a drum roll please.
top 10 reasons to tell people not to watch brian williams on nightly news:
10 he practices smell a fart pauses
9 he has dandruff (molly says look close and you can see it)
8 he is an idiot (6 people)
7 he smells like poop (7 people)
6 he eats boogers on air
5 he is uptight and prissy
4 he is the pompous asshole you ran from in school
3 he is a pig
2 he probably hired jeff gannon for 'consultations'
1 he frigs his hole between segments
sherry e-mails me that what i wrote about on thursday a little jaques wrote about on monday in the business section of the new york times. thanks for passing that on sherry. and thanks for saying 'you lead, they follow.'
i do agree it's rather sad that something they should have written about much earlier i address four days prior. sherry says that jacques doesn't even get how close the difference between peter jennings and brian williams is. and that he also has no 'historical perspective' since rather 'when he 1st took over the evening news' only lost a little of the audience but that he continued to lose and to lose.
so the point sherry is making is that brian williams is vulnerable and jaques can't see it.
the whole nbc network is vulnerable because they don't know what the fuck they are doing.
fall 2004 will be remembered as their cnn moment. like cnn who thought aping fox would increase their ratings, nbc thought aping what others were doing would increase their ratings.
for 20 years, nbc has been the home of the comedy and they've given that up. they don't know how to make people laugh lately. joey is a hideous show (as my pals at the 3rd estate sunday review have repeatedly noted). and yet they built thursday night around this.
they may lose will & grace at the end of this year (every 1's contract is up) and it's the last good sitcom on nbc or any where. when it's gone, expect more fat man married to thin woman comedies.
nbc doesn't get it. their viewers weren't the junior high kids. but they also didn't have cbs graying audience. they had the 18 to 49 year olds that advertisers wanted.
they didn't get that with law & order. they didn't get that by having retro bullshit sitcoms.
they got that by having sitcoms that reflected that audience. seinfeld, friends and others.
their biggest mistake in the spring of 2004 was cancelling whoopi because that was a show that was getting attention. you had characters who would only continue to get more interesting, not the bland or bland with a dash of quirk bullshit they push off on you now.
there's no 1 on joey that resembles a human being.
in the 70s you had sitcoms like the classic mary tyler moore show, all in the family, maude, the bob newhart show and others where the comedy was based on things the writers saw in their own lives. the problems with sitcoms today is that they are based on what the writers saw on another show or a movie.
king of queens is a hideous, hideous show. i saw a rerun of it while flipping channels this week. the african-american couple (i don't know any of the names of the characters, sorry) were picking a couple to be the god parents to their children. fat man and thin woman were not picked. at the christening, they went around trying to upset the couple that way. the man who was chosen says he does not watch basketball because 'it's a bunch of pitutary glands . . .'
get the problem? it was a funny line. in 1977 when it was said in the movie annie hall.
you see that all the time. a popular film to steal from is tootsie. 'i said good day' is a line dorothy michaels (dustin hoffman) says in that movie. then 'i said good day, sir.' how often do you hear that on everybody loves raymond? how often do you hear that on every sitcom?
it was funny in tootsie. it's not funny when people who can't write about their own lives steal from movies.
here's another problem nbc might want to consider fixing -- ugly guys.
i really don't think america needs any more fat men, thin wives sitcoms. but they also do not need this bullshit of ugly guys paired up with beautiful women.
you get the idea that the network suits are scared of casting hot guys. they'll cast some 1 slightly better looking. when friends started matt leblanc hadn't turned into big fatty and was actually cute. that's why rachel could say 'you're so pretty.' but they seem to think that women are going to sit through tits and ass on display and not notice that the men are either ugly or plain.
i know women who watched that lame hawaii 5-0 rip off on nbc briefly this fall just to see the hunky ivan sergei. the show's cancelled. get him on a sitcom.
he can't act? so what. do you think we watched dharma and greg because we thought greg was a great actor? no, we watched it because we all wanted to change places with dharma. and when dharma fell for the hercules refugee we recoiled in horror.
i have 3 friends who watch that hideous beastmaster just to see the hottie in the loincloth.
ike barenholtz was in falling around in his underwear on mad tv saturday night. i didn't see it.
but i heard about it from 4 women sunday. he wore tighty whities. and that got a bit of buzz.
i think he's like jimmy fallon in that he's in a cute phase he may leave quickly. but women do find him sexy right now. and we like to see guys in their underwear.
when he's shirtless or has his shirt open while he's doing the abercrombie & fitch spoofs on mad tv, my phone won't stop ringing with friends calling and saying 'turn it on rebecca! he's showing flesh!'
but instead of a hottie, the suits love the jonathan silvermans. we didn't find him hot on gimmie a break and we don't find him hot now. he's a dud, network suits.
we don't lust after him.
abc's getting ready to push john stamos in a sitcom. i can tell you that if it's funny, it will have an audience. if they parade him around in briefs, it doesn't have to be that funny.
and that's not a boxers v. briefs argument. i know women who prefer their men in boxers but want guys filmed in briefs and the reason for that is the boxers they put these guys in onscreen are so nonsexy! unless the guys wearing boxer briefs, you can't even enjoy a butt shot because the boxers are so loose they flap around back there. apparently no 1 wears tapered boxers in hollywood?
put john stamos in briefs and put him in them often and we'll watch. he's sexy. he hasn't yet hit the tony danza wall that charlie sheen's reached where the body is gone and you may as well be in home depot because you'll see that boxy shape on every guy there.
some day the networks may get that just as guys like to look at the sports illustrated swimsuit mag even though they'll never marry a swimsuit model, women like to look at hotties even though they know they'll never get a ck underwear model.
stop putting the stocky guys in the leading roles of these failed shows and we'll pay attention.
there's not a girl i went to school with that didn't drool over the hottest guy on campus. but apparently the suits didn't get that. or understand the meaning of a 'wet day.' (as in, 'oh look at him! i'm having a wet day now!')
did they miss that tom cruise became a star because he danced around onscreen in his bvds?
he left the hot phase long ago, but even women who loathe him remember that dance.
if they signed jimmy fallon for a sitcom tomorrow, made the pilot him being in his briefs for the first 1/2 of the show (maybe he's locked out of the apartment, maybe some woman tricks him into thinking they'll have sex and runs off with his clothes to get back at him), i guarantee you that the ratings would be high.
