Thursday, June 02, 2005

I Want to Thank You, For Giving Me the Best Days of My Butt

Todays TV Takes will be entirely reality driven. They will also be brief, because the summer reality season is only beginning to really get under way.

1) Beauty and the Geek is promising. Praising Ashton Kutcher's potential right now is trendy like Lindsay Lohan's total lack of breasts, or body phat, or internal organs--but regardless the show is not bad. The dudes are about equally split between moderate dorks and extreme dorks. The former are really no different than smart dudes who aren't particularly good looking, they're not butt ugly by any means and while they prolly have interests that lean towards geekish, they don't perpetually talk Star Trek etc. The other half is really quite impressive, one dude wants to use the prize money to buy the General Lee (as a side note, his name does not start with a "K" and end with an "aya" not to mention that his father has likely never responded "woop woop" to anything in a bread bag) and one dude got 2 bloody noses in the premiere while explaining the medical circumstances which would lead up to such an event (the word "mucosa" aired for arguably the first time on a Fresh WB Wednesday). Regardless, the show has alot of the potential of Average Joe but with a younger feel. No fat guys though, which means we don't get yet another opportunity to prove that even when compared only to other ugly dudes fat guys take the cake. But prolly cuz we were gonna eat it.

2) I suggested earlier that Dancing With The Stars was the worst idea ever conceived for a television program, or, for that matter, a middle school play, or a Christian video game. Evander Holyfield, Jay Peterman, some soap chick, Trista, Rachel Hunter, and Joey McIntyre ballroom dancing in primetime television. Wow, its horrible. It can be entertainingly horrible at times, since the judges are really really bad and the host is the same guy who does America's Funniest Home Videos since Bob Sagat made his fateful Half Baked career move. I think soap opera chick is going home but since she was the least famous in a group of not famous people, it matters little. They also do the dances to these really horrific covers of popular songs and there is nothing like the former heavyweight champion of the world doing the cha-cha to a cheap Idaho barroom version of "Crazy in Love" with the skankiest ballroom dance champion in history. Since there is shit else on Wednesdays at nine you might as well tivo it.

3) Candian Idol has gotten not better at all. They have 180ish people going to Hollyw...Toronto and my estimate is that 20 of them would have gotten through on American Idol. In all fairness I will give them one thing, though it will be a quintessentially Canadian thing to give them: they are way way better dealing with people who have tragic stories or whatever. They recognize what, for the sake of brevity I will call "cultural diversity" in the uses and sounds of different ethnic or national or reasons for music and find a way to respectfully say that they are not right for this competition. There have been alot of people whose voices are not nearly good enough to be on this show, but who use music in socially transformative ways or in reflection of some important/tragic life event and everyone comes out looking good, the judges, the competitors, and the audience. You know how you felt kinda dirty when you laughed at William Hung, CI has solved that problem (though at the expense of quality talent, interesting judges, and hosts with decent catch phrases).

Longer than I thought it would be wasn't it. I am gonna start watching "Hit Me Baby 1 More Time" soon, but I will reserve comment for the next edition. It appears that our summer schedule has already gotten briefly thrown off track since we are no longer on our way to Philly next week. This will save us money, allow us to go home sooner, and is less work/driving/etc. but it means that I will be unable to conduct my comprehensive survey of Philly cheesesteaks, at least for the time being. It is then likely that we will be on our way back to the TC earlier than planned, which roxrz.

My long running (2 or so day) conversation with Pete in regard to free office soft drinks has set me adrift on memory bliss of root beer. By which I mean that I would very much like to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the world's best root beers. This one would be roughly site generic, since I think I can get alot of these things by mail order, but prolly a little pricey to ship. I doubt there is any demand for a root beer specialist, even less than for a beer specialist, which in turn has less than a sommelier. If there is, I have found my new calling, cuz I freaking love a good root beer. Jones, IBC, Sprecher are all classics not to mention your 1919s and such. Root beer, much more than its alcoholic counterpart, has alot of mass-produced quality specimens. I've never been a Mug fan, but A+W and Barq's are tasty, not to mention the oft-overlooked Dad's, which may have been just a Minnesota thing.

Hippo is curious about this "root beer" of which we humans speak, so I am gonna explain it to her, starting from the frosty mug concept and proceeding all the way to the classic "Oh he is a root-bear."

Peace,

MB-K

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