Actor and “The Masked Singer” panelist Ken Jeong is the newest person to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you’ve walked the real neighborhood of Hollywood, it’s not as glamourous as you might expect. It’s a touristy strip with “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (not live) shooting at the old Hollywood Masonic Temple, but there’s also a lot of t-shirt shops, dirty bootleg characters charging for photos, and a long-time homeless encampment that LA dismantled in August before a big public event.
Singer/songwriter Kinky Friedman died June 27 of Parkinson’s disease. I never saw Kinky perform live, but I read all his mystery novels and admired that he was able to create a more clever fictional version of himself that replaced the real guy in the public eye.
I imagine he’d appreciate that when People magazine wrote his obit, it neglected to mention his song, “People Who Read People Magazine.”
I’m a loyal watcher of the old “Mission: Impossible” TV series. Right now, you can catch one episode a week on METV. Monday mornings at 3 a.m. I expect that whenever the next Tom Cruise “MI” movie comes out, it’ll run more often. That’s what usually happens.
What I love is how it’s a time capsule of making TV in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The same character actors show up season after season. Sid Haig played eight different people. Arthur Batanides played six. John Vernon, four. They’d play a priest in one episode, disappear for a year, and then reappear as a gangster. It was easier to have that kind of career before DVDs and streaming.
You can find the four seasons of British sitcom “The IT Crowd” on Netflix – and you should. It’s centered on three people who work Information Technology (I.T.) in the basement of a large London corporation. Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids,” “Girls”) is Roy, the slacker. Richard Ayoade (“Travel Man,” “Submarine”) is Moss, the nerd. Katherine Parkinson is the allegedly normal one stuck with Moss and Roy.
There’s a lot of great small moments between characters, but my favorite episodes are the big farces where small bad choices snowball until there’s no dignified way out. It’s tough to find just one clip that explains all of that, so here’s some “greatest hits.”
I’m excited to see a three-season (so far) TV comedy is finally coming to the US. “Wellington Paranormal” is a spin-off from the 2014 New Zealand mockumentary, “What We Do in the Shadows.” The movie is both subtle and over the top – a horror/comedy about vampires who rent a house together in the New Zealand capital, Wellington. You’ll probably recognize Taika Waititi (“Thor: Ragnarok,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and Jemaine Clement (“Flight of the Conchords,” “Moana”).
In the original movie, the vampire lads run into all kinds of trouble, including the local cops, Officers Minogue and O’Leary. They’re by-the-book, but a bit dim.