Louie Season 2 : Ep. 12
For the past couple of months, I’ve been studying comedy. Growing up comedy was just about my favorite thing. I loved sit-coms, SNL, stand-up and late night talk. I kind of dropped it as an interest, until I started listening to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. Where we were with tech and podcasting in 2005, the comedy world is now and it’s awesome to see that passion flowing again in a fresh way.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember the podcast I was listing to the other day when they were talking about Louie C.K.’s TV show called Louie. I was driving. It could have been WTF or one of the other podcasts I’ve added too my Stitcher list. The guys talking were talking about the show, Louie, in a very reverential way that made me want to check it out.
Today, I saw it was on Hulu and I watched Ep. 12 from Season 2 called The Duckling. In this episode, Louie picks up his daughters from school the afternoon before he is going to travel to Afganistan to do some USO performances. The teacher tells him it’s his turn to take home the ducklings the class has been raising. Louie tries to get out of it, but the teacher won’t accept Afganistan is an excuse. It’s only for one night. One of his girls begs him to let them keep just one duckling. He says, “NO!” and the girls go to sleep.
When he gets to Afganistan, he discovers that his daughter packed one of the ducklings in his suitcase to keep him safe. He takes care of the duckling as he travels around entertaining troops and then at the end, the duckling ends up taking care of him.
I’ve only seen one episode, and I don’t know if it’s a typical example, but this one episode is one of the most beautifully real and human things I’ve ever seen packaged as a TV show. It has some comedy, but more than anything, it has heart. The episode is embedded below and if you have 30 minutes to have your heart warmed, I think you’ll be glad you did.
Read MoreLooking forward to X Factor
The way they present X Factor is brilliant. My first exposure to it was when Susan Boyle broke through. The way they cut away to the judges and audience creates a kind of magic that works even when it isn’t justified. This clip shows a girl singing an Elton John song. She isn’t good, but the way the show is edited makes her feel good.
It’s going to be a good show and I’m looking forward to watching.
Embedding is not allowed. You’ll have to click to watch on Youtube.
Read MoreTwitter TV: How I’d Make a TV Show Based on Twitter
Last year, Variety reported that Twitter signed a deal with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment to develop an unscripted TV series. Later Twitter’s Biz Stone said it wouldn’t be an official Twitter show. Twitter is allowing production companies to work on TV projects based on Twitter without endorsing one over another.
I have two ideas for turning what happens on Twitter into compelling TV. I shared one of the ideas on Twitter this morning:
I would like to produce a TV show based on the amazing things that happen in people’s lives because of interactions on Twitter.
Neal Campbell
nealcampbell
I got two types of responses. Social media folks understood why it could be a good show because they see examples of peoples lives being positively changed or at least inspired every day. Other folks weren’t certain anyone could squeeze more than a single episode out of the idea.
Last year Amanda Rose organized an event called Twestival to raise money to provide clean and safe drinking water to over 17,000 people in developing countries. The event raised over $250,000. Since then Twestival has raised nearly half a million dollars. An episode about Amanda Rose and Twestival would start with a tweet and end with people filling bottles with clean water in a village somewhere.
May 20, 2009 Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Drew has a sense of humor about the cancer and started blaming everything from losing his keys to Twitter being slow on his cancer. He asked other people to blame things on his cancer too using the hashtag #blamedrewscancer. Drew’s goal is to raise $1 for every tweet blaming something on his cancer. Another episode would tell Drew’s story.
When Nashville flooded a couple of weeks ago, Pete Wilson tweeted a request for volunteers, hammers, trash bags and brooms to help with cleanup. Hundreds of people showed up to help. There are stories to be told about that.
Those are three examples that made the news. Other amazing stories of people connecting and helping each other in very special ways happen every day on Twitter. To me nothing is more interesting that hearing people’s stories about going through pain and coming out the other side stronger and with more depth.
I’m throwing my pitch out to everyone because I don’t mind if someone other than me makes it happen. I’d love to work on a project like this, but I’d also like it if someone else wants to make it happen.
The quick pitch is Extreme Makeover Home Edition meets Twitter meets On the Road with Charles Kuralt.
Do you have an amazing Twitter story to share? Leave a comment!
Read MoreJohn Stewart on The Missing iPhone and Baconnaise
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Gilmore Girls Pilot
Got an invite to the WB Beta so I’m posting episodes of Gilmore Girls here so Chris Farley can see them. In exchange, I’m watching episodes of The West Wing.
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Boy, I Missed Having a Blog
About 3 weeks ago, I realized several WordPress sites we run were inadvertently setup under an FTP username that we give out to people for uploading large files for us. I deleted that username which then disconnected access to the various databases that feed the sites. It wasn’t a hard fix and it wasn’t pressing enough to take care of right a way so I just now got to it.
There have been times during this down time that I felt really frustrated because I couldn’t post something I wanted to remember. Like the other day, we saw the news on the wires that Paige Davis was returning to host Trading Spaces. The production let her go after photos were published of her stripping on a bar to raise money for charity. That was a mistake. Without her, the show floundered and couldn’t hold it’s audience. Having a charismatic host is gold, and we’re excited she’ll be back. The show is in production now and it’ll start airing again in January in HD. The original series was such a phenomenon, and my guess is that re-creating that success isn’t a given. I hope she can do it again because she is magic on screen, and I don’t think she deserved being dumped.
SO THERE! I’ve written, I’ll post and I’ll start thinking about something else. I might get serious about blogging for an audience some day, but for now, it’s just personal record keeping for various thoughts and memories. I hadn’t realize how much I have started to depend on the blog as an emotional release.
The moral: start blogging and save on therapy!
UPDATE: There are still some issues. I’m having to put HTML in to make paragraph breaks and the sidebar is down at the bottom. Wacky.