Don’t you wish you had the opportunity to do this?

Why Sesame Street is still awesome

The greatest thing ever in the whole history of the internets

Or television, for that matter. Move over, Betty White fan, move over Gleeks — there’s a new star in town (Yes, you will have to sit through a commercial, but I promise you, it’s worth it:

And if bad 80’s music, puppets, and the Mythbusters weren’t enough all by themselves, the context is even better. From TVSquad:

For no particular reason, Ferguson was joined by the two dudes from ‘MythBusters,’ as well as puppets “Wavy the Crocodile” and “Sid the Rabbit.” Plus a random half-naked dancer or two. … And the best part of the crazy song was this: It was just the opening of the show, had nothing to do with anything, and Craig never mentioned it again for the rest of the night. Sheer random surrealism! Or just a guy dancing with puppets. Either way, it was pretty cool.

(Thanks, Tata!)

In case you missed this

I got to watch to this live yesterday. All by itself it made getting the Droid worth every penny:

And the (semi-)serious side here.

If you need further proof that what Colbert did yesterday is right up there with his White House Correspondents Dinner masterpiece, check out the response of Rep. Steve King (R-Wackyland):

“Maybe we should be spending less time watching Comedy Central and more time considering all the real jobs that are out there, ones that require real hard labor,” King said bitterly. He invoked the “Joe the Plumbers of the world who, many days, would prefer the aroma of fresh dirt to that of the sewage from American elitists who disparage them even as they flush.”

Oh yes he did. Yes, he really did invoke Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, the unemployed plumber/Republican prop. I’m waiting now for the footage of Mr. Wurzelbacher working in the fields. Because until he does, invoking his name simply proves Colbert’s point.

There are no words to describe tha awesomeness displayed yesterday by this Sunday School teacher from Montclair. He makes me proud to live in Joisey.

A small glimmer of hope for the future

My hope is that for every attention whore cashing in on their parent’s fame like Bristol Palin (and yes, sad to say it, Meghan McCain), and every bubbleheaded going-nowhere like Snooki, there’s a kid like Jacob Isom:

A planned Quran burning Saturday in Amarillo was thwarted by a 23-year-old carrying a skateboard and wearing a T-shirt with “I’m in Repent Amarillo No Joke” scrawled by hand on the back.

Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham’s Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book.

“You’re just trying to start Holy Wars,” Isom said of Grisham after he gave the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo.

(h/t)

Not important in the larger sphere of things, but wonderful news just the same

Roger Ebert is coming back to television — sort of:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Sun-Times film critic is producing “Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies” with his wife, Chaz Ebert. The weekly, half-hour review program will debut in January and be syndicated nationally on public television stations.

The show will feature co-host Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and contributing critic Elvis Mitchell of National Public Radio and former movie critic for The New York Times. Ebert will have his own segment on the show called “Roger’s Office,” during which he will use his computer voice to review new movies or talk about the state of film.

In a pilot of the new show, Ebert is shown sitting behind a desk, typing his review of a documentary. The computer voice says his words as he discusses the film. As Ebert finishes his review, he says: “I think it’s a real discovery on DVD and I give it a big thumbs up.” And he does.

[snip]

The new show features Lemire and Mitchell sitting in red movie theater seats debating back and forth about a movie before issuing a thumbs up or thumbs down review, not unlike Siskel and Ebert years before.

Lemire and Mitchell will never in a million years have the chemistry, the “dysfunctional marriage” aura the Siskel and Ebert had. And they just aren’t in the same league, though Mitchell in particular knows his stuff. But nothing will ever equal the originals, as you’ll see from this Siskel and Ebert review of the wonderfully campy teen vampire movie The Lost Boys:

But anything that involves Roger Ebert is guaranteed to be worth your time. If you haven’t been reading Ebert’s blog, you don’t yet know what a damn fine writer he is — not just about film, but about everything.

I will vote for every friggin’ budget with bloated crap for the high school football team if they promise to do this at every game

I really may have to start watching Glee.

(h/t)

This is all kinds of awesome

An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano. They’ve been married for 62 years and he’ll be 90 this year.

Maybe this is why women’s sports get no respect

Because women make men look like boors.

This morning I received from a friend one of those forwarded e-mails that we all hate. You know, the ones in 36-point type that tell some story (which usually turns out to be false or at best apocryphal) that’s supposed to warm your heart and guilt you into forwarding it along to your own e-mail list, thereby perpetuating the spam forever. It’s a lovely story, but it may or may not even be true. Parables are fine, but parables sold as truth are something else entirely.

But sometimes we don’t need to rely on the One Percent Doctrine to get all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes the stories are true:

We live in a world where Peyton Manning walks off the Super Bowl field without shaking anybody’s hand. Where Tiger Woods leaves the Masters without a word of thanks to the fans or congratulations to the winner. Where NFL lineman Albert Haynesworth kicks a man’s helmetless head without a thought.

So if you think sportsmanship is toast, this next story is an all-you-can-eat buffet to a starving man.

It happened at a junior varsity girls’ softball game in Indianapolis this spring. After an inning and a half, Roncalli was womanhandling inner-city Marshall Community. Marshall pitchers had already walked nine Roncalli batters. The game could’ve been 50-0 with no problem.

It’s no wonder. This was the first softball game in Marshall history. A middle school trying to move up to include grades 6 through 12, Marshall showed up to the game with five balls, two bats, no helmets, no sliding pads, no cleats, 16 players who’d never played before, and a coach who’d never even seen a game.

One Marshall player asked, “Which one is first base?” Another: “How do I hold this bat?” They didn’t know where to stand in the batter’s box. Their coaches had to be shown where the first- and third-base coaching boxes were.

That’s when Roncalli did something crazy. It offered to forfeit.

Yes, a team that hadn’t lost a game in 2½ years, a team that was going to win in a landslide purposely offered to declare defeat. Why? Because Roncalli wanted to spend the two hours teaching the Marshall girls how to get better, not how to get humiliated.

“The Marshall players did NOT want to quit,” wrote Roncalli JV coach Jeff Traylor, in recalling the incident. “They were willing to lose 100 to 0 if it meant they finished their first game.” But the Marshall players finally decided if Roncalli was willing to forfeit for them, they should do it for themselves. They decided that maybe — this one time — losing was actually winning.

That’s about when the weirdest scene broke out all over the field: Roncalli kids teaching Marshall kids the right batting stance, throwing them soft-toss in the outfield, teaching them how to play catch. They showed them how to put on catching gear, how to pitch, and how to run the bases. Even the umps stuck around to watch.

More…

In a world where even the gentlest of sports uses metaphors for war, and one in which the arts and even academics often get short shrift in favor of men’s school sports that favor players who believe not just in winning, but in pummeling the opposition into a pulp, here’s a bunch of girls who take the idea that sports are about teamwork seriously.

If you got all blubbery over Christian the Lion, take a gander at this