Family Guy Review: "Foreign Affairs"

It's a tough time to be in the television biz. The kids today are spending less and less time huddled around the ol' cathode ray tube, due to this passing Internet fad. Why watch something with fun characters and production values when you can watch cats doing cat things or virus-riddled kiddie porn or whatever it is they watch today. Ratings are, generally speaking, down, and everyone's had to make cutbacks. House, for instance, is throwing away Lisa Edelstein, which actually might be the best thing to happen to it in seasons. American Idol famously saved money last season by throwing away some of their famous people, and bringing in moderately less famous people. And Family Guy, it seems, has outsourced three minutes or so of the show to Mick Jagger and David Bowie circa 1985, thus saving valuable writing/animation time and money. What's that you say? That probably made it even MORE expensive, and as such there's literally no justifying this episode's already notorious centrepiece? Oh. Well. That really is unfortunate, isn't it?

Family Guy Review: "The Big Bang Theory"

This past Sunday was Mother's Day, as all of us who were sprung forth from female loins were probably forcefully made aware if we weren't already. How did you celebrate it? I called my mother, and will regrettably be shipping off the pirated CDs of her request soon. If you were Family Guy, you celebrated Mother's Day with an episode where Mama Lois left to run errands early in the episode and was never seen again, and wherein a relatively newborn baby was shot between the eyes with a spear gun. Festive! But, ignoring the show's refusal to air an instalment with even a slight appropriateness to Overly Commercialised Maternity-Themed Holiday, I think we can at least be pleased that it is considerably less romance-themed than "Brothers and Sisters". Instead, it's about Stewie being the most important person in history and not being married to Generic Female Character #614. Also, despite its title, it's not about horrid socially awkward nerd stereotypes. "Bang" probably means something sexual, like intercoursing or something.

Dentistry and a Show!

As I've mentioned, I've been having to make several visits to the dentist lately, to fix cavities caused by, well....let's not get into what Jim's family put me through yet again. Instead, let's get into what I love about going to the dentist: the awkward banter between dentist and hygienist. Two people who generally have nothing in common, but are forced to fill the silence while their patient of the moment is incapacitated with fingers and various dental instruments inside his or her mouth. To me, this is amateur theatre to ease the pain of the procedure at hand. I love it.

*an ad for NBC's The Voice plays on the radio*

Hygienist: Have you seen that show yet?

Dentist: Nnnnnno.

Hygienist: It's really good.

Dentist: Oh. I never really got into American Idol.

Hygienist: But this is better!

Dentist: Mmmm-hmmmm.

Hygienist: It's not like American Idol. Everyone is hand-selected because they're actually good. So, every performance is epic.

Dentist: Mmmm-hmmmm.

Hygienist: So you don't have to spend weeks watching all the bad auditions to get to the ones that are good. You should watch it.

Dentist: Is that the one with Steven Tyler on it?

Hygienist: No, that's American Idol.

Dentist: Oh. Paula Abdul then?

Hygienist: Also American Idol.

Dentist: Oh. Mmmm-hmmmm.

Mandatory Commentary on Some Sort of Newsworthy Happenstance

A Word From The Future: I am not exactly proud of this piece. I'm a better nerd/humourist than I am a political commentator. Not that I'm good at being either of those two particular things either. By which I mean, I certainly didn't need to be so callous about, well, any of this.

Remember Osama bin Laden? A truly evil man, but also, Baby Bushie's excuse for launching wars that, for the longest time, actually had pretty much nothing to actually do with him? The fella whose first name sounds similar to our incumbent President's surname, a fact pointed out by right-wingers as if it has relevance to anything at all? Remember how it used to be notable every time he released one of his little student films about how America is bad? Remember how he kinda faded out of the news? Well, he's in the news again. By being dead.