Music Video Reviews*

(Please know I did not select these, it’s just what MTV Hits chose to show me tonight.)

Katy Perry – Waking Up in Vegas

This video is great! Things I like: right size story, amazing costumes, the humorless assistant from Bones as the hilarious boyfriend, and Katy Perry’s amazing rack.

Jesse McCartney – How Do You Sleep?

This video is terrible. Things I do not like: the slow rap he does in the middle of the song, that it is in black and white, his shiny gray suit, the weird race overtones I probably made up, and that I had to watch the whole thing. Also, it’s one of those backstage glimpse things, but who the hell wants that from this guy? That works if you have mystique or something.

Eminem – We Made You

Oh, whatever, Eminem. I’m not coming to you for subtle satire or anything, but this is sub-MadTV stuff. It’s just a list of famous people! Confidential to Lloyd from Entourage: Why did you agree to do this? Things I liked: Eminem’s dancing is actually good/funny. Everything else makes my heart sad.

Kid Cudi – Day & Night

This video is okay. I like the creativity – he walks around and there are MS Paint style effects on the people (funny hair, costumes). I don’t know why they couldn’t sync the lyrics with his mouth. Mostly this is just boring, though. The MS Paint stuff was a cool idea, but nothing happens so it doesn’t really hold my interest.

Chrisette Michele – Epiphany

Did JJ direct this? There is so much lens flare, yet they are not in space. Anyway, this video is also boring. Oh I’m so sad reminiscing about my ex-boyfriend. I feel like I’ve seen this video a hundred times.

Super funny commercial for Easy Curves, or what I call “I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My Bust”

My favorite commercial.

Kanye West – Amazing

Boy am I tired of overprocessed vocals. Anyway, I do not like this video. It’s just pretty scenery and a fire and Kanye looking pensive and saying “so amazing” five thousand times. I think the Earth is the amazing thing? For a while I was worried there wasn’t going to be a scantily clad young lady, but then she showed up, thank God.

Kevin Rudolf – Welcome to the World

I don’t know what I just saw.

*I just found this entry in our draft folder, from May. Timely commentary. You’re welcome.

JONAS

Guys, I have to tell you about the Jonas Brothers’ new Disney channel show. It is called JONAS. I have seen one episode. Here is the premise: The 3 famous Jonas brothers play the famous Lucas brothers. They are rock stars but also go to a private school. They live in a fire station (unexplained). They don’t seem to have parents, but there is an adult wandering around who they call Doug. Also, Bonus Jonas plays their little brother (Bonus’s real name is Frankie, but Bonus Jonas is just too good). He is 8, so the no parents thing is really pretty weird.

In the episode I saw the A-plot was about Joe’s old friend coming to visit. But the old friend, Carl, is too excited about the Jonases being rockstars. He thinks it’s all parties and chicks. He lets the paparazzi in, he puts spray cheese on the walls, touches their guitars, breaks their fancy Cher-in-Clueless-style closet, etc. The boys decide to show him what it’s really like as a rock star. Rehearsing loudly at night, answering huge piles of fan mail, sorting stuff animals (?), and getting mauled by girls volleyball teams. Carl learns his lesson and goes back home with his tail tucked between his legs. He leaves a sad note, though, so our heroes feel bad and throw Carl a party so he can be popular at his school. Then they perform at the party.

There is also a subplot about their school friend who buys a potato chip that looks like Joe. And another one about them playing hide and go seek with Bonus, but forgetting he’s hiding for days and days.

This is basically any Disney channel show, except it’s incredibly weird and also pretty funny. That is an exaggeration, but obviously I expected it to be zero funny, so. Here are some jokes / plot elements I enjoyed:

• In the cold open, the boys really want to watch a leprechaun based tv show. They have leprechaun hats they wear while doing this. (This bit is oddly similar to one on the Sarah Silverman show, where the Silverman sisters watch Cookie Time together.)
• There are too many remotes, though, and one of them cues confetti.
• While rehearsing loudly at night, Joe Jonas plays a tambourine in a pretty hilarious loose-hipped way.
• Joe reads Carl’s sad goodbye note aloud. Kevin repeatedly thinks Joe is expressing his own thoughts. “You are annoying sometimes, Joe.” “Don’t say that, you have great hair!”
• At one point, the boys are startled, and scream. Kevin’s girly scream goes on for like a minute longer than everyone else’s.
• While messing with the Clueless closet, Carl comes up with a Hawaii/Alaska outfit. Joe says, “While I know I could pull that outfit off…”
• While they try to come up with a plan to teach Carl a lesson, Kevin says, “I’ve got an idea!” Nick (the youngest and strangely most serious Jonas) says, “Can you explain your idea without using any of the following words: pie fight, trampoline, time machine?” “No.”
• Also Nick: Carl does a bit where he pretends to be a robot repeatedly running in to Nick. Nick hates it in a way that is very funny, like even real Nick Jonas hated it for real. Kevin claps with glee when Carl does this.
• When they play at the end of the episode, they begin with “Hello, living room!” in the style of “Hello, [name of city where concert is being held]!”
• At one point, Doug goes over to the kitchen sink, opens the cabinet under it, and hands Bonus his mail. Everything about that is “?”

Apparently the “critics” (there are Disney channel show critics? Hee!) liken the show to The Monkeees, and that is totally right. I am impressed that it’s kind of absurd and silly. I was expecting it to be really terrible and to be more Jonas-ego-inflating. They are not afraid to look like idiots, though, and I appreciate that. Compare with, say, NSync or the Backstreet Boys, who had basically no sense of humor about themselves, and were clearly afraid to look like dorks.

After watching a lot of other stuff this next generation really likes – Twilight, High School Musical, Paramore music videos, etc. – I was really bummed out. Sentence I’d never thought I’d write: The Jonas brothers give me hope.

By the way, the show is not good, that is definitely not what I am saying. I do not recommend it unless you are me. I am going to keep watching it. I totally love it.

Oh, weekend!

You are nearly here. This has been a very long week, and I might not have to work this weekend, which has led me to make a totally unreasonably long list of things I want to do, including:

Watch Razor
Watch Heroes
Play Galaxy
Play Fire Emblem
Play Zelda
Play Rock Band
Bake a pie
Get groceries
Read next volume of “Y The Last Man”
Watch something in HD on my new HD-DVD player
Get some boots or at least get the boots I have fixed
Take these plates to Goodwill
Post old DVD player on Craigslist
Make new budget
Sleep

I suspect that these will not all get done.

Unrelatedly, overheard at the Ro-Ta Manor this evening:

“Stab him in the head while he’s down!”

and

“No number of capes is enough.”

Shhh!

I am catching up on TV while I work, and am currently watching some ANTM.

I. Hate. Bianca’s laugh. Ugh. I feel bad hating anyone’s laugh, because you can’t really help what it sounds like and also laughing is a nice thing, so it’s kind of mean to hate it. Though, in this case, she was laughing AT someone, so whatever.

Everyone hates this season of Heroes (general spoilers)

Except me! I mean, it’s not as good as last season, but I didn’t expect it to be. I also think it will get better. I don’t love Hiro in Japan, but I do love Sark enough to mostly make up for it. I hate the twins, but last season I hated Nikki, so I think there just has to be one person/pair that is annoying to make everyone else seem all that more awesome. Episodes without them, despite also generally being Sylar-less, are definitely better.

Ok, I wasn’t going to talk about yesterday’s episode, but I am watching it right now, and I NEED to. Big-time spoilers after the jump.

The Naming of Things

I just noticed that Ta subtitled our blog Carebears v. Transformers, not Carebears vs. Transformers. This way is much funnier. Before, I felt kind of bad that the Carebears were going to be massacred by the giant, metal, weapon-toting / actually-being-weapons-themselves Transformers. What were the Carebears going to do? Care at them? Transformers don’t have souls, that wouldn’t have worked.

How I Imagine This Lawsuit Came To Be:

Location: Care-A-Lot, outside Grumpy Bear’s adorable house. Three Carebears gaze upward, where a huge battle rages in the rainbow-filled sky.

Grumpy Bear: Damn it!
Good Luck Bear: I hope it all works out! Those Decepticons are meanies!
Grumpy Bear: Do they have to do this here? Oh, great, now one of them is dropping bombs.
Funshine Bear: They’re pretty like fireworks! Anyone want a hug?
Good Luck Bear: I do!

They hug.  A bomb falls on Grumpy Bear’s adorable house.

Grumpy Bear: Every time. Every frigging time.
Funshine Bear, emerging from the hug: Oh no! Grumpy Bear, your house fell down!
Good Luck Bear: We can fix it!
Grumpy Bear: That doesn’t work, morons.
Funshine Bear and Good Luck Bear: CARE BEAR STARE!!!!

They stare at the rubble. Grumpy Bear rolls his eyes.

Dude, You’re Encroaching on My Decrees

The post title has nothing to do with the content that follows. And I’m not sorry.

Today’s topic: Watching Television is Hard

I have a problem with television – not the problem where I watch too much, because that’s not really a problem and also I can quit anytime. I am having trouble actually watching TV. I have lots of great shows all neatly lined up in my DVR, and I cannot watch any of them. For example, I have five episodes of Battlestar Galactica in there. That’s a great show, and I totally love it! Yet I haven’t watched it, or the season finale of Avatar, or those four episodes of The O.C. What’s up?

I’ll tell you what’s up! TV is hard – I get all invested, and worried, and interested, and intrigued. I don’t just watch TV, I watch TV. I watch TV hard. I think about it, and what each character has going on, and where I think things are headed, and what parts were bad writing, and whether X’s characterization has been consistent, and on and on. And people? I’m so tired.

So instead of watching fabulous television I’m sure to enjoy, I watch easy stuff, like General Hospital, or an episode of Futurama I’ve seen ten times (note: that is not an exaggeration). But the DVR is filling up and I need to get over my block. Any ideas?

Passions!

Since I’m unemployed, and have a DVR, I’ve decided to start watching soap operas again. My history with soaps is as follows:

The
Golden Age: One summer before I could work but after I could be left
home alone, I watched three soaps a day. The ABC ones – All My
Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. I caught the tail end
of the Sarah Michelle Gellar years on AMC, in fact.

The
Revival: The summer before law school I had a few weeks with nothing to
do, so I caught back up with General Hospital. Then that first summer
during law school I was again bored, and watched it A LOT. But once
classes started up again I had to tape it every day, and I quit after
about a week.

Today: Now, three years later, I realized that I
can watch any soap I want, through the magic of the DVR. Welcome back,
old friends!

My game plan is as follows: Test drive each soap
opera for two weeks. It takes that long to figure out what’s going on,
and decide whether it’s awesome or not. The exception is General
Hospital, which I regret ever abandoning, and which I hope to watch
every day until I die. Seriously, that show is awesome. It has the mob.
Enough said.

That brings us to Passions, my first Two Week
Soap. I had really high expectations. There was a doll that came to
life, right? And maybe ghosts and stuff? And it was crazy and over the
top? Well, I was very disappointed. VERY.

There were only THREE plotlines! And each one was incredibly boring!

Plot
#1: Stuck in a Mineshaft. Some chick was pushed down a mineshaft, hung
out for a week, then was rescued in the second week. It was vaguely
interesting because the Town’s Only Cop went into a trance after having
a sleeping pill dropped into his coffee and could see her ghostly image
pleading for help. Oh, and they had to get naked and cuddle for warmth.
Hilariously, it’s his FOURTH time doing that! Still, the mineshaft plot
was slow and boring.

Plot #2: Ratted Out to the Tabloids. I
guess this lady told the tabloids that her husband was really a member
of the evil rich family (the Cranes). She lied about it, claiming it
was actually his ex-girlfriend. The ex decided she wanted him back, so
tried to prove it was the wife. This was so boring I almost died. It
was endless back and forth about believing people. The three characters
had the same conversation a million times.

Plot #3: Pretending
You’re Dying So Your Fiancee Won’t Leave You. Kay decides she is still
in love with Miguel, so she has to cancel her wedding to Fox Crane.
(The names are pretty great – the lady in the mineshaft was called
Fancy.) Fox gets wind of this (via eavesdropping, a soap opera standby)
and pretends to receive a call from his doctor regarding his fictional
fatal illness. Kay is wracked by guilt and still hasn’t told Fox,
choosing to sleep with him instead! That’s pretty great, especially
since Fox also tracked down Miguel’s vanished one true love, and
smuggled her back into town. He is really really serious about marrying
Kay. I don’t know why, since she doesn’t love him and also isn’t that
great a person. But that whole plot was at least interesting.

Other:

• Passions loves the voice-over, especially to relay obvious information.
• The
  names are awesome. For example, the ex-girlfriend from Plot #2 named
  her son after another main character, so she always has to call him
  Little Ethan.
• Random shirtlessness is always appreciated, and
  there was at least one incident per episode. One guy had a whole
  conversation with his wife, ex-girlfriend, mother-in-law, and a male
  stranger without putting on his shirt. The shirt was right there, on
  the table next to him.
• The acting is almost all terrible, particularly by the nice guy men. I think Miguel is actually a puppet.
• A
  witch did show up on the second Friday, with the ability to make
  everyone in the room fall asleep by clapping. I guess that’s crazy, but
  even she was a little boring. And, if your universe includes witches
  and magical powers, why does it only come up once every two weeks? Talk
  about a wasted opportunity.
• Oh my God, Paloma. Paloma is the
  Town’s Only Cop’s sister. She wears a barrette. She is nosy and dumb. I
  hate her.

Conclusion: Goodbye, Passions! You didn’t
deliver the crazy shenanigans I reasonably expected, and also you were
dull and repetitive. I wish I’d watched in your heydey, when that living doll
fell down a well or whatever.

Up next? All My Children! I
chose this one because the commercials show a General Hospital alum
with an eyepatch and amnesia. Sold!

Important Questions

Yeah, I skipped my Sunday entry. WHAT OF IT? I was still on vacation time, plus, recent personal events have made me not feel like being very interesting (which is true, but was also, oddly, articulated in just that way on Studio 60 last night). This entry may not be all that interesting either, but I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this last night.

Today, I want to talk to you about America’s most unlikely funny man: Brian Williams. Ok, maybe "most unlikely" is an exaggeration, as there are certainly many, many unfunny people in America. It is still surprising that he has turned up on SNL and on the recent autism telethon, the hilariously-named "Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Benefit for Autism Education." Apart from the fact that his dry, serious-news-anchor delivery turned out to be excellent when put to telling jokes, his willingness to make fun of his own job is very charming.

Are all news anchors secretly funny? If so, where does that come from? You would think most news anchors would take themselves too seriously, given their weird, self-important job.

I assume Brian became besties with Jon Stewart after appearing on his show when he took over for Brokaw, but that doesn’t really explain the SNL appearance. And how do the NBC Nightly News producers feel about his comedic stylings? I suppose fine, since SNL is on the same network.

Semi-relatedly, in that references to it constantly appear in my life: Why is the very idea or mention of Ladysmith Black Mambazo (including in the NOTMS:AOBFA) is so freaking funny. I mean, now it’s just funny to me because they keep popping up. It’s odd for a specific group to become an actual comedic device though.

Dear American Eagle

WHY DID YOU DO THAT?

Last night, Ro and I were sitting down to watch the TV offerings of the day I like to call Awesome Tuesday. On Awesome Tuesday, the CW gives us Gilmore Girls, followed by the unspeakably incredible Veronica Mars. (Seriously: It’s not like I forget how great a show it is, but every time it comes back from an absence I actually feel how great, funny, smart, sweet, scary, and perfect it is. It’s as though it impossible to really hold in one’s mind how good a show it is, because part of the goodness is actually a visceral reaction of joy that I have while watching it, and you can’t really recreate that feeling in your mind when the show is off the air for a while. Yeah, that’s right, all that over a TV show.)

Obviously, I feel really strongly about these shows, VM in particular. Because they are, at times (GG in particular), girly shows, dramas involving discussions of the dreaded "feelings," shoes, hair, etc. Everyone is pretty and shiny and on GG there are minimal car crashes and explosions (though in the season premiere, that was not true). VM actually has a fair bit of action and suspense, though if you don’t watch it 1) start, 2) you won’t believe me until you do. But Ro’s enjoyment of these fine programs is a testament to the fact that they are so much more than girl-dramas, and in fact, they aren’t even really girl-dramas at all.

Which is why it was so appalling to see the the CW had placed, at random commercial breaks, some sort of short . . . thing featuring a bunch of girls sitting around a sectional sofa in their casual best, talking about the shows. I died inside. It is already nigh impossible to convince people to watch these shows if they do not already. THIS WILL NOT HELP. Ro termed it insipid, and she is not wrong. It was. A little research this morning on on the Interwebs (yes, I am leaving on vacation in like 6 hours, shut up) revealed that this is some sort of devil-inspired collaboration between the CW and American Eagle, purveyor of surprisingly good jeans. (Really, try them out, they are great, and cheap!) It is called "Aerie Tuesdays," and apparently, it is meant to make me want to buy clothes from AE’s new line of clothes.

Problems ABOUND, people. The first of many is that while I am sure that these shows do draw a fairly large audience from the girl-teen population, they also draw a good number of smarty-pants 20- and 30-somethings. Moreover, having these terrible Aerie Girls moments? Not going to expand and grow that audience, CW! The shows don’t have stellar ratings, and any guy just tuning in at the behest of his girlfriend or wife or friend is going to take one look at these girls chatting and giggling and RUN AWAY. As he should.

I can’t tell from the "Meet the Aerie Girls" section of the above site how old these girls are, though in fairness there appears to be a good spread of ages. And I actually can’t tell you what they talked about in the spots, so deafened by my own rage was I. Maybe it was about the social implications of having a sexual code on college campuses, as provoked by an Take Back the Night rally on VM. I doubt it though.

In sum:

1) Watch Veronica Mars (you should watch GG, but it is in less danger of cancellation)

2) CW: please kill off the Aerie Girls in a terrible, soft clothing-related accident.