FanFare

This week: Baltimore protests over death of Freddie Gray. Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro targeted... with a mango actually, by a lady in a crowd, who wanted an apartment, so he gave her one, and so the floodgates opened. Bud Light unveiled a new slogan that is, unimaginably but actually, "The Perfect Beer For Removing 'No' From Your Vocabulary For The Night." LTW produces their own commercial for Bud Light, more prominently featuring the word NO, because "Bud Light tastes like the scared urine of a rabbit." The main story is on standardized testing. (YouTube 18m) Oh, and that is Wyatt Cenac in the Bud Light "commercial."
posted by JHarris on May 4, 2015 - 18 comments

ISIS gains an ally in Boko Haram. Ireland accidentally legalizes a number of psychoactive drugs for a day. Brazil prepares to investigate politicians taking bribes from oil companies. And Now: Newscasters Who Don't Know About You. Main story: NCAA is a billion dollar industry, but with many problems with how it treats its players (YouTube 21m). Last Week Tonight introduces the hashtag #soybeanwind and ends with an ad for their more realistic NCAA simulator video game.
posted by JHarris on Mar 16, 2015 - 6 comments

(B&W, Monster, Horror, Mexico, Volcano, Education) Giant scorpions come out of a volcano and attack Mexico. A large number of educated people try to stop them. "BLACK... so you can't see him until he's ready to get you! BLOODLESS... that's why he wants you!" "NOTE: The management reserves the right to put on the lights any time the audience becomes too emotionally disturbed!" We're here. We have made it to the end of the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's also the end of the early history of MST, and the swan song of Josh "J. Elvis" Weinstein as Dr. Lawrence Erhardt and original voice and performer of Tom Servo. To Weinstein may I just say: "THAAANK YOOOU!" Unavailable on YouTube. First aired February 3, 1990. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Dec 17, 2014 - 13 comments

This week: Turkey president Erdogan builds a gigantic thousand-room house. New Yorkers become eligable to register .nyc domain names, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg preregisters a ton before scalpers get them. (LWT registered a few of their own: michaelbloombergisawiener.nyc, tinytinymikebloomberg.nyc and bloombergeatsbabycornasifitsrealcorn.nyc). A brief look at the Salmon Cannon (5m), a device for getting fish up stream past hydroelectric dams. (The show kind of goes nuts with the idea.) Main story: State lotteries, their problems and abuses (15m). And Now: People On TV Misunderstanding What The Term "Spoiler Alert" Means. And, finally, this is the last episode of Last Week Tonight for the season, and the year. They bring back the puppets, the Scottish Unicorn, the Space Sex Gecko, and Breakdancing Lincoln for the closing credits. G'night, John Oliver.
posted by JHarris on Nov 11, 2014 - 25 comments