Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Closer to the Truth is That You Cant Get Enough-You're Gonna Have to Face it You're Addicted to Butt

When did it happen that it became more exclusionary to be a dork than to be cool. In high school, the way I remember it, the cool athlete kids were the ones who were always complaining and excluding people. They were the ones who were too cool for everyone else and constantly did the ripping. Now, this evening, when I briefly turn on VH1s version of the 50 Worst Songs of All Time list from Blender, I see a giant group of dorks, I mean, not bad people, not losers, just dorks. All these guys could tell you the names of way too many charaters from some space-based sci-fi show. They all owned a very competitive deck of Magic cards at one point. Did the whoel dork-cool continuum reverse itself at some point after high school to the degree that Blender is able to criticize mainstream music on behalf of their much hipper indie flair. Have we actually reached the point where you are more likely to be pushed into the cool group then segregated with the dorks. That was off on its own, There are other matters of concern.

The first such matter is Thursday night television. I have already briefly commented on Survivor. Apparently it wasn't the most popular season, but I quite enjoyed it. They chose the best fucking 18 characters and put them all together. I mean, technically they didn't choose the best 18, but they chose 18 of the 25 or so best characters. The challenges were good, there were some suspenseful moments. I don't really understand the people being pissed at Boston Rob for lying to them in the context of the game, but I've never really gathered the inability for many people to recognize that behavior in a bracketed context does not reflect upon external events. I also appreciated the "We need to give Rupert a million bucks" bonus episode after the season finale. Considering that his popularity rating on the CBS website was in the 90s by the time he made it to the final four this time around, though we knew Jenna was gonna stab him in the back, it was kind of a gimme, but my guess is they felt that they needed to get Rupert the money, since he ranks up there with Richard Hatch as the greatest Survivors of all time. I saw Rupert, decked out in his beard but substituting a Pacers jersey for the normally tie dyed tank top. He yelled and stuff and sat around to watch the Pacers lose a tight one to Detroit. The Eastern conference at some point eneds to band together and recognize that these grueling series they put each other through only serve to 1) demonstrate that none of these teams are especially good, just a series of mediocre equals and 2) wear down the eventual champion to the point that they will never contend with whomsoever comes out of the West. Maybe it will end in 5 and one of them will pull ahead, but the way it looks it will just be whether or not Detroit's offense is in sync. 20 fucking blocked shots Detroit had last night. Fucking incredible. Hopefully the Wolves will make it more likely that someone not too far West will put the hurting to them.

Thursday night's other piece of big programming since the completion of The Apprentice was CSI. Katie has never gotten into this show especially, though I don't know why. I mean, I know some of the violence can get to people, and sometimes it doesn't really show through, but there are some episodes of this show which really explore interesting relations between death, law, sexuality, money, etc. Not to mention that its set in Vegas of course, which highlights all these things and more. I think one of the reaosns CSI Miami was never as interesting was the lack of that quality setting, though I am planning to check out Gary Sinise's New York installment in the fall. Anyway, this season's finale was not the best epsisode they have ever done, but it was a quality idea, I just don't think they took it where they normally would . I think it would have been much better off as a two-parter, since the amount of turns required to establish the plot failures take a good amount of time, hence there was really only one line which examined the fucked up nature of this dude's life. I haven't investigated the accuracy of the thing they were discussing , but if its real that is fucked up. The more interesting thing to do would be to read this final episode in relation to last year's, since both deal with the basic question of the existence of dual identities. I can't do any better without spoliers and don't really feel like giving them, so it will end here. Very little TV left to go, so I will save it. Let me just tell you exactly how much it sucks this week, when almost no television is new. There is an old episode of CSI, there is no West Wing, no The OC. I think NBC is just reshowing the series finales of their sitcoms a couple times and filling all the rest of their prime time programming with Law and Order.

On one further TV note I have attempted on two different occasions to watch the WB's Superstar USA, but its just fucking horrible. The idea is to select the worst singers possible and pretend they are good, but its not even funny. You can't take people like this and pretend to seriously complement them, I don't even think they are falling for it. If the show ends up being an experiment to see if you can fool people, convince them they are good, and then devestate them completely by revealing the farce involved, maybe it will be worthwhile. The judges are also ridiculous, such horrible immitations of the AI crew. I mean, Vitamin C and Tone Loc, the funky cold medina jokes alone are too much to take. Maybe when we move beyond the auditions portion of the program it will become tolerable. If we are to trust The Jamie Kennedy Experiment or High School Reunion or The Surreal Life, however, maybe we should just give up on WB reality altogether.

Alright, I am gonna watch the Wolves. We are off to an okay start for the first game at Staples, though I would prefer we were shooting a little better. No way this Gary Payton spurt can last the whole game, but we still need to play tighter basketball, and for a jump-shooting team, that means we need to make shots. Maybe more later.

Peace,

MB-K

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