Pat Kiernan, I Love You

You may not know about the adorable newsman who wakes up with New Yorkers every day and reads us the morning papers but let me tell you, he is our real-life Ron Burgundy. Pat is our cold morning cereal news buddy supreme. All non-New Yorkers may recognize him as the deadpan host of that short-lived trivia show on VH1, the World Series of Pop Culture, where he dryly recited the lyrics to “My Humps” as if it were Robert Frost. He’s done bit parts in New York-centric movies like The Interpreter and Night at the Museum, where he always plays himself. He has to, because Pat Kiernan is so damn real, that to say he is “keeping it real” can’t even begin to describe his high levels of cosmic realness. Modestly he shrugs off the calls, nay, the deafening chorus of voices begging him to move to a national platform, like another local anchor that used to be our little secret: Sam Champion (also awesome, but in a totally different way.) Mr. Kiernan declines. “No!” says he to puff pieces and cooking segments and chattering menopausal co-hosts because the great PK would rather read the hard news to the people of the hard city. Pat Kiernan is a New Yorker in the best sense, in that he is actually Canadian. He admits that, growing up in Alberta, his biggest thrill was meeting a local AM newsman in Calgary. He is obviously chief of the tribe of sandy-haired Canadian news nerds, but he loves New York so much that he gets up at 3 am to get to the studio and start reading us the news while we’re still wearing eyeliner and a black light hand stamp from the night before. He does his own makeup and makes French toast on an electric skillet in the newsroom. Paul Rudd named his fantasy football team after him. He looks like a handsome newscaster Muppet. He loves Slurpees and dreams of owning his own Slurpee machine. At the Geekmocalypse, he may be standing in judgment over us all. For all these reasons and more, the Lady Geek nominates Pat Kiernan. Sir, we salute you.

 

Pat Kiernan, I Love You

You may not know about the adorable newsman who wakes up with New Yorkers every day and reads us the morning papers but let me tell you, he is our real-life Ron Burgundy. Pat is our cold morning cereal news buddy supreme. All non-New Yorkers may recognize him as the deadpan host of that short-lived trivia show on VH1, the World Series of Pop Culture, where he dryly recited the lyrics to “My Humps” as if it were Robert Frost. He’s done bit parts in New York-centric movies like The Interpreter and Night at the Museum, where he always plays himself. He has to, because Pat Kiernan is so damn real, that to say he is “keeping it real” can’t even begin to describe his high levels of cosmic realness. Modestly he shrugs off the calls, nay, the deafening chorus of voices begging him to move to a national platform, like another local anchor that used to be our little secret: Sam Champion (also awesome, but in a totally different way.) Mr. Kiernan declines. “No!” says he to puff pieces and cooking segments and chattering menopausal co-hosts because the great PK would rather read the hard news to the people of the hard city. Pat Kiernan is a New Yorker in the best sense, in that he is actually Canadian. He admits that, growing up in Alberta, his biggest thrill was meeting a local AM newsman in Calgary. He is obviously chief of the tribe of sandy-haired Canadian news nerds, but he loves New York so much that he gets up at 3 am to get to the studio and start reading us the news while we’re still wearing eyeliner and a black light hand stamp from the night before. He does his own makeup and makes French toast on an electric skillet in the newsroom. Paul Rudd named his fantasy football team after him. He looks like a handsome newscaster Muppet. He loves Slurpees and dreams of owning his own Slurpee machine. At the Geekmocalypse, he may be standing in judgment over us all. For all these reasons and more, the Lady Geek nominates Pat Kiernan. Sir, we salute you.

He don like-a de juice?

Egghead Likes Her Booky Wook

I like to pretend that I can mingle successfully with normal people and that I function as a kind of geek liaison to the regular world, but like George Costanza I may have recently crossed the line from Man to Bum. I must confess that I’ve become totally enthralled with George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. I’m not at all into fantasy books, but I liked Lord of the Rings a lot. I tried to read Wheel of Time, I did really try, but I didn’t make it past the first couple of chapters. It was just too dang boring. But man, about a hundred pages into Martin’s Game of Thrones I was hooked forever. It has everything. Sex! Violence! Dismemberment! Zombies! My little brother’s girlfriend infected me when she gave me her much loved, tape on the spine, possibly dropped in the tub paperbacks. I’ve since passed on the plague to friends and family. One of my friends is listening to the book on tape and can now mock me when I mispronounce character names.
George R.R. Martin’s personal website is a kooky gem, I highly recommend it. It turns out he’s a very hands-on evil genius. He goes to a lot of obscure cons and even helps fans sort out grievances with dubious Ice and Fire merchandise distributors. He posts pictures of babies named after Bran and Arya. I discovered that he loves NFL football and also enjoyed The Lake House with Sandra Bullock. Actually, I wish I didn’t know that last thing.
HBO absolutely has to make this into a series. They have to make it, and it has to be kickass, or we will cry our sad, lonely nerd selves to sleep. I mean, more so than usual.

Spores, Molds and Fungus

Over the years, I’ve fallen madly in love with many fictional nerds. Special Agent Dale Cooper, George McFly, Dennis Kucinich. Some people think I’m too intellectual, but I think it’s a fabulous way to spend your spare time. My first mad hardcore nerd god crush was on Egon Spengler, Ph.D. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven when I wrote him a love letter in which I expressed my desire to grow up to be a Gohstbuster [sic]. If I had known there would be math on the test, I wouldn’t have been so excited. Still, I grew up wanting to move to New York. I wanted to eat Chinese food bought with petty cash. I wanted to get kicked out of Columbia for my bizarre research. I’ve never been inside the New York public library ’cause every time I walk by I get the urge to run away. I even forced my parents take me to see Ghostbusters 2 in the theater, during that heady summer when I ate a pound of those hard sticks of Batman card gum, which is probably still somewhere in my body. After seeing the trailer for the new video game (with real, actual jokes!) and holding out foolish hope that a new team of smart-ass comedians might strap unlicensed nuclear accelerators to their backs, my love for Egon has awakened like Cthulhu. Ray is the true believer, but Egon is the brains. The kind of guy who would ignore you for weeks, and you’d come downstairs and find him asleep in his lab with a page of Tobin’s Spirit Guide stuck to his face.  He’s the brilliant, basement-office-dwelling, obscure-degree-holding heartthrob that really gives me a case of total protonic reversal.

 

Sometimes its a comic

Obama Of Nine

Star Trek does more than just clog your DVR. It also sometimes determines the leader of the free world. In 2004 Barack Obama ran for US Senate in my home state of Illinois. For those of you who, like me, own his books but haven’t read them, he had previously been a thrice-elected state senator, having lost one contest in between when he ran for the House against Bobby Rush (and giving Michelle Obama a million told-ya-so points). After sailing through the Democratic primary for the Senate seat, where he slew many foes with his 18 for charisma, he entered the larger contest against Republican opponent Jack Ryan, who used to be married to Jeri Ryan, who you all know as Seven of Nine. Ryan’s campaign fell apart over the summer when certain spicy details about their sex life (definitely worth looking up) came out in their divorce papers. After losing Ryan, the Republicans called up notable old crank Alan Keyes, who it turns out wasn’t busy and offered to step in. Obama went on to trounce Keyes, which is basically like beating your Dalmatian at Scrabble. I realize it’s silly to think that Jack Ryan’s crappiness alone led to Obama’s victory, because a month after Ryan dropped out, Obama gave that kickass speech at the DNC. You know, the one that made everyone believe again. But still, any chance to mention Star Trek while talking about the presidential election works for me, because nothing is more fun than alienating people at Manhattan cocktail parties.

 

Mr. Column

I’m really a Spaceball. I know that. When I was a kid we watched our tape of it constantly. My siblings and I ruined countless adult dinner parties with our insistence on reciting lines and doing voices from the movie. The first string of words my little brother ever uttered was “Hot…Too Hot”. Swear on a stack of Bibles, that is true. Ask my mom. You won’t be surprised to hear that his second sentence was a mangled version of “Hello my name is Inigo Montoya. You keel my father prepare to die”.
I realize now it’s a little embarrassing to harbor this secret love of Spaceballs, especially because my favorite movies as an adult are Mel Brooks’ good movies. I’m not delusional about its objective quality, but at least Spaceballs has more jokes than High Anxiety, which has precisely three. And one of them is just a gag from Blazing Saddles. Spaceballs has a metric ton of goofy, lowest common denominator appeal. The bits are all so childish and sincere. And it has a lot of swears.
It makes sense that the new cartoon would be lowbrow and raunchy, but I was hoping for more of a silly and sweet “Virgin Alarm” deal rather than a boob-centric Tripping the Rift type of humor. I mostly hate the show, but I admit I genuinely cracked up at a couple of jokes. I can’t see why adding Yogurt’s wife and another -arlene helps things, but hearing Mel Brooks recite the Konami code was pretty thrilling. The animation is so crummy and weird, and Dark Helmet is so stupidly tiny as to render the whole thing unfunny. But if I look on the bright side, maybe now we’ll get Spaceballs the Cereal.
 

Jay

I’ve recently re-discovered The Critic on this crazy cable channel called Reelz. They play one episode over and over again for a week, then switch to a new episode which they play nonstop for a week. Its odd for sure, but its worth the unruly DVR list to rekindle my romance with that show and see the amazing writers’ credits which include a handful of Simpsons geniuses and Judd Apatow. The Critic captures just the right combination of highbrow and lowbrow references. I can’t think of any other show that could get away with a throwaway reference to a movie like Picnic at Hanging Rock, nerdy law school trivia and Supreme Court justices, all while finding a way to rhyme “genitalia” with “Australia”. Sure, one can sometimes tell they wrote some jokes at the last possible moment cause the lip sync doesn’t really work out, but we can forgive such things when they have Jay’s dad drive a monster truck into Picasso’s masterpiece and scream, “Take THAT, Guernica!” The episode with the extended appearance of an animated Siskel and Ebert brought tears to my eyes. By the by, there’s a great clip of the two on their real life show critiquing the first three episodes of The Critic as being too sitcommy and not focused enough on the fascinating life of the movie critic. I’m pretty sure they were being serious.

I suppose I’m feeling the pull of early nineties New York nostalgia. You know that Mighty Aphrodite, Dream On, early Seinfeld milieu, when the city still seemed to hold a soupVon of danger. The Critic was a great platform for cut away jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but it also managed to be a warm, sweet little view of city life. The show is full of Woody Allen, cab driver and doorman jokes and uses some beautiful watercolory images of Manhattan. But I do go on too much about New York. I romanticize it all out of proportion.

 

Follow That Bird

At karaoke recently I finally noticed the writer’s credit on the Three’s Company theme song was one Joe Raposo, whose name I revered even as a little kid. He wrote all the classic, dark and jazzy tunes from Sesame Street’s best years like C is for Cookie and Sing. My personal favorite is Everybody Sleeps, which immediately conjures up fuzzy images of friendly hobos and snuggly kittens. It made me think about the olden days of The Street, before the green screen reign of the soulless Elmo. I tried to watch some clips of Elmo and that peppy orange one, but the sound of their voices cuts through me like a knife.*
Recently I also caught Cookie Monster on The Colbert Report, who threw out some hip jokes to win over the young crowd of Manhattanites, who initially made hostile murmurs at the mention of “Veggie Monster”. We’re hostile because we all grew up watching those millions of cookies come spilling back out of his black felt mouth, and we turned out OK. They did make sure we knew not to bring cookies into the library though. I feel like Sesame Street didn’t always have such an obvious, annoying agenda. A kid could just chill with a juice box and watch a rolling rubber ball do its thing. And find me someone who doesn’t love that crayon factory. The Street was at its best when it was ponderous and abstract.
Also, can they cool it with the hipster guest stars? Don’t preschoolers know how to count to four already by hearing that Feist song on incessant ipod commercials? Back in the day we had classy guests like Madeline Kahn and Cab Calloway. Not one hit wonders with bangs. Now if they had Smokey Robinson running from that giant floating U parent groups would freak out cause it probably fosters stalkerist tendencies.
And anyway I think it’s clear that I still haven’t gotten over Mr. Hooper.
*Secret trivia: One of the fiery things in Labyrinth has Elmo’s voice (Kevin Clash), which bumps them up into a cosmically annoying level.