Take Five: 00s TV Couples Improved By Ditching the Boring One for the Jerk

After missing the second half of the first and the first half of the second season of True Blood (more due to a lack of HBO than anything), I picked up watching again with some friends of mine recently. I was glad to see that they seemed to have expanded the show to a wider cast of characters, themes, and freaky supernatural phenomena (Shape-shifters! Demons of self-indulgence! Frank Sobotka from The Wire!), while leaving some of the groanworthier plots from S1 in the dust. Still, having Bill and Sookie (Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin) at the center of it all was proving to be something of a hinderance–with all the excitement around them, the two were proving to be little more than wet blankets with irritating vocal tics. If the love story between the two was really supposed to be the driving force of the show, that could’ve been a major roadblock to True Blood’s long-term success.

In last week’s episode, though, a wrench was put into the works–Eric (played by Alexander Skarsgard, son of Lars Von Trier favorite Stellan) tricked Sookie into sucking his blood, forming a bond with her, which in the ceaselessly libidinous True Blood universe means that Sookie is now unconsciously drawn to Eric as well. We saw this in action as Sookie had a fantasy dream about Eric–one which stunned me and my friends watching it, as it contained more passion, chemistry and just general hotness than all of Sookie and Bill’s scenes had combined through the first season and a half. Skarsgard is certainly a better looking guy than Moyer, but without all the brow-furrowed seriousness that had come to define Bill and Sookie’s relationship, Paquin looked cuter and just more red-blooded than she had since the show started as well. It’s an interesting dilemma for the show, but an even more interesting one for the audience, who now I’m sure has no idea if they want Bill’s true love to win out over the con game of the rogue-ish Eric, or if they think maybe Sookie’s better off this way after all.

The more I thought about this situation, the more I realized that this was really not an uncommon phenomenon in TV in general this decade–in fact, it’s close to becoming damn near formulaic. It’s nothing new, of course–everyone loves the bad boy/girl, right?–but you’d be shocked at the number of shows in recent years that were improved by giving a main character a switch from a boring, super-serious love interest to a sleazier, more caustic one. Consider the following…

Schadenfraude / Take Five: Pun Disses of “Year One”

• “Talk about a disaster of biblical proportions!” -Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
• “So simple even a caveman will appreciate it. Correction: Make that only a caveman.” -Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post
• “And the studio did open “Year One.” And the people did see it. And then the wailing and gnashing of teeth did truly begin, and the people did rend their garments once more, even those cute white capris that they just got at such a sale you wouldn’t believe.”-Stephen Whitty, New Jersey Star Ledger
• “Its script isn’t worth the papyrus it’s printed on” / “THOU SHALT NOT SEE IT”-Kyle Smith, New York Post
• “Sets prehistoric comedy back at least 20 years.” -Stephanie Zacharek, Salon

Take Five: The Core of a Historically Bad Fantasy Baseball Team

I participated in my first ever live auction baseball draft–an NL-only league set up by friends of friends–before the start of the baseball season, and boy, was it a thing of beauty. I’d done internet roto drafts before, but being a junkie for true geekdom, this was like going straight from passing around a joint to freebasing heroin–those suspenseful moments where you think you might be getting a steal on a backup corner infielder being essentially what I live for. This was also my first time in a fantasy league where real money was involved, so I didn’t want to take it lightly–I did my requisite reading, I created my tier systems, I learned about what prospects were on the ascent, and when draft day finally came, I felt I put together a pretty decent roster. I made a couple rookie mistakes, sure–I lowballed on a couple bargain players too early and ended up having a ridiculous amount of money left to spend all on Pirates second baseman Freddy Sanchez–but I thought it was a lineup that would stay competitive throughout the year.

Well, as the saying goes, you can’t win fantasy championships in your first month, but you sure can lose them. How bad are my boys, the Ontario Obscelences, doing a month into the season? Well, the league leader currently has 67.5 points, based on his high rankings in various offensive categories, and most of the other teams are lagging behind them in the 50s and 40s. I currently sit at 9th with a galling 20.5–a full 24 points behind the 8th place team, which is farther behind him than he is behind the first place team. I’m talking Detroit Lions bad, Los Angeles Clippers bad, Dallas Academy bad. It’s so dispiriting that I can’t even pretend to monitor the waiver wire in the hopes of catching untapped talent, or try to deal my players to other teams, without just laughing at myself for even trying to make a project out of these losers. I am officially the Isiah Thomas of Fantasy GMs.

How did it get this bad? Well, part of it is totally my fault, as I ended up getting stuck wtih snakebit players that I made low bids on and ended up getting stuck with–Josh Willingham (.143 BA, 1 HR), Juan Pierre (only one steal so far for my speed demon) and Chan Ho Park (8.57 ERA, 1.86 WHIP, 0 wins) all among them. But some of it I refuse to take full credit for, as a disturbingly high number of my upside guys just disappeared altogether–vanishing acts that even their biggest doubters couldn’t have predicted. And so, the five guys who can take primary credit for my team hitting the golf courses early this season:

1. Geovany Soto (C), Cubs (.167 BA, 0 HR, 4 RBI) Getting two good catchers was important to me for my team, so I picked up Geo early on in the draft, and got Jesus Flores as a respectable backup some rounds later. Flores has done his part, putting up a decent .288 with 2 HRs and 11 RBI. Soto, however, got injured early on, and has limped his way to a sub-Mendoza batting average and not a single longball since. Last year’s rookie of the year hit .285 with 23 dingers and 86 RBI, excellent numbers for a backstop–so much so that Soto even got enough MVP votes to finish 13th in that race. This year, it’s starting to look like even among Cubbie catchers, career backup Koyie Hill might have been a wiser–and much, much cheeper–investment.
2. Troy Tulowitzki (SS), Rockies (.213 BA, 3 HR, 7 RBI) I was positive that I got two incredible bargains out of the Rockies lineup when I landed Todd Helton for $2 and Troy Tulowitzki for $12, convinced both were due for huge bounceback years. After a slow start, Helton is making me look smart enough by hitting in the .330s, but after hitting three home runs in the first week or so, Tulo has disappeared for the second straight season, slinking lower and lower in the Colorado lineup and losing more and more playing time to Clint Barmes and Ian Stewart. Two seasons ago, this guy was drawing comparisons to Cal Ripken Jr. and leading the Rockies to the World Series as a rookie–what the fuck happened, Troy?? On the plus side, Tulo has swiped a pair of bases so far–which, disturbingly enough, currently makes him the steals leader on my lead-footed lineup.
3. Edwin Encarnacion (3B), Reds (.127 BA, 1 HR, 6 RBI) Part of a more or less around-the-horn underwhelming Reds lineup thusfar, Encarnacion was the last of the semi-decent third-baseman available when I nabbed him for $11 with the 121st pick. I didn’t expect huge numbers, but I expected something a little bit more in line with the 26 HRs and 68 RBI that he put up last season than with these minimalist numbers. Luckily, Edwin put me out of misery by going on the DL early, allowing me to slot in homeboy Pedro Feliz in his place, who–like everyone on the Phils outside of Jimmy Rollins and our backup catchers–is putting up offensive numbers that are positively silly. Hard to imagine the double E supplanting him anytime soon.
4. Lastings Milledge (OF), Nationals (.167 BA, 0 HR, 1 SB) Yeah, OK, so I was obviously taking a chance going for a troubled, raw youngster like The Edge, but hey, even Elijah Dukes is hitting .300-ish with four home runs, and those are steroid numbers compared to what Lastings has given me this season. Forget this being a breakout year, Milledge will be lucky if he can even break his way into the Nats’ starting lineup, what with their glut of outfielders and their increasing impatience with shenanigans. He’s currently toiling away at triple A, hopefully in time to at elast give me one player at the end of the year with double-digit steals–so pathetic is my team’s baserunning that I think Carl Crawford has swiped more bags in his last two games than my ENTIRE 14-MAN OFFENSIVE ROSTER has all season. I don’t even understand how that’s humanly possible.
5. Milton Bradley (OF), Cubs (.130 BA, 2 HR, 2 RBI) I saved the worst for last here, of course. The knock on Milt has always been that he’s as offensively brilliant a player as there is in the game when he’s on the field, but he can never stay on the field for a whole season at a time. Well, at this point, him going down for the season might actually be a good thing for my team. He sucked for the first few weeks, went out for a while with a strained something or another, came back, and has sucked even more. And what’s really insulting is that Kosuke Fukudome–last year’s titanic disappointment, who wasn’t even supposed to be in the starting lineup this year–has looked to be one of the steals of the draft thusfar at $2, hitting .315 with four homers, 18 RBI and a few swipes. Next year, I think I’m just staying away from this fucking team altogether. I don’t even like ‘em that much.

If I ever see any of you guys on the street, you owe me a pretzel or something.

Take Five More: Second Hits of VH1’s Top 100 One-Hit Wonders of the 80s

As is all too rarely the case on this blog, I actually had more to say about the two-hit wonders shoehorned into VH1’s Top 100 One-Hit Wonders of the 80s list than I could fit into last night’s post. So here are five more classics (and, uh, near-classics) that VH1 is conspiring to have written out of the history of pop music:

• Will to Power – “I’m Not in Love” (#7, 1991). Everything about Will to Power screams one-hit wonder. “Baby I Love Your Way / Free Bird (medley)” (#97 on VH1’s list) was one of the more ridiculous #1 hits of the late 80s, a relatively purposeless cramming of two AOR radio staples into a pillowy soft-rock medley groove, and the band itself set off all sorts of OHW red flags–named after a Nietzschean philosophical concept, masterminded by a biker-looking guy with a ridiculous moustache, etc. But remarkably enough, there was a second top ten hit to come out of the whole mess–”I’m Not in Love,” a cover of 10cc’s gorgeous, singular 70s anti-love song. You could argue that it kind of nullifies what was so amazing and unique about the original version, but in a way, that just makes me respect 10cc’s version more, because “I’m Not in Love” still works beautifully given the Will to Power treatment as a wispy, MOR-ish torch song. It even hit in 1991, meaning Will to Power can claim to being an integral part of two decades of adult contemporary music!
• Patrice Rushen – “Haven’t You Heard?” (#42, 1980). Patrice is known to most sane people as the chick who did the song that Will Smith sampled for the “Men in Black” theme (which, looking back on it now, might have been the very last truly ridiculous smash hit to be inextricably tied to the movie it comes from–can you imagine Transformers or Pirates of the Carribean having a mega-hit theme song like that?), and some might also know that “Forget Me Nots” (#86 on the VH1 list) is a pretty good song in its own right. Props to ex-Stylus co-writer Tal Rosenberg, however, for hipping me to “Haven’t You Heard?,” Patrice’s older hit from the tail end of the disco era. It’s one of the most burstingly exuberant songs I’ve ever heard, and the piano hook–that simple, little two-note tease that runs throughout the song–is one of the most inexplicably infectious hooks of an era absolutely packed with ‘em.
• The Outfield – “Since You’ve Been Gone” (#31, 1987). One-hit wonder? Uh, try five top 40 hits between 1986 and 1990. Of course, none of them were as unforgettably soaring as “Your Love” (#59 on the VH1 list), and consequently that was the only one remembered. But I definitely dig “Since You’ve Been Gone” (which I first heard, strangely enough, as the representative choice for The Outfield on the otherwise front-running Like, Omigod!: The 80s Pop Culture Box (Totally)) almost as much–it’s another immaculately produced, anthemic love song that sounds like a power-pop / arena-rock hybrid (or, in other words, a combination of the best things about the mainstream rock from the first half of the decade). Coming during the time of Girls, Girls, Girls and Looked What the Cat Dragged In, however, it’s not too hard to see why it slipped through the sands of time.
• John Waite – “Change” (#16 Mainstream Rock, 1982). Actually, John Waite did have two other top 40 hits–”Tears” (#37, 1984) and “Every Step of the Way” (#25, 1985)–but his second best-remembered song is probably this adrenaline-pumper from two years before his #1 “Missing You” (#33 on VH1’s list)–which, for the record, is still one of the greatest love songs to ever top the charts. Written by Holly Knight (who wrote or co-wrote similarly invigorating 80s classics like Animotion’s “Obsession,” Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” and Scandal’s “The Warrior”), “Change” never hit the pop charts, but was a deserved rotation staple in MTV’s early days, and even became part of that rarified canon of cheesy 80s soundtrack montaging due to its use in Vision Quest a few years later. Oh yeah, and Waite also had about a half-dozen other hits during his years with The Babys and Bad English. “Missing You” wouldn’t be a bad legacy to leave on pop music, but truly, it is but a mere chapter in the epic John Waite story.
• Dead or Alive – “Brand New Lover” (#15, 1987). Not that “You Spind Me ‘Round (Like a Record)” (#19 on VH1’s list) isn’t about as much Dead or Alive as one could possibly need for a lifetime (and given its recent regurgitation in Flo Rida’s largely unbearable “Right Round,” that in itself might already be too much). But growing up, I remember hearing “Brand New Lover” on 80s radio and archival VH1 stuff about as often as I heard “You Spin Me ‘Round,” and assumed that the two were about on equal footing cutlurally. And really, the two songs are about equal in their virtues and faults, so if you wanted to swap one’s place in history out for the other;s, I doubt anyone would mind terribly. But nevertheless, an interchangable two-hit wonder is still not the same thing as a one-hit wonder. Take note before the 90s list, VH1—you can’t just pretend that songs like “Real, Real, Real” and “Wifey” don’t exist.

Take Five: Second Hits from VH1’s Top 100 Hit Wonders of the 80s

VH1 recently made my week by trotting out their list of the Top 100 Hit Wonders of the 80s over the course of five nights, hosted by the irrepressible Judah Friedlander. “Now hold on a minute,” you’re undoubtedly thinking to yourself. “Hasn’t VH1 already done this countdown, like, a dozen times already?” Or so you’d think. But while they’ve indeed put forth their selections for the Top 100 Songs of the 80s, and the Top 100 Hit Wonders of All-Time, this is the first time to date that they’ve combined the two for a list. And while the selections towards the top–Toni Basil, Soft Cell, Dexy’s Midnight Runners (who grabbed the #1 with “Come on Eileen”)–were predictably predictable, it was fun to see some of the more forgotten one-offs that just scraped their way onto the list. I mean, when was the last time you heard Nik Kershaw, Paul Lekakis or Robbie Dupree discussed by anyone, let alone Amanda Diva and Hollywood Steve? A guaranteed recipe for quality television in my book, now and always.

But as with all discussions on the topic of one-hit-wonderdom, there were issues to be had with the question of eligibility. Naturally, there were artists who had critically successful careers that belied their one-hit-wonderdom–Midnight Oil, The Church, XTC (and how big of a hit was “Dear God,” really?) But the choices that really irked me were the ones where the artists really did have legitimate second pop hits–just ones that weren’t as well remembered, for whatever reason, as their first. In some cases, these songs were pretty fucking good, too, so it sucks to see them completely written out of history like this. Here are some of the more egregious examples:

• Club Nouveau – “Why You Treat Me So Bad?” (#39, 1987). Club Nouveau are, no doubt, best remembered for their reggae-fied #1 hit cover of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” (#94 on Vh1’s list)–a cover which, to be perfectly honest, makes me far happier than the original. But their most lasting contribution to pop culture might actually be its follow-up, the tortured “Why You Treat Me So Bad”? The song in itself is a little awkward, but its main hook–that eerie, hypnotic keyboard part–would be a recurring theme over the next two decades of hit pop music, appearing as the basis of Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It,” Puff Daddy and R. Kelly’s “Satisfy You” and Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Gonna Be Alright.” The song’s bizarro intro was even copied by Ashanti for the beginning to her underrated “Only U.” Wiki entry even claims that the song was the inspiration for Gwen Stefani’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (for, I suppose, better or worse). Not bad for a second hit.
• Tommy Tutone – “Angel Say No” (#40, 1980) A highly respectable slice of early-80s power pop–perhaps lacking the unforgettable sort of hook that would eventually propel them to OHW infamy, but catchy and youthful and all those good things as well. More interestingly to me, it’s actually the band’s first hit, coming a full two years before “867-5309 / Jenny” (#4 on VH1’s list). That means for two whole years, Tommy Tutone were known to the public as “That ‘Angel Say No’” band, and people likely assumed that that was all they would ever be known for. There would be worse fates, anyway, but I’m sure it’s a better sell on the nostalgia circuit to list your peers as Bow Wow Wow and Thomas Dolby than Bram Tchaikovsky and The Records.
• Neneh Cherry – “Kisses on the Wind” (#8, 1989) The success of Neneh Cherry seems like such a period fluke in retrospect–a beneficiary of that weird era in dance music between freestyle and diva house, maybe–that it seems only logical that Neneh Cherry would be a one-hit wonder. But indeed, the effervescent “Buffalo Stance” (#50 on the VH1 list) was just one or two of the top ten hits that Miss Cherry produced, the second being “Kisses on the Wind,” a similarly irrepressible dance number (about reaching puberty, of all things). Both songs are kind of obnoxious, but decently catchy, and certainly fascinating for their time–I have a feeling people will say similar things about M.I.A. 20 years or so down the road. (Regrettably, brother Eagle-Eye Cherry did in fact have just the one hit).
• Rob Base & DJ EZ-Rock – “Joy and Pain” (#58, 1988) OK, so #58 isn’t very high, but in reality, “It Takes Two” (#18 on VH1’s list) wasn’t that huge a chart hit either, peaking at #36 in the era when Tone-Loc was the only rapper hitting the top ten. And “Joy and Pain” is a pretty well-remembered Golden Age party jam, which you still hear fairly frequently on old school nights on hip-hop stations and classic dance stations and the like. It’s clearly not as good as “It Takes Two”–not many things are–but it’s a more-than-worthy follow up. I can’t get enough Rob’s ceaseless shouting (“PUMP IT UP! PUMP IT UP! HERE WE GO! HERE WE GO! WHAT ELSE?? WHAT ELSE??”) over what could have otherwise been a rather unremarkable chorus hook–rap songs just don’t talk to themselves like that anymore.
• A Flock of Seagulls – “Space Age Love Song,” “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)” (#30 and #26). I find the placing of “I Ran (So Far Away)” (#2) particularly insulting, especially given that it finished just one out of the top spot. Not just because the band had two other top 40 hits, both of which still get play on 80s weekends and the like (though obviously nowhere near the levelof “I Ran”), but because both of those songs are actually considerably better than “I Ran.” Don’t believe me? OK, it might be an over-exposure thing–maybe. But check those other two songs out first, becuase they’re fucking dynamite–shimmering, soaring, absolutely glorious synth-pop anthems, part Soft Cell, part Big Country, all 80s. And people wonder why I like Angels and Airwaves so much–watch the videos for “Wishing” and “The Adventure” back-to-back and tell me Tom DeLonge wasn’t a megafan as well.

Take Five: Videos Worthy of Shot-for-Shot Remakes

I found this shot-for-shot remake of the classic video for Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” in the always-informative Sports Guy’s Mailbag, and it got me thinking a little. The video itself was not necessarily any more compelling than the Gus Van Sant Psycho, but the thing that interested me about this imitative retelling was that it got me thinking how I would have gone about doing it if I had to refilm this video with my friends. What exactly is the easiest way to mount a keyboard on a wall? How hard is it to get four guys in a line singing in unison? Is a two-second montage of eight different shots really worth all the trouble? Even with the sound off, this remake would’ve been immediately recognizable as the “Separate Ways” video, but how many videos could that really be done for? So many of the best either have important, hard to reproduce special effects (like, say, A-Ha’s “Take on Me”), are filmed in too-exotic locations (any Duran Duran video), have a cast too wide (Guns n Roses’ “November Rain”) or, uh, camera shots that somehow look cost-consuming (Busta Rhymes’ “Woo-Hah! Got You All in Check!”) Rather, you just need a video that you and six or so of your closest friends could reproduce in a day or two of filming with a hundred-dollar budget, a handheld camera and basic video editing software.

So what videos what I remake with my friends would I reproduce with my friends, given the option? Here are the leading candidates:

• The Verve – “Bittersweet Symphony”. Easy enough–all you really need is one guy who doesn’t mind bumping into people for four minutes, and a bunch of other guys to join up at the end as the rest of the band. The other roles–the incidental people that Richard Ashcroft bumps into on the street–can all basically be replaced by real-life, unwilling participant extras, except for the one chick who gets supermad and probably should be cast in a role herself. The hardest part I guess would be maintaining the video’s grainy, blue-ish hue–I dunno what kind of filter you have to buy for your camera to achieve that, or maybe you can just work it out in post. Interesting, the video itself is basically a non-shot-for-shot remake of Massive Attack’s slightly less iconic but equally classic “Unfinished Sympathy.”
• George Michael – “Freedom ‘90“. Somehow, I imagine this video becomes a lot more affordable when you don’t have to pay five of the most famous women in the world to appear in it. (Of course, you still do have to find five women to appear in such a project, and as the “Separate Ways” remake makes clear, sometimes finding even one can present something of a challenge). Nevertheless, all you really need once you get the girls signed on are a tea kettle, an abandoned apartment, and a bunch of really, really big sweaters–easy enough. The exploding jukebox might present something of a challenge, but I suppose you could always cut to stock footage–no proof that George Michael actually took the time to blow one up on his set either.
• Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories – “Stay (I Missed You)”: Technically the easiest video on this list to reproduce, as it is a mere one-shot (in fact any number of one-shot videos could conceivably work for this project, with the extremely notable exception of Kylie Minogue’s “Come Into My World“) with no extras needed to support the performance of its star actress. But naturally, the success of the project would depend entirely on the performance of said leading lady, as a “Stay” remake sinks or swims depending on how closely she could emulate the myriad emotions that Loeb manages to project throughout the video (and, yes, the song). Oh, and I guess you probably need a cat too. And those glasses. Might be slightly trickier than you think, but at least the rest of the faux-Nine Stories still get to chill off-screen.
• Smashing Pumpkins – “Today“: Maybe a litlte high-budget for our purposes, since you need an ice cream truck (or at least a truck with the words “ice cream” on it), a whole lot of paint, and a relatively low-maintenance gas station willing to support your tomfoolery for about half an hour. That said, it’s certainly easier than trying to emulate the rest of the Pumpkins’ videography, whether the stop-motion of “Tonight, Tonight” the ridiculous makeup of “Ava Adore” or that super-cool camera-in-a-rolling-tire angle from “1979″. And besides, you get to persuade one of your friends to lounge around in a sundress for a few hours, or do it yourself if you’re so inclined. (Speaking of which–did you know that James Iha and Taylor Hanson are going to be in a band together? Two of the hottest chick-dudes in rock history, in the same band? With eternally hideous Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos? History in the making, my friends).
• The Replacements – “Bastards of Young“ In fact, I’m sure this video has been accidentally remade shot-for-shot dozens of times as burgeoning rock bands put their equipment down for a cigarette break during their shoots and simply forget to turn the camera off. Except for the kicking-in-the-speaker part at the end. Or maybe not.

Take Five: Adventures With DV-R

For many years, I had resisted the urge to pursue any sort of TiVo or DV-R type cable recording device. This would likely surprise many, considering that someone who watches as much TV as I would no doubt find the perks of such a service to be gargantuanly advantageous. But I felt my reasons for not acquiescing were good ones:

1. It would make me less disciplined as a TV watcher.
2. It would cut into too much money I could otherwise be spending on Chinese delivery and Rock Band downloads.
3. It would result in me watching even more TV than I already do.

So for all of college and my first year out, I made do with a cheap VC-R borrowed from my cousins (which I used only in the gravest of TV emergencies) and a very active internet connection. But it got to the point where even my parents were ribbing me for not having one of these, and it made me reconsider if the negatives were really that negative:

1. Being a “disciplined” TV watcher resulted in a lot of late nights of deciding in between watching Family Guy reruns for the 30th time or hoping that new anchors would make watching the same SportsCenter I watched two hours before somehow fresh.
2. The cost of DV-R was really not that considerable, and would likely only result in one less order of dumplings and hot & sour soup and maybe a pass on downloading another Disturbed song on Rock Band a month.
3. I was already watching as much TV as a human being could possibly watch without resulting in physical entropy.

Consequently, I made the plunge about a month ago by picking up a DV-R, and have of course yet to look back. It hasn’t changed the quantity of TV I’ve watched–the TV’s on whenever I’m home, pretty much no matter what–but the quality has drastically improved. No more midday malaise resorting to O.C. or Sopranos reruns the millionth time, no tricky 6:00 hour in between Pardon the Interruption and Jeopardy, and no more miserable late nights. The only problem now is recording things faster then I can watch them, which all things considered, is a pretty decent problem to haave.

The most obvious and immediate benefits are the ease with which I can record Sixers games when I’m at work and LOST episodes when I’m at home watching Sixers games. But far more exciting are the opportunities the service affords me to watch things that I would likely never watch before–either because I’m not at home when they’re on, watching something else when they’re on, or simply don’t think to flip past the channel when they would be on. It means I can see a preview for a show like Life on Mars or Burn Notice, think “hm, never seen that before,” and take a flier on it. I’m not interested enough in them to torrent their episodes or catch ‘em on Hulu, but if I can have it on in the background while I’m falling asleep, waking up or writing to you lovely people, why not give it a shot? It’s given me a new sense of purpose in my TV watching–whereas most people would likely view spending two+ hours watching Kerry Wood’s 1998 20-K game against the Astros as a complete waste of time, it makes me feel oddly productive.

So with that in mind, here are five of the better dice rolls I’ve made since acquiring the Black Box:

• American Idol (Early Episodes). I hadn’t watched American Idol with any regularity since my roommate got me into the Bo Bice / Carrie Underwood season my freshman year–liked parts, but too much filler, too many boring contestants, too much Seacrest. And I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it into the teeth of the competition. But man, those early episodes. They’re not pretty, and they take some cheap shots, but IITS friend Victor put it best in his on point analysis of the appeal of Paul Blart: Mall Cop–sometimes, you just wanna see a fat guy fall down. My favorite moment was undoubtedly a college kid from I think the Utah week, who performed an extremely timid version of “Walking on Sunshine” after telling Simon that where he saw himself in ten years was (roughly) “In a house…hopefully with some wooden floors…” (his exit, fairly pre-determined, was oddly self-aware for a spectacular Idol failure, leading me to wonder why no stunt journalist had ever taken on an AI audition). Plus, the advent of the Fast Forward button–less filler, less boring contestants, much less Seacrest.
• NBA All-Star Games. It’s funny, because I don’t even remember being too interested in the 2008 All-Star Game while I was watching it last year–I had no real rooting interest, and the players didn’t seem to have one either, so I wasn’t sure why I should care. Now I see the point–as an NBA cultural snapshot, the All-Star Game has no peer. NBA TV has been replaying all of the All-Star Games of the last 30 years or so–though I only really started taping within the last decade–and the marvel-worthy moments n those I’ve watched so far are plentiful. Allen Iverson affectionately asking for coach Larry Brown after winning the game MVP, the emotional peak of a soon-to-be extremely tumultuous relationship. Kobe Bryant putting on a clinic in Philly but getting booed anyway, an early lesson for Kobe that you can’t go home again (especially after breaking their heart in the finals the year before). Steve Francis, Wally Sczcerbiak and Stephon Marbury performing the parts of successful, well-liked NBA players. And if that’s not all compelling enough, you also get Jason Kidd hitting half-court buzzer beaters and Tracy McGrady throwing alley-oops off the backboard to himself. Fantastic stuff–I’ll be catching ‘em all next year for certain.
• Demetri Martin. I never watch The Daily Show, and I had no idea who Demetri Martin was, minus the fact that he was in an episode of Flight of the Conchords, and I could’t even tell you which one. But I read a comeplling article about him, a couple of my friends are in love with him, and the previews for Important Things, his new Comedy Central show, looked OK. So I took a look at the series premiere, as well as an old CC special of his that aired the night before, and I think I can now count myself among the ranks of my smitten friends. Important Things was pretty hit-or-miss–so much so that I don’t think you can find a review of it that doesn’t use the phrase “hit-or-miss” in some capacity–but when he was on, he was absolutely Chappelle-worthy. The comedy special was even better–I actually remember seeing commercials for it two or three years ago and being struck with the hilarity of the “Cuteness of Girl vs. How Interested I Am in Hearing About How Intuitive Their Cat Is” graph, but I had no memory of Martin being behind it. In any event, his stuff should be on my DV-R radar for some time to come.
• Gossip Girl. I’d always meant to be more up on Gossip Girl than I had been–I liked it pretty well, and felt that it was somehow important, but would never be emotionally invested enough in a show filled with such largely unsympathetic characters to download it or get the DVDs. I only watched it when I was home and nothing better was on, resulting in me seeing about four episodes total, with about a half-season in between each. Now, though, I certainly have 40 minutes a week to spare for some pretty, snobby 17-year-olds (played by pretty, slightly less snobby 24-year-olds) and their narcissistic ways, and I’m glad to have the show in my life. It appears I picked a good time to reinsert myself as well, as we appear to have moved into the “Sex With Teacher Scandal” subplot phase of the show’s career–a must for any epoch-making teen drama worth its salt, and one which GG has possibly already gotten to three or four times without my knowledge. Don’t tell me what happened last week, though–I could only tape two things at a time, and my conscience made me prioritize the Presidential Address over GG last time out. Mistake, no doubt.
• GAC’s Top 50 Videos of the Year. My stance on Mainstream Country is, somewhat regrettably, a fairly common one of northern popwatchers–I recognize its right to exist, but I’m not going to voluntarily interact with it all that often. As should be no surprise to readers of this blog, though, I’ll watch anything in countdown form, and that certainly includes country videos. Besides the fact that it’s important to remember that in certain corners of the world, “How Great Thou Art” is an acceptable cover choice, Andy Griffith is an enviable music-video cameo and Trace Adkins may as well be a Jonas Brother, it was just kind of fun to see this musical canon with whom I had such limited interactions–a learning experience that confirmed that most of these songs weren’t for me, but that I was sort of glad that they were out there anyway. Bravo to GAC, too, for doing a full top 50 countdown, one rerun after New Years eve, and one that even had a reputable host in crossover megasuccess Taylor Swift. And a couple of the songs–Keith Urban’s “You Look Good in My Shirt,” Billy Currington’s “Don’t,” Plant & Krauss’s “Gone, Gone, Gone”–actually inspired me to fire up SoulSeek. Might have to check back on the weekly Top 20s every once in a while.

Something’s Always Wrong / Take Five: The Real Cheating of Slumdog Millionaire

Spoilers like the Oakland Raiders

So I finally got around to seeing the inevitable sleeper of the 2008 Oscars last night, and the movie was predictably wonderful. Even if the movie hadn’t been any good, I’d appreciate its existence for catapulting Danny Boyle–easily one of the most brilliant, exciting and versatile directors of the past two decades, and quite arguably the single most underrated–back into the limelight. But the movie was good, quite certainly–epic but charming, gritty but beautiful, the whole deal. But I still have a rather large bone to pick with the movie, and if you have even the most cursory knowledge of this blog, you should have a pretty good idea what it is.

The movie’s framing device–of main character Jamal going on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? because he knows that his lost love will be watching, and ending up nearing the maximum winning amount due to all of the questions pertaining to important (and usually tragic) events in his life–is a clever one, for sure, and the movie is undoubtedly richer for it. However, as a game show junkie for the majority of my existence, and as a one-time GS alum myself, I can’t help but be irked at the large number of gigantic suspensions of diseblief the movie requires to buy into it. Admittedly Indian game shows may differ somewhat from their American counterparts, but there are some basic game show rules so universal that I don’t believe for a second that they could even be different halfway around the world. To wit:

1. There’s no way that Jamal even gets on this show in the first place. Not because he’s a slumdog, or a chaiwala or whatever class denigration the movie gives him, but because the dude has no personality whatsoever. Which isn’t to say that you need to be Eddie Izzard to get on a game show, but the kid’s so moon-faced and emotionally intense that it’s unbelieably unlikely that he’d pass any sort of screening process. Think about it–when was the last time you watched Millionaire, and the contestant just gave expressionless, one-word responses to Regis/Meredith’s bantering, or straight-up, elboration-less answers? No, it’s all “Well, funny story, Reg,” or “Actually, Mer, I think I know this one ‘coz once when I was in third grade…” Plus, what kind of Fastest Finger could Jamal have possibly won? He doesn’t seem to know the answer to anything besides the Q’s he gets right on the show.
2. In the film’s climax, Jamal’s lost love Latika realizes that he is calling the phone that his brother Salim gave her, because she hears him mention that Salim was his Phone-a-Friend on TV, and manages to get to the phone in time. All well and good, except for one thing–you can probably count the number of game shows in the world that are broadcast live on one hand, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? certainly isn’t one of them, here or in India. My friend who I saw the movie with knew someone who used her as a Phone-a-Friend during an appearance on Millionaire sometime over the summer, and she thinks the show might finally be airing sometime in the next few weeks. In reality, Jamal would probably have to wait at that fucking train station for close to half a year before he could even have hope of Latika coming through.
3. Particularly insulting to my intelligence was the scene after the show’s host slips an intentionally wrong answer to Jamal out of distrust and jealousy of his oncoming celebrity status. After using the 50/50 to narrow the choices down to the correct answer and the wrong answer fed to him by the host, Jamal either realizes that the host is misdirecting him, doesn’t want to cheat, or realizes that he knows it anyway, and chooses the right answer. And the host, baffled at Jamal’s defiance, keeps needling him–”Are you sure you don’t want to pick [the other answer]?” He even sort of tries to make a case for why Jamal should pick the wrong answer. I’m sorry–there might be game show hosts out there that are that morally shady, but there are none that are so blatantly unprofessional.
4. Speaking of game show hosts–why are they never presented in a positive light in movies? What kind of phobia are we displaying of these purveyors of good fortune and mirth when the most genteel of them presented on-screen are merely scumbags (Anil Kapoor here, Philip Baker Hall in Magnolia) and the worst are just straight up killers (Sam Rockwell in Confessoins of a Dangerous Mind, Richard Dawson in The Running Man)? I mean some of ‘em are a little cheesy, sure, but at least a couple must be decent citizens, right? I think the profession needs a Wrestler-like focus picture to give it a certain dignity. Get Anthony Michael Hall his first Oscar nod, perhaps.
5. And of course, the worst of all–this is supposed to be a show where even the greatest intellectual minds of India have yet to get to the final stage of the show, right? But when Jamal gets to the final question of the show, it’s just about naming one of the Three Musketeers? No offense, guys, but are the greatest intellectual minds of India the equivalent of vending machine stockers in the United States or something? I mean, the book might not be as popular in India, but Jamal and Salim were reading it in school, so clearly it’s not particularly obscure, either. (Though to be completely honest, I thought the answer was D’Artagnan. And that’s why you’ll never see me on a game show where there’s even a slight possibility I’ll get a question about something besides music, movies or TV).

Also, anyone else think Salim got kind of a bum rap in this movie? I was pulling for him most of the way.

Take Five: Students That Coach Taylor Would Have to Deal With in Friday Night Lights

“Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He is going to fight and he is going to lose.”

Friday Night Lights is the best show on television. Dexter rivalled it occasionally this season but now appears largely out of the running, and Mad Men is on pace to be a title contender by next season, but after finally catching up on season three over the weekend, I now consider this point to be basically inarguable. Most great teen dramas (and really, most non-HBO dramas of any stripe) start to decline rapidly in their third season–by then everyone’s gotten with everyone, plots start getting repetitive, and as is unavoidable in the genre, college becomes an unavoidable issue. But while the show may never be able to recapture the magic and freshness of that first season, if there’s a significant lag to be found in FNL’s third season, I’m not feeling it–the show still crackles with the urgency, humor, and emotional honesty that made it such a bright spot on NBC for its last two seasons. And what’s more, it’s even possible that the show could keep it up for four or five seasons to come, assuming two things:

1. It can manage to keep itself on the air, even with the reduced expectations of DirecTV
2. It can continue to develop new characters

Riggins, Lyla, Saracen, Landry, Tyra, Julie–all great, great characters. But aside from Julie (and possibly Landry, I dunno what his deal is), all of ‘em are of to Uni next year, and if the show doesn’t want to become Saved By the Blitz: The College Years, it has to start the regenerating process. I’ve been fairly impressed with their ability to say goodbye this season, as two of the show’s previous core characters (Smash Williams and Jason Street, both of whom had since left Dillon High) were given four-episode arcs to wrap up their stories this season and sent on their way. That’s half of the equation, but even more important is their ability to bring on new talent to fill the voids their characters left. So far, all we’ve really been introduced to this season is J.D. McCoy–the adorable, all-american rich kid with a cannon of an arm and a mercenary of a father, tabbed by the Dillon Powers That Be as the school’s QB1 of the future (and possibly the present). His character started as a caricature, but quickly became as vivid as any of the show’s regulars, demonstrating the show’s continual ability to somehow make any walking cliche three-dimensional.

But still, even if JD is the show’s franchise star in waiting, the rebuilding process on Friday Night Lights has to run a lot deeper. The way this show would work best in the years to come were if the show’s producers treated the cast like the team’s starting lineup–giving most of the playing time to its seasoned vets, but still giving limited minutes to the up-and-comers, so they can take the reins when the oldsters move on to greener pastures. Similarly, we should be seeing characters in minor spots this season–perhaps like  that of JaMarcus Hall, the fullback whose parents disapproved of his being on the team until they saw him play this season–who will be given increasingly expanded roles as the seasons progress. Consequently, here are my suggestions of types of future Panthers the show would be wise to start developing now, so that they can emerge as the centerpieces of the main story lines two or three seasons down the road.

• The Celebrity Kid RB: Let’s say the son of a universally beloved and admired football player–a Jr. Manning, Tomlinson, Strahan, what have you–comes to Dillon, wanting to play. The pressure on Coach Taylor to play him immediately–from the fans who want to witness flashes of his father, the boosters who want the national exposure the kid would bring, and maybe even the parents, who want their son to have everything that daddy did. But let’s say the kid really, really sucks–has some natural athleticism, perhaps, but no mind for even the most simple mechanics of the game,  and no heart to make up for it. Maybe the kid doesn’t even really want to be there–maybe he’d rather be in a band, or on the Mathletes–but his parents and friends won’t let him quit, and Coach can’t just bench him without pissing off the entire town. So the two have to figure out a way to work on his skills, play to his strengths, and somehow fit him into the team. Maybe he becomes the long snapper or something, angering fans and parents alitke, until he makes one key tackle on a punt return in an important game, and the whole town learns an important lesson on how every position is essential to the game.
• The Gay LB: A show as good as FNL can’t avoid homosexuality in the locker room forever, even after they sort of copped out with Landry’s lesbian bandmate. It’s a chance for a very honest show to get a little uncomfortable in its realism. Say one of the team’s better linebackers is discovered outside a gay club by a bunch of his teammates driving by. Most of the team wants him booted, aside from a couple of the Landry/Matt-type players quietly voicing their opinions that it isn’t that big a deal, and Coach Taylor has no idea what to do, not wanting to part with one of his best defensive players, but faced with enormal pressure from inside and outside the team, and a little uncomfortable and outraged with the kid himself. Coach decides to ignore the issue, but the situation is quickly proven untenable, and he decides that has to get rid of the kid. He calls the kid into his office and fabricates some excuse as to why he has to be cut, which the kid quickly sees through, silently tearing up as he leaves the locker room. Coach ends up unable to shake the feeling that he did the wrong thing, but even Tammy agrees that he had no choice. He isn’t seen on the team again, but eventually becomes a good friend of Julie’s, making for a couple extremely awkward dinners at the Taylor household.
• The Raging DT: Making things similarly uncomfortable, a kid joins the team with serious, destructive anger issues. It makes him one of the team’s defensive stars on the field, but he seems to get called for Personal Fouls a whole lot, and eventually a locker room scene where he ends up getting into a fight with one of his teammates shows the kid to have an inner rage that goes far beyond his desire to pancake offensive linemen. Coach Taylor tries to talk to him and mentor him a little, but that just angers him further, and maybe he even tries to take a swing at him at one point. Coach tries to get him booted from the team but is talked down by Tammy (who sees the kid as troubled and crying for help) and by Buddy (who sees the kid as the anchor of a weak defensive front four)  and persuaded to give him a second chance. Eventually, the kid turns out to have been abused and/or neglected by his parents, Coach gives him some speech about how he has the strength to become his own man, he gets involved with one of the new recurring female characters, and he mellows out a little.
• The Lonesome PK: Isn’t it a little miraculous that on a show featuring a team that seems to have every game come down to a final drive, I don’t think we’ve ever seen a single field goal attempt? Maybe we just need a good kicker character–someone who reflects the culture of tragedy associated with the position, of course. Let’s say there’s a kicker on the team that’s always been sort of a loner, acknowledged but not really accepted by the team, who just floats along in the periphery of a bunch of episodes until there’s a big game that comes down to a final field goal (or even worse, an extra point) that the kid just shanks, resulting in him getting shunned by team and coach alike. Then a few days or weeks later, the kid tries to kill himself in the locker room bathroom, and suddenly, everyone on the team–especially Coach Taylor–is forced to confront the fact that they never took the kid even remotely seriously, and that they’re all at least partly responsible for giving him such shit for the one time all year he didn’t come through for them, despite the fact that he had been the model of quiet efficiency prior to that. In time the kid recovers, comes back to a standing ovation from the team, kicks a game winner, and gets a private lap dance at the Landing Strip that night, paid for by his teammates. Watching at home, Bill and Martin Grammatica embrace and sob wildly.
• The Narcissistic WR: Coach has never really had to deal with a real instigator on the team–Smash had an ego but was basically a good kid, and “Voodoo” Tatum only stuck around with Dillon for a few weeks before leaving, but what if there was some receiver type that had a good sense of the game, was immeasurably talented, but always thought he knew better? He constantly disrupts the team chemistry, gives press conferences where he badmouths his teammates and staff for not playing the game right (i.e. getting him the ball) and takes practices off when he feels like it, but is far too brilliant on the field for anyone to question him as a starter. Coach Taylor tries to get him to fall in line but can’t get through to him, and eventually the other players start to complain that he’s hogging the spotlight too much. Coach tries to bench him, but the Panthers’ passing game goes stagnant, Dillon loses an important game, and the entire town starts calling for his job. Eventually, maybe the kid gets into some kind of trouble off the field–he pissess off the wrong people, or owes someone some money, or maybe has some secret he can’t go to his parents with. With no one else to turn to, he goes to Coach Taylor for assistance, who reluctantly agrees to help the kid. Touched, the kid humbles himself a little, and though he still can’t hide his egomania, he apologizes to a couple of his teammates, shows up for practices, and helps Dillon get back to state contention. After the title game, coach meets his father for the first time, played in a wink-wink cameo–of course–by Terrell Owens.

Take Five: Pictures of Samantha Ronson Wearing a Stupid Hat and Flashing a Peace Sign

Does this look like a woman you’d flip your sexuality for?