MAGIC         PORK

With all the talk about the new sitcom Cavemen - you know, the one about those cavemen from the Geico ads - I just had to watch it. I expected it to completely suck since I don’t even care for the ads but I figured I should see it for myself before passing judgment. So I TiVo’d it and last night I finally brought myself to watch it.

And it was funny.

I’m not being sarcastic. I laughed out loud. It was good from the start until the end. I couldn’t believe it but it was actually funny. It takes a lot of guts to tell the whole world that you loved a show that is getting almost universally panned but there you have it.

If you look around online you’ll see everyone saying how awful it was. I don’t know what show they were watching. Everyone has a different sense of humor so I can definitely see some people not liking it, but the way people are talking as if it’s the worst pile of filth to ever grace the screen makes me think that they were determined that they were going to hate it no matter what and are sticking with that.

You know I have a good sense of humor because you read magicpork.com so I won’t bother trying to qualify myself to you.

I don’t know if they’ll be able to make a whole series out of this however. I’m pretty sure they’ll milk every drop of humor they can out of the caveman setup - if they are even given enough time to before being yanked off the air. But the pilot episode? Great stuff.

Tell me I’m wrong if you wish - but only if you’ve actually watched the pilot. If you missed it, you can watch it on abc.com.

I was going to come up with some clever title for this post, but then went with the obvious in a blatant attempt at getting more Google traffic. But I’m sure that even so, I won’t even be on the first 100 pages.

So yes, this post is about Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards. In case you have better things to do with your life and don’t know what I’m talking about, Britney Spears did a surprise performance at the VMAs last weekend that was pretty much a train wreck. No, a train wreck would have been her falling off the stage or something so let’s say it was a 5 car pile-up. Everyone says train wreck. Let’s start a new phrase.

I knew as soon as I saw it that the Internet would be flooded with people trashing it. You can do a search yourself. She wore this slutty bikini and didn’t seem to know her dance moves or her lyrics for that matter (lip-synced). It was just embarrassing to watch. I noticed (because it’s impossible not to in that outfit) that she wasn’t quite the skinny girl she was before. Had a little padding on her. I thought that it probably wasn’t the best choice in costume and I would have went with something a little less revealing if I were her. But I really didn’t think much of it, I just thought the performance was bad.

Then I read online people making fun of her for being “fat” and it made me mad to be honest. Yes that’s right, you thought this was going to be all about Britney-bashing didn’t you? Well I like to surprise ‘ya.

I thought “I should do a post about that”, then later I saw an article on CNN.com saying pretty much what I was saying so good for them. But I’ll continue my point anyway.

People always complain about these super-skinny models and how it sets unrealistic expectations for adolescent girls. Now you have a young woman that (for whatever reason) young girls seem to look up to looking not fat but not exactly skinny - and everyone pounces on her for being fat and don’t think what adolescent girls are going to take away from that? Let’s get real people. A girl that looks like Britney Spears, at any bar in any city in the USA, would be getting hit on left and right.

That’s what made me mad. I just pictured some teenage girl hearing how “fat” Britney was and thinking “gee, I look about like that in a bikini and most of my friends say I look good - I guess I’m really fat though”.

Would I have advised Britney to wear that outfit? Most definitely not. I mean it’s just trashy regardless of her weight. But with her having a bit of a “paunch” on her (seems to be the word everyone’s using - one site said “paunch me baby one more time” which I admit made me laugh out loud), it would have been best to cover it up a little and she still could have looked hot. I read that she was advised to wear this corset thing but she wanted the bikini. So make fun of her for her fashion choices. Make fun of her for her awful performance. Make fun of her for shaving her head or whatever other nonsense she’s done recently. But don’t make fun of this mother of two for having a little tummy.

I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well so I thought of a way to summarize how I feel about heavier 2007 VMAs Britney. I think it will make things totally clear. Imagine someone punches me in the face, then throws me in a cage for a night. But they throw in Britney with me, wearing that outfit. It’s a wash. The beating and false incarceration is canceled out.

But now say they punch me repeatedly in the face, break my left arm, and set my eyebrows on fire before they throw me in. They better get themselves a time machine and throw in 2003 VMAs Britney!! Either that or Rihanna. Preferably after she’s been deprived of any sexual pleasure for two years. Which now that I think of it would also require a time machine.

There, see what I’m saying now? No? OK, nevermind.

There’s something that I’ve been afraid to admit. I know I’m not going to make friends with this post, but I’m going to come clean here. I don’t like Family Guy.

When Family Guy first came on the air, I watched an episode. I thought “this sucks” and never watched it again. I didn’t know anyone else that watched it, so I was under the assumption that others had the same opinion of it. I was therefore not at all surprised when I heard that it got canceled. Then I started to hear stuff about how it was finding an audience on DVD, and lo and behold it actually got put back on the air. There was much rejoicing. Not by me, but by the legions of fans the show apparently had. I read people posting online about how it was the funniest show on TV, some even said the funniest show EVER, how stupid Fox was for canceling it, and so on.

Family Guy is pretty edgy / controversial in its jokes so of course for all the fans, it meant that if anyone didn’t like the show it must be because they’re offended by it. Well that’s not the case at all with me. I didn’t like the show because it wasn’t funny. I started to doubt my sense of humor, which I had always thought was pretty good.

Friends would forward me video clips from the show. Some were funny, some not so. Finally I figured I’d better check the show out again and see what I missed. Maybe I just saw a bad episode.

Well I did see an episode that I would call funny, but it guest starred Norm MacDonald as the voice of the Grim Reaper, and he was the reason it was funny. So I don’t know if I can really count that one. I watched another episode, and this one I really wanted to turn off half way through but I forced myself to watch the whole loooong half hour. I then determined that I’d seen enough to make my conclusion. But just before posting this, I thought maybe I should give it one more chance, and I looked up some more clips of the show. I rated these clips on the following scale:

1. Didn’t even smile. Not at all funny.
2. Parts of it made me smile. But still not funny overall.
3. Elicited at least a chuckle. Could possibly be considered funny.
4. Outright laughter. It’s funny.
5. Sustained laughter. Hilarious. I gotta forward this to someone!

Here’s my results: Six clips rated a 2. One clip rated a 4. The other five rated a 1. I’d tell you which was the 4 but I think it’s more fun to make you guess. I will say however, that the clip was a solid 2 until right near the end.

(OK, I lied a little. One of the clips was very long and was a 1 except for one tiny part of it that made me laugh out loud. It just didn’t seem fair to rate it a 4 because of that, so I rated it a 2. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that almost all of the clips that I’ve seen online involving the character Quagmire were funny.)

I think I don’t like Family Guy for the same reason I don’t like to watch Robin Williams do stand-up. He rattles off a million jokes that have no relevance to anything he was talking about. They’re completely random. Maybe 20% of the time he’ll hit on something funny but it’s bound to happen just by mere chance. The other 80% of the time he’s not funny and I just want to slap the guy and tell him the shut up. In other words, sitting through the 80% crap just to get the 20% funny isn’t worth it for me. Yes, you just switched to an Ed Sullivan impersonation. I get it. Not funny.

So just when I was thinking something must be wrong with me that I’m not liking this show, the most recent two-part episode of South Park was shown. In it, everyone is up in arms about an episode of Family Guy that’s going to show a cartoon Muhammad. There’s a lot going on in the episode which I won’t get into here, but the point is the writers of South Park completely trash Family Guy. They even show some fake Family Guy clips that the South Park writers made that are spot-on. Those could 100% be from a Family Guy episode. They’re basically saying that it would be a cinch for them to write Family Guy because the writing is so bad.

So thank you Trey Parker and Matt Stone for allowing me to realize there’s nothing wrong with me for not liking Family Guy.

Side note: South Park had an episode years ago that featured Muhammad as part of a group called the Super Best Friends, a spoof on the DC Comics cartoon Super Friends. The group also had other religious figures like Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and Joseph Smith (now that’s funny!). I forgot all about that when I did my post about the Danish cartoon.

*** SPOILERS from last night’s Lost ***

I liked last night’s episode of Lost, although the flashback story with that woman was a little reminiscent of David Mamet’s House of Games. Except that in House of Games, the woman was a psychiatrist so it makes a little more sense why she would be fascinated by the art of the con. Mamet must like stories about con artists because he also wrote The Spanish Prisoner and Heist, and possibly others that I haven’t seen. I haven’t seen Wag the Dog, but I know it’s about some people that try to fake a war so I guess that can be considered a con too.

If Mamet had written this episode of Lost, he would have had at least two more levels of deception going on, like the woman would have really been a con artist too but Sawyer knew she was a con artist and planned on her double-crossing him, and so on. Plus every other word would have been bleeped out and Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon would have been in it.

If you really dissect these movies, they aren’t very realistic. The whole plot might depend on some character anticipating the behavior of some other character that would have been impossible to predict - but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

Mamet also made State and Main which stars Oscar-nominated Philip Seymour Hoffman!!! Sorry, he grew up here, so it’s been all over the news. It is kind of cool, but come on, it’s just making us look lame that we’re going ga-ga over this. It’s not like he still lives here. It seems to me like all this excitement over Hoffman just draws attention to the fact that to make something of himself, he moved out of Rochester.

It’s not like he’s some new star either. It’s his first Oscar nomination, but he’s been doing great work for years. For a while there, it seemed like he was in every other movie I saw. Anyway… State and Main’s a good movie.

OK, back to Lost. Part of me feels like Charlie’s acting a little out of character, but I’m willing to go along with the writers because:

1. He seems to be going a bit insane what with the wacky dreams & sleepwalking.
2. You’d probably go a little nuts too if you were deserted on an island perhaps for the rest of your life and you had a chance at sealing the deal with some really cute blonde chick.. she’s even got a funny accent like you.. hey you think, maybe this deserted island thing won’t be that bad.. and suddenly the weirdest guy on the island is taking your place. Guess it’ll be listening to old records with Hurley the rest of your life instead. Ouch.
3. Monaghan makes some awesome creepy facial expressions. If he gets to do that more often, all the better.
4. I trust that the writers are setting up something really good with this new dark turn in his character.

Some people are getting antsy because they want more answers to the show, but I say keep it going nice & slow. I love it. I wouldn’t feel that way if it seemed like the writers didn’t know where it all was going (like on X-Files where it started to get frustrating), but I think they know exactly where it’s all going and I say let them tell it and have fun watching how all the pieces fit together.

I want to inform all of you that here at magicpork.com, I have a “No-Spoiler Guarantee“®. I have a TiVo and often watch programs days after they air, and I know a lot of you have DVR’s as well. You can visit magicpork.com without fear that I’ll be revealing the details of your favorite episodes before you’ve had a chance to watch them. Same goes for movies and books. But I’ll be spoiling the hell out of music. Like did you know that if you try to dance too close to Fergie and touch her hump she’s gonna start some drama? Well you do now! I’ll be ruining those songs for you left & right so get used to it!

So you can expect some sort of *spoiler* warning when the post contains potential spoilers. This post will be discussing a recent TV episode, but I’ll give you the spoiler warning before I start with that.

Those of you who don’t watch Battlestar Galactica, I have to tell you that it’s one of the best shows on TV. Seriously. When friends first told me about it, I thought it sounded like just some silly sci-fi show, so I understand if you’re thinking the same thing, but trust me it’s not. See, I was sneaky. If I put in the title of the post that I was going to discuss Battlestar Galactica, many of you would have skipped right past it. Be forewarned that from time to time I will actively seek to deceive you. For example, “No-Spoiler Guarantee“® isn’t really a registered trademark of magicpork.com. I’ve applied for it. No I haven’t. See that was another lie. You get the idea. But believe me about the spoiler alerts.

Now those of you who don’t care about Battlestar Galactica are excused. But come back for my next post, where I’ll be discussing Middle East politics.

Some of you still there? Great. First off, congratulations on your good taste in TV shows. But this isn’t a post about how great the show is. You guys already know that. It’s about how the last episode was disappointing. I guess it was bound to happen. They finally had a bad episode. It was just full of clichés.

*** MINOR SPOILERS ***

In the opening scene of the episode, Apollo is pointing a gun at some tough guy. The tough guy says, very confidently, “You won’t shoot me. You’re not like me.” How original. So I’m already wary about this episode, but okay I’m willing to overlook that one. Then they take us back to 48 hours earlier. I don’t have a problem with this technique but I don’t like it when TV shows abuse it. If you’re going to do something like that, there should be a reason for it. When knowing what will happen in the future sheds a different light on events happening in the past, then it’s cool. But this time, not so much. They could have just as easily told that story without the flashback, and they probably intended to, but then in editing they realized the beginning was too boring so they threw that in there to grab our attention.

We also had the hooker with a heart of gold, who’s of course only doing it to provide for her adorable little girl. She came out of nowhere and just screamed “plot device”. I don’t mean her character literally screamed “plot device”. That would have been funny if she had.

There were also some long-lost-love flashbacks from Apollo for some girl that, if I’m not mistaken, we’ve never heard anything about before. And that wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t keep repeating the same damn cheesy clips! They looked like they were out of a soap opera.

I expect that this was just a bad episode and we’ll be returning to greatness next week.

One more thing… I’m not going to discuss Middle East politics in my next post. I don’t know jack about that. But don’t tell the others that stopped reading earlier. It’ll be our little joke on them.