Hilarious

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I don't know if anybody caught the new show "Andy Barker P.I." on Thursday, but if you missed it, I highly recommend that you find your way over to NBC.com and watch the first episode. In fact, if you want, you can watch the first six episodes right now for free at NBC.com or download them from iTunes.

Quite simply, the show is hilarious. Produced by Conan O'Brien and starring Andy Richter, a personal favorite of mine since his time on Conan and for his short-lived show, "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" (also hilarious), the show reminds me a little of Arrested Development (which means it probably won't last more than these six episodes). If you don't know the general plot, Richter plays Andy Barker, an accountant, who hangs out his shingle and rents an office that used to belong to a private eye. Desperate for money, Barker takes on an investigation when he is mistaken for the former tenet. The series then follows the weekly efforts of an accountant, doing his best Magnum impression while driving a late model family sedan and obeying all traffic laws. I highly recommend the first episode. I can't wait to watch the other five.

On a different note, regular readers might be interested in the profile of comedian Jim Gaffigan that appeared in the New York Times last week. My favorite graf:

Mr. Gaffigan’s big break came in 1999, when he was booked to perform a stand-up set on “Late Show With David Letterman” after five years of trying. As a fellow Indiana native (Mr. Gaffigan grew up in Chesterton, in the northwest corner of the state), he said that he had regarded merely shaking hands with Mr. Letterman as something akin to “meeting Mark Twain.” Among the jokes he told that night was this one: “I’m from Indiana. I know what you’re thinking. Indiana. Mafia.” From behind him, he could hear the host giggling. After Mr. Gaffigan was finished, Mr. Letterman rewarded him with an honor that to this day he bestows only rarely: he invited Mr. Gaffigan to sit down next to him at his desk.

The article also notes Gaffigan's regular appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the series of two-minute cartoons he presents called "Pale Force" in which animated versions of Gaffigan and O'Brien play superheroes who blind villains with their whiteness. (Check the cartoons out here) It is bizarre to say the least. Check it out.