| Greg Proops article |
[09 Apr 2009|06:13am] |
Greg Proops dispels 4 Greg Proops misconceptions"
... Like sometimes there’d be a female bodybuilder or a girl with a snake or fuckin’ Jerry Springer or something, and I always felt slightly insulted, like, “Are you kidding? I’m making stuff up off the top of my head here, with no script, and you bring out Jerry Springer?” ...
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| Whose Line is it Anyway? DVD News Update! |
[26 Feb 2009|02:58pm] |
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So the good news is that there will be a new uncensored DVD release this June!
The bad news is that the episodes were selected based on gay jokes, celebrity appearances, and kissing moments!
Hoo...ray?
[tvshowsondvd.com article]
Well it's better than no release for this year at all. It's just a shame that the show is to represented this way.
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| Mike McShane on Just a Minute |
[25 Aug 2008|11:51am] |
[Cross-posted to the Idiotsite board)
It's not often we hear an American on JAM!
I missed its original airing because I was a bit out of touch and didn't realize the new series had started a few weeks ago. Luckily, his first show (along with the others in the new series) has been made available for download here, thanks to "helmethead." Mike's is the one labeled with "Edinburgh Festival."
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| Downloadable things to listen to |
[02 May 2008|10:18am] |
Since I've postponed (you never hear of things being preponed, do you? Though nowadays a lot of people seem to get pwned) posting these, they may or may not be old news to some of you.
Back in late March, Greg Proops was on BlogTalkRadio with Olivia Wilder. The show is two hours long, but since Greg was late for the show, the first forty-something minutes are pretty much the host complaining about Greg not showing up. I'd say feel to free to skip that chunk, though she does at one point play a clip that seems to be from one of Greg's new albums. If you're a Greg fan, you're bound to enjoy the hour-and-fifteenish minutes of just chatting.
Also, Colin Mochrie was on a later Olivia Wilder show. What more can you ask for than two hours of Colin talking and answering live-chat fan questions?
Clive Anderson has a news podcast for the Telegraph website. It's mostly serious news with a few dashes of Clive-style humor thrown in. Each "show" is around twenty minutes long.
Drew Carey was a guest on this week's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! There are only a few days left to download the episode or listen to it online, though.
That's all I can remember at the moment.
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| A(nother) nauseatingly extensive Whose Line DVD review (Volume 2) |
[20 Oct 2007|08:00pm] |
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Whose Line is it Anyway? Season 1, Volume 2 has been released. This completes the first season, as there were only twenty episodes in the first season and the second volume contains the remaining ten. If you had to choose between volume 1 and 2, I would recommend 2, because I think the latter half of the season is more memorable and fun to watch. Highlight include the Emmy-submitted episode 119 with the Going Bald Hoedown, appearances by Ian Gomez and Stephen Colbert, Brad's Songs of the Ant Farmer, Wayne's first song to a man, and the episode with Greg and Denny.
So, for this release, improvements have been made. Bleeped stuff is actually unbleeped (though it wouldn't bother me a whole lot otherwise, I admit it is interested to hear the dialog uncovered). In the second half of the first season, there were three bleeps, and two of those are uncensored on this release: Ryan's "They're-never-going-to-allow-that" comment in Narrate at a pizza place, and Wayne's use of an L-word in the Birth Hoedown. This does make me look forward to future releases, to hopefully hear things that we couldn't figure out on our own.
Both DVDs in this release include bonus material. The first has four previously unaired games (well, one is a chunk of a game) and the second five games (one also kind of being a chunk).
I still wish the set came with an episode guide. It's not too much to ask for, is it? I mean, shows on DVD that don't need episode guides get episode guides. Not only do I have to consult an outside source or memorize the episode numbers to find the episode I want, but I have to figure out on which disc it would be! And I have to memorize which cut games are on which DVD as well. Nothing fancy, a black-and-white plain text sheet of paper would have sufficed.
The menu graphics are still a bit lame, but whatever.
The previous release had closed-captioning but no English subtitles; this one has English subtitles but no closed-captioning. The subtitles use the performers' surnames instead of their first names for some reason. Also, a trivial observation: In one playing of Telethon, the subtitles label an impression Brad does as "Willie Nelson," but in another playing Brad does the same impression but the subtitles say "Neil Young." Scott's website has it down as Garth Brooks. For the record, I'm convinced it's supposed to be Willie Nelson.
The French and Spanish subtitles are gone this time around, though. As I mentioned in my previous review, I actually found it interesting to see how certain things were translated, and I'm a bit disappointed that I can't do that for these episodes.
( This part only for those who have seen the DVD extra stuff. )
So yeah, even if I may have seemed negative, it is quite neat, and I would recommend it.
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| Playskool Advertising Meeting |
[25 Sep 2007|09:35am] |
(this post done in the style of Simon Rich)
-"So, we're ready to start a new line of commercials, but we were thinking that, instead of using a nobody, we could maybe use a celebrity guest."
-"I'm not sure if it's in the budget..."
-"Well, not an A-lister obviously. Someone relatively obscure, but still recognizable. I was thinking, as a suggestion, Ryan Stiles. He has two kids*, and he has experience doing commercials."
-"The name rings a bell, but...remind me, what's he from again?"
-"I think most people would know him from The Drew Carey Show."
-"I never really watched that one. What kind of character does he play?"
-"A weird, creepy, lonely sexual deviant with psychopathic tendencies."
-"Uh...huh."
-"Oh, he's also on that show Who's Line is it Anyways."
-"I love that show! He's the bald guy, right?"
-"No, he's the tall guy."
-"You mean the surly bitter one?"
-"Yeah."
-"...who makes dirty jokes all the time and gets bleeped the most?"
-"Yeah, him."
-"Oh."
-"Yep."
-"Okay then. Let's make some toy commercials.
*I think Ryan has three kids, but I'm not sure (go ask a real Ryan fan), so let's imagine this person is just not up-to-date anyway.
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| Mate Colin |
[26 Jun 2007|02:28pm] |
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Just when you thought you've seen enough digitally altered pictures of Colin Mochrie, Worth1000.com attacks with more, including some surprisingly well-done (albeit disturbing) ones.
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| Greg Proops stand-up - Cleveland, OH - March 1st, 2007 |
[03 Mar 2007|06:59pm] |
Don't worry, I won't give a super-ultra-hyper-ridiculous detailed report of the act itself. The reasons being:
1) I'm sure one could easily find recaps of his recent stand-up acts as written by other fans, and most of it is probably the same as the one I saw.
2) It would take me so long to not only write it, but to collect my thoughts to try to remember as much of it as possible.
3) It wouldn't be nearly as funny to read about the show from a second-hand source as it is to actually see/hear it. Granted one could say the same about an improv show, but in that case I mostly liked the idea of a recorded account of the show, since each performance is quite different. One of Greg's qualities that impresses me is his way with words, and since I wouldn't be able to quote him directly, the mood of the jokes might fall flat anyway if they were to merely be paraphrased.
This was the first time I had ever seen live stand-up, and though I can't explain why, but it does seem much funnier than to see comedians live than it does to see them on television or movies or YouTube or the back of a cereal box or whatever. One of the interesting (to me anyway) things that separated this show from the Colin & Brad show, in terms of viewing experience, was the rest of the audience. I imagine most of the people who see An Evening With Colin & Brad see the show because they're already fans of Colin and Brad. I mean, unless you've seen Whose Line or have been recommend it by a friend, what other reason would you have for seeing it? In any given Colin & Brad audience, are there any people who attended because they enjoy improv but previously had no idea who Colin and Brad were? I imagine not, but I could be wrong. However in the case of the Greg show, it seemed there may have been people who attended the show because they enjoy stand-up comedy but previously had no idea who Greg Proops was. Maybe they happened to be at the restaurant for the night at decided to take in the show, or perhaps they regularly attend the comedy club to see whoever happens to be performing. I know that the couple sharing a table with us (us being me and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mountain_fawn, but you probably guessed that) were given the tickets for free from a friend (I think the friend had won them in a contest or something. I don't know, it was hard to hear.). So it's not as if they went for the sake of seeing Greg, as we had. Also, I'm fairly certain the audience wouldn't have groaned and moaned as judgmentally as they had if most of them were people already familiar with Greg's material. Maybe there are plenty of Greg supporters in Cleveland, but they had just decided to see him on a different day than I had.
So because I was seemingly one of the few "hardcore" Greg fans (I hope that owning the audio cassette imaginatively titled "Greg Proops Live" qualifies me for hardcore status) for that show, I was able to get tickets for the best table in the place. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I was just so surprised about it that I feel the urge to mention it. I knew that the table would be one of the closest to the stage. I did not know, until I got there however, that the table put me within arm's distance of the stage, smack dab in front of the microphone. That is why Amanda took this picture for me. The photo was taken while we were both seated at the table. Being that close helped a huge deal to make the show an awesome experience, the only downside being that my neck was a bit uncomfortable, craning upwards during the entire show to maintain eye contact. Resting my neck would have meant either looking away from the performer completely or looking at his crotch. I'd rather have my neck be uncomfortable.
Here is a picture of an ad that was in a plastic stand thingy on the table. Note the text below Greg's picture.
There were a couple of openers for Greg's act, the first (and the emcee) being a guy who I could only describe as striking a resemblance to Mike McShane (circa his Whose Line years - for those who don't know, before and after he was in better shape), especially because I can't remember his name. He was, well, as good as you'd expect an obscure local comedian to be. Your mileage may vary. The second was Drake Witham. I don't know how funny I would have found him if I had seen him on television first, but I thought he was quite funny at the show.
Seeing Greg live was surreal to say the least. When you can see the performer's sweat, flying saliva, and slightly thinning hair...well, that's pretty darn close. I don't remember the context of the bit, but at one point Greg was standing at the front of the stage, leaning back slightly, head looking upward, holding his crotch with one hand. I'm sure certain Greg fans would've enjoyed being in my position, as said crotch was practically pointed at me. I however felt quite awkward about it.
There were some key moments that were probably unique to this performance (or the Cleveland performances as a whole):
-Greg seeming/pretending to have trouble pronouncing "Ohio." "Ohi...oao...ao."
-I'm sure that Greg normally jokes about how the current venue he's playing in is much colder than the warmth of California that he's used to (if that's the case, of course). There's a bit in his recent iTunes album "Joke Book." Greg also specifically joked about the weather in the Cleveland area the morning. He asked the audience why rain doesn't follow the laws of gravity, since he learned that in Cleveland it travels sideways instead of falling downwards. I particularly enjoyed the reference because I had been out that morning too and could easily relate. To see him mention the subject of Cleveland weather, click here.
-The woman at our table had to leave briefly for some reason, and when she returned Greg noticed here, gave her a perplexed look, but said nothing.
-At one point in the show Greg pointed to an audience member (who was as close to the stage as we were) and said something to the effect of, "Ah, you laughed at that one! I've had my eye on your the whole show, and I know who laughs and who doesn't. You might think I can't see the audience from here, but I watch everyone."
-Cleveland insults, mainly referring to the Indians. Greg suggested that our racist mascot be replaced with a giant syringe who pokes the players in the butt with his (the syringe's, not Greg's) head. Naturally any jab got boo's from the audience, which as Greg pointed out himself, only made him want to make fun of them even more. He also commented on the way the audience reacted to certain bits. But with Greg I guess that's always to be expected.
-Greg expressed his desire for a drink, and eventually a waiter extended his hand toward the stage to fulfill the wish. As the waiter left, though, Greg crooned softly as if singing to a lost love. I can't explain it; it kind of confused me.
One of the bits was about Jessica Simpson's stupidity, the example being that she thought a buffalo had wings ("and that they could be so small..."). This lead to Greg's hypothetical demonstration of a buffalo getting ready to take off for flight. It was one of my favorite bits that night; I wish I could see it again. Now that I think of it I may have liked it for its Whose Line-ness. I can totally imagine "buffalo trying to fly" as a Party Quirk.
After the show Amanda and I hoped to meet Greg for autographs and a picture. We saw him head into an Employees Only door, and when Amanda asked a minute or two later one of the staff cleaning up, we were told that Greg was probably already leaving. That was another difference between this show and the Colin & Brad one. Did Greg just not expect enough people to want his autograph afterwards, or did he not have the time for it? Anyway, even without be able to personally greet him it was a pretty awesome show.
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| Whose Line-related news, what else? |
[26 Feb 2007|02:50pm] |
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For those who haven't heard yet, the British version of Whose Line, the full first two seasons of it, will be released on DVD. The fans in the states will see it first, thanks to A&E. You could buy it through the A&E store now for about $53 (including shipping), but I would recommend getting it when it's available through Amazon.com exactly a month from now, since it'd only set you back about $35 (with free shipping). And, well, if you plan on buying it through Amazon anyway, why not go to the front page of the Idiotsite and use the referal link there? It'll help the site out, at the cost of only a mouseclick or two.
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In other news, I'll be seeing Greg Proops perform stand-up in Cleveland this Thursday.
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