The Office is Back!

I feel like I just wrote this post about 6 months ago...The Office is back tonight (A brief aside, Ross told me that I should have posted this yesterday, but I didn't want to tempt you a day early). I was torn, but, ultimately decided to wait until today (sorry, Ross).

Anyway, I usually focus on Pam, Karen, Jim and Dwight, but here's an awesome compilation of Michael Scott's various dance moves.



In other news from The Office, NBC has greenlighted a spinoff for next spring. I don't know what to think of this yet, but, to be honest, I don't know how you can be upset about it. I love The Office.

Sticking with the NBC theme, since I didn't post on Monday, you might have missed that Christopher Walken hosted SNL for the 7th time and it was pretty good. You may have caught some of the sketches already, but here are a couple of my favorites if you haven't seen them yet.

The first is called Surprise Party.



The second is a Walken Family Reunion. This skit would be genius if it wasn't for Keenan butchering it near the end.

Make It Rainn On This Film

If you're missing your Dwight/The Office/Rainn Wilson fix (the show will be back in April!), I think I have something to help you out. Apparently some the Film Independent Spirit Award committee hired Rainn to make some funny videos. I've included a couple here. (On a side note, doesn't "Spirit Award" sound like a code word for "Participant"? Who likes the participant ribbons? I hated when they gave those things out at competitions I was at. Did they win? No. So why in the hell would they want to remember it? I remember I got a participant ribbon once. I threw it away on my way out of the competition.)

Here's Rainn in the 3rd (and funniest) part of his interview with Jason Reitman (the director of Juno).



The first 2 parts can be seen here and here (the 3rd is easily the funniest).

Here's Rainn interviewing Todd Haynes who directed something called I'm Not There, which I know nothing about..but the interview is funny.



I just went back and looked at the cast from the movie I'm Not There and there are apparently two characters in the movie names Hobo Joe and Hobo Moe. I'll probably see it now. Anyway, Rainn also has an interview with a fake Julian Schnabel, who I also know nothing about.

There's So Much To Do

...And so little time. With late night TV returning, I'm busy watching TV again (turns out Conan is still funnier than that idiot Craig Ferguson). Plus, I've been playing the new Wii game my wife got me for Christmas (I've included the box art on the right* so you can think about what I'm doing when I'm not on the Internets) and watching football, so I'm really busy. And by busy, I mean occupied because are you really busy when all you're doing is watching TV?

Anyway, I hope you had a good New Years' celebration. I had a good time in Austin, TX (also known as a Hellhole of Sin - that's a must for anyone from Austin), unfortunately, after the party (and the ensuing night's sleep) I had to drive back to Nebraska where I summarily lost my left testicle because it jumped off my body and ran back to weather above 0 degrees. Then I pulled up my computer and saw the 1000+ number in my reader. You'd think there's no way I'd pour through all of that, but I'd be pissed if I missed a funny video to start 2K8. Sooooo, here's a couple funny videos I found.

1) Here's Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight) having a tussle with a photographer. There's some NSFW language in there, so exercise caution. If you ever wanted to see an extended Dwight fight scene with R-rated language, this is it.



2) If you shot off fireworks for New Years, I hope you followed the safety precautions outlined in this (fake, Dutch) Islamic fireworks safety video.



That was apparently banned - I'm not sure if its because of the blatant stereotypism or the fact that everyone has gone and looked right into the heart of a maybe-lit firework wondering what is going on and people don't want to be reminded how dumb they were.

3) Also, if you didn't see the National Anthem played by a group of trombones on Fox the other day, watch the first 20 seconds of this clip.



Their name is Bonerama! How can they get away with this? I'm now going to start a band called "The Code Piece Conglomeration" or "Boxfest". Get my Rock Band set.

* There is no way in hell I'm playing this game, I just thought it was funny box art. Wait, how did this game get made? Seriously - its real.

Why Is There Almost Always A Public Backlash?

Can someone explain to me why there is almost always a public backlash against something that is really popular? You know what I'm talking about - People start complaining about something, saying things like "Its not as good as it was" or "I never really liked it anyway." Its already starting with The Office (unjustifiably) in (the sadly abbreviated) season 4 and has happened over the last few seasons of 24 (perhaps justifiably) - people are starting to turn on it. Unfortunately, if enough people start murmuring, executives could talk about changing or canceling the show. The worst part about this is that the show/movie/music probably never needed changed, people just needed something to complain about.

I myself am guilty of this - I bitch about the quality of SNL (justifiably) and Tara Reid (unjustifiably), talking about how much better they used to be. To be honest, Tara Reid was just never that good (she always had that smoker/hooker voice/hair) and I should have never been that high on her to begin with. SNL, well, that's just another story.

Anyway, Will Ferrell has had a slight backlash building against him since Ricky Bobby (I guess some people didn't even like Anchorman...you bastards) and Judd Apatow had people threatening to backlash against him this summer with 2 movies coming out. Fortunately for him and us, the movies were awesome and did really well. Even if you didn't like one of the movies, you probably like the other, and they were generally well received. Well, now Apatow has another movie coming out that you've definitely seen the previews for, Walk Hard and people are already lining up to say its gonna be a flop. We'll see. Either way, Judd is poking at his critics in this funny viral marketing video featuring a bunch of his people that have been actors in his films.



You can catch this video on Funny or Die as well. Anyway, I hope Daryl from The Office (whatever his name is) starts to get a bigger role in these movies. He always makes me laugh.

Casual Dress Friday: Real Life Dwight vs. Michael

Its a Casual Dress Friday and it has been a very busy week for me. Not only have do I have a bunch of new video games in my possesion: The Simpsons, Contra 4, some Lego game where you can actually be Admiral Ackbar, Ultimate Mortal Kombat and Guitar Hero 3 - speaking of which, if you haven't seen this clip of Cowbell Hero its a must watch.



Sorry, I got distracted, where was I - oh yes, busy - at work we're also within 5 days of a code freeze and I've also been working out every day. Working out is pretty low key. I go, run a few miles, lift a little bit and peace out. I try not to pay attention to anyone else, but the other day I couldn't help it (Long Story Warning: If you have ADD or you just don't want to read this...just skip ahead to the ***).

There were two guys lifting together (I have no clue who they are or what their names are), one in his upper 30's, for the sake of this story, we'll call him Marvin, and one in his upper 20's, we'll call him Derek. Marvin was clearly Derek's mentor and seemed to be more experienced at lifting, so, Marvin was showing his workout routine to Derek. While he was explaining everything, Marvin would tell Derek the number of reps on each machine that he would do (he never did more than one set). Of course, the entire time, Marvin was saying how hard it was and how exhausted Derek would get.

Tired of talking, Marvin goes into an extensive stretching machine to warm up his muscles for the lifting. At this point, I have slowed down my lifting just so I can watch this. Do you ever get the feeling that a train wreck is about to happen so you just pretty much stop whatever you're doing to watch it and you keep trying not to look but you can't help it because you know its coming? This was one of those times.

Finally, after what seemed like 20 minutes, Marvin jumped on a leg machine...unfortunately I was in the middle of a set. I couldn't see what weight he started at, but I could hear him him grunting and struggling to get it up (that's what she said). I quickly pounded out the rest of my reps and took a look at what Marvin was lifting. It was 40 pounds. 40. Just to give you a point of reference, Shorty does around 125 L-Bs on that machine.

Now let's not get it twisted - I don't laugh at what people lift - I can't bench much more than my own weight, but this was bad. The funny part; however, occurred after Marvin traded positions with Derek. Derek wants to increase the weight, but Marvin tells him that it gets really hard around 5 or 6 so he shouldn't. So, Derek jumps on and pounds out 12 reps in like 20 seconds. Right when Derek finishes, Marvin says "Wasn't that f---ing hard?" and Derek says "No. I didn't even feel like it worked me out." Awesome. You could tell that Marvin was pissed but determined to show that his workout would wear Derek out.

Marvin and Derek move through about 3 more machines until Derek looks at Marvin and says (this is an exact quote) "You are weak. I apparently have the strength of you plus me." This, not surprisingly, pissed of Marvin, so on the next machine (which happened to be right next to mine), he tries to throw up 200 pounds. Of course, he immediately hurt himself and Derek had to help him out of the weight room.

I don't know why this was so funny, and describing it probably doesn't do it justice, but it just seemed like a real life version of Michael and Dwight from The Office. The previous story is 100% true.

***If you want to skip the long story, just start reading here.***The best part of it all? The old guy (Marvin) was wearing Reebok Pumps.



Have a good weekend.

Casual Dress Friday: Top 10: The Office

It's a Casual Dress Friday and I am really sad that we could be losing The Office way earlier than we need to. So, here are two Top 10 videos from The Office that always make me laugh. They are kinda long, so I'll be short on the text.

The first is the Top 10 That's What She Said moments.



The second are the Top 10 songs sung on the show.

Casual Dress Friday: Lazy Post

It's a Casual Dress Friday and I have been spending the majority of my nights this week trying to find a suitable, original costume for our early Halloween party this week. I've been thinking about it too much and now I have no ideas. In any case, it has finally caught up to me and now I'm posting a follow-up post to yesterday.

You remember yesterday when Conan went off about the fire alarm? Here's the follow-up to that.



You remember yesterday when I talked about how SNL is starting to get a little funny again. Well here's an old-school Barkley skit that's way funnier than the one they did this week.


How creepy does Chris Farley seem there. I'm not sure that its very funny (mainly because it features Rob Schneider) but Charles Barkley's choke-hold makes me laugh every time (and its still funnier than anything Keenan can do).

The best part of yesterday may have been a point brought up in the comments, as to whether 30 Rock has crested The Office in funniness. I will agree that the hour long episodes and new character directions have brought them closer together, but I'm not sure which one is funnier. I'll think about it this weekend. In any case, both Shorty and I have found ourselves playing the screen saver game which The Office nailed.

Britney Dwight in a Bra

I watched parts of the VMAs on Sunday night (I DVR'd it and am waiting to watch the full broadcast with my wife). I immediately came here and began to write a post about how bad Britney Spears's performance was (some people have ripped her for looking bad, but I don't think that's the case at all. Is she as tight as before? No. But she's also had two kids and been on coke/meth/somthing. Cut her some slack). Then there was media overload that reminded me of the whole Miss USA fell down thing. By now, I'm sure you're sick of it, so I'll just refer you to an old post where I talk about Britney to state my feelings.

So, if you've heard enough about Britney in her bra, what do you want to hear about? How about Dwight Schrute in a bra! I don't know if you've seen the commercials for the US women's soccer team featuring Jim Mike. Now, I know your first reaction is "Wait. Dwight can't be Jim!", this is true (except for one time). Fortunately, Dwight is actually an actor named Rainn Wilson (I know that's a Dwight clip), so he can act as other people. Amazing. Want to see proof? I've included the five (5!) commercials below. Since they're commercials, they're short, so you shouldn't feel guilty for watching them.

The first three commercials are about Jim Mike auditioning for his position.

#1


#2


#3 (this one is my favorite)


I know what you're thinking "Funny, but didn't you promise me Dwight in a bra?" Why yes I did and its a rule of mine that anytime I promise someone a man in a bra, I deliver. On a side note, it is also a rule of mine to never trust a man with two first names. This would disqualify Jim Mike from ever entering my circle of excellence trust. Anyway, without further ado, here's Dwight Schrute/Jim Mike/Rainn Wilson in a bra.



There seems to be a new one every day. As I was writing this, I saw a new one and had to update the post. Here's the final commercial to date.



If you watched the commercials, you saw the motto "Greatest team you've never heard of" (which is grammatically incorrect, Jim Mike) but also very similar to this blog's unofficial motto "The 4th greatest non-daily pop-culture black-hole blog that you have heard of because your reading this but that most people haven't heard of." See the similarities? They even end with the same grammatical incorrectness. I should look into whether Jim Mike stole this from me...I knew I couldn't trust that guy.

* I forget who originally sent me those commercials, and for that I am sorry. Thanks though - those are awesome.

A Summer Vacation

Holy nuts! A Thursday post! Well, this one couldn't wait. It is The Office's summer vacation summary. If you were wondering what happened to Jimmy and Team Karen, you're questions are answered.



That's right, ladies and gentlemen - Team Karen has failed. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I was a huge Team Karen fan, but after Team Pam made her case so brilliantly in Blades of Glory (NSFWish) I was torn. If you ask me, this clip was funnier than all of the accountant skits last summer but not as weird as this video.



And if you're complaining about a Thursday post (and I'm not sure why you're reading it if you're complaining), understand that I was so excited when I found this video, I immediately wrote a post. Besides, The Office is on Thursdays, so this video in on a Thursday. Stop Whining.

Transformers: True American Heroes

Happy 4th of July everybody! Since it is a holiday, I'll keep it short. Yesterday, I saw Live Free or Die Hard. It was awesome; a perfect mix of action and cheesy story. If you enjoy bald, older men or the guy who got crushed by the fat cheerleader in Dodgeball. then I highly recommend it

Anyway, a movie that actually came out this week is Transformers. I used to love Transformers when I was younger and my parents still have all of my old Transformers toys boxed up. Anyway, one of the biggest reasons I used to love Transformers was because of the genious cartoon. So, what better way to celebrate the 4th and my love for Transformers than watching a clip of the Korean version of the show. Nevermind. That video was too painful. You can watch it on that link. Instead, watch Stephen Colbert's Korean music video.



I think that is actually the same guy doing the voices for everything. It is painful. Please tell me you didn't make it through all of that. Sorry if you did - its not even that funny, its more absurd. To make up for it, here is a link to a collection of Megan Fox picture articles. Who's Megan Fox? She's in Transformers. See, it all ties together. Here's a video of her on one of my favorite shows, Two and a Half Men.



Have a good 4th.

Casual Dress Friday: Filet-O-Fish

Last night was a good night for me. I left work before 5, worked out for the first time in like 3 weeks, ate a delicious tex-mex dinner, got to spend some quality time with the wife and watched my Spurs pick up their 4th championship over the Cavs, who, basically, didn't put up a fight. Good times for me.

I know a lot of you aren't Association fans, but if you follow pop-culture at all, you know that Tony Parker, the newly crowned NBA Finals MVP, is marrying BCS Top 5 Chicas member, Eva Longoria (I'd crash it, but its in France...). Anyway, my theory as to why Tony won the MVP? Eva closed off the box during the playoffs. Seriously. Since we've seen how that's turned out, I guess I should be thanking her except that I have a sneaking suspicion that she was debating whether she should hook-up with the G.O.A.T., Michael Jordan (that's a recent pic, by the way - I'd say he's fallen off, but if you're putting in time with Eva, I guess you're not doing that bad). Anyway, hopefully Eva doesn't come down with herpes like recent tennis champion (and heinously ugly chica) Justine Henin-Hardene.

Anyway, obviously, when you watch sports, you see a bunch of commercials. Too many. So most of the time I tune them out, but every once in a while, one catches my attention. One of them that caught my attention - Zach Braff's Wendy's Triple Stack commercial. Honestly, does Braff have to stoop to fast-food commercials? That's the best you can pull? Look, I get it, George Clooney is the voice of Budweiser, but that's beer not a f-ing squared cheeseburger. Speaking of Clooney, I saw Ocean's 13 last week and it was excellent. Still not as good as Ocean's 11, but very good as well.

Anyway, I love Scrubs as much as the next guy, but I guess we all have to realize that our expectations were just too high for Braff. In reality, he's really just a poor man's John Krasinski (aka, Jim), who made the injured reserve of Shorty's BCS Top 5. Think about it, Jim (I know him better as Jim) is on The Office (a better show than Scrubs), is less pretentious and, not having seen either movie, I'm going to guarantee that Jim's movie with Mandy Moore will be better than Zach's movie from this summer. I guess it could be worse. He could be doing flea market commercials.

Speaking of bad commercials, here's a McDonald's commercial for a Filet-O-Fish from Napoleon Dynamite's Aaron Ruell (aka Kip). I don't like it, although it appears to be as polarizing as the movie.



McDonald's has really fallen off from their glory days.



Have a good weekend.

Bartenders, SNL and Team Karen

As I said Monday, I'm traveling. So when I go out to eat, I usually sit at the bar of whatever restaurant I go to because I am by myself. This usually gives me a way to watch TV and get my food rather promptly. As a bonus I'm not sitting all by myself (the people in the crowd dancing in that video kill me...also, did you know that song was originally sung by Eric Carmen - that's Carmen not Cartman - and not by a woman? I did not) looking like a tool.

Anyway, can someone please explain to me why the dumpy bartender feels that she needs to flirt with me? Now, I'm not one to turn down some casual flirting, but, honestly, I'm there for food, you're gonna get tipped, the ring (that one gets even funnier at the end) on my finger clearly indicates that I'm married despite the fact that I'm sitting at a bar by myself, and, perhaps most importantly, you're not hot and you know it. It's one thing if you are trying to play up the cute angle, but you know you can't do that so why are you trying to give me the treatment? This may work for the truckers that roll through Kokomo, but I'm in a suit, looking dapper and clearly not looking to hook-up with you. Please, be nice, but please, don't treat me like I'm a horny 15-year-old that will put my cod in anything that resembles a box.

But I digress. What I really wanted to do today was beat a dead horse. I have two clips, one that you may have seen (I watched it live) and one I hadn't seen until today. They show just how far SNL has fallen.

I'll start with the good clip. It features Chris Farley, Phil Hartman and Mohr's BCS #1 Man-Crush, Bill Murray.



I laughed the entire way through that skit. Start to finish. I probably laughed the hardest when that dude got tagged in the mejitos. Good times.

On the other end of the spectrum, here is a clip from a recent SNL featuring Lindsay Lohan.



The premise of that skit isn't funny and it features a whole slew of SNL personalities I don't like, including a cameo from Keenan. Ironically, I laughed at that skit, not because it was all that funny, but because they were all laughing so hard (something that Jimmy Fallon is notorious for). Breaking the skit is what made that sketch funny and that's not good news. I guess it could be worse...they could be using Carlos Mencia. SNL is diappointing each and every week (much like this clip of Andre Agassi tagging Steffi Graf) and I'm hoping that if I keep saying it, finally it will catch on.

I've decided that I can't leave you with that, and since it is Thursday, that means its a great time to give an Office shout-out. I wanted to mention the undercover hottness of Pam (Jenna Fischer). My friends and I have been discussing this ever since we saw these Puma ads from a couple years ago, but for me it really came to light in the movie Blades of Glory (which was pretty funny by the way - if nothing else, there's a Mr. Feeny cameo and I love Boy Meets World). There's a clip here that is PG-13 so, kids, you should probably not watch this one.



I'm still a Team Karen person, but I may be more apt to root for Team Pam after that...


I guess I would be OK with Jim switching to team Pam after Blades of Glory.

Casual Dress Friday:

Apparently those bastards over at NBC forgot to read my letter to television a couple weeks ago because they are yanking me around with The Office. First its on, then its off, then its on for 2 weeks, then its off for like 6 in the middle of the spring. What's worse is that I knew it wasn't new this week. I knew it. But my box (and by that I mean my DVR) told me it was a new episode. Of course, all they did was put two episodes back to back, interspersed some deleted scenes (which I had alread seen on NBC.com) and told my box it was new.

What in the hell is that? Bush league, NBC, real bush. If I ever meet the president of NBC I'm going to punch him. Right in the mouth.

Anyway, since The Office isn't going to be new until sometime in April, here's a sweet video to hold you over in the meantime. It's actually an NBC compilation of clips, but I know you'll enjoy it...

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It's a casual dress Friday here at the Skeet Thrower, and I have decided that on Friday's during March, I'm going to take the time to answer a few of the more popular questions from my hundreds of readers (OK, let's be honest, some days its just tens of readers..but I digress). If you've been paying attention, you've noticed that I did this two weeks ago when I told you who was on my BCS Celebrity Man-Crush list (I left it to celebrities because it could get really awkward if I revealed my non-celebrity man-crushes) and last week I answered ?Porque Es Amor?

This week I'll answer a very complex question: "Who or what do you hate the most?". Now, typically, I try to avoid direct negativity. I tend to just enjoy light-hearted mockery (like naming all of my NCAA tournament brackets "Dickenmann's boys" - who, on a side note, sadly and predictably lost - but can you tell me why there's a website that keeps track of Howie Dickenman quotes?), but sometimes you have to just spit some good 'ol hatin'.

To be accurate, I'm going to split this question into two parts, what is my biggest pet peeve and who do I hate the most. The latter part of the question will fall under my BCS Top 5 Most Hated List (which will be officially unveiled next week!), so I'll save that for another post.

Today, I'm going to tell you about my biggest pet peeve. I'm a pretty level-headed guy, but there are very few things that push me over the edge. I hate brown-nosers. Someday, when I'm rich, I'm just going to fire people that annoy me like this. I also hate it when people sniffle a lot during meetings (or just anywhere) and refuse to blow their nose. And I hate it when people are bragadocious homers for their team (sports or otherwise) when they A) know nothing about what they are bragging about and B) only brag when they win.

But those are all petty little things. Like I said, I'm level-headed - those things don't even really bother me.

But you wanna know what really bothers me? Bluetooth Headsets.

I am a huge fan of technology. Hu-Uge. I love iPods, DVRs, cell phones, Wiis and the Internets. But I hate bluetooth headsets. Look, I get the conveinence factor (and maybe everyone should be forced to get them for their car). I even get the whole, it frees up my hands for phone sex thing. But honestly, I hate it when people just walk around with on non-stop. Don't you realize you look like an idiot? You may think you're cool and hip walking around with your bluetooth in all the time, but what you don't realize is you have a metal and plastic tumor growing out the side of your head and you look like a fake Robocop. And do you always have to yell? Why are you announcing your conversation? Yes, we know you have a bluetooth headset, but, no, I don't care what you are having for dinner tonight.

Honestly, lets lay down some ground rules for using bluetooth headsets.

1. Only have the bluetooth in when you are on the phone.
2. Only use a bluetooth when you need both of your hands for something else.
3. Don't act like you're cool because you have a bluetooth headset. You're not. And this guy better hope me never meet in the streets.
4. Don't be a derka.

That should take care of it. This shouldn't even be something I need to write about. Some people are just dumb.

Looking back on that last paragraph, you can see why I don't write about things I hate. I can't even find funny links for this shit.

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In other pop culture news, check out this video of the band name "The Cat Empire." I saw this on a Letterman rerun last night. I'm ok on the song, but can you tell me what the dude on the far left is doing? Also, is the person on the piano a chick or dude because I have no clue.



He's playing a freaking tambourine? That's it? Oh, I guess he dances as well. What in the hell is that? He doesn't have a mic at face level so unless his cod piece is singing that's all he's got. I wonder if that has caused a real-life more cowbell situation...only with a tambourine and a beast on synthesizer/keyboard.

Have a good weekend.