Grid Effect

We’re at work today and not entirely certain if we were supposed to come in. You could hear a pin drop it’s so desolate in here so we’re assuming we could have stayed home. But no matter, when we have a blog to entertain ourselves with.

Between the holiday season and the strike there has been jack shit on television as of late. On Friday night we got one more Wire special. This one entitled “The Last Word�?, a sort of overview of what the fifth season themes will be. It was entertaining and insightful without being filled with spoilers, so that was a quality half hour. Other than that, we’ve taken to rewatching the first season of Mad Men and haranguing those who don’t watch it or The Wire (we get very elitist and self-righteous when we’ve been drinking).

So, yeah, it’ll be similar to this until FNL and Nip Tuck return, and even then we’re struggling for material because we’re not really into either of those series’ anymore. Otherwise we’ve got The Wire on January 6th and a strike with no end date in sight. TBS does have their annual 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story on the horizon here so things could be worse, it could be a days worth of Deck The Halls. See, there’s always a silver lining.

Onto the short but sweet links…

The WGA fully intends to picket the Golden Globes, which will effectively kill the buzzes of everyone in attendance. Nothing like being the scourge of Hollywood I would imagine. Something tells me that if you fuck with George Clooney while he’s getting his drink on, labor strike or no labor strike, there will be repercussions. We cannot even fathom what Sean Penn is capable of (we really liked both Michael Clayton and Into The Wild, by the way).

Dwight Schrute, or Rainn Wilson, or, if you’d like, the store clerk from Juno (tremendously overrated, by the way) will be following in Sarah Silverman’s footsteps to host the Independent Spirit Awards. If it weren’t for their quirky, untraditional choice of hosts, it’s probably the most obscure show during awards season.

Letterman’s sought after exemption was turned down by whichever governing body handles such matters. Not that we’re surprised, it seemed like an odd scheme to actually be able to pull off, especially in the public eye. With labor strikes I doubt its common for someone to be able to work because they were popular.

A rare acknowledgment of American Idol’s existence: Ruben Studdard was recently dropped by his record label. Despite winning the contrived game show, his sales have been poor at best and downright inexcusable at worst. This doesn’t come as a surprise, either, we’re pretty convinced you have to be female to experience any commercial success after Idol. And if there is an exception to this, please let us know.

We’re sensing a trend here.

In the grand tradition of cable channel Christmas marathons for syndicated series’, here’s a comprehensive list of virtually all of them, should you find yourself with nothing to do on the holidays. I, for one, see nothing abnormal or depressing about watching endless hours of Flip That House on TLC.

Denise from Survivor has donated Mark Burnett’s money to an AIDS charity. Regardless of what anyone says, I think this totally redeems her, and I’m not being sarcastic in any way. We’d be happy to donate someone else’s money to needy charities so multi-millionaires can write off the donation.

And finally, we know all of you were concerned about this, but David Chase has won his lawsuit. Yes apparently the courts decided that introducing a series creator to people doesn’t qualify one to receive co-creation credits. Shocking, I know. Anyway, at least now we can all sleep at night.

That’s it until the 26th, merry Christmas (for those easily offended) and happy holidays (also for those easily offended).