TV is the New Reading

Brain candy alert - summer's here!

Summer is officially here.

What a statement! How can I be so sure? After all, there’s parts of the state we had snow within the past week, it’s been gray and rainy and overnight temps have hung out near freezing.

Well, I’ll explore my own personal theory on that in just a moment. More after this:

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Laurence Simon is a writer who hosts 100 Word Stories from the blog “This is full of crap,” a title influenced by Sturgeon’s law that suggests 90 percent of everything is crap, he asks, “Why settle for 90 percent?” His language is raw and the imagery in the stories people turn in aren’t always pleasant – in short, it carries the “explicit” tag for a reason. Even so, everyone can use a creative outlet from time to time and if this is yours, here’s to you! The direct link to 100 Word Stories is (http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com).

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The Internet! Two cable productions opened recently – Daniel Tosh of “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central and “Singled Out”s Chris Hardwick of “Web Soup” on G4. And with the entire Internet at their disposal you’d think they could keep off of each other’s toes – especially since “Web Soup” went to perhaps the oldest clip on the Internet – two ancient local Stanford and Waldorf-type television reporters having a snipefest at each other – a snipefest we witnessed when Joel McHale aired it on his show “The Soup” and when Jon Stewart used it on “The Daily Show” even before that.

To be fair, “Web Soup” used this clip to set up a fake snipefest between Hardwick and McHale in its pilot episode as a handoff to the new show, but I don’t personally need ever again to see “Good Day NY”s Ollie and Jim from 2007 – which is a century ago in cyberspace. If you do, however, here it is.

Like I said, they’ve got the entire Internet at their disposal. Both shows approach their subject matter from different perspectives, but essentially both look at funny clips from the Internet. And in their pilot episodes, both shows featured an elephant “cleaning” another elephant … that’s all I’m going to say about the clip itself. If you saw it, you know what I’m talking about and if you didn’t, believe me, be happy. There’s stuff you can’t un-see, like that turtle romancing a tennis shoe. Eep.

I’m going to suggest something: The VH1 production of Patrice O’Neill hosting “Web Junk” was already a much higher profile than most of this nonsense should have – I’m talking to you, old guy smoking in a shower and singing along to Britney Spears and, for some reason, then, uploading it to the interweb. Any one show competes with the fact that while the show is airing, a 1,000 other funny things are being uploaded and you can expect to highlight a few and even create original content – “Tosh.0” tracked down the Afro Ninja who suffered an epic fail in a backflip and gave him a chance to do it correctly (which, spoiler alert, he did). But the reason you know about most of what you’ll know about is because it’s gone viral – meaning everyone has already seen it – and if everyone has already seen it, why do they need to tune in to watch you comment on it? It’s funny, we already knew that, that’s why you’re airing it.

On the other hand, since I don’t spend every waking moment clicking around on funny videos, this is probably the only place I’d see them, so “Tosh.0” and “Web Soup,” you are performing a pub-- … well, some kind of service.

More after this:

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My friend Kurtis Scaletta had the excellent fortune to have his first novel, the baseball-themed “Mudville,” published. He sat down recently with C.A. Webb for “Conversations Live” on BlogTalkRadio. I included a few clips from that interview in my podcast and the link is in the June 10, 2009 entry from Scaletta’s Web site at (http://kurtisscaletta.com).

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By the way, I do go outside occasionally to enjoy the nice weather in the summer months, too, have no fear.

No, whatever the weather, whatever else is going on, the way I can tell it’s summer, all I need to do is watch ABC for new episodes of “Wipeout” and a show I’ve been waiting to return since its first-season finale, “I Survived a Japanese Game Show!”

If any of this gets offensive, just be aware that Japanese people already put themselves in the most ridiculous situations in actual Japanese gameshows, which tend to involve more physical challenges, vibrantly colorful sets and get more tactile-intrusive. American contestants last year got slimed, greased, doused, sticky and floured and had to eat all sorts of unusual things in order to stay in the competition. They also had to wear all manner of silly costumes and from the previews, we’re only going to see better and funnier.

The Americans, who all share a house in the off hours, are split into teams and compete in all sorts of bizarre stunts in a gameshow called “Majide.” In between competitions hosted by screamingly funny impressario Romu Kanda and adjudicated by the hilariously stuffy Judge Bob, American contestants on the winning teams tour the best sights and scenes of Tokyo. The losers get a different tour, usually having to give rickshaw rides or clean up some popular destination spot or help on a farm. In all, everyone gets some taste of Japanese culture which is part of what makes this such a great show.

That and it’s hilarious. Along with “Wipeout,” a show that flings 24 ordinary people at an obstacle course and they fall about uproariously, competing to complete a variety of physical challenges until the final four take on the monster course and the one with the best time gets $50,000. Meanwhile, running commentary by hosts John Henson, John Anderson and Jill Wagner keep the funny popping all the way through and …

OK, yes, I recognize this isn’t Shakespeare. It’s brain candy of the most accessible nature. But honestly, sometimes people consume media for the sheer joy of it and people falling down are funny

So "Tosh.0" airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Comedy Central, "Web Soup" airs Mondays at 8/7c on the G4, "Wipeout" airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on ABC, this week followed by the premiere of "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" at 9/8c, also on ABC. Hai, MAJIDE!

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