things that i've learned

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

xoxo

i'm pretty sure gossip girl uses wordpress.

her blog's heavy on rich media, sports nearly 100% RSS saturation (producing more vibrations on freshmen girls than a swiffer), and updates with the efficiency of a twitter addict at CES. Or Davos. and thank you faux Lycée Français for the open wi-fi that she's tapping in to in order to fire off in-class updates. it's a pretty robust platform, and yet totally possible. you don't even need ues-level spending to build it.

so if gg can be moderately legit with their IT, why is it so hard to keep it real with the nyc? come on disembodied voice of kristen bell, why is your team shooting in cooper square and pretending like you're next to a high school that's clearly on 93rd between Park and Madison? it's not like you don't know better, gossip girl - you sent chuck to butai and referenced sake at decibel in the same episode. (at least you had the decency to keep your namechecks subtle; i'm running out of places in my neighborhood that i still like.) i'd dance on the nuances further, but i'll leave the heavy lifting and further nyc private school love to nymag. xoxo, b.

Labels: blog, gossip girl, tv

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Things I Learned from Children's Television

in response to this fascinating article about the first two seasons of sesame street in the sunday magazine (which I check out while she looks at Arts & Leisure), a few thoughts on things that i've learned from children's television.

1) i remember thinking it was a bit weird that no one else could see snuffleufugus except big bird. but around that same time that snuffleufugus was suddenly visible to the rest of the world, the gummi bears premiered on the disney afternoon. a group of product placed candies who save each other from harm by drinking "magic juice" that suddenly makes them all powerful and crap? i was six years old being all like "i'll buy the blue people with marshmellows for heads" but these gummi bears are crazy.

2) cookie monster being some kind of strung out, cookies-are-my-meth-type addict never bothered me much, probably because at that age the idea of eating nothing but cookies did not seem unusual to me (it seemed desirable, in fact). is this bad? would i eat more vegetables had i watched vanessa the vegan teach me the benefit of living on a raw food diet starting at age 4? for the sake of entertainment, i hope not.

3) speaking of great children's programming, this reminds me of the fact that the muppets actually premiered on saturday night live and were only redeveloped into children's characters because no one wanted them on the show. michael o'donoghue was quoted in miller and shales' "live from new york," as saying "i don't write for felt." what a great line.

Labels: tv

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Friday, September 21, 2007

Last Person Watching

Has there ever been a bigger trainwreck to a live reality TV finale show than Wednesday's conclusion to Last Comic Standing? What happened to this once watchable program? The show hasn't had any credibility in the comedy world since Dat Phan won the first season, but at least they've traditionally had good talent leading up the finals. The first four seasons brought us Rich Vos, Todd Glass, Kathleen Madigan, Alonzo Bodden and Jay London. Even Gary Gulman seemed funny when I first saw him do his I-am-a-gigantic-Jew routine. And at this year's auditions we got the amazing comedic stylings of Mel Silverback, the world's first stand up gorilla, whose act was easily the best two minutes of the entire season.

But back to the atrocious season finale of this year's garbage fest. After eliminating all the good performers in the early rounds (thanks America!) we were left with the funny-when-you-can-understand-him LaVell Crawford, and the not-very-funny-but-certainly-quite-excitable Jon Reep. The two hour I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Cable schlockfest featured special guest performers Carrot Top, a bunch of puppets, and some guy whose entire act is an impression of John Madden. I couldn't make that up if I wanted to. This is NBC, the network that gave Jerry Seinfeld a show, and this is the best that they could come up with for guests on their season finale. Carrot Top? Really? Was Sinbad not available? And the guy who did the impression of John Madden... I spend half my week thinking about fantasy football and I don't even find that guy funny.

Oh and Dane Cook! They had Dane Cook! The internet loves Dane Cook! What does this say about the LCS season finale that it was so grossly unwatchable that I found myself actually thinking "gee Dane Cook is coming up at least he's a real comic, maybe he'll be good." And I hate Dane Cook. But I digress... so when Dane Cook came on, he didn't even do his act, he just showed a clip of his new movie with Jessica Alba, did 30 seconds of unrehearsed talk show style blather with Bill Bellamy, and then walked out. I actually felt cheated. What's worse - thinking that I was about to see totally unfunny stand up from totally unfunny Dane Cook, or actually feeling gipped that totally unfunny Dane Cook didn't even bother to do totally unfunny stand up, he just stood there.

Thank God they gave five minutes to Robert Schimmel. At least one person at NBC still understands that if you're going to do a show about stand up comedy, it helps to have funny comedians.

TVSquad panned the episode, too.

Labels: crap, tv

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Reasons to Watch Television

I love reality television. Hell, I support reality television. Surreal Life Fame Games is a joy. Sure, watching it makes me feel a little bit worse about myself as a person and about how I choose to spend my time with my expensive education. But I also learned that I thankfully do not have the low self esteem of CeCe Deville, the rage of Vanilla Ice, or the complete bitchiness of Verne Troyer. Surreal Life Fame Games has taught me that minor celebrities have no sense of irony, unless they get naked for a living and apparently appeared on the cover of a Girls Gone Wild music collection. I know what you're thinking... Joe Francis has a record label? Is it better than MusicSpace.com? (Answer: No. Nothing is better than Save the 90's except maybe the newly released Monster Ballads Platinum Edition.

Tonight I watched the Surreal Life Fame Games celebrity phone bank challenge, where the B list cast was asked to call their B list friends and get them to call them back. Among the "stars" who called back... Frank Stallone. Joey Buttafuco. And big-time star, Carrot Top. No word on whether Carrot Top's crazy muscles called back, too. Do you think you can book Ron Jeremy just to name drop people for an hour? Because I'd pay $12 for that.

Labels: blakestuchin, celebrities, crap, reality, tv

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