Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark

Fox
Ray Gustini 2,365 Views Jan 9, 2012

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your fiveminutes (or less). Today: The Simpsons take a swipe at their corporate siblings at Fox News, the easy charm of print books after hours, and the first teaser for Eastbound & Down will restore your faith in the HBO comedy.

E-books are great because they're easy to obtain, competitively priced, and never become a storage issue. The downside, of course, is that unlike print editions, it's impossible to imagine digital books hopping out of your Kindle and having adventures when they're left alone for the night. This won't halt the rise of digital publishing, but it's a reminder that books on a shelf have what their digital twins lack: personality. [Type Books via Adam Sternbergh]

Homer Simpson briefly became a Glenn Beck-ish conservative talk show host on The Simpsons last night. The fact that Beck isn't at Fox News anymore saves the bit from packing the same kind of wallop that Banksy's opening-credit sequence inside a Korean sweatshop did back in 2010, but the episode as a whole was still blistering, "course correction" or not.  [Mediaite]

The state of the HBO comedy is in flux, except for Eastbound & Down, which is returning for a third season in February. Good for Eastbound & Down! The first teaser trailer isn't much more than Danny McBride's washed-up ball player Kenny Powers giving life advice to a gaggle of children, which is good enough for us.  [HBO via Vulture]

Perhaps overshadowed by President Obama's press conference announcing the departure of White House chief of staff William Daley: the president's press conference welcoming the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks to the White House. If the event feels perfunctory, blame Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who neglected to do a single goofy thing at the event, and neglected (we would assume) to sound out Daley's interest in appearing on HDNet in some capacity. [The White House]


 

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