Further proof that we are two nations separated by a common language... just read the headline my friends.
The article is very interesting, too. Thanks to my wife for the link.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Today is the 4th Anniversary of my wedding to Jamie McBride Steans.
We got married on a lovely Friday afternoon in South Austin under the watchful eye of many of our friends and loved ones and some random friends of my parents. Jamie was amazingly lovely, and the whole thing mostly went off without a hitch.
Here's to four great years of me being the luckiest guy on earth.
We got married on a lovely Friday afternoon in South Austin under the watchful eye of many of our friends and loved ones and some random friends of my parents. Jamie was amazingly lovely, and the whole thing mostly went off without a hitch.
Here's to four great years of me being the luckiest guy on earth.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Everyone wants to be naked and famous.
I got a post-card in my mail-slot at work today for some sort of drama camp being held at my employing university. It looks like it's for middle-school or high-school aged kids, and is designed to aloow them to try out their acting chops in an environment other than the annual Christmas Pageant (I, myself, am a three-time veteran narrator of the Christmas Pageant. I was not allowed to narrate anymore after I flubbed the phrase "Prince of Peace" during the horrid production of "The Christmas Alphabet". There are a lot of letters after P, and X wasn't even included, so it wasn't much of a play. But I sure saw those angry stares from the parents when I screwed up "Prince of Peace". Which made me start laughing. Which made my brother start laughing. Which made Todd start laughing. Which didn't help with the angry stares. And I thought Christmas was supposed to be merry...).
At any rate, the post card shows about five kids of varying ethnicities pulled from some pay-per-photo website. They might be singing. They might be yelling. I can't tell. I kind of don't like kids, so I didn't pay too much attention. What caught my eye was the phrase, "Where every child is a star!" Parents: That is physically impossible. Not every child is a star. The world if full of us chorus type people. And if your kid stinks, your kid stinks. furthermore, Parents: just because your kid is an obnoxious lout, doesn't make them the next Katherine Hepburn. Trust me. And, no... there's no such thing as precociousness. It's almost invariably obnoxiousness through the filter of parent's doting eyes. And then it becomes obnoxiousness which receives positive reinforcement, making it all the worse for the chorus kids.
Can little kids be good actors? Sure. I guess. And so can chimps and dogs. Even Dolphins can act, if you've seen Flipper.
But the point is, not EVERY child is going to be a star. A lot of kids will go to camp and end up way back in the chorus, or play "shopkeep #5" in an atrocious rendition of Hello, Dolly! (I am actually reminded of a former co-worker of mine who told me her 5th grade class performed MacBeth. I said "God, that must have been awful for your parents!" and she said "No, we were really good." To which I said "You were 10. Whether you knew it or not, the best you could do is memorize your lines." To which she insisted "well, we were in the gifted class." To which I said "Weren't we all. It sounds like a freaking nightmare. I pity your parents." To which she said "Well, kids at my school were probably smarter than at your school. This was in Philadelphia." Which pretty much went against everything I ever knew about Philadelphia, but I let it drop.)
Now there's nothing wrong with kids doing drama, or adults doing drama. And I don't want that confusion to play out here. But the point is: iWhere Every Child Is a Star!
Which got me thinking about Reality TV. It's fairly easy to see the connection and if you see where I'm going, stop reading now. Reality TV is the long-awaited dream of all of us untalented chorus people. It's the final resting place of the morbidly un-cast to be famous for being famous, to let dignity and due process fly to the wind. It casts off any preconceptions about skill, or working for years before getting a break, or having talent. It's your chance to fulfill the highschool popularity contest of being universally known and loved just for existing.
But, like everything else, this stardom is fleeting. Just the length of the season of the show, and then someone even nutsier comes along on a show you never heard of before. But by then you've got an agent, you've ditched your girlfriend and moved to LA to have a go at making it in the movies (which, honestly... you know jack-shit about...). You get a role in a commercial playing a pre-scripted version of yourself (who is kind of an ass, but it's hyperbole for TV, right...?) and then... VH1 calls to ask you about how bitter you are because you're not in the next Spielberg picture the way you hoped... and can they put you on camera to talk about it? Well, says you agent, it would be good for your exposure (which is limited to the local bar right now). So, yeah, go ahead. 15% of blood money is better than 15% of nothing.
And forget about the kids who go to LA and are starring in movies like "The Sopornos 18" a year or two of bad decision making after their arrival. Or the sea of people who don't happen to have fathers and mothers who can get them a job... Or the demeaning role of "chubby girl #2" or the best story they have is that it turns out Alan Thicke can be a real moody bastard on set...
We want our kids to be famous. We want them to be known and harassed and stalked and photographed and adored... screw it if their only skill is showing their teeth when they smile...
And if they do become a star, they decide you abused them and sue you for all you've got once they turn twenty-one and meet a coke-head stripper looking for a handout. Hell, if the story is horrific enough, you can get on VH1 and talk about with out without a 15% representation fee. And, hey... that makes you semi-famous, right..?
I got a post-card in my mail-slot at work today for some sort of drama camp being held at my employing university. It looks like it's for middle-school or high-school aged kids, and is designed to aloow them to try out their acting chops in an environment other than the annual Christmas Pageant (I, myself, am a three-time veteran narrator of the Christmas Pageant. I was not allowed to narrate anymore after I flubbed the phrase "Prince of Peace" during the horrid production of "The Christmas Alphabet". There are a lot of letters after P, and X wasn't even included, so it wasn't much of a play. But I sure saw those angry stares from the parents when I screwed up "Prince of Peace". Which made me start laughing. Which made my brother start laughing. Which made Todd start laughing. Which didn't help with the angry stares. And I thought Christmas was supposed to be merry...).
At any rate, the post card shows about five kids of varying ethnicities pulled from some pay-per-photo website. They might be singing. They might be yelling. I can't tell. I kind of don't like kids, so I didn't pay too much attention. What caught my eye was the phrase, "Where every child is a star!" Parents: That is physically impossible. Not every child is a star. The world if full of us chorus type people. And if your kid stinks, your kid stinks. furthermore, Parents: just because your kid is an obnoxious lout, doesn't make them the next Katherine Hepburn. Trust me. And, no... there's no such thing as precociousness. It's almost invariably obnoxiousness through the filter of parent's doting eyes. And then it becomes obnoxiousness which receives positive reinforcement, making it all the worse for the chorus kids.
Can little kids be good actors? Sure. I guess. And so can chimps and dogs. Even Dolphins can act, if you've seen Flipper.
But the point is, not EVERY child is going to be a star. A lot of kids will go to camp and end up way back in the chorus, or play "shopkeep #5" in an atrocious rendition of Hello, Dolly! (I am actually reminded of a former co-worker of mine who told me her 5th grade class performed MacBeth. I said "God, that must have been awful for your parents!" and she said "No, we were really good." To which I said "You were 10. Whether you knew it or not, the best you could do is memorize your lines." To which she insisted "well, we were in the gifted class." To which I said "Weren't we all. It sounds like a freaking nightmare. I pity your parents." To which she said "Well, kids at my school were probably smarter than at your school. This was in Philadelphia." Which pretty much went against everything I ever knew about Philadelphia, but I let it drop.)
Now there's nothing wrong with kids doing drama, or adults doing drama. And I don't want that confusion to play out here. But the point is: iWhere Every Child Is a Star!
Which got me thinking about Reality TV. It's fairly easy to see the connection and if you see where I'm going, stop reading now. Reality TV is the long-awaited dream of all of us untalented chorus people. It's the final resting place of the morbidly un-cast to be famous for being famous, to let dignity and due process fly to the wind. It casts off any preconceptions about skill, or working for years before getting a break, or having talent. It's your chance to fulfill the highschool popularity contest of being universally known and loved just for existing.
But, like everything else, this stardom is fleeting. Just the length of the season of the show, and then someone even nutsier comes along on a show you never heard of before. But by then you've got an agent, you've ditched your girlfriend and moved to LA to have a go at making it in the movies (which, honestly... you know jack-shit about...). You get a role in a commercial playing a pre-scripted version of yourself (who is kind of an ass, but it's hyperbole for TV, right...?) and then... VH1 calls to ask you about how bitter you are because you're not in the next Spielberg picture the way you hoped... and can they put you on camera to talk about it? Well, says you agent, it would be good for your exposure (which is limited to the local bar right now). So, yeah, go ahead. 15% of blood money is better than 15% of nothing.
And forget about the kids who go to LA and are starring in movies like "The Sopornos 18" a year or two of bad decision making after their arrival. Or the sea of people who don't happen to have fathers and mothers who can get them a job... Or the demeaning role of "chubby girl #2" or the best story they have is that it turns out Alan Thicke can be a real moody bastard on set...
We want our kids to be famous. We want them to be known and harassed and stalked and photographed and adored... screw it if their only skill is showing their teeth when they smile...
And if they do become a star, they decide you abused them and sue you for all you've got once they turn twenty-one and meet a coke-head stripper looking for a handout. Hell, if the story is horrific enough, you can get on VH1 and talk about with out without a 15% representation fee. And, hey... that makes you semi-famous, right..?
Monday, April 26, 2004
I have to admit a fondness for MTV's globe-trotting "nature" program Wildboyz.
While I am sure that the good folks at PETA probably flip out at the very notion of putting an animal on camera without a signed consent form, the folks at PETA should really give the show a second-look... because the primary attraction of Wildboyz is getting to see grown men mauled by wild animals.
Steve-O and Chris Pontius from MTV's gleefully brain-dead Jackass have taken the show on the road, and decided to involve the peoples and animals from across the world. No longer content just to ride grocery carts downhill into a brick wall, Chris and Steve-O swim with man-eating sharks, get bit by toucans and get zapped by electric eels. Really, the show is an investigation into all of the aggressive tactics of animals you've heard about, but never got a chance to witness at the zoo. Luckily, Chris is not above poking a jaguar to see if it IS the dealiest cat alive.
Granted, Wildboyz is deeply rooted in the scatological (and here, my PETA friends, you may quit reading before you bust an artery). Steve-o is pee'd and pooped upon by elephants, and Chris might use his thong as the location where he's concealing feed for a guinea hen. And, of course, the male nudity. Neither Chris nor Steve-O will wear much more than a thong, given the chance. In some cases (like when they jumped in the water with a Great White Shark) they've had on even less.
Have I learned anything from Wildboyz? I have learned that Chris and Steve-O should be dead about fifty times over, but somehow live on, with all of their fingers, toes, ears and eyes intact. I also have learned that undomesticated animals WILL in fact attack you in pretty much the worst ways imaginable (see last nights episode with the Sloth Bear incident), and your crew will stand off camera and laugh as you get really messed up.
The amazing part of the spectacle is that Chris and Steve-O go back again and again. It wasn't enough when they dressed up as two parts to a zebra and ran across a veldt in front of hungry lions, only to be mauled. No, next episode they plan to test the stories surrounding the electric eel by standing in runnign water and grabbing electric eels.
I won't watch The Swan, but, God help me, I will watch these two guys get beat up by every creature on the planet.
While I am sure that the good folks at PETA probably flip out at the very notion of putting an animal on camera without a signed consent form, the folks at PETA should really give the show a second-look... because the primary attraction of Wildboyz is getting to see grown men mauled by wild animals.
Steve-O and Chris Pontius from MTV's gleefully brain-dead Jackass have taken the show on the road, and decided to involve the peoples and animals from across the world. No longer content just to ride grocery carts downhill into a brick wall, Chris and Steve-O swim with man-eating sharks, get bit by toucans and get zapped by electric eels. Really, the show is an investigation into all of the aggressive tactics of animals you've heard about, but never got a chance to witness at the zoo. Luckily, Chris is not above poking a jaguar to see if it IS the dealiest cat alive.
Granted, Wildboyz is deeply rooted in the scatological (and here, my PETA friends, you may quit reading before you bust an artery). Steve-o is pee'd and pooped upon by elephants, and Chris might use his thong as the location where he's concealing feed for a guinea hen. And, of course, the male nudity. Neither Chris nor Steve-O will wear much more than a thong, given the chance. In some cases (like when they jumped in the water with a Great White Shark) they've had on even less.
Have I learned anything from Wildboyz? I have learned that Chris and Steve-O should be dead about fifty times over, but somehow live on, with all of their fingers, toes, ears and eyes intact. I also have learned that undomesticated animals WILL in fact attack you in pretty much the worst ways imaginable (see last nights episode with the Sloth Bear incident), and your crew will stand off camera and laugh as you get really messed up.
The amazing part of the spectacle is that Chris and Steve-O go back again and again. It wasn't enough when they dressed up as two parts to a zebra and ran across a veldt in front of hungry lions, only to be mauled. No, next episode they plan to test the stories surrounding the electric eel by standing in runnign water and grabbing electric eels.
I won't watch The Swan, but, God help me, I will watch these two guys get beat up by every creature on the planet.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Suddenly I'm a tremendous fan of NASCAR.
click on pic for a larger image from over at Superman Homepage
Seems Hot Wheels is sponsoring some races. I guess I need to be on the lookout for Justice League themed Hot Wheels cars. And all this after today when, while at Target, I picked up what Jamie called "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Green Lantern".
All I know is I want to ride in whichever car Wonder Woman is getting in.
click on pic for a larger image from over at Superman Homepage
Seems Hot Wheels is sponsoring some races. I guess I need to be on the lookout for Justice League themed Hot Wheels cars. And all this after today when, while at Target, I picked up what Jamie called "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Green Lantern".
All I know is I want to ride in whichever car Wonder Woman is getting in.
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