#65 - it's a mad mad mad mad tv.

if there's one thing that fox can say it's consistently kicked ass in over the years, it's comedy...& i suppose, if you're a bombastic prick, you might also say they've kicked ass in news coverage, but then you deserve a good kick in the nuts too.

just look at the list of awesome comedy-based programming that they've been home to, all with varying run lengths...married with children (11 seasons), the ben stiller show (1 season), arrested development (3 seasons), the simpsons (20 seasons), family guy (7 seasons), in living color (5 seasons), that 70s show (8 seasons), the critic (1 season), get a life (2 seasons), herman's head (3 seasons)...the animated sit down, shut up (with like half the cast of arrested development doing voices) premieres near the end of april. i already assume that it's genius.

in their history, fox has made a mixture of great & awful decisions as far as which programs to keep or cancel. madtv has managed to stick around for 14 seasons now & is finally ending its time on fox after the current season. over time, even though it too can have its fair share of groan-worthy sketches, i've become a bigger fan of madtv than i am of snl.

this saturday's episode opened with a sketch with two people watching a disturbing commercial for a dog declipper. in it, they kept showing a closeup diagram of how the clipper worked, which involved yanking at the claw and slicing off the nail, all to the sound of a dog yelp. the couple squirmed & squirmed & the sketch ended with another commercial for a product that proposed to aid in "papercuts to the cornea." the sketch then returned two sketches later with a commercial for "the circumscissors."

throughout the show, there were a few sexy sketches about abstinence with miley cyrus & the jonas brothers, a celebrity roast of a dying child, a series of "t-mobile fave 5" sketches with bushie the second, angelina jolie & michelle obama, two bobby lee sketches--one with him in a diaper as cupid & one with him as "the blind kung fu master," a sketch where a firm comes up with a new image for a manufacturer of douchebags and a few other "gems." it was humorous enough.

#65 - it's a mad mad mad mad tv.

snack: stacy's cinnamon sugar pita chips
drink: samuel adams imperial white

as i spent the hour watching & writing down notes about madtv, i dug into a bag of stacy's cinnamon sugar pita chips. they're baked & wheat-based & essentially healthy and stacy madison (the co-founder) got her start in boston, so that's cool. the company's currently based out of randolph, a yawntastic town located just south of boston that i never found the need to go to in my 20+ years growing up in the area. their website is pitachips.com, so i guess that pretty much makes them the masters of the pita chip.

i'm a fan of pita chips. they're never greasy & their thickness makes them a substantial & satisfying snack item, especially when combined with the right amount of flavoring. these ones have a cinnamon sugar flavoring that's never overpowering & when you do get a chip that's abound in flavor, it's a sweet treat & no reason to complain...plus, the flavor reminds me of the main reason my moms got me to eat so much toast growing up.

with the chips, i'm enjoying a beer from another boston-based company, the samuel adams imperial white. it's one of three beers (along with the double bock & imperial stout) in their "imperial" series. it's a fruity witbeir and i enjoyed it (even sipped it as suggested by their website) and thought that the orange & coriander flavors went well with the cinnamon sugar...in fact, it was going so well & i was feeling good that when midnight rolled around & madtv ended & talk show with spike feresten came on, i leapt up like a coked-up leopard & shut that tv down before it was too late...catlike pita & beer reflexes, i tell ya...quicklike.