Tag Archives: 30 Rock

Feb 11

“30 Rock” (minor spoiler)

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The joke between Alec Baldwin and Jon Bon Jovi tonight on “30 Rock” was totally ripped off from a real-life story told frequently by Don Rickles. Here it is in a 2007 Aaron Barnhart column — scroll down.

Rickles was trying to impress a woman and secretly asked his friend Frank Sinatra to come over and speak to his date, to impress her. But when Sinatra came over, Rickles startled Sinatra by snapping at him, “Frank — can’t you see I’m with a girl here?” which was, in its own way, even more impressive.

The “30 Rock” version had Jack Donaghy (Baldwin) playing Rickles’ part in that scene and Jon Bon Jovi (as himself) playing the Sinatra part.

Nov 13

30 Rock

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I was on the phone with my TiVo-owning brother, and while he doesn’t have to worry about when television shows normally start or end, he completely understood when I ended our conversation to watch “30 Rock.”

All of the promos were about guest star Jennifer Aniston. But — without giving too much away — I was more thrilled by the subplot, with guest appearances from, er, several other people. Like Aniston, these other people were cast members on a beloved NBC Thursday night sitcom. Unlike “Friends,” this was a sitcom I actually watched. But that’s all I’m going to say, in case you, like my brother, have TiVoed the episode.

Oct 01

Embed problem

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If your feed reader tried to direct you to a non-existent post titled “Conan and Julia (and Kenneth the Page),” my apologies. I found a really funny clip and tried to embed it, and the embed code was giving me trouble — one version worked on IE but not on other browsers, the other version worked on everything but IE.

Anyway, the clip — which I saw embedded at another blog — was of a scripted comedy bit between Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Conan O’Brien when Julia was a guest on Conan’s show, I assume last night. When Tina Fey won an Emmy for best actress in a comedy, she saluted Julia — one of the other nominees — in her acceptance speech, saying that she sometimes uses Julia as a source of inspiration. Conan and Julia joked about the injustice of Julia losing the Emmy in this fashion, and then Conan tells Julia that “30 Rock” is being taped on another floor there at Rockefeller Center and that Tina Fey has the Emmy in her dressing room.

Julia decides to steal the Emmy. I won’t give the rest of the sketch away; you can find it at Conan’s web site. If they fix the embed code, I may embed it here later.

UPDATE: I now have a link on my Facebook profile.