I’ve always been slightly unnerved by ventriloquists ever since, as a youngster, I saw the terrific Anthony Hopkins voice-throwing horror movie Magic. And I’d barely heard of Jeff Dunham before somebody started plastering everything in my neighborhood that remained still for 30 seconds with posters for his new show, which debuts on Comedy Central tonight.
On further investigation, however, it turns out I may be the only person on planet earth who is not a diehard Dunham fan. Maybe there are even Martians who have seen one particular routine he performs with his Achmed the Dead Terrorist puppet which has been viewed a remarkable 97 million times and which you can see below. Meanwhile, Forbes recently estimated his annual earnings at $30 million, thanks to the ventriloquist’s hugely successful tours and DVD sales.
Have you seen Dunham in the flesh? Are you excited for his show? And do you agree with me that Magic is the Citizen Kane of movies-where-you’re-not-sure-whether-the-murderer-is-Anthony-Hopkins-or-his-creepy doll?
Last night’s Cougar Town episode may not have been the strongest in the sitcom’s brief history, but it did succeed in giving us a sense of Courteney Cox’s Jules as a professional woman whose life isn’t devoted only to drinking, partying, and pursuing younger dudes. Okay, so in actuality we saw Jules pushing some of her crazy workload onto irresponsible Laurie, but still, the little details felt just right — from the explanation that you can’t have too many bowls of wooden fruit when staging an open house to Jules’ insistence that Laurie show up on time to pick her up for their morning appointment. “Calling me at eight from 20 minutes away to say ‘Come out, I’m here’ doesn’t count.” Laurie, with her “fightin’ nails” and her questionable taste in men, is an endless source of trashy good fun, whether she’s accidentally losing her skirt in some roadside bushes or serving as a punch line for Ellie, who commented on Laurie’s lateness by speculating that she was “passed out under some loser who’s naked except for his hat on backwards.”
This week at the Pop Culture Club the plan was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Or was it? In my endless masochistic desire to get us to objectively rejudge our nostalgic favorites (
As writer-director Troy Duffy recalls it, the cast and crew of The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day were more than a tad nervous when they began work on their Boston-set, vigilante-action sequel. “Everybody was terrified to be the guy that screwed it up,” he says of the Toronto shoot for his movie, which is released October 30. “They knew the fans would find out where they lived and burn their f—-ing house to the ground.”
This season’s most unexpected success story, Glee is snarky, theatrical, totally addictive — and a cult phenomenon on its way to becoming a national obsession. The comedy is currently averaging a steady 8 million viewers a week, and the people watching are enviably young: Five million of its viewers are in the desirable 18–49 demo. (It’s little wonder that in September, Fox made Glee the first new fall series to be given a full 22-episode pickup.) Meanwhile, fans are staying engaged even after the episodes are over by downloading the cast’s newest cover tunes. More than 1.7 million Glee songs have been sold since May, and that’s after only seven episodes. “I thought it would be a huge project, but I didn’t know it would be this big,” says Rob Stringer, chairman of Columbia/Epic, Glee’s label. “The public appetite for this music is incredibly intense.” Adds the comedy’s co-creator Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), “It seems to have transcended just being a television show to moving into other cultural areas.”
Bad news for the Pritchett clan, good news for us: Phil isn’t the only family member harboring an inappropriate crush on an in-law. Seriously, was there anything better on last night’s dangerously funny installment of Modern Family than Cameron’s overly enthusiastic admission (embedded below) about his attraction to Mitchell’s dad Jay? “For the record, you’re smokin’ hot. One hundred percent. You’re totally my type. You’re dangerous. You’re gettable. You have a little cashola in your pocket….the whole kit and kaboodle.”
