"Portlandia" is the rarest of all rarities: A local sketch comedy show that *isn't* public access. It's produced and (generally) set in Portland, Oregon, and like most local attempts at community-based comedy, it's (generally) doggedly un-funny. That said, because Portland is where the trend-sucking leeches live lives of deliberately-affected hiposity, they have a lot of truck within the entertainment community. http://rediscover.msn.com/city/31780172/video/21?WT.mc_id=msn
Since we're a science fiction site, "Red Tails," the World War II picture about the Tuskegee Airmen, is pretty much beyond our purview. Given that this is a Lucasfilm, however, there are of course two, possibly three bits of geekery thrown in:
While watching "Green Lantern" the other night, they started running these "DC Nation Shorts," which where 60-second spots involving DC superheroes (Or variations thereof) engaged in stupid comedy. They ran two.
The first was an Aardman-styled claymation bit with English kids doing the dialog for deliberately goofy-looking versions of Batman, the Joker ("See how many hops I can do on one leg!") and others. Cute, but meh.
Harlan Ellison turned up on Scooby Doo tonight! No, really! It wasn’t just a name-check or anything, it was Harlan playing himself. There was also a throwaway Galaxy Quest gag (“By Grabthars’ Hammer!”) and the whole thing revolved around the Cthuhlu Mythos, which itself has some SF aspects here and there. Put it all together and it’s a perfect storm of geekery.
The kids were watching “Looney Tunes: Back In Action,” tonight, a film I’ve actually put some effort into avoiding. It looks dreadful, it is dreadful, Warner Brothers clearly doesn’t know that to do with their classic animated characters (“Loonatics Unleashed,” anyone?) and Jerry Goldsmith manages to blow “Powerhouse“ every time it comes up in the score. I honestly can’t remember the last time Steve Martin was anything apart from humiliating in a movie. I don‘t expect much of Brendan Frasier, and I expect even less of Joe Dante and Jenna Elfman, but Jerry Goldsmith?
In the world of SCTV, there was this independent cable network located somewhere in the midwest. The show generally followed the day-to-day operations of the little station that couldn't, intersperced with sketch comedy in the form of fake commercials, shows, and movie-parodies.
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaan, this is the coolest thing ever! And to think I’d never even heard of it before yesterday, despite the fact that it’s probably the most audacious, most high-profile, most legitimately countercultural bit of Drive-By Geekery ever!
The Republispouse got me SCTV on DVD as sort of an present-in-advance for my birthday next month. (I know. I don't get it either, but, hey, windfall!) and I’ve been plowing my way through them in delirious abandon. There’s a number of old SF gags in the show, which I’ve been debating mentioning on here despite being nearly 30 years old. I mean clearly, no one cares anymore, so why should I waste everyone’s time? I realized that I have to do at least one of these: the episode entitled “Zontar” which is an obvious reference to the 60s d-movie “Zontar: The Thing From Venus.”
Ok, I'm in a quandry here. This feature is dedicated to pointing out occasional shoutouts and in-jokes aimed at us, the geek community. These are generally fairly infrequent, like the surprise appearance of Space Cowboy Mal on a recent episode of Castle. The problem is that 30 Rock seems to have a deliberate bit of Drive-By Geekery in every episode as part of their formula.
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