Friday, July 22, 2005
WTF is happening to TV?

Today, we will examine several God-awful TV shows and genres of commercials that plague my Summer TV-watching experience. The seriousness of the situation is reflected in the fact that, at times, I've even opted to reading a goddamned book instead of watching TV.

1. The View
ABC's The View is a "chatfest, featuring a team of five dynamic women of different ages, experiences and backrounds." (ABC.com) However, to call this show crap, would be raising it to an unjustifiable level of decency. The View has failed miserably at its attempt to bring pride to the role of women in American Society; however, it has brought under the magnifying glass the characters of 5 women who have, after attaining substantial accomplishments in their lives, ironically come together to imply that women are a gossipy, shrieking, and intellectually incapable lot of repulsive femmes. They sit there doing nothing but discussing their bigoted, petty intolerances ubiquitous of the celebrity life. Not entertainment. Not a portrayal of feminine pride; rather human egotism.

2. Jerry Springer
What a great show, huh? With bouts of butt-ugly women rendering about as much cleavage as Pamela Anderson on a night prowl, heaps of lowlife men that have nothing better to do than impregnating those ugly women aforementioned, innumerable "bleeps", cat-fights between ugly women, who's-the-real-father tests, nauseating stories of pedophilia and incest, unnecessary and equally undesirable nudity, and interracial gay/lesbian action, who can't have fun? Disgusting. You have to ask yourself, how does a character such as Jerry Springer sleep at night?

3. Pizza/ Home Maintenance (IE. Glade) / Child Nutrition Commercials
I'm not sure if you've noticed this or not, but every pizza commercial is centered around the male sex. There's usually the college-attending guy, working at a pizza place because he's poor as hell and desperate for money. Otherwise, there's a sportsfreak middle-aged couch-potato man, married, with a strange fetish for excessively meaty pizza. The Home Maintenance commercials usually feature an idealized image of middle-aged yet good-looking women as the protectresses of the home, standing by 24/7 to protect the home from bad odors and stains. The child nutrition ads are similar, only the woman is about 20 years old and extremely good-looking, and the kid's at least 7-8 years old (thats gross), happily munching/sipping/both on some obviously disgusting nutritional supplement.

4. Quasi-legal Medicine Advertisements (Zantrex 3!) / Paid Programming
"Lose 300 pounds in a day!" And then of course there's someone, dressed up as a doctor, to certify the medical credibility of the product and then assure that they themselves use the product regularly.

5. Day-time Soaps
I've never entirely watched a complete episode of a soap opera. But since the 2nd grade or so, I've combined many bits of information to acquire a pretty damn good idea of what a soap opera is. In a soap opera, there's always someone in court, there's always someone in jail, there're always two people having unwarranted sex, there's always a divorced couple that's obviously going to get back together, there's always someone, after having a terrible accident, in the hospital with someone else standing over them about to cut the oxygen line for revenge.

# posted by PlanetRandom | 10:24 AM | 0 comments




Friday, July 15, 2005
Harry Potter. I see a problem.


Harry Potter and friends frolic around giant pumpkins.

The newest Harry Potter book, set to be released on Saturday, July 16th, will be the 6th installment of an immensely popular series by British novelist JK Rowling. Now a mature and/or culturally unconscious individual might tell you that Harry Potter, and the associated cult, are harmless indulgences of children's fantasy. Fortunately, I'm neither mature or culturally unconscious. There is a very real problem here.

So this morning I'm watching one of those sorry-ass early shows on channel 5 or 7 filled with useless information. There's a group of kids, the youngest of whom is about 6-7 and the oldest is at least a shocking 18, on screen (live) who had entered and won an essay-writing contest, an essay about how the Harry Potter novels have changed their lives. So one nervous looking kid gets up and forgets where he's from; he starts to say "New York", but then realizes that he's from Washington State. Then this black girl gets up and in the most irritatingly poetic tone exclaims that the Harry Potter novels contain a certain magic not only centered within the witches and wizards of Hogwart's Magic School, but also the magic that is born in the hearts of Muggles, referencing herself and her fellow fans. (So I'm choking on my cereal at this point and I'm forced to flip the channel)



HPANA, the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator. (News Aggregator?!) This is a real website, and represents one of several disturbingly obsessed zealot communities that have been posting every shrapnel of info associated with "HP" for a few days now and will do so until the release of Rowling's novel, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. This particular website, if one is able to scroll down, requests that the visitor select one of four housing categories: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw and submit some other information in order to join the other 43,581 "students" at HPANA. You are then required to send an "owl" to your e-mail address for verification purposes. Once enrolled (I'm going along with this image of an educational institution), students will enjoy privileges like being able to:
  • Post comments
  • Participate in conversations in the forums
  • Vote in community polls
  • Make friends
  • Gain points, and win prizes!
(awesome yeah?)
I won't say any more, but on to more pressing matters of the issue. Recently, the Sun newspaper of the United Kingdom reported that, in London, two men were charged on Saturday after allegedly trying to sell a STOLEN copy of the book to a tabloid newsletter for 50,000 pounds, the equivalent of $90,880.
"A 19-year-old man has been charged with the theft of the book and a possession of an imitation firearm intending to cause fear of violence."
That's a real quote, I'm not lying. Anyway, the illegally acquired copy is currently safe in the custody of London police, and the two perpetrators are scheduled to appear before magistrates early next week (if not stoned to death by Harry Potter fanatics beforehand).

Also, recently, Raincoast Books of British Columbia mistakenly sold several copies that had been in store. The "Honourable Madam Justice Gill" (pfft), on behalf of the British Columbia Justice System, ordered an injunction restraining the individuals "from copying or disclosing all or any part of Harry Potter #6 or any information derived therefrom including without limitation the story, plot or characters of Harry Potter #6 to any person prior to 12:01 a.m. local time on July 16, 2005."

As if this all wasn't enough heartbreaking an issue, I soon learned that Pope Benedict(ator) had seized a piece of the ass for himself, accusing the books to be full of "subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (the Faith) could properly grow..." I think the real issue with the Pope is this celebacy thing. He's been dry for so many years that everything's gotta seem like seduction.

I think many of us have failed miserably in acknowledging that the Harry Potter series consists of books. It would all indeed be utterly harmless if idiots such as those aforementioned didn't address it as though it was the end of the fucking world. If responsible adults were to treat them rationally, kids would follow in nature and treat them as books as well. Of course this can't happen. I just thought it would be interesting to present a half-second scenario in which everybody acted in a manner such that would, in the long run, spare society from a few more aspirants for the insane asylum.

# posted by PlanetRandom | 1:17 PM | 1 comments