What would you say is the toughest sitcom to have an encyclopedic knowledge of? “The Simpsons” is likely the first show that came to mind, considering it’s been on for 23 seasons and will soon air its 500th episode. Maybe “Seinfeld” or “Friends,” too. But a dark horse – possibly one ridden from Heaven by Thomas Jefferson – candidate is “30 Rock.” Unlike “The Simpsons,” “30 Rock” rarely has a coherent plot; the show’s nothing more than a string of time-spanning jokes and pop culture references (everything from a porn parody of Amadeus called I’m-a-Do-Us to Liz getting mad at her mom for not marrying Buzz Aldrin because she could have been played by Laura Linney in HBO’s Moon Wives), with dialogue so rapid fire that you remember individual lines more than actual scenes – and that’s why it’s so great.

To celebrate the beginning of the show’s sixth season, which airs tomorrow on NBC at 8 p.m., here are the 15 Greatest “30 Rock” Pop Culture References. And if you’ve ever participated in a “30 Rock” Trivia Night: props.

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One of the nice parts about slow news days is that it frees us up to talk about some of the more offbeat, weird stuff on the periphery of the TV world. And nothing — NOTHING — is more weird and offbeat than the wonderfully insane videos that Taiwanese animators make about current events. I could watch them every day. So, when they put out a video recreating the Alec Baldwin airplane fiasco, I quickly put aside dumb stories about Rosie O’Donnell yelling at David Letterman and Hulk Hogan suing his wife for defamation and put this post together.

While the whole video is a treat, my favorite part is the depiction of Baldwin deactivating his Twitter account. He rides down a city street standing atop a tank and wearing a military helmet and a sash that says “MAYOR,” runs over numerous members of the press, and shoots a billboard displaying the controversial tweet with the tank’s gun. If this was how you actually deactivated your Twitter account, I swear to God I would do it ten times a day. Maybe more. There’s no way to tell how mad I’d go with mayoral tank power. I might just start deactivating other people’s accounts, too. People would beg me for leniency and then I’d find out their Twitter bio said something moronic like “I tell it like it is n if u don’t like thats UR PROBLEM LOL” and I would just explode their sh-t all over the sidewalk. It would be chaos. None of you would be safe.

In summation, I would like one (1) tank for Christmas. Thank you.

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What I imagine it looked like aboard the airplane.

I once ran into/met/became best friends with Alec Baldwin while in Central Park. My friend and I were walking around playing a game where we had to name famous actors without a signature role (there were no winners in said game), and he said, “Alec Baldwin.” (This was before “30 Rock” came out, and besides, I disagreed with him anyways, countering back with Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross.)

ANYWAYS. Not long after he called out Baldwin, I saw a suave older gentleman walking towards us with a gorgeous, younger woman at his side. I asked, “Is that…?” He turned around and said, “Yup.” As Alec Baldwin and his Babe walked by, either my friend or I said to him, “Hello,” and Baldwin replied back with, “Top o’ the morning.” IT WASN’T EVEN THE MORNING.

The point of this story: Alec Baldwin got kicked off an American Airlines flight yesterday, because he was playing Words with Friends, and deactivated his Twitter account.

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I’ve been re-watching “Arrested Development” recently, and one of GOB’s lines stuck with me as I sat through the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” so that I could write this recap: “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Why? Why do I do this? Every week it’s more than an hour of my time so that I can watch one funny sketch and maybe a digital short I enjoy, and then I tell everyone, “Hey, it’s not so bad. This is what it always is.”

Anyway, I’ve got video of most of the show on the following pages, and if you don’t want to watch the video (or can’t because it’s Hulu and you’re not in America), here’s the fast version:

• Pro: the writers didn’t take the easy short cut of re-using popular characters or established sketches.
• Con: they did, however, go for cheap laughs (drinking urine, food dumped on someone’s head) in sketches that ran too long.

In general, the show was middling to bad, with a few high notes — pretty much the same as ever. And it looks like I’ll keep pushing this rock up the mountain every week for another year. Yay!

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Back in June, former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Ana Gasteyer let it slip that Ben & Jerry’s was making a Schweddy Balls ice cream flavor based on the well-known “SNL” sketch she starred in with Molly Shannon and Alec Baldwin. Although Ben & Jerry’s played coy at the time, it’s now official: you too can lick Schweddy Balls. The description on the front of the container says:

Vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum & loaded with fudge covered rum & malt balls.

That’s pretty close to what I was expecting. My money was on “…covered with a big load of vanilla cake batter,” but I’ll settle with being happy that there’s no hair in the recipe.

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