Hardee's gets in on the sexually suggestive junk-food ad trend...

Via Towleroad.

Stephen Colbert's report last night on the environmental activist suing Seattle to suspend the Fourth of July fireworks at Gas Works Park.

It's been awhile since we've had a good ol' screaming match about pitbulls on Slog hasn't it? Allow me to put an end to that.

Here's a BBC documentary on pitbulls and other monster dogs called My Weapon is a Dog. about, um, weaponizing fighting breeds. Argue away about nature vs nurture, etc.

Fair warning: it's slightly obnoxious in a twitchy, MTV-style Attention-Deficit-Disorder-causing kind of way.

The other 5 parts can be found after the jump.

Hilarious. Will post as soon as Comedy Central puts it up.

Not their finest half hour—or ten minutes, I should say. The Iran segment was painful to watch, and for all the wrong reasons. The attempt to salvage Jason Jones's jokey interviews with three men who have since been imprisoned and may be in very real peril... eesh. And Stewart's interview with the son of one of the men was... painfully off key. Jon's attitude seemed to be, "Hey, this is all going work out, right?" And the look on the man's face said, "Ah, no, my father is probably a dead man." A rare instance of the Daily Show losing its footing.

About a month ago, I slogged about watching all 72 hours of The Sopranos consecutively. As I wrote then:

Over the past decade I've watched dozens of Sopranos episodes on A&E and DVD and in HBO-rigged hotel rooms, accepting whatever episode was thrown at me and cumulatively encountering most of the major plot points, but never experiencing the story chronologically, thus never able to directly connect cause and effect between misdeeds and retribution for misdeeds, and most importantly, never knowing exactly when a character was lying—which, as we're dealing with organized crime, is a lot of the time. It's been—duh—amazing. I will not bother reiterating why The Sopranos is both one of the greatest television shows and one of the greatest Mafia-themed entertainments ever made, because everyone who cares already knows. But my chronological, unedited-for-TV viewing has been a 36-hours-and-counting dream.

Now it's up to a 62-hours-and-counting dream, with my trek through season five bringing me to what feels like the single greatest Sopranos episode I've ever seen: the next-to-last episode of the season, "Long Term Parking." The whole episode is unusually poignant, with Tony's post-separation return home to Carmela (who looks slender and gorgeous in that perfect post-heartbreak I-think-I-may-be-single-again way) but of course the main story line belongs to Adriana, who tells Christopher her secret and the matter sorted out before nightfall.

This horrifying abruptness (see subject line) of mob life is one of the scariest parts of The Sopranos. I just got hit by another instance of this in season six, when Vito's secret is discovered and he's on the lam within the hour. The overarching moral: Being in the mafia is the kinkiest lifestyle choice there is. (Also, sociopaths make good TV—you never know what those fuckers are gonna do.)

(Also also, am I the only person who watches The Sopranos with subtitles? It's really illuminating re: the Italian slang (madon', goomar, etc).)

P.S. Turns out I'm not alone in considering "Long Term Parking" the best Sopranos episode ever.

Brian Lynch for the prosecution.

Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is currently the most acclaimed comedy series on television. It's won numerous Emmys and Golden Globes and I think Pulitzers. Critics and audiences alike love the show and its lovable zany characters, and consider it one of the most original comedies in years.

And I guess it is original...if you've never seen THE MUPPET SHOW. Because, my "friends" (in quotes because I don't know or trust you, please don't be offended), Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is quite obviously ripping off Jim Henson's beloved TV show.

Read the whole thing here.

During their annual pledge drive, Colorado PBS station KDBI is giving massive attention to 9/11 Truthers. They're also giving out 9/11 Truth videos and books to donors. I believe this is the most mainstream media attention that's ever been given to the Truth movement.

Of course, if you go to KDBI's website now, you'll see this notice:

Digital Update: KBDI's analog broadcast has been discontinued due to antenna damage. You can view the KBDI digital signal at low power now on frequency 38.

Coincidence? I bet some Truthers don't think so!

(Via.)

Yesterday was Conan O'Brien's first night at the helm of The Tonight Show, and while there were no astounding surprises—it just felt good, ya know? Like Bush leaving office, the blase darkness of Jay Leno was suddenly washed away by someone who actually deserves the job. Here's the opening sequence from last night's show, which may not be fall down funny, but it's certainly goosebump inducing, and will make you sigh with affection and relief.

I've never really watched Spike TV. It's aimed towards dudes, and I'm not a dude, so shows like MANswers don't thrill me at all. But last night, while dazed from too much allergy medicine and not enough sleep, I ended up watching Spike TV and discovering a show called 1000 Ways to Die.

Have you seen this?! It's really fucked up. It's basically the Darwin Awards but with reenactments and snide commentary. For example, last night, I learned about the man who died from a blood clot in his brain after he cut off circulation to his legs for hours when he tied a big sausage to his leg to make it appear as though he had a giant penis. Also: a woman choked on a fish (it got stuck in her throat and the scales made it impossible to pull out), a man died after the pepper spray he put up his butt went off (he shoved it up there after getting pulled over by the police—he was on parole and it was against the rules to have it), and also this happened... this woman was sucked to death...

It's awful. And it's amazing. And it's terrible. And I couldn't stop watching it.

Alright. Following last week's promise to myself, I refrained from watching the latest episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey until it was safely ensconced in my Tivo, to protect myself from the deal-breaking double-whammy humiliation of watching both The Real Housewives of New Jersey and the ads that make this monstrosity possible.

A fair chunk of this week's new episode was devoted to Teresa, second from left above, who dragged her would-be child-model daughter around to photographers and agents. Everything you need to know about Teresa, for now and forever, is summarized by America's preeminent Real Housewives chronicler, Gawker's Richard Lawson:

Teresa does not have a forehead. Teresa's forehead went out for a pack of cigarettes one summer day in 1986 and never came home. Teresa's forehead ran away with the circus while its Georgia onion farmer parents watched, all dusty and sad. Teresa's forehead went to Hamilton, maybe? Or was it Middlebury? Anyway, I don't know. They just lost touch. You know, time. Years. These things happen.

As I've mentioned before, trashy rich folks who willingly put their lives on TV are one of the only groups left available for guilt-free mockery, and personally, I think Teresa does indeed have a forehead, but insists on hiding the majority of it under her pulled-down-too-far wig. I think she thinks it looks pretty that way.

But the show's splashiest moments involved no one but Danielle (above center), who spent the episode getting shot in the face (with needles, not bullets, but the season's just getting started...) and dragging her friends into ridiculous manufactured drama ("How can I ever break up with my boyfriend, who's 20 years my junior, sweats profusely, and continues to stop by for his daily blowjob?") But the show really came to life with the teasers for next week's show, which hinted at the dark secrets in Danielle's past (coke! stripping! would-be kidnapping?!).

Once more, Gawker's Richard Lawson gets to the bottom of it, in his must-read post The Real Stripping Coke Fiend of New Jersey:

Last night, the promo for next week's Real Housewives of New Jersey said the secret to Danielle Staub's shady past could be found in an out-of-print book called Cop Without a Badge. Well, that's been tracked down and a "coke whore" named Beverly Merrill bears an awful close resemblance.

Read the whole thing—including telling book excerpts!—here.

This is gonna be good, by which I mean awful.

I present you with the teaser clip for the upcoming remake of TV's timeless trash classic Melrose Place.

First, I am very happy to report that Sydney—the original-flavor Melrose Place superstar who eats blackmail and breathes betrayal—is returning for the reboot.

Second, I'd like to remind everyone that the original Melrose Place was filthy—which means that if it has any hope of suceeding, the new Melrose Place has to be super-duper filthy. Like, jealous-woman-slipping-her-pregnant-best-friend-a-handful-of-morning-after pills filthy. Secret-webcam-in-the toilet filthy. Come on, CW, you can do it.

Third, credit for the subject line and the whole of my interest in Melrose Place goes to eternal Hot Tipper Jake.

As I've noted previously, the soon-to-be-airing series I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! features a wad of celebrities—Sanjaya Malakar! Lou Diamond Phillips! Janice Dickinson! Duane "the Dog" Chapman!—dropped into the jungle with a camera crew for a Survivor-meets-The Surreal Life reality competition.

As I've also noted previously, ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was originally scheduled to be among the jungle droppees—except his federal indictment on corruption charges got in the way of his ability to leave the country, and he had to step down.

Undeterred, the show's producers rounded up a totally amazing replacement celebrity, beloved far and wide for her amazing famousness: Patti Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor's wife.

And as the Associated Press makes clear, it's not a happy business:

"I didn't seek this out, [Patti] Blagojevich told The Associated Press in a Thursday telephone interview. "And if it wasn't for our financial situation I probably wouldn't consider it. You do what you have to do when you're, you know, a mother of two."

Ugh.

Aislinn asks: "Do you think the right person won American Idol?"

Okay, that's not an actual quote from The Real Housewives of New Jersey's Danielle, just a representative summation shoved in her mouth by my guy Jake, as we gaped in horror and occasional boredom at last night's new episode.

As I wrote last week, trashy rich folks are practically only group left in America available for guilt-free mockery, and The Real Housewives... series is nothing but trashy rich folks doing trashy things, often in front of their children. (Last night's episode was so riddled with bad parenting that my proposed drinking game—"Every time someone does something horribly inappropriate in front of their children, CHUG!"—would've resulted in near-fatal alcohol poisoning.)

About that occasional boredom: For me, the ultimate test of a show is whether I would watch it without the commercial-removing power of Tivo. 30 Rock? I'll happily suffer through whatever ad-crap gets thrown at me to watch that. The Real Housewives of New Jersey? Even with the time-compressing power of Tivo it's an iffy proposition.

I will give this increasingly boring show another week, in hopes of the "Is Danielle an international criminal on the lam?" teasers paying off big. But if I get another week of gawky daughters shopping, it's over, Real Housewives of New Jersey.