 I know a lot of folks view reality shows in general as something of a guilty pleasure. Perhaps the guiltiest of all is America’s Next Top Model, which is sort of like watching a train just fail to wreck every week.
The premise sounds like a recipe for disaster — 13 young girls get taken under Tyra Banks’ wing and are guided through an audition and training/challenge process on their way to a contract with CoverGirl and Ford Models — but after a boring season or two (which Jenn watched alone), the show really found its way, and is pretty entertaining.
The girls are a mix of viable models who would have likely succeeded anyway (like this season’s runner-up Joanie) and lunatics who seem to be there as much for the reality show drama factor as anything else (like psycho know-it-all Jade, who insisted that she was a great undiscovered talent whom the industry had simply failed to notice, despite her living in New York City and trying to break in for almost a decade).
The lunatics, of course, are what make it really entertaining (OK, the lunatics and the girls flirting with lesbianism), and Jade gave me and Jenn our name for the show forevermore, when she explained it wasn’t necessary for her not to be a froth-at-the-mouth bitch, because the show was not called America’s Next Top Best Friend. Classic.
It’ll be a long summer without it.
(And yes, Jason, this is why I don’t watch the multiple Emmy award-winning Amazing Race. Sorry!)
Although Dave Cusick’s Post Modern Rock Show is still the best radio show on the Internet, I’ve recently discovered Coverville, which is a strong #2.
The concept — interesting covers of well-known songs — could easily have been painful, painful, painful, but the music (mostly) stands on its own as great tunes, although many of them are so obscure, they’re impossible to find on one’s own.
In a clever twist, there are also Originalville shows that feature the original versions of songs that only became popular as covers.
For those who find Dave Cusick’s show a little too po-mo (which even I find to be the case once in a while, as he’s more musically adventurous than I am, despite all my efforts at extreme open-mindedness), Brian Ibbott’s Coverville might be just the ticket. And even for those who’ve gotten turned on to the former show, it’s a great addition to a podcasting line-up, along with the music shows from KCRW.
There are movies that merit running more than two hours, where the filmmakers fill every second with cinematic gold. Unfortunately, Tristan & Isolde isn’t one of them. The movie drags from the beginning, as we see 20 to 30 minutes of background that could have been explained with some background text. Each scene, then and after, moves at a leisurely pace, as though people were not dying and nations were not at war.
Worst of all, James Franco — surely there were attractive young British actors that could have played Tristan — seems to be sleepwalking through every scene with his co-star, bringing an abject lack of chemistry to the proceedings.
This is a workman-like film, but it has really nothing to demand that the viewer watch it. A rental, and nothing more.
Although I enjoy all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels (I’ve read all of them in paperback except for the latest kid’s one), some characters and settings I like more than others. I quite like the witches of Lancre and the wizards of Unseen University, for instance, while I’m lukewarm at best to Death.
But, perhaps because they’re not being designed as franchise players, I seem to like Pratchett’s standalone story characters best. Sure, we see that the journalists of The Truth are still around and there are enough references in the other books to let us know the events of Small Gods happened, but for the most part, those characters were created to stand on their own, and that focus, if that’s the right word, really makes them shine for me.
And so it is that another one of Pratchett’s apparently standalone works, Going Postal, has turned out to be one of my favorites, especially its condemned conman turned Postmaster General, the uncomfortably named Moist.
Pratchett has always had a real ear for conmen and hucksters, and Moist is an engaging protagonist faced by a series of obstacles, magical and mundane, including Discworld’s heliograph system, the Clacks, finally taking center stage after being mentioned in several books.
The author also restrains himself, and doesn’t throw too many ideas into the cooking pot at once. Other than giving Moist a very film noir femme fatale figure to relate to, the real world parodies and references are kept to a minimum this time, helping the book with its narrow focus.
Going Postal gets the highest possible recommendation for fans of Discworld, fantasy or, heck, stamp collecting.
I’d say MySpace argues against the notion, myself.
But Wired has a more at-length column along those same lines:
As a mere stripling, I was advised that if I hoped to become a good writer, I should write every day. More than that, I should read good writing every day. This can be accomplished on the internet as easily as it can by reading a book or magazine. But if you’re the sort who prefers People to The New Yorker, well, again, what’s the point?
So my riposte to Topsy was, while the internet may be a nifty vehicle for delivering one’s polished prose and penetrating insights to an impatiently waiting world, it can’t help you become a better writer if you, pardon my French, suck.
Moreover, the internet leads to all sorts of unsavory writing practices, like blogging. You know, the journal of the 21st century.
Keeping a diary or journal (“journaling” they now call it, thanks to the modern world’s habit of turning perfectly good nouns into verbs) was common among the literate before television came along and hooked us up to the communal drool bucket.
A journal exists for its author to reflect on, well, anything. A fading love, political turmoil, a spat with a friend, the weather in Buffalo, New York, on June 10, 1946. The writer is free to express the most intimate thoughts, because the nature of keeping a journal is to keep it private.
Occasionally, if the journal belongs to a writer or an artist or a statesman, the writing is so compelling that it finds its way into print after the author dies. In the best of those, we are invited into the mind behind the creative process and we emerge with a deeper understanding of a masterwork, say, or the thinking behind a crucial political decision.
Most journals go unread, though, and that’s the way it should be. The contents were only intended for the writer’s eyes, after all.
A lot of people will tell you that blogging is merely journaling online. It is not. Blogging is not private, but very public. And very few blogs involve the kind of introspection that characterizes a serious journal. Most blogging is sheer exhibitionism, either the self-absorbed ramblings of an individual blogger or the corporate site that exists for the sole purpose of making money. (If anyone sees a disturbing parallel between blogging and column writing, kindly keep it to yourself.)
This doesn’t mean blogs have to be badly written. It just means that most are.
This blog, incidentally, began as a somewhat private affair, intending to keep family, friends and voyeurs up to date on my health. The Internet being what it is, and my job being what it is, that didn’t really end up lasting terribly long, so now it’s written with the knowledge that it’s a public blog.
Good thing I never talked about killing that man in Reno, just to watch him die.
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