Grid Effect

My apologies for not posting yesterday, but I woke up feeling like I got my ass kicked in a bar last night while shit-faced. My back was preventing me from walking, my head from thinking and my stomach from eating; long story short, it was a tremendously long day for getting out of bed at 1PM. I guess it makes sense given that we referred to a new links post on Tuesday as “long overdue“, given that we were too incapacitated to actually post them yesterday morning. I feel like Walter White minus the cancer and double life, which is to say flat out miserable.

If you weren’t angry enough at the world for already being a smoldering ball of chemicals on a fast track to hell, then I have some bad news for your insufferable perky optimism: Lauren Conrad’s bullshit “novel” could end up being optioned for a film. Which struck me as strange because isn’t her book based on her life, which has already been made into a TV show? Christ, I hope I never have any daughters if this is the consumerism that drives the demographic.

In attractive woman that I still respect news, Gabrielle Union has joined the cast of the upcoming NBC series FlashForward. She’ll play a lawyer with a romantic interest on a show that turns two words into one…On second thought I take back my initial assessment, but she’s still insanely beautiful so it doesn’t really matter.

Here’s a concise synopsis of the AMC party that supposedly took place after they premiered the first episode of Mad Men’s third season. I have to tell you, if I was to attend any circle-jerk Hollywood event it would probably be this one. From what it sounds like everyone is rather amiable and these are without a doubt the two best projects in television or film. Yes, film industry, you’ve officially been surpassed by television in regards to inspiring, original content.

This seems like a good time for me to do my weekly pimping of Breaking Bad, and point you in the direction of the mini-episodes they put out in after their strike shortened first season and before the kick in the balls second. For the most part they’re pretty mundane and aren’t necessarily representative of the greatness of the series, but the mini-episode entitled, “The Break In”, is a real knee-slapper and is emblematic of the dark humor displayed on the series.

Here’s some snippets of the Joan Rivers Roast set to premiere August 9th on Comedy Central (where else has a roast aired in the past 10 years?). I always tune into these for Greg Giraldo, because his career is so ridiculously overlooked that you can always bank on him to be at these things, and he always kills. As does most everyone else given the chance at the podium. And while I don’t tend to like Joan Rivers (entirely too superficial work detail for me to take seriously, I also resent anyone being a harbinger of fashion), she can give as good as she gets.

Speaking of Joan Rivers, she, much like about, say, 50% of the country, takes the legitimacy of Jay Leno’s career quite personally. I don’t understand why this guy is so hard for everyone who hates him to ignore, but it is proving quite daunting. And the fact that Conan is now losing to Letterman on a regular basis seems to only fuel the flames of resentment. We never enjoyed Leno’s comedy either, but it certainly isn’t keeping us up at night.

ESPN’s upcoming documentary series, 30 for 30, has added more directors to its arsenal. I can’t emphasize enough how much I’m looking forward to this. For the uninitiated, under the suggestion from Bill Simmons, ESPN grabbed (or is currently grabbing) 30 filmmakers to put together a small documentary about a pivotal (sometimes obscure, sometimes not) sporting event since their inception in 1979 (that’d be thirty years). You can see the full list of what they have completed so far, personally we’re looking forward to “The Trial of Allen Iverson”, if for no other reason that it feels like we might get a Zapruder-like film out of it.

In its ongoing quest to make mincemeat out of supposed “new king of pay cable ever since Sopranos went off the air” Showtime, Diane Keaton has signed onto her own HBO comedy about a feminist icon. Because we all know how humorous feminists tend to be. I kid, of course, because while this probably isn’t something I’ll watch more than once (I even watched the first three episodes of Carinvale, so I’m probably too easy when it comes to HBO), there is definitely an untapped market for it. And in all likelihood HBO will be true to form, and knock this out of the fucking park.

As you probably heard, Ben Silverman has finally been ousted as NBC’s Entertainment President. This was probably long overdue. Even though I personally watch(ed) more on NBC than any other network for the past five years and counting, the ratings are in the tank, they have way too many series’ open to horrendous reviews and even worse Nielsen’s, not to mention all the desperate attempts at remakes. Sorry, man, but The Office, 30 Rock and FNL will only carry an entire broadcast network so far.

And finally, below is the trailer for the upcoming season of Dexter. We’ve made our feelings quite clear about this show, and the trailer contains much of what we find redundant about it, but I’ll be damned if this series isn’t tailer-made to produce an anticipatory montage, which is probably why they were able to get over three minutes out of it. Most TV spots run roughly under a minute, but most series’ aren’t about a charming sociopath who brutally disembowels and murders other serial killers, because that’s just how he was raised.

Back tomorrow with more links, I imagine.