The Rundown: Brand takes over Fox, Foo’s shake earth

From time to time news items fall through the cracks. It’s up to The Rundown to pick them up, dust them off, and present them to you.

Russell Brand and Fox are sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g! The wiry Brit comic and Get Him to the Greek star has signed on for a late-night, unscripted series with FX and an animated sitcom that may be loosely based on his life during his whoring, roaring 20s according to Deadline. The late-night series will reportedly be Brand, in front of a live audience, doing… things. Brand had this to say about this next Murdoch-heavy phase in his career.

“I am so excited I’m on the point of climax, in fact I will put the “O” into FX, which spells FOX, which is actually the channel’s real name… That’s the only thing that worries me about all this to be honest. At least I’ll be able to have a Christmas drink with Bill O’Reilly.”

I didn’t really find that funny, maybe you did.

Sad news to report, Joe Simon, who co-created Captain America with Jack Kirby, has passed away, he was 98. Simon also created Boy Commandos and was one of the first to popularize horror comics.

In other Marvel news, the “House of Ideas” announced that they will release a 4 issue prelude to the theatrical release of, The Avengers. The first two issues of the mini-series will be scripted by Chris Yost and Eric Pearson.

Before we get to see Joss Whedon’s take on The Avengers, comic movie fans will have to sit through Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the sorta sequel to Mark Steven Johnson’s unfortunate stab at the saga of Johnny Blaze. This one comes from “extreme” filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor the “auteurs” who gave the Crank series to the world. Here’s the second trailer, absent fire piss, but now with more Elba.

You still hanging in there? Alright, onto reality TV and a rock band almost causing an earthquake…

This next story makes me uncomfortable. Reality TV is a tumor and apparently its fiscally seductive properties have hooked Howard Stern, the smut radio king who will be replacing Piers Morgan as a judge on America’s Got Talent. Naturally the PTC (Perpetual Tightass Club?) released a statement of fury and fire and condemnation.

“The once-proud broadcast network has lost its way and has made it clear it holds no concern whatsoever for children and families,”

You know, Stern can be offensive, I guess (I really haven’t listened to him since I was a kid, and doesn’t that say things about the me that is I), but he isn’t going to be led to his chair by a bevy of topless servants. This is a network job, and he’ll either behave or he won’t and NBC will can him and not air his lewd behavior. Either way, this is about attention for the struggling peaCOCK network, and really, the PTC is just playing their role.

Onto music and geological news: According to Geonet, which is really my geology blog of choice, the Foo Fighters rocked Auckland so hard that they damn near broke the thing. According to the site (which I found via THR) “the cause of the shaking is most likely the weight of the 50,000 fans dancing, as 50,000 fans is equal to around 5,000 tonnes of mass moving (or moshing) on the ground for the duration of the concert. This set up a nice harmonic vibration in the ground which was recorded in our nearby borehole seismometers.”

I’ve seen the Foos live, so I can attest, if you walk out anything less than deaf and mute you aren’t doing it right. It’s also worth noting that Grohl demands nothing less of his audience…

That is all the words you get for this very special long hair edition of The Rundown. Go away now, but come back next time.

Written by Jason Tabrys (@jtabrys)

The former editor-in-chief, Jason still reappears in the rafters of our fair site from time to time but he now spends his days leaping from one place to another, trying to put right what once went wrong. You can still find his words across the toxic constellation that is the… More »