Wordplay

Prodigiously
Horrifically
Awesomely
Funny
Apocalyptically
Biblically
Epically
Unbelievably
Heart-stoppingly
Eye-gougingly
Ear-explodingly
Painfully

These are all adverbs to modify the word "bad" in the question: "How bad was tonight's musical episode of Grey's Anatomy?"

The Hammer Definitely Needs

• Random Pop Culture:
• Matt is becoming one of the great heroes in Survivor history and he's only on for five minutes an episode! I can not wait for next week's episode to see how crazy it gets after he swats Sarita aside like the mentally-weak-reminds-everyone-of-a-bad-Kristen-Wiig-character player that she is.
• Traffic Light has really come into its own as a very funny show, but they had to use an "It's complicated" Facebook relationship status joke? I actually spoke the punchline out loud before they said it.
• Started watching The League, which is kind of like a dirtier and funnier Traffic Light. I have some issues with the constant continuity errors around the fantasy football, though, at least early in the first season.
• Unsurprisingly, Lights Out will not be back for a second season, but that doesn't take away from what is airing. The finale should be phenomenal.
• Opening Day:
• It may be 35 degrees and raining outside, but tomorrow is Opening Day! Why they chose to do it on a Thursday is beyond me, but I'm excited! Some quick predictions.
• Division winners: Boston, Minnesota, Texas, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, San Francisco
• Wild cards: Yankees, Colorado
• Sleepers: Colorado, Oakland
• MVPs: Alex Rodriguez, Joey Votto
• Cy Young: Felix Hernandez, Roy Halladay
• World Series: Phillies over Red Sox
• Random Music Video:
• One heck of a day for birthdays today! You have Celine Dion, Norah Jones, and Eric Clapton. Oh, and this guy.

We Are The World

The video from last night has me in a cartoon mode, but we live in more and more of a global society each day. It's just not fair to any international readers we may have to go crazy about cartoons I watched when I was growing up (or, sure, after I was grown up, at least physically). So, here are some non-English-speaker-friendly versions of some of my favorites.

People Just Liked It Better That Way

• The Monologue:
• A cobra has disappeared in the Bronx Zoo. Duke and Scarlett have been detached to investigate.
• An Egyptian cobra has gone missing from the reptile house in the Bronx Zoo. With its departure, the Egyptian cobra military is now in charge of the exhibit.
• A snake went missing in the Bronx. Upon hearing there was a living thing in the Bronx that they hadn't tried out, the Yankees asked him to come in for a shot at being their fifth starter.
• Random Pop Culture:
• Nurse Jackie and United States of Tara return tonight. Nurse Jackie is in danger of going the Weeds route with me. It has three great performances, but the show itself is pretty boring because nobody ever learns anything or does anything different. On the other hand, Tara is constantly pushing itself (and also has great performances). I only watched Tara tonight and it was as good as it was at the end of its last season.
• Luke of The Amazing Race may be my least favorite contestant ever. He is whiny to a level that Snooki finds annoying. Oh, I'm so sorry that you have it tough on a freaking game show where you get to travel around the world for free. I'm sure the 99.9% of applicants that don't get picked for the show really feel for you.
• Don't look now, but House just literally bored someone to death. If only they had been more self-aware, they would have been able to diagnose the guy.
• Am I crazy to think that Butler has the best shot of winning this thing? Really don't want to jinx them, though.
• Random Music Video:
• 81 years ago today, the Turkish Postal Services Law was enacted and required that all foreign governments stop calling the country's largest city, the third largest city proper in the world, by its old name. But, why did Constantinople get the works? Let's see if we can find out!

Worst of the Worst: #83, Doogal

America is so uncouth. Compared to our finer cousins on "The Continent" we are just a bunch of drawling hicks, like a less-gentlemanly Quincey Morris. Take, for instance, the French and British kids show, The Magic Roundabout. It's a show from the late '60s -- the British version was written and narrated by Emma Thompson's father -- shot in stop motion animation about a magical town with a magical carousel in its center and the adventures of a goofy but loyal dog, Dougal, who lived there. Years later, the French and then British made a computer-animated movie about the cartoon and the movie did quite well.

And here come those crappy Americans. Nobody here knows anything about the show, but the movie did well in the UK, so producers brought it over and redubbed it with mostly American actors. They carried over Kylie Minogue, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen, but, for instance, replaced Bill Nighy with Jimmy Fallon and Ray Winstone with Bill Hader. Good omen, right? Plus, because nobody here knew the story, they were able to stray from the earnestness of the kids show (yay!) and make it a bunch of inappropriate pop culture references and fart sound effects. A kids movie where every line is taken from Pulp Fiction? Yes, please!

It's this dialogue and this lack of care about the source material that dooms the movie. You don't want to blame the voice talent like Whoopi Goldberg and William H. Macy and John Stewart, but they seem to reading the lines in a total vacuum. There is no emotional connection and it is obvious. You end up with a bunch of stuff happening that you can't possibly care about and that makes this boring. Really, really boring. Had to rewind a few times because I drifted into a daydream and missed a plot point. Easily the worst kids movie I've ever seen and it holds the record for lowest-grossing computer animated film ever (I learned in reading about that that the average computer animated kids movie makes around $130 million!). I imagine some kids might like a dog that eats lots of candy or a snail and cow being in love with each other, but if my kid is going to like weird stuff, it's going to be at least well-made. I've never seen an episode of the Steve Carrell The Office because I'm too much of a snob about the British one. I'm passing that snobbery on, no matter how American my kid is.

Dook

You ever seen a Duke team look so bad in the tournament? The only thing that came to mind was 2003 in Redick's freshman year when they lost to the Heinrich-Collison Kansas team and JJ kept missing and missing, but it turns out they lost by 4. They just got run off the floor tonight. I pumped up Derrick Williams and now you know why.

Dancing

Hard to say that, even with the upsets, there were many surprises in the first two rounds of the tournament.

• You can't really count Marquette, Butler, or Florida State as Cinderella teams. Two are from major conferences and the other is one of the top programs in the country.
• The Big East choked, especially Pittsburgh and Notre Dame. What's new?
• Ditto Purdue and Texas.
• BYU is much better than many people (not me) thought, but it's not like they haven't been top ten all year.

Yes, it's weird that Kansas is in a regional with three double-digit seeds and, yes, a lot of the weekend's games came down to the last seconds. But surprising? I have all of my Final Four left. The ones who don't are the ones who believed in Pitt, Notre Dame, and Syracuse. What's surprising to me is that people would do that.