Anthony Bourdain in Plane Crash

Former chef turned TV host Anthony Bourdain has been involved in a horrific plane crash that has left fans wondering whether he will emerge from plastic surgery looking younger. See shocking footage below, taken in the Ozarks.

For more on Bourdain, click on his name (link) above. (BTW, this vid was inspired by his recent comment on Parts Unknown, “I’m feeling all my years.” He has a wicked sense of humor, so this is homage.)

Star Trek Into Darkness Attacked

J.J. is at it again. His Mission Impossible 3 was a good film (and his big screen career took fire when Tom Cruise picked him for that), but Super 8 was a flashy, ridiculous waste of good sets, on par with the great SET WASTE that is the second half of the movie Resident Evil. When was it that Abrams got lost? Maybe it was writing LOST TV scripts. (Explain the polar bears again? Left over from a Coke commercial?) Abrams’ series Alias was addictive, until they brought in vampires. Yes, vampires…in a spy drama. His co-writer Roberto Orci did the nutty Cowboys & Aliens, and is doing The Amazing Spider Man 2, while Abrams is slated to direct the next (and last) Star Wars movie. (God help us all.) This is the same guy who brings you Revolution, that dystopian epic which Newsday describes as having “an overwhelming been-there-seen-that feel,” and the Miami Herald describes as “a cowboys and Indians story for the end times.” No imagination, that’s J.J.’s problem. And Hollywood’s. Eat, fart, sleep, repeat. This is why we have sixty crime dramas on TV, all with the same plots and dopey cliché characters. Wrap all of them up together and they don’t equal a single really good film, like No Country for Old Men. On Star Trek Into Darkness, Slashfilm’s Germain Lussier says “it’s a fun but frivolous sequel.” And he likes the film. Other critics are considerably more dystopian. Silas Lesnick of ComingSoon says it’s a “nonsensical mess” and a “beat for beat remake of Star Trek Nemesis.” Ain’t It Cool calls it “misguided” and full of “shameless pilfering.” But enough about having no original story, what about those special effects? The Hollywood Reporter calls them “pale, thin, bleached out” and that it “takes a few steps back.” Sounds like solid advice: to take a few steps back. Maybe to Read a book. Otherwise we might be blown away at the box office like this…

Shawty Lo: Oprah’s Next Chapter?

Kim Kardashian is having Kanye’s baby, but doesn’t want to get married. Does that mean rapper West should be reading Oprah’s latest chapter…or 50 Shades of Grey? Shawty Lo has 11 children by 10 different women, and brags about it. He started D4L records, which stands for Dicks 4 Life. He has a deal with 50 Cent. One of his songs is “Break Ya Ankles” from the Ball Street Journal. At the 2008 Dirty Awards where he performed, the crowd had to be pepper-sprayed after a feud erupted. He tells his critics to “hate all you want.” Our question: what’s to love?
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Quotes from 50 Shades of Grey:
* “Come, I want to show you my playroom. Now, let’s travel back in time to the Spanish Inquisition.”
* “It’s taking all my self control not to f$#% you on the hood of this car, just to show you that you’re mine, and if I want to buy you a f%@#ing car, I’ll buy you a f%@#ing car!”
* “Men aren’t really complicated, Ana. They’re simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. The more you submit, the greater my joy. It’s a very simple equation.”
* “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Now, don’t get your panties in a twist…and give me back mine!”
* “He’s lost somewhere in his darkness. His eyes are wide and bleak and tortured. I can soothe him. I’m Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he’s the serpent, but I cannot resist.”
* “My inner goddess is jumping up and down, clapping her hands like a five year old. It’s doing the dance of the seven veils!”
* “The physical pain from the bite of his belt is nothing compared to this devastation. Even a pain in the ass needs someone to care about them.”
* “Christian Grey, CEO Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. Holy shit. What does that mean? Does he white-slave small children to some godforsaken part of the planet in his helicopter? In spite of all he’s said and what he hasn’t said, I don’t think I have ever been so happy. Inside my head I’m doing graceful cartwheels.”
* “I’m rich…what can I say?”

Shocking Seth MacFarlane Interview

Interviews from a Parallel Universe
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NEN: “Hi, Seth. Congrats on being chosen to host the Oscars. Can you tell us, what kind of cars are os cars, anyway?”
SETH: “Obviously superior to those driven by losers.”
NEN: “What kind of car do you drive?”
SETH: “I don’t drive.”
NEN: “Do you…dress yourself?”
SETH: “Nope. Someone feeds me too, and not just grapes.”
NEN: “You’re the most successful comedy writer of all time. How does that feel?”
SETH: “Like that antelope in the commercial with the night vision goggles. The press can’t bring me down and feast on my carcass anymore.”
NEN: “Wow. That must be a great feeling.”
SETH: “It is, but not as good as being fed filet mignon by supermodels in the jacuzzi behind my sixty million dollar beach house.”
NEN: “To what do you attribute your success?”
SETH: “Making Stewie’s head the shape of a football, and imbuing Peter with the mentality of your typical NASCAR fan.”
NEN: “That’s a big audience you’re pandering to.”
SETH: “You should try it, you might not be eating Beenie-Wienies with a plastic fork, alone, by candlelight.”
NEN: “I guess I do favor Brian’s perspective too much.”
SETH: “Brian’s a good egg, but he gets broken a lot. Our society favors those who break things, including laws, motel rooms, marriages, and necks. It’s always fun to blow things up, not so much fun to watch things being built. The trick is to take any idea or philosophy and run with it head on, full speed, until you hit a brick wall. Then you take a two ton drill to the wall and see if you can punch through.”
NEN: “To point out the flaws in the philosophy?”
SETH: “No, just to see what’s on the other side.”
NEN: “Humm. And what is that, usually?”
SETH: “Another wall.”
NEN: “Where are you going with this?”
SETH: “Nowhere. The goal is to just entertain people so they’ll sit through the commercials for more, and also to express my contempt for certain actors and cultural rituals and political stances.”
NEN: “Kinda like what we’re doing? So we’re not on your hit list?”
SETH: (after a pause) “My bodyguard just asked me, before I answer, to allow him to hit you a few times, just for practice. Would you mind?”
NEN: “May I have your autograph?”
SETH: “That’s better. You’re learning!”
NEN: “One final question. Do you believe in extraterrestrial UFOs or Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster?”
SETH: “Doesn’t matter what I believe, it doesn’t affect the truth one way or the other.”
NEN: “Good answer!”
SETH: “Besides, I lose answering a question like that, either way. Ratings. Now, if you ask Peter, he’s personally met Bigfoot and Nessie at Area 51, and shared a jacuzzi on a UFO with several Entertainment Tonight babes.”
NEN: “Which ones?”
SETH: “Sorry, that’s classified.”

Philosophy of Television Announced

In his book “The Umpire Has No Clothes,” author Walter Witty has given a name to the philosophy underlying the medium of television. FRAGNEWTONISM is the philosophy (optical illusion) that the more things remain the same, the more they “change.” It could be said that this is also the philosophy of Congress, albeit few there would admit it. Says Witty, “This philosophy lends to the illusion of ego the status of hero. While making a religion of sport in all areas of human interaction, including politics, class, race, and sex, it revels in keeping scores and tracking them on all manner of electronic devices while wearing the ceremonial robes (jerseys, uniforms) of high priests (players, pollsters, divas, rappers) and while ritually eating sacrificial lambs, steers, and chickens (while pigging out on the couch.) It erects monuments to ignorance (game show sets, studios, stadiums), and displays its relics and artifacts as though they are sacred icons worthy of worship, often shown on QVC or in ads that repeat often enough to hypnotize. Others, not directly advertised for sale on TV, include rosaries, ‘smart’ bombs, IEDs, hockey pucks, cigarettes, and TRUMP–THE GAME, which includes money with The Donald’s image on it, and playing cards that say things like ‘If You Own Both the Sports Complex and the Casino, Collect Profits of $90 Million,’ and advises ‘Don’t let anyone else accumulate too many Trump cards!’ or ‘The player with the most money wins!’ and finally, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose, but whether you win!’ Alas, he doesn’t say what you win, other than perhaps imagining being rich enough to have your own board game with a large photo showing a full head of hair. Now let us examine a bored game once played by Easter Islanders called STATUE BUILDER. Fearing and despising outsiders, as all US vs. THEM fans do, they erected goblins to frighten off intruders. Yet the intruders never came, and so what killed them was their own obsession with the game. All over the island are found statues in transit, or still being quarried, some so massive that, by the end, they could not be moved because the players had already used up all the trees (Trump cards) to transport those previously moved. With nothing left but rocks to eat, they then ate themselves out of existence in cannibalism. ‘Monumental’ efforts of group-approved and peer-sanctioned play produced an entire gaunt-faced defensive team carved from the granite of acceptable fashion, every statue with the same earnest face, and attended by the shouting ‘cheerleaders’ of conformity. Even as they began to starve for chicken wings or lizard poppers, they continued to play by the same rules, excluding creative thought by cultural edict, (or rather ‘statute.’) Not knowing that progress is made by ideas, the umpires kept turning the same stone cards over, inscribed with superstitious beliefs kept today in ‘rule books’ and ‘record books.’ So all it took was one disaster for which they couldn’t imagine a solution, and then they went the way of the dodo bird. Kinda like not having a show picked up for next season.”

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.  –Rod Serling