Blog: The Sly Oyster

The New York Times examines the underlying trends of primetime's sharply declined television viewership . Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime-time programming is down this spring — chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults. In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent) in that 18-to-49 age category compared with the same period last year, CBS lost 239,000 (8 percent), ABC lost 681,000 (21 [...]

Last week, Vulture and Jon Defreest teamed up for a hilariously fake concept for a Schmidt workout DVD video called Cut the Schmidt . It was a classic Defreest - take something already funny in pop culture and reimagine it to be even more funny. Schmidt is easily the best character on Fox's New Girl , which is saying something because that sitcom is filled with great characters. Anyway, Max Greenfield, the actor who plays Schmidt, saw the fake workout DVD and went and made a real workout video. It's as ridiculous as you [...]

New York-based designer, author, and filmmaker Hillman Curtis passed away following a three year battle with colon cancer. He was only 51 and will be remembered as an innovator nonpareil. A good place to start with his creative output is with his series of interviews with cultural icons like Milton Glaser, Daniel Libeskind, Malcolm Gladwell, and Stefan Sagmeiste that has become known as The Artist Series . Luckily for us all, especially those only vaguely familiar with his work, Curtis created an autobiographical piece just a month before passing away.

From IRC Images : "The people of Mexico were lined up along the streets to see the Pope. This little guy thought otherwise." The photo was taken by Yuri Cortez of Getty Images way back in the end of March, and actually, the dog was trailing the Popemobile along the streets of Guanajuato, Mexico, according to the Washington Post .

Samuel L. Jackson plays an aging grifter trying to go on the straight-and-narrow, but who is inevitably pulled into one last job in David Weaver's con man thriller. Con man movies tend to go either way and even though you know there will be plenty of obvious twist and turns, the best ones always have a protagonist with one more trick up their sleeve where you know the trick is coming but you don't see it. Make no mistake - a great con man movie is a difficult cinematic trick to pull off. Here's hoping The [...]

Just like what the title says. Eight floppy drives playing the James Bond theme song. This was built for display at Purdue University for the Association of Electrical Technologists (AET) club during Technology Week. See Also: Double Oh | Amazon acquires rights to Ian Fleming's Bond novels

Speaking of The Hunger Games trilogy . Director Francis Lawrence has been tapped by Lionsgate to step in and direct the sequel to The Hunger Games in August . Gary Ross, the director of the first film, bowed out because Lionsgate wanted to turn this sequel around quickly and Jennifer Lawrence - Katniss Everdeen - wanted to do both this and the sequel to X-Men: First Class , which begins shooting in January. So Ross was out and Francis Lawrence is in. He's best known for directing ahem, Constantine, I [...]

This epic dubstep remix of "Dayman" from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia dropped back in January, but somehow I'm just seeing it for the first time. I don't like dubstep, but I love Dayman and this is as good a way as any to celebrate 420. I nearly lost it when Dennis pulled out the gun and said, "you know what it is bitch" and then the bass dropped. This is pretty fantastic effort from Joman .

The gang behind some of the best movie ending rewrites, How It Should Have Ended , have offered up their Hunger Games rewrite. The hilarious video makes the case that (a) Edward Cullen should have been killed at some point, (b) the movie needed more onscreen violence and blood splatter, and (c) unrelated to the video, I was confused as all hell after watching the movie then decided to reread Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Peeta gets a robotic leg? Why would the movie not include that?

We knew it was coming. Levon Helm , the drummer and vocalist behind The Band died Thursday afternoon at the age of 71 after a lengthy battle with cancer , the Times-Herald Record reports . He'll be missed, but his music will certainly live on. [via spinner ]

Load up Instapaper! Conor Friedersdorf just published his annual list of the best nonfiction writing from 2011. The list is so good, I'm not even sure where you should start, but you probably can't go wrong making an effort to work through all 101 pieces.

Magic Mike is director Steven Soderbegh's male-stripper comedy that, despite starring the underrated comedic chops and chiseled pecs of Channing Tatum, didn't seem all that interesting until Matthew McConaughey showed up playing a stripper version of Wooderson. Anyway, NPR's Monkeysee takes the cake : "At any rate, it's not long before we learn that Mike is not just a stripper. He has a dream. A dream! Of course he does. And what is it? He makes custom furniture. CUSTOM FURNITURE! Just like the guy in While You Were Sleeping, and the guy in Like Crazy, and [...]

1. Mondo is releasing a limited series of posters based on Marvel's The Avengers . Seven posters will be produced in all and two of them have gone on sale. Olly Moss did the BLACK WIDOW above and Tom Whalen did a cool job with HAWKEYE. My guess is there will be posters for Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor and then a team poster. Posters are $45 is you're lucky enough to get one. [via firstshowing ] 2. Watch a Donald Duck short as if it were made in the [...]

Lasse Spang Olsen and Jan Elhøj are given a house and strict instructions to do everything stupid and dangerous they can think of, like sticking a bottle of red wine in a microwave, for the Danish TV show, Dumt & Farligt. The video was shot with a Phantom Flex at 2500 frames per second and I could probably watch this all day. [via devour ]

Charles Pierce on Levon Helm : I wanted to write all of this before he passed. I wanted to thank him for the way he sang, and for the throb of his drums, and for the way he helped point the way home for all of us who thought we'd lost our country. He brought us back to what was really important: the fugitive grace of a young democracy, that America, for all its flaws and shortcomings, for all its loss of faith in itself and its stubborn self-delusions, was a country that was meant [...]

Showtime's Homeland was easily one of the best dramas last year. Compelling characters and gripping plots. It felt tight and lean in its storytelling, while never getting boring. Here's a promo for the new season, which sadly features no new footage. It's just a nice reminder that you have to wait until September to learn all the answers. [via vulture ]

As our friends at Uproxx say , there's never a bad time for a Parks and Recreation gag reel. This is basically the best thing that will happen to you today. Who doesn't need a good laugh to start their Thursday off? Also, it's a great reminder that one of the five best sitcoms on television returns to the airwaves tonight.

From a press release : "Amazon.com, Inc. and Ian Fleming Publications Ltd today announced that Amazon Publishing has acquired a ten-year license for North American rights to the entire list of James Bond books by Ian Fleming in print and ebook." Fleming's two works of non-fiction - a collection of travel writings called Thrilling Cities (1963) and an expose of the illegal precious stones trade entitled The Diamond Smugglers (1957) - are also included in the agreement. The question not answered by Amazon is whether or not people will be able to purchase the Bond books [...]

From Flavorwire : "Mitch Hurwitz told the crowd at an event in Las Vegas yesterday that the entire ten-episode season will premiere at the same time on Watch Instantly, in 2013, for our Bluth-bingeing pleasure. He also mentioned that he'd be happy to go back to Netflix for subsequent seasons." It'd be quite the treat to have new seasons of Arrested Development just drop onto Netflix all at once every year and better that it would be a genuine labor of love for the cast and crew, since most of them have plenty going on. Even [...]

56th Studio 's Caricature as furniture collection , is a line of whimsical chairs designed to look like members of The Simpsons family: Homer , Marge , Bart , and Lisa . Sadly, there's no Maggie chair. The collection doesn't start and stop with The Simpsons, however, they also have a Lady Gaga chair , a Harry Potter chair , a Hedwig chair , and two chairs - " Grace " and " Naomi " - that sadly I don't recognize. The Harry Potter chair might be my favorite of the bunch. [via [...]