I really love this “Hitler freaks out about something” video meme that’s been going around YouTube for awhile. The footage, taken from the movie Downfall and starring Bruno Ganz as Der Fuhrer (a role he also played brilliantly in Inglorious Basterds), is in German and different people have added unrelated English subtitles in order to make Hitler mad about everything from the Nintento Wii to the Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno fiasco. In this one, Hitler plays his greatest role yet: a teaching assistant.
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As any regular STA reader knows, I’m a big Conan O’Brien fan. Even though I wish he would still go back and write episodes for “The Simpsons,” I’ve been totally grossed out by the way Jay Leno and NBC have treated Conan during his stint on “The Tonight Show.” One of the upsides of the whole late night war, though, is all the awesome television coming out of it. Conan has not pulled any punches, making fun of NBC and Leno as much as he can before leaving the network. This clip, though, was one of the best yet: a crossover with fellow NBC star Jack McBrayer in character as 30 Rock’s Kenneth the Page. And what was Kenneth doing at the Tonight Show? Giving a studio tour, of course.
Elisabeth Moss may be a brilliant actress, but it seems like her success as Mad Men’s secretary-cum-copywriter Peggy Olson could be backfiring for her. Since the show has started, she’s been part of two other high profile projects - and she played an assistant in both of them. First, she costarred with Raul Esparza and Jeremy Piven in a Broadway production of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, which concluded with Piven’s hilarious fake “mercury poisoning” incident. Now, she’s in the new Sarah Jessica Parker/Hugh Grant vehicle Did You Hear About the Morgans?, where the two actors play a couple who accidentally witness a murder and are placed in the Witness Protection Program. Elisabeth plays SJP’s character’s assistant. First Jennifer Hudson and now this - how does Sarah Jessica Parker keep getting such high-caliber actors to want to play her second banana?
Anyway, Elisabeth is pretty awesome playing non-assistants too. I loved her as Zoey Bartlet on The West Wing (minus that whole terrible storyline with the gross French boyfriend and the kidnapping), and recently she did this great Funny Or Die video with now-husband Fred Armisen:
Conan O’Brien was interviewed on his very own episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio, even though he isn’t an actor. One thing I really liked was that he talked about some non-showbiz stuff that he did, including a brief stint as a Capitol Hill intern. Conan worked for a short time as an intern to his district’s congressional representative, but his main memory of the experience was “making lots of copies.” He also cops to having had a bit of an entitlement problem, admitting he didn’t want to work his way up through the ranks but rather skip straight to the top. Oh, Conan, you adorable former “Simpsons”-episode writer, you. Why people preferred watching Jay Leno to this man is an absolute mystery to me.
What’s the best way to improve a situation you hate? Just add a cute animal. Case in point: when the phone just won’t stop ringing, this kitty goes and answers it. Talk about talent. Cats may not be great with printers, but it seems like their phone-answering skills are a bit more on track.
Remember when Conan hired a zombie to be his personal assistant on The Tonight Show? Well, he’s keeping the bit going - and mocking Twilight in the process, which is always fun. Enter the brooding vampire, the hot werewolf, and … the sexy mummy?
This weekend, SNL brought back one of my all time favorite recurring Weekend Update segments - “Really?!” with Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. The deserving target of this week’s tirade was finance behemoth Goldman Sachs, who got H1N1 (that would be the Swine Flu) vaccines for all their employees, even though there’s a nationwide shortage. In case you were wondering, this means that bankers are more deserving of, well, everything, than we regular folks are.
Taylor, the peroxide-haired “senior assistant” who seemed to hate her boss Rachel Zoe, has been fired. There was no reason offered by either Rachel or Taylor (who Ashley likes to refer to as “the awesomely bitchy one”). Along with Rachel and fellow assistant Brad, Taylor was one of the stars of The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo, which just finished airing its second season. Today, Taylor emailed all her contacts the following note:
After four amazing years at Rachel Zoe Corporation, I’m saddened and exhilarated at the same time to announce my departure. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take the challenging leap to go off and style on my own.
After the jump, let’s revisit some of Taylor’s finest (and most disgruntled) moments.
I really enjoy this video, where singer Jason Mraz talks about how great it is to have an assistant. He really nails the whole “famous person who has to brag about what a nice, generous person they are” schtick.
In this commercial, a hotel concierge or assistant (it’s sort of hard to tell what his job is, although I guess he works for the hotel since he’s not traveling with her) uses mobile technology to get everything set up in Mariah Carey’s hotel room. Also, he looks a lot like a straight-haired Mark (Michael Urie) from Ugly Betty. Obviously, this is fiction since Mariah travels with her own assistant army.