50k-entertain: January 2015

29.1.15

Can We Admit That Jimmy Fallon Kind of Sucks? | The Daily Banter

Chez Pazienza on June 20, 2014

There isn’t a plane of existence where the name Jay Leno should be mentioned in the same
breath as the name Mark Twain. Unfortunately, despite this fact, it was
announced on Wednesday that Leno will be receiving the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Center this coming October. The honor represents the
highest award for comedy in the United States and effectively instills
upon Leno a credibility and place in American history that he most
certainly doesn’t deserve. True, with one noteworthy break, Leno helmed The Tonight Show for 22 years, but honestly when the hallowed history of Tonight
is mentioned, you often hear the names Allen, Parr, and of course
Carson, but nobody in his right mind would drop Leno in with that
company, regardless of his lengthy stewardship of the legendary
property. Well, I take that back — I guess the Kennedy Center people
would.

When NBC named Jimmy Fallon as the successor to Leno on The Tonight Show,
it was tough to argue that the network hadn’t made a smart choice.
Fallon was quirky but unthreatening, mildly clever without being the
least bit cerebral, and smart but not smug. He had a broad-based appeal
that would play perfectly at 11:35; the older crowd would think he was
cute and endearing — or at the very least harmless — while the younger
crowd would respond to his social media savvy. More importantly than any
of that, he was a bona fide company man, an earnest lapdog who would
ecstatically embrace the NBC way of shameless corporate synergy and cross-pollination. Want somebody who’ll interview the entire cast of the latest Universal film while the winner of Top Chef
cooks for them and Matt Lauer troubleshoots their Comcast cable issues?
Fallon’s your guy. Need somebody thoroughly beholden to the NBC system
to the point where his balls and soul are both held in a vault in Lorne
Michaels’s office and he’s guaranteed never to give you an ounce of
trouble? Bring on Jimmy.

Here’s the only problem: while his ratings have been everything NBC
could’ve wished for, Jimmy Fallon kind of sucks. As in, his take on The Tonight Show
is in some ways even worse than Leno’s. It’s not that Fallon doesn’t
occasionally do some funny bits, it’s that he’s so unfailingly benign
and so unwilling to ever make anyone — his guests, the audience, anyone
— the least bit uncomfortable that you feel like you need an insulin
shot from all the sugar that’s being pumped into your bloodstream during
his show. He certainly doesn’t need to be snarky or wry, that’s more
the torch Jimmy Kimmel is carrying forward, but Fallon and his writing
staff of apparent Thought Catalogers seem so thrilled to simply be there
that the occasional edge that could benefit an interview or a show beat
is never even considered. Believe it or not, the show suffers because
of this.

What’s more, Fallon not only attempts to avoid anything that might
cause a break in anyone’s fun, he willfully edits out serious moments if
they happen naturally. Recently, an article on Shailene Woodley claimed that during the actress’s appearance on Tonight to promote Divergent,
the show cut her answer to a question Fallon had asked about whether
she minded being compared to Jennifer Lawrence. Woodley’s answer was
no-nonsense and took to task Hollywood’s tendency to pit female stars
against each other. Fallon’s people apparently thought it harshed the
vibe or something because the exchange never saw the light of day.

Then just a couple of days ago came Chris Christie’s damn-near hallucinatory guest spot on Tonight in which he and Fallon did a sketch called “The Evolution of Dad Dancing” and Fallon thanked him for “standing in the ring and getting hit like that” by the press while sheepishly deflecting
the conversation away from the reason the press was “hitting” him:
because his administration almost certainly ordered part of the George
Washington Bridge closed to punish a political adversary. Fallon is
simply genetically incapable of asking a question that might get an
answer that isn’t 100% unicorns and rainbows. Even Leno was able to
slyly hammer Hugh Grant after the guy had been busted with a hooker.

Fallon’s sketches seem to aim largely at triggering the dopey
nostalgia receptors in the brain, with the amusement to be gleaned from
watching him and his guests dance, and sing, and rap Gen-X and
Millennial favorites apparently being a limitless commodity. He gets the
cast of Full House back together; he sings Ebony and Ivory with Terry Crews; and he of course pores over every possible hip-hop classic, either by lip-syncing, bringing out Justin Timberlake to do cheesy white-boy karaoke with the Roots, or editing Brian Williams intros into Baby Got Back. It’s not that it’s not funny or charming on occasion, it’s just that it’s not on occasion. It’s constant.
Fallon has one speed and only one speed: cloying and cutesy. He seeks
out maximum Facebook viral circulation and hits precisely the insipid
notes necessary to achieve that, turning The Tonight Show — one
of the most storied properties in media history — into broadcast
television’s answer to Upworthy. Fallon is a living, breathing hashtag.

Now certainly Fallon knows that the word broadcast is what
matters. He’s aiming for the broadest possible audience and maybe that’s
a laudable thing in an age where media saturation has removed the old
cultural touchstones we as a nation used to experience together. There
will never be another Johnny Carson precisely because there can’t
be — our media choices are too expansive and diverse now and it’s split
the audience into too many different subsets. But Fallon is trying to
use social media to connect all the dots out there and give Americans
something they can share in, even if they don’t share it in the
traditional way. The problem is that there’s no meat to Fallon and
that’s what’s needed to move his shtick beyond being just, well, shtick.
Guys like Carson weren’t just funny, they were insightful and
empathetic; they knew when to turn on the charm but also when to turn up
the class and even subtly go for the throat. They knew that there’s
more than one way to be entertaining. Fallon doesn’t seem to grasp that
yet — although admittedly there’s time for him.

As long as his ratings hold, The Tonight Show will be
Fallon’s for as long as he wants it. Hell, one day he may even be
honored by the Kennedy Center. At which point he’ll probably take the
stage and do a rap battle with the cast of Friends.

27.1.15

Prince Philip turns 93: Cringe at a memorable quote for every year of his life - Mirror Online

From the racist and the rude to the insensitive and
idiotic, the Duke of Edinburgh can be counted on to stun us with his one-liners

Prince Philip turns 93 on Tuesday so we have brought you 93 of his most cringe-worthy lines.

In those nine decades he's been a loyal companion to the Queen,
represented Britain around the world... and put his foot in it several
times.

From the racist and the rude to the insensitive and idiotic, the Duke of Edinburgh can be counted on to stun us with his one-liners.

Here are the most memorable of them...

After being told that Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme in 2002: “Are we going to need ear plugs?”
To a car park attendant who didn’t recognise him in 1997, he snapped: “You bloody silly fool!”
To Simon Kelner, republican editor of The Independent, at Windsor Castle
reception: “What are you doing here?” “I was invited, sir.” Philip:
“Well, you didn’t have to come.”
To female sea cadet last year: “Do you work in a strip club?”
To ex-pats in Abu Dhabi last year: “Are you running away from something?”
After
accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991: “Your country is
one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.”
At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, he said: “Cats
kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat
and save a bird?’”
To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”

Racial insult: Lord Taylo
To the President of Nigeria, who was in national dress, in 2003: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”
His description of Beijing during a visit there in 1986: “Ghastly.”
At Hertfordshire University, 2003: “During the Blitz, a lot of shops had
their windows blown in and put up notices saying, ‘More open than
usual’. I now declare this place more open than usual.”
To deaf children by steel band, 2000: “Deaf? If you’re near there, no wonder you are deaf.”
To a tourist in Budapest in 1993: “You can’t have been here long, you haven’t got a pot belly.”
To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”
His verdict on Stoke-on-Trent, during a visit in 1997: “Ghastly.”
To Atul Patel at reception for influential Indians, 2009: “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”
Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: “It looks as though it
was put in by an Indian.” He later backtracked: “I meant to say
cowboys.”
To Lockerbie residents after plane bombing, 1993:
“People say after a fire it’s water damage that’s the worst. We’re still
drying out Windsor Castle.”

Wreckage: Lockerbie jet
In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”
In 1987: “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.”
To his wife the Queen after her coronation: “Where did you get the hat?”
Using Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1997, he called him: “Reichskanzler.”
In 1969: “We go into the red next year... I shall have to give up polo.”
At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”
To a woman solicitor, 1987: “I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.”
To a civil servant, 1970: “You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.”
On the 1981 recession: “A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have
more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now everybody’s got more
leisure time they’re complaining they’re unemployed. People don’t seem
to make up their minds what they want.”
On the new £18million British Embassy in Berlin in 2000: “It’s a vast waste of space.”
After Dunblane massacre, 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a
school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you
going to ban cricket bats?”

Massacre: Dunblane primary school
To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “If you travel as
much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of
less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something
called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”
On stress counselling for servicemen in 1995: “We didn’t have counsellors rushing
around every time somebody let off a gun. You just got on with it!”
On Tom Jones, 1969: “It’s difficult to see how it’s possible to become
immensely valuable by singing what are the most hideous songs.”
To the Scottish WI in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”
To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”
To Cayman Islanders: “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?
To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

Buckfast: Popular in Scotland
At a WF meeting in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a
chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if
it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
In Kenya in 1984: “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?”
A VIP at a local airport asked HRH: “What was your flight, like, Your
Royal Highness? Philip: “Have you ever flown in a plane?” VIP: “Oh yes,
sir, many times.” “Well,” said Philip, “it was just like that.”
On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”
To a fashion writer in 1993: “You’re not wearing mink knickers, are you?”
To Susan Edwards and her guide dog in 2002: “They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.”
When offered wine in Rome in 2000, he snapped: “I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!”
In 1967: “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.”
At City Hall in 2002: “If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”
On seeing a piezo-meter water gauge in Australia: “A pissometer?”
To matron of Caribbean hospital, 1966: “You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.”

No fan of press: A younger Prince Phillip
At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:“So who’s on drugs here?... HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”
To a children’s band in Australia in 2002: “You were playing your instruments? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?”
At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”
To Elton John on his gold Aston Martin in 2001: “Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car, is it?”
At an engineering school closed so he could officially open it, 2005: “It
doesn’t look like much work goes on at this university.”
To Aboriginal leader William Brin, Queensland, 2002: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
At a Scottish fish farm: “Oh! You’re the people ruining the rivers.”
After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and
pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy, 2002: “The French don’t
know how to cook breakfast.”
To schoolboy who invited the Queen to Romford, Essex, 2003: “Ah, you’re the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then?
To multi-ethnic Britain’s Got Talent 2009 winners Diversity: “Are you all one family?”
To parents at a previously struggling Sheffield school, 2003:
“Were you here in the bad old days? ... That’s why you can’t read and
write then!”
To Andrew Adams, 13, in 1998: “You could do with losing a little bit of weight.”
When presented with a hamper of goods by US ambassador, 1999: “Where’s the Southern Comfort?”
To editor of downmarket tabloid: “Where are you from?” “The S*n, sir.” Philip: “Oh, no . . . one can’t tell from the outside.”
Turning down food, 2000: “No, I’d probably end up spitting it out over everybody.”
Asking Cate Blanchett to fix his DVD player because she worked “in the film
industry”, 2008: “There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you
tell me where it goes?”
“People think there’s a rigid class
system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some
have even married Americans.” 2000.
After hearing President
Obama had had breakfast with leaders of the UK, China and Russia, 2010:
“Can you tell the difference between them?”
On students from Brunei, 1998: “I don’t know how they’re going to integrate in places like Glasgow and Sheffield.”
On Princess Anne, 1970: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”

Horseplay: Princess Ann
To wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident, 2002: “Do people trip over you?”
Discussing
tartan with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year: “That’s
a nice tie... Do you have any knickers in that material?”
To a group of industrialists in 1961: “I’ve never been noticeably reticent
about talking on subjects about which I know nothing.”
On a crocodile he shot in Gambia in 1957: “It’s not a very big one, but at least it’s dead and it took an awful lot of killing!”
On being made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in 1953: “Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.”
He hated the noise Concorde made flying over Buckingham Palace, and said
in 2002: “I must be the only person in Britain glad to see the back of
that plane.”
To a fashion designer, 2009: “Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?”
To the General Dental Council in 1960: “Dontopedalogy is the science of
opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve practised for
many years.”
On stroking a koala in 1992: “Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”
On marriage in 1997: “You can take it from me the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.”
To schoolchildren in blood-red uniforms, 1998: “It makes you all look like Dracula’s daughters!”
In 1988: “I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.”

Happily married: Philip and Queen
To female Labour MPs in 2000: “So this is feminist corner then.”
On Nottingham Forest trophies in 1999: “I suppose I’d get in trouble if I were to melt them down.”
In 1956: “It’s my custom to say something flattering to begin with so I shall be excused if I put my foot in it later on.”
To a penniless student in 1998: “Why don’t you go and live in a hostel to save cash?”
On robots colliding, Science Museum, 2000: “They’re not mating are they?”
While stuck in a Heriot Watt University lift in 1958: “This could only happen in a technical college.”
To newsreader Michael Buerk, when told he knew about the Duke of
Edinburgh’s Gold Awards, 2004: “That’s more than you know about anything
else then.”
To a British student in China, 1986: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll go home with slitty eyes.”
To journalist Caroline Wyatt, who asked if the Queen was enjoying a Paris trip, 2006: “Damn fool question!”
On smoke alarms to a woman who lost two sons in a fire, 1998: “They’re a
damn nuisance - I’ve got one in my bathroom and every time I run my bath
the steam sets it off.”
To people at the Margaret Pyke Family Planning Centre in London in May: “At least you are all legitimate”.
“He told me I should lose the feet and put some wheels on my prosthetics as
it would be easier to get around,” recalled Light Dragoons trooper
Cayle Royce, who lost both legs in a blast in Afghanistan in 2012.
On the newly-married Duchess of York's quarters in 1986: “It looks like a tart's bedroom.”