The News Today

• The Monologue:
• Elena Kagan will become the third sitting Jewish member of the Supreme Court. And you thought we ran Hollywood?
• According to the US Census, Jews made up 2.2% of the US population in 2008. That would mean there should be 0.198 Jewish justices. Maybe Scalia's grandmother intermarried? Eh, suck it, Affirmative Action!
• According to this article, BP has tried to stem the "Spill, Baby, Spill" by shooting golf balls and pieces of tire into the leak. Does that seem like a good idea? I mean, it sounds fun, but helpful to the environment?
• Random Pop Culture:
• The Amazing Race is generally such a fun show that I struggle with whether or not a season can really be bad. This season seemed weak, thanks to some really stupid teams and the inevitable comparison to one of the best ever Survivor seasons running at the same time. The producers removed all doubt from my mind last night with a super lame final episode. None of the challenges were difficult in any way and the margins between the teams came from a clever travel move and a travel difficulty. So the end results may have been surprising, but they were anti-climactic all the same.
• The Pacific is great TV, but it (maybe predictably) jumped over to "disturbing" in the sixth of its ten episodes. The first half of the hour turned into a battle scene reminiscent of the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, as Marines ran across an airfield and a bloody mess ensued. The show really is brilliant, but that was very hard to watch.
• In thinking about The Pacific, I was trying to determine the intensity scale. If The Hurt Locker is one extreme, what's the other? Blue's Clues? Sesame Street? Armageddon?
• Random Music Video:
• Today is Sid Vicious' birthday, but the biggest rock star in the world (I think, right?) turns 50 today:

Worst of the Worst: #71, College

In which we wonder whether the bigger tip-off that this movie will not be good is the originality of the title or the fact that Verne Troyer plays himself.

I still watch reruns of Saved by the Bell, but when I was younger I used to watch a lot of the live action kid/teen shows. I watched the crap on "TNBC" like California Dreams, Hang Time, and City Guys. I'd spend some time with "TGIF": Full House, Family Matters. Even earlier, I would come home from school and watch You Can't Do That on Television, Hey Dude, and maybe a little Kids Incorporated, on Nickelodeon. In time, I got older -- I didn't say matured -- and refined my taste as it pertains to tasteless adult comedies. I'm not referring to Curb Your Enthusiasm adult, I'm talking about things like Animal House, Anchorman, There's Something About Mary, and Superbad. I see the shows that the kids watch nowadays on Nickelodeon like Hannah Montana, That's So Raven, and Drake & Josh, and I've wondered how these kids tastes will move towards the profane. If College, starring Drake Bell from Drake & Josh, is any portent, I'm frightened for kids' intelligence.

There's a high school buddy movie. It deals with a trio of high school losers. One is a totally average guy who seems to be the leader. One is an overweight foul-mouthed gentleman who talks a big game but is horribly insecure. One is a skinny nerd who is the butt of the other two guys' jokes. The three buddies decide that they're going to let loose, get drunk or maybe high, meet loose women, and go somewhere where nobody knows them and they can escape their stereotypical mediocrity. Superbad, right? Shoot, maybe it's even Dazed and Confused. No, this is the plot of College, which came out in 2008. And people thought Superbad, which came out in 2007, was derivative.

And the comparisons end there. The totally average guy is played by the aforementioned Nickelodeon star, who was 22 when the movie was made and looks every day of 28. Even dropping the f-bomb, Bell plays the character with as much Jonas Brothers panache as he can muster. The overweight guy, as opposed to the quick-witted Jonas Hill, is so stupid and unlikeable that they may as well had one of the "O'Doyle Rules!" kids from Billy Madison in the role. The skinny nerd is played by Kevin Covais.

Wait. What? Kevin Covais. Yes, that Kevin Covais.

I could stop there, but why? Because the high school students look like they are in their mid-twenties, the college students have to look like they are approximately 42. There have to be multiple poop jokes, even more binge-drinking jokes, and main female characters that are written with no personality. Remember in Animal House when we saw the Delta guys prepare for the parade stunt at the end? Preparation is a waste of important story time! In College, they show the guys putting together a prank that would take days to prepare in no more than ten minutes. And they don't even wake any of the bad guys up! How cool is that?! And so on and so on with the poop and the vomit and the masturbation jokes and the homophobic jokes and the comic male nudity and the straight-out-of-Penthouse-Forum sex scenes.

Having never seen any of the straight-to-DVD American Pie Presents movies, the worst "adult" college movie I've seen of late is Approved, with Justin Long and Jonah Hill. It had its moments, but it was very stupid. I like it more now. College can't hold Approved's beer-soaked, head-worn jock. College tries to be Superbad, but it only succeeds in being super bad.

May Sweeps Reset

Maybe the best way to catch up on TV is to go show to show for various observations. Spoilers in each, of course.

The Amazing Race:

• Not much to say. The cowboys have been the most fun team and have to be the favorite to win. It's been a very weak season, all told.

24:

• Last week was a major copout for the writers. They had this great set-up of Jack vs. Chloe and then they gave Chloe an easy out to work with Jack again. I could see it happening by the end of the season, but they could have waited longer than like 40 minutes to give in. I'm digging the end of the season, though. I'm probably enjoying it more than if I didn't know it was the last few hours. I have no hopes for whatever Bourne-rip-off movie franchise they come up with, so I'm happy to see this great series go out in a blaze of relative glory.

American Idol:

• I looked up the current odds on sportsbook.com and, in order from worst to best, it's Big Mike (16-1), Casey (14-1), Lee (1-1), Crystal (2-3). We can all agree that Mike and Casey have no real shot to win. I'm all over Lee. He and Mike were the best this past week and Lee is just the type of Kris Allen-ish unoffensive soft rocker to get the votes in the end. Crystal is still my favorite. But that's all relative, they're all still not that great. At least we got a great Harry Connick week before the show blessedly goes bye-bye at the end of this season.
• I can't be the only person who thinks that the most recent eliminated contestant, Aaron Kelly, looks eerily like Rachel Maddow.

Survivor:

• This whole season has been fun, but this past week's episode was especially so. There were two eliminations and the first was very ho-hum as Candice signed her own death warrant when she inexplicably flipped to boot Amanda. The second tribal council was fantastic and it was all because of the great Russell. He thrives on chaos and, when the right vote was obviously Rupert, Russell decided to shake things up for the hell of it. He invented a lie about Danielle, confronted her about it in front of everybody, and then just stuck with it. He is so block-headed and aggressive that it didn't matter that she fought him with the truth, he just kept lying until she freaked out, cried, and let out more info than she meant to in order to prove her point. In doing so, she got herself kicked out and she lost Parvati (and you could see that Parvati knew it by her body language) the million-dollar prize. I have no idea who the favorite is now. I don't think Russell can win the jury vote unless he goes up against only Jerri. Can Colby get in there and win it? I've been sick of Rupert since the end of his original run on Pearl Islands, but his fake immunity idol move to save himself in favor of Candice was just brilliant.

Lost:

• So... Almost all is revealed. I spent the entire season going back and forth over whether or not Locke was truly evil or whether he and Jacob were two sides of the same coin. I eventually landed on the latter. Wrong. So I was surprised when we discovered (maybe a second before Jack did) that Locke was trying to kill everyone, but I wasn't that surprised in the grand scheme. Locke said he needed everybody with him in order to get off the island. I had assumed that that meant that each of the candidates had to deny Jacob and join up with Locke. It was really a long con by Locke, leading to his need for every candidate to be dead in order for him to win. Those scenarios are not so different as far as the mythology is concerned. And as far as the mythology, it looks like all will be revealed next week with what is rumored to be an Oceanic 815 castaway-free episode that focuses only on the history between Jacob and the Man in Black. Three episodes left.
• By the way, when I say that I was wrong and that Locke is truly evil, I'm not just jumping to that conclusion. Cuse and Lindelof said exactly that in this interview with ew.com after last week's episode.
• So what questions are left? Let's see...
• Did Widmore wire the plane to explode and, if so, is he really working with Locke and why?
• Did Desmond reveal the flash-sideways world to Sayid, leading to Sayid sacrificing himself?
• Will Jacob's replacement (presumably Jack) be the last-remaining candidate because everyone else dies? Or will the rest leave the island (doubtful)?
• Will each character have to die in one of the two timelines in order for the both to merge?
• What is the endgame with the flash-sideways?
• What else?
  

Developing...

I had a very long day with my travel home, so I'll save everything (a sort-of-shocking Lost, a crazy-fun Survivor, and more) for later. By the way, I got lunch today two blocks from the New York Stock Exchange as the Dow burned. What was the mood? Everyone in the restaurants were chilling, laughing, having beers. It was a beautiful day, I suppose.

Harry Connick Jr., Professional Wiseguy

Harry Connick Jr. is this week's American Idol mentor. He also wrote all of the arrangements for this week's covers of Frank Sinatra songs. I never realized what a crackup he is. He picked on the contestants and traded barbs with the judges with an unparalleled smoothness. If they are looking for a new judge when Simon steps down next season, he could be a great substitute to keep the show lively.

• Aaron Kelly led off with Fly Me to the Moon. When I heard it was Sinatra week, I thought Aaron would have the easiest time, since he has a crooner voice. However, his performance was very underwhelming, almost weak.
• Casey James sang "Blue Skies". I didn't think this was a Sinatra song but wikipedia proved me wrong. Casey was so bad that even Kara bashed his performance. I hope he has his bags packed.
• Crystal Bowersox sang Summer Wind. During the intro interview, she mentioned several times that she has a personal connection to this song but never mentioned what that connection was. It was the obvious question for Ryan to ask after the performance. Did he ask it? Nope. This is the 2nd straight week that Crystal was just ok. She is probably safe but I wouldn't be completely shocked if she got voted out. I just don't think she has a following like the two weakest remaining contestants, Aaron or Casey, do.
• Michael Lynche sang The Way You Look Tonight. This was by far my favorite performance of the evening. He looked the part of the crooner and did an awesome job overall.
• Lee DeWyze finished with That's Life. The judges ranted and raved about how good he was. I thought he was good, but not nearly as good as Michael.
• Casey and Aaron should be in the bottom two with Casey heading home.

Other notable headlines today.

• Baseball announcer Ernie Harwell passed away today. There are very few announcers who could broadcast a game and truly make you feel like you were there. Ernie Harwell was one of those people. Still broadcasting is Vin Scully, 60 years after he started doing Dodger games. If you ever want to hear baseball broadcasting at its finest, try to check out tapes of Vin Scully or older recordings of Ernie Harwell.
• The Feds caught the New York City car bomber just before his flight was leaving for Dubai. Way to go, Mr. Guy In Charge of the No-Fly List.
• I know this joke has been recycled several times but Happy Star Wars Day...May the 4th be with you.

Random Link:
The band 'Spose brings an Offspring feel to their new song "I'm Awesome". Definitely my new favorite song and video.

Away Again

Mondays have been my long day recently, so only got a chance to watch one show tonight as I did laundry and it was a pretty good 24, especially compared to recent episodes. And speaking of crazy security in the Big Apple, my crazy travel year continues as I'll be in NYC for the rest of the week. The blog has suffered greatly from my trips, especially because I miss out on all these opportunities to mock an eminently mockable American Idol season. I'll watch it on Thursday, but the fun is gone by that point since everyone will know who gets voted out. This should my last trip until after TV season is over, so I have that at least.

American treasure Pete Seeger's 91st birthday:

Random Pop Culture

It was this kind of day and I mostly just sat around (excepting some magic with the lawnmower), watching various movies and trying to empty out the DVR:

• I had never seen 48 Hours before and when it popped up as a recommendation on Netflix Watch Instantly, I figured I'd check it out. Not as funny as I expected, but entertaining. You could see flashes of chemistry between Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, but Murphy didn't quite have that charisma that he did in Beverly Hills Cop, which is a much better movie.
• I have rarely seen a movie as frustrating as Capturing the Friedmans, the Oscar-nominated documentary about a father and son on Long Island that were accused of hundreds of counts of child molestation. There are questions about their guilt or innocence that still linger even twenty years after the fact and the movie presents these questions with no lean to it either way, so you end up being confused as each new piece of the story unfolds. It's really good, though; fascinating that a family would take so many home movies and end up having these videos of them arguing about allegations and plea bargains.
• I've become quite the Civil War geek and had seen a recommendation somewhere about a PBS documentary about Lincoln's assassination. Not only was that online (it was well done, but didn't offer many new insights), but PBS actually has a huge array of historical shows that can be viewed online. I saw American history titles that varied from Jonestown to World War II to the creation of Earth Day. We'll see how bored I get at some point.
• The next three Sundays are big TV nights. Next week is the season finale of The Amazing Race. I'm rooting for the cowboys, obviously, and think they have to be the favorites because of how cool they are under pressure. The following week is the season finale of Survivor. Parvati's probably the favorite, but I don't know if she can get the jury since she's won already. Danielle? Can Colby somehow sneak in? The series finale of The Pacific is also that week. Three weeks from tonight is, of course, the series finale of Lost.
• You can just stop reading here. So Annie's totally better than Naomi, but I just can't see her and Liam together. Liam's the bad boy and Annie's the geek. Not feeling that chemistry, but I get the sense that that's where the season might end up. Weird, since last season ended with the whole thing where Jen told Naomi that Annie and Liam slept together, leading Annie to lose focus and kill Jasper's uncle. Speaking of Jen, you had to know she would come back because she's too evil a character. The Dixon-gambling thing is pretty contrived, but I guess most things are on this show. I feel like it's almost Lost-ish with all the characters; very little Adrianna and Navid this week, but next week is an Ade- and Navid-centric episode. Meanwhile, we finally got to see the fabled Spence Montgomery! Kind of fell short of expectations. There was a story that Rob Estes isn't returning next season to West Beverly, so we'll have to see if it's the divorce thing or the blackmail thing that does him in.