The Palace: So This Is Where the Asians Hang Out?, Chapter 4

Previously on The Palace: He watches Hong Kong movies for the dangling participles--the kind that doesn't turn up in Sex and Zen, that is.

20 favorite Current TV stories (Part 2)

Previously on A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog: #20-#11.


My favorite Current TV show is a recent addition to the channel's lineup, The Rotten Tomatoes Show, a unique movie review show that's reminiscent of both the earlier years of G4's X-Play (the hosts participate in movie parody sketches) and ReelzChannel's Movie Mob (it features webcam reviews that are less obnoxious and insipid than the ones on Movie Mob because they're submitted by film bloggers who have a sense of film history and professional comedians, instead of anonymous morons who think they're funny and make the review about themselves instead of the movie). Two of my selections on this post are examples of why The Rotten Tomatoes Show is the most entertaining movie review show since the time Ebert threatened to sit on Siskel.

10. "YouTube's Worst Parents"
Brett Erlich's "Viral Video Film School" is always a highlight of infoMania.



9. "Hipsters in Space"
When's South Park going to skewer hipsters? SuperNews! beat them to the punch.



8. "Beatboxing the Flute"
One thing that's missing from this piece about Nathan "Flutebox" Lee is his ill cover of the Knight Rider theme. I assume the music clearance fee would cost more than a new chassis for KITT.



7. "Hookers are the Best Roles in Town by Ellen Fox"
The Rotten Tomatoes Show co-host sardonically sings about Hollywood's fixation on hoes-with-hearts-of-gold. On the shallow side, Fox looks hotter in the Pretty Woman hooker outfit than Julia Roberts does.



6. "Joe Gets Game"
Even though I know very little about Harry Potter (the first movie was so ponderous I never got into the rest of the franchise), Joe's bad pick-up lines in Potter slang are amusing.



5. "Blue Scholars Seattle"
This mini-doc featuring Geo and DJ Sabzi is actually more about Seattle than Blue Scholars, but any segment with them is worthwhile viewing. The video title makes the duo sound like a bad prime-time procedural franchise (Blue Scholars: Seattle, Blue Scholars: Miami...).



4. "La Vida Flamenco"
Damn.



3. "Sexy Scientist"
Double damn.



2. "Ode to the Indie by Ellen & Brett"
There's one frequent indie comedy element that's missing from this Rotten Tomatoes Show list of indie clichés: "Oh, those funny-talking yellow-faced and brown-faced people!" humor.



1. "Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Cleaning"
Each week on infoMania, Haskins' great "Target Women" segment shows how advertising panders to female viewers. The funniest of these "Target Women" pieces spoofs dumb bathroom cleaning product commercials.

The illest Knight Rider theme cover ever

Like According to Jim, Knight Rider is a show that just won't die. It's been revived five times: three times in TV-movie form and twice as a weekly series. Not even the presence of the hot Smith Cho from Ping Pong Playa could get me to watch the latest attempt to revive Knight Rider, which everyone agrees was an epic fail.

Knight Rider is an example of Not-So-Great Show, Killer Theme, even though the banter between the Hoff and his lover sidekick KITT made it more enjoyable than most old Glen A. Larson shows. Like on all other Larson shows, the theme was co-written by Larson, who used to sing in the '50s and '60s with an SCTV Five Neat Guys-ish group called the Four Preps, and his regular composer Stu Phillips.

Beatmakers and beatboxers can't get enough of the Knight Rider theme, as evidenced by the year when Busta Rhymes and Timbaland & Magoo both dropped remixes that sampled the theme, as well as Panjabi MC's "Mundian to Bach Ke (Beware of the Boys)" and this sweet little recent cover by Nathan "Flutebox" Lee, whom I first caught on Current TV earlier today (Googling him led me to his Knight Rider theme cover).