Crappy the Smart-Assed Toilet

If you’re like tens of Americans, you find yourself on Friday, perhaps standing around the “water cooler,” trying to remember what happened this week on Survivor. Sure, you could find out the answers in painfully easy ways, like actually watching the show. Or maybe reading about it at the official CBS site, or surprisingly (particularly to the CBS media relations people), at, uh, the not-CBS site. Or you could even support CBS’s feeble attempt to undercut the iTunes Music Store, by “renting” a crappy copy of the show for 24 hours, all for the low, low price ($1.99) you’d pay to buy it (forever) from Apple. But please don’t, it would only encourage them. Instead, throw out your old-media habits, and stop supporting methods that only tell you how it “really” happened, and start reading below, where Crappy’ll tell you how it “realityly” happened.

It was apparently belt-tightening week at CBS for the second episode of Survivor: Panama - Exile Island. To free up some much-needed cash, America’s #1 network replaced the first half hour of the show with a Jeff Probst-narrated recap of the first episode. Even the opening credits were pared back to the bare minimum: a few seconds of tribal chanting and out. Everything must go!

In a further attempt to cut costs, alleged contestants Bobby “Bob Dawg” Mason and Ruth Marie “Tina Wesson” Milliman did not appear in this episode. We thought we might have seen them during the tribal pick, but that was probably just their Dream Team stand-ins. Perhaps they were secretly exiled. Regardless, we’re told by our sources deep within CBS that the money saved by not filming them was, as always, put directly back into the brilliant, comedic genius writing of Yes Dear, The King of Queens, and Two-and-a-Half Men. That and Les Moonves and Julie Chen’s personal Love Shack slush fund. Whoops, we weren’t supposed to mention that part. Oh well, nobody reads this, anyway.

Further savings were realized as the tribes were trimmed from four to two. This one wasn’t entirely for money, as the two extra camera crews were needed back in the States to shoot the genre-busting, spectacularly original new CBS realebrity series, Playing Badminton with the Former Cast of Punky Brewster. Again, according to our CBS flies on the wall, Moonves is convinced that this birdie-smashing entry is going to wallop the crap out of American Idol in the ratings, and force FOX to merge with the CW. You sure know how to pick ‘em, Les!

To save on twist-writing, the tribal shuffle was recycled from Palau, with captains Terry “Tom Westman” Deitz and Danielle “Stephenie, Yet Again” DiLorenzo initiating a schoolyard pick’em. Danielle kicked off the festivities by selecting Shane “Krusty the Klown” Powers, saying “That’s a wicked awesome Sawx tattoo ya got theah.” Shane hugged her, then sobbed, “No! Boston’s my dear, dear son, who I occasionally see when there aren’t Hollywood parties to attend, or reality show auditions.” As Danielle looked imploringly back at Probst and started to ask, “Uh, can I put this one back?”, Shane suddenly spotted a cameraman innocently lighting up a Marlboro. Whipping across the clearing with near-light speed, Shane hoisted the guy up by his lapels, bellowing an otherworldly howl: “Give me that and I will allow you to live!”

But sadly, as Shane thrust the entire pack of cigarettes into his mouth, lit them and started to inhale, he was tackled by SEG security. Probst gently reminded him, “While we do try to withhold as much food and medication as possible to keep you guys cranky, you’re really not supposed to touch the crew.” Eventually, Shane’s screams and thrashing were subdued by medical personnel, who applied Nicoderm CQ patches to every square inch of Shane’s body, although they later decided to remove the one covering his mouth, because people who could snap at any moment usually make for good sound bites. Chastened, Shane returned to his tribe, and the picking resumed with his selection of “Sideshow” Courtney Marit. From there followed Aras and Cirie, confirming that “Casaya” is Spanish for “some kind of nut.” The other tribe self-selected a bunch of eggheads and boring old people. As punishment, they were not given much camera time for the rest of the show.

Last, and apparently least, was Silent Bruce Kanegai, who it turns out is actually capable of speech, as long as he’s not holding a machete. Probst turned to him, arched an eyebrow, and solemnly intoned, “Bruce, I’m sorry to inform you, you’re the last to arrive.” After pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, “What are you going to do now?” Inexplicably, Bruce erupted in a chorus of whoops, handsprings, and backflips: “I’m going to Disneyworld! Woo-hoo!” Confused, Probst backpedaled, “Well, I was kidding before, but actually, you’re getting Exiled.” Bruce responded, rather half-heartedly, “Woo…?” Pleased to once again be dispensing pain, Probst continued, “Actually, it’s just a money-saving thing again. You get a bye for this episode, and we’ll just splice in some footage from your pre-game interview, and pretend it’s Exile Island. Nobody will be the wiser. Grab some smokes on your way out and see you in a few days.”

The many moods of Shane Powers
Jonesing	Craving	Needing a fix

From there, a competition of some kind followed, notable only in that it did not involve Bruce Jenner, Kelly Monaco, or Simon Cowell in any way. Wait, hold on. We’ve just been informed that perhaps the reason CBS has thus far (after a full 24 hours! The nerve!) failed to offer us a contract to write for the CBS site’s Survivors Strike Back blog is that there is not a sufficiently excessive level of CBS/SEG asskissery present in our writing. With this in mind, please strike the first sentence from this paragraph (and for that matter the second, third, and the part preceding the colon in the yet-to-be-read fourth). What we meant to say was: Wow, what a reward challenge! We’ve never seen such an amazing use of bamboo, paint, and wooden objects, since, like, ever! And the drama? Oh. My. God! Who could have predicted that, after she announced her mortal fear of leaves in the first episode, Cirie would be forced to conquer that fear in order to win a challenge in the next episode? Amazing! (Well, technically, they didn’t win, but still…). Absolutely the most original obstacle course we’ve seen on this show! Definitely since Guatemala, at least!!!!!

So anyway, as we mentioned, there are two tribes now. La Mina (Spanish for “The Mina”) won the reward, and promptly scuttled back to camp to plot which set of pairs from the original tribes would be the first to stab the others in the back. The two thinking pairs (Terry and Dan, along with Sally and Misty) quickly realized that the best strategy was to recruit the pair of model/actor/waiter/fratboys from the younger men’s tribe, who could be convinced to vote for just about anything simply by promising to hook them up with some free beer, a meeting with their friend who does some casting on the side, and possibly some coupons for 10% off at the CBS commissary in Los Angeles, all after the show ends. Austin and Nick were a bit flummoxed by the sudden attention at first, but quickly decided that (1) they sure could use that 10% coupon, and (2) some of those people offering them coupons had boobs.

To celebrate their newfound alliance, Nick and Sally rowed out to do some “fishing.” Which means, of course, ceremonially burying the Hawaiian sling at sea. Sally did so, then looked over at Nick, “Well, it’s way down there. We’d better go back.” Nick seemed unconvinced, “Are you sure? I think I can touch bottom here.” Sally shook her head, “Oh no, it’s at least three or four feet down there, you’d never get it.” Nick nodded slowly, “Ohhhh, wow. That is deep. Okay, I guess we’d better go back.” Upon reaching the beach, Sally leapt onto the beach, slammed the remaining fishing gear down onto the sand, and commenced to re-enact some of the finer moments of the “Terrell Owens Touchdown Dance Highlights: A Celebration” 12-DVD box set in front of Tom/Terry and his gangly buddy, Ian/Dan. “Ha ha, Terry/Tom!” she shrieked. “We lost the spear! Let’s see you get a shark this time around, now, buddy!” To which Tom/Terry calmly replied, “Well, actually, I used a machete the last time.” Freezing mid-prayer/shuffle, Sally quickly started plotting ways to get Bruce onto the La Mina tribe, to ensure that Terry/Tom would not have access to the machete.

Later, a second challenge was run, also recycled from Palau. Probst described it thusly: “Okay guys, you’re looking at a free lunch here. Since Bruce will be joining whichever tribe loses today, you have a golden opportunity to lose on purpose, and get rid of someone you hate. La Mina, got anyone in mind?” Misty, who hadn’t actually been seen since she was last exiled, piped up: “Oh no, we love everyone! Except Ruth Marie, but that’s okay because she’s not here this week.” Probst then fired the same question over to Casaya. “Anyone on your tribe? I’m looking at you, Shane.” Blinking rapidly and scratching at his skin, Shane replied, “So help me, if you don’t give me a cig right this second, I will kill every motherfucking last one of you!” After a 30-minute break for an emergency patch replacement session, play resumed. Shockingly, the tribe with Tom/Terry won. Apparently, in a flash of creativity, the producers decided to add something called a “zombie head” to the Palau version of the challenge, and the head needed to be set on fire for some reason. Now, maybe we’ve been watching the wrong movies, but to our recollection, zombie heads are usually concerned with finding brains, generally display little interest in fire, and are rarely disembodied. At least until they get attacked by lawnmowers. But again, maybe it’s just us.

Anyway, Casaya headed back to decide who to boot. Bobby/ “Bob Dawg” was a popular choice, seeing as he wasn’t there at the time, but eventually Shane stepped up and announced he wanted to quit. After being taken aside by Aras (”Seriously, dude, the pre-jury trips are NON-smoking! You’d be screwed! Plus you can’t call your son to bring you a pack of smokes until you get home anyway”), Shane later clarified his statement, saying: “What I actually meant was, I want to quit smoking. That’s why I’m here, see. And I have to stay here to keep at it. So, uh, sorry about the misunderstanding. Oh yeah, and we’re voting out one of the fat chicks instead. Doesn’t matter which.”

This of course made for smooth sailing, right up until tribal council, where Probst welcomed the new Casaya to their second home, and invited the new members to light their torches. As Probst would later assert to the press, nobody could have predicted this, but upon seeing cylindrical objects and flames, something snapped in Shane, and he raised his torch to his lips, desperately trying to take a puff. Suddenly noticing the tribal council set, he proceeded to race around the cave, lifting up every candle and sucking ten times harder than The War at Home. Once again, a fresh selection of full-body patches eventually restored order.

Trying to ignore the twitching, eyebrow arching, bouncing guy in the back row, Probst focused his attention on Melinda and Cirie. “So… I hear you two are pretty much screwed. Aren’t you glad we shuffled the tribes in Episode 2?” Melinda and Cirie sobbed, wailing, “It’s not fair! Just because we voted Tina out because she was strong, doesn’t mean these people can vote us out for being weak! And Shane wanted to quit!”

At this point, Probst called a halt to the filming, and conferred with his team of producers. “So whattya think, guys? Should I goad Shane into quitting, like I did with Janu? I’m pretty sure if we wave a pack and a lighter at him, just out of camera range, he’ll go for it.” But after much discussion, it was determined that Shane was likely to a lot more yelling in the next episode than Melinda, so he got to stay. Plus, since Shane was an aspiring actor, he was willing to work for scale, while Melinda wanted residuals and a cut of the DVD sales.

And so another fine (and by fine, we mean small and granular) episode of Survivor: Palau, er, Panama - Exile Island ended. Tune in next week, where if you don’t start forking over your two bucks to CBS posthaste, you’ll be sure to find a 38-minute recap and a tribal yelp, along with 22 minutes of commercials.

When we asked the rhetorical question, “Does anybody really still watch the Grammy awards?” a few posts down, we didn’t mean, in any way, to suggest that anyone ought to be watching American Idol instead. Criminy, a second straight episode of Lost that felt like it was the fourth-place entry in some middle school fanfic competition was bad enough. But American Idol? Wasn’t there an episode of Tricycling with Former Disney Channel Stars for you people to watch, or something?

In looking over the CBS “Survivors Strike Back” blog, it strikes us that something’s missing from the CBS definitions of “community” and “elite pool of experts.” And that would be the sage comments not of actual ex-contestants, but of people who’ve helped Survivor maintain a presence on the web. By which, of course, we mean us. Oh sure, CBS has lined up an impressive set of snarky writers, PhDs, and Ivy Leaguers. But we’ve got that covered too. Surely we have the necessary chops to at least ghostwrite for the mysterious (and as-yet-invisible) “Ralph.” True, we’ve never actually gotten around to starving on national TV for 39 days ourselves, but we’re sure we’d at least consider it, as long as CBS is willing to pony up a hefty appearance fee, right up front. Tap, tap, tap. We’re waiting, CBS!

What’s that you say? We’ve already done the recap/commentary thing on our own site, and we should just shut up and get our lazy butts back to work? Huh? That’s not what you meant by “Your recaps sucked ass, shut the hell up?” Guess we’d better get our hearing checked then. Damn those ear buds. Don’t think we won’t sue you, Apple, especially for suggesting we might enjoy your free download of She Wants Revenge.

So anyway, here you go, CBS. Consider this our application for inclusion in your little “web-based magazine.” Paid inclusion, of course. But it’s definitely money well spent. As you’ll see from this particular blog, we’re nothing if not prolific and frequent posters. And think of all the traffic we’ll draw to your site when the two or three readers of Crappy the Smart-Assed Toilet (all of whom may or may not be related to us) think about clicking over to your site, eh? As we said: money well spent, money well spent.

Okay. So… Survivor: Exile Island. No, wait, Survivor: Panama. No, wait, Survivor: Panama - Exile Island. One of those. Anyway, here’s the thing: the DVR ate our copy of the show (shortly after we hit “Delete now,” as well as the A button after it asked us “Are you sure?”). So, uh, our memory’s a bit cloudy on what happened in the first episode.

But we’re pretty sure it started off in the usual way, new contestants showing up in shiny new buffs, smiling a lot. No returning contestants this time, unless you count fighter pilot Terry Deitz, who previously appeared in Palau as “firefighter Tom Westman.” All is bland, happy, new-age feelgoodery, until Bobby “Bob Dawg” Mason objects to the younger men’s buff color, a neony-yet-pastel green. “Hey Probst,” Bob Dawg says, “Can we switch buffs with the Spice Girls over there, because this color makes me look like a pussy.” Probst says, “No way. Look, we’ve already made flags and mats that match your colors. Your tribe is green.” Bob Dawg is not convinced. “Ok fine. How about we just be the Purple tribe then? Yeah, that sounds good, I’ll be Mr. Purple.” Probst: “No! Some OTHER tribe is Mr. Purple, or more accurately, the four Mrs. Purples. YOU’RE MR. GREEN!” Cirie and Shane then start whining about being stuck with all the old farts. Exasperated, Probst says, “All right, I’ve had it with you guys!” He then explains they’ll all be back on two tribes by the next episode, so they move on to the reward challenge.

Contrary to hopes raised by CBS ads, no shrunken heads were harmed in the filming of this episode.

Each tribe carefully selects their fastest runner, and they run across the tiny Exile Island to smash fake skulls on rocks. It’s important to use fast people, because… well, it’s not remotely important at all, actually. As it turns out, winning and losing this one is entirely due to luck, since there are three challenge-winning amulets spread through a pile of 40 or so skulls. But it does allow Probst to declare that “fate” decided the winner. As opposed to the secret clue Probst slipped the two men’s representatives to “only smash the skulls with the red dots.”

And so… “fate” sends three of the tribes back to their respective camps with a flint for firestarting. Timber Tina the lumberjill singlehandedly deforests the older women’s island, lashes together a Mall of America using pre-cut, suspiciously non-native-looking bamboo, and builds a massive bonfire, all in the space of about five minutes. Washing down their twelve-course dinner with some freshly-distilled coconut moonshine, her three tribemates decide: “This being provided for stuff totally blows. We came here to be on Survivor, not The Real World: Panama. Let’s boot the lumberjack lady!” Meanwhile, the younger men take turns devising games with their new flint toy, such as scorching ants, blindfolding themselves, burying it in sand, then finding it again, and the ultimate favorite, seeing how far out into the ocean they can throw it before it’s too far to get it back. Eventually the camermen just light a fire for them, out of pity. The older men are not shown for the rest of the show, because CBS objected to paying for a fifth camera crew, and because guys over 35 are boring. Except for Bruce, who chops anything that’s stationary. Watch out for that guy.

That leaves the younger women, who, in addition to their highly desirable pale-blue buffs, were given some tribe name that was never used on the show itself. It was carefully painted by the production staff onto all manner of mats, flags, an island map, and other objects. Mayo… bayo… battle axe? Nah, that’s not it. Well, we’re sure their hard work did not go unnoticed, all the same.

After the young ladies lose the RC, there is a period of indecision, in which the younger women keep trying out various picking methods until they come up with one that rids them of “that bitch, Misty,” without revealing that this is what they’re doing. That accomplished, the three non-exiles set out for their island. It’s full of many more dramatic decisions, such as “how do we build our hut next to an outlet, so we can plug in our hair dryers,” to Sally weighing whether or not to sue CBS for planting a dead sea turtle on their beach, then alerting Courtney to the (former) sea turtle’s presence. “The funeral service was okay for first couple of hours,” Sally admits later, “but when the producers brought out a crate of incense, body paint and bongos for Courtney to use in hour three, it got to be a bit much.”

Meanwhile, Misty spends her time on Exile Island… sitting. On the beach, here, and… (wait for it)… over there. Clearly, having this sort of excitement to look forward to every week will undoubtedly propel CBS to ratings successes heretofore unknown in modern history. Apparently, there’s an immunity idol somewhere there as well. Probst helpfully points out that it’s on the little islet that gets connected to the main Exile Island when the tide goes out. Misty hears this, and gazes at the receding tide. But then she recalls Jeff’s second admonition: “Or, you could just pretend you have it, and fake everyone out.” Since nobody would ever accuse a former beauty pageant contestant of not being everything she appears on the surface, Misty goes for that option. And sits some more.

Eventually, an immunity challenge involved swimming, rowing, and puzzles rolls around. And flags, can’t forget the flags. As shown in TV Guide, the older women lose. Cirie renews her campaign to oust Tina the Provider, and is successful. Ho hum.

All in all, not an inauspicious start. Shane and Cirie seem amusing enough, and to a lesser extent so do Aras and Courtney. And Silent Bruce. Certainly better than the plodding tedium of the previous night’s episode of Lost, “Fire + Water = Pssssshhhh.” Then again, so were the re-runs of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s meetings on C-SPAN. That Don Young may be a corrupt, pork-ladling, bribe-taking bureaucrat, but he’s such a crackup when he gets in front of a camera!

Finally, we still haven’t addressed the question of “Why now?” Well, as should be clear, commentary on reality TV shows is dated comedic material from the get-go. So the best plan is to get it out there when people are paying attention, such as the night of the show, or the day after. And that’s why you see it here, now, almost a full week after the show airs. This stuff never gets old! And that’s our Crappy seal of approval.

Does anybody really still watch the Grammy awards? Seriously, after looking over the list of nominees, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that, in the age of the iPod, a group that’s torn between whether to crown Mariah Carey, Paul McCartney or U2 for the finest musical output of the past year, will be handing one of them (or Gwen Stefani, or Kanye West) a trophy with an antique gramophone as its icon.

So we’ve decided to hand out our own version of 2005 musical awards. Ones that actually recognize some sort of musical achievement, as opposed to payola-driven airplay and moved units. We’ll call them the “Buddies“, in honor of our beloved, deafness-inducing earbuds. In the process, we’ll have to dispose of some of the decrepit Grammy categories (mainly because there are a number we just don’t listen to). But here goes:

Album of the Year: This one’s a bit problematic, since we rarely buy albums in one shot anymore (Mars Volta, Death Cab, Franz Ferdinand, Decemberists, Belle & Sebasiatan and Sufjan Stevens in the past year, as we recall). Of these, we’d nominate the following two:
- Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
- The Decemberists: Picaresque
Winner: The Decemberists. Tough choice, both albums contain many standout tracks. But we think Colin Meloy and friends’ effort is the one that plays better as an album. Picaresque has a broader array of narratives, while Sufjan, by design, is stuck in one state. We’d call it a tie, but someone ought to win, and we have a feeling Sufjan will come out ahead somewhere else.

Single of the Year: Unlike the album category, this one is much more competitive. In fact, it’s extremely difficult to even get it down to five or six songs. But we’ll try, in alphabetical order:
- “Formed a Band” - Art Brut
- “Banquet” - Bloc Party
- “Poison Oak” - Bright Eyes
- “Hey Now Now” - The Cloud Room
- “For Real” - Okkervil River
- “Casimir Pulaski Day” - Sufjan Stevens
(Honorable mentions: “Be Gentle With Me” - The Boy Least Likely To, “Requiem for O.M.M.2″ - Of Montreal, “The Lord God Bird” - Sufjan Stevens, and “The Engine Driver” - The Decemberists)
A 3-3 split. Light vs. dark. UK vs. US (okay, that one’s 2-4). Should we just shut up and dance/play, or should we broodingly explore the consequences of loss? So many conflicting emotions. Honestly, any one of the six would be a fine choice, but we have to decide somehow. So for a preliminary cut, we’ll stick with the dark side, and Art Brut, Bloc Party and the Cloud Room: thanks for lightening up our otherwise leaden mood, but you’re out. So for the final three, do we go with Will Sheff’s slow-building rock anger, or Conor and Sufjan’s more quiet meditations on early death? Well, if you know us, you’d know we’re absolute suckers for the latter (sorry Will, great song, though). Of the final two, “Poison Oak” is the more tightly focused, but “Casimir” gets extra credit for throwing newfound agnostic deity-questioning into the mix.
Winner: (tie) Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens. Screw it, we can’t decide (can’t decide, anything). Share nicely, boys.

Newcomer of the Year: This has always been a point of contention with the Grammys, where multi-albumed artists are continually tagged as “new.” We’ve done our best to nominate only acts who actually had a first U.S. album release in 2005. There were a lot of bands from whom there was at least one great song (we’re looking at you, The Cloud Room and Arctic Monkeys), so we raised the bar to two great songs for this list (that we’ve heard, which is entirely arbitrary). But here are five we really like:
- Art Brut
- The Boy Least Likely To
- The Rakes
- Silversun Pickups
- The Spinto Band
A fair selection of different styles here, but for us, the main battle is between Art Brut and The Boy Least Likely To. And as much as we love “Formed A Band” and “Emily Kane,” Art Brut has had a lot more exposure. So we’ll have to vote for the tinkling-toy-piano-wielding underdogs. Be gentle with them:
Winner: The Boy Least Likely To.

We had plans for other categories (Best Song Featuring Banjo, Best Beard in an Indie Rock Band), but hey, our attention span is only so long.

In the true Christmas spirit, the Bush administration has decided to sic DOJ investigative squads on whoever leaked news of the NSA’s domestic spying program. And as we’re sure John Yoo would agree, if the Bush administration even suspects one of their own may have said something that casts the whole operation in a bad light, even if they’re merely exposing the administration’s complete disregard for the rule of law, they must automatically be “enemy combatants,” and can therefore be shipped off to Uzbekistan for some good, old-fashioned, extreme rendition. Good times, good times.

And with that in mind: Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we’ve just lost the picture, but what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Constitution has apparently been taken over — ‘conquered’ if you will — by a master race of giant space elephants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the elephants will soon be here. And we for one welcome our new NSA overlords. We’d like to remind them that as a trusted blog-based personality, we can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground peanut caves.

In the immortal words of various members of the Bluth family: “Her?”

(Translation for those of you who don’t watch Arrested Development, but should: Bland, dull, unexciting).

As for Survivor: Panama - Exile Island, it looks even more dull than we originally expected. So in quitting watching and spoiling this show, we can safely say: “We haven’t made a huge mistake.”

Update: Wait, there’s a pill we can take for this. (Removes from annoying packaging). Forget-me-now. Forget-me-now. Ah, that’s better. What were we saying again? Eh, doesn’t ring a bell. Guess we’d better get to work on the S12 pages. Carry on.

We’re reminded that, barring some miracle, the last handful of episodes of Arrested Development are upon us. There’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it (much as we felt about Freaks and Geeks).

Wait, maybe there is.

It took us long enough to figure it out, but Survivor has outlived its watchability by about three years. So, we will not be picking up the option of covering Survivor 12, or an future edition, here at the True Dork Times. Let’s just say we’re cutting our order back from 14 to 11 (minus the ones we already ignored).

That felt good.

While we’re at it, we won’t be paying any attention here to FOX’s 24, either. It’s never regained the brilliance of its first season, and as it ages, it slips more and more embarassingly into the many combustible cliches of Action Movie Excess emptiness. So… no game, no Life Expectancy, no spoilers. Jack Bauer, you’re on your own. Although we’re sure you’ll still be perfectly capable of walking into any room and slaughtering all 99 people inside with nary a scratch. Whatever. Call us when you want someone to write a story arc where Jack tortures someone, they tell him what he wants to hear, and millions of people die because the info was bogus. We won’t be holding our breath, but the option’s open.

We’re not sure what we’ll do with all our newfound free time. Perhaps we’ll have to pick up an unhealthy habit, like reading books or something. Nah, probably just more Sudoku.

Ah, nice to see our good “uniter, not a divider” President, faced with sinking poll numbers, is rallying the base by calling the opposing party a bunch of liars. Brings to mind an oldie but goodie from the TDT archives:

And while we’re at it, we note that the recent discovery that Shiite militias in Iraq are running (formerly) secret torture prisons is just the sort of good news the President has been looking for out of Iraq. Now Bush can make a clear case to the American public that we need to overthrow Iraq’s corrupt, human rights-abusing government, using military force, so that Iraq can become a beacon of democracy to the rest of the Middle East. (Again, much like Turkey).

On the plus side, we already have troops there, and they’ve been getting on-the-job training for a while, so additional costs would be relatively small. Perhaps he can give the rich another tax cut to pay for it.

Now the story of a talent-wealthy TV family that won everything (at the Emmys). And the one FOX president who had no choice but to keep them all together (on the air).

Against his will, apparently. Arrested Development is no more.

Sure, it was previous president Gail Berman’s success story, but at first things seemed to be going well for the show, even when Berman left. Liguori’s first act as president was to renew AD for a full, 22-episode third season.

And, as is almost always the case on almost every episode of the show, after that optimistic opening, things progressively fell more and more spectacularly apart after that. The show was unceremoniously removed from its comfortable Sunday-night slot (to make room for some piece of crap laugh track extravaganza that nobody watches), and dumped in the Monday night graveyard. If FOX advertised this move, we must have missed it. It aired a grand total of four weeks in that spot: three in September, was yanked off to make room for this year’s exceptionally dull MLB playoffs, and brought back for one week (a full hour, at least) in November. Yeah, there were ads all through the playoffs and World Series for other FOX shows, even ones that won’t air in 2005 (such as season 5 of 24). But none visible for the show that accounts for the bulk of FOX’s Emmy haul. This from the exec who had success with Nip/Tuck and The Shield at FX?

Maybe if Mitchell Hurwitz had gone all-out in attracting must-see guest stars, or other such stunts, things would be different. Seriously, though: Frankie Muniz? Does anybody actually watch Malcolm in the Middle any more? Just think what could have happened if they’d had Michael, in a desperate, last-minute attempt to save the Bluth Company from bankruptcy, stage a concert featuring “Clay Fucking Aiken” (GOB’s words, of course. Certainly not ours. Okay, they’re also ours) at the site of their potential new development? Perhaps with Ann, the Veals, and George-Michael picketing outside, because Aiken isn’t “wholesome enough”? And Tobias manages to somehow sabotage the whole thing, Clay Aiken gets kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel in mid-song (as agent Jack Bauer jumps into action to save him), and Tobias has to close the show (to a chorus of boos and a hailstorm of produce) singing show tunes?

And that’s how you save a ratings-challenged show on FOX. But it’s too late now.

And finally, to channel Stephen Colbert: Emmy voters… you’re on notice. Now that AD is defunct, you can grow some balls, and shower it with awards this year. Michael Cera and Will Arnett deserve Best Supporting Actor nominations, and Jeffrey Tambor needs the trophy. And don’t try to tell us that Will & Grace deserves recognition for its “extended excellence,” or some other such crap, because you could put a clip show together of that show’s funniest moments, and it still wouldn’t last as long (or be as funny) as a single AD episode. You’ve been warned.

We don’t know what we’re saying!

Once again, since nobody asked, we went ahead and made an iTunes Music Store iMix of the singles we’d rank among the top songs of 2005. It’s creatively titled Crappy’s List 2005. We’re sure you’ll be as thrilled with the contents as you are with the title.

Note that, due to iTunes not being a complete repository of all music, some songs that should be in the mix aren’t listed. These are: Jeniferever’s “You Only Move Twice,” Oktober People’s “The Sky Is Falling” (highly recommended), Ponce De Leon’s “Snap Goes the Gator Jaw” (strongly recommended), Pretendo’s “Harbor” (because we miss Creedle), and Sufjan Stevens’s “The Lord God Bird” (also highly recommended, but available for free from NPR).