Some TV-related things

jacksonpublick posted a production journal for the Venture Brothers pilot, which Cartoon Network is running on xmas. It's amusing, but actually not the best introduction to the show. A lot of the style changed from the pilot to the first season, not to mention the animation quality.

morgan_spurlock posted some news about his upcoming projects: Class Act, a documentary about the elimination of school arts programs, is debuting in spring 2006, and he optioned the book The Republican War on Science for a film going into production in 2006.

I've been continuing to enjoy the new CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother". It had the best pilot I've seen since "Dharma & Greg"'s, and most of the episodes since then have maintained that level of quality, including last night's New Year's Eve episode. Barney's blog is pretty funny too. (Especially the Halloween logic puzzle!)

Also really entertaining is "The Andy Milonakis Show" on MTV2. It's a similar kind of bizarre/surreal/infantile humor as "Sifl & Olly" and "Stella", except without all the parts that actually make sense. Worth checking out just for the theme song.

And if you didn't already hear the sad news, "The West Wing"'s John Spencer (Leo McGarry) died of a heart attack on Friday. Still not clear how "The West Wing" will handle it, with 8 episodes left to be produced for this season.

Edit: One more thing I almost forgot: "Lazy Sunday", a hilarious music video from last weekend's "Saturday Night Live". (Warning: that's a link to the video itself, with sound.)

Followup

This deserves its own post: Barney's Guide to Licking the National Monuments.