Todd Sokolove Presents - BEWARE OF THE BLOG - Blogging from New York City: January 2006

beware of the nomcast...

In honor of today's Oscar nominations we get all film school geeky.

Topics include:

• A full run down of The Noms.

• Dorothy's sexual journey to meet the Wizard.

• The most interesting thing Rachel learned in film school.

• The Selena - L.A.'s hottest car rental.

• Who are the Barrymores of our generation?

As always, this, and EVERY, BEWARE OF THE BABYLON podcast can be automatically downloaded to your computer and transferred to your iPod through iTunes.

an oscar prediction...

Of the nominees announced this morning, I think I'm most excited for Hustle and Flow, of which the song It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp is a contender for Best Original Song.

I predict this to be the most fantastic moment in Oscar history as Djay serenades the academy with lines like "because a whole lot of bitches talkin shit" and "couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when shit got harder."

Maybe they'll do one of those interpretive dance numbers to it.

it's delicious love...

Check out my friend Ann's great choc-o-monial from the Time's Square Hersey's store.

Ann, your's is CLEARLY the best choc-o-monial.

it only makes me laugh...

So apparently eBaum's World (aka Eric Bauman) has been optioned for a television series deal from USA Network.

Is Beware of the Blog far behind?

Is Beware of the Babylon?

Is this a sign of the apocalypse?

All's I know, is I wouldn't be able to live without these three clips of people falling for that stupied "Satanic Jingle Bells" video clip from Christmas...

life imitates art...

This is scary heavyweight fighter Nikolay Valuev (a.k.a. The Beast From The East).

He totally reminds me of one of those boxers in Nintendo's Punch Out.

i like the way they move...

For those of you that thought Outkast was a flash in the pan, check out the trailer for the Outkast movie, Idlewild.

Personally, I can't wait to see this.

But then again, I was all about Under the Cherry Moon until I actually saw it.

When, uh, Oprah calls...

First came the fantastic "we got Oprah on the phone" bombshell on Larry King a few weeks ago, NOW Harpo Productions has conveniently transcribed a recent conversation between Frey and Oprah directly.

Read what the truth-monger had to say to him here.

Highlights include:
• "I regret that phone call I made to Larry King."
• "I feel duped."
• "I feel that you conned us all."
• "...hanging is more dramatic than cutting your wrists?"
and my personal favorite...
• "Bitch, don't make me call the po-po on you."

Okay, I made that last one up.

let's hear it for the boy...

RIP 1965-2006
All time favorite Chris Penn quotes...

I mean we're not stuck in the goddamn middle ages here. We've got Family Feud.
- Footloose

It's casual.
- The Wild Life

We got places all over the place.
- Reservoir Dogs

I don't know anything about that, so you can kiss my fat ass.
- Rush Hour

All I have to do is maintain my fantastic 2.0 grade-point average, and everything is cool.
- All the Right Moves

things unsaid...

Finally someone had the balls to ask President Bush if he has yet seen Brokeback, to which he replied...

"I'd be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie."

Other optional responces to the question floating around W's brain...

• You mean that faggy, cow-pokeing flick?

• No, I only see non-homosexual films like The End of the Spear.

• No, but did you catch those mountains on Drew Barrymore?

• I saw it, I lived it, I loved it. Better than Cats.

desperately seeking celebrities...

I rarely get star-struck, mainly because I have, as many of you know, a pretty ridiculous job.

When you've played Santa with Kelsey Grammer, spanned time backstage at Carnegie Hall with John Lithgow, and received death threats from Donald Sutherland, you tend to become immune to celebrity.

This is probably why I only get star-struck by the more obscure celebrities. The ones you have to explain a bit to people where they are from. For those keeping track, highlights in past years have included Eric Roberts and Wentworth Miller.

This weekend, I add to the list Rosanna Arquette...

and Tyler Labine (Dave from Invasion)

Consider me struck.

i had so many devices...

Song Airlines is just about the closest thing to heaven before dying.

Not only do you get a choice of several organic food items via menu, but once the flight takes off, you are treated to games, movies, and mp3s on a touchscreen system built into the chair in front of you.

Honestly, my flight to LA could have been going down in flames and you couldn't tear me away from the magic of the Song Inflight Trivia Challenge (in which you compete with the other passengers for most useless knowledge) and my own personal playlist, which I peppered with the Spamalot soundtrack and dirty old-school Prince.

bigger than Beauty & The Geek 2

America has decided what it wants to see on television, and it's Skating with Celebrities.

Airing on the very same network that brought you the Tonya Harding/Paula Jones boxing match, Fox pulled off an amazing 11.2/17 HH rating/share (that's very good, by the way) and dropped the National IQ Average by about 20 points.

Upcoming Fox shows rushed into production include:

• Bungee Jumping with the Bradys
• Lambada with the Gangsta Rappers
• Skeet Shooting with the Former Child Stars
• The Running of the Bulls with Former MTV VJs

The Don't Cha Cast

Don't cha wish your podcast was raw like this?

Rachel and Todd wax poetic this week on...

• Boobs everywhere on the Golden Globes.

•The End of the Spear - The Year's Hotest Gay Porno.

• How Margaret Thatcher ruined Rachel's love life.

• How the recorder is kinda not like a kazoo.

• Which waiter to stay away from at this week's location, the Westway Diner.

As always, this, and EVERY, BEWARE OF THE BABYLON podcast can be automatically downloaded to your computer and transferred to your iPod through iTunes.

U-N-I-T-Y?

Don't get me wrong. I love Queen Latifah, but her intro last night on the Golden Globes was nothing shy of blatant promotion.

If you missed it, she took it upon herself to welcome everyone to the Golden Globes by somehow tying in Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with the box-office returns on Glory Road and her new movie, Last Holiday.

Give me a break. King deserves better than two films that, by the way, were trumped by Hoodwinked.

What she should have pointed out is that the ideals of King live on in the nominated films this year: Crash, Brokeback Mountain, and Munich to name a few.

Again, I don't hate you, Queen Latifah. You ain't a bitch or a ho.

You just ain't a host.

everybody wants to be a cat...

Peer pressure, plain and simple.

I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened.

cool it cats...

Thor and Heather are in production on an epic film, hence the lack of new posts lately on their site.

In the meantime, I share this original short film exploring the method of Thor's motivation.

this just screams caption contest...

I'll go first:

lowbrow -
You wanna be startin somethin?

highbrow -
I loved you on Family Matters

uh, catch and release when?

Not that I really care, but if I were the Marketing Director at Sony Pictures (which I'm not, unfortunately) I'd fire this lame-brained designer of the Catch and Release webpage.

Now, generally Spring is a throw away time for the studios, but putting IN THEATERS 2007 on a Spring release is pretty bad.

Trust me, this only caught my attention because anything over a month is WAY too long to keep the public waiting on a Jennifer Garner romantic-comedy vehicle.

On the other hand, apparently OVER A YEAR (?!?!) is not too long to wait for the new Ghost Rider movie.

comfort in a biskit...

Don't know what it is about Chicken in a Biskit that gives me great comfort at the supermarket. Maybe it's the fact that this product still exists and appeals to somebody (kind of like the Goobers Peanut Butter and Jelly in the same jar).

Alls I know is over in the land down-under they have nine, count 'em, NINE variations on the theme...

Barbecue
Dixie Drumstix
Crispy Bacon
Nachos
Cheese
Crispy Potato
Salt & Vinegar
Cheddar
and lest we forget Vegemite In A Biskit

frayed Frey...

So the Smoking Gun website has blown the lid off of James Frey's god-awful "memoir" A Million Little Pieces-- He made up the whole thing!

Wow, guess what? Who gives a flying fuck?

Any gump duped into reading this piece of crap, be it by Oprah or that girl at the Walden Books in the mall, deserves to have the rug pulled out from them on this poor-man's Trainspotting.

One more thing. Everyone is quick with the headlines on Oprah (i.e. Oprah Winfrey's Been Had. or The Man Who Coned Oprah).

When did Oprah become responcible for Frey's little lies? For whatever reason, Oprah saw something in this book (why she would promo this one over Dry is a mystery for the ages).

Is everyone's looking for the next Dan Rather?

Just wait until Tom Cruise comes out. Will they blame Winfrey or the couch Cruise jumped?

a one eyed cat, peeping in a seafood store...

Haiku for Cy, the Oregon kitten with one eye...

OH CY, WITH ONE EYE
COULD NOT SMELL DEATH AT IT'S DOOR
'CAUSE IT HAD NO NOSE

The Asthmaticast

Rachel and Todd catch their breath at L’Angolo and discuss the first week of 2006.

Topic include…

• Asthma—it’s not just for the weird kid anymore.

• Todd’s new beard—is it working?

• The Tale of Sweeny Rachel (and Todd)

• Will Rachel’s hot new brunette locks snag the Baldo?

• The best gefilte fish is your own gefilte fish.

As always, this, and EVERY, BEWARE OF THE BABYLON podcast can be automatically downloaded to your computer and transferred to your iPod through iTunes.

everybody's gonna leave their seat...

So there I was in Midtown Comics yesterday when I saw the one thing that was definitely missing in my life, circa 1978 - a KISS Destroyer lunchbox.

This is one of those retro-kitch items that exist now, but never did when we needed them.

So I got to thinking, maybe I could buy this, travel back to 1978, hand it to myself in the first-grade cafeteria, and all would be good.

Naturally, realizing the implications of creating a rift in space-time continuum, I put the lunchbox back on the shelf and ditched the plan.

Whew, that was close! I could have gone all Aston Kutcher on you for a minute there.

so hot you're cool, so cool you're not...

Ever wonder what those chat-room and message-board fanboy geeks do when they leave their computers? That's right, they go to Borders. Or at least it seems like they all go to the Borders Craig and I like to check out during the week.

exhibit a

Above you will find tonight's BUFFY, ANGEL, FIREFLY, and SERENITY forum. Two guys with a stack of SciFi magazines, bad comb-overs, and a hard-on for Joss Whedon.

If the camera phone were any better you would see the amazing metal table sign they made up. I suddenly don't feel so much like a loser tonight.