Fail, NBC

You would think that being a TV network executive would require a certain amount of intelligence. Well, maybe not at NBC. In fact, it would seem that at NBC, your job relies heavily on making stupid decisions rather than smart ones. Exhibit A: the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien fiasco.

What NBC should have realized before they tried to get cute with their late night lineup was this: by moving Leno to 10, having Conan at 11:35, then Jimmy Fallon at 12:35, NBC is essentially putting on the exact same show format for three hours. Think about it: how many people are really going to sit through Leno at 10, then watch their local news for a half hour, then watch the entire Conan show at 11:35, then stick around for another hour of Fallon? That doesn't sound like smart TV scheduling to me. But, hey, what do I know, right? I'm just a TV viewer, not a wise executive.

I've been a huge fan of Conan for years and it's tough to see someone who so genuinely loves what he does be pushed out for not really doing anything wrong. On the other side, while I'm not really a big Leno guy (I just don't get why people think he's funny), I don't really blame him for this, either. He was essentially forced out by NBC last year, then when he thought about going to another network, NBC freaked out because it brought back bad memories of when David Letterman left for CBS, so they gave Leno a new show which was essentially his old show but at 10 p.m. instead. But now, ironically, in their attempts to keep Leno from defecting, it now looks like Conan is the one heading to another network. Well played, NBC. Well played.

Anyway, we'll all have to just wait and see how this whole thing plays out. And in case you haven't yet read it, here's Conan's statement on why he intends to leave NBC.

I'm with Coco.

Peace out, 2009

Another year has come and gone, and 2010 is upon us. But even though we're moving on to bigger and better things, we'll always have the memories, 2009. Come, reminisce with me, won't you?

Best Marriage of the Year: Jim and Pam on The Office. Not even close.


Weirdest Marriage of the Year: Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian. Not even close. (Lamar, be honest. The real reason you married her was because you were tired of Kobe getting all the attention, right?)


Most Rapid Breakdown of a Marriage: Jon and Kate Gosselin had won this distinction by a landslide throughout most of the year. And then Tiger Woods and Elin Nordgren came on to the scene. It's hard to argue with a wife that chases her husband down the street with a golf club, and then smashes the rear window attempting to "save" him, but we can't forget that Jon and Kate's decline was pretty epic as well. Let's just call it a tie.

Take your pick. This:

Or this:


Catchiest Song of the Year: Anything by Lady Gaga. I'm not a fan of Lady Gaga, but every single song she writes is absurdly catchy. Whenever she comes on the radio, I just leave the dial and let the song play out. And I'm pretty sure I know all the lyrics. And I know you do too.

Ultimate Get Out of Jail Free Card Moment: Michael Jackson's death. When MJ died, you would have thought that this guy had been the man that cured cancer or brought peace to the entire world. The entire universe was put on hold for the next month so everyone could honor him and talk about how much they loved him. But there was one thing that everyone forgot: this guy was out of his freaking mind! He had sleepovers with little kids!!! And not the kind of sleepover where everyone gets their own sleeping bag... they slept in the same bed!!!! And he admitted it!!!!! And he thought there was NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!!!!!!!! But even knowing all of that, everyone pretty much collectively decided to let Mike off the hook after his death. Was his death sad? Of course. His life was cut short and that's always a tragedy. But come on.... the dude molested little kids. Let's not throw him a parade. (Oh, wait, we already did.)

Guilty Pleasure of the Year: "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift. Okay, it's time to come clean. I really like this song. A lot. I know there are others who are just like me out there. It's okay. This is a safe place. There's no judgment. It's just a place where we can all sing the lyrics out loud together.

You belong with meeeeee....

Speaking of Taylor Swift...

Kanye West's Annual Douche Bag Moment of the Year: "Yo, Taylor! I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish! But Beyonce had one of the greatest videos of all-time!"


Best movies: 4. Star Trek 3. Up 2. The Hangover 1. Avatar

I finally saw Avatar the other day after weeks of hype from just about everyone in the world and it absolutely lived up to it. In case you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch it in 3D. Without 3D, it's probably just a really fun movie. With 3D, I'm not sure there's a more visually stunning film. All that said, Avatar is far from the best movie I've ever seen. The story and plot are a bit one-dimensional and things become fairly predictable. But give James Cameron credit-- he has possibly created the most epic film ever.

As a side note, you may wonder why other critically acclaimed movies such as Up in the Air aren't on this list. It's real simple, my friends: I haven't seen them. The movies on this list are the ones I was really looking forward to seeing and, most importantly, these are the movies that made the $10.75 (or whatever absurd price they're charging these days for movies) worth it.

One more side note: make sure you watch The Hangover. Hilarious.

Biggest (and Best) Distraction Among Young Men: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Pure awesomeness.

Best Sports Moment: Usain Bolt's two world records at the World Championships. Yep, that's right. It's from track and field. Now let's be real here for a minute. How many of us even knew the track and field world championships existed? Unless you actually competed in it, probably none of us... until Usain Bolt destroyed the 100 AND the 200 field with record times. The dude is a freak of nature.



Worst Sports Moment: The Lakers winning the NBA championship. The fact that they won isn't really the worst part. The worst part was that everyone knew it was going to happen. Yeah, they had a couple of questionable games in some of their playoff rounds, but we always knew they'd get to the Finals. And then when the Magic knocked off the Cleveland LeBrons in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Lakers essentially locked another trophy up before even playing Orlando. You just knew how it was going to end.

It was like watching The Empire Strikes Back for the second time. You've already seen it, you know how it ends, and you know that the bad guys pretty much had a field day in this movie. The Empire whooped the rebels' asses in the snow battle with those freaking snow walker things, Darth Vader screws up Luke Skywalker physically by cutting off his hand and then screws him up psychologically by telling him he's his father, and, to top it all off, Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite and shipped off to Jabba the Hutt.

Pretty much no bueno all around. That's what it was like being a non-Lakers fan this year.


Best Thing to Look Forward to in 2010: The World Cup. Always wildly entertaining and a ton of fun to watch. FYI, this event is also known as "the rest of the world joining Europe in actually giving a crap about soccer once every four years."

Here's to 2009 and to an even better 2010.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from the Punch to you and your family. Enjoy the start of 2010 and look out for a review of 2009 coming in the next week. Until then, here's one of my favorite YouTube videos to tide you over. If you're a sports fan, you'll really appreciate it. If not, well, it's still pretty funny.

By the way, my New Year resolution to you is that I will update this more often. Seriously.

On a separate note, I've slowly started to become addicted to Yelp. So if you are on Yelp and would like to be friends, I'm open to new friendships as well. Here's my page: schrutefarms.yelp.com. I know. It's the greatest URL ever.

Welcome to 2010.

Forget Chuck Norris; We've Got Steven Seagal

If you haven't seen the promos yet, there's a new TV series that's vying for the title of greatest unintentionally funny show ever: Steven Seagal: Lawman. The show centers around, who else, Steven Seagal. But it's not like his movies where he plays the white, ass-kicking cop/law enforcement agent who knows kung-fu, but might also be secretly Native American because he's always wearing Native American clothing. No, this show is different. Steven Seagal doesn't play a cop... he IS a cop. Yes, Lawman is a reality show. Apparently, Seagal has been a Reserve Deputy Sheriff in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana for over 20 years and the show basically follows him around while he's both on and off-duty.

As someone who has seen a Seagal movie or two in my life, I can't tell you how excited I was to watch this show. And not because I thought it would be particularly revealing or entertaining, but because I was excited to see Steven Seagal get a little too into being a real cop. Can't you imagine it? Seagal pulls over some teenage kid for doing 40 in a 35. He slowly walks up to the driver side and asks for his license and registration. The kid hands it over and then realizes it's freaking Steven Seagal!

"You're Steven Seagal!" he says in disbelief.

"That's OFFICER Seagal, you punk. Get out of the car right now."

"What?"

Seagal proceeds to pull the kid out of the car through the window and perform a series of kung-fu kicks and punches on him. As the kid writhes around on the ground, Seagal finishes writing him a ticket and tosses it on him. As he starts walking back to his car, he turns back to the kid dramatically and says, "You have 30 days to pay the fine or appeal the ticket."

And after watching the actual show? I was pretty much right about Seagal getting a little too excited. Okay, so he didn't beat up a teenager, but throughout the show he gets pumped up about almost everything that happens. For example: while on patrol, a high-speed chase ensues. After a short pursuit on the freeway, the suspect is eventually boxed in and subdued by several officers as Seagal's car arrives on scene a little bit late. But as they pull up, he starts shouting, "Where he at?! Where he at?!" He sprints out of the car and, even though there are five cops already pinning the guy down, Seagal jumps in and gets in on the action. Um, thanks for the assist, Steve.

Then there was the part where he helped a fellow officer with his shooting. I was actually impressed because it turns out that Seagal is a really good marksman (he shoots the top off of a q-tip and then a match from 20 feet away). But the best part was his insight on the art of shooting a gun: "Just like zen archery or something, it's a kind of meditation for some people, being able to really concentrate on being masterful with your discipline."

My thoughts exactly.

Like I said, it's quality entertainment.

Anyway, apparently I wasn't the only excited one for Steven Seagal's reality show debut. The premiere of Lawman drew 3.4 million viewers, which is the highest ever for a premiere on A&E. So that's about 3.4 million people more than normally watch A&E shows. Basically, Steven Seagal is to A&E what Jon and Kate were to TLC... except watching one show makes you angry to the point you want to beat someone up, and the other show features Steven Seagal. Anyway, be sure to check it out. I mean, come on, when has Steven Seagal ever disappointed?

Another NBA Season, Another Amazingly Terrible Warriors Team

The Punch has been out of commission the last few weeks for three main reasons: First, I'm lazy. Second, believe it or not I actually put a lot of thought into what I write, so it takes a lot of time to write some of these posts. And because things outside of my blog realm have been busier of late, I've had less time available to post. And third, I haven't really found anything worth really writing about lately. And then the NBA season started... which meant a new year for the Warriors... which meant a new level of dysfunctionality. (By the way, dysfunctionality isn't actually a word. That's how absurd this team is-- you need to create words to describe them.)

Anyway, I don't need to give you a breakdown of the stuff that's gone down recently. If you follow basketball even remotely, you already have a good idea. At this point, it's just comical how incapable this team is at doing anything right. And that goes beyond just things on the court. If the players and their ineptness to play sound basketball brought the franchise to its knees, then coaching and management provided the knockout blow.

Okay, I changed my mind. It bothers me so much that I have to breakdown what's gone so wrong for this team so far...

There was the whole Stephen Jackson saga. This guy went from being one of my favorite players on the Warriors to public enemy number one pretty much overnight. I seriously felt like I was reliving that whole T.O. fiasco when he was with the Niners years ago. Like T.O., Jack thinks way too highly of himself. He sees himself as a franchise player, someone like a LeBron or Kobe. So when things start going bad, he thinks he can demand anything he wants like a star player normally does. The problem, though, is that he's just... well... Stephen Jackson. At the same time, though, the Warriors have been so bad recently that he's been the team's best player which has given him an ego bigger than Kanye West. Anyway, the Warriors finally traded him for a guy who needs season-ending surgery and another guy whose name sounds more like a hockey player than a basketball player. And somehow, the Warriors can actually feel good about the deal. Yes, it's been that kind of year.

Then there's the injuries. Andris Biedrins has played in a grand total of four games this year, killing the Warriors and my fantasy team at the same time. Ronny Turiaf is hurt. Brandon Wright is hurt. CJ Watson has the freaking swine flu. And (my favorite Warrior) Kelenna Azubuike is done for the season with a knee injury. And we all know it's only a matter of time before Corey Maggette gets hurt. (By the way, I actually had a dream the other night that Kelenna Azubuike was playing again. I'm not sure what it means, but it's probably not a good sign when you start dreaming that slightly above-average players aren't injured anymore.)

And then there's Don Freaking Nelson. I don't get this guy. I really don't. You know this team is going absolutely nowhere. Wouldn't you see that as all the more reason to mix things up, put your young guys in there, get them some experience, and allow them to start meshing together for the future? Apparently, that's not in the Don Nelson coaching handbook. (Neither is defense.) Instead, Nellie likes to play mind games by giving the youngsters big minutes one night, then less than 10 the next. And this is even more confounding when you consider he has two of the best young players in the league in Anthony Randolph and Stephen Curry. They've both shown they have the skills to play in the NBA and yet Nelson seems to refuse to believe it. Look, I appreciate what Nellie has done for this team and the success that he was able to generate. But coaches have been fired for much less than what he's done lately. It's time to leave Don Nelson behind.

So where do the Warriors stand now? Well, after nice wins over Portland and Dallas, the Dubs followed by getting smacked down by over 30 points to the Lakers. Apparently the six man rotation isn't the best way to run a squad. Look, this is still a fun team to watch. They score like nobody's business and they have some really talented players. But when I watch them play, I never feel comfortable. When they're winning, they sort of lull you into believing they have the game in control. Instead, they manage to let the other team go on a massive run and get back into the game. Then the Dubs start jacking up desperation threes every possession, fail to rebound, and wind up getting destroyed down the stretch.

It's like watching a horror movie. The stupid teenagers think they've finally killed the axe murderer. They think they're safe.. but of course he's not dead! He comes back to life (sometimes several times over the course of many sequels) and eventually kills them all.

And you know how you can see the killer coming up from behind the victim and you want to yell at them to run away? I have a similar experience when watching the Warriors...

"No, Corey! We're only down one point! We're still in this game! You don't need to take that three from halfcourt! NO!!!!!"

It makes the days of "WE BELIEVE" seem so long ago....


But look on the bright side, fellow Warriors faithful: at least we're not the Nets.