Alex Reid

Four Eyed Monster is an indie film based on the courtship between Susan Buice and Arin Crumley. When they first met, shy and tired of the inanities of dating, they decided to only communicate through art.

I don’t play Warcraft, but the SouthPark boys do.

Rogers Cable Canada ranked number nine in a new worldwide list by Phishtank for hosting phishing web sites.

Shameful.

I began watching Extras yesterday, the HBO/BBC show featuring Ricky Gervais (the boss in the UK original The Office) as Andy Millman, a hapless film extra trying desperately to make it big in the movies. Despite his better efforts, his best advisers (a friend and his agent) are complete idiots who unwittingly screw up his life one episode at a time.

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(season one spoiler below)

By second two, after some help from Patrick Stewart, Andy lands a comedy series on BBC. Slowly, the show spins out of his control and the show becomes like Married with Children complete with catchphrases and tasteless insinuations. The show is a roaring success with the common people, but the critics and his peers hate it. With every torturing slagging review Andy suffers, the ratings continue to rise. And did I mention his agent is an idiot.

Cue awkward survival.
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Don’t think this show is like The Office, it’s more like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like how Larry David gets into trouble because of abrasiveness and dishonesty, Andy gets himself into awful social situations because of his exaggeration of how successful or popular he is which is often misinterpreted and magnified by the people closest to him. And every episode features a real film star acting as an exaggerated parody of themselves, inducing more of the awkwardness, very much like Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The Office was good in a way awkward can be, but Extras is much better in a way only intellectual awkwardness can be. Here’s a great stand up routine by Gervais to help sway you away from thinking about The Office.