American Idol Drinking Game

I've put together some rules for an American Idol drinking game. I'm not much of a drinker, but I think it will be fun! Comment any suggestions you have!

"A Drink" = it's up to you, depending on what you're drinking and what your tolerance is. You will probably have a lot of drinks over the course of the episode, so "a drink" should probably be some kind of sip or gulp.

When to take "a drink"...

* Any comments about song selection
* Anyone says "pitchy"
* Simon doesn't understand what Ryan's talking about
* Ryan makes contestants wait til "after the break" for results
* contestant sings directly to judge(s)
* judges are split Simon & Randy vs Paula & Kara
* male sings Stevie, female sings Whitney
* anyone sings a former Idol's song
* anyone forgets the lyrics (take 2 drinks)

Kara...
*demonstrates how she could have sung it better
*(need more for Kara!)

Randy...
* "It was just alright for me, dude"
* "You made it your own"
* "I wasn't feelin' it"
* "That song was too big for you"
* "dawg" or "dude" to female, "baby" to male
* "keeping it real" or "good lookin' out"

Paula...
* "unique"
* punches Simon
* says a contestant looks beautiful
* doesn't like a performance (take 2 drinks)
* stands up during song
* gets "chills" or other physical reaction to performance

Simon...
* "It was a complete and utter mess"
* feels his man-breasts
* "if I'm being honest..."
* "this is a SINGING competition"
* "karaoke" or "cabaret"
* “Horrible” or any variation of the word (i.e. horrific, horrendous, etc)

If you drink one time for each judge (Randy, Paula & Simon) during one contestant's critique...go ahead and finish off your glass!


ALSO:

This is a fun version I found online...

Rule 1: Anytime Randy says “dog” you have to put your thumb on your head. The last person to do so has to take a drink.

Rule 2: Everytime Simon says “Horrible” or any variation of the word (i.e. horrific, horrendous, etc) it is a social and everyone has to drink.

Rule 3: Everytime someone takes a sip out of a cup, the first person to yell “cup” gets to make whoever they want drink.

Rule 4: When you see a person featured (someone that is about to go before the judges), you pause the show. At this point (starting with one player and working around the room), you choose weather or not the person will make it to Hollywood. If you are correct, you are safe and don’t have to drink. If you are wrong, you have to drink with the other losers who also guessed wrong!

Rule 5: When a person is featured and after you decide whether or not they make it to Hollywood, you get to pick an artist you think they will sing. If they sing that artist, then everyone else in the room has to finish their beer (no matter how much is left) and you get to gloat in all your fantastic glory.

More Commercial Alternatives

During Vh1's Fabulous Life of the Mega Rich, they had little pop-up comments. Mostly it was kinda dumb stuff like "get this look and save money by putting fake gold on your floor instead of real gold!" There was also a pop-up for Wendy's Threeconomics (their 99 cent menu) that related to the show just like the other pop-ups. Like I said, all the pop-ups were pretty cheesy and dull, but it was a new way to get their message noticed!
I've noticed that when E!'s The Soup goes to commercial, they put a twist on the usual "we're sponsored by McDonald's" thing. They somehow relate the company/product to a funny clip, so it's like it's part of the show, but it's promoting the sponsor.
During The Hills commercial breaks, the Sonic commercials feature the usual Sonic characters talking about The Hills and Sonic products. I love those Sonic characters, all their spots are funny. And I really love the way these ones tie-in to the show!
On The View they incorporated a commercial into the program in a really neat way. The ladies were talking, as usual, and somehow the conversation led Joy to begin telling a story. The story wound up to be about Hamburger Helper and at the end they showed the audience, and they all had Hamburger Helper hands!

Regalbuto Whisperer

This is a weird "coincidence."

Let's see where do I begin?

Okay, on Fridays I watch Ghost Whisperer, but this past Friday (yesterday) I missed it. I wasn't even able to tape it. Boo hoo. Anyway, the episode title was "Save Our Souls."

Okay now rewind to 1988. (This is how I remember it.) My mom and I were on vaca in L.A. and we got tickets to see a taping of Murphy Brown. Not just any taping, this was the pilot. So there were a lot of "important" people in the audience, chatting before it started. We were seated next to Faye Dunaway (at least for a little while...she said something about better seats and then was gone). My mom and her were talking about the guy on the show who plays Frank. They commented that the actor has been in so many things, but they could not think of his name. They found out his name was Joe Regalbuto.

This guy has guest starred on sooooo many classic '80s TV series. Golden Girls, St. Elsewhere, Knotts Landing, Mork & Mindy, Barney Miller, Bosom Buddies, just to name a few. So from then on, my mom and I referred to any actor who has had a ton of small or guest roles but you have no clue what their name is, as "Joe Regalbuto." The legend was born. And ironically, he went on to star on Murphy Brown for the next 10 years and has barely been heard from since. As soon as we learned his name, he stopped being a Joe Regalbuto!

Okay now fast forward to the present. Well, 10 minutes ago. I was looking up the new movie What Just Happened 'cuz I have a pass to an advance screening. So I looked it up on the IMDB. Stanley Tucci is one of the stars. I thought to myself "hmm, he's one of those Joe Regalbutos who's been in so many good things but nothing I could really tell you off the top of my head." And then I thought "I wonder what Joe Regalbuto has been up to. Has he reclaimed his Joe Regalbuto status?" So I checked IMDB. He's only got about a dozen credits since 2000. The most recent credit?

Ghost Whisperer
-Save Our Souls

I swear I did not see previews for this episode or anything. I had NO idea.
Isn't that weird?????????


P.S. Okay maybe it wasn't a total coinky dink.

When I said "I wasn't even able to tape it" that wasn't entirely accurate. I got home around 8:30 and pressed record. So I got the second half on tape, but I hadn't watched it cuz you know, what's the point? I'm not sure, but most likely I turned the TV on to start the recording and then I turned it off or muted it and got on the computer. So I did see a literal glimpse of the episode. I just played the tape. It begins with Jennifer Love Hewitt and our boy Joe exchanging a couple of lines. So I must have seen his face. Even though I had no recollection of it 10 minutes ago, and I don't think I even acknowledged it at the time, my subconscious must have taken note. Once he was in my subconscious I was more likely to refer to the Joe Regalbuto phenomenon in my head and to get curious about his resume. It wasn't really out of the blue that I clicked on his IMDB after all. But I sure was convinced.

Just goes to show, what seems like a strange coincidence could just be an example of the quiet ways your subconscious influences everything you think, say, and do!

Best career for a TV actor

I've figured out the prized role for an actor if you can't be a regular character on a show but you want to at least be a recurring character.... Shrink.

Bringing a psychotherapist in is an easy way for the writers to explain a character's motivations or sum up a story line, and everyone's got problems, especially characters on TV, so you'll always have work. It may be months or years even between episodes, but they will bring you back.

As long as you're a good psychologist and stay neutral you won't be in danger of getting written off. Rarely does anyone on TV or in real life end a relationship with a therapist permanently. People are much more likely to end relations with or kill lovers, even family members. Therps are safe. Look at Lorraine Bracco on The Sopranos. She played Dr. Jennifer Melfi throughout the series run. Not many characters on that show survived til the end!

Here are a few other examples of actors steadily working as shrinks...

Patricia Wettig played Dr. Judy Barnett on Alias for 12 episodes over 3 years. 3 in season 1, 4 in season 2, and 5 in season 3. That'll keep the bills paid, right?

Jane Lynch plays Boston Legal's "sexual surrogate" (a sex therapist with benefits) Joanna Monroe. She has been in 4 episodes over 3 years.

Jane Lynch has also been playing Dr. Linda Freeman the last 4 years on Two and a Half Men. She has counseled Charlie in a total of 8 episodes.

I'm sure there are more. Anyone wanna help me out? Comment with your favorite TV therp.....

And now a message from our sponsors

FX shows movies like this: movie for 10 minutes, commercials, movie for 10 minutes, commercials.... A 2 hour movie becomes 3 hours! (One example: Mr & Mrs Smith is 120 minutes but takes 3 hours on FX. I couldn't sit through it!) I avoid watching movies on FX, especially recent movies shown near primetime, I think it's worse then.

I love the way Fox does the commercial breaks for Fringe. They come fairly frequently, but are usually under 2 minutes and start with "Fringe will return in x [60, 90, etc.] seconds." It's just enough time to run to the bathroom or grab a drink from the kitchen or compare notes with whoever you're watching with. Not enough time to get bored and start flipping channels or doing something else. You may even just sit and watch the two commercials (and that's a good thing for the sponsors).

About a year ago, I watched a movie on one of the cable stations (like AMC or something), and they had a different way of presenting commercials. The commercial breaks were pretty normal, except for one thing: there was scrolling text along the bottom of the screen that related to the movie. Stuff like trivia about the movie's production, facts about things related to the movie, multiple choice questions about the plot, quotes from the director.... So you could be entertained throughout the break and never even think of changing the channel. While you would be distracted from the ads by the text, the fact is you would be staring at the screen, hearing only the commercial's audio. So it's good for the viewer, good for the sponsor.

I liked this way better than some of the other attempts at adding extras to movies on TV... Regular trivia and quizzes surrounding the commercials are rarely anything worth resisting the urge to "flip" for. There's the whole Dinner & a Movie and Movie & a Makeover thing on TBS. But come on, who really wants intermittent recipes with hosts no one really cares about? I do like when they play the special features from a DVD before/after the commercial breaks.

Standards & Poppyc--bleep--ck

I hate the way TV censorship works. It doesn't make sense. A word or phrase might be bleeped out in one show, but then included in another show. I guess it's not all based on a clear cut law. It depends on the station, the sponsers, the time of day, etc.. It's just silly.
I hate when a station with pretty strict standards show movies that obviously will need a lot of editing. I remember TBS aired Glengarry Glen Ross, written by David Mamet. It was a lot of "Forget you! Forget this place!" and other ridiculous phrases. Or when a station whose programming is full of content bordering on indecent airs a movie similarly indecent, and bleeps out a bunch of PG-rated words. Comedy Central does this with a lot of movies. And then the same channel allows Chris Rock swearing unedited late at night.
Tonight I watched the SciFi Channel bleep the word "ass" in Total Recall and then on ABC Family, a character in Samurai Girl said something about kicking "ass." If it's okay on ABC Family, shouldn't it be okay in a movie with a record-setting body count?
On TruTV they were showing the O.J. Simpson Las Vegas trial closing arguments, and the attorney said (quoting the tape of O.J.) "shit" and it wasn't bleeped. And it wasn't even live--it was footage from yesterday.
TNT allowed "assholes." Usually the "hole" gets bleeped.
TNT also allowed Jack Nicholson's naked butt in Something's Gotta Give. Aren't butts usually censored?

P.S. Check out this great blog entry about writing for MASH and dealing with S&P back then!

Dino-mite!

The History Channel has a new show called Jurassic Fight Club. Each episode starts with some sort of fossilized dinosaur remains which experts analyze and interpret for us. They concoct a plausible storyline for how those remains got there and the story comes to life with cable-TV-quality CGI graphics. So it's kinda fun and interesting. Anyway, the weird thing is that just as this show is starting, there was a very similar segment on a new episode of Nova Science Now. The PBS Paleontologists pieced together the story of a couple of Mammoth skeletons just as "Dinosaur George" and the others on THC did with the Majungatholus remains.
It's a weird coincidence. And it's happened before. I think there were one or two other shows on PBS with subject matter eerily similar to shows on History. Both channels had shows about how the earth might end. I think on History, it was called Last Days on Earth, and it was a countdown of 7 ways life as we know it on our planet may end. On PBS, it could've been Nova, Nova Science Now...but they talked about the same stuff. And I think PBS did an episode similar to History's Life After People and maybe that show they did on the year 2052? I just remember a couple of those speculation shows being copied on PBS! Usually PBS covers material a bit more compelling than the History and Discovery Channels.