Friday, July 28, 2006

It's Over, Biotch!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Hey all! New Pulse article here.

This one is about the recent so-called "lost episodes" of the late, lamented Chappelle's Show, an attempt by Comedy Central to burn off the sketches Dave Chappelle made before he famously disappeared to South Africa last year as he was working on a third season of his immensely popular sketch-comedy series. Apparently Chappelle didn't exactly sanction the release of these final sketches; nevertheless, they have been broadcast and now available on DVD, and in my article I try to make the case that these sketches seemed to uncannily (or, not so uncannily) foreshadow Dave's flight to South Africa. Some of the sketches in the three "lost" episodes were surprisingly rather dark and introspective, for all its lightness of touch and occasional stabs at gratuitous vulgarity. And yeah, most of the sketches weren't quite as funny as in previous seasons, but then, it's not like Chappelle had much time to refine them or even throw some of them out.

Anyway, at least this article was a nice change of pace from the usual old-movie article I've written in previous pieces. And I'm contemplating continuing to vary it up: perhaps I could tackle 9/11 in the movies as my next piece, in anticipation of Oliver Stone's upcoming World Trade Center. Connecting movies to the real world: that's what makes movies so great in the first place, at least in part.

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Interesting day at work today: the power went out for about half-an-hour today, at least computers and projectors. It led to a whole group of people descending upon the West Box demanding refunds. But Megamovies apparently doesn't give out refunds; it gives "happy return" passes to people so they can see another movie with it for free at a later date. If you think about it, I suppose the policy has its own kind of logic; but obviously it didn't satisfy everybody, and I heard some people yelling at the manager on-duty as they stood on line to get these special passes.

People can be so rude sometimes. Take a chill pill!

Anyway, I don't think I committed any major screwups today, thank goodness.

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