Kassia is fond of saying that around ‘Loper HQ, April Fools isn’t a day, it’s a season. However, this year, real life has gotten in the way, so in honor of that, I’ve decided to point out a few actual real things that are far more absurd than most of the jokes you’ll see today.

Let’s begin, shall we.

• Continuing Record Company Cluelessness About the 21st Century
  Last week, there was an article in Entertainment Weekly about the rush-release of the new Gnarls Barkley album. Apparently, the fact that it leaked online a few weeks early caught Atlantic records by surprise.

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Apparently, Lorne Michaels is worried that — because of a couple of cold opens spoofing the media’s kowtowing to Obama, Tina Fey’s funny but heartfelt “bitch is the new black” endorsement, and of course, an actual appearance by Mrs. Clinton her own self — people are perceiving Saturday Night Live as pro-Hillary.

This, naturally, brings up two related questions: 1) who still watches Saturday Night Live? 2) Are pro-Obama SNL viewers up in arms over the pro-Hillary bias?

My answers are: 1) me. 2) Not this one.

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About a year ago, after Bravo purchased Television Without Pity, I wrote a piece entitled Why I’m Not Worried About The TWoP Buyout. I figured that as long as they were able to keep their strong, independent editorial voice, they would do just fine, and remain one of my most favorite websites on the entire interwebs.

And for a year, everything seemed to be fine. Sure, I didn’t like the cosmetic upgrades — I miss the line drawings that accompanied the recaps — but that was more that outweighed by the expansion into sitcoms like The Office & 30 Rock, as well as the catch-up they were able to play with shows like The Wire.

But now I’m worried, because according to a blog posting on their site, the founders of Television Without Pity are leaving. Within the next week, as it turns out. That seems . . . quick.

This. Is. Not. Good.

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quarterlife, the much-hyped new series from the creators of such shows as thirtysomething, Once and Again and the eternal My So-Called Life, debuted a couple of nights ago to what some are calling “the worst ratings in 20 years.”

I don’t think that this was what NBC had in mind when they announced that they had picked it up from, er, MySpace amidst a busload of hype. Given the fact that it had a pretty high profile and was debuted during a time where there is very little serious drama being broadcast, their expectations must have been that it would at least hold its own.

And yet it failed, miserably. Why? The flip answer is that it sucked, but that’s only part of it. The full answer is a bit more complicated.

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ABC, which was hit a couple of weeks ago with a $1.4 million fine by the FCC, has decided to fight back.

The fine was imposed because of a scene in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue that showed a woman’s buttocks and a bit of what the Celeb gossip sites all call “side boob.”

Just like NYPD Blue had been doing for 10 years. This time, however, it was different. I guess. And five years after the actual episode was broadcast — three years after NYPD Blue went off the air — the FCC came down with their oh-so-timely fine.

And the children, once again, are saved from the gruesome horrors of the naked female human body! Thank God. Or thank Wholly His Official Representatives on Earth, the children-loving, naked-woman hating Parents Television Council, who, as usual, decided to be offended so that the rest of us didn’t have to.

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I first heard about Mystery Science Theater 3000 from friends in ‘91 and thought it sounded interesting, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to track it down. Then one Friday night after closing the Video Zone my friend and coworker Mark and I were flipping through channels, as was the custom in those days. we came across a b&w monster movie with silhouetted chairs and figures along the bottom of the screen. I said: “Is this what I think it is?” The movie was Gamera, and while it was never my favorite episode of MST3K, it will always be the one closest to my heart. You never forget your first. I was immediately a fan, and I taped every episode.

The show was canceled in 1999 after a decade, and I figured that was that. It saddened me, of course, especially because I held the heretical belief that the show hit its stride when it moved to the Sci-Fi channel in 1997. I always preferred Mike Nelson to Joel Hodgson, I liked the new direction Bill Corbett took Crow, I found Pearl and Professor Bobo and Brain Guy a lot funnier than Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank, and…yeah. As I say, heretical.

Still, there’s a lot to be said for quitting while you’re ahead. Or, as the case may be, being abandoned by your network while you’re ahead. Besides, I still had several hundred hours of MST3K on tape should I ever need a fix, many of which I hadn’t watched since the waning days of Bush 41’s administration, so they wouldn’t feel stale. It’s not like I remember any of the jokes from Crash of the Moons or Tormented, though I do know Manos, The Hands of Fate and Mitchell by heart at this point, and woe to anyone dating me who thinks they won’t be subjected to Hobgoblins.

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The headlines, of course, are breathless: HBO Goes Online,
It’s not TV, it’s HBO — on your computer, It’s Not the Web, It’s HBO, so when I first saw them, I thought, cool.

Actually, here is what I thought: finally, I’m going to be able to re-watch the full run of The Larry Sanders Show! On my own schedule!

But then I read what HBO on Broadband is actually going to be . . .

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On Black Friday, the incongruously named day-after-Thanksgiving I rang up Amazon.com and joined the middle class. Yes, I plunked down $1999 for a Samsung LNT4671F. (I know, I’ve railed against idiotic naming conventions for consumer products in the past). It’s a 46″ LCD TV, 1080p, 120 Hz, HMDI 1.3 with built-in spicto-blango-color-correcting-carousel blah blah blah. Suffice it to say it was the top-of-the-line product from Samsung when it first came on the market in October (which of course makes it now hopelessly obsolete by the standards of the consumer electronics industry. It’s the second-highest rated TV in Consumer Reports after the Sony XBR4, but my wife Vicki didn’t approve of the floating glass bezel around that one so we settled for a (very close) second-best.

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The Writers Strike has been a bit underground in the past month or so, since there is a normal holiday downtime for new original TV shows anyway. This week, however, it took down what might be its biggest casualty yet: The Golden Globes.

With the Screen Actors Guild boycotting the event, The Globes’ massive pointlessness ramped up past the usual level, and so NBC has reduced it from a major telecast to a um, er, press conference.

Ladies and Gents, while the Golden Globes is the first major awards show (I don’t really count the People’s Choice Awards as anything but more money for Dick Clark) that the WGA strike is going to affect, it is by no means the last.

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As the Writer’s Strike stumbles towards Christmas, the latest casualty of the AMPTP’s ongoing assholishness is Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller’s (all together now) quirky hour-long dramedy.

Tonight marks the last episode that was written and produced before the strike, and there are no more eps in the can. It’s a shame: Pushing Daisies was pretty much the only wholly original show that any of the broadcast networks put out there this season, and while the critical buzz was pretty strong, the ratings were mostly middling.

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