This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Over at The Awl, Robert Lanham recaps a Three’s Company episode from season 7 called Chrissy’s Cousin.
Next week, we have a very tough decision to make since two Richard Chamberlain miniseries, “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds,” will be premiering opposite “Three’s Company” on the two other channels. Decisions, decisions.
Repeat, on the two other channels. (This just in: get off my lawn!)
Have you ever thought about a rocket as a giant flying Thermos bottle? You will now:
Lovely bit of production there as well. (via russell davies)
John Hodgman is filming a pilot for an HBO show called Good Evening, My Name is John Hodgman. Jonathan Coulton and Spike Jonze are involved.
THE THEME OF THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM is “JOCKS vs. NERDS,” the culture war of our time, and a subject that you know I have been thinking about for some time now, and also talking about with the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
IN THIS CASE, the “NERD” shall be played by me, John Hodgman, and the “JOCK” shall be played by the New York Jet, NICK MANGOLD, as I confront all of my deepest fears (humiliation/being punched/Nick Mangold) and attempted to learn from him the virtues of jock culture and the rules of football.
And YOU are invited: September 28th in NYC. Tickets are free and they have an unlimited supply because they are filming it in some sort of massive rocket ship hanger. All you Little Hobos (that’s what Hodgman calls all his fans) click through for details on how to get your tickets.
The new show will appear on PBS and feature Elvis Mitchell & Christy Lemire as the main hosts.
“I believe that by returning to its public roots, our new show will win better and more consistent time slots in more markets,” added Ebert. “American television is swamped by mindless gossip about celebrities, and I’m happy this show will continue to tell viewers honestly if the critics think a new movie is worth seeing.”
Stars January 2011.
Ladies and gentlemen, a friendly reminder: Pete Campbell’s happy dance.
“So here’s some advice I wish I would have got when I was your age… Live every week like it’s shark week.” - Tracy Jordan
In its 24th year, the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is really coming into its own on the internet. At least on the meme-filled internet of Tumblr/Twitter/Reddit etc. Add in the clever guerrilla marketing of having sharks appear off the coast of Cape Cod and NJ this past week, and you’ve got the makings of a media phenomenon I can hardly bear.
In case you missed it on Friday, NBC announced that the October 14th episode of 30 Rock will be performed live. In fact, they’ll be performing 2 shows, one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast. (Pro tip: Air the opposite coast’s episode before the next week’s show.) I am, of course, excited to see the Tracy Morgan/Tracy Jordan combo live.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry for Live Television is jam packed with interesting nuggets such as an incomplete list of notable live television episodes (West Wing, 2005. ER, 1997). Also, the last scripted series to “do it live” regularly was Roc in 1992.
Video of a Valley Girl contest that took place in Encino, CA in 1982.
The footage is from a show called Real People, which was a big hit with adolescent Jason (although I loved That’s Incredible more). If you want to learn more about Valley Girls — sure you do! — Wikipedia has almost too much info. (via lowindustrial)
Over at Unlikely Words, Aaron Cohen has a roundup of the many previews written about tonight’s Mad Men season 4 premiere.
Todd Levin wrote for Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show; here’s Levin in GQ describing the job and those final few weeks of the “I’m with Coco” business.
So it wasn’t until my third day of work that I finally decided to slip past Conan — hunched over his desk, busily doodling on that day’s script — and join the other writers behind the couch. As I settled into my spot among three veteran writers and prayed for invisibility, Conan glanced over, sized us up, and mock sneered, “Look at you four, standing there. You’re like a Mount Rushmore of incompetence.” Then he chuckled and returned to his cartooning. It was a quality put-down, and I was honestly overjoyed to be included in it.
I had so much fun with this last year, I’m doing it again: watch the original CBS News coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and first Moon walk, reported live by Walter Cronkite exactly 41 years after it happened.
Just leave this page open in your browser and at the appointed times (schedule is below), the broadcast will begin (no manual page refresh necessary).
Schedule:
Moon landing broacast start: 4:10:30 pm EDT on July 20
Moon landing shown: 4:17:40 pm EDT
Moon landing broadcast end: 4:20:15 pm EDT
…
Moon walk broadcast start: 10:51:27 pm EDT
First step on Moon: 10:56:15 pm EDT
Nixon speaks to the Eagle crew: approx 11:51:30 pm EDT
Moon walk broadcast end: 12:00:30 am EDT on July 21
If you’ve never seen this coverage, I urge you to watch at least the landing segment (~10 min.) and the first 10-20 minutes of the Moon walk. I hope that with the old time TV display and poor YouTube quality, you get a small sense of how someone 40 years ago might have experienced it.
Please note that schedule times are approximate, based on your computer’s clock, and that the syncing of the videos might not be perfect. You need to have JS and Flash 8+ to view. This is just like real TV…if you miss the appointed time, there’s no rewind or anything…the video is playing “live”. I have not done extensive browser testing so it may not work perfectly in your browser. If you run into any problems, just reload the page. Thanks for tuning in.
I love these minimalist Mad Men posters by Christina Perry.
Prints are available. (via footnotes of mad men)
It’s two weeks until season four of Mad Men starts but in the meantime, you can pre-order Mad Men Unbuttoned, the book that sprang from the loins of the excellent and well-reviewed The Footnotes of Mad Men blog. I’ve only skimmed bits of it here and there, but it looks good so far.
Terry Kniess, a former weatherman with a knack for numbers and seeing patterns, went on The Price is Right and won more than $50,000 in prizes because of an exact bid on his Showcase. His secret? He watched hundreds of hours of the show and discovered its secrets and weaknesses.
Before they stepped foot in the Bob Barker Studio, they were going to be prepared; “Good TV is rehearsed TV,” Terry likes to say. For four months during the summer of 2008, they recorded The Price Is Right every morning and watched it together in bed every night, Terry hunting for patterns and Linda doing the math. It didn’t take long for them to find their edge. In The Price Is Right’s greatest strength, he and Linda also found its greatest weakness: It had survived all those years because it seemed never to change. Even when Drew Carey replaced Bob Barker — the show’s own version of Vatican II — he rocked a similar skinny microphone. Behind all the screaming and seeming chaos, there was a precise and nostalgic order. Terry says he first sat upright in bed when a distinctive grill called the Big Green Egg came up for bid again and again. It was always $1,175.
(via @longreads)
Unless the producers pull a Darrin Stephens, Michael Scott will no longer appear on The Office following the next season.
“I just think it’s time,” Steve told our Kristina Guerrero. “I want to fulfill my contract. When I first signed on I had a contract for seven seasons, and this coming year is my seventh. I just thought it was time for my character to go.”
But according to Steve, The Office could go on without him. “It doesn’t certainly mean the end of the show. I think it’s just a dynamic change to the show, which could be a good thing, actually. Add some new life and some new energy…I see it as a positive in general for the show.”
Carell added:
I didn’t see it as a huge thing and I certainly didn’t anticipate any sort of hubbub over it.
All together now: that’s what she said.
P.S. Tad Friend has a profile of Carell in the New Yorker this week…sadly offline without a subscription.
Socials & More