Those of you in my immediate demographic will remember Talk Soup, a show that played clips of various talk shows---then in their hey day---and then tore into them hilariously. The show fell into the doldrums during a five year stretch after its host (and only on-air personality) left, but was miraculously reborn (not unlike Jean Gray from X-Men, or Jesus from the New Testament) when a Rose Bowl ring-wearing Seattleite named Joel McHale stepped in.
The new reincarnation, called The Soup, ruthlessly chides the absurd world of reality TV, celebrity gossip, and just generally the vacuous self-import people on TV give themselves.
While it may not fit into any of those above categories, a few months ago, McHale derided this underproduced kids show called "Gina D's" that included a bizarre song and dance number that manages to unite the creative space between Nostradamus and Barney the Dinosaur. With her voice creepily enhanced by that weird Cher-"Believe" underwater effect, Gina D tells her youthful progeny that:
"There's a land of all dinosaurs/
spread around American shores/
waiting for the day and planning their way/
to rule all the world."
I'm sorry, what? First, there's a secret land of dinosaurs hidden somewhere among the coastline of the U.S.: the most populated part of the country? And second, these maniacal reptiles are working together to devise a plot to rise up and take over the entire planet? This is like the DinoBots teaming up with Cobra Command, for god's sakes. But does Gina D offer unilateral progressive bargaining arbitration with the dinosaur aggressors, or a campaign of preemptive special forces strikes to incapacitate their fragile clam-shell communication network? No, she just keeps fucking singing in that tin-can aqua-voice.
Later in the clip, other Soup staples such as Mankini and Running Prostitute wander around the set. All in all, it's pretty damn funny. If you think otherwise, you're wrong. Dead wrong.
More "Soup" clips can be found on the show's YouTube channel. New ones air and re-air Tuesday's at 8:30am and 9:00pm, Wednesdays at 1:00pm, and Thursdays at 6:30pm. Send me a check, Joel.
3 comments:
what? No credit for gratuitous use of the vocoder on that one?
i love "the soup", almost as much as i love taffy. And i'm a man who loves his taffy.
yeah, The Soup is my bread and butter as far as TV goes. That's in addition to Man vs. Wild, Family Guy, PTI, and random episodes of Arrested Development.
anonymous: you don't get credit because i didn't use "vocoder" in the post, and I was the one that remembered the word "vocoder," not you! Peter Frampton is rolling in his grave...well he would be.
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