Chappelle’s Show

The Daytime Emmy Awards, 2010

/ Jared / 1 Comment

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So, guess who stumbled across The Daytime Emmy Awards in the cable menu while setting up the DVR for the week?  That’s right, me!  The Daytime Emmys, everybody!  I could not pass up this opportunity to have another winner-picking competition with Johanna.  I mean, what other award show features categories like this:

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL CLASS SPECIAL

WE ARE ONE: THE OBAMA INAUGURAL CELEBRATION AT THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL
HBO
CLEAN HOUSE: THE MESSIEST HOME IN THE COUNTRY
THE STYLE NETWORK

ON THE EDGE: THE POVERTY CRISIS IN AFRICA
FOX REALITY

That’s right, Clean House up against Obama and poverty in Africa!  Also, since when did Fox Reality Channel have shows about things like poverty in Africa?  Neither of us has even heard of a lot of these shows, let alone see them, so our choices will be almost completely arbitrary.  This is going to be more bonkers than our MTV Movie Award competition.

Believe it or not, not only was there not a printable ballot to be found online, I wasn’t even able to find a list of the categories than were going to actually be in the telecast.  So I printed the huge list of unbelievably specific awards off of the Emmy site, and then set about eliminating all but the seemingly most important categories.  I brought it down from sixty pages to a concise eight.  We’ll find out together whether or not I chose the right categories.

Johanna has made a special cocktail for the occasion out of pear vodka, cranberry juice, and lemon.  She’s calling it the “Bitch Slap.”  It tastes delicious, but I’m going to give her the first hour of the show to punch up the name.  Let’s get started.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – You know an award show is extra-classy when it comes to you live from beautiful downtown Las Vegas.  They’re listing all the performers and presenters here, and outside of our host Regis Philbin, I think the biggest star is Simon Cowell.  Chubby Checker???

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Television, 2000-2009

/ Jared / 4 Comments

This has been a great decade for television, so much so that the list of my favorite shows of the decade pretty much doubles as the list of my favorite shows of all time.  Other than Seinfeld and the nineties-era Simpsons, I’m struggling to think of a pre-2000 show that would make the cut.  It’s amazing how far television has come as a medium over the past ten years.  Anyway, here they are, not the best, necessarily, but my favorite shows, 2000-2009 (clips when available and appropriate):

30) Sealab 2021 (Adult Swim, 2000-2005)

A bizarre show for a bizarre decade.

(I couldn’t get the embed code from Adult Swim to work for my favorite clip for some reason, so here’s the link. If I can figure it out, I’ll fix it.)

29) Extras (HBO, 2005-2007)

It’s not The Office, obviously, and parts of the series finale were painfully earnest.  But Ricky Gervais (on television, at least) is always worth my time, and about half of the guest stars were hilarious.

28) The “House” Series (Frontier, Colonial, etc.) (PBS, 2000-2006)

It’s almost always entertaining to watch the types of people who sign up for reality television on PBS.  For instance, Michelle Rossi-Vorhees, of Colonial House, is simultaneously attempting to recreate the life of a female pioneer in 1628 while staying true to her 21st-century ideas about feminism and atheism.  In doing so, she basically undoes the premise of the show, but it makes for great drama, and the PBS veneer allows viewers to pretend that it’s not just a higher-class Wife Swap.  Very sad that there hasn’t been a new installment since 2006.

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