Smokin'  TV history in more ways than one, ladies and gentleman, though with all due respect to NBC for compiling the highlights package above, there is some great stuff they missed.

The New Pornographers have just been confirmed to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman on August 20th.  That's the night before they officially unleash "Challengers" on the world (although people hip to BEGN have been enjoying it for weeks already).  Ready, set, Tivos ahoy!

Little known Matador factoid : Richard Bey was our first choice for host of "What's Up, Matador?"

From BBC's forthcoming 'Rush Hour'.

My favourite bit = '….swimming with Lorenzo!'

C'mon Time-Warner, bail this guy out, already.

To the elected officials of Boston and Massachusetts who are knocking themselves out with their crazed grandstanding, I can only hope that none of you are ever placed in Frylock's Cloner.

(UPDATE :  A nice way to cash in on the lunacy, though I would hope some of the dough could go towards the defense fund of the poor schnook the Boston Police have made a scapegoat out of. )

The Late Late Show is an Irish institution (like the Magdalene Asylums) which was presented first by Irish broadcasting legend and brave-name-haver Gay Byrne, then latterly by Pat Kenny, the presenter being harassed in this here clip. Of course, the Irish stereotype of the literate drunk irks me somewhat, but I can't help but applaud this heckler. He's hammered, and he still manages to articulate in a concise manner what most right-thinking Irishers think of Pat Kenny.

….but it probably helps. 

Tonight, on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien", scheduled guests include Charles Barkley and Cat Power.

Chan and the MRB are hitting Rockefeller Plaza after blowing minds at Las Vegas' Vegoose Festival.  The Round Mound Of Rebound is also no stranger to Vegas, nor is he unfamiliar with a provocative performance every now and then.  

About two years ago, I fell deeply in love with The Wire. You can’t even describe it in words. Sordid twists on corruption, taciturn civil servants and then…that drug experiment with all those drugs. So, why not start a whole blog dedicated to understanding it. Well, someone already beat me to the punch. Behold….the Heaven and Here blog. (you’ll recognize some contributors including the editor of world-class b-ball blog… Free Darko.)

Oh, and some accompaniment music – “JSBX: Do You Wanna Get It (mp3)”

No mention of the original artwork for Cat Power’s ‘The Greatest’, however.

Nothing like a low blow or 2 directed at the lower 48 to get your weekend started (link courtesy Boing Boing). Even if Bruce McCulloch got to the point a little faster.

Emma Forrest once argued that Top Of The Pops was a massive cultural force simply because it had no editorial policy. It was reportage; if a record was high enough in the charts, it was on TOTP. They were just presenting the facts. The general consensus is that TOTP’s failure to be objective over the last few years has led directly to it’s demise – and by failing to be objective, I mean their chasing of the youth demographic for the past 4 years was about as subtle as a brick in the face. And the thing is, theres one fundamental aspect of Top Of The Pops that is increasingly alien to that demographic, and indeed the rest of us: TOTP was the very definition of appointment television. Until a few years ago, I made sure that I was free to watch TOTP because, God help me, I actually cared about what was going on in the charts, and the state of pop music in general.

In the documentary ‘The Story of Top Of The Pops’, everything seemed to be going fine with TOTP until mid-90s producer Chris Cowey arrived. Now, theres nothing wrong with Cowey. Dude looks like the Aphex Twin, and he really does love pop music with all his heart. But the BBC gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted to TOTP, which could have been madness in the wrong hands. And after Cowey left, the BBC wanted someone who could steer TOTP towards the youth market that seemed to be drifting away from them. Enter Andi ‘Wrong Hands’ Peters. The documentary implied basically that the shows sharp and massive decline was all his fault, and given that he didn’t show up to present a defence, I can only assume it’s true. At the very least, I find him deeply annoying. And so began an era of exclusives, songs that weren’t in the charts yet, moves to Sunday nights, ‘archive’ clips, interviews in the artist bar etc. They tried to turn it into ‘Heat Magazine: The Musical!’, and predictably, it was shit. So very shit.

Watching the final ever TOTP on Sunday was gut-wrenchingly awful. Absolute unmitigated arse water, the lot of it. Instead of having some all-star blowout, they went down the clip-show route of budget TV. First, playing clips of old TOTPs robs them of their context, like watching a greatest hits of News At Ten, evocative but remote and arcane. Showing Nirvana’s performance of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ doesn’t make half as much sense as when you first saw it alongside the other 25 minutes of chart pop that week. Secondly, the hour-long parade of clips implied that the show had a rich and varied history, which only begs the question ‘How did you fuck this up?’. Popjustice succintly summed it up as ’60 minutes of us telling you how proud we are of something we don’t care about’. It really was like watching the ghost of a suicidee enthusing over how good the turnout was for his funeral. When they actually got around to the final ever top ten countdown, Shakira was no.1 with her frankly bizarre new single (sounds like outsider music. Really), and SHE WASN’T EVEN THERE TO PERFORM IT. ON THE LAST EVER TOTP. No fucking effort whatsoever. Post credits, Jimmy Savile did the symbolic thing and turned off the studio lights, dolefully shaking his head. As did I, thinking ‘Saville outlived Top Of The Pops. I miss John Peel so much.’ And thus ended the most pathetic piece of television I think I’ve ever witnessed.

Apologies to US readers, for whom this post must be completely incomprehensible, not to mention totally irrelevant. Sorry.

Despite the considerable distraction of standing next to a man in a Miami Vice t-shirt, the author of “Raw Talent” drops some science on Mort and WWOR viewers.