The television jerk is a beautiful thing. Residing somewhere between villain and oaf, these characters are often the antidote to lame protagonists and pandering storylines.
Here are five of my favourites:
5. Master Shake, Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Cartoon milkshake Master Shake’s constant antagonism of dullard running buddy Meatwad is his go-to act-out, but pretty much everything he does is ridiculously and brilliantly assholic. Master Shake’s jerkishness is a thing of relentless beauty.
4. E.B. Farnum, Deadwood
Technically, E.B. Farnum’s more sniveling worm than jerk, but most of the characters on Deadwood are jerks so his brand of noxiousness uniquely stands out. Particularly good are his interactions with his assistant Richardson, a simpleton E.B. picks on mercilessly.
3. Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It
Watching Malcolm Tucker will a) help you compose brilliantly withering insults, and b) make you want to swear at your co-workers a lot more.
2. Pierce Hawthorne, Community
Bumbling racist Pierce Hawthorne’s best when executing some act of physical comedy — tripping over drumkits, having trampoline accidents — and without him there’d be no Community.
1. Gob Bluth, Arrested Development
Gob Bluth is a perfect human. “Come on!” is one of television’s great catchphrases.
When you look at it closely — at the expense of the regular work you’re supposed to be doing — it’s pretty obvious the Thin White Duke, David Bowie, isn’t actually an earthling at all. Rather, he’s from Gallifray. A Time Lord. Just like Doctor Who.
My Spinner colleague Cameron Matthews and I came to this determination recently and compiled our proof into an article called “David Bowie & Doctor Who: Proof That the Thin White Duke Is a Time Lord.”
To read our reasons why head over to Spinner by clicking here.
Last week I got to attend the 100th Grey Cup under the guise of covering the Justin Bieber half-time show. It was pretty exciting for me in part because the Toronto Argonauts were in the final (and won!) and because going to a Grey Cup game was on my list of things that every Canadian must do at least once.
The big story that came out of the half-time show was that Bieber got booed mercilessly (read my onsite report).
That statement is… inexact.
Did Justin Bieber get booed? Yes and sort of.
Here’s what happened: During a stoppage in play somewhere between mid-1st quarter and mid-2nd quarter the Skydome (nobody calls it “Rogers Centre” except Rogers employees) showed a giant image of Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen on the Jumbotron with some sort of “Stay tuned for Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen at the 100th Grey Cup half-time show…”-type message.
THIS got super-booed. As in, everyone in the arena was really loudly booing.
The game continued. Then came the half-time show.
The stage got built, which took about five minutes, then Gordon Lightfoot played on a small riser far removed from the main stage. During this time half the stadium emptied out to go get beer/food/pee break. Meanwhile, somewhere in this time frame about 300 screaming girls were unleashed on to the field to surround the main stage. Then Marianas Trench played (who were wretched, truly awful). Then Jepsen played. Then Bieber.
Besides a short burst of teen girl screaming when Bieber hit the stage and a bit of gauzy, unfocused low end rumble that could have been booing, the crowd noise during Bieber was relatively inaudible.
Bieber’s face on the jumbotron during the game = super-booed. His half-time performance = not so much.
Now, an audio-minded conspiracy theorist could suppose all sorts of things from this. First off, in advance of the Grey Cup game the Argos had been practicing with crowd noise pumped through the Skydome speakers — the assumption being that the ‘Dome would be hella loud during the game and when the Argos would be on defence the noise would disrupt their opponents the Calgary Stampeders plans if they couldn’t hear themselves.
During the actual game Argos players and cheerleaders were constantly whooping and encouraging to the crowd to make noise when Calgary had the ball. This is all pretty standard football stuff. Nothing nefarious there.
But what if the stadium was miked for crowd audio (for a high-profile televised sports event… this is a certainty) and during the big game the home team, on their home field, fed some of that crowd audio back into the stadium soundsystem to make the crowd noise seem louder? There’s a long sports tradition of home team fans, hoteliers, venue staff, etc trying to mess with visiting teams before and during big games (painting the visiting team’s dressing room the day before an NHL playoff game is a thing home arena staff do to the away team), so touching up the audio to help the Argos — who practiced to anticipate said noise — is well within the realm of possibility.
So how does this relate to Bieber? Well, what if that jumbotron flash earlier in the game was a test of the “augmented” audio the stadium was using? So when the super-booing happened the decision was made to completely dampen crowd audio during Bieber’s performance — just turn it right down — be it boos or cheers. Which would explain the relatively mute sounding crowd during the half-time performance.
Now, have I investigated this? Talked to people? Dug further? No.
This is mostly just tin foil hat-wearing with a minor in event trolling. I don’t actually care enough to investigate further beyond the 20 minutes it took to write this. So take it for what it is, nothing more.
By the way, I actually did write about Bieber’s performance for Huffington Post Music Canada. The story — in which pretty much everyone has ignored the obvious sports analogy-as-defense-of-Bieber — has resulted in a fiery comment war based on gnarled CFL fans vs. teenagers lines. You can read, and comment on it, by clicking here.
Here’s the performance, filmed by someone in the Rogers Centre — not via the television feed (which would have had tinkered crowd audio). Decide for yourself:
UPDATE: Because Spinner is RIP, Sarah’s full interview with The Hip can be found here.
To celebrate the release of The Tragically Hip‘s newest album Now For Plan A the band recently took over Toronto’s boho Kensington Market neighbourhood for multiple days worth of free mini concerts, interviews and autograph sessions.
Sarah went down to experience the unique event and also interview the band. The resulting interview was, well, “weird,” devolving into a lengthy discussion on how the mess on old Russian hockey nets makes for more exciting goal scoring than with the antiseptic nets used these days. Yeah. Blame Gord Downie.
To read the story head over to Spinner by clicking here.
Sarah was assigned to cover the 2012 MuchMusic Video Awards on Sunday for AOL Music Blog.
This was mostly fine because it was basically a Carly Rae Jepsen coming out party and she’s relatively onside for the CRJ.
She was somewhat less onside for the latest crop of Much VJs (who are these people?), but whatcha gonna do? MuchMusic is firmly demographic television these days.
Risky Fuel 