Arguably Kroll Show's most underrated sketch revolves around dueling pawn shops in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where the accents are sharp and the deals are dirty. In the latest sketch, Murph and Don team up to make some cash for Murph's forthcoming wedding to Teresa. But there are troubles in the Schuylkill River.
If you've ever wondered what separates New York's toughest accent (The Bronx) from its second-toughest (The Rockaways), how East Villagers talk differently from their counterparts on the West, or why Long Islanders sound so flabbergasted all the time, allow Fred Armisen and his considerable improv skills to demonstrate.
Welcome to another edition of America's Ugliest Accent, where we as a country gather together to determine which of us in this great nation of disgusting vocal squalor has the least listenable accent. Every day this week, Round One of the Tournament, we'll be presenting two face-offs between cities. You, humble reader, will decide a victor.
If you're from Philadelphia, your preferred non-Yuengling beverage is wooder. If you're from New York City, your greatest enemies are the bridge-and-tunnel crowd from Lawng Island. If you're from Los Angeles, you respond to people who hop on the 405 at rush hour with a pained "Whyy-ee?"
Comedy Central's criminally underrated Kroll Show devoted most of last night's episode to a reality show pawn-porn parody called Pawnsylvania. In it, Nick Kroll's Philadelphian character swapped pawn shops with Jon Daly's Pittsburgher and verbal hideousness ensued. These accents are so hard to nail (I was flummoxed when Toni Collette was praised for her Philly accent in The Sixth Sense, which was...not a Philly accent), and also hard to differentiate, though they are substantially distinct.
Yesterday, sulking fame heir Willow Smith performed her song "Summer Fling" on the first episode of the new Queen Latifah Show. If you saw the official video for this song that can't decide if it wants to be a ballad or an uptempo (not that it has to decide anything since it is millennial), you probably noticed that Smith breaks into a British accent for no good reason during the song's few spoken lines. She sounds extremely stupid, which I guess makes sense since she is 12. She did the same thing during her performance, but the accent was more pronounced and the lines were different. In the interview that followed the performance, Smith did not speak in a British accent, which also makes sense, since she isn't British.
Today, we are thinking about inconsistent regional accent use in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.
Among the two minutes of behind-the-scenes Mitt Romney footage that Gawker's Fox Mole released today is a brief moment in which, contemplating changing his tie, Mitt Romney jokes, "I'll take the pink one." Buzzfeed Politics posits that Mitt's pink tie moment constitutes a "gay guy impression." Does it?
Most of you know that the Chinese sure do talk funny. But just in case you don't, let's let powerful House Appropriations chair Rep. Hal Rogers explain it.
Last week, Jill Abramson became the first female ever to hold the top editor's job at the New York Times. She'll now be responsible for leading America's most important journalistic institution through a perilous and unsure time of media industry upheaval. So we must ask: what up with her accent?
