A People's History of Moeller Television Festival XVI
How did the TV Festival go on Saturday? It's easier if I put it in the words of the participants. What follows is a collection of some of the comments that were hand-scribed onto index cards and submitted into the meticulously-decorated comment box (i.e. a re-purposed tissue box). It could have been during any one of the 14 TV show viewings that took place on Saturday while the no-talking rule was in strictest order. This is not all of the comments, but plenty of them to be sure. I present to you my favorites, that is, the ones that lack the context of the moment when they appear here three days after the fact but still hint at the brilliance of the authors. We commence. Next year in Jerusalem!!
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Don't forget to turn off cell phones and beepers.
Thanks especially to Tim for coming from Peoria and Jamie from Schaumburg, IL.
So this is what happens at your wing night Wednesdays
Saul Star is looking good for his age
I vote hot enough for television. Signed Groucho
What no love for Tootie?
This is why TV is better than the internet
How much did Blake Shelton pay for this product placement?
The recent focus of public discussion on the systemic barriers faced by literally all women is starting to feel like special pleading. Enough already #NotAllMen
G-C add 9 - A-D on a 12-string Martin = Gold!
Why is there a salon hair drying chair?
Susan Anton hot enough for network TV
I propose we bring back the sweater vest.
Did Aaron and Chris come out in formation?
Waiting is the hardest part, but every minute Moeller reads another card.
Tom Petty has a face like an eighteenth century paper boy
White tights are a daring fashion choice for giving birth
I think of this episode every time a "normal guy" tries to engage me in sports-type talk.
Why do British shows look different?
I like how the kissing scene wasn't just fan service, but was worked into the plot.
I can't see the TV. Signed Groucho
If you like Flight of the Concords, you will love Rattlesnake Master
Bowie rocks
Aaron Moeller, you have got it going on
In addition to our shout out to those who came the furthest, a shout out to the guest who supplied our charcuterie plate
Who's going to be the lighting director when Emily leaves?
All these Open Remote shows with foreign actors and accents is a real slap in the face to the Moellers and their usual Trump-like America First TV Festival
This is one weird Munsters episode
I have heard termites are high in protein and taste like mint
Gunther needs a website that translates Leonard Bernstein
Fact: In 1962 cars only drove in straight lines. No turns
Aardvark before Aaron. The great book tells us so. The dictionary.
But, I think you're nonchalant
Good thing it wasn't a Jamaican garden, it be nothing but weeds... ba dum bing!
This is what the first fests were like. All the VHS shows had commercials.
Next year's charcuterie special-- Chad's world famous hog face
Weird violin music equals student film
Brian Urlacher played middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Hopefully, he will be voted into the Hall of Fame next week.
Aubrey Plaza is the most nonchalant actress I've ever seen
Lying naked on concrete has got to be hard on the pecker
Watching Rachel Ray while doing heroin sounds pretty great
What's a juice cleanse? Also, from the last show, I forgot to ask, what's a text alert? Signed, Groucho
If you come to US Cellular Monday morning with your Moeller TV Festival program, get 30% off Nest home security camera.
Best bass line in a theme song
"Can you give me a break, Tom, for old time's sake?" "Afraid I can't do that, Sal."
Jack Soo's name is in all my crossword puzzles.
3rd best bass line in a tv show theme. Seinfeld gets second
Markie would give any man a post
Took us 16 years to get to Night Court
2018 to-do-- learn the Curb Your Enthusiasm tuba line
"Bad chicken-- mess you up"
I'm glad to see the Jewish culture has become the mainstream. Signed, Groucho
Moeller Television Festival XVI- The greetings
Another Moeller-fest has come and gone and I'll just say that we broke a few windows. It's traditional to post the two greetings that Aaron and I write for the festival's program. Here they are a day after the fact. If you couldn't make it, you were missed.
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A Western Union telegram
sent from Chris Moeller to his brother, Aaron, prior to the world's first
television festival in 2002:
YUR IDEA IS GENIUS
STOP SO IMPRESSED STOP WITH YUR BRILLIANCE REFLECTED IN COLLEGE TV
CRITICISM CLASS AND NATURAL FLAIR 4 PARTIES COMBINED WITH MY 2ND BANANA
ABILITIES AND SKILLS CHANGING REMOTE CONTROL BATTERIES THEY WILL NEVER FORGET
THIS EVENT STOP PLY THEM WITH ALCOHOL FOOD PENS BLANK COMMENT CARDS THEY
WONT WANT TO LEAVE STOP PLUS ONLY WEIRDOS USE THIS NEW INTERNET THING AND
PEOPLE STILL HAVE AMAZING ATTENTION SPANS STOP
An email sent from Chris
Moeller to his brother, Aaron, a few weeks ago:
Boy,
I was right all those years ago stop. your idea was definitely genius
stop. I think we have a great lineup this year comma, but remember to
keep reminding people I have a book coming out colon: a collection
of scripts for a Taxi remake set in an Uber garage stop. We've kept this
thing going from its earliest days where everything was on home videotape
comma, thru the era of DVDs comma, thru a year with every episode culled from 8
tracks comma, the year we acted out an entire Perfect Strangers episode comma,
parentheses (you were right you should have been Balky closed parentheses) thru
the streaming age and beyond stop. Let's keep plying them with alcohol and
other sedative laden foods comma, they won't want the great television to ever
stop stop.
Aaron Moeller
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Micah Finley has to take four different
metro Philadelphia buses to get to school each day. The 17-year-old travels
from the Glenwood neighborhood, an area on the city’s near north side
identifiable by the block upon block of boarded-up rowhouses and storefronts, to
the all-boys, college preparatory Haverford School, located 10 miles west of
the city center. He can usually get a ride home at night from the sister of one
of his classmates.
Micah’s mother Trudy works three jobs,
all three for little more than minimum wage. Since Micah’s father died in Vietnam
(in 2014), it’s just the two of them now inside this tiny flat on Percy Street.
So when Micah returns from Haverford each afternoon, he’s alone for several
hours . Back in Trudy’s day, Micah would have been called a latchkey kid, but
today, a lot of the traditional door locks have been replaced by those hotel
room swipe cards, or they can probably unlock the door with a Smartphone app or
some Star Wars shit like that. Often times there’s also a four-person film crew
at the house led by a Drexel University grad student with an NEA grant that has
shot over 250 hours of footage of Micah’s life.
Trudy’s meager income would not go far
in paying for Micah’s tuition at the Haverford School, an academic institution
that sees fit to list the entire list of its headmasters throughout history on
its Wikipedia page. Tuition and fees for a high school student runs annually to
more than $38,000. Instead, a wealthy elderly patron and Haverford alum pays
Micah’s way. Micah, you see, has a talent that Haverford desires—one that the world desires. Micah plays table tennis.
He plays it well. Very well. He’s
really quite good at it.
During the summer, on playgrounds throughout
Philadelphia’s so-called “badlands,” young boys with no other way off these drug-infested
streets play table tennis. There are no Asians around to voice an objection
when Micah and his friends refer to the game, in their politically-incorrect street
patois, as “ping pong.” Talent scouts from suburban private schools, and even
some colleges, stand along the chain link fences on the playground and watch
the paddlers compete in high-intensity pick-up table matches. These informal
public showcases draw large crowds of observers, and for the players, are often
as much about impressing the neighborhood girls—or the neighborhood boys, if
the player is homosexual, as about securing a future for themselves away from
this economically-impoverished community.
Micah doesn’t have time to do much else
besides play table tennis. Haverford provides him with a private tutor for his
studies, but his time at school is spent mostly inside one of the academy’s three gymnasiums devoted to table
tennis. The “Fords” of Haverford Prep are hoping to ride Micah’s Seemiller grip
and rapid reflexes to a win over their arch-rivals at Episcopal Academy this
spring, and ultimately, to the Pennsylvania State Table Tennis Championship at
Bethlehem. His time after school, likewise, is spent leaning over the lopsided tables
with the make-shift nets in these Glenwood parks. Here he polishes his game. At
home, he practices his backhand chop by throwing the salt and pepper shakers
into the air and striking them as hard as he can into the kitchen backsplash
tile. He masturbates every two hours to strengthen the tendons of his flexor
muscles. He dreams about his future whether he’s asleep or awake. He rehearses
his victory smile in the bathroom mirror, his arms outstretched in triumph.
The Summer Olympic Games of 2020
beckon just beyond that horizon.
Chris Moeller
Co-founder, Moeller Television Festival
Moeller Television Festival XVI-- The schedule
MTF 16 is in the can. No, it hasn't taken place yet. That will be this Saturday at noon at Aaron's home in Cedar Rapids (you're all invited-- email me). But copies of each of the TV shows have been found and you'll find the schedule revealed below. We had four episode suggestions from you and they're each included as well. Ten of the fourteen series have never been featured before. We're really proud of this one, and want to hear what you have to say about it. But now is not the time. Save it for the comment box.
THE SCHEDULE
"12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer" Inside Amy Schumer #23 COM 5/5/15
"No Baby, No Show" It's Garry Shandling's Show #18 SHO 11/6/87
"Are We Not Men?" The IT Crowd #14 British Channel 4 11/28/08 Submitted by Jenn Shaeffer and Chad Chopard
"Bowie" Flight of the Conchords #6 HBO 7/22/07 Submitted by Cory Grundmeyer
"How Smart Can You Get?" Car 54, Where Are You? #23 NBC 2/25/62
"The Butler Did It" Police Squad! In Color #3 ABC 3/18/82
"Hey, I'm Solving Here!" Angie Tribeca #26 TBS 5/15/17
"Package Thief" Easy #9 Netflix 12/1/17 Submitted by Jamie Marchiori
"Keys Open Doors" You're the Worst #3 FX 7/31/14 Submitted by Rob Semelroth
"Bail" Baskets #13 FX 2/2/17
"Rand Report" Barney Miller #49 ABC 1/20/77
"Fortune and Men's Weight" Cheers #39 NBC 2/2/84
"Another Day in the Life" Night Court #95 NBC 2/18/88
"Palestinian Chicken" Curb Your Enthusiasm #73 HBO 7/24/11
Hugh Wilson 1943-2018
Hugh Wilson died on Sunday, but word of his passing did not hit the web until today. That fact fits the man's outsider status throughout a long career working in Hollywood. He lived in Charlottesville, Virginia the last 26 years of his life, teaching screenwriting at the University of Virginia, even as he continued to be active writing and directing.
Wilson created a damned good TV show called
Frank's Place, starring Tim Reid, that lasted only the 1987-88 season but was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. It was the writer's follow-up to his creation of
WKRP in Cincinnati, which ran from 1978 to 1982, earned two Outstanding Comedy nominations, and is the greatest television show in history.
Here's what I wrote about it when I counted down the 50 greatest shows back in 2009.
Elements of Style
Ugh.
The status of journalism in this country.
First paragraph, in part: "In an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers on Thursday, President Trump described Haiti and African countries as 'shithole' countries."
Ok. Second paragraph lets us in finally on the source of the information. Kind of. "
Sources told Washington Post." Got it. Nobody goes on the record, but of course we're not going to let that slow us down. It's been a long time since we let something like that slow us down. Intelligence sources tell us Russian operatives interfered with our election. No names. No evidence yet presented and it's been a full year. Trust us.
Are you worried yet that the "shithole" statement is not true? Is it just me? Third paragraph: "The exchange was confirmed by NBC News, BuzzFeed, and CNN." Was it now? Did their reporters hear it? If they did, it's beyond curious that none of them would put their name on the story or rush to do it.
The answer is that they
didn't hear it and so they can't confirm it. The
anonymous reporting of the exchange was confirmed by NBC News, BuzzFeed, and CNN. The exchange was not actually confirmed because those news organizations are relying on an unnamed source that did the confirming.
And then of course the routine ends with every news outlet in the nation joining the herd and reporting that Trump has said this.
Well, his hacks had a chance later in the day to dispute that he said it, and didn't. That means he certainly did say it and they're worried somebody recorded it (although they've been known to dispute even things he said that were recorded and heard by everybody). But this is journalism sloppier than shit. It's not just me, right? "Sources" got us into Iraq, and lapdog news agencies help prop up the unaccountable intelligence wing of the government. Abandoning the pretense of impartiality, as most news outlets have now done, is not the same thing as abandoning the holy discipline of verification.
Trump's a menace. He respects no rules. But it doesn't mean you do the same in the fourth estate. Tighten up your game. The president is deeply unpopular, historically so, but his poll numbers are still running neck-and-neck with that of the national news media.
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Here's a tautly-written news story by a reporter right here in Iowa and worthy of a news outlet with a much larger circulation: A new series of lawsuits have speed cameras on the run.
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The Cardinals have a new 23-year-old statistical analyst in their baseball operations department. And she's
a lady.
