Moments of Wonder

On another procrastinatathon through YouTube, I stumbled across the gloriously named “Philomena Cunk” and her Moments of Wonder from Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. Somehow I’d completely forgotten about this, even though it was only on in 2013 and I found it great at the time, easily the highlight of the show.  It seems like something my friends would appreciate, and the American contingent probably missed out on it too given the strong UK news/TV focus of the rest of the show. So here’s four of the segments, unfortunately the remaining two don’t seem to be on YouTube.

Interestingly Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris are credited as “program associates” for the show. I thought those names seemed familiar, and it’s because they’re two of the people responsible for The Framley Examiner, my favourite ever newspaper/website/book. I’ve owned the book for, ooh, something like 12 years now, and I can still take it off the shelf and find new things to chuckle about in it. There’s definitely echoes of the Examiner‘s absurd humour in Cunk’s ramblings.

Big Bang Theory

Watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory on the plane, but laughed harder at the episode description than anything else: “Sheldon atttempts to invent 3-player chess”. Because my housemate had been trying to do that just a couple of weeks earlier.

It really is the most inconsistent series. Some episodes are brilliantly funny with clever references. And some are just poor, with terrible “jokes” followed by a gale of canned laughter. Sadly this was one of the latter type.

Just give a kidney

After being constantly bombarded with adverts whilst watching Frasier on Comedy Central, I finally gave in and watched 30 Rock. And it was great. The first episode I watched, I was impressed to see Alan Alda as a guest star.

The next episode featured Alan Alda again, AND: Elvis Costello, Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, Clay Aiken, Adam Levine, Adrock and Mike D of The Beastie Boys, Michael McDonald, Rhett Miller, Wyclef Jean, Steve Earle, Moby, Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles, Robert Randolph, Rachel Yamagata, Talib Kweli, and Norah Jones.

Holy crap.

I am now officially hooked.

Ghost Hunting With X

Whilst flicking through the TV schedules late at night, ITV2 threw out one of the most amazing titles I’ve ever seen. “Ghost Hunting With The Happy Mondays”

Ghost Hunting. With The Happy Mondays.

So I was just about to post this, and maybe some of the other ridiculous titles I’ve seen recently (e.g. “Pants Off Dance Off”, “100 Men Own My Breasts”). I decided to google the ghost hunting show first, and it turns out that “Ghost Hunting With X” is something of a phenomenon. Where X = “Girls Aloud”, “McFly”, “Coronation Street”, “Radio 1”, “Louis Walsh and Boyzone”, and strangest of all: “The Dingles” o_O

In this episode Yvette takes Lucy Pargeter (Chastity Dingle), Verity Rushworth (Donna Windsor-Dingle), Hayley Tamaddon (Delilah Dingle), Joseph Gilgun (Eli Dingle) and Mark Charnock (Marlon Dingle), to three of the reputedley most haunted locations in York, including the National Railway Museum.

Only four of the five members of Girls Aloud took part in the pilot episode of the show, which was set in North Wales. Nadine Coyle opted out of the show because she was too scared.

Wikipedia