Merry Christmas, friends!

Merry Christmas, friends

I hope everyone out there is having a great Christmas. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, then I hope you’re having a great Thursday.

Last night’s stream was great…I’m going to post some wrap-up thoughts on it within the next few days most likely, but I want to thank everyone who joined the chat, everyone who viewed the stream embedded here (which seemed to be a surprisingly high number…I’ll discuss that later, though), and, especially, everybody who gave to The Trevor Project.

Having it on Christmas Eve prevented a lot of folks from making it out, though. My bad, and admittedly poor planning. However, the fundraising page will be open until Sunday, the 28th, so here’s a little extra:

If you donate any amount at all before Sunday, I’ll send you a download link for the entire Xmas stream. All five hours of Christmas specials, music, magic, and more.

Just donate and then contact me at this address and I’ll shoot you the link. No minimum or maximum donation limits, and whatever you give, it’s for a good cause.

If you donate anonymously, be sure to attach the receipt (or take a screenshot of the thank-you page) so that I know who you are.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for helping to make this a great year, and thanks for being the best audience I’ve ever had.

Go Now! The 2nd Annual Noiseless Chatter Xmas Bash!! Live Stream

We are live! At 8 Eastern, anyway. I’m posting this a bit early to give folks the chance to tune in, settle down, and log in to streamup if they wish. The stream, as you see, is embedded here, and if that’s all you want to see…GOOD FOR YOU. But if you’d like to join the chat, click here and sign up for an account! (It’s quick and free…sorry, no way around that!)

Let’s party!!

Please Donate to The Trevor Project: https://www.classy.org/xmasbash
Join the chat: https://streamup.com/xmasbash

We will be going for FIVE FULL HOURS. That’s 1am Eastern!

Throughout the night you will see…
Seven terrible Christmas specials spanning decades of terrible Christmas specials
Vintage toy commercials interspersed throughout
Holiday oddities that exist…for some reason
Two original songs by Andy Starkey
One original song by Adam Lore
A debut episode of PortsCenter
A debut episode of No Date Gamers
A debut episode of The Big Bible Blastoff
Holiday magic by Wes Iseli
…and a hell of a lot more.

We worked very hard and lost a lot of sleep to bring you the show, so I hope you enjoy, and I hope you find it in your heart to donate to The Trevor Project, and help LGBTQ youth who suffer from depression and other mental health issues. It’s a great cause. For as little or as much as you’d like to give, you’ll be doing a great thing.

The 2nd Annual Noiseless Chatter Xmas Bash!!

Live Stream Wednesday; but why?

Noiseless Chatter Xmas Party, 2013

As a reminder, tune in right here on Wednesday, December 24, at 8 p.m. Eastern time. That’s Christmas Eve, and I’ll be hosting the Second Annual Noiseless Chatter Xmas Bash. Just visit this page and join us.

I’m still working on getting everything set up. It’s a lot of work, so I wanted to take a moment to explain why I’m doing this, and why I appreciate everyone who participates.

Many of you were probably not around this time last year. I’ve gained a lot of momentum with this site in the past 12 months, and I couldn’t be happier about that. If that’s the case for you, what you missed was a night of terrible Christmas specials streamed live, with a chat room, and some host segments recorded by me.

There wasn’t much to it. Everything I streamed came right from my Hulu account. Difficulties took the form of everything from echoing sound to the entire stream being taken down before its proper conclusion. And the host segments were off the cuff and probably boring as all fuck.

So why am I doing it again?

Because something crazy happened last year: people actually showed up.

See, I didn’t invest much time or effort in the stream (at least not in comparison to this year’s) because I had no clue if anyone would bother tuning in. Worst case scenario is that I and a few friends would watch some shitty TV together, so it’s not like there was much at stake, but as the night went on and the number of viewers hit the hundreds and stayed there…I was genuinely amazed.

The chat room became the unexpected highlight of the stream. Not only were people there…funny people were there. They kept the momentum going while I struggled to get my technical issues sorted out. They provided funnier commentary on the host segments than anything I was doing in the host segments. (My particular favorite observation came early, the suggestion that I looked and sounded like I was running an NPR pledge drive. It became my favorite running joke of the night…if only because it relieved me of the responsibility of creating minutes-long stretches of painful anticomedy.)

In short, it was a bigger success than I expected. Another stream the following year was a foregone conclusion.

But then…well…we had this year.

And this year, I think it’s safe to say, fucking sucked.

I’m not kidding. This has been a terrible year on a global scale. Whether it’s innocent people getting their personal information and / or private photographs leaked, artists being openly threatened by their audiences with murder and rape, beloved funnymen killing themselves and having years of alleged sexual assault uncovered, shootings by the week, fatal reminders that racism is not only still a very serious issue but is somehow getting worse…

Those are just the, for lack of a better term, highlights. Part of the reason I haven’t been as active in writing for this site over the course of the past year is…well, Jesus Christ, just read that last paragraph again. What kind of world is this?

I don’t mean to sound as though I’m depressed. It’s more correct to say I’m baffled. Concerned. Uncertain.

My year — and I feel almost guilty for admitting this — has been pretty great by contrast. I found an excellent job, was a very busy and productive writer, pitched a few book ideas, collected and published two volumes of The Lost Worlds of Power, got my own place (again!), and entered into a relationship with a beautiful, brainy, supportive woman that I care about deeply. Again, those are the highlights. And because I’m an endlessly neurotic mess, my first thought when realizing how good I’ve had it is that so many others are having it much worse.

And I have evidence of this. After Robin Williams took his own life, I opened the floor to others who suffered from depression. The response was heartbreaking.

Here were people I didn’t know, opening up not only to a stranger (me) but to everybody who would ever see what they wrote. They were taking their deepest, most painful feelings and sharing them, openly.

I know that isn’t an easy thing to do. I was touched. I run some dumbass website that reviews ALF for Christ’s sake. Maybe now and then I say something worth reading. Maybe not. But if the small number of visitors / readers / passers-by had so much to share along those lines, it’s staggering to imagine how much people are going through (silently, internally) on a larger scale.

Offline, as a result, I tossed around the idea of a Mental Health Scholarship. I ran through the logistics with some friends and professionals. What I wanted to do was put some money aside (my savings), and offer it to somebody so that they could afford to pay for a therapist, or medication, that they otherwise couldn’t.

It meant a lot to me. I wanted to do this more than anything, and I spent months trying to make it work. Ultimately, however, there were too many obstacles. The one that bothered me most was that people would have to apply for this, and then while I might have been helping someone, there would have a lot of other someones who wouldn’t receive the scholarship. This would have been one more thing they needed that they weren’t getting, and I’d have felt terribly responsible for that.

Then there was the fact that someone could falsely apply for and receive the scholarship, then get the money and spend it on video games or candy or god knows what. Those were the two most troublesome concerns to me, but they were by no means the only ones.

One of my friends and supporters — Emily Suess, whom I’ve never met, but whom I value deeply, and whom I am richer for knowing — gave me the cleanest piece of advice I had during that whole time: don’t worry about it. You’re not a charity. Find an actual charity that does what you’d like to do, and give the money to them.

Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to help you see how simple a solution really is.

And I did exactly that. I knew I wanted to benefit a mental health charity — for personal reasons — and The Trevor Project was exactly what I was looking for.

Or, no. It wasn’t. It was a lot better, because it’s not a one-off scholarship program; it’s ongoing help, assistance, and counseling for LGBTQ youths that suffer from depression and other mental health issues. Within a few days I was on the phone with one of their outreach coordinators, and we spoke about how we could make this work (officially) as part of this year’s Xmas stream. They’d handle all the logistics of actually collecting and handling the donations, and they were grateful for the offer. (I was twice as grateful, I’m sure, in return.)

I still intend to donate that money. (I won’t mention the amount, because it’s embarrassingly paltry.) Only by attaching this to the stream, I’m increasing the amount of that donation, hopefully significantly. I’m taking some small piece of good that I could have done, and turning it into something larger, to benefit more people, to make a bigger impact. And I’m allowing others to join in that gesture of kindness, to help make this world — this dangerous, frightening, cruel world — more liveable for those who might otherwise find themselves unhappily at the end.

The spirit of the stream, I hope, will remain the same. Yes, it’s attached to a charity, and yes, I encourage you to donate if you can afford to do so. Beyond that?

It’s still a collection of terrible Christmas specials. It’s still a drunk and rowdy chatroom. It’s still hosted by a guy who’s much funnier in print than he is in person.

But last year, the holiday miracle was that we got together at all. And it was something I valued (and continue to value) very much.

This year we can pull off a much larger miracle, and help a lot of people who won’t be having as merry a Christmas, by doing the exact same thing.

That is why I’m handling the second stream the way that I am. I feel obligated to make that known, and I hope you join in the fun.

Donations can be made anonymously, and anyone who chooses not to donate is exactly as welcome as anyone who does. It’s not why the stream is happening; the stream itself was more or less a given after how much fun we had last year. But as long as the stream is happening, we might as well turn it into something really beautiful.

Long story short: Thank you.

ALF Reviews: Character Spotlight – Brian Tanner

At the end of season one, I decided to do a character spotlight on Kate Tanner. It was an extremely easy decision, as Kate was the only Tanner with any character to spotlight. At the end of season two, the decision to spotlight Brian is just as easy, but for the opposite reason: he’s the only one still without character.

I alluded to this — vaguely — in my overall review of season two a couple of weeks ago. The three best episodes were all built around exploring one of the Tanners:

“Working My Way Back to You” – Kate
“Oh, Pretty Woman” – Lynn
“Night Train” – Willie

Notably absent is a similar episode about Brian. And I don’t mean absent from my list of favorites; I mean that one doesn’t actually exist.

The show’s relationship with Brian is an odd one. I knew that, but just how odd it was didn’t register with me until I was looking for screengrabs to use in this article. Unlike the other Tanners, Brian almost never gets a shot of his own. He’s always in frame with somebody else.

ALF, "It Isn't Easy...Bein' Green"

It’s an odd pattern, but, unfortunately for Benji Gregory, it makes sense. Brian doesn’t get the camera’s attention the way the rest of the cast does because he doesn’t do anything. Even when he’s sharing a frame it’s not because he’s toadying up like Smithers, tagging along like Butters, or scheming like Iago; he’s just there.

Brian went from being the potential heart of the show (see E.T. for the obvious template) to being a piece of furniture. Actually, that’s unfair; the furniture is featured far more prominently than he is.

And it’s fascinating to me for so, so many reasons.

It’s impossible for me to say why Brian became such a worthless (literally…in the sense that he has no value) character, but some thoughts do occur. On this blog a commenter whose name I can’t remember posited that they hired Benji Gregory because he was a cute kid…finding out too late that he was a lousy actor and were stuck with him.

I certainly can’t disprove that, and it makes enough sense, but that’s the truly weird part: they weren’t stuck with him. Whatever the reason Brian wasn’t working, they didn’t actually have to keep him around.

ALF, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"

Television is littered with the transparent carcasses of abandoned characters. While soap operas in particular see characters come and go (and die and revive) all the time, sitcoms are by no means exempt from the practice. Chuck Cunningham, Richie’s older brother in Happy Days, is probably the most famous example. For a while he’s positioned as a main character. For a much longer while, he never existed. My own generation had a similar vanishing-sibling moment with Judy Winslow disappearing from Family Matters.

In both of those cases, it happened early on. These were characters who were built into the foundation of the show, but then, once the machine was running, they proved to be vestigial. The audience didn’t care about them, the stories didn’t require them, and the writers couldn’t think of anything to do with them. It can seem a little silly (and, if you’re in a particularly playful mood, sinister) that the members of someone’s immediate family can cease to be overnight and nobody asks questions, but if that one flash of logical impossibility occurs for the sake of making the show better as a whole, it’s easily worth the tradeoff.

Other times it happens later. The Brady Bunch infamously introduced Cousin Oliver to the show because the kids were running out of cuteness…but wisely abandoned him when the audience responded with a not-very-Brady “come the fuck on.” Then, down the line, the otherwise cynical Married…with Children aped the Cousin Oliver debacle while simultaneously failing to subvert it. Seven, like Oliver before him, was dropped with the sort of swiftness that resembles silent apology.

So Brian being tucked in at the end of season one and having what’s now a spare room claimed by ALF in season two isn’t out of bounds for the show. If anything, being erased from history would ironically be the most memorable thing Brian ever did.

ALF, "Keepin' the Faith"

And of course, you don’t have to make a character disappear in order to say goodbye to him. Great shows like The Office (both versions) and Breaking Bad crafted in-continuity farewells to characters for various reasons, from the death of an actor to a character having exhausted his or her utility.

And then we have examples like Gilligan’s Island and Red Dwarf, who recasted the same character, so that you might tune in next week to see a character you knew being played by an actor you didn’t.

I’m stepping back from ALF, I admit, but I’m doing so in order to make a point: the show is not stuck with Brian.

What’s frustrating is that it acts as though it is.

There are plenty of perfectly acceptable ways of shedding a character that isn’t working. I’ve listed some of them above, and I’m sure I’m missing one or two less common methods. If you begin a show expecting that a certain character will have a purpose that is proven not to exist as the show evolves, you can correct for that.

The really funny thing, though, is that it’s not as though Brian serves no purpose; it’s that the show was at first completely uninterested in exploring it, and later rendered it redundant by introducing Jake.

But I’ll get to that in a moment.

ALF, "Movin' Out"

ALF, essentially, crippled itself right out of the gate by making the show not about the family, and not even about the title character, but about the zingers that the title character delivered to the family.

By now, thanks to the episodes listed above, we can rattle off a few character traits for 3/4 of the Tanners. Whether literally any of them will carry over into season three is anybody’s guess, but the fact that it took so long to catch even fleeting glimpses of character shows us that the writers — or, perhaps, just Paul Fusco — weren’t much interested in developing them.

What they were interested in was the stream of hilarious gobbledygook that could come out of ALF.

Which, oddly, causes the show to play like some kind of vanity piece for a stand-up comedian. You know the kind of show I mean; one that takes the comedian’s stage persona, craps it onto a sound stage, and figures that whatever schtick made him famous in the first place will carry the production on its own. Minimal effort, at best, is invested in translating it to a new medium.

It’s actually difficult for me to come up with a recognizable example of this. I’m sure you can name plenty of shows starring ex-standups, but the ones we remember, such as Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show, or Roseanne, are remembered because they emphatically did not fall into that trap.

They built worlds that were populated with interesting (and rich) characters that had lives and objectives of their own. Perhaps most importantly, the “star” of each show almost never got the biggest laugh of the episode, or even most of the laughs. Other stand-up transplant shows — and there have been literal hundreds — took away the microphone and replaced it with some paper-thin supporting characters to deliver his monologues to, and that was that.

Do you remember The Jeff Foxworthy Show? That’s why.

ALF, "Border Song"

ALF was not a stand-up comedian. Shit, ALF doesn’t even exist. And yet the show is constructed as though he does, and was. People will tune in every week, the writing staff believes, because they already love ALF. They’re familiar with his schtick, so that’s all we’ll give him.

Consequently, every episode is an excuse to get the alien tapdancing on stage, and if that means nobody else gets to do jack shit, then so be it.

In fairness, I certainly didn’t remember anything about the Tanners. That almost proves the worth of that mindset; if ALF is the only one anyone gives a shit about, why bother with the rest of these bozos? Of course, the reason nobody gave a shit about the rest of these bozos is that the writing staff never gave us a reason. Our appreciation for — and enjoyment of — any given character is not innate; it’s something an audience develops because a show earns it.

ALF, surprising no-one, has that backward.

The Tanners are only sounding boards for ALF’s non-existent stand up comedy hits. If ALF wants to make jokes about somebody being nerdy, he’s got Willie. If ALF wants to make jokes about someone being bitchy, he’s got Kate. If ALF wants to make jokes about sexually assaulting underaged girls, he’s got Lynn.

This is also why — in spite of us being reminded frequently that it’s crucial to keep ALF secret — he keeps meeting people.

Like, all the fuckin’ time.

He needs to keep meeting them, otherwise they’d have no business in this show. Again, it’s not a show about ALF…it’s a show about the things ALF says to people, and the self-congratulatory pre-recorded laughter of dead idiots that love him for it.

ALF, "Baby, You Can Drive My Car"

So, back to Brian. It’s not difficult to see why having a young boy around would provide comic fodder for ALF to play off of. And the show certainly realizes that, because as soon as it gave up on Brian it brought in another little boy to replace him.

Brian’s tragedy isn’t that he doesn’t fit into the show. Brian’s tragedy is that the show refuses to either do anything with him or write him out. And so he’s stuck in this bizarre, almost painful purgatory, where we have to watch him dress in silly costumes, sit quietly in the corner, and do nothing else.

His character arc is roughly that of a soggy paper towel’s. He ends season two no better off than he opened season one, and with one exception — which I’ll get to in a moment — nobody on the writing staff has even tried to give him something to do.

The boy-and-his-alien trope should be right at home here. Indeed, it’s the very first thing that comes to mind with a concept like ALF‘s. I’d even be very tempted to assume that’s why Brian was created to begin with.

Yet that suspicion falls at the first hurdle, as there are no boy/alien storylines to bear it out.

A few token gestures toward bonding (Brian laughs at ALF’s jokes, sits next to him while he watches Gilligan’s Island, and is ostensibly sad when he almost leaves) are all we get. As far as seeing them grow into any kind of relationship — at all — we get nothing. It’s not a boy and his alien…it’s a boy, and it’s an alien.

Judging by what we see rather than what we’re told we should be seeing, neither cares if the other lives or dies.

ALF, "It Isn't Easy...Bein' Green"

This was almost made up for toward the end of season one, back in “Aspara Gonna Hate” or whatever that shitty episode was called. For the first time, Brian had a plot, and steps — it seemed — were being made to flesh him out. We paid a visit to his school, gave him an antagonist, and had ALF spin some bullshit about a magical tooth he’d never mentioned before and hasn’t mentioned since.

It seemed, briefly, like Brian was being woven back into the show that nearly forgot he existed.

I know “Pennsylvania 6-5000” must come to mind as an earlier example for some of you, but as much as that might sound like a Brian episode, the kid hardly did anything. He took the fall for ALF’s terroristic threats to national security, and was commended for threatening to blow up the Commander in Chief, but even there, as everywhere, he was just set dressing.

Things happened around him. Not to or because of him.

So the Asparagus Follies was it. The high point for this character was dancing around and singing some awful song about veggies that make your pee smell.

It was somehow all downhill from there.

ALF, "Help Me, Rhonda"

And, frankly, that’s also when Brian’s mercy killing should have come.

We ended the first season with one lone misfire for the character. The ideas for season two are being spitballed. None of them involve Brian. Several of them involve his replacement, Jake. This is the time to ship him off to Aunt Bonnie, to whom we will never refer again.

But that doesn’t happen. We still have Brian here, in the house, in every episode. This implies that they might have a reason for him being there, but fifty episodes into this shit and it’s clear that they really don’t.

Twice in season two it seems like we just might get some last minute attempts to do something with the kid, but each time it’s just a tease.

First, it’s “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog,” which opens on Brian enamored with a stray dog, and then spends irrelevant twenty minutes reminding us that Anne Ramsey was not very attractive. Then there’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” in which Brian is tormented by a bully and then promptly disappears from his own narrative. Even the conclusion to this plot is delivered by Lynn, while Brian is literally nowhere to be found.

If they don’t want the kid around, why oh why are they keeping the kid around?

ALF, "Something's Wrong With Me"

At this point, it’s becoming irritating. There are problems with Jake as a character, but he’s superior to Brian in what’s probably the most important way: if he has nothing to do with the story, he doesn’t need to make an appearance.

That means we aren’t subjected to Jake dressing up like a bellhop or impersonating Ted Koppel. He’s not great by any means, but at least he can disappear when the story doesn’t need him.

It honestly seems cruel to keep Brian around while Jake takes away his role and macks on his sister, but the writers may not even realize that. It’s Brian’s portion of the opening credits, remember, that features an embarrassing shot of the set’s lighting rig; and I think it was Sarah Portland here who observed that this was emblematic of how little they cared about the kid as a whole.

Seeing him cursed to amble through this world he no longer occupies, I can’t disagree. It says a lot when the most memorable thing about him this season was the abject horror I felt when I realized they had a puppet blindly pitching glass at him from across the room.

It’s probably also worth mentioning how almost every time we see this kid, he looks fucking miserable.

ALF, "Isn't it Romantic?"

Benji Gregory’s not a good enough actor to be doing that deliberately, as some sort of improvised character tic. He just sincerely hates being a part of ALF.

This show often reminds me of Jim Henson’s various productions. Specifically, it reminds me just how much better they are. In this case, I remember reading a long time ago about children visiting the sets on shooting days. In the case of Sesame Street this may have been because they were actually going to be featured in a segment, but with The Muppet Show it was just a treat for the kids.

Apparently between takes the Muppeteers would often pick up a Muppet and interact one on one with the young visitors. The interesting thing was that the kids would always focus on the Muppet, and speak to it as though it was alive. The fact that Jim Henson, Richard Hunt, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz, or whomever else was clearly visible, lips moving, hand(s) operating the Muppet meant nothing; the experience of interacting with this character was magical, and the kids adored it.

Looking at Benji Gregory’s face in any given episode, I can only imagine that the experience of getting to interact with ALF was leagues removed from doing so with Kermit, The Count, Cookie Monster, or Gonzo.

It’s sad. Brian Tanner is living every little boy’s dream — in a situational sense — but he’s stuck with writers who aren’t capable of bringing that out…or even giving him any identifiable, let alone memorable, traits.

I’m pretty sure that, depending on the week, I’ve argued that the heart of this show should either be the relationship between ALF and Willie or between ALF and Brian. And, honestly, I can’t decide which it should be. But the fact that they haven’t even tried to explore the myriad possibilities of the latter pairing is a glaring, almost obnoxious waste of potential.

Brian should be captivated by this creature. He should be fawning over him. ALF, in return, should be bonding with him, seeing a new world through fresh eyes.

Either ALF or Brian could serve as the sidekick, depending upon the plot. ALF has more experience and knowledge than Brian does, but Brian’s been on Earth much longer and has a better understanding of its customs and mores.

ALF should be dazzling Brian, regaling him with stories (both real and fabricated) of his life on another fucking planet.

And yet, Brian doesn’t care. He takes no more interest than anybody else does, because ALF isn’t an alien. He’s a hacky standup comic that’s been given a platform upon which to parade his ego.

There’s a long list of crimes of which ALF is guilty, but failing to either take advantage of this ready-made character or to put it out of its misery is one of the worst. It’s beyond incompetent; it’s narratively unethical.

ALF, "Strangers in the Night"

We’ll see what season three (and…uh…season four…) have to say, but right now I feel confident writing Brian off. If they didn’t find a reason for him to exist in the first 50 episodes, I can’t imagine they’ll make up for it in the next 50.

And that’s sad. ALF is a show that needs more characters. More actual characters, that is; not just people who show up and recite some shitty dialogue.

For them to put a bullet in this kid before even trying to do anything with him…well, that’s just cruel.

Xmas Stream Update: SILENT NIGHT (BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN QUIET)

Santa Shush
Well hello! Season’s greetings from me, the guy who isn’t dead, I promise!

It’s Christmastime, which, as always, is a busy time for me. I didn’t expect it to take a toll on the site here, but a quick glance at my folder of half-finished drafts (including the season two bonus stuff for ALF) makes it pretty clear to me that it has.

I don’t intend to stop posting until the end of the year, but updates are coming slowly. Work’s been busy, I’ve got a few other creative irons in the fire that I can’t say much about yet, and…y’know…all that DAMNED CHRISTMAS STUFF TO DO. There’s one thing in particular that I really want to get written and posted because it was requested on my Facebook page by a few people.

(Speaking of which, are you following the Noiseless Chatter Facebook page? If you don’t…do!)

But the one thing I’ve been working on most is…drumroll please…

The 2nd Annual Noiseless Chatter Xmas Stream!

Yeah, a four-hour programming block isn’t as easy as it sounds to pull together. Last year (for those of you who weren’t there) I basically streamed the entire thing from what Hulu had available, which conveniently narrowed down the selection for me, but which also posed some technical (and legal!) difficulties.

I hope to have those addressed this year. At the very least, be sure to keep an eye on this page. The link to the live stream will be posted here at 8pm Eastern time on December 24. If for any reason the stream goes down, come back here…there will be a backup. And that will hopefully solve that.

As I put the pieces together for this stream (I’m doing that right now, actually, typing while a few things render) I honestly believe this will be the best batch of specials in the history of mankind. In fact, culling them down to a mere four hours means I’ll have a lot of stuff left over for next year.

As far as the stream itself goes, I don’t know if I’ll be appearing in person. But I do know that there will be at least a few surprises for you in store, by way of original material. What will it be? Stay tuned…you’ll know in ten days!

The stream will kick off with “ALF’s Special Christmas,” and believe me, it only gets crazier from there. That’s the only special I’ve seen so far…I look forward to experiencing them all for the first time along with you. But the snatches I’ve seen have me very excited.

Don’t forget to RSVP to the event. It’s not mandatory, but it’ll give you a little reminder that it’s time to watch some really shitty television with the funniest people on the internet.

Any questions or concerns, let me know. And be sure to mark your calendars. It’ll be a great night for a great cause.