Thursday, July 17, 2008

Elderly Wasteland

I'm in the midst of a big documentary kick through the Netflix.  I can't quite identify the moment it began, but I realized the way that things would be after watching Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line the other night.  How I got a minor in film studies without being forced to watch this amazing film is beyond be.  Right now, I've watching Errol Morris First Person series of interviews.   Well, that and parts of the Who tribute show on VH1 Classic.  Pearl Jam is doing their version of "Love Reign O'Er Me", which is fantastic, but I was kind of hoping that they would do a Who song I had never heard them do before.  Their drummer (he used to be in Soundgarden, and for the life of me I can't remember his name at the moment- I almost called him Jack Irons) is no Keith Moon.  Then again, who is?  Now Pearl Jam is doing "The Real Me", which is also off of the Quadrophenia album.  I'd be willing to be that Eddie Vedder knows every word to Quad.  God, if they played "Punk and the Godfather" I'd be so happy.  Either Mike or Stone Gossard threw his guitar into the air and let it hit the stage to end the set, I couldn't tell which from the shot.  Neat little touch.  Now, half of the Who are playing "Baba O'Riley".  I missed the Flaming Lips playing, which I had meant to watch.  

  Until the last season of The Wire comes out on DVD in August, I have a feeling that documentaries are going to be most of my Netflix rentals.  

I'm still looking for the next book I'll fall in love with.  Last week I was so wrapped up in my sister's wedding that I fell out of whatever reading pattern I was in, and now I'm having a problem getting back into the groove.  I should probably go ahead and read the book about Big Star that's been sitting on my shelf of music books for about 15 months now.  That seems like a good way to slip back into practice, now that I think about it.

The Rock the Bells show is sneaking up on me, and I haven't done as much background listening as I had hoped to.  I'll probably pick up Nas' new album tomorrow, since his set will probably be pretty heavy with new stuff.  Nas has always been more talented than likable.  

Monday, July 14, 2008

The Greatest Thing Since the Last Thing That Was Great

When I was in middle school, I watched a potentially distressing amount of MTV.  This was around the time when they were playing the videos for "Soul To Squeeze" and "November Rain" constantly.  And every hour, they would run the "MTV News" bit where Kurt Loder had to tell all of the kids about the big news story of the day.  And of course, I was never watching when, say, he reported on Kurt Cobain killing himself (I heard about that on NPR during a car ride to a chess tournament in Charlotte, just to give you an idea of how cool I really was).  The only story I remember was one about some kid who got kicked out of a mall for wearing a t-shirt for the band Fishbone that had the phrase "Fuck Racism" on the back.  I have no idea why I remember that, since I'm not sure I've ever actually listened to a Fishbone song.  Anyway, it turns out that VH1 Classic has their own version of this- a two or three minute "news" segment that runs at the end of every hour.  Only, instead of telling semi-real news stories about "classic" bands, the segments are invariably commercials for new albums from heavy metal bands.  Kiss, in particular, for reasons I can't begin to discern.  So, after tonight's Venture Bros.  was over, I was flipping through the channels, and on my cable system, VH1 Classic is two channels away from the Cartoon Network.  So I caught the most awesome segment with Judas Priest talking about their latest album.  It's a concept album about  Nostradamus- a double album actually- and watching three aging guys wearing their heavy metal leather outfits and talking so seriously about Nostradamus turns out to be more Spinal Tap than some scenes from the film This Is Spinal Tap.  To give you some idea of how awesome this is, I quote from the "Story line" section of the album's Wikipedia page.  "Nostradamus [no italics is sic] centres [also sic, leading me to believe that the British contingent of Judas Priest fans won out on a wiki editing war that was truly a thing of beauty] around the life and times of the prophet.  The first disc details various prophecies he has about the future and the end of the world.  This leads to him being exiled.  Later on, after his death, the world realises [also sic] just how right he was."  The album is out now, and there's a version that includes a 48 page booklet.  The mind can only boggle at the potential brilliance of that.  I just looked at the track listing, and the last track is called "Future of Mankind" and is eight and a half minutes long.  Just when you think that you've seen all that the world has to offer, something like this returns to restore your since of... wonder, I guess?  

My sister's wedding seemed to go well.  I won't bother describing it, since there's a very real chance that only two people reading this blog weren't there in person.  And today I got the cathartic thrill of deleting about a dozen songs that my sister insisted I download onto my computer.

I think I had gotten used to being fairly busy over the last few days, because I couldn't really relax today.  So I went to see Hellboy 2, in part because I thought the first one was pretty decent, but mostly because I wanted to go the movies and that was the only thing I hadn't seen that I have any intention of ever seeing.  The movie is very interesting visually, but mostly sucks as a story.  del Toro, the director, seems to believe that audience has some sort of emotional connection to these characters, which is a very odd thing to believe.  If I hadn't already divested myself of any expectations for the Hobbit movies (yes, movieS.  Peter Jackson could do each book from Lord of the Rings in one film, but Guillermo del Toro needs two movies to tell the story of Bilbo Baggins stumbling across a piece of jewelry, walking around with a bunch of dwarves, then arguing with a dragon, then going back home), I would probably be concerned.  

I picked up the new Beck album.  I've only listened to it once, while I was driving around on Saturday.  The album seemed fine, but it didn't jump out at me as much I was hoping for, especially since Danger Mouse produced it.  Beck is one those acts that I like, but I would have a hard time explaining precisely why.  I mean, I love Odelay as much as the next guy, and maybe this idea I have that Beck is looked at as some sort of standard-bearer for music fans between the ages of, say, 25-40 is just my own misconception, but... actually, I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  You figure it out.  

I also bought the new Weezer album, even though I had agreed with myself that I wasn't going to.  Which goes to show how much I can be trusted.  I listened to the first three songs on the way to the movies.  The first track was kind of just there, the second track was a mess, and the third was the single "Pork and Beans", which seems all of the obvious "singles" from the post-Pinkerton albums- "Hash Pipe", "Keep Fishing", "Beverly Hills" and so forth.  I'll listen to the rest of the album with the hope that it can only exceed my low expectations.  I form odd sense of cultural obligation.  I've bought all of Weezer's releases this decade (including an import version of the Green album, the import of the "Island In The Sun" single and the limited release EP of the band live in Japan) out of a sense of obligation.  But I was once as big a Kevin Smith fan as I was a Weezer fan, and I haven't seen one of his movies in the theater since 2001.  



Wednesday, July 9, 2008

All The Bathorses and all the Batmen


I saw some "news" story about the mad rush for tickets for the upcoming Batman movie, and I got to thinking.  Specifically, I began to think about just how many Batman movies have come to theaters since the first Tim Burton film.  Do you realize that this will be the seventh Batman movie since 1989?  The list goes: Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight,  and the somewhat forgotten animated film Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm.  I tried to think of other franchises that have been this prolific over the same time period, and I could only come up with two: James Bond, which will have had seven films since 1989 when Quantum of Solace opens later this year (License to Kill, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) and Star Wars, if you count the 1997 theatrical re-releases of the original trilogy, plus the new trilogy and the up-coming animated Clone Wars.  There have been five Harry Potter movies (and three or four to come, since they are splitting up the sixth book, and one would assume that they might do the same with Deathly Hallows.  And apparently, Saw V is going to come out this year, even though I have a hard time imagining who is clamoring for this.  (I just googled "movie franchises", and I realized I had completely forgotten about the Star Trek movies, of which there have been six installments since 1989.  Since I just watched the documentary Trekkies last night, I probably should have thought of that).  

Just something that occurred to me.

Don't even ask me about how my day went.  Suffice to say that trying to hook a laptop up to an ancient amplifier is a bitch.  After visiting a Best Buy, a Circuit City and a Target, I think I finally have daisy-chained enough adapters and cables together to actually get music to flow through the speakers for my sister's wedding reception, but I'm taking nothing on faith at this point.  I'd worry about the fidelity of the sound, but given some of the songs my sister has demanded, it might be a hidden blessing if people can only half-hear David Cook, "The Electric Slide", "The Cha-Cha Slide" (which is a more inane version of the electric slide.  I know, I didn't think it was possible either) and Edwin McCain (Do you like Hootie and the Blowfish?  Then you'll love their inbred cousin!  At least, that's how I remember him from the two weeks in 1995 when people gave a shit about Edwin McCain).  

(To be fair, she is letting me choose about 85 or 90 percent of the music, so it's kind of mean for me to keep mocking her taste.  On the other hand, I can't help it, because I'm the kind of person who thinks that High Fidelity hits a little close to home.)  


Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Talking Wedding Music Blues


Yesterday was the big conversation with my sister and her fiancee about what music will be played at the wedding reception.  It went slightly better than I expected, except for the moment when I was on the other side of the room, and unable to get to my computer before she downloaded George Michael's "Faith" from iTunes to play at the reception.  (That kind of sounds like a joke, but it really isn't.  She literally did this, even though I thought that we had reached a compromise when I agreed to play both a Bon Jovi song AND a Journey song in exchange for salvaging some shreds of my own self-worth).  Also, it's a very good thing that I never took the iTunes recommendations very seriously- after the last few weeks, the suggestions it kicks out are going to be amazingly schizophrenic.  Something along the lines of "I see you've bought Iggy Pop, Chris Bell [he was the key member of Big Star who wasn't named Alex Chilton, if you haven't been keeping score], and American Idol's David Cook.  We recommend The Stranglers, Brian Eno and Clay Aiken"

My sister's fiance's suggestions were more interesting.  If I do get married one day, I can imagine requesting several non-conventional wedding reception songs. But not, for example, "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine, or Eminem's "Square Dance", or quite so many Beastie Boys songs.  After giving the matter some thought, I've actually become curious about how people would react to the Rage song, but alas, my sister vetoed that one out of hand, despite not ever having heard the song, except possibly while watching him play Guitar Hero. (The only time I can ever think of my sister referring to Rage was when I was in high school and she was in middle school, and she called them "The Raging, Dancing Machine".  Which in retrospect is kind of awesome).

So, yeah.  Next Saturday is going to be... something.  

The picture is of Sly Stone, for no real reason besides the fact that I like Sly & The Family Stone.  I will probably sneak "Dance to the Music' into the mix during the reception.

 

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Notes From The Mundane



So.

I've been 26 for a couple of days now, and I still haven't gotten the hang of it.  But I'm not too worried about it.  I've mentioned a couple of times that my sister is getting married in about a week, so my secret hope was that my life would re-enact Sixteen Candles, and everyone would forget my birthday.  Unfortunately, no one did, and I didn't get that magic moment with Jake Ryan.  I think I mainly wanted to meet John Cusack.  Everyone gave me cash in lieu of gifts- the one exception was a copy of the new David Sedaris book.  So that was all fine.  I used some of the money to pay for my ticket to the Rock The Bells festival in DC.  I bought new headphones, to replace the two pairs that broke over the last five days (one pair just gave out after months of abuse, and then I accidentally destroyed my back-up pair when I was taking a bag out of my car during a driving rainstorm- I was trying not to get too wet and didn't notice when I slammed them in the door.  I discovered them the next morning and had one of those moments where I vaguely feel like I've failed at life.  Because I was up so early, I went ahead to Target to buy a new pair.  Since I was flush with gifted cash, I felt like I should buy something else while I was there, which is an incredibly odd impulse when you look at it rationally.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would have bought the new Futurama DVD, but it was 8:15 in the morning, and that level of logic was inaccessible to me.  So I wound up staring at the CDs for sale.  I thought about buying the new Weezer album, but I couldn't bring myself to give up 16 dollars for something that I'm so sure will be a disappointment.  So I ended up buying the 25th anniversary re-release of Thriller, which was on sale.  In retrospect, I really can't understand why I did that.  I mean, it's a great album and all, but I'm not a Michael Jackson fan, and I can't imagine any other circumstance where the idea of buying the CD would have even occurred to me.  There are probably two or three valuable lessons to be learned here.  

The tracklist that I made for myself about my birthday goes as follows:
1. Pearl Jam- Corduroy (Live, from the Live on Two Legs disc)
2. Nirvana- Oh, Me (From Unplugged)
3. The Pogues- Medley: The Recruiting Sergeant/The Rocky Road To Dublin/The Galway Races
4.  The Rolling Stones- Torn & Frayed
5. U2- Vertigo (Live, from an EP I found on iTunes of U2 at the Brooklyn Bridge and only bought the one song)
6. Weezer- Perfect Situation (which is the one song off of the last album I actually liked)
7. Aesop Rock- Flashflood
8.  The Beatles- I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
9. Bob Dylan- Idiot Wind
10. Bruce Springsteen- Darkness On The Edge of Town (Live)
11. Buck 65- 1957
12. The Clash- The Guns of Brixton
13. The Coup- Busterismology
14. Neil Young- Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (Live from the Bob Dylan 30th anniversary show)
15. The Stone Roses- Made of Stone
16. Mcenroe and Birdapres featuring John Smith- A Little Bitter
17. Radiohead- Anyone Can Play Guitar

I just finished reading the new Sedaris.  It's good, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the other ones.  I'm a little worried that he's begun to run out of past, so to speak, and is forced to write more essays about life as a middle-aged, mildly famous, neurotic gay man, which are inherently less funny than essays about being a twenty-year old hitchhiker or child who is neurotic even by the standards set by the rest of his family.  


Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Where I'm Calling From and Where I've Been


If I were a mixtape, it would sound something like this at the moment.

1. Nirvana- Aneurysm (Live version from a bootleg I have where the guys who printed up the liner notes thought that the title was "Come On Over") (key line: " Love you so much it makes me sick")
2. Aesop Rock- Commencement at the Obedience Academy "Must not sleep/must warn others")
3. Neutral Milk Hotel- Communist Daughter ("Bends toward herself the soothing")
4. Talking Heads- Take Me to The River ("Love is an ocean that I can't forget")
5.  Neil Young- Tonight's The Night ("As real as the day is long")
6.  Robert Johnson- Come On In My Kitchen ("Babe it going to be raining outdoors")
7. The Refreshments- Interstate ("I don't need a miracle but I could use a push in the right direction")
8. Soundgarden- Outshined ("I got up feeling so down")
9.  Mission of Burma- That's When I Reach For My Revolver ("But all of that is changed now")
10. Love- A House Is Not A Motel ("And if someone asks you/you can call my name")
11.  The Beach Boys- I Just Wasn't Made For These Times ("They say I got brains but they ain't do me no good")
12.  The Jam- That's Entertainment ("Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes")
13.  Graham Parker- I Discovered America ("Everyone said quit now and that's when I found hope")
14. The Flaming Lips- Waitin' For A Superman ("Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be")
15. Eliot Smith- Speed Trials ("But it's sure as fate and hard as your luck")
16. MF Grimm- Children Of Cain ("Children of Cain just nod to this")
17. Bruce Springsteen- Magic ("This is what will be")
18. Atmosphere- Tears For The Sheep ("The language was primitive, the listener complex")
19. The Replacements- Swingin' Party ("If bein' afraid is a crime we'll hang side by side")
20. Canibal Ox- The F-Word ("I'm more than just a shoulder to cry on")

Sometimes I'm pretty sure that most people don't go about things in the ways that I do. 

What I've been up to:
 
Reading: Dennis Lehane's Darkness Take My Hand and Sacred, The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns (it's kind of a precursor to The Wire. Actually, I picked up the Lehane books in large part because he wrote for The Wire.)  Slam by Nick Hornby, which was good but not great, and intended more for teenage readers than his other books (although it might have enough cursing to irritate some high school librarians, which I consider to be a point in its favor), I just started Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,  and we'll see if I finish it, as it looks like a fairly demanding read.  Also, there's a slight chance that Islamists might go after me for reading it.  

Listening:  Besides the stuff I mentioned, I've been getting prepared for the Rock The Bells festival later this month by listening to some of the acts on the bill that I'm less familiar with, like The Pharcyde and Immortal Technique.  Beyond that, a lot of the usual suspects.  Plus I'm still working on the music for my sister's wedding reception, which is alternately fun and maddening.  Guests who know me will be able to tell which songs I chose, and which songs the increasingly deranged bride chose.  Also, do you really think Elvis Costello's "Allison" is appropriate for a wedding reception?  I get that my sister's future husband's sister is named Allison, but I can't be the only person who actually understands what the song about, can I?  I mean, why don't we just play all of Dylan's Blood On The Tracks while we're at it.  (Except for "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", which could potentially work.  And on some tv show, there was a wedding where the theme song was "Shelter From The Storm", but I think they only heard the parts about "I came in from the wilderness/a creature void of form/ 'Come in' she said I'll give you/shelter from the storm" and missed the entire rest of the song, which mostly consists of lost loved and Dylan comparing himself to Jesus, which is practically an entire sub-genre of Dylan songs.  But the show got it wrong by using the album version.  I would have used the live version from the Hard Rain album.  But that's just me)

Watching: Wall-E, which I liked, the second season of My Name Is Earl, which I started on Netflix after finishing the fourth season of The Wire.  I think Rome will be next.  I saw the new Narnia movie, which was okay but way too long, and The Happening,  (going to see it wasn't my decision, which I hope I don't even have to say.  As is often the case when I see a bad movie, there was a girl involved.  The only bad movie which I saw in the theaters by choice over the last few years was The Da Vinci Code, which I had to see after it got booed at Cannes.  I was hoping for a true train wreck, but Ron Howard could only produce a mediocre mess.)which isn't so much bad as inscrutable.  It's like a film made by aliens who had seen a few Earth movies, but really didn't understand them.  But it's also pretty bad.  I think I was the only person in the theater who wasn't so much pissed off as impressed by it's essential strangeness (strangeness in the bad way, not the awesome Night of the Hunter or David Lynch way).  I saw Indiana Jones, mostly out of a sense of cultural obligation.  It wasn't really bad, but it was staggeringly unnecessary, and the actors seemed to know this.  I finally caught up with Battlestar Galactica, which I had begun avoiding this season.  The final few episodes of the half-season were pretty decent, so I'll wind up finishing the ride when the show re-starts.  Oh, and The Venture Bros., which is still six kinds of awesome.  And my secret shame is watching Hell's Kitchen on Hulu.com.  I hate the reality show parts of the show (i.e. all of the contestants display sociopathic tendencies, pointlessly dramatic commercial breaks, inane contests) but I'm a sucker for Gordon Ramsay yelling at people.  I wonder if BBC America shows episodes of the British version of the show, which I'm positive is better than the Americanized version.  And if next season is b-list celebrities, then even Ramsay can't keep me there.

Playing: No one game in particular.  Some GTA: San Andreas, some re-playing of the original Half-Life on PS2, some Super Mario Galaxy, some Bully.  But there's no game that I'm obsessed with at the moment.  I picked up Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii, mostly because of how much I love the Lego Star Wars games.  It's pretty good, but by no means is it a must-buy, especially since it doesn't take very long to finish.   

The picture is Neil Young, but you already should have known that.  


Oh, and by the time I finished editing and rewriting this, I looked up and it was Thursday. I am apparently 26 now, which is slightly vexing.  I thought that 25 was a perfectly reasonable age to be.  

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

My 25 Favorite TV Characters From The Last Ten Years, Partly Explained

Omar- The stick-up man who terrorizes Baltimore's drug lords, Omar is  Barack Obama's favorite character on the Wire.  On one commentary track, a writer explains that they have to be careful using the charismatic Omar, because he constantly threatens to steal the entire show.  Not bad for a character who was originally supposed to be killed in the first season.  

Tony Soprano- Is any explanation really necessary?  The Sopranos was essentially an epic, operatic character study of a depressed, charming sociopath who charmed the audience as much as he repulsed them.

Hank Hill- King of the Hill has never gotten the respect it deserves, stuck in the shadow of The Simpsons, and then Family Guy, but Hank Hill has grown from a simple caricature of small-minded America, into a well-rounded voice of reason, and one of the relatively few convincing and sympathetic conservative characters on American television.

The Monarch- Everything he says is instantly quotable.  The real reason why everyone should be watching The Venture Bros.

Pam Beesly- The obvious choices are Michael and Dwight, but for me, Pam is the heart of The Office.  When she's sad, I get sad.  When she finally dumped Roy, it felt like a personal victory for me.  When her relationship with Jim hits an inevitable snag next season, I'll  be depressed for a week.

David Brent- The other reason why I couldn't put Michael Scott on the list.  Brent is a different character from what Michael Scott became, but he's the real gold standard for the obnoxious, completely lacking in self-awareness boss.

G.O.B. Bluth- "I've made a huge mistake".  "Come ON!".  "I heard that the jury is still out on science."  and Franklin.  As easy a pick as any character on this list.

David Fisher- I don't know why I like David more than Nate.  I also just realized that I chose two characters played by the one Raleigh actor on the list, but there you are.

John Munch- Chosen in no small part to cover both Law and Order and Homicide, but you have to give it up to any character who has shown up on that many different shows (he even popped up on Arrested Development)

Lisa Simpson- Just about the only member of the Simpsons family who has managed to keep her dignity over the last eight seasons.  I nearly chose Moe.

Eric Cartman- Everyone's favorite racist, anti-Semitic, occasionally murderous 4th grader.

Dexter Morgan- The other character played by Michael C. Hall on the list, and another sociopath.  I'm wondering what that says about me.  

Chloe O'Brian- Jack Bauer has seen some character development past the basic Tom Clancy spy who can do anything required of him, but it's still hard to think of him as a real person.  Chloe on the other hand was money in the bank from her first snarky, occasionally off-putting appearance.  

Gregory House- Probably the best dramatic character not to debut on HBO during the last decade, even when the show is hopelessly formulaic Hugh Laurie's portrayal of House demands attention be paid.

Ben Linus- Honestly, I've gotten sick of almost all of the survivors (Hurley and Sawyer are about the only exceptions) and Linus completely stole the fourth season, becoming as oddly sympathetic as he is manipulative and condescending.

Kara Thrace- I've grown a little weary of the single-minded, prophetic Starbuck of the recent episodes, but from her first appearance in the poker game (I've forgotten whatever name they came up with for cards in the future) Starbuck stole the show.  And not just because she's so hot.

Dan Rydell- Less whiny than Casey ("Am I in love with Felicity Huffman?  Let's drag it out over two seasons and never really get anywhere with the storyline" ) except when he starts talking about his dead brother.

Adrian Monk- He's become a complete cartoon character, but when Monk first began, the character was a flawed revelation of how to reinvent the tired "genius detective" character.

Liz Lemon- Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy would have also been a good pick, but Tina Fey gives Liz a touch of realism that Baldwin doesn't need to bother with.  "Food network doesn't have a news show Jack".

Maggie Jacobs- I chose Maggie in part because I didn't want two Ricky Gervais characters, but she was often funnier than Andy Millman on the show, and in a weird way she was the more sympathetic character.

Bender- I probably should have chosen Fry, but Bender had so many of the show's best lines that I couldn't resist him.  

Dana Scully- Probably the last character to make the list.  I don't have much to say about Scully.

George Costanza- Seinfeld only barely made the list, because it barely scooted under the ten year demarcation.  But George remains my favorite.

Ari Gold- "Who's Jeremy Piven?"  "We don't know."- The Simpsons

Al Swearengen- I respect any character who can say "Cocksucker" that many times without the word losing all its meaning.

My 25 Favorite TV Characters From The Last Ten Years

In the spirit of the lists I've seen recently (the AFI's latest "bless them they're trying" disaster and Entertainment Weekly's "top 100 of everything in the last 25 years where we try and convince you that "Purple Rain", of all things, is the best album of my lifetime- and I say this with no disrespect to "Purple Rain"), I present this, apropos of nothing.

(Only one character per show, and in no real order)
Omar Little- The Wire
Tony Soprano- The Sopranos
Hank Hill- King of the Hill
The Monarch- The Venture Bros.
Pam Beesly- The Office (US)
David Brent- The Office (UK)
G.O.B. Bluth- Arrested Development
David Fisher- Six Feet Under
John Munch- Law and Order SVU, Homicide: Life on the Street
Lisa Simpson- The Simpsons
Eric Cartman- South Park
Dexter Morgan- Dexter
Chloe O'Brian- 24
Gregory House- House
Ben Linus- Lost
Kara Thrace- Battlestar Galactica
Dan Rydell- Sports Night
Adrian Monk- Monk
Liz Lemon- 30 Rock
Maggie Jacobs- Extras
Bender Bending Rodriguez- Futurama
Dana Scully- The X-Files
George Costanza- Seinfeld
Ari Gold- Entourage
Al Swearengen- Deadwood