Very exciting! After a long-ish gestation, the first trailer for Open Mike Eagle & Baron Vaughn’s new comedy/variety show on Comedy Central is here! It’s called The New Negroes (which is a reference to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1910s & 1920s) and you can watch the trailer here.
I’m so excited for Mike! This show looks to be a mix of standup, music, and maybe some bizarre sketch-comedy stuff, judging from a few quick clips like this one where someone emerges from Mike’s mouth:
dat mouf…
Here are some more interesting screenshots that I pulled from the trailer. Let the speculation begin!
Open Cop Eagle…
Vid gom…
Wotta wig…
Musical hospital…
The New Negroes premieres on Comedy Central on Friday, April 19th. I’ll have to find a way to watch it since we’re a cord-cutted family!
From the excellent Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (my review is here), this opening song quite well encapsulates the feel of Miles Morales and his transformation into the titular hero. Spoiler warning, though: the video includes footage from pretty much all parts of the movie and gives quite a bit of the plot away. Partake and be pleased:
“I’m really not sure how much weight the stage can support…”
So apparently there’s a pre-scripted(!!) rap battle TV show called Drop the Mic. Apparently it’s a spinoff of a segment from The Late Late Show with James Corden(!?). I dunno, I don’t really watch the TV anymore. But I do enjoy the Muppets.
This battle has Kermit and Pepé facing off against Miss Piggy and Beaker. There are some very funny lines, and a great running gag of how Kermit keeps trying to be extra nice instead of insulting. Beaker has a gag that was very predictable but very well done, proving that much of comedy is in the execution and not necessarily the idea. Take a look/listen:
Okay, so it’s not an actual octopus; it’s a massive, badass sculpture at the corner of Pacific Ave and South Tacoma Way (map) called “Gertie’s Ghost.” It was created by artists Sean Orlando and David Shulman, who were inspired by the ill-fated Galloping Gertie bridge.
“We were enamored with the story of the giant octopus that lives in the wreckage of the bridge,” Shulman told the Tribune. “We kind of fused all of those things together to try and build something that was evocative of an old railroad trestle but had the tapering lines and organic curves of an octopus’s tentacles.” Source
I personally love this. I (almost) always love massive installation sculptures. Tacoma actually has a lot of great public sculptures! I’ve always thought it would be kind of cool to have a feature on this website where I take pictures of every single public sculpture within the city limits (but who has the time for that?). There’s another massive installation sculpture going into the in-progress Dune Peninsula park, called “Alluvion” that’s made of deconstructed pipes that reference the old Asarco smelter smokestack that used to be on that site:
Did you watch the big, huge, new, hour-long Steven Universe that premiered on Monday night? If not, stay the heck away from this post! Heck!
Anyhoo, the episode, “Change Your Mind,” sure seemed to be the culmination of 5 years and 100+ episodes of the show. It brought to a close pretty much all of the major storylines, and it ended, as it should, with a song: a reworking of the opening theme song of the show itself. Take a watch/listen for yourself!
Actually, my previous paragraph was not entirely truthful. The show didn’t end with a song; it ended with two songs. After all the problems are solved and everything has calmed down, Steven sits on the beach with the three people (well, sentient lesbian space rocks) with whom he began this journey in Episode 1, and sings a little coda to the whole series. It’s very simple, but it’s exceedingly sell-sung by Zach Callistan. It is, like the episode itself, called “Change Your Mind.” Here you go.
I don’t know what Steven Universe can do from here. I know there’s a movie coming out later this year, and the possibility of another season. But the whole arc of the show has now been wrapped up; the diamonds have been “defeated” and the corrupted gems have been uncorrupted. There are some dangling threads, like will the diamonds be able to successfully dismantle their horrible, oppressive dictatorship? Will gem society be able to adjust smoothly into a free society? Will Pearl ever go out on a date with the Mystery Girl? So we’ll just have to wait (for a long time, per usual with this show) to see what happens.
C’mon, hurry up and dance, Patton’s really gotta get in there…
Hey, listen up, I really love The Bird and the Bee. Alright!? I know they haven’t released a new album since 2015, but I’m really jonesin’ for some of that sweet, sweet, jazz-inflected, dreamy, electro-exotica pop.
Here’s the video for their first single, “Will You Dance?” from their most recent album, Recreational Love. It stars Simon Helberg and Patton Oswalt! How can you beat that?
Gosh, I’d love it if they’d put out more music. Here’s a fun thing to do: go to Pandora and make a station based solely on The Bird and the Bee. Do you hear all of that music? That’s my favorite kind of music!!
Hey, did you know that my all-time favorite band They Might Be Giants released not one, but two new albums (technically two, but in reality three because one of them contains a “bonus disc” that’s as long as a full-length album) right before the holidays? C’est vrai! They just kinda sneaked ’em out.
Here’s “Gudetama’s Busy Days” from the album My Murdered Remains, which is apparently about the “lazy egg” Sanrio character of the same name? As with many TMBG songs, it’s hard to tell what it’s actually about. But partake and enjoy anyway!
Seriously, though, those are some excellently lazy grooves in that song. Tasty.
Notice how I very purposefully didn’t say “egg-cellently lazy” in the previous paragraph! You’re welcome! An enjoyment has occurred!
