Isaac Hayes, the man who made "Shaft" a household song (shut your mouth!) and then became the mouth of "Chef," the libidinous cafeteria cook on Comedy Central's "South Park," is today's second most-blogged-about personality for quitting the show (today's top news story). Because creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker dared to poke fun at (take your pick) religion, specifially HIS practice of Scientology. And boy, are bloggers taking off. No more Chef AID, points out Coalition of the Swilling. Is it a case of extreme victimization, asks Currency Lad? TVGasm files the news in the "are you kidding me?" edition. Well, children, that's just the way it is.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:11 PM

It might feel like a flashback to the 1970s, where every Tuesday evening, the college newspaper staff would gather in the photography darkroom to watch the latest weekly episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus...and then re-enact its goofiness for the next week. Now I can revel in its glory in my own living room, thanks to PBS, which is airing a Monty Python's Flying Circus special this week (the subject of today's No. 35 most-shared link). The entire series begins again in April on PBS. Oh joy! Dead parrots. Singing lumberjacks. Fruit-based martial arts. Marauding grannies. Ah, the things of my youth, returned in all their bizarre glory for yet another generation. Glee! reports one LiveJournaler. Now For Something Completely Different is the rip-off comment of another blogger.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:38 PM

We paid only cursory attention to The Big Game last night on TV, and used every available opportunity to get away from John Madden's thunderously inane prattle -- we got more unhealthful snacks, cracked open another cole burr, or switched over to the Puppy Bowl, today's no. 33 top link. The geniuses at Animal Planet built a little football field, scattered some chewy and squeaky toys on the Astroturf, and let about a dozen puppies run loose on the field. The program was criminally adorable; only the coldest hearted of robots could resist melting at the sight of the canine craziness. (The best was the camera they put in the bottom of the dogs' water dish, which showed a nose-eye-view of the little puppies' lapping up some water!) Let's all say it together: "Awwwww!"

Relatedly, last night marked the debut of the best TV commercial ever shown.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:26 AM

When we saw today's no. 2 link, which details the merging of two anemic TV networks, UPN and WB, to form a network that will either be doubly anemic or 50 percent less anemic than the two were seperately, we couldn't help but think of ways to also combine some of their best programs. What they should really do is have just one three hour-long show that stars Tyra Banks, Alyssa Milano and the woman who plays the mom on "Gilmore Girls," as three sassy, sexy detectives who use magic to solve fashion show mysteries and are always there for each other when times get rough. And fair warning: We will sue for royalties if "The CW," as they're calling the new network, starts production on this show without us. Bloggers are kind of split on the announcement: This post is a sober dissection of possibilities and unanswered questions, whereas this one cracks wise. Full rundown of reactions is here, and we are not kidding about this Banks-Milano-woman from "Gillmore Girls" project -- it's getting made.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:42 AM

We could feel the enmity from the rest of the Internet this summer when we made Joss Whedon's "Firefly"-"Serenity" series the target of some of our trademark gibes, but we're somewhat saddened to have to report that we won't really have it to kick around anymore. Sure, the DVDs will be continue to be a top-seller, probably, but the movie tanked and as our no. 11 top link says today, Whedon's never going to revive the series beyond its perpetual syndication loop on the Sci-Fi channel. Now, we have seen a couple episodes of this show, and though we found it ludicrous that in the far future people would be wearing overalls and ridiculous boots on space ships, saying things like "I reckon," "Firefly" seemed to have its moments. (Apart from its theme song, which was heavily ladled with weak sauce.) Its Internet devotees, however, will be howling their sorrow for the next ten moons. One postmortem lays the blame square at the feet of the fans: "I would like to congratulate Joss Whedon on admitting that Firefly/Serenity is dead. Remember, Browncoats, it's all your fault for making Yet Another LiveJournal post about the movie, and not just living at the theatre for the seven weeks it was on. Again, to repeat: it was all your fault." Oooh, snap!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:12 AM

You always had a feeling, didn't you, that comedian Dave Chapelle's catastrophic breakdown at the height of his fame was just a little too convenient for certain... ah... interests, wasn't it? Made you wonder whether certain... ah... powerful black cultural figures and entertainers hadn't had something to do with it? Drugs in his marijuana, perhaps? Some kind of chemical irritant in his Roos? Well, your aluminum foil hat has successfully protected you from the gubbment mind-control rays and you've managed to independently come to the conclusions established by The Chapelle Theory, BlogPulse's no. 28 top link today.

Nobody knows if the site is truthful, but that's all right, because on the blogosphere truth doesn't matter — all you need is a contention, y'know, an opinion... which for the purposes of Malkin and Kos alike is tantamount to gospel. A poster on this blog had his theories confirmed: "I knew that Cosby was up to no good. Who was he kiddin' with all those Jello Pudding Pop commercials." Nobody, it seems. TVSquad, at least, calls it a "good read," and writes: "Remember folks, if you're missing Chappelle's Show, just blame Fat Albert." Y'know how you can tell it's a hoax? In the introductory page, the Chappelle Theorist writes that Chapelle's fate is an " abhorrent byproduct of the industry I used to hold to such a high esteem." Anybody who says they ever held the entertainment game in high esteem has got to be a liar.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:49 AM

Comedy Central broadened its "news" programming to include a new show Monday night, the intensely over-promoted " Colbert Report," starring the former "Daily Show" correspondent Stephen Colbert as the hyper-serious Everyanchor, with a good measure of Bill O'Reilly mixed in. (It's our no. 19 link today.) After two episodes nobody's quite sure what to make of the show, and Colbert and his production team seem like they too are struggling to find just the right mix. Colbert so far has interviewed two TV journalists, Stone Phillips and Leslie Stahl, and seemed uncertain whether to poke fun at them or ask serious questions. Bloggers have responded to the show with warm but reserved praise, as in this Wonkette post, in which she's generally complimentary but starts out by saying the show "tests the boundaries of just how long one can stand arch irony." TV Squad is nervous about the show, worrying "it might be too similar to 'The Daily Show,' that it'll be too much of character-Colbert, that the set might come crashing down... I'm worried about a lot of things, really." If you're interested in a blow-by-blow account/review of the premiere, you'd be hard-pressed to beat this blog post, which has time-indexed responses to the first episode. We're holding off until the first week or so has aired before saying more, but we did think the gravitas-off with Stone Phillips was pretty funny, especially when Phillips intoned, in his anchor voice, "In the interest of full disclosure, I should state that this reporter has a similar body piercing."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:26 AM

Americans can only hope the taxpayer-financed churls at the Federal Communications Commission — or The Bureau of Being Totally Weak, as we sometimes risibly call it (BBTW) — saw the Times story in our top links today about how profanity is inseperable from culture. "Cursing," writes reporter Natalie Angier, "is a human universal." Which means efforts by the U.S. Senate and the BBTW to try to levy heavier fines on TV shows that involve cursing are total bullplop. Bullplop. Bloggers, as you might expect, have taken easily to this concept. (Readers are cautioned that many bloggers, in protesting the BBTW's stance on profanity, have been even more profane than usual.) For example, posters here are explicit in their reaction against the proposal. Slightly less blue is this thoughtful post at the Irregular Times, which sums up its thesis of historical swearing nicely: "In every single one of those cultures, people go on saying the naughty words in spite of the taboos. And, surprise surprise, none of those cultures fall apart as a consequence." This blogger took from the story a few medical benefits attributed to bad words: "So, I guess, feel free to swear. You’ll feel better!" Done and done. You listening, Mister Chairman?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:03 AM

It's a blogrony (that's what we call irony on the blogosphere) that on the rare day when BlogPulse's most blogged-about person is real, for a change — President Bush instead of one Mr. H. Potter, D.D.S. — the burstiest person is a TV character. Maynard G. Krebs, to be precise, the goateed arch-beatnik who showed Americans that members of their counterculture were lazy bums who screamed whenever anybody said the word "work" in their presence. Bob Denver, the gangly actor who portrayed Krebs, and perhaps more famously, the goofy mate Gilligan of the SS Minnow, is not named in our Key People today, perhaps tellingly: Americans knew him through his hilarious TV shows, but little about him personally. He died last Friday, and bloggers, just like everybody else, are morose. Or worse: "GILLIGAN, NOOO!!" mourned Lord Xorus, chairman of the House Select Subcommitte on Evil . The wags at metafilter are running the gamut of tv references in their memorials, including this one: "He finally got off the island." And American Digest signs off a post with this eulogy for the beatnik Krebs: "May the Bongos of God serenade you to your sleep."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:37 AM

BlogPulse's no. 39 top link today is a story on Salon (you'll have to watch a brief ad if you click on it) about the federal gubbment getting ready to crack down on "offensive" or "inappropriate" things on cable TV. Historically, America's idea-nannies have only had justification to meddle in things that TV and radio broadcasters sent over the airwaves, because the electronic spectrum they use belongs to the people of this great nation, which station operators lease through their licenses. Now, for some reason, the FCC thinks it has the same jurisdiction over privately owned cable lines, paid for by subscribers. Top FCC officials are thinking of ways, Salon reports, to hold cable stations to the same standards as broadcasters, meaning the days might be numbered for the edgy but sometimes racy things cable can show. Bloggers aren't happy about this. "When are people like us going to stand up against the likes of a government who tries to mold us in its own cultural image, simply because it believes it has sufficient 'political capital?'" asks SpeakSpeak. Check out MediaGeek for a a pretty slippery slope: "If he is willing to censor material on subscriber services like cable and satellite that don't agree with his good tastes, one has to wonder how long it will be until he sets his sights on the Internet." And blogs.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:36 PM

Bloggers, techno-futurists all, are excited by the promise of BlogPulse's no. 32 link today, in which the BBC announces it will begin broadcasting some of its TV shows on its website and make some "programmes" available for download. Just think: you could dial up the BBC on your browser and grab an episode of "Titty Bang Bang" — whatever that is and we swear we're not making it up, those crazy Brits — and watch it on your computer at your leisure. At first it'll only be for viewers in the UK, but the precedent could spread rapidly as American or other networks figure out how to use such a system to make money. One bloglimey praises the idea of a web-BBC-cast, as long as they do it right: "Excellent, but kinda pointless if it's just stuff that's on at the same time as the TV." Another Britoblogger also has a proviso: "If the quality is good enough (and it is from the BBC News live that I’ve seen on-line), then it will be a great success." This could be the sort of thing that would work well with a video iPod, if one actually comes out next month... you listening, Señor Jobs?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:16 PM

Tom Baker is almost universally regarded as the finest actor who portrayed The Doctor in the BBC's old-as-dirt science fiction TV show "Dr Who." But the show's producers, at one point, inexplicably felt it proper to make one of his sidekicks a robotic dog. Now, as evidenced by BlogPulse's no. 32 link today, as the Doctor has returned, so too has his dog, K9. We've mentioned before this phenomenon of the Doctor's "assistants," many of whom were comely women, but we haven't mentioned this phenomenon of the show's robots, which, because the BBC F/X guys clearly were on a budget, slide around kind of generically and always must have smooth surfaces to move on. So K9 — and before him, the Daleks, who for as fearsome as they were supposed to be, may represent sci-fi's stupidest villains — deserve a lot of improvements if they're to be modernized for this new "Dr Who" series. (If any readers can say how the Daleks got around their flat-surface handicap, naming the episode and the circumstances, they'll get an official BlogPulse Shoutout in a future post.) As for K9, bloggers don't seem too pleased the BBC has brought him back: "Ugh, I hate him!! He annoys me sooo much!" writes a poster here. This poster agrees: "UGH. I hate K9. Stupid irritating little one-joke dog that does nothing useful." Maybe the new K9 not only needs to be able to walk on, say, grass, he also needs some new writers.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:18 AM

Now that its death has officially been pronounced, fans can look back on the Dave Chapelle Show and marvel that (a.) it got on the air in the first place and (b.) it stayed on as long as it did. (Bloggers made it the 23rd most-traded link today.) Chapelle made not one but two R. Kelly parody videos, both of which tastefully involved the lyrics "drip drip drip;" he reinvented Sesame Street as a blighted Queens streetcorner where the neighborhood puppets sang songs about drugs and STDs; and made Rick James into a catchphrase for millions of fratboys. All that is quite an accomplishment in Rick Santorum's America. And putting such a positive spin on it is randomduck: "Chappelle’s program was high-quality from beginning to end: no filler, just great comedy. Ending now will close the series on a high note, something few programs have ever done." Also accentuating the positive is Dr.Pundit, who says at least it created a new comedy star: "Charlie Murphy (Eddie's brother) is truly the find from the show. Here's hoping he goes places." The same goes for Chapelle.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:49 AM

You'd think only a few Britons -- or an exceptionally rare sort of Yank geekoid --could truly appreciate the significance of this BBC story about the new season of Dr. Who, airing in the U.K. But this link is no. 14 in BlogPulse today, indicating that enough people on the web know about The Doctor, the T.A.R.D.I.S., etc. that this announcement is getting plenty of attention. The Doctor is a time-traveler from the planet Gallifrey who, because he can "regenerate" after serious injury or illness (or after the men who play him want more money), has been portrayed by at least 10 actors since the show debuted in the early 1960s. Comely young girls fall into his orbit and travel with him in chaste devotion, and he has encountered just about every permutation possible of TV monsters made from garbage cans, pudding, old shoes, plastic bags, little balls of light, etc. And he is beloved, as a glance at a few blogs will demonstrate: "Could this be the final proof that God exists and that he is in fact commissioning editor at the Beeb?" writes Third Avenue, while this blogger, who's seen which actors will be on the show, writes "Oh dear God. I think I'm purring already."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:54 AM