COMEDY. ricky gervais

ricky gervais is a really funny guy. in this special he goes all to the wall and rips apart americans and all the stupid things we do. he doesnt just give us a go, but he turns it back on himself quite often. pretty funny, but nothing very memorable. he can tell a great story, but i think his stuff is better when its situational, like in the british 'the office', or his other show, 'extras'.

WORDS. the interrobang

i'm not entirely sure how or why i came across this, but i recently found this strange little grammar anomaly. its a punctuation mark that is meant to be an exclamation point and a question mark. strange. in the official rules of grammar it is not allowed to have more than one exclamation point at the end of a sentence. so when ever anyone ends a sentence like this: 'he said what?!?' it is improper grammar. instead, you are supposed to use the interrobang. huh. will the wonders of the english language ever cease?!?

TV. 2009 emmys

the emmys were on last night, hosted by neil patrick harris. i'm always a sucker for award shows (and love nph on 'how i met your mother'), so i tuned in hoping it would be good show and barney would do a good job hosting. i was not disappointed! there were a few changes this year, including the fact that almost no one expected to win won, which always keeps things lively. nph started things off with a little song and dance number about how everyone should make sure they watch and 'put down the remote'. it was a fun intro and played to nph's strengths. they also started with the best categories, in my opinion: the comedy awards. there were quite a few surprises here with not all the awards going to '30 rock', as was expected. unfortunately, my favorite, jim parsons from 'big bang theory' did not win. maybe next time.

one of the best additions of the show was the color commentary from john hodgson, the daily show's resident expert. as the winner walked up to accept the award he would briefly speak about that person making random comments about them that werent necessarily true- very funny! another bit that i really loved was when nph would introduce the presenters he would not reference their most well known role, but rather cite a very random bit role that they had played in, for example when jon cryer came on to present an award, nph referred to him as 'photographer number four in 'my two dads'.' or something equally absurd.

my big question for the night, though, is this: why do they have so many awards for the movie/mini-series category?!? who really cares?!? no one watched those! why must we waste 45 minutes of the telecast to that stuff? oh, and that 'dancing with the stars' tribute was completely worthless. good thing nph did such a great job of keeping it moving that it was easy to overlook such timewasters. in fact, the whole show was only about five minutes over their time- amazing!

anyway, hopefully there were enough people watching this year for cbs to renew its contract with the emmys to show it again next year, because if not, it will most likely be banished to bravo or lifetime i'm sure...

BOOKS. the shack

this story follows a spiritual man who recently lost his daughter in a while camping. the family was playing in the water when a man came by and kidnapped her. since the event he has struggled with forgiving himself for not being there to save her, and also questions God about why it happened. while trying to deal with a spiritual crisis of faith, he decides to find some time alone and goes to a cabin his friend offers as a way to get away for a while. while there he has the most amazing experience: God shows up. now he can ask God directly why did this happen. the book deals with these conversations in an interesting manner, but it quickly becomes apparent that the 'God' he talks with is not the traditional God of Christianity, but rather some sort of 'spiritual' god that bares little resemblance to the God of the Bible. the story is well told and we really feel for what this man is going through, dealing with the loss and guilt of a dead child, but the doctrine is far from Christian.