Respect Authority

I can’t believe it was only six months ago that I wrote my first post on RA about Jersey Shore, when the show was just a few episodes in and the media/pop culture firestorm surrounding it hadn’t yet reached its peak. Oh, how things have changed.

The first episode of the much-anticipated second season premiered on MTV last night, and unless you live under a rock (or are older than 35) you know that the network’s eagerness to get the now-famous cast back on air led them to shoot Season 2 in Miami when it was still snowing buckets on the East Coast.

So far, the geographic change seems at worst harmless, and at best necessary. Since JS Season 1 only ended a few months ago, it would be exceedingly hard to revive the novelty of the show’s first weeks in the same house and at the same bars. Indeed, it’s not such a bad idea to test the legs of the cast—can they be as interesting, or perhaps more interesting, when removed from the very scene that gave the show its name? Answer: yes.

Watching The Situation, Pauly D, Vinny, Ronnie, Sammi, Snooki and JWoww (more on Angelina later) reunite was like meeting up with old friends again, and even though we know many of the cast members have spent the last four months within arms’ length of one-another, it still felt like they were all excited to be re-living the very experience that got them here in the first place. Sort of like how the three months you spend planning the prom (what, you guys didn’t have overanxious female friends in high school?) didn’t manage to undermine the greatness of seeing your peers in evening wear. (Well, that, and the drinking; everyone’s looking forward to the drinking.) Read More ›

So I know I’m several weeks late with the inevitable roundup of summer television, but I like to get a little settled before I pass judgment on hours of programming that I’ll probably continue watching out of sheer boredom after I’ve long since established that it’s making me progressively dumber (see: Rock of Love). I like to catch a few episodes, allow myself to get mildly invested in the characters/contestants/suitors before I decide whether a show is “worth” an hour of my Sunday afternoon, which might otherwise be spent watching foreign films, reading literature or pontificating on the meaning of life. Seriously, I’m a very busy person.

So here’s what I’m watching this summer, and what you should be too, if you know what’s good for you.

---

THE BACHELORETTE: I’m a little late to this particular line of shows; all I know is both The Bachelorette and predecessor The Bachelor (shit started in 2002!) are the mainstream equivalents of VH1’s romantic contest-based programming. The only difference is there’s more mush—poetry, hand-holding, prolonged eye contact without resulting sexual contact—and fewer strippers. Bachelorette Ali, who is apparently a cast-off from a past season of The Bachelor (sort of the ABC version of Real World/Road Rules Challenge), seems sufficiently generic; she’s the kind of girl you’d pass in a J. Crew with a small dog in her purse. Her eligible men are equally nondescript, to the point that I’ve watched at least three episodes and couldn’t pair names with faces. Fortunately for ABC, the sheer voyeurism of watching people try to fall in love means it’s hard to fuck this one up.

Verdict: Watch with a hand on the remote. Some scenes—like Ali being serenaded by anyone, anywhere—are too perfectly awkward to miss. Others, like the ENDLESS rose ceremony, are easy to skip.

---

TOP CHEF D.C.: Here’s the thing about Top Chef: it’s getting a little…old. The formula is the same every season and even though they switch cities, unless you’re familiar with the culinary inner-workings of Chicago versus New York versus D.C., the guest chefs and restaurant cameos aren’t going to make much of a difference. It doesn’t help that a lot of the challenges are the same (and then again repeated on Top Chef Masters which, let’s be honest, is just a space filler between TC seasons so you don’t start watching something else in that time slot). That said, this season of Top Chef seems to have the requisite cast of characters: the early front-runner, the power-hungry female, the trod-upon foreigner. Add some spices and voila! Decent television.

Verdict: If you’ve watched the last six seasons, you might as well keep on keeping on. But make sure you have food around; after one particularly tantalizing episode I found myself dipping pretzel rods in butter.

---

WORK OF ART: In its never-ending quest to find the “top” everything—chef, fashion designer, hair stylist, hair stylist for poodles—Bravo has moved on to perhaps the most subjective of all topics: art. Work of Art throws a bunch of weirdos with artistic inclinations in one room, where they tackle assigned inspirations that run the gamut from portraiture to book covers. To be honest, I had limited hope for this show. I get the Bravo thing, I buy into it, but as someone who’s spent life wishing her technical ability matched her drive to create art, I wasn’t keen on watching people have their work slammed. So far, Bravo has proved me wrong: the ‘assignments’ are broad enough that it’s hard to argue people are being pigeon-holed and the variety in skills is huge; the show includes everything from painters to performance artists. The only weak point: the judges. But to be fair, Tim Gunn set the bar pretty high.

Verdict: If you like Bravo’s other fare, this one is well worth the time. And if you don’t like Bravo’s other fare, why the fuck are you reading my blog?

---

YOU’RE CUT OFF: VH1 never ceases to amaze. Just when I think they’ve exhausted the possibilities for trashy spin-off shows, they come up with something totally original (and by original I mean “original”) to hold the line until Ray J and another gaggle of hookers can be rounded up. You’re Cut Off follows a dozen spoiled princesses (think My Super Sweet 16, plus ten years) as they’re thrown in a house together with a life coach who teaches them lessons like “Toilets don’t clean themselves” and “Shoes don’t HAVE to cost $4,000.” It’s predictably entertaining to watch women who count tiaras among their casual-wear try to figure out how to grocery shop, or sweep a floor. Unfortunately the life coach/host isn’t harsh enough to make me feel like the ladies are learning anything so much as biding time until they can return home to their pampered lives, a few thousand dollars richer (what does VH1 pay its minions these days?) and decidedly more famous. I would venture to say that a re-casting of Sharon Osbourne, who whipped even sluttier and trashier girls into shape on Charm School, would have made for a much better show. Assuming Monique is booked.

Verdict: When it comes to the on-camera demonization of 20-somethings who have never had to work or think for themselves, I am decidedly in favor.

Now that it’s become abundantly clear neither man nor machine can solve what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico, I think it’s high time we start looking for alternatives. And no, I don’t mean collecting pounds of hair from the floors of high school gym showers worldwide and shoving them in the still-spewing rig. Rather, we need to think outside of the box, and in this case the box is reality.

It’s pretty obvious the oil spill is a job for a superhero. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of pseudo-natural disaster for which superheroes are uniquely prepared. Can’t get into space on a whim? Call Superman. Need to ascend that skyscraper in 30 seconds flat? Text Spiderman. And if you just need a quick fix of a woman in latex, I’m pretty sure Catwoman hasn’t done much of anything since the early 90s.

So who in our long parade of superheroes and villains is best suited to handle what’s arguably the biggest environmental disaster in our country’s history? Well we at RA thought of some ideas that, frankly, don’t sound all that batshit next to “throw tires in there.” (Note: Aaron thought of most of this. His knowledge of superheroes is unparalleled and, were it not so helpful to this post, I would be mocking him).

---

BATMAN: BP may have a lock on the advanced technology surrounding offshore drilling, but I’m pretty sure Batman was behind everything from the Hummer to the Internet. Dude has mad gadgets. And the fact that the government (and therefore the massive companies to which the government pays endless lip service) is heavily involved in the industry suggests Wayne Enterprises probably has something up its sleeves for this. Some CIA oil-containing secret weapon that was in development in the 80s and then got scrapped because, well, not containing oil is certainly more profitable. Morgan Freeman would be all over this.

---

CYCLOPS: All things considered, an optic beam is a good thing to have laying around. After all, the rig is made of metal, and a good blast from old One Eye could probably seal the thing in a few seconds flat. Whether Cyclops can swim that far underwater is another question. I imagine this is where Storm would come in handy; she could probably part the seas for Cyclops and then, to quote Aaron, “make like a waterspout that sucks up all the oil and have like Professor X levitate that shit into space.”

---

MAGNETO: It’s ill-advised to rely on Magneto for much of anything that involves “saving humanity,” but even mutants can’t live on Sludge Planet. Seems it’d be fairly easy for him to pile a bunch of metal shit on that open pipe (think the electromagnetic/nuclear explosion that killed Juliet in LOST).

---

THE FLASH: This is a little grim, but so is watching herons and gulls wash up on the shores of Loiusiana looking more tarred than feathered. In one comic, The Flash ran around the world so fast that he went back in time, which would be useful for turning back the clock a month, killing everyone on the rig (whatever, they were going to die anyway) and preventing this from ever happening. As a side benefit, I’m not opposed to canceling out that intoxicated night of karaoke I had last week.

---

AQUAMAN: It stands to reason that the dude has some expertise when it comes to water-related disasters. That said, he uses creatures of the ocean to help him, which might be a lost cause right now. There’d have to be some sort of global outreach on the part of sea creatures to solicit help from those in far-flung places. Sort of like when Scuttle and Flounder got all the sea animals to ruin Prince Eric’s wedding to Ursula in The Little Mermaid.

---

SPIDERMAN: Not sure how useful Spiderman would be for the actual sealing of the rig, but assuming he was down for a collaborative effort, the cleanup work here would be massive. Some uniquely manufactured spider webs, designed to pick up oil and filter water, would come in mighty handy over the next, I don’t know, three decades.

---

SUPERMAN: It’s fair to say getting Superman involved is a surefire way to get this shit taken care of, and in time for him to go home and bang Lois. The options are limitless: traveling back in time, sealing the pipe with heat vision, freezing the whole area and throwing it into space, plugging it with Lex Luther. When you can pull off underwear outside the pants, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want.

---

Now I know what you’re thinking—what about Captain Planet? It’s true that the captain, whose job as a superhero is pretty much to prevent or stop this exact kind of disaster, should be on the task force. But to be honest, I haven’t seen him deliver on that whole “bring pollution down to zero” promise, so I’m willing to give everyone else a try first.

Got your own ideas? Let us know. But let’s be honest, they won’t be nearly as awesome.

Anyone who’s been in a corporate meeting …or at least seen an episode of 30 Rock, knows the importance of synergy. After all, what’s better than a great product if not finding a way to integrate it with other great products in the most prevalent business example of killing two birds with one money-scented stone? This sort of big-business sell-outitude is obvious in things like Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combo restaurants and ABC’s prolonged dispute with Cablevision eliminating my access to Disney for an entire day. But in the TV world, synergy has been woefully underutilized. In other words, the day there’s more than one competition show about hair styling is the day we should start trimming the fat—and what better way than by combining some of our favorite programs? Here are RA’s top ideas for the TV equivalent of Taco Bell/Pizza Hut …minus the gas.

---

1. REAL WORLD/JACKASS

Both of these stalwart MTV franchises have been lagging in recent years—on the Real World, MTV vacillates between self-involved intellectual types and balls-to-the-wall party kids, with little gray area. Meanwhile Jackass, once the symbol of our viral video times, has since the beginning of the decade fallen into a murky audience zone. The 20-somethings who followed the show during its heyday are too old to appreciate it anymore, and there’s something inherently creepy about 13-year-olds watching men their father’s age attach things to their balls.

Combo show: Eight strangers picked to live in a house and have their various attempts to injure themselves or one-another taped.

---

2. SURVIVOR/LOST

The “plot” of Survivor is ungodly easy to follow—drop desperate losers off on an island and let them duke it out; each week, someone is given the boot. Lost, by contrast, has long since stopped making sense for even its most devoted followers. Throwing these two together would make Survivor fans moderately smarter (as Lost is prone to obscure literary and philosophical references), and Lost fans slightly less confused. After all, what is an island full of fame-seeking morons if not some sort of televised purgatory?

Combo show: Send a few dozen idiots to an obscure island with limited supplies and plentiful mysteries. Stage random assaults via wild animals and smoke monsters. Each week, someone gets kicked off (and put on a plane that will subsequently crash).

---

3. REAL HOUSEWIVES/CELEBRITY APPRENTICE

Anyone who’s seen even one episode in the Real Housewives franchise knows housewife in this case is synonymous with “marrying rich so you can start your own line of face cream/cocktails/jewelry/insert other pointless product here.” But what would happen if you actually put the self-absorbed and mildly insane women of RHNY to work for someone like The Donald? Though Sinbad and Bret Michaels have provided no shortage of hilarity so far on this season of Celebrity Apprentice (to say nothing of perennial politician Rod Blagojevich), the two-hour show is quickly wearing thin (at Episode 2, mind you). Some good old-fashioned cat fights would definitely do the trick.

Combo show: Pit two teams of Real Housewives ladies (personally, I vote for New York vs. New Jersey) against one-another in a series of challenges aimed at “raising money for charity” (by which I mean degrading people who think they’re above menial labor).

Alright I know this isn’t meant to be a silo for all manner of viral videos and, to be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of viral videos to begin with—the hit-or-miss aspect offends me. (There’s a reason I watch so much television, where discerning viewers are free to pass judgment on an entire series after just a single episode). That said, I was more than a little excited for the premiere of Funny or Die Presents on HBO, not only because it gives me a little tickle in my tummy to know TV still has some measure of power (FOD is otherwise a fairly popular video Web site, so it says something that they bothered with television at all), but also because I hate watching shit on my laptop.

FOD is unquestionably sophomoric, so there were times I felt disadvantaged by my lack of a 14 to 25-year-old penis, but overall the show had enough gems to make it more than worth it. This is one of them:

In the opening of “Hailey’s Song,” Eminem, who had already broken down barriers in the rap world by virtue of being white (and lyrically innovative), says “I can’t sing/I feel like singing/I wanna fuckin’ sing.” And at the end, after what is a vocally atrocious but still very endearing song, he says “I told you I couldn’t sing/Oh well, I tried.”

Were “Hailey’s Song,” in all its experimental glory, an entire album – it would be Lil Wayne’s Rebirth: daring, bold, endearing, and not entirely …good.

As a preface, I should say I’ve been listening to an illegally downloaded ultimate version of Rebirth, which includes all of the tracks officially released this week, as well as a few that had been leaked months ago and were later pulled from the CD. In all, after more than few delayed releases, Weezy popped out nearly two-dozen songs for Rebirth, which was marketed as (and is) the rapper’s attempt to merge his own hip-hop style with rock influences. I don’t have the energy to figure out which songs were part of the final release and which weren’t—moreover, all of the songs were arguably intended for inclusion on a professional album—but I figure having a few extra ones to go off of just means Wayne gets a more comprehensive chance at impressing me. Read More ›

I know what you must be thinking: “Damn those Saw movies is good.” Well, friends, you are right - which is why I actually spent real American dollars acquiring the DVDS for Saw II through V (believe it or not, the first one was the worst). And that’s why I’ll happily tap out a review of much-anticipated (for me at least) Saw IV, whose DVD release is pegged for Jan. 26, according to Netflix (I no longer buy DVDs, even highly-coveted sixth installations of favorite horror series, primarily because its not 2002 anymore). But until then, you’ll have to be satisfied with what this really is: a year-late review of There Will Be Blood.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to TWBB; perhaps because all anyone ever said about the film was “Daniel Day Lewis is so good in that,” or “I drink your milkshake!” The former is certainly encouraging - but a singular stellar performance does not always a great movie make (see: everything Jim Carrey has ever made). The latter is what some might consider the film’s signature line (naturally, Daniel Day Lewis doesn’t say it until the last 10 minutes), and all manner of ironic T-shirts have been fashioned in its honor. But even combined, these two impressions hadn’t been enough and so here I am, months behind the curve, finally getting the joke.

Everything people said was right: Daniel Day Lewis IS amazing in the movie, in the way anyone is amazing who can make you forget they’re acting. The fact that Lewis is a rather selective actor only helps: unlike Will Smith’s flip-floppery between “I’m a real actor” and “I’m a superhero malcontent,” Lewis appears so sparingly in pop culture cinema that I found it easy to become immersed in his character. Good thing, too - since he’s on screen more or less the entire movie, and communicates via facial expression or prolonged silence as much as actual dialogue. And the milkshake line - well, it lives up to the hype. Read More ›

To all three readers of Respect Authority, let us extend our deepest apologies. It’s 2010 now, which means a new decade, and a new opportunity to shirk our regular responsibilities in favor of inane blog writing. Consider it my New Year’s resolution. (Well, one of them, third after “Watch less TV” and “Don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t end up watching less TV.”) And there’s no better way to start off a new year of witty commentary and reality television snark than with a missive defending MTV’s now infamous Jersey Shore.

I know, I know, I’m weeks late in commenting on the work of sheer genius that is Jersey Shore, but it took a few episodes’ worth of contemplation to really nail down what it is about JS that’s so damn appealing. It’s not just the fights, or the inane commentary, or the inability of men on this show not to use the word “fresh” at least once an episode. I mean, it is all of those things (as well as the fact that JS has become so pop-culture relevant that even die-hard haters of reality TV wonder if they’re missing out) but also many more. Here, in three points, is my defense of Jersey Shore.

1. “When it’s time to party, we will party hard.”
One of MTV’s biggest mistakes when it came to every season of The Real World after San Diego was the show’s slow trajectory away from bar fights and towards passive-aggressive work arguments, or utterly boring in-house pranks. Although Real World was always a forum for (ahem) real-world issues—homosexuality, religion, war—those issues were, and still are, best brought up in a loud club, after a lot of alcohol. At least for television purposes. While several of the more recent Real World seasons (Brooklyn and now-airing D.C. being the most flagrant examples) have devolved into mind-numbing self-righteous and too often sober discussions of political and social qualms, I have yet to hear anyone on the Jersey Shore discuss something other than clothes, hair, drinking, clubbing or sex. The vast majority of the show’s footage is of the roommates at bars (to the point that I’ve learned the names of said bars) or on their own roof deck, wooing unsuspecting (or totally suspecting) young ladies into their altogether normal hot tub. This is the stuff of great television.

2. “Watch the lioness, as she contemplates her next victim.”
Though MTV has always been a master of stereotypes—in a truly meta moment, one of the cast members of Real World D.C. correctly predicted that the last arriving housemate would be “the gorgeous black man” and lamented the lack of a “gay guy”—putting a group of the same stereotype in one house and watching them exist together is nothing short of genius. While much of reality television is founded on the notion of different people coming together and interacting, JS joins people that could have very easily become friends anyway. Indeed, to watch the crew interact is akin to some anthropological study: the ease with which they communicate in their unique language, the guido rituals (gym, tanning, laundry, in that order) to which most of them subscribe, the almost immediate tribe-like bond they form with one another. Though plenty of attention has been paid to the negative connotation of “guido” and the show’s supposed affirmation of this stereotype, I personally find the culture more interesting than laughable.

3. “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
This, above all, is the reason I watch Jersey Shore: Despite their questionable fashion choices, limited vocabulary and utter devotion to hooking up, the cast of JS is, for the most part, kind of likeable. The show’s most annoying roommates–the much-maligned Situation, whose desperation when it comes to lady-hunting is downright cringeworthy; and Sammi “Sweetheart,” whose “I’m the sweetest bitch you’ll ever meet” opening-credits line pretty much says it all–are still in my view a rung above even the least annoying people on The Real World. More importantly, they actually seem real. Perhaps by virtue of becoming part of a 20+ year institution, MTV has created something of a monster when it comes to Real World casting: the 20-somethings who ultimately make the cut appear on air with such a sense of self-worth (having made it through umpteen rounds of auditions) that they seem to assume their lives are interesting. By contrast, the Jersey Shore group always seem mildly baffled by their own fame: they’re in it for the sex, free booze and VIP club seating, not to be a part of pop culture history. This is something I can respect.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a fairly big Jersey Shore fan – it’s like the orange-juice concentrate of live-in-a-house-together reality programming, with more hooking up and fighting in one episode than other shows manage in a season. But I think Jersey Shore is a little something extra: it doesn’t create characters by putting otherwise mundane people in a tricked-out house and parading them through overpriced bars and faux careers. Instead, MTV found actual characters, put them in a rather mundane house, and let them handle all the parading. To me, that’s pretty—for lack of a better word—fresh.

I just watched Julie & Julia with my family – a Christmas Eve compromise between It’s a Wonderful Life, which I’ve watched more or less every year since I was five and could probably recite from memory, and Star Wars, which Spike TV is currently playing in marathon and, honestly, never gets old. In fact, despite the movie choice being in actuality a compromise, it’s about as far from my normal decision-making process as possible: an entire film (and a long one, let me tell you) about the literal joys of cooking, as compared with several nostalgic hours of pre-Calista Harrison Ford and animatronic banthas. For someone who owns approximately one pan and has used her oven twice in ten months (and one of those times was to make pot brownies), the choice would have otherwise been fairly obvious.

As it turns out, J&J wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Which isn’t to say it got bad reviews; most critics seemed wowed enough by Meryl Streep as Julia Child that they overlooked the movie’s rather tedious length and borderline endless discussion of actual cooking. In fact, in some deep-seated female part of my being, I guess the movie did make me want to cook a little – only because Amy Adams/Julie made cooking seem like such a respectable alternative to sitting around in your apartment and watching TV. It seems downright productive.

No, this is what really annoys me about Julie & Julia, and movies like it. Shit like that doesn’t really happen. Not to normal people, not often enough that watching it happen isn’t in actuality just as infuriating and depressing as anything else. People don’t dash off to France and magically overcome historical prejudice so they can go on to be one of the most famous chefs of all time. They don’t just happen to have husbands with government jobs that afford them plenty of leisure time to pursue a completely (at least at the time) absurd hobby, or pen pals who just so happen to know major book editors who just so happen to be interested in not only reading, but testing out, cookbooks from otherwise unknown authors.

And back in New York, in 2002, government employees don’t just decide to start a blog and then within a year not only have mastered cooking but also gotten numerous book deal offers, to say nothing of a movie starring, oh, Meryl Streep. People who live in dipshit apartments above pizza places in Long Island City are supposed to CONTINUE living in dipshit apartments above pizza places, or Chinese places, or butcher shops, to make the rest of us (read: me) feel like it’s totally OK to continue living in Brooklyn next to a car wash with a neon sign that sometimes blinks through our window the entire night.

So, in conclusion, fuck you Julia Child, and Julie Powell, for your uncommon success and its alleged ability to inspire (rather than depress) those of us who are forced to sit through a movie about your lives on Christmas Eve. This isn’t even a tale of hope, or of overcoming hardship. This is a story about two relatively happy people who became even happier through a series of fortunate and lucky events. And those stories, like Santa, aren’t real.

The only funny thing Bobby Moynihan has ever really done on SNL:

Also:

THE GOOD

THE BAD

–> After the two-hour premier of Jersey Shore, MTV’s show about eight Italian-Americans spending a summer together in a house in Seaside Heights, N.J. (essentially Real World Jersey), Domino’s pizza told the network to stop airing it’s ads during the show. This is the biggest misunderstanding of your core audience since Kellogg’s stopped endorsing Michael Phelps because he smoked pot. READ MORE.

–> Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that it’s been years since the government has known where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. So basically, until Osama is updating his Twitter feed with “Chillin’ in Afghanistan; opium crop looks gr8,” we’re shit out of luck. READ MORE.

–> Richard Branson unveiled today the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two, a commercial spaceship that will soon carry tourists to space for a mere $200,000 each. The spaceship, which is scheduled to begin test flights next year and start commercial routes by 2012, will carry six passengers and two pilots—which means Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger might have a shot at crash-landing on the moon. READ MORE.

–> The New York Times did a big piece Monday on how car-phone makers promoted the devices back in the 1960s, even while knowing the risks of driving with one’s hands otherwise occupied. A note to the Times: the 60’s weren’t exactly a model for best practices in advertising (See: cigarettes, Spam and anything directed at women). READ MORE.

–> Unilever is recalling some 10 million cans of its Slim-Fast ready-to-drink products in North America because of a possible bacterial contamination that makes people who drink the product throw up. …In unrelated news, sales of Slim-Fast were through the roof Monday. READ MORE.