// Category Archive for: Comedy

Best Of 2010: Megashaun

Here’s a list of stuff I was really into in 2010.

Music

Electric Six, Zodiac: This album arrived in the mail a few months before its actual release. When it arrived, I was so excited that I actually felt sick. So instead of listening to it right away, I read all the press notes that accompanied it. I listened to it the next day. I have listened to this album over 245 times. This is not a lie. Drive somewhere with me and you’ll hear it twice.
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Robin Hatch, Sheezer: Best Of 2010

New Music that I was into this year

Anamanaguchi, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Original Videogame Soundtrack
Wild Nothing, Gemini
Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (except for the song “Runaway,” which is the Emperor’s New Clothes of songs)
Anything Nicki Minaj does or is “feat.”-ed on
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Lee Neutron, Daiquiri: Best Of 2010

Albums

2010 was a great year for releases, particularly for the “oldies;” there were strong albums from such long-running acts as Killing Joke, Devo, Helmet, Scorn, Young Gods, and Melvins. I’ve picked my very favourite albums of the year, as well as a standout track from each (these are definitely not in order of best to worst or whatever, like that matters one way or the other).
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Best Of 2010: Ann Clarke

2010 was ridiculously limp regarding any newly released tangible media; I enjoyed older stuff much more. There were plenty of mediocre bands with new albums, boring reunion tours, and remakes of films . . . and I can’t even comment on books because the only ones I ever bother to read anymore are reference materials (travel, art, or kitschy humor).

However, here is some 2010 entertainment that I did enjoy!
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Best Of 2010: By Danny R. Phillips

Hope you enjoy . . . following my advice on these picks is optional and I will not be held responsible for the damages.

Albums

The Black Angels, Phosphene Dream (more…)

Bottom Ten: 2010 Deaths

By Matt Keeley

Man, the Grim Reaper sucks. I know, I know, he provides a valuable service and when he gets stuck up a tree, all sorts of bad stuff happens, but sometimes his aim sucks. Like seriously, Mister Rogers? Talk about all-time candidates for immortality. Anyway, here’s a list of the Ten Least-worthy Folks to have kicked the bucket this year.

Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen was awesome. Sure, he made a lot of crappy movies, but he also made ones so awesome that no one minded! Yeah, Mr. Magoo exists, but so does The Naked Gun. And, really, Spy Hard wasn’t that bad. But the cool thing is that Nielsen was also a renowned dramatic actor and even—in his youth—a heartthrob, which kinda messes with folks of the younger generation, just because we think of Lt. Frank Drebin. But, honestly, Frank Drebin was pretty hot.
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Doctor Ew: Best Of 2010

Brass Eye

Band: The Elwins

Albums:
Women, Public Strain
Mantler, Monody

Songs:
Hooded Fang, “Straight Up The Dial”
Marvin Gaye, “Anna’s Song”
Steven McKay, “Ignite”
Bad Yoga (Neil Fuckin’ Quin), “A Saturday in the Cold Sun”

Craziest comedy show of all time: Brass Eye

Musician: Sandro Perri

TV: The Walking Dead (first episode)

Doctor Ew, a.k.a. Drew Smith, has just released his first solo album, Gadzooks. He is also a member of The Bicycles.

When Three Is Neither Company Nor A Crowd: Least Favorite Love Triangles On TV

By Maureen

I’m not a fan of love triangles. I’ve never been involved in one, and neither has anyone I know. The modern television writer, however, seems to think that love triangles are so commonplace a situation that shows feature them frequently. Usually I am able to ignore them, but three particular examples in recent memory come to mind as especially aggravating. In the spirit of the “power of three,” here they are.
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Seinfeld: You Got To Have Three

By AJ Wood

Comedy duos are always the front of our minds, as though funny only happens in pairs: Lucy and Desi, Burns and Allen, McCain and Palin. For me, as typified in that first sentence, three is the funniest of numbers: one and two set up the pattern and three knocks them down. Works every time.

What becomes even funnier is using the same structure on top of itself: having three different series of three gags which are each funny on their own, but funnier still when they come together to form something greater. Something like a comedy turducken: nothing is left to idle stuffing; it’s just meat on meat on meat. Or perhaps as a vegetarian, I should say a comedy Voltron, with powerful parts coming together to make something more. Or maybe I should stop giggling over the fact I just wrote “meat on meat on meat” and “powerful parts coming together” and move on to the next slide.

One of the best examples of seamless tripartite comedy writing comes from an unassuming source: the show about nothing, Seinfeld. Running from mid-1989 through the 1997 TV season, this sitcom created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David offered something fresh and different from more typical sitcom formats. While “about nothing,” it was still quite unlike anything else on the air. One well-known episode from the early years setting this show apart was “The Chinese Restaurant” (Season 2, Episode 11): a continuous 22 minutes of Jerry, Elaine, and George waiting for a table in a restaurant. Pretty standard fare for a one-act stage comedy perhaps, but definitely not the realm of the typical sitcom.
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Terrorists, Tours, And Tourette’s: Season Three Of Curb Your Enthusiasm

By AJ Wood

Season Eight of Curb Your Enthusiasm will be starting soon, and I will of course be watching. No matter what it brings, it will be difficult for it to reach the brilliance of the third season, which aired in 2002.

Not that episodes from seasons before and after the third one have not been great in their own regard: Porno Gil’s dinner party, opening night of The Producers, and of course, a wrestler named Thor. But as a whole, the third season brings the best mix of those three things that make CYE such a comedic goldmine: impossibly bizarre situations, a wonderful supporting cast, and some great insights into the mind of Larry David.
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