The oil boom in North Dakota's oil patch is huge. The buzz about the millions of dollars just waiting to be made doing the hardest form of work can make your mind race. But seeing this intensity, action and drama captured on film in the form of an extended teaser for what could very well be the first reality show ever set in North Dakota is almost exhilarating.
The real alluring part of the potential series is that the series focuses on five sisters -- all natives of the area surrounding Williston, North Dakota -- as they earn their livings in an oil boom town. From a welder to a septic truck driver to a bartender these women put a different face on the explosive growth taking place in North Dakota's oil patch. No gritty drama focused solely on guys on the oil rigs -- that instead is replaced with the every day goings ons of these women who struggle each day to deal with the influx of a mainly male group of workers who have left everything behind for the chance at a better life.
I'm curious which cable channel will land "Boomtown Girls" because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when a cable outlet premieres a show focused on the North Dakota oil boom in the Bakken oil patch.
I hate the Kardashians. They are annoying. Their voices and mannerisms grind on my every nerve. They are the picture of everything that is wrong with television in AMerica. However, they are also stupid famous because of being on TV. It's a vicious circle. But because of their fame, they also find themselves thrown into scandals. I like scandals because a good scandal is better than anything that can be dreamed up by a "reality" television producer.
Unfortunately, the scandal surrounding the supposed doubt about just who Khloe Kardashian's daddy is has me bored. Yeah, she's totally amazonian compared to her two smaller and annoying sisters featured on the endless string of shows on E! entertainment television. But she's really not much taller than her mother. You can't judge their heredity based on looks because, hell, they are the privileged few living in Beverly Hills or whatever exclusive suburb of Los Angeles and I highly doubt that there's anyone in that family who hasn't had some sort of plastic surgery done. It's painfully obvious that their step-dad, Bruce Jenner, had his done in the back of a windowless pedophile van.
So maybe Khloe has had her lips plumped with some ass far. Maybe her two prominent sisters have had their noses slimmed and re-shaped. Or maybe, and this is a big stretch, she just looks different from her siblings. I've seen how different people in large families can look and it's questionable if they all shared the same dad. So while a good scandal is interesting, this one pertaining to who Khloe Kardashian's real father is has no legs. Khloe Kardashian's father is -- wait for it -- most likely who she has always believed her father was, Robert Kardashian. But until the E! television channel vanishes as a whole our sad little country will be plagued with garbage about the paternity of celebrities.
Yippee. Tonight is the debut of some singing show called The X Factor. I hear that it features some British guy named SImon Cowell. He apparently used to be at the front of some other singing show entitled American Idol. Apparently both of these singing shows are on some American television network named FOX and center around people's dreams coming true or being crushed when it comes to their vocal prowess.
Alright. I can't actually pretend not to know what either if these shows are but I can honestly say I only watched the very first season of American Idol which produced the only true pop star from the series (Kelly Clarkson) but The X Factor is different. Simon Cowell will let his dickish self shine through. He is free to be an utter prick to kids as young as twelve. He can sport his black tees from Baby Gap in front of the same fucking mindless drones who watch the incessant drivel that is American Idol except now people can get their weekly dose of public belittling of people who have no business singing for about nine straight months.
In short, I know that tens of millions of brain dead Americans will watch the lowest common denominator programming which The X Factor certainly is. It's a cruel program but it's also somewhat real. Sure, the producers are scouring the lines of potential contestants looking for those who are sure to embarrass themselves. They are desperate to find the person who is so oblivious to their own lack of talent that they will eagerly belt out two or three horrendously off-key lines to an already horrid pop song that Simon Cowell will be chomping at the bit to belittle this contestant who needs to be belittled but should probably be belittled in a more private setting.
Hey, I have no problem with cruel. I'm a rather cruel person but The X Factor is a semi-scripted attempt at reality competition television. If they have to show this drivel, show it uncut. That would be true reality. Show it without the producers coaching potential contestants. Show it unedited and unfiltered. It will always be edited in a way that's flattering to the judges -- particularly Simon Cowell who overflows with pretentiousness -- but I hope and pray that Americans will return to scripted television and this year is the year to do just that.
NBC actually has a solid hour of comedy tonight with Up All Night and Free Agents starting off the night and ABC has an hour both of The Middle and Modern Family tonight so ditch the shitty "reality" singing contests and appreciate the fact that creative and sharp writing teamed with legitimate actors is a superior alternative to a TV landscape littered with mindless drones looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.
Tonight was the premiere episode of yet another reality/documentary series on cable channel TLC (remember when it used to be "The Learning Channel"?) entitled Extreme Couponing. The premise is as simple as it sounds -- a camera crew follows a couple coupon clipping psychos around as they prefer for one mammoth grocery shopping trip. The preparation -- usually scouring seemingly endless stacks of coupons from Sunday newspapers, itemizing their shopping list complete with quantities of each item and even going as far as one woman's compulsion leading her to have a spreadsheet detailing each and every item her favorite grocery store stocks and where the items are located within the store is showcased.
All of this borderline insane preparation leads to the big trip. The two women I saw showcased tonight ended up filling a minimum of four shopping carts each. The quantities of items purchased were either totally impressive of straight up insane. Dozens of packages of cold cuts, dozens of boxes of cereal and even 60-plus bottles of mustard.
Yeah, 60 bottles of mustard. That one sort of jumped off the screen at me. Unless you are literally eating a bowl of mustard for dessert with a meal once a week -- as a family -- there is no conceivable way that a family of five would use that much mustard in a lifetime. During the 8 or so warm months in Minnesota, I tend to grill 4-5 meals a week which means brats, hamburgers or weiners for approximately a third of those meals. Even with that kind of frequency I have only used two bottles of mustard in the past six years. That's where the hoarding aspect of Extreme Couponing began to become obvious to me.
These women put 6-10 hours into just the planning of their grocery shopping trips. Then there's the time spent actually gathering the massive quantities of each item into their train of grocery carts. But the big sticking point for me, personally, is the fact that the checkout process takes between one and two hours. If I did this at the local Cub Foods I'd probably have my tires slashed because the thousands of people waiting to check out would have one less checkout to go through -- for an hour or two. Once they return home, the hoarding aspect again becomes obvious -- they have entire rooms where they store their hauls. Having 2-plus dozen bottles of laundry detergent stockpiled seems ridiculous. Buying 50 or so cups of yogurt at a time is almost wasteful and to the woman who purchased 26 packages of cold cuts -- donate a few of those to your local food shelf.
I applaud anyone who can manage to save 90-99% on their food costs -- and to me doing that once a year would likely give me a raging hard-on because I hate spending money -- but this goes beyond extreme couponing and extreme savings, it comes down to buying massive quantities to prove something to yourself and even show off to those around you. It makes me a little angry to think that even some of the food they purchase may go to waste but this is America, the land of excess, and if a family of five feels the need to come home with five carts of groceries for six bucks, so be it because getting a rain check for another 20 cups of yogurt is definitely a first world problem.
I won't say that I've watched the entire season of "Project Runway" on Lifetime because I haven't. I have, however, watched the final fifteen minutes or so of each episode because it always amazes me who gets "aufed" by Heidi Klum and her band of fashionistas.
Chris Straub, or Shakopee as I call him (because he's from Shakopee, MN - represent!) did amazingly well early in the competition. He actually won the first competition and I was excited to see that someone from Minnesota - especially the suburbs - was recognized for their creative skills. Then, as the series went on, Straub seemed to be strung along. His work wasn't terrible but the judges consistently billed it as such but kept him in the competition. It seemed almost mean for Heidi Klum and her band of fashion divas to keep Shakopee's Chris Straub on the show as they kept berating his designs. He was a near-permanent fixture in the show's bottom two or three designers.
I hoped that Straub was being strung along for a good reason. Hopefully they realized that he had immense potential. I rarely saw huge negatives in Straub's designs but maybe I'm just a homer who hates seeing the home team lose.
Then last night, on the final episode before "Project Runway's" big Bryant Park Fashion Week finale, Chris Straub was eliminated. The judges sent two designers packing leaving three young women to duke it out in New York City on next week's episode. So for many months now Shakopee's home town deisgner has been working away in the basement of his townhome - which us graphic designers in my office have determined the general location of - creating new fashion trends on his own. The difference is that he now has a significant amount of national television exposure to help his career. Something tells me that he'll be alright.
If you are fond of Minnesotans and all things Minnesota, check out MinnPics to tour Minnesota via photographs.
I don't see the appeal of the genre of "reality" show that litters TLC. You know, the genre of enormous families who have their own TV show just because they have a huge family. The Duggar family, whose patriarch is appropriately named Jim Bob, are the face of this eerie new "reality" genre.
The family, who currently has 18 children, announced today that they are again expecting - bringing the tally to a whopping 19 children. That is quite the feat for a woman who is a mere 42 years old. It is also disturbing as hell. Hey, America is a free country and if you want to pop out enough kids to field two entire baseball teams, go for it. And if you want to finally profit from your freakishly large family, so be it.
My problem lies in how we, as Americans, gobble this shit up. How does something like this qualify as being worthy of a few minutes of time on NBC's Today Show? Are we so vapid and mindless that we are enthralled by this? Does it qualify as news? Who watches this show on TLC?
I've never met anyone in my admittedly small world who has ever watched this show (outside of myself). Is it a compelling program or is it just a camera crew following the circus-sized family and interviewing them in typical "reality" show fashion?
For the time being, MinnPics has taken a break from Minnesota and focuses instead on Los Angeles and the inferno that rages just outside the city. Photos of Minnesota return later today. Check it all out!
The American workplace is a clusterfuck. There, I said it. Over the years it moved from casual conversations about last night's episode of Knot's Landing around the water cooler to people endlessly shopping on ebay. Then it moved on to people dicking around on their MySpace page (which is now officially the Detroit of the internet). Those same people have now all moved to Facebook where they post results to mind-numbingly stupid quizzes about what kind of fruit they are and are always buying me a drink. Sorry bub, but I can't drink my 24 inch Dell LCD monitor.
The cool kids drop tweets all day long. You can tell the ones who spend too much time tweeting because their Twitter page consists of updates about what they are eating, have eaten or plan to eat. If you're gonna tweet, make it something at least mildly interesting or so strange that I'm compelled to know more. (My latest Facebook status update stated that I "feel like a cowboy" - I'll let you figure that one out.) My Twitter account is for business but even that is kept at least moderately interesting (my grandma, if she was still around, would probably be sobbing into her Pringles can of knitting needles with Reader's Digest filing chapter 11 today).
It's all good in moderation. I can even tolerate discussions about the performances on last night's Dancing with the Stars (that's a hot topic - I can't wait to see Kelly Osbourne's pasty skin shoved into a dancing outfit). But my biggest pet peeve is drama. Especially if it interferes with your job and, in turn, fucks up mine. Keep that shit at home and I don't care if I put my foot down and, in a roundabout way, make you feel bad for dropping the ball - especially when you straight-up say "I have a lot of drama in my life right now, not that you care". Bingo. I don't care. We are at work, not your latest counseling session. Now get off the phone with me and go make me some money. Daddy needs a new entertainment center.
MinnPics is far more controlled and free of celebrity gossip, rants and drama. Check out the killer pics!
Cable television is easy to figure out from a programming aspect. Find a hit show, produce endless spinoffs. Bam!
It's the formula for success. Particularly at the former music channels like VH-1 and MTV. Laguna Beach begat The Hills. Hogan knows Best gave us Brooke Knows Best. Rock of Love gave us Daisy of Love (and everyone on both shows various STDs). Flavor Flav's dating shows gave us Charm School. See? It's all about the spin-off.
But what about some of the older shows? I'm thinking of Pimp My Ride from earlier this decade on MTV. It would have been a piece of cake to spin off. The possibilities of items which could be pimped are endless.
Particularly this one.
Dammit MTV, if you don't run with this one and whatever you interpret it to mean you are bigger fools than I had ever guessed.
Hint: Pimp My Wife could be about blinging out your tired, old wife or it coud be about turning your wife in to a streetwalking prostitute turning tricks for a pimp who ain't afraid to slap a ho.
Now that I've covered how to televise pimping of wives, check out the killer photos at MinnPics. If you don't I'll come up with more bad TV show ideas.
For an entire week, cable channel TLC has kept tens of millions of Americans on the edge of their collective seats by constantly airing this teaser about tonight's Jon and Kate Plus Eight announcement:
What could it be? They've made decisions to bring peace to their lives. But what are those decisions?
We all know that the real decision is that Jon Gosselin finally grew some balls and decided to divorce his gold-digging, child-exploiting wife in favor of a twenty-something teacher. Well, actually Kate decided to divorce him because she is the one who makes every decision in this off-kilter family but it was fun to speculate that Jon decided on the divorce.
Even more fun is to speculate on some far-flung ideas about what this huge announcement and decision could be. Maybe Kate Gosselin has decided to join the church of Scientology. Maybe she has opted for sexual reassignment surgery because after being the one with the theoretical balls in the relationship, she wanted some actual balls. Or maybe Kate has decided that Jon is going to get neutered - he already is to a certain degree but she wants to make it official. Or maybe, and this is a huge maybe, Kate Gosselin has decided to announce that she is a robot from the planet Bitch.
On a cheerier note, check out MinnPics. It's a photo project of sorts chronicling all things Minnesota.
Are Jon and Kate Gosselin (of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus Eight) getting divorced? Are they together? Or is this whole circus surrounding them a huge, elaborate, sprawling promotional stunt?
The timing of Jon Gosselin's supposed cheating surfacing is rather convenient. The rather forced drama surrounding the premiere episode (last night) seemed to be beyond contrived. All of the controversy surrounding the family of 10 seems a bit too convenient to me. I don't know about the few people reading this but I am sick of seeing them. That damn Gosselin family is everywhere. They are plastered across the Discovery Television Channels on cable, salacious headlines regarding Kate's past, her attitude, her behavior, Jon's behavior, his past, their tumultuous marriage, separation and now their supposed divorce are on the cover of every celebrity-obsessed waste of paper at every damn checkout stand in America. They need to go away. But they won't.
The Gosselin family is a product of their own making. A mom who saw a way to fund her life, sold the soul of her children to a television channel and is at their mercy and she loves it. Oh, so what if it ruins the lives of everyone who is a part of it outside of her? I find her over-the-top behavior nauseating and if the whole thing is a publicity stunt coordinated by some faceless person behind tshe show, kudos to them for basically bringing the entire country to a screeching halt over the aupposed antics of a couple of non-celebrities from Pissant-Nowhere, Pennsylvania and actually making casual fans of the show turn in to rabid, frothing jackals who are starting flame wars and opposing blogs online.
If TLC pulled the plug on this show tomorrow, America would forget about the fmae whore known as Kate Gosselin and they'd all slip in to obscurity by summer's end - and I'd be happier for it happening. They are a product of manufactured fame and with the youngest six kids going off to school in the fall (they turned five in last night's premiere) that fame is about to end. Hopefully TLC has someone with half of a brain running things and realizes that filming a show that revolves around the fabulous and exciting adventures of a brood of pre-schoolers will lose something when they have homework to do and begin to become actual people who are less and less influenced by their power-hungry mommy.
They are essentially singing their swan song for the next couple months and if a divorce is actually in the works for Jon and Kate Gosselin, her desire for more fame will ultimately be their own undoing.
MinnPics isn't about fame and glory. It's about quality photographs from across Minnesota. Click and see what's new today.
It's a well-kept secret that I write both a celebrity gossip blog and a TV blog for my employer so it's often hard to truly express myself within the language limitations placed on me. That's why I've become increasingly random here but the one thing I am intensely focused on is Jon & Kate Plus Eight on TLC. That show is truly shit. Kate Gosselin basically has neutered her husband and if he is tip-toeing through the tulips with another woman, kudos to him because the dude's wife if a self-centered, celebrity-obsessed bitch who only cares about her appearance and sees her kids (but only the youngest six) as dollar signs. If you want to see how truly crazy it is that this family has a television show because - gasp - they're a unique family - check out "Kate Gosselin's" blog at TLC.com for two reasons. First off, I sincerely doubt that she actually sits down at a computer and types that drivel that seems to be written by one of the show's pee-ons or a fifth grader with a severe learning disability. The second reason is that I've begun commenting there (under the obvious name "Sornie") to see how many comments of mine the producers will actually post as I get increasingly over-the-top in my congratulating of this God-like woman.
There's actually a third reason too. They moderate the fuck out of the comments. So much so that an unfettered blog, Gosselins Without Pity, has popped up so people can freely voice themselves over the fake TLC blog posts where only positivity is allowed in the comments.
But back to the shrew known as Kate Gosselin. It's widely known (now) that she began plotting and scheming on how to turn a buck after she insisted on fertility treatments for her second pregnancy. She saw, from day one, sextuplets as tiny cash machines. Dress them all alike and the money will pour in. And thanks to our braindead society willing to gobble up even the lowest shit, because it's neatly packaged, she has won. But I think the relative collapse over the past month of her perfect little fairytale life of having a bunch of nannies, nurses, aides and staff around to essentially raise your little troop of hellions will finally bring to an end her reign of terror. Maybe this will be the end of America making somebody out of nobody. Maybe it's finally the damn end of the bullshit we, as a society, gobble up because we're too fucking lazy to read a book, magazine, listen to some music, go for a walk or watch PBS (which had a killer two hour Nova on Tuesday night about Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design") because all we want to do after our mundane jobs is to shut our brains off.
Well, I can dream.
If you want to stimulate your brain, check out the photos at MinnPics.
I don't care who will win American Idol. There, that's out of the way. In fact, I don't even know the names of one single contestant on this season's floundering show. More perplexing to me than why people watch these kids sing only to have a British dick in a tight shirt tear them down and leave them just short of tears. What makes me most curious is why it will take 2 hours and 7 minutes tonight to unveil the "winner" of this sham of a contest. And on the anger side, a TV network (FOX) who bases their entire operation around one franchise series is not a network. Really, they juggle their entire schedule to fit in four hours of this manufactured drama each week at the beginning of the season.
Now before you get all preachy and say that this show makes dreams come true, let's see just how many legitimate stars this crapfest has actually produced. The first season (which I actually watched) made Kelly Clarkson a household name. Beyond her actual career, only Carrie Underwood has actually attained some level of success and time will tell if she can follow up her initial success or if she fades into obscurity like Fantasia Barrino, Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks. Jordin Sparks and David Cook's true fate remains to be seen as both have done something but are definitely not breakout stars because one song does not a star make.
So, tonight's eighth season finale will crown yet another teen whose dreams of stardom are tied to a heavily leveraged recording deal in which Simon Cowell's record label essentially owns their soul and will do little to promote their efforts beyond an initial single which will receive boatloads of Top 40 radio airplay between now and the end of the year until being discarded as another has been.
Why do people seek the approval of the angriest, meanest, strictest, lowest lifeforms? That's the question I kept asking myself as I accidentally watched Hell's Kitchen on FOX. These supposedly skilled chefs feel the need to further themselves via a rather staged contest as they struggle with their obvious daddy issues and seek endless approval from Chef Gordon Ramsay who has serious rage issues and whose antics and attitude I seriously doubt would be tolerated in any workplace.
If the chefs in this competition really wish to further their careers, a better solution would be to hone your skills and advance yourself based on your work, not by seeking the approval of one very bitter man. Sadly, the semi-staged contest is a staple of "reality" television and "reality" television is becoming the norm on television these days as the once-mighty networks semeingly trade places with cable outlets and become the home of lowest common denominator.
All in all, Hell's Kitchen is, at best, background noise and I truly fail to see any hint of drama in this series and I don't see how it has lasted this long on the airwaves. I guess it's due to the fact that FOX chooses to focus on its juggernaut, American Idol, and doesn't care much about the rest of its schedule.
MinnPics is all about still images and, therefore, is better than most of the dreck on TV. Check out the awesome photos today!
So, that's a bit misleading but a couple miles away from my parent's rural Austin, MN home, the zoo better known as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has been swinging hammers, knocking things down and pulling in thousands of cheering fans for the past week.
The story behind this makeover, like all others, is specifically chosen to tug at your heartstrings. The family, whom my dad has known for over 20 years, lived in a patched together but falling apart home. With plenty of poorly crafted additions, water made its way in to the home and mold soon followed. The father, who lost his job as a diesel mechanic at an Albert Lea implement dealership a couple years back, will be portrayed as triumphing over adversity. He's made a living as a mechanic while having only one arm (he lost the other at age 10). The parents, Dirk and Susan DeVries, have close ties to a religious school in nearby Hollandale and the 15 year-old son (one of three children) has a fascination with crafting stuff from duct tape.
The big attraction, though, is the excitement surrounding a bunch of Hollywood-types rolling in to town with their fancy three syllable words and big lights (my dad even sounded a bit starstruck as he said he could see the lights from five miles away Saturday night as he sat inside the cab of his combine harvesting soybeans).
Of course tomorrow (Tuesday to you) the hundreds of spectators, a tearful family and a caffeine (and maybe meth)-fueled Ty Pennington screams "Bus driver, move that bus" and within hours, the circus, just like the one with lions and elephants, pulls out of town and like the one with animals and clowns, all that's left is the elephant shit.
And by elephant shit, I mean the mess left behind. Think of the expenses incurred during this excitement. For an entire week, 24 hours a day, a Freeborn County Sheriff's deputy was stationed at either end of the gravel road on which the construction site was located. I'm glad to pay for that sort of overtime because ABC television deserves the ratings. There's also the matter of the demolition debris. The company in charge of hauling it away couldn't do so in the timeframe demanded by the production company. That debris, then, was dumped in a neighbor's yard for later disposal.
It's a mixed blessing, of sorts, to have a reality TV show pull in to town but I wouldn't turn it down because where else would you land a free end of September vacation to dreary and wet Niagara Falls, New York?
Well, in news Americans already knew and simultaneously didn't care about, former American Idol swooner/crooner Clay Aiken is coming out as gay. He is also looking a bit puffy but that isn't the real point.
In an effort to keep himself in the news and somewhat fresh in people's minds, Aiken is taking to the cover of some shitty supermarket checkout "magazine" to announce what everyone already knew, that he likes dudes.
The real point here is why do we care? Why is this news? Clay Aiken, famous because he was a gangly singer on a TV show whose results may or may not be rigged, is as gay as Charles Nelson Reilly. He's as gay as Larry Craig. Aiken is as gay as... well you get the point.
Why are we, as a society, so enamored and polarized over someone's sexuality. Are we so bored or fed up with our own lives that we feel the need to escape and almost obsess over the lives of those who are on our TVs? Yes, I think we can all agree that Clay Aiken admitting what we already knew is mildly humorous/sad but what business is it of ours?
One thing to care about is great photography. It gives us something interesting and of value to obsess over and the best of the best from across Minnesota live at MinnPics!
Sometimes stereotypes are just wrong. Other times they are just too spot on to ignore. Take, for instance, a stereotype about country music fans being prone to living in trailer parks in the middle of tornado alley. Sometimes popular media takes a stereotype like that, runs with it and makes it reality.
CMT, the cable channel that morphed from playing country music videos to immersing viewers in the country "culture", has either proven a point or made a mockery of country music fans across America.
As I perused the listings for new episodes on TV tonight, I found a show on CMT entitled "Mobile Home Disaster". Even the logo for the program looks to be a touch redneck. They are definitely walking the line between immersion in the country culture and mocking country music fans and portraying them as a bunch of inbred NASCAR fans who seem to be rejects from the casy of "My Name is Earl". If you are a country music fan, I'd be interested in knowing if this sort of programming (essentially a countrified version of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition") appeals to you. To others, would a program mocking your way of living offend you or entertain you if the offending style was done in a backhanded fashion?
Yes, it's a big blame game but I have legit questions too.
Are Americans so downtrodden and worn down by their own lives that the only recourse is escapism? Is the only way to accept their own lives to live vicariously through the lowest of the lows that fill the broadcast schedules on the TV channels we watch?
Are we so overly exposed to our sad and pathetic reality that our only escape is what has become (for some at least) an unhealthy obsession with pop culture including celebrities and the "reality" television that comes along with them? After all, if there wasn't a market for the products, would the papparazzi violently stalk celebrities?
I could go down one path here and state that America needs to pay attention to the real reality that surrounds us (wars, our economy, the election, etc.) but too much of one thing is not a good thing at all.
The other path is to find a balance. It sounds preachy to say it and I know I'm far from perfect but I can honestly say I don't watch shit like TMZ or American Idol. I rarely, if ever, watch E!. VH1 and MTV's slathering of bottom feeding programming doesn't get tube time in our house. I don't watch the 24-hour news channels. And at 10 PM I split my time between The Daily Show and the 10 o'clock news on WCCO. Maybe that balance comes from my parents or maybe it's from my own choosing.
Even though I am somewhat young, I tend to think I am from a very different segment of my own generation. I was one of the few growing up who had the luxury of eating supper at the family table. We sat down and ate as a family. Yes, we even managed to do this (in a different venue) during the busy seasons on the farm. It brought out a sense of togetherness. We often had the evening news on in the adjoining living room because living in the country there wasn't the constant barrage of choices on the TV. We talked during the meal and discussed the day. How many truly have that luxury in 2008? How many families make it a point to eat together if the schedules of the working parents provide for it?
Sometimes the strength, or in this case the lack of strength, of a country can be solely based on one small item.
Yes, that's right. Sunday night's premiere of "American Gladiators" was not only the most watched program of that particular evening but also the highest-rated premiere of a series on NBC during the 2007-08 television season thus far.
Yes, Americans are that damn stupid.
I fail to see the entertainment value in watching a bunch of jacked-up wanna-bes and has-beens pummel each other with various specially-made items in the gladiator ball or the gladiator cube or even the gladiator sphere. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, if this is what passes as entertainment in a world without television and screen writers, we should all hit our knees because the need for quality entertainment, while miniscule in the grand scheme of things, is a need none the less.
If you do, however, have the stomach to turn on a TV tonight, you'll hear alot about the New Hampshire presidential primaries. Pay attention to what the candidates are saying as well as what they aren't saying. As much as politics grates against my nerves at times, the future of our country is truly in the hands of voters. 2008 is an opportunity to truly make a change and there is an opportunity to make history with who is ultimately elected in November. Pay attention so that when your respective turn in the primaries or caucuses comes, or should you choose to wait, the general election this November; you can make an informed choice based on positions and facts.
And if you can't stomach the ultra-early election news, Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" returns tonight at 9 PM EST for its fourth season. Hey, it's ALOT better than watching the gladiators (one of whom is a former gay porn star...)
Maybe this would fit better in my work blog but when my TV habit gets fucked up, there might be hell to pay.
Honestly, it got my attention when I heard about the possibility of the TV writers guild going on strike. Even more interesting was the fact that they simply want to be compensated additionally for the new revenue streams (DVDs, online downloads...) that the TV executives and producers profit from.
Sadly, the writers went on strike at Midnight and some of my favorite shows will immediately be affected. Current and topical shows such as "The Daily Show", "The Colbert Report" and David Letterman's late night program will be first to feel the strike. To be honest, I am not going to be heartbroken if/when the primetime scripted shows vanish because I have lost a lot of interest in TV.
Some faves from last season are feeling worn. Shows like "The Office" and "30 Rock" still have their edge but "Grey's Anatomy" seems to be going through the motions and with the newbies I have been watching such as "Bionic Woman" and "Dirty Sexy Money" I won't miss them. Sure, it's free entertainment but with sloppy writing and poor production decisions such as the murder of an ancilliary character on "Prison Break" and the jailing of the main character on "My Name is Earl", maybe this strike will weed out the crap that has been passing as TV. Maybe this will make TV execs realize that, after having to fill their line-ups with reality fare, they need to work harder and take more chances with scripted series.
I can honestly say "farewell" with a big smile because Americans, as fat and lazy as plenty of us are, need a wake-up call to break us from our sedentary lifestyles and use our damned brains for once. But I will miss "Lost" because I'd be surprised to see this one make it through a lengthy strike.
Sure, I talk music here on Fridays and much like the question about a tree falling in the forest, what would happen if nobody heard it? Truth be told, I don't really care. It was a goal of mine as the year began to stick it out and challenge myself to be confined to one topic on a schedule and so it continues.
Back in the day (the day being 2000) I used to subscribe to the newly-minted digital cable (remember, I lived in rural southern Minnesota, SPAMTown USA to be specific). It was something new and I picked it up cheap as a new subscriber. It featured channels such as IFC, Sundance and, my favorite, MTV2. But the story starts long before this time.
I was first exposed to M2 (as it was originally known) in high school during an assignment for my independent study class. I was asked to scan the satellites (the school had one of those enormous 8 foot relics) and catalog the channels I came across. Sure, it was busy work for a do-nothing type class but I was curious and forged ahead with it.
As I came across the still-new M2, I took notice. I loved music then as much as I still do and actively sought out anything new and different that wasn't being force-fed to us southern Minnesota high schoolers. As I graded papers and worked on other projects in the teacher's office, I had my new friend -- M2 -- on in the background. I'd glance up if something tweaked my ears and I found plenty of new and different music through that channel.
Little did I know that we would be reunited in 2000 as I became a digital cable subscriber. MTV2 was a novelty -- they played music videos and for a rural area, it was a fantastic way to discover new tunes. Sure, it was during the heyday of Napster but MTV2 was a passive way of discovery and that channel spurred me to buy even more CDs.
Soon, though, my introductory offer and its relatively cheap price expired. I parted ways after a year with my new old friend. Sure, we were reunited some time later but, as friendships do, my friend had changed. Hip-hop was now dominating the revamped channel. We began to drift apart.
The rift continued as I moved away from the city which gave me my first taste of digital cable as well as MTV2. I cut costs and for the two years that I was a suburban apartment dweller, I did without cable all together. The apartment complex I called home, though, had a rooftop antenna which picked all of the Twin Cities stations including, wait for it, MTV2 which was on a former outlet of "The Box" music video channel.
I watched it from time to time and saw just how much further it had declined. My old friend, it seemed, had fallen in with a bad crowd. A crowd that worshiped hip-hop and seemed to be distancing itself from the 'person' it had once been.
I was glad to move again. This time we ponied up for cable but seeing what had become of my old friend, MTV2, the digital tier wasn't worth the extra cost. We watched, though, as my old friend reinvented itself once again during halftime of the Superbowl a couple years back. It was sad to see the my old friend had lost its core values. Gone was its trusty and once innovative foundation of music videos not seen on its big brother's airwaves.
In their place were 'lifestyle' shows geared towards young males, recycled materials from the channel's big brother and it seemed obvious that the younger sibling would follow in the footsteps of the elder MTV.
As I perused the Wikipedia article, it seemed that I was correct. Maybe I ought to trade in the insanely expensive software package I earn my living with and get myself a crystal ball.
At least there are a few memories which I shared with you in the above video and the following one -- one of my favorite songs from the past decade.
Dammit MTV, if you don't run with this one and whatever you interpret it to mean you are bigger fools than I had ever guessed.
