Wherein Karl worries about the proctology

Friday's Ricky Gervais Show isn't among the season's best, but hey, even a bad Gervais episode still beats the snot out of other underachieving show. (I'm looking in your direction, The Office and Saturday Night Live.)

While there is no more Monkey News - Karl ended the segment the previous week by telling the story of a chimp eye doctor, a truly great way to end it - they have adjusted by expanding his notebook feature and the general conversation segments. Both remain outstanding. This week, Karl was worried about dying during a proctology exam, and thus having to have his doctor's hand up his anus throughout eternity as a ghost. They also talked about a germ that eats chocolate. Good times!

Really, I don't have much else to say about the show. It is definitely an acquired taste; you have to like animation and podcasts. And if you like The Ricky Gervais Show, then do yourself a favor and check out the Loveline cartoons. They are along the same lines, and just as incredible, although there are only four of them.

Grade: A-

Hey, just to clarify, The Ricky Gervais Show is still incredible

Where DOES the time go? It seems like just yesterday I was talking about how incredible The Ricky Gervais Show is, but in actuality, it was more than a month ago! Heavens! That is as nuts as believing that there is a dishwasher on Mars.

Well, to clear up any confusion, the show is still ridiculously funny. In fact, I have no idea why HBO buries it on Friday nights, since it is one of the shows I look forward to every week. It is just great, up there with Archer and Community in terms of consistency. I admit that the format - basically, animated segments to an audio podcast - isn't for everyone. But I find Karl's immense stupidity so appealing.

Case in point: He now keeps a diary, which Ricky and Steve have been reading for the past three or four shows. Karl does have some oddly decent insights in the diary, but for the most part, it is another great opportunity for Ricky and Steve to mock him. The show's other features, like Monkey News and Listener E-mail, are still around, so if you liked the show in the past, just realize it has gotten even better. I mean, how can you beat Karl's "true story" about a chimp performing eye surgery?

Grade: A+

TV Review: Karl Pilkington and Bruce Willis make Ricky great

If Karl Pilkington from The Ricky Gervais Show could be anyone from the annals of history, living or dead, who would he be? Why, Bruce Willis, of course.

I mean, you had doubts? This is, after all, a guy who thought the phrase "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" referred to the period in time when people moved out of caves and into glass houses, literally. His stupidity really has no bounds, which means it is endlessly ridiculed by Stephen and Ricky for our benefit.

Outside of wanting to be Bruce Willis, Karl also revealed that one time, to see what it would be like to live without a body part, he tried to wash the dishes without using his thumbs. Of course, while he was doing this, he spotted a neighbor across the way in the buff. So to make things even, he revealed his butt to her, as his girlfriend in the other room asked him what he was doing.

... It's kind of hard to describe why this is all so great. Sorry. However, if you have any appreciation at all for British humor, then you need to be watching this.

Grade: A+

What Steve Thinks About: 42 Midgets vs. A Lion

Unfortunately, this would not be "groovy" for Mini-Me.

Sooooooo. On The Ricky Gervais Show, they read a news story about 42 midgets in Cambodia fighting a lion. Apparently, the athletic commissioner of a traveling circus of midget wrestlers was challenged about their actual fighting skill by a heckler, and the heckler said that 42 midgets couldn't take down a lion. According to the news story, the fight was stopped after the lion killed about 28 midgets, and the remaining 14 were too maimed to continue.

I was curious enough after hearing the story to Google it, and unfortunately, the whole story is an urban legend. (I say “unfortunately” and that probably makes me a horrible person.) However, just hearing about this hypothetical fight immediately makes my mind imagine what would happen if it actually, uh, happened.

First, a few qualifiers. According to the fake news story, the midgets were not armed, and did not have access to weapons. It was just them in a Colosseum-style ring vs. the lion. Also, no mention was made of any special armor. So, I'm assuming that puncture-proof Kevlar vests are unavailable.

With those provisions in place, the lion has to be a heavy, heavy favorite. Its sheer size and speed would make it a lethal killing machine in the ring. It would be very hard for the midgets to encircle it, or to generate enough force with just their fists or legs to significantly damage the lion. Because it would be in a ring, there would be no terrain to use as cover, or to launch a more effective attack. Also, lions are much faster than humans, and presumably have greater endurance, so you couldn't wait for the beast to get tired, especially since it probably wouldn't take much energy for it to mow through the midgets.

If the midgets want to take down the beast, I can only think of a couple ways, and they're all pretty grisly, and require sacrificial lambs. Or, in this case, sacrificial midgets.

1) When the lion is chomping on a midget, shove it even further into its mouth, in an attempt to choke the beast to death. This would be kind of similar to the scene in Return of the Jedi, when the huge beast in the pit at Jabba the Hut's lair momentarily choked on the bone in its mouth.

2) Scavenge a midget corpse for weaponry. While the midgets can't bring any weapons into the ring with them, this does not prevent them from doing the sick deed of using a dead midget for their femur and other bones to craft crude weaponry. Yeah, it is extreme and gross, but do they want to kill the lion or not?

Anyway... Sometimes I worry myself.

The photos of the lion and Mini-Me are from their respective Wikipedia pages. The rancor from Return of the Jedi comes from this page.

TV Review: Oh, you funny English tarts!

Stephen, Ricky and Karl, best of friends.

Following the suggestions of others, I finally gave The Ricky Gervais Show a chance, and boy, am I glad I did! It airs on HBO, and it is essentially an animated version of his podcast. It features him, his writing buddy Stephen Merchant, and this dumb, boring and hilarious producer named Karl Pilkington.

Karl is stupid. Really, really stupid. Like, disgustingly stupid. On one of the initial three episodes, he talks about how he considers sex something to do when there isn't anything good on the telly. (Note: All three are British, so speaking as a piggish, thuggish American, I enjoy their heavy accents immensely. Also, Gervais has the most wonderful laugh – It sounds like he is in the death throes of a vicious tickle.)

By far, my favorite skit shown on the show so far has been Karl reading an e-mail from a radio listener about the troubles faced by a Russian television station. They kept cutting back staff, until finally, they realized that they had nobody to put on-air. At this point, Karl says they noticed a monkey “kickin' about the studio” and decided to put him on the air. From there, hilarity ensues as Karl tells more details of the story, and Stephen and Ricky viciously tear him apart.

In fact, a regular segment of the show is Monkey News, which just features Karl or Ricky recounting news about monkeys or chimpanzees or anything of that sort. In addition to the news story about the monkey newscaster, Karl also believes that the first monkey in space was trained via a banana dispenser to steer the shuttle “left” to the Moon.

Anyway – I really heart the show. The three episodes I've seen, about 70 minutes in all, have been high quality. I think the show only has a six-episode run for now, and I'm hoping HBO extends it for the future, since I'm sure there is tons of archive podcast footage for them to draw from for the show. Also, a bit from the show gave me a great idea for a hypothetical entry for 7 p.m., and you'll know it when you see it.

Grade: A+

Around The Dial: Archer gets good ratings, Gervais excels with the Globes and JLH has bedazzled junk

Back in the day, there was this show called Frisky Dingo. And by "back in the day," what I really mean is January 2009, when it and a spin-off show, The Xtacles, was formally canceled. Anyway, it was a wacky show that featured the evil villain Killface, who resembled a white-skinned standing crocodile, battling Xander Crews, a buffoonish billionaire with the alter-ego of... Awesome X!

Like most of the shows on Adult Swim, it was pretty wacky and funny. I considered it like a more over-the-top version of The Venture Bros., since both shows loved to lampoon the conventions of their genre. Dingo was by the same guys who did Sealab 2021, one of the four original shows on Adult Swim, and it features the same deadpan humor.

This brings me to present day, and the show Archer, which is done by the same guys. Actually, in many ways, it seems like a clone of Frisky Dingo. The main difference is the theme - It merely transposes Xander Crews from a superhero to Archer, a secret agent in an incompetent bureaucracy. Only two episodes have aired so far on FX - it is currently in the time slot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - but they have shown incredible promise. I'm hoping the show has a good future, and the first articles out about it have noted that it has done surprisingly well in the ratings.

In other television news...

- I watched the Golden Globes last night, and I wasn't really that impressed, outside of all the older celebrities who are still foxy as all heck. I did think that Ricky Gervais did an incredible job hosting, and some of his jokes were just savage. He got in the obligatory shots at NBC and Jay Leno, but his best burn was definitely on Mel Gibson, making a reference to his drunken driving arrest right before he presented an award.

The other amusing part of the broadcast was how drunk some celebrities clearly were. I'm referring mostly to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who looked so drunk-red that it seemed like she was wearing a clown nose, and Felicity Huffman, who repeatedly stumbled over simple teleprompter lines. Also, I was really glad that Glee managed to take home an award, and the cast looked great, too. And as Billy Crystal would say, if you look great, then you must feel great.

- Jennifer Love Hewitt apparently has been into "vajazzeling" her vagine. I don't really think it adds anything to her, but hey, I'm still a fan. She was one of my earliest crushes, along with Melissa Joan Hart.

The Frisky Dingo picture at the top is from this blog. Jen is from this site.