Tittererer’s Digest |87| feat. Marty Whelan

Hello again! Did you know that the word “tittererer” in “Tittererer’s Digest” is spelled “tittererer” and not “titterer”? I didn’t until sometime last month. And now you know as well. Unless you already knew, in which case I hope you’re okay with this slight misuse of your time in the name of knowledge.

1. Sharing a Feelin’ with Marty Whelan

Before I watched this short, I wasn’t aware of the Marty Recommends series of compilation albums. I don’t understand why it exists, but I am very glad it does because without it we wouldn’t have this tremendously produced film in which Shane O’Keeffe ponders, quite intensely, how Marty selects the tracks for his albums.

2. history of the entire world, i guess

Have you got twenty minutes to spare? You almost definitely do. Use those minutes to watch this. YouTube man Bill Wurtz will explain to you history. From the big bang to the present day. It’s like receiving a lecture from an incredibly well-informed Jean-Ralphio Saperstein.

3. The Part That’s About Trump

Yeah, it’s Trump unfortunately. There are a couple of Trump-related pieces floating about this week that I enjoyed. The first is a New York Times article about Jimmy Fallon, the declining ratings of his Tonight Show and how playing with Trump’s hair may have been a mistake.

The second is an important piece by Ben McLeay aka @thomas_violence about comedians punching down while they’re mocking Trump. It discusses the widely-covered homophobic joke made by Stephen Colbert on his late night show along with other instances.

It takes zero work to make him look like a foolish dumbass with little awareness of the world around him and even less awareness of his own actions. You don’t have to be homophobic or transphobic to make fun of him.

4. Upcoming Scifi Sitcoms

Fox announced two new sitcoms (among others) as part of its 2017 upfronts presentation last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9sKeCE8V0

The Orville is a space-based sitcom created by and starring Seth MacFarlane. It is very much in the vein of Star Trek, a show MacFarlane has always enjoyed spoofing on Family Guy. I honestly don’t have high hopes for it, but it will be airing at the same time as a brand new Star Trek show (which has been fraught with production issues) so that could be interesting at least.

Ghosted is more down-to-earth, but in the literal sense only. It stars Craig Robinson and Adam Scott as a couple of guys recruited by an organisation that investigates the paranormal. Again, the premise here could be quite weak but these two leads have been killing it for some years now. (You can ignore their starring roles in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 if you weren’t a fan.)

Before I Go…

This has been a fairly stateside digest, Marty Whelan aside, so I’m going to keep that rolling. This clip of Jason Mantzoukas on Conan O’Brien’s talk show last year is absolutely my favourite late night anecdote. He tells the story of his time working on the world’s worst prank show, one which I still cannot believe was ever attempted.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy yourselves and maybe give Take On Me by A-ha a listen at some stage today.

Main image via YouTube