The Dallas Cowboys crushed the Chicago Bears on Thursday night to secure their first winning season since 2009 (read our coverage and see the best photos here).
We compiled some of the best memes from the Internet and social media.
Verizon announced this week that it has agreed to distribute Fort Worth’s Ride TV, an indie “equestrian lifestyle channel” that debuted on Oct. 1. Once you add the equestrian part, Ride’s pretty much what it sounds like. Or better, according to a press release: It produces original programming like “highly entertaining reality shows, talk shows, documentaries, children’s programming, [and] movies.”
Some of that includes Rock Star Vets, about an oil patch doc who “dips snuff, is tatted up and graduated Magna Cum Laude,” and who is a “brilliant equine surgeon who can drink more tequila than any person vertical.”
Seriously. That synopsis alone is better than half the writing on TV.
So no hatin’ on Ride TV. I grew up in a town of 200 with a cowboy dad who forced us to watch nonstop RFD-TV on the only television in our house that had satellite. Teenage me wasn’t crazy about live cattle auctions or tractor documentaries. (Though Baxter Black was my boy.) In retrospect, I’m glad my dad had a link to a community that he was, for the most part, too remote to actually be a part of.
Still, Ride TV is niche as hell. How far can we take this? Let’s do an all-Dallas channel! To my knowledge, none of these television shows currently exist. But, if you’ve got an upcoming conference with a network head and are in need of filler, pitch these:
SMU Fratiators: No drinking games or even quiz bowl trivia here. We’re talking actual hand-to-hand combat in the [Moody] Coliseum. How can you rightly call it panhellenic unless there’s some Greco-Roman maneuvers involved?
Wizards of White Rock: A reality show following locals on their quest to go pro. Follow the heartbreaking territorial rift between Lakewood’s clan and Preston Hollow planeswalkers. Season cliffhanger leaves us with James in rehab trying to shake the “cardboard crack.”
America’s Next Top Cat Meme: Grumpy Cat has her own movie. We want to do a spin-off ripoff, but Dallas doesn’t have a Tardar Sauce of its own. At least not one that’s been discovered yet. Does your feline have star power? Original grumpy cat Simon Cowell can’t commit to judge, but Alan Arkin’s agent picked up the phone at least once.
Queens of the Court: It’s like Judge Judy — small claims court — but presided over by The Rose Room’s glamorous divas. There’s no “lip syncing for one’s life,” a la RuPaul’s Drag Race. But capital punishment does include life without sole. (Flats only.)
Mall Walk, Fast Talk: Finally, a good old fashioned sitcom set at NorthPark. There’s a laugh track and track suits, not to mention dialogue snappier than Dick Van Dyke crossed with that handsome Tony Danza boy. The central driving theme is the will-they-won’t-they between Burt and Myrtle, and Mary-Dell’s signature fringed pixie is expected to surpass The Rachel in a landslide when it comes to follicular copycats.
Hockey player Ray Kaunisto of the Kalamazoo Wings is meowy sneaky. He said the word “meow” seven times in 40 seconds during an interview, as ESPN reports. (Clearly, he’s a Super Troopers fan.)
Thank goodness for more cat jokes on the Internet. Watch it right meow:
In the Central European celebration of Krampusnacht, people dress as the beast-like Krampus and go around scaring kids (it’s on Dec. 5). Now Krampus is coming to Dallas-Fort Worth. At the Krampus Walk events in Denton and Deep Ellum on Friday, a variety of Krampi will gather and wander in search of those who belong on the naughty list. If you dare, the hairy, scary fellow will also let you sit in his lap and pose for a photo during Christmas With Krampus at Dark Hour Haunted House in Plano Dec. 14.
As a Whatever Blog post from last year notes, “In pre-Christian Alpine folklore, while St. Nicholas was busy each year dispensing gifts to good boys and girls, Krampus, the anti-St. Nick, was out getting his jollies by punishing youngsters who had misbehaved. That evolved into an annual and enduring ritual wherein villagers dressed up as Krampi accompany St. Nicholas and angels as they visit households to dole out rewards or reprimands as the preceding year’s behavior dictates.” Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
You might know former Plano Senior High School student Alan Tudyk from Firefly, or from his voice work in movies like Wreck It Ralph and Frozen, but now you can also know him as “That dude who played a board game on a YouTube show with some other celebrities.”
The actor appeared on the most recent episode of Tabletop, an online (and this year, at least, fan-funded) show centered around board games. In every episode, host Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Big Bang Theory) is joined by several friends/fellow celebs as they either compete or cooperate in a tabletop game, teaching viewers about the game along the way. It’s a pretty great show that has introduced me, personally, to a lot of awesome games I might not have known about otherwise.
In this episode, Tudyk and Wheaton work together with Jon Heder (best known for his role as Napoleon Dynamite) and Felicia Day (The Guild, Doctor Horrible Sing-Along Blog) in an attempt to conquer the cooperative game Forbidden Desert.
You can watch the episode below then, if you’re like me, rush out to a local game/comic book shop to hunt down a copy of Forbidden Desert to play with your friends. You can also see more from the pre-game interview with Tudyk here.
The Dallas Cowboys were off on Sunday. They play a key game Thursday at Chicago (click here for the latest news and analysis).
Meanwhile, enjoy the memes the Internet had in response to the loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Thanksgiving.
The New York Times asks a pertinent question: “Who really wants to wait in line overnight, or even multiple days and nights, to get first crack at the deepest discounts?”
If you’re all like
I’m not going to
Just to rummage through
But, just,
OK, you’re hyperventilating. THE CROWDS. THE SHOVING. THE SWEATING.
This is not your kind of thing.
You’ve got permission to go eat a turkey sandwich with your Thanksgiving Day leftovers and go back to bed. Forget about those people waiting outside shopping malls in suburbia. Relish in this: There’s one really big, great place to get deals, too:
Move over pumpkin pie. Slide along candied yams. There’s a new king of Turkey Day desserts. At least in Texas and Oklahoma this year.
Like Señor Amore’s, the Mexican-Italian fusion restaurant specializing in pesto enchiladas and queso cannolis that exists only in my dreams and future Shark Tank appearance, Texans are gobbling over sopapilla cheesecake, a nontraditional favorite that’s a little bit old world and a little bit new.
That’s according at least to a New York Times interactive poll based on “Thanksgiving Recipes Googled in Every State.” While sopapilla cheesecake might not seem all that Thanksgiving-y, other states’ results are downright puzzling. Can someone let us in on what the heck North Carolinians mean when they Google “pig pickin cake”?
How about kissing cousins, “cookie salad” and “snicker salad,” both of which topped a number of states in the Midwest? The latter evokes the image of a crisp bed of romaine crested with snack-sized bits of caramel, peanuts, and crunchy nougat.That’s to say nothing of the nightmarish notions conjured by “frog eye salad,” popular throughout the western states.
If only there were a device that could instantly disabuse grievous culinary ignorance… Ah, yes. Once again the Google Machine saves the day. We’ll save you the typing time:
My wife loves Downton Abbey. I love Iron Man. We can’t always agree on which to watch. If only there was a way to combine them.
Well, the former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine (OK, you might know him better as the dude writing the first standalone Star Wars film, or the guy who wrote The Book of Eli) has a solution in his wonderful Downton Abbey/Iron Man crossover fan fiction. It’s incredible, and I think the BBC needs to get on the phone with Marvel right now to get it filmed.
By “incredible” I don’t mean “an Oscar-worthy screenplay that all film students should study.” It’s obviously written to be a lighthearted, fan-fiction bit of fun. There are jokes about Americans liking french fries and Howard Stark tells Lord Grantham that “coal is for suckers,” but for something just aiming to be entertaining: mission accomplished. I mean, Iron Man’s dad goes to Yorkshire to talk to aristocrats about economics and technology. How is that not kind of awesome?
The experiment in dumb (the good kind of “dumb”) fan fiction relied somewhat on dumb social media activity, with Whitta only releasing the first act of the “Stark Ascendancy” script when one of his Twitter posts got enough retweets, and act two hinges on the same thing.
If I get enough RTs I’ll post the first pages of DOWNTON ABBEY: THE STARK ASCENDANCY on Monday. It’s in your hands! pic.twitter.com/ZPzA2c4vZA
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) November 22, 2014
Trying to gauge interest in Part Two of #StarkAscendancy. Original post needed to hit 1000+ RTs, not even close. On verge of cancelation!
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) November 25, 2014
But hey, this is the kind of social media movement I can get behind. I need to know more about how the Crawley family factors into Howard Stark’s plans to fight Hitler.
You can read act one of Downton Abbey: The Stark Ascendancy here.
It’s been more than a decade since the last Jurassic Park movie, and that fact has been met with either gratitude or disappointment depending on who you ask. But whether or not a fourth Jurassic Park movie should happen is no longer a relevant discussion — it’s happening. And now, we have our first glimpse at what it will be like when it hits theaters June 12, 2015.
I don’t know how I feel about the team behind the movie creating a “new dinosaur” as an antagonist (are regular dinosaurs just not exotic enough?), and some people online are lamenting the heavy use of CG as opposed to practical effects, but I’m personally optimistic about the film as a whole. I’m a fan of the classic Jurassic Park theme being slowed played on piano, too.
