Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-sixth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Films

Friends With Kids

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Footnote – U.S. release

Attenberg – U.S. release

New Comedy

Doug Stanhope: Before Turning the Gun on Himself…

New Books

You’re Not Doing It Right by Michael Ian Black

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors by Molly Harper

And Finally

This week we focus on two traditions with military ties that are heading in opposite directions.  The first is to be found in College Station, Texas where the sidelines of Texas A&M football games are not the domain of female cheerleaders or dancers but rather the all-male yell leaders.  Dating back to 1907 when freshmen in janitor uniforms were sent to the sidelines to entertain ladies from a nearby women’s college visiting the (then) all-male school, the Aggies student section has been led in cheers (sorry, yells) by five male students chosen by popular vote.  Typically the majority of the squad comes from the five candidates put forth by the Corps of Cadets, a student military organization that is coed but has never nominated a female.  This year, however, two women threw their hats into the ring in an attempt to end this 105-year tradition by making the yell leader squad truly gender diverse.  Even though change is in the air with the Aggies moving from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, this proved to be a bridge too far with the two would-be pioneers finishing last in voting.   Happy International Women’s Day.

Meanwhile, down under, a military-based tradition that is dying a slow death is the “march past.”  Again dating to the early 20th century, the march past consists of squads of lifeguards marching in formation, on the beach, barefoot, wearing nothing but a Speedo and a swim cap, and led by a drummer, bagpipe player or bugle player.  Back in the day the march past was a very serious endeavor with members training for hours in order to demonstrate perfect formation during festive Saturday parades.  Today, the kids who participate in the surf lifesaving clubs’ “Nippers” training programs are enthusiastic about learning swimming and water safety and such but marching…..eh, not so much.  And with those who are still willing to march reaching an advanced age (again, wearing nothing but a Speedo and a swim cap) the spectators are losing interest as well.  Which just goes to show that sometimes fighting tradition is like battling a riptide and other times you simply watch it ebb away.

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fifth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Film

Boy – U.S. release

The Salt of Life – U.S. release

Let the Bullets Fly – U.S. release

Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

New TV Series

GCB

New Audio

The Benson Interruption – The Podcast:  Episode 12

And Finally

Twenty-five years ago the film Wall Street was released containing one of cinema’s most quoted soliloquies in which Gordon Gekko proclaimed:  “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.  Greed is right, greed works.”   And for twenty years greed and Wall Street got along quite well and no one really complained too loudly.  (Don’t worry, this isn’t going to degenerate into an Occupy Tom Nob screed.)  However, over the past five years this incestuous relationship has come under close scrutiny, to say the least.  Now word reaches us that the Gekko-man himself has been turned by the government.  This week the FBI released a new public service announcement featuring actor Michael Douglas in which he cautions viewers about participating in deals too good to be true and encourages those in the financial industry to report any securities fraud they witness.  In other words, Gekko is now telling us that greed is bad.  Apparently the rich have failed to get the message.  Or maybe that is why they are rich.  According to research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers engaged in seven experiments have found that those who were upper class, or perceived to be among the upper class, were more likely to engage in self-absorbed behavior like lying, cheating, stealing candy or withholding critical information.  As one of the study’s author, Paul Piff,  states:  “It’s not that the rich are innately bad, but as you rise in the ranks – whether as a person or a nonhuman primate – you become more self-focused.”  This link between man and ape is entirely appropriate for as the 1987-vintage Gordon Gekko continued:  “Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”   Which raises the question as to whether greed is an original sin or a legacy of our great ape ancestors.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fourth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Film

The Fairy – U.S. release

New Web Series

Battleground

New TV Series

Life’s Too Short

New TV Season

Being Human (UK) – season four

New Audio

Dylan Brody:  Chronological Disorder

Garfunkel and Oates:  Slippery When Moist

New Books

Flatscreen:  A Novel by Adam Wilson

And Finally

Aside from the coronation of Adele as queen of the music recording industry, one of the most notable events of the recent Grammy Award ceremony was the 50th anniversary performance of the reunited Beach Boys.  While the eccentricities of Brian Wilson, the “lost” Smile album and the 1988 hit “Kokomo” have helped keep the band from fading away, the Beach Boys will always be best known for their hit songs recorded in the early to mid-1960s and compiled on 1974′s Endless Summer.  These beach-themed tunes forever immortalized carefree fun in the sun on California’s golden shores.   As such, there is no small irony that as the 70-year-old Boys re-form for one more round of fun, fun, fun the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is saying no, no, no.  The Supervisors, who create the rules that are enforced on the public beaches in the county, have decided in their infinite wisdom that the sands have become too hazardous and need new rules.  So, from this point forward no person shall dig a hole in the sand deeper than 18″ except for film and/or television production purposes.  Sorry, kiddos, no more digging moats or holes to China.  If that wasn’t bad enough, it is now unlawful for any person to cast, toss, throw, kick, or roll any ball, tube, or light object other than a beach ball or beach volleyball.  This means that playing catch with a football or a frisbee on the beach could result in a $1,000 fine.  The one activity that is exempted from these new ordinances is playing water polo “on or over” the Pacific Ocean.  Brilliant.  Allow the one thing that people don’t do at the beach and ban all the things they do.  Might as well go catch a wave because staying on the beach is going to be an endless bummer.

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-third edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New TV Season

Cougar Town – season three

Eastbound & Down – season three

New Books

Delicacy:  A Novel by David Foenkinos

And Finally

Another Valentine’s Day has passed and, as we were diligently observing National Safe Sex Awareness Month, we had some extra idle time on our hands.   Because the devil’s work takes less time than it used to, we turned our attention to learning more about this St. Valentine who has inspired this day filled with angst and ecstasy.  Everybody is familiar with the image of St. Nicholas and has some understanding of his back story but when it comes to the pompitous of love:  nothing.   The short, boring reason is that there was no specific St. Valentine but rather 14 different martyred saints of ancient Rome who were referred to as Valentinus.  Even if the number of saints and the calendar date are more than coincidental, there is no other historical link between any of the St. Valentines and the pursuit of love.  In fact, the first reference linking St. Valentine and romance comes from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules written in 1382 in which he describes birds seeking their mate on St. Valentine’s Day.  Historians have questioned why the birds of England would have been looking to mate in mid February but there it is.  Amazing that such an oblique reference 630 years ago could have spawned an $18 billion/year heart-shaped industry.  Even if we are no closer to solving the meaning of life, at least we now know who wrote the book of love.

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-second edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Stand-Up

Patrice O’Neal: Mr. P

New Books

A Good American by Alex George

Life As I Blow It by Sarah Colonna

And Finally

Aside from a few subtle obscene gestures during the halftime show that were missed by 111,349,998 viewers until the puritan police felt compelled to point them out frame-by-frame, last weekend’s Super Bowl XLVI was considered by all (except for Mitt Romney’s former minions) to be a resounding success.  While Peyton Manning won an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World and his NY Giants teammates earned a ticker-tape parade through the canyons of Manhattan, the big winners appear to be the automobile manufacturers who paid an average of $3.5 million per 30-second spot to peddle their vehicles.  Either through the use of humor or by plucking on the patriotic heartstrings, the auto makers have taken over the mantle from the beer companies as being the main source of entertainment during a typically mediocre football match.

One auto brand that returned to the Super Bowl airwaves after a 10-year hiatus was BMW.  However, the tailwinds being enjoyed by the German manufacturer in the North American market from their $7 million Super Bowl spend were being partially counteracted by $394 they spent on their home continent.  Here’s the story:  the Berlin Institute for Meteorology at the Free University, which has been naming all high- and low-pressure systems affecting Central Europe since the 1950s, had its funding slashed in 2002 prompting the organization to launch an “Adopt-a-Vortex” program.  Normally used as a novel gift for individuals, BMW’s marketing agency thought it would be a clever idea to sponsor a high pressure system to promote the “brisk” quality of the Mini Cooper brand.  Clever, that is, until the “Cooper” front which swept in to central Europe out of Siberia proved a bit too brisk with sub-zero temps that killed over 250 people.  Mini was forced to quickly pulled a Rockford in order to disassociate from the catastrophic weather though they will ultimately suffer only minor embarrassment and an opportunity cost rather than any real damage to the brand.   Just goes to show that when it comes to halftime performers and weather fronts, even the best of intentions can result in a gesture gone bad.

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirty-first edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Stand-Up

John Mulaney:  New In Town

Chris Killian: The Not Black Album

Doug Loves Movies: Live in Sacramento

New TV Show

Key & Peele

New TV Season

Tosh.0 – season four

And Finally

Yesterday Facebook finally filed a preliminary prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for its long-awaited initial public offering.  Following in the footsteps of other so-called Web 2.0 companies like Linkedin, Groupon, and Zynga who have opened their respective kimonos in order to provide some liquidity for founders, early investors and employees alike, Facebook is not modest in the self-assessment of its value which it reportedly places somewhere between $75-$100 billion.   With over 800 million users and revenues of greater than $3.7 billion for 2011, there is no doubt that Facebook is worth a lot of money but Zuck & Co. have their work cut out for them to grow into this valuation.  What they and other social media companies need is to successfully transition from a free, user-oriented service to a platform conducive for the marketing and advertising of corporate brands and products.  The holy grail known as monetization.

However, when corporate customers shift their spend on branding activities to the social media sphere,  they leave behind the safety of carefully scripted one-way messages and become exposed to the ugly underbelly of the user base.  A recent example of this comes courtesy of McDonald’s (another company worth $100 billion) whose brand mission is “to be our customers’ favorite place and way to eat.”  Forgetting momentarily that this describes the typical 5-year-old, McDonald’s launched a promoted tweets campaign on Twitter encouraging its legion of customers to share their “McDStories”.  To paraphrase the McDonald’s social media director, the conversation did not go as planned with tweets from individuals whose meals were not so happy quickly swamping the campaign which was cancelled within hours of launch.   Thus, while putting the Egg McMuffin on Facebook would seem to be something that both companies would like, it is far too easy for an exercise in monetization to morph into digital defacement and simply end up with egg on the face.  And what’s the value of that?

Here is the one-hundred-and-thirtieth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Stand-Up

The Benson Interruption – The Podcast:  Episode 11

New TV Show

Inside Comedy

New TV Season

Archer – season three

And Finally

Pity poor Michael Williams.  All the Caddo (Louisiana) Parish Commissioner wanted was to go to Wal-Mart, hobnob with the greeters, and maybe take advantage of the everyday low prices.  What he got, however, was a group of layabout young men wearing pajama pants which failed to hide the junk of at least one male.   Mr. Williams took this as a sign that “the moral fiber of our community is dwindling…its pajama pants today, next it will be underwear tomorrow” so he is proposing to introduce an ordinance that would ban the wearing of pajama pants in public.  There is some precedent in the parish as the city of Shreveport enacted a ban on sagging trousers in 2011.    While enforcement of such a ban would certainly prove problematic, Mr. Williams has proposed that violators be required to perform community service.  Our take on this is that it is probably more of an issue of the quality of the cotton fiber rather than the moral fiber and that the presence of underwear would probably prove to be quite helpful.  Besides, people who don’t feel any motivation to change out of their pajamas as they proceed with their day are poorly “suited” to be providing community services.

Here is the one-hundred-and-twenty-ninth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Stand-Up

Doug Loves Movies:  Live in Las Vegas

New TV Show

Unsupervised

New TV Season

Being Human (Canada) – season two

And Finally

How do you want to be remembered when you leave this mortal world.  Will your legacy be a name on a building, a product or company  you created, the genius of your progeny, an oft-repeated quote, a work of work, or a piece of fruit?  We’ve been thinking about this since hearing recently that the American rock band The Velvet Underground is suing the family foundation of the late Andy Warhol over the licensing of one of his works.  A good friend and early supporter of the band, Warhol provided a silk-screen-styled yellow banana to serve as the cover of the 1967 “The Velvet Underground and Nico” album.

Despite the fact that it sold poorly and was largely ignored by music critics, the album has since grown in reputation during the intervening decades and is now routinely included in lists of greatest rocks albums. Thus, when the band learned that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts had licensed the banana image to a maker a cases for iPads and iPods they filed a lawsuit in federal court. In short, the band’s argument is that the banana belongs to them by virtue of 45 years of association. While the band is due their 15 minutes in court, theirs is an uphill journey and a slippery one at that.

Here is the one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New TV Show

Napoleon Dynamite – season one

Are You There, Chelsea? – season one

New TV Season

30 Rock – season six

The Game – season five

Let’s Stay Together – season two

New Stand-Up

Tom Papa: Live in New York City

New Books

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel

And Finally

We’re almost two weeks into the new year which means, if past is prologue, that many of the resolutions that were made to improve our less-than-perfect lives have already gone by the wayside.  Typically one of the first to be formulated on that brand new morning is to drink less alcohol.   Chances are, according to a spate of agency data from around the world, even if you succeed in experiencing fewer alcohol-fueled fiestas, the number of drinks you consume on each occasion will remain quite high.  Government poindexters have deemed such events as “binge” drinking.   Social binge drinking traces its roots to 17th century England when well-heeled university students and barristers-in-training formed drinking societies where they were expected to drink copious quantities of alcohol yet still be able to retain their wit.  Today the phenomenon of  binge drink has permeated virtually every society and social class but in ways that may surprise you.  While the English have retained their reputation as binge drinkers par excellence, the true “champions” may be South Africans, a third of whom reportedly begin drinking early afternoon on Friday and do not stop until the workday starts on Monday resulting in a rather precarious rush hour.  Back here in the United States where binge drinking is considered the purview of the college students and cheese-topped residents of the Badger State, the Centers for Disease Control just released a study which found that the income group with the most binge drinkers were those who made more than $75,000 per year and the age group that binge drinks most often being those 65 years and older.  Clearly this cohort has taken to heart the witticism offered by their generation’s bards, the Grateful Dead, who sang:  “Too much of everything is just enough.”  A toast to their health.

Here is the one-hundred-and-twenty-seventh edition of Tom Nob’s Thursday Notes. TN2 serves as a brief summary of what good humor we have found during the past week plus some suggestions for the upcoming weekend.

New Film

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same

New TV Show

House of Lies – season one

Angry Boys – U.S. debut, season one

Work It – season one

New TV Season

Portlandia – season two

The Increasingly Poor Decision of Todd Margaret – season two

Shameless – season two

Californication- season five

And Finally

Nasty, brutish and short. This ellipse of unrelenting gloom from Thomas Hobbes (not to be confused with Calvin’s sidekick) can be aptly applied to the pudgy, petulant pipsqueak promoted to power in Pyongyang but it is probably just as fitting in describing the attitude of millions of kiddos in California on New Year’s Day.  We are referring to a change in law that took effect on January 1 in the Golden State that requires all children to remain in car booster seats until they are 8 years-old or reach the height of 4-feet-9-inches.   This change is not going down well with an estimated 1.1 million 6- and 7-year-olds who thought that booster seats were a fading image in the rearview mirror of life after reaching the previous requirement of 6 years or 60 pounds.  And so their parents, who managed to survive childhoods of riding unfettered on plastic-encased bench seats while inhaling lungfuls of leaded gas fumes and second-hand smoke, must re-elevate their little princes and princesses back onto their thrones kicking and screaming or face the threat of fines in excess of $425.  While all of this change is being made in the name of safety, the California Highway Patrol reports that 75% of car seats inspected have been installed incorrectly.  Their grim new reality can be best summed up by Calvin, BFF of Hobbes (not to be confused with that killjoy T. Hobbes), who lamented:  “Life’s disappointments are harder to take when you don’t know any swear words.”

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