Retrotainment 2: Clone High

Retro-tainment: Media You Might Have Missed – Vol 2: Clone High

Can you imagine if we were somehow able to extract DNA remnants of all the great figures in history. And then, from those specimens, we would create genetic duplicates of these great and infamous men and women in history. Then imagine when those clones enter their awkward teenage years: the angst, the uncertainty and emerging sexuality playing against their famous personalities. Bill Lawrence (creator of Scrubs and Spin City did, only he (Along with co-creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) decided to make it a cartoon and play it for laughs.

Clone High imagines a world where Abe Lincoln is a neurotic sociopath with an unspoken crush on Cleopatra and JFK is the popular football team captain with 2 gay foster parents. It is a place where Winston Churchill can be a thugged-out B-boy and Ghandi can be an indulgent, sex-obsessed hedonist.

Homeboys in Outer Space

Opening from an actual mid-90′s UPN sitcom

I love blacksploitation almost as much as I love sci-fi.
Seriously, kids. Even I was offended.

Black-Off

 

Frustrating as they may be, there are some questions that every human being struggles with. We struggle to find satisfactory answers to queries like: “Who am I?”, “Why are we here?” and “Why do Caucasian office workers in business attire seem so funny to people when they act gangsta?”

The Writer’s Strike: An insider’s view

In case you haven’t been watching the late-night rerurns for the last week, we’re in the middle of a TV writer’s strike. It’s come to my attention that many are not entirely clear on what the issue(s) is/are in this strike. This isn’t surprising; the last time the Guild that represents TV/Film writers struck was nearly 20 years ago. Also, there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding both sides. For instance many people believe that professional screenwriters make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Truthfully, there are a few in that league, but they’ve usually been at it for decades and have a few Seinfelds and X-Files-es under their belts. They’re the rainmakers, the hit-doctors. Most writers make within the range of what a plumber or mechanic might make, except their employment situations are far more transient and far less secure. When you factor in the necessity of living in 2 of the most expensive areas of the country (New York and Los Angeles), it can be pretty challenging to keep food on the table in such a profession. Similarly, we think of producers as being fat cats in $3,000 suits who rule their productions with iron, well-manicured fists. In reality, they are often significantly beholden to other interests: networks, sponsors and investors, who all exact their pound of flesh and sap a little more control away from the prod’s.

Royalties, residuals, format convergence…does anyone outside a 818 or 212 area code know what these are? In a Ration Reality Exclusive, a Hollywood professional involved with a major network production has graciously taken a minute to explain the situation for our readers with the insight only a true insider can have. He has asked that his name be withheld.

The West Virginia Chronicles, vol. 2: Bad Rap/The Gilligan Connection

West Virginia is the butt of many a redneck joke. Personally, I don’t see it. Those stereotypes are based on dispatches to newspapers in New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland a century ago when field reporters were covering labor skirmishes and family feuds for sensational headlines. Besides, for my money, people in Maine and Upstate New York know a whole hell of a lot more about being redneck than Mountaineers do.

Still, West Virginia’s reputation for being weird is not fully unwarranted. Astronomically fucked-up things happen there regularly–things that sound like Onion stories that were somehow picked up by legitimate news agencies that weren’t paying attention. For instance, Gilligan used to live in WV–or, Bob Denver, the guy we know as Gilligan, anyway. Yes, after the wild success of Gilligan’s Island and Dobie Gillis, he settled near Princeton and started a computer business and radio station.

Now here’s where the weirdness comes in. A few years back, Gilligan went sideways of the law.

It’s Always Sunny on TV

 

I hate listening to people’s dreams. It is like flipping through a stack of photographs.
If I’m not in any of them and nobody is having sex, I just don’t care. – Dennis Reynolds, IASIP

Here at ЯR, we spend alot of time bitching about things that piss us off. We do like some things. Like television. We fucking love television. And we love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I love the Danza

Tony Danza. Lol’d.  Loldanza 4eva!1

y hello thar – I’m Tony Danza

**I move away from the mic – cuz I’m Tony Danza 

Would anyone like any toast

“I think, in all probability, Wilma Flinstone is the most desirable woman who ever lived”

Diff’rent Stokes up in Crack Smoke

A contribution by our good friend, Ellen. Submit your work here.
-bagel

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Do you remember the 1980s? Have you seen the commercials? Cashcow or Cashcall.com. Yes, that’s the one…and YOU thought Gary Coleman (the man born with a congenital kidney disease causing nephritis; a disease House, MD specialized in) was dead?

He tried: “In 1993 Coleman appeared on the television talk show Geraldo and admitted he had twice attempted suicide with sleeping pills. Coleman went into semi-retirement and moved to Colorado and then to Arizona, where he was trained as a security guard, a job he often worked when unable to find other employment.” 

Television Wrapup for 6/17: HBO’s ‘Entourage’ and ‘Flight of the Conchords’

 

 Entourage, Season 4 Premiere

Tonight was the first episode of season 4 for HBO’s Entourage.  Season 3 ended only about 3, maybe 4 weeks ago,  so I’m not quite sure what happened with the off-season, but I’m not complaining.

Anyway, when last we left the boys, Vince and Eric had just finished raising the money for Medellin.  Billy Walsh was onboard as director.  Ari was skeptical, Nick Rubenstein (with the money) was pissed, but he signed the check anyway. 

 Well, we come back and … it’s a little different.  They’re getting ready to film the movie, and this episode was done in the style of a behind-the-scenes documentary, the sort of bullshit thing that’s a special feature on a DVD but you never watch it.  Some little British poof narrates, but we never see him.  It was a good idea, but the execution of it was off – they used it for throwaway gags, and to allow them to squeeze 3 or 4 months into one half hour.

 This episode covered way too much territory.  At the start of the show, they’re just arriving in Colombia, still casting locals in the role.  By the end of the show, they’ve wrapped principal photography on the movie and they’re ready to head home and edit.  There were too many separate storylines that all had to come together in only a half-hour, and the results seemed just entirely too pat.  This should have been at least an hour of television, maybe an hour and a half.