Noiseless Chatter Archive

So, okay. It’s been a little quiet here lately. That’s not due to a lack of interest, or even a lack of time. It’s due more to a shuffling of my priorities…which has caused some other things to fall behind. The first year of this blog’s existence, I took January off as a kind of “me time.” Nobody — literally, like, fuckin’ nobody — liked that. And I can’t blame them. Some content is better than no content. And since then, I’ve decided I’ll never take a full month off again. Which means that every so often, I guess, I hit these phases of distraction. I have plenty to write about…but other things demand my time. And when those are done…I kind of want to relax, and enjoy myself. I’ve also — as many of you who follow me on Facebook probably know — entered into a relationship with a very special lady. For once, I don’t intend to get sappy, but I will say that the spare time that I do have is being spent with her. And happily so. Additionally, I’m moving in August, s...

  ALF Reviews: “Something’s Wrong With Me” (season 2, episode 8) It’s come to this: an episode about ALF getting the hiccups. That sure sounds like a riot. Part of me doesn’t really mind. As we learned last week, the quality of the plot isn’t really an indication of the quality of the episode. If Lynn entering a beauty contest can lead to one of the funniest episodes yet, then ALF getting hiccups shouldn’t be written off immediately. And, hey, dude’s a space alien. Maybe your brother getting the hiccups wouldn’t be a story worth telling, but if you knew some guy from Jupiter who got them…well, that might get interesting. Maybe ALF gets hiccups for the first time ever. He doesn’t know what they are, so he panics while the family tries to assure him they’re not dangerous. That could be funny. Could be. Instead, the episode does something that has more or less the same comic potential: it gives ALF the  Melmacian  hiccups. Instead of ALF being the one experiencing this bizar...

Every so often, the internet reveals itself to be a pretty magical place. This installment of 20 Questions is a direct result of that magic. David Ury, star of “Peekaboo,” my favorite episode of Breaking Bad , found my writeup of the episode and got in touch. He was also kind enough to offer me a copy of his new book, Everybody Dies , which was co-written with his half-brother Ken Tanaka, and which we discuss below. David Ury may make a living playing some truly off-putting individuals, but I can’t imagine meeting a nicer guy. (I’d just like to meet him in a well-lit area. You can’t be too careful.) 1) You’ve definitely been cast as a lot of…creepy guys, for lack of a better term. Which character would you say was the creepiest? Boy, it’s hard to choose. I was a landlord in Community who hoarded women’s shoes. In Rizzoli and Isles I was a “death enthusiast” who went to crime scenes to photograph corpses. But maybe the creepiest was “Easter Joe” on Raising Hope …a g...

  ALF Reviews: “Oh, Pretty Woman” (season 2, episode 7) I’ll probably be accused of being too polite, but season two has been a big pile of fucking shit. It got off to a legitimately good start with “Working My Way Back to You,” but everything else has been an insult to my intelligence at best, and a staple through the scrotum at worst. Okay, granted, we’re not even a third of the way through the season, but the reason I’m not holding out hope is that the storylines have actually been decent…it’s the execution that’s so frustratingly flawed. Unlike season one, which almost never found a story worth telling, season two has already found several, and simply pissed them away. “Take a Look at Me Now” was about Mrs. Ochmonek discovering the central premise of the show: the fact than an alien lives among them. That’s a major occurrence, but all  ALF  could think to do was stick her on a talk-show and make avocado jokes. Then, last week, ALF used Halloween as an excuse to mingle...