Michael Stipe as Sludgesicle-peddling Captain Scrummy.

Like a defiant cannonball splash disturbing the tranquility of an adult swim, the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete lives on. Over three seasons between 1993 and 1996, the show followed the adventures of two brothers each named Pete Wrigley, their parents, their friends, and the entire population of the fictitious suburban town known as Wellsville.

Barely noticed at the time, the cult of Pete & Pete has slowly gained traction in the intervening years. In tribute to that fact, the original cast reunited in Los Angeles last November for the first time since 1996. It's New York's turn on Friday, when the Bowery Ballroom hosts two shows titled "An Evening With the Cast and Crew of The Adventures of Pete & Pete."

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via MTV

On the L train! So wacky!

I Just Want My Pants Back protagonist Jason Strider—a receptionist and aspiring music journalist who appears to live alone in a one-bedroom apartment despite claiming to have just $100 to his name—doesn't remember what sex tastes like because it's been six whole weeks since his last encounter. "This little dry spell could easily turn into the drought of the decade," he says through a smoky exhale in the bathroom stall of a Brooklyn bar, where he and his impossibly caustic friend Tina drink "to freedom" and only ever say the opposite of what they actually mean. With this new series, MTV has finally made the full transition from producing music programming to producing music blog programming, paying homage to the concept of music with a show about people who claim to listen to it.

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This morning, Soul Train creator and host Don Cornelius was found dead from an apparent suicide at age 75, and the outpouring of grief and nostalgia was probably best summed up by the Roots' ?uestlove, whose Brooklyn Bowl party Bowl Train is an homage to the show. He wrote passionately about how the weekly airings of Soul Train influenced his development both as a budding musician and as an African-American youth coming of age in the '70s, and he noted that he carries video of old Soul Train episodes around (they're on hard drives now)—he also noted that his passion extended to him evangelizing the show to musicians he worked with, like D'Angelo (right around the time that they started working on Voodoo) and Erykah Badu. In that spirit, here are seven standout clips culled from the extensive YouTube archive of clips from the show (chosen with the assistance of Michaelangelo Matos, who also linked a few choice cuts of Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye appearing on the show in his tribute); this is barely a fraction of a fraction of what Soul Train brought into American living rooms during its TV run, so feel free to link to your own favorites in the comments section.

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This past weekend at New York Comic-Con, Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge presented the inaugural public screening of his classic animation's rebooted first episode. Chris Linn, MTV Executive Vice President of MTV Production, introduced the pilot. Luke Wilson, Judge's friend who starred in the director's feature-film cult spoof Idiocracy, "moderated" a post-viewing panel discussion. This meant the affable Wilson asked his pal a few questions Wikipedia could've answered ("You were an engineer, right?") and then subjected himself, along with Judge, to an audience-commandeered Q&A, one of those rare moments when a big-shot film actor sits unarmed without a mediating publicist. (Consequently, Wilson not only allowed an excitable young woman to pet his head, but also got asked if he or his brother Owen got "better trim," a question he politely rebuffed.)

But Wilson was just a high-wattage prop ("I don't even know what I'm doing here," he admitted). The real stars were those walking teen-boy devil-horns from Highland, Texas, who, as you've surely heard, will be insulting MTV's own reality programming along with music videos. Perhaps unsurprisingly—given the low-hanging fruit of Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant—the 2011 pilot is hilarious. Here's what else we learned from the panel.

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News on a new sitcom just purchased by ABC: "The as-yet-untitled project would revolve around a 'super cool' 1990s all-girl band who, after 20 years of bad blood, tries to reunite though they're no longer girls and no longer cool." You may not be surprised to find out that people have opinions on this show! Some are calling for a pre-emptive moratorium on jokes about "mom jeans," while others are a bit more craven in their desires for how this deal should shake out. But a friend of a friend on Facebook made an offhand comment that resulted in me realizing that, clearly, the band being profiled should not be made up of "four Gwen Stefani characters" (shudder) but should be at least based on Cake Like, the twisted downtown squall-pop act from that storied decade that had as its members Kerri Kenney-Silver (of The State, Viva Variety, Reno 911!, and other comedic efforts), Nina Hellman, and Jodi Seifert. Because not only would the songs be pretty good, there would be a chance for cameos by the likes of John Zorn (signed 'em to Avant, released their first LP), Ken Marino (formerly of The State), and the 7-Eleven that's coming to the Bowery soon (watch the hilarity ensue!). Kenney-Silver's comic timing alone would make the thing transcend your usual half-hour sitcom fare, or at least blunt the "sexist ideals thriving amidst a laugh track" knife a bit. More clips below, because I am dead serious about this.

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Who knew Ice-T was a role model? Ice Loves Coco, E!'s new reality show about the rapper/actor and his model/fashion designer wife, makes them look like such a perfect couple that you almost expect them to turn into anime characters and see little cartoon hearts popping above their heads as they kiss. Even more surprisingly, it shows Ice—you know, "Cop Killer" Ice—as a benevolent influence on those around him. He tells a friend that he shouldn't lie to the woman he's dating, helps his wife calm down at a photo shoot by expressing his confidence in her, and, in the most recent episode, rescues his ill-trained bulldog Spartacus from bombing at his own photo shoot. (The shoot is for a dog calendar; Spartacus is wearing a devil's cape and red horns; and, if anything, the scene is somehow even more adorable than this description might suggest.)

How did we get here? Ice's whole career has cast him as a kind of cultural antihero, from Original Gangster to "Cop Killer" and beyond. Sure, he's had the role on Law and Order: SVU, but that was an acting gig, and there's no reason he couldn't still be real underneath the detective costume. Ice Loves Coco is Ice-T IRL, though, and it turns out he's aged into basically the dad from That '70s Show—gruff but lovable, a softy underneath his hard exterior. Nor is he alone, what with fellow OGs Ice Cube and Snoop displaying their own variations of this persona. It's not that it's soft, but it's not really hard, either. It's more like a fundamental grumpiness, a sense of perpetual but mild annoyance at the world in general. And in Ice's case, it's crossed the line into outright cuddliness. Does this mean rap is softening, too?

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via Rickey

Already, The Voice is just about over. Tomorrow, the field of four contestants gets wiped away and we get a winner. This show could've kept going for another three months or so if it followed a less fucked-up elimination schedule, but maybe NBC didn't realize they had an actual hit on their hands. This two-hour show was a weird one, with all the contestants teaming with their coaches for duets and also singing original songs—and original songs on televised singing competitions are never good. Structurally, the show remains a mess, and I hope some of the problems will be fixed next season. But all four remaining contestants are people who I could imagine having careers in music, and that's not something I can say about any single season of American Idol. The people behind The Voice did a pretty amazing job picking talent, if nothing else.

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via Rickey

One thing about The Voice that bugs me: Way too many people getting sent home way too quickly. It's hard to develop that much of a connection to the contestants when half of them get axed once a week. So on this results show, people were, once again, just dropping like flies. Would it kill this show to stretch things out a little longer? It's not like NBC has shit else going on.

Another thing that bugs me: How do people get sent home again? The results came from some combination of coaches' scores and audience votes, but Carson Daly didn't exactly do a bang-up job explaining how it would work, or which was weighted more. At this point, it's been firmly established that the coaches love everyone, so why not leave it up to audience votes entirely? Is that such an awful idea?

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And it's the one that's not-at-all-loosely based on Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark! Yes, on tomorrow night's episode (airing at 9 p.m. on USA) the downtown legend plays a Columbia professor and old friend of Vincent D'Onofrio's Detective Bobby Goren who teaches him (and us!) about the myth of Icarus, and all its failed-ambition metaphors. (Also, hang on—what happened to Hudson University? Did its endowment go poof when the L&O mothership died?) [Previously]

via Rickey

Hey, The Voice! It's still pretty good! And right now, there's pretty much nothing else on TV except for Game of Thrones!

On last night's episode, Carson Daly, you'll be happy to learn, moved on from the detestable suit-with-sneakers look he was rocking last week. Unfortunately, he swapped that thing out for a leather jacket over a shirt and tie. Will somebody teach this man how to dress like an adult? If he's going to step into the singing-show-hosting game, he has to look the part. I'm harping on this because it just demonstrates how woefully underqualified Carson is for a job that, as it turns out, must be pretty hard. Ryan Seacrest only makes it look easy; all the little things that the guy does improve his show vastly. Carson has been blessed with a relatively entertaining show; he's just not living up to it. Cee Lo could've fixed all this just by lending Carson his incredibly sparkly jacket, but I don't blame Cee Lo for wanting to hold onto that thing.

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