Tonight marked the US premiere of An Idiot Abroad, the travel show featuring The Great Orange-Headed One, Karl Pilkington. The series already aired in the U.K. and I was filled with jealous rage when I saw all the tweets and blog posts about how funny it was… but alas, it wasn’t available in the U.S.. I was reaching the point of ordering a PAL DVD player on Amazon just to be able to watch the series in its entirety. Thankfully, Science Channel solved my problems and announced that they would air the show right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. The first episode, which featured Karl visiting China, aired just a few hours ago. I watched, tweeted like a mad man and wrote up a review of the show within a couple hours of the original air time.

Here’s a little slice of my review:

Before Ricky Gervais was pissing people off at the Golden Globes or writing the original version of The Office with friend and writing partner Stephen Merchant, he was marveling at the brain of Karl Pilkington, a radio producer assigned to the duo for their program. In fact, anyone who has listened to the widely popular Ricky Gervais Show podcasts or watched The Ricky Gervais Show on HBO is familiar with the musings of this “little, round-headed, bald, missing link, chimp-like buffoon”, as Gervais has so sweetly labeled him.

In the new series An Idiot Abroad, airing here in the U.S. on Science Channel, Gervais and Merchant send Pilkington on a trip around the globe to see various wonders of the world. Pilkington, who barely adjusts to the social protocol of his own culture, tries to wrap his little round head around foreign food, art and customs…..

You can read the whole thing on Trashwire.com.

To my pure delight, Science Channel actually tweeted out a link to my review to all their followers. They were all over Twitter during the show, posting replies and RTs to all the Pilkie fans out there. They did a kick ass job with social media and I couldn’t be happier that they distributed the link to Trashwire.

Check out a clip from An Idiot Abroad after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

Read an article today saying Japanese scientists intend to clone a mammoth by 2015 in a procedure that completely disregards the valuable lessons we learned from Jurassic Park.

According to the article, Dr. Akira Iritani of Kyoto University had this to say:

“The success rate in the cloning of cattle was poor until recently but now stands at about 30 per cent,” he said. “I think we have a reasonable chance of success and a healthy mammoth could be born in four or five years.”

I was left wondering if Karl Pilkington had heard the news, especially knowing how he reacted to a similar story years ago…

There’s a fire in the hotel… and it’s not just a metaphor for what’s going on in Karl’s bedroom.

As a huge fan of Karl Pilkington, I’ve practically memorized his book Happyslapped by a Jellyfish. Imagine my surprise when I saw this video of another creature that fascinates Pilkington stealing a guy’s camera. I can only imagine what he’d have to say about this!

View a quick video about Karl Pilkington’s book after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »