Today, we celebrate the birthday of a great American: Joe Don Baker! No, it’s not a holiday yet. But it should be! (Though my friend Shaun told me that you do get the day off if you’re a hooker or a brewer.)
As you should already know, Joe Don Baker is the star of Mitchell, the greatest 70s cop/detective movie ever made. Don’t believe me? Peep this collection of clips from the films MST3K treatment, and thou shalt believe.
Still not convinced? Infidel! Then check out the hot merging action in this quote-unquote car chase scene.
Please also consider this sampling from the latter-day Joe Don Baker oeuvre, Final Justice, in which our hero roams the island of Malta dressed in a 5-year-old’s idea of a sheriff’s outfit.
It’s Friday! Procrastinate and countdown to happy hour with these lovely bits!
Louis C.K., one of the funniest dudes out there right now, has a new sitcom in the works (Louie), which will debut in April on FX. Yesterday, I finally saw a brief ad for it. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get me all a-flutter.
I’m glad that this is coming out now, because his last sitcom (Lucky Louie) was unceremoniously canceled by HBO after only one season. (And yet they keep reordering that piece of bro-garbage, Entourage? What the shit?!) And as this video indicates, that cancellation nearly drove him to a very different career path.
Why do I love Mr. C.K. so much? Because he delves into the darkest corners of parenthood, in excruciating detail. As he does in this clip where he discusses the difference between boys and girls.
Or in this clip, where he talks about the horrible frustration that ensues when your child refuses to eat. YOU’RE ON THE GRID! JUST PUT IT IN YOUR FACE!
And because he also makes delightfully silly videos like this.
It’s Friday! Procrastinate and count down to happy hour with these lovely bits!
Several friends of mine on the The Twitter and The Facebook posted a link to this video yesterday. It’s British funnyman/commentator Charlie Brooker showing the essential elements needed in any news segment. Though this was done on the other side of the pond, it’s clear that such rules transcend borders.
This reminded me, Hey, Charlie Brooker’s pretty damn funny! Brooker hosts Newswipe on BBC4 (yes, there’s four of them now) and is known for his adept, savage skewering of the media. I know the word skewering is tossed off every time someone takes shots at The Boob Tube, but Brooker’s pieces are truly worthy of that adjective. Think of Jon Stewart in his best moments of righteous indignation, but angrier and more Cockney.
Like his take on American news media, pitched at a British audience blissfully unfamiliar with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
Brooker can be just as good when going after less serious topics, as in this clip, where he lists “The 10 Biggest Cocks in Advertising”. (Cock = douche, jerk, etc. He’s not naming the 10 Biggest Cocks in the Greg Oden sense.) I’m not really familiar with most of these ads, but Brooker tears them apart so well–in ways both clever and silly–that it doesn’t matter. Funny is funny.
Or this spot-on (as the Brits say) takedown of MTV’s My Sweet 16. “I think this might be an Al Qaeda recruitment video.”
Just a brief sampling of the peeved hilarity Mr. Brooker has to offer. You could spend hours watching his collected works on the YouTubes. So go ahead! It’s only Friday. C’mon, you checked out of work by lunch on Wednesday, didn’t you?
Finally, Aziz Ansari posted a video on his web site that is, no joke, the craziest thing you will probably ever see. I cannot embed it, so you’ll have to click there and take my word for it.
The video is an pregame intro for an Alaskan collegiate hockey team, featuring their CGI polar bear mascot. It is not cheap, tossed-off CGI. If anything, this video is a little too well done. I will not ruin any of the madness for you. Suffice to say that, if you took Chuck Norris and The Punisher, and multiplied them by infinity, then multiplied them by INSANITY, they would still look like pussies compared to this polar bear.