What Are YOU Doing Here?

After last night's great Celtic win [Sidebar: Doc, I get that you want to reward your bench for their energy and defense, but Tony Allen should never, ever, ever be playing in the final four minutes of an NBA Finals game], I was too wound up to get to sleep right away. Instead I found myself flipping around the dial and searching for entertainment when I landed on Showtime and a show entitled The Green Room with Paul Provenza. The premise of the show is that Provenza, a stand-up comedian, sits around with other comedians and they tell stories about their experiences on the road and the rest of their comedy careers. While I think sometimes comedians can take themselves too seriously when discussing their "craft", this show didn't seem to go too far in that direction. The episode I caught featured some British comic I was unfamiliar with, Eddie Izzard (who I think is great), Larry Miller (who can be funny if given good material) and Drew Carey. It was an interesting enough format, but I found myself wondering exactly why Provenza was the host, because other than the British comedian he was probably the least recognizable person there. In fact, after a quick check of his IMDB page, the only other thing that I would know him from was one episode of The West Wing and the fact that he directed the very good film, The Aristocrats.

This is the second of these comedian-roundtables type of shows I have found where the person hosting is probably the least-famous person there. The other one is called Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. That show is always on and every time I am confused because I have no idea who the hell Byron Allen is or why he deserves his own show. Allegedly he's a stand-up comedian, but I've seen a lot of stand-ups and I had never heard of him before this show. Now, I get that you wouldn't want to hire an insanely famous comedian to host this type of show because the panel would just sit around, defer to the big star and listen to that one guy talk for a half-hour, but you would think a comedian who has at least done some work to have raised their profile would make a better choice. Instead I found myself wondering why Provenza was talking so much about his career doing gigs on cruise ships, because what exactly is he going to tell Izzard, who has sold out stadiums across the world? Basically, I think when it comes to hosting duties on any show type of talk show the criteria should be this: are you famous enough that you would be invited to be a guest on your own show? If the answer is no then you probably should hand the gig over to someone else.

-Yesterday there was a story making the rounds about the World Cup refs who will be working the England/USA game tomorrow taking English classes just so they know when they are being cursed at. Normally I think this would be ok, because how else are they going to know when it is time to hand out the little yellow cards? But, the problem is that the story doesn't mention them taking classes in any other languages that they could potentially encounter. While I'm sure England and the US will do their fair share of swearing, it comes across as having it out for those two specific teams. Are you trying to tell me that the French and Spanish teams aren't going to curse out the refs at any point? Add this on top of the chief security officer saying that they didn't want the US to make it to the round of 16 due to the security headaches a President Obama visit would cause and suddenly the US's chances for advancement, which seemed high after the group they were placed in, are looking a little in doubt. It almost feels like the fix is in. I guess we should be proud, because maybe this means we are officially a real soccer powerhouse. In years past the US team could be counted on to take itself out, but now World Cup officials are trying to fix the refs to card people up and openly pining for us to be eliminated. We've made it!