat Buchanan is about Holocaust reparations, is it any wonder that S&TC can't bother to keep things straight for its target audience? I guess it's all cool as long as the Manolo Blahniks look good. Thanks for ruining democracy, by the way.

I suppose I will one day forgive the writers for this pathetic oversight. But Sarah Jessica Parker - as articulate a spokesperson for abortion rights as any Hollywood A-lister - should know better. She could at least have ad libbed something.

Berger: Are you telling me the guy had a mango in his suitcase?

Carrie: He did! And I'm also telling you that voting is cool!

Berger: Your excitement about the political process has inspired me to not break up with you on a post-it.

Carrie: Let's have sex!

And...scene.

Vampire Blog-a-Thon: Interview with The Vampire

Brace yourselves, readers, for a blood spattered October 30 blog-a-thon extravaganza! Watch the video above for details and mid-nineties, less-crazy Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Mmm.

Alanna's TV Round-Up: Questions for the Day

1. I've just tuned in to the delicious smuttiness that is Nip/Tuck. I know, I'm way behind the curve. But can someone tell me whether they always tie up troublesome plotlines so abruptly? See: The crazy would-be nanny Sean slept with getting hit by a plot device, I mean bus. And Sanaa Latham's husband having a deus ex machina, I mean stroke. I feel the show writers are missing excellent opportunities for blackmail stories. Come on, I want to see the despicable main characters plunging into the deepest shame spirals possible, not getting what they want four episodes into the season.

2. Lost was groovy last night. Anything with Pretty Boy Boone, sweat lodges, and hippie communes cum marijuana factories is fine by me. But are they ripping off Heroes by giving Desmond psychic abilities? And WHEN will we learn how Locke got paralyzed? I've heard a million different theories, including: botched suicide attempt; injured when Hurley made that deck collapse with his powers of fatosity; car accident with Sawyer. This is a question that could easily be answered, and should be. Soon.

3. Do you think Hiro on Heroes is a Sambo character? Vivian does. He certainly has that stereotypical anime character thing going for him, but I think it's tempered by his more sober and slightly sleazy friend. And how cool was that future-Hiro at the end of last episode? Well, just another shocking Heroes ending™.

4. Was anyone surprised that Jeffrey won Project Runway? I mean, even I could see that he was the most talented of the bunch, despite being periodically blinded by his hideos neck-tattoos (necktoos?). YEAH DETROIT!!

McFighty

We're none of us Grey's Anatomy fans, but I can't help but take notice at the recent brouhaha on their set. For those of you who are too busy going to the opera or adopting African orphans to pay attention to B-list scuffles, Isaiah Washington tried to choke a bitch -- the bitch in question being Patrick Dempsey.

I can't really speculate as to what this was about, but there's definitely something about Dempsey's mug that makes me want to break out my long-abandoned tae kwan do skills. Look at him - he's smug, simpering, other "s" words. He looks like Sean Penn's goofy little brother. (The one who didn't OD.) And face it, McDreamy fans - that hair is ridiculous.

They Come Out So You Don't Have To

In honor of National Coming Out Day, we at The Boob Tubers encourage our GLBT visitors to find the courage they need to fly their rainbow flags high... through, of course, the magic of television. Without further ado, my favorite TV queers:

1. Willow & Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
These two were the first lesbian couple to appear on primetime TV. What a difference a few years makes. Willow's metamorphosis from a cutesy, stammering nerd larvae into a big, beautiful, Wiccan lesbian butterfly was one for the ages. The singular Buffy writers made her sexual awakening believable and relatable (except for the being able to float part). And Tara was her sweetie who, despite being a fairly minor character, got a show-stopping number in the Buffy musical, Once More With Feeling. You make me come...plete indeed.



2. Jodie Dallas on Soap
Frankly, I know very little about this character, as I was but a twinkle in my mama's eye when this show aired. But Billy Crystal grew up one town over from me (Strong Island WHAT!) and he played this dude, the first openly gay regular character on an American series.

3. The Fab Five on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
They're a little past their prime, but they shaped Bravo into the delightfully flamey network it is today. Tim Gunn, you betta recognize!



4. David & Keith on Six Feet Under
That crazy HBO. It wasn't enough for them to have a gay couple, they had to be a gay interracial couple as well! What's next, elaborate fantasy sequences involving the Corpse of the Week and some kind of musical number? I keed, I keed. David and Keith stand out because they were given as much screen time and drama as any other couple on Six Feet Under. They were alternately wretched and adorable, but by the series finale I was convinced they were meant for each other. Granted, whenever I watched the show with my dad he carried on so much you'd think the sight of two men kissing was burning the eyeballs right out of his head. So the social value here is negligible, if my dad is your sample population.

5. Shane on The L Word
This show is pretty much terrible and preposterous, but Katherine Moennig as Shane is the sexiest dirtbag to ever grace television. I want to both wash her hair and make out with her.



6. Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life
Rickie is the gay best friend every girl wants to have. He did his makeup with BFFs Rayanne and Angela in the girl's bathroom and secretly, sadly was infatuated with Jordan Catalano. (Who WASN'T?!?) I recently heard a crazy story: actor Wilson Cruz was kicked out of his home for being gay while filming. When his father saw the ironically parallel episode in which Rickie also ends up on the streets, he invited Wilson back home and they reconciled. See, TV does heal all wounds.

7. Mr./Ms. Garrison on South Park
Well, I just made a mockery of this whole list, didn't I?

Jeanette's Stream of Consciousness, 10/9/06 Studio 60 , Reliving Jay Mohr's Nightmare (it's not waking up each day realizing he's Jay Mohr)

Since my posts are done when I am at work, it's becoming harder and harder for me to write manifestos as we have seen other tubers do, namely regarding Lost. Jesus, I didn't get a word of that. OTHERS? POLAR BEARS? COCONUTS?! WHAT?! WHO IS WITH ME!? ABC, you so crazy.

So here are my television thoughts for Tuesday, October 10th...

I do not understand entertainment trade publications and their need for nicknames. When CBS is referred to solely as the eye, it makes sense. It is easier to say eye than it is to say CBS. The same can be said for NBC being referred to as the peacock. Say them both out loud...now which is easier? Why, peacock of course, both for its lack of a third syllable and its tendency to give you the giggles! But calling ABC the alphabet network and its parent company Disney the Mouse House, while cute, does not save breath or trees. It does, however, make any speaker invoking the slang sound just as cool as Ari Gold.

Last night, the second half hour of Studio 60 was magnamulous. I continue to be thrilled to see Evan Handler in a meaty, post Sex and the City role. Last night, Evan's Ricky Beck handled chaos with grace as Dylan (Bradley Whitford) and Matt (Matthew Perry) dealt with plagarism from the writer's room. Simon's (DL Hughley) abnormally funny rant on the Studio 60 version of Weekend Update was reminscent of a piece written much earlier by someone else... In Gasping for Airtime, Jay Mohr recalls a similar incident , where he blatantly steals a bit from Rick Shapiro's stand up. If it is the first month of Studio 60 and we have already seen them deal with this issue, and other predictable live TV show issues such as power outages, where do we stand with plot development, you may ask. I say we still haven't seen Dylan do blow off a hooker's ass, so this show has room to grow!

And also, please don't accuse me of getting on the box full of peacock soap that pays my rent, but feel free to enjoy tomorrow night's premiere of 30 Rock. I have seen the pilot which is certainly better than any 30 minute comedy out there on network TV (Ahem, Two and a Half Craps, eye network). But even if tomorrow's show doesn't 100% strike your fancy, please tune in next week, when the show is supposed to be HILarious.

Lost, 10/4/06: How did The Others get DSL???

This week on the Lost premiere: Jack, Kate, and Sawyer (for love triangle purposes, I'll just call them Skack) are in Otherville, which turns out to be a suburban utopia complete with muffins, book clubs, and high-speed access to Australian autopsy reports. Unfortunately for our protagonists, they're being held in the rough part of town.

Jack's in a 24-esque prison cell, where a cute blond named Juliet quickly breaks him like the pansy with daddy issues that he is.

Sawyer's in a bear cage, where he mostly glowers, quips, and figures out how to get a fish biscuit, but much more slowly than the bears did. Heh. Sawyer's dumber than your average bear.

Kate gets to don a dress and handcuffs for a beachside breakfast with The Artist Formerly Known as Henry Gale. TAFKAHG tells her to enjoy, because the next two weeks are going to be rough. Oh, shit. Two weeks in Lost time is like a full television season in the real world.

The rest of the Losties are nowhere to be found. We still have no idea whether Locke, Desmond, and Mr. Eko are alive after the hatch-splosion. Wait, that's not true. The actors' names are all in the opening credits. Mystery solved. However, I wish episode 3.1 could have tackled at least one question instead of dwelling, once again, on a Jack flashback (Jackback?) in which our hero is so put upon by the world. Sorry, when I consider the tragic backstories of other characters (Locke's dad stole his KIDNEY??? Sawyer witnessed his parents' murder-suicide???) I can't drudge up much sympathy for a self-rigteous jackass with such garden-variety problems as a drunk dad and a cheatin' wife.

Now, I'm not one to complain about Lost's deliberate pacing and cornucopia of mysteries. I enjoy its multilayered WTF-ness; it's what keeps me coming back. However, I agree with one Television Without Pity poster who said that the trouble with the show is that when it does answer questions, it only addresses the whats, never the whys or hows. For example:

Q: What cause the plane to crash?
A: An electromagnetic pulse emitted by the hatch.
Q: But... why? Why did the hatch have world-destroying electromagnetism that was diffused by pushing a button? Who made it so? Now that the hatch exploded, where does the EMP go? How will that effect the island?
A: Shut the fuck up.

My advice to the Lost team: Get crackin' on those whys soon, or you'll soon end up with a X-Files Season 11 mess. Also: Sawyer looks warm in that cage in the middle of the jungle. Maybe he should take his clothes off.

Hugh "BFF of Jeanette and Alanna" Laurie to Host SNL

Sure, we've been bashing SN-Smell and NBC lately, but this news offers a glimmer of hope for the anorexic Saturday Night Live. Unlike most hosts, Hugh Laurie actually has a background in comedy and could theoretically write some of his own material. Is it foolish to hope we'll be spared the typical audience plant, "Oh hey, I didn't know you were British!" opening monologue antics in favour of an actual, you know, monologue? If not, Hugh's one host who I wouldn't mind to see singing instead of making jokes about car accidents (cough*DaneCook*cough). If you haven't ever experienced Hugh Laurie's lyrical stylings, check out season 1, episode two of Jeeves and Wooster. Hidy hidy hidy ho, indeed.

In any case, this calls for a blogtastic countdown to Hugh's SNL gig, which Jeanette and I will be DVR'ing because we're throwing a Halloween party that night. Yes, we're actually forgoing real time television. No, you're not invited.

So check back here throughout the month for Hugh-themed countdowns to October 28, AKA The Day Which Shall Live in Infamy. We'll post our favorite House bon mots, photographs, and whatever else we feel like when we're too lazy to come up with an actual update.

COUNTDOWN STATUS: 24 DAYS UNTIL HUGH LAURIE HOSTS SNL

Weekend Round Up, Degrassi, SN-SMELL, Saved by the Smell, Discovery Smell-las (which one doesn’t really work…)

The new season of Degrassi: the Next Generation started Friday night. Let me say it is a good thing that our neighbors to the north are liberal, because when I get picked up for seducing a minor (AKA, Daniel "biceps" Clark), I want to be tried in a bleeding heart court of love. As Dr. Gregory House said, “You can’t stop our love!”


Pictures of Daniel on the Internet are scarse, but that’s probably for the better. I don’t want to end up being interviewed by Dateline’s Chris Hansen with my pants off.

Anyway, I give the premiere four out of five chunks of Gouda, because it was cheese-tastic!

I want nothing more than to love Saturday Night Live. Ever since I was a four-year-old, flat-boobed tuber, watching Nick at Nite, asking my mother what consumption of mass quantities meant, the humor has reached out to me like no actual friends or emotional bonds could.

By the end of the 31st, 2005-2006 season, though, some would argue that it was as if Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker, himself had jumped on top of the show, leaving a pile of kindling (and the remains of Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz, and Finesse Mitchell’s careers) to be swept up by Jane, the Studio 8H cleaning lady.

I have spent too many early Sunday mornings drunkenly quoting Amy Poehler’s Caitlin to be completely down on season 31, or the show in general. But when you have a weekend update team that is supposed to have more chemistry than Fred and Ginger, and they only get mild chuckles, Lorne Michael’s pulse has probably increased from ‘Canadian’ to ‘concerned.’ I’m not giving up yet, and stay tuned here as I will let you know how the new, streamlined cast is doing…


I’m certainly not breaking the news to blog land that Dustin Diamond, aka Screech of Saved by the Bell fame has had a sex tape leaked. But I am breaking social mores when I out myself and fellow boob tuber Alanna for following his lead. We spent our entire Saturday night giving each other fake dirty sanchezes from unknowing providers of…special moustache paint. Too much?


DVR is waiting for me to watch the first installment of the Discovery Channel’s new series Discovery Atlas. The Discovery Channel and I have had a tight relationship ever since they showed me my first naked boobies that weren’t my mom’s. Now they continue to fascinate me with this installment that will spend two hours simply profiling a different country this week. If you saw it, let me know what you thought of last night’s premiere on China (read: let me know which dog recipe looked best). Italy is featured next Sunday at 9 PM!