CNN delivers again with this hard-hitting exclusive top story. The Peabody folks are actually starting to take back previous awards from CNN. The worst thing is that this has become standard for the editorial culture there. No one even recognizes how embarrassing it is.
I want to like CNN. As an Atlanta native it wounds me personally to see crazy Ted Turner’s once proud news empire rudderless and foundering. Recent high-profile reporting blunders and questionable editorial calls haven’t helped matters. But I at least like some of what they’ve tried since Jeff Zucker showed up to run things. Anthony Bourdain’s hyper-promoted show is as interesting an hour as any of the news channels broadcasts (although it’s still not exactly news). His visit to Libya was flat-out fascinating.
But, you know, this:
Surely there are some actual news-minded editors at CNN who are ready to just give up. How thoroughly embarrassing that Miley Cyrus’s skank dance at the VMA’s is the breathless top news item on CNN.com. Right down to the triple-question-marked tabloid “She did what???” headline. You’re making it hard to root for you, CNN.
UPDATE: By the way, I was kidding about the “distasteful Miley Cyrus content.” I consider any Miley Cyrus content to be distasteful. We haven’t gone prude here at containseggs.
UPDATE NO. 2: Wow, The Onion rips CNN.com to shreds for this in a hilarious phony editorial. Outstanding.
As we observed tonight’s three-hour time-release Ambien awards show:
Golden Corral apparently has bought a 2012-GOP-presidential-candidate-sized block of television airtime to advertise its new Chocolate Wonderfall, a provocatively unsanitary bubbling cascade of gooey brown bacteria. The idea: Patrons submerge berries, cookies and other confections on sticks in the flowing chocolate, and then, apparently, consume them. (Fondon’t! Fondon’t!)
The commercials seem to run incessantly now, especially on the cable news channels:
There exists no doubt that this chocolate waterfall will trigger a much more violent chocolate waterfall later. Can you conceive of a more disgusting buffet line concept than this geyser of gastrointestinal distress? A churning wellspring of warm, sticky dessert syrup continuously attracting and recycling torrents of sneeze juice, dust and child germs?
And maybe a half of a second will pass from when a five-year old lays her eyes on this until she sticks her doll’s head into the chocolate sugar lava. Don’t just take our word for it; here’s the top comment on the YouTube post of the first commercial, which made us laugh until we cried when reading it aloud:
“So I went to a golden corral today, and I tried this out. Right as I dipped my marshmallow into it, some little kid reached over the little metal railing and just stuck his whole hand into it…”
And the Golden Corral reply to the comment offers scant solace:
“We strive to provide the best possible customer experience for all of our guest [sic]. However, with something as popular as this it is difficult to catch everything.”
Gaaahh! I just took a shower after reading that. This from a restaurant with a history of serving up the all-you-can-e coli buffet. And don’t forget the salmonella special right here in Georgia a few years back.
You’d think that such a track record would inspire tremendous caution with food safety and public health. Or maybe Golden Corral just realizes that the American buffet-going public has a short collective memory and an unrelenting lust for novelty, chocolate sauce and type-2 diabetes. Bacteria be damned! These patrons in a follow-up commercial certainly seem excited:
I hope that guy’s cowboy hat can catch some barf.
Finally, in an important aside, our good friend Tim O’Shea of Talking With Tim pointed out on Facebook that there is an inevitable advertising tie-in for the band Oasis. What better reason for them to reunite than to promote the Golden Corral Chocolate Wonderfall? After all, both the band and the Chocolate Wonderfall recycle things that were once good (Beatles songs, chocolate) and turn them into horrible abominations that send us running for the toilet. We close with some lyrics from the Oasis hit “Wonderwall,” reworked for Golden Corral:
Today is gonna be a day that you’re probably gonna spew
By now, you surely feel foul
From the chunks you inevitably blew
I can’t conceive how anybody
Eats that chocolate goo that’s trickling down
Yet maybe, after eating steak and gravy
You’ll heed the call, of Chocolate Wonderfall
I must admit, we were kinda bummed to see Henry Winkler recently debut as the celebrity spokesperson for One Reverse Mortgage. First of all, when did the Fonz age into the role of Comforting Familiar Trustworthy Senior? Isn’t that the territory of folksy oat peddler and diligent diabeetus warrior Wilford Brimley? Or the surprisingly inept and possibly inebriated teleprompter reader Tommy Lee Jones? I mean, the fucking Fonz improbably mastered Russian dance, sent bullies scurrying in a whimpering panic by busting doors off their hinges, mixed toughness with wisdom to defuse a violent situation with a karate-crazed Tom Hanks (!), and ended racial segregation.
So forgive us if we can’t help but feel that shilling for reverse mortgages is beneath Winkler’s station, better suited for Hart to Hart actor and marital yacht assassin Robert Wagner. (Insert tasteless Natalie Driftwood joke here.)
We’ve decided to celebrate some of Winkler’s finest work, as lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn on Arrested Development. Here, in one of our favorite scenes of all time, Winkler lampoons overt TV product placements, punctuating the point by jumping the shark for the second time in his career:
And the original, as Fonzie, which launched a passionate cultural fixation on pinpointing the moment good things start to suck:
And finally, one last sublime Zuckerkorn moment. Those are balls:
There are two things I need you to help me find:
(1) In the early 1980s, there was a TV public service announcement by the Department of Labor that educated viewers about their minimum wage entitlements. I know this one existed; I recall the song, a punchy, uplifting soundtrack for a 30 second inspirational montage of happy people celebrating minimum wage employment. Some sample lyrics:
“Three-ten, three-ten an hour is federal minimum wage / For most jobs your hired to do / You’ve got three-ten coming to you”
The spot ended with a flourish: A race runner joyously broke through the finish tape, victorious in his quest for stifling poverty. As he pumped his fist with unbridled delight, the song punctuated our shared exhilaration: “You’ve got three-ten . . . YEAH! coming to you.”
I have searched online to no avail, and even my friends with encyclopedic pop culture knowledge don’t remember it. It would comfort me if someone acknowledged remembering it. It would thrill me to the point of Kelly Ripaesque giddiness if someone has or can point to a clip.
(2) In the sixth grade (1982), we had to watch a drug scare film in science class. I recall a scene with a young man, maybe 20 or so, who had suffered a psychotic break after taking PCP. Institutionalized, he was dancing atop his bed singing “Shadow Dancing,” apparently now under the delusion that he was Andy Gibb. I laughed aloud and the teacher asked me if I thought something was funny. I replied, “Are you watching the same thing I am?” Then she made me leave the classroom.
Now, I challenge my own memory of this incident. First of all, you’d think a school anti-drug filmstrip with PCP Andy Gibb singing “Shadow Dancing” would’ve found its way to the Internet by now. Google comes up empty, at least for me.
Secondly, my memory seems to have made me an impossibly clever and quick-witted 11-year-old.
But the details of the film seem unusually specific for my mind to have simply invented over the years, and I’ve been recounting some version of this incident for as long as I can remember. So I cling to hope that this cautionary educational gem did indeed exist. Please, someone out there, deliver me this humble Christmas wish.
Surely, someone among the double-digit daily readership here at ContainsEggs can help solve these mysteries.
UPDATE 2/3: An exciting breakthrough! It looks like someone else remembers the school drug-scare film, and that perhaps my memory failed me on the particular song. This person recalls the PCP kid singing Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” which in retrospect seems more appropriate for an angel dust overdose. But the other details were the same. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081121144317AAblDO9
I love the dueling A&E and TLC shows about hoarders because crazy people fascinate me and provide a comforting benchmark for my own relative sanity. I actually admire their resolute passion to cling to a package of hair bows or a jar of relish.
(I do wonder how many of those 1-800-GOT-JUNK guys making $12 an hour walk into those houses crammed with dirty diapers and cat carcasses and say, “Fuck this shit; I’ll work at Burger King.”)
But this story tests even my tolerance for hoarder horrors. A court in Ypsilanti Township, Mich., has ordered a property management company, residential association and a derelict condo owner to clean up a condominium stuffed to the ceilings with rotting raw meat, rodents (dead and alive), and insects. I can’t describe it in any more grisly detail than this:
Upon inspecting the property at the end of August, township officials found rotting meat in plastic bags, decaying animals, animal feces, money strewn throughout the debris, around 30 bicycles, “unknown soft items” in various states of decay, mold and even raw chicken stuffed in the mailbox.
(Mailman: “Fuck this shit; I’ll work at Burger King.”)
The repulsive, sad story speaks for itself, but the article also serves up this delightfully misplaced promotional link about a third of the way through:
When this story first posted last week, the page served up an ad link for this local pizza place. We’re guessing Happy was anything but.
Our cheeks are clinched with excitement over the upcoming fall TV season! We intended to post a super mega containseggs sneak peek at the upcoming season, with reviews based entirely on the promotional print ads for the shows, but we never quite got around to finishing! Entertainment reporting makes us want to exclaim!!!
So, here’s one sneak preview, for a show that already debuted tonight. We didn’t watch it, but we bet we’re pretty accurate.
Even Apu Hates This Show
If this promotional ad is any indication, this show will suck as aggressively as his last sitcom, if you can Imagine That. We love Hank Azaria for The Simpsons alone, and we think he’s a gifted live-action actor as well. Huff entertained us during its brief two-year run on Showtime, and Azaria impressed among a terrific cast that included Blythe Danner and Oliver Platt. (Platt’s turn as a spectacularly unraveling, drug-charged lawyer ranks as one of our favorite performances in TV or movies over the past several years.)
But Free Agents looks like forgettable formulaic schedule-filling crap. Uh oh, indeed. Let me guess: Two professional colleagues drink too much at a work function and end up sleeping together. Hilarity evades!
Even the look on Azaria’s face here seems less to communicate, “What awkward professional situation have I gotten myself into with a coworker?” and more to say, “I hope Helen Hunt doesn’t ridicule this show at parties.”
So, apparently “The Office” star John Krasinski will kick off the 42nd season of Sesame Street by bracing for a high-velocity money shot from an enormous uncircumcised penis. Do Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity know about this outrageous filth PBS is peddling?
Scene Directed By Bert and Ernie
Some recent things that amused us:
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