New Trio of Comedy

Listening to one of the multitude of podcasts that Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington it is hard one to get the sense that these three radio personalities are genuine friends. Ricky and Stephen are the popular creators of The Office, the UK version, the slightly less funny than the NBC version made famous by Steve Carell et. al but awkwardly brilliant nonetheless. It was the first introduction of Ricky Gervais the actor to an audience. His BAFTA, Golden Globe and Emmy winning performaces were surprising. Not the standard comedian of joke and punchline, he has just finished his fourth stand up tour, this one entitled Science. With stories about Noah's Ark, gift giving and fat people this is a very niche stand up special. I would recommend RIcky Gervais: Out of England, which is has his most versatile material.
Ricky and Steven were popular after doing XM Radio in Britain. It was there that they met their producer Karl Pilkington. After realizing that the funniest interchanges happened after asking Karl his opinion, they brought him in front of the mic, and a star was born, albeit, one with a head like a f*#kin orange. I suggest listening to the Ricky Gervais Guide To series. This is a very good series of podcasts, about an hour long that has the trio chatting about their takes on the future, medicine, natural history, politics and philosopy amoung other such subjects. These are conversations in the minimalist sense, basically they ask Karl something and rebut with comments about his ludicrous answers. One can bet money that Ricky and Steven have the opposite reasonings for or against the topics at hand. It is also delightful to get an insight into Karl's personal life. One memorable interchange between the three occurred wen Karl was describing what he did last week, saying he had to go to the cobbler and then he went to the toffee shop. This brought about Ricky's infectious laugh straight from his gut, actually even deeper, from his legs, and it works its way up to the surface in a high pitched hyena-esque mating call, a laugh only Karl can bring out. Its fun because it gives us non-Brits an insight into the goings on of normal Londoners. They busted the notion that these uniquely British-isms of the toffee shop and cobblers have gone instinct. Stephen quips whether Karl visited the blacksmith and the candlestickmaker next.

Last year, HBO animated the podcasts, giving them a new life for those unfamiliar.

The animations allow us to see what Karl sees when he gives his ridiculous explanations and news. One staple news portion of the podcast is Monkey News. Basically, Karl explains some fantastical bit of news he read recently and the punchline is that it was the monkey who saved a woman from a fire, or it was a monkey that was steering a rocket in outerspace. Seriously, head like a fuckin orange.

Blake Griffin

My vote for Rookie of the Year





Born on Marh 16, 1989, Blake Griffin is the most intense and talented 21 year old I’ve seen in a long time. Griffin was November’s Rookie of the month with the Clippers, the team that drafted him first overall in last year’s draft. Griffin played his college ball in Oklahoma for the Sooners winning many accolades during his two years there. The most impressive award he won was the Naismith Award for outstanding collegiate basketball player in 2009. At 6’10” and 250 lbs Griffin is a classic power forward. He has explosiveness that is unheard of when he has the ball in the paint. He can handle the ball and distribute well for a big man. He can run the floor, set up in the post and jam the ball home; and he can do this consistently for 48 minutes. He is very comparable to LeBron James. Their styles of power and intensity at the net is unrivalled. Both players had their high school careers scrutinized and inspected, the only difference was that Griffin went on to play Collegiate ball and Bron-Bron went straigt to the NBA, winning Rookie of the Year. The race for this year’s Rookie of the Year seems to be between Griffin and John Wall of the Washington Wizards who was drafted first overall this year. Wall is a point guard on a mediocre team but Griffin is the big dominant figure on a terrible team. It is because of Blake Griffin that fans are paying attention to the team from Los Angeles that aren’t named Lakers. Due to injury Griffin missed all of his debut season with the Clippers, but is now recovered and dominating the boards and the stat sheet. He is averaging a 20 point 10 reboun d perfrmance. His only drawback seems to be at the line, where he is Shaquille O’Neal-esque. After the jump is a highlight reel of Blake Griffin as prepared by the NBA. (watch in HD for full effect of this beast at work)

The Oscars have Buzzed

This is my review of all things Oscar. The winners, losers, and quirky moments. They were very different this year, and I don't know if that is a good thing or not.

Melissa Leo won the first award and gave the first hint that this year’s award’s ceremony was going to be different. After uttering “Fuck” during her acceptance speech and then having it brought up in others’ speeches, we see that the Oscar’s still maintains that class division that makes a genuine outburst something non-oscar.

This year was a three way dance to take home the most shiny bald men between The Social Network, Inception and The Kings Speech. In a bit of an upset, The King’s Speech won awards for Tom Hooper’s Directing, and David Siedler’s Screenplay. No knock to the King’s Speech, but what Christopher Nolan imagined and created for the screen was something we will not see again until the next Christopher Nolan movie. David Fincher’s directing should have taken the cake, there was a story being told here that in the wrong hands could have become a mockumentary about a book, but Fincher displaying his unique style and vision created a documentary about an entire generation. However, Aaron Sorkin did win for Adapted Screenplay, thanking Fincher and everyone else he could think of in a decidedly classy speech. Inception won most of the technical awards, not surprising, for a film that had to build constructs of the audience’s mind both figuratively and literally.

The other awards of the night such as the live action and animated shorts did what they set out to do, they gave light to pictures that would never enter the collective psyche of the average Oscar viewer. The montage of those films made me seek some of them out on the net, especially after the speech by NYU grad student, Luke Matheny for God of Love, brought some fresh attitudes to the hip-Oscars.

Speaking of which, your emcees for the night, did and did not disappoint. Anne Hathaway was her quirky beautiful self and the Franco was his brooding self. His brand of Apatow-esque awkward comedy did not land consistently with the audience, but i was dying watching the screen. it was somewhat paradoxical however, that Franco and Hathaway knew that they were here as a gimmick to bring in a new demographic, but they were still limited by the Oscar writing, which is as consistent as a M. Night Shamalyan movie.

Also, Christian Bale finally won an Oscar. Bale, the most overlooked actor in Hollywood for about a decade won for The Fighter, which had a good share of acting nominations. Natalie Portman and Colin Firth won for their respective roles in Black Swan and The Kings Speech. These were the most locked categories in years. Even the Franco knew he wasn’t gonna beat a stammering English King. Toy Story won Best Animated Feature, in a category that featured three nominees, something that has to change, since Despicable Me and Tangled, which was nominated for Best Original Song, were noticeably omitted. With Toy Story being nominated for Best Picture, it was only logical that it won the Best Animated Feature.

Other notables was Kirk Douglas (insert joke about age and death) doing an old vaudeville routine while presenting an award, which went on a bit too long. Nearing the end of show, Steven Spielberg presented the award for Best Picture and gave examples of the films that have won in the past and those that didn’t win and presented the idea that they were all winners, except the other eight movies not named The Social Network or The King’s Speech.