Originally posted Nov 11, 2007
There is an old saying I saw on some sort of movie once that goes something like this, “If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out; but if you put a frog into water at room temperature and slowly start to boil the water, the frog will stay in there and burn to death.” To me, this saying means that if you are around something while it is happening you won’t notice it as much as much as you would if you are somewhere else and come back to find this thing in full swing, and you are left flabbergasted wondering, “What the hell happened?”
One good example of this is when a radio station wants to change it’s sound. They will occasionally play something totally different and out of the ordinary and then go back to the regular programming. But as time goes on (as it always does), this new style of music becomes more and more prominent until one day… BOOM, that is what the station is about. That is fine; the entertainment business needs to keep things fresh to keep up with people’s increasingly short attention spans. There is one style of entertainment that I feel needs to just stop. I am talking about reality television.
Now I know that this has been a very obvious statement for about the past five years, but now I feel it is moving up to epidemic proportions. Moving back to that quote at the beginning, I have been experiencing a “frog in boiling water moment” for about the past year, which I suppose is longer than a moment, but I am going to move on anyway for the sake of myself.
When I lived in the dorms and in my first apartment, there was cable TV in both of them. So I would suppose I have had cable in the places I’ve live for a little less than 2 years total, I never had cable as a kid. Now there are some fine programs on cable, I love the nature shows and history channels and all that stuff. Even [adult swim] and some comedy central and syndicated sitcoms from when I was little are good for me sometimes. During those years I was also subjected to many of said reality shows. Particularly the last year when I was spending a lot of time around this girl who had an affinity for crappy TV (I will get into her in a future post perhaps). One of the shows I was exposed to was called “Flavor of Love.” Now for those of you not familiar with the show it stars this guy who resembles what it would look like if the devil ate a giant clock and it passed through her digestive tract only to be crapped out on the floor with the rest of the Devil's shit named Flavor Flav, who was a drummer or producer or something and I think he is famous for wearing Viking hats, giant clocks as medallions, and inventing the stereotypical black man slang. Anyway, on this show, he sleeps with a bunch of girls because he is trying to find love, also he can’t remember their names so he gives them nicknames.
Since then I have seen examples of some pretty ridiculous shows. One was called Rob and Big, in this one there is some guy who is a skateboarder named Rob and a fat black guy whose name is Big, and they go around town and get into trouble and cause ruckus. Now I approve of ruckus, but not when it is contrived by some 50 year-old producers that sit on their highchairs in MTV headquarters that decide what the kids are going to think is cool this year.
Another one is VH1’s celebreality, this is where you take celebrities that were popular when the 18-24 demographic was younger and put them together and make them fight and sleep together and wish they could get real work. This is actually where Flavor Flav comes into play. I guess viewer eyeball focus was up when he was yelling “Yeeeeeeeah Boooooooy” so they decided to give him his own show as mentioned above. On this show was an angry black girl that he named New York. I am not sure if she won or not, but since Flav came back for Flavor of Love 2, I guess it didn’t work out. Anyway, yesterday, while at the Wellness Center, I was running on the treadmill and glanced up at the TV to watch Seinfeld (great show by the way). Next to Seinfeld was another TV tuned to VH1 or one of those worthless channels; and on this TV was this New York girl with a new boob job alternately eating and watching these guys fighting. I think that is the entire show. Now that was scary enough on it’s own, but what really freaked me out was the title of the show. The show was called “I Love New York 2.” Enough of you people watched whatever happened on the first one that the network thought they would make more money by making a second one.
I think the worst one that I know of is one that I saw a commercial for a month or two back. I am not sure what it was called but I think it is on the E! Network. It stars this girl named Tila Tequila. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is this girl who had a bunch of friends on Myspace and then she posed for Playboy or something like that. But the point of the show is that she is trying to find somebody to love, don’t we all. Well that seems like typical reality show fodder, there is a twist to it. She tells us she is bisexual, so she is gathering around 15 straight men and 15 gay women together to decide who is really right for her and to probably pull some shenanigans. My God, I don’t know if there are words to describe how terrible that is.
Now I have talked to some of you about this before and you tell me, “I only watch reality shows when nothing else is on,” or “I only watch them to make fun of them” now at this point in the conversation I would nod and say “ok” or something to that effect, but what I really wanted to say was something like “give me a fucking break.” I do like those people, In fact I love some of them, I just have a different point of view, which I just happen to think is better because it is mine.
I could tell you a bunch of things you could do instead of watching reality shows, but I am not going to, I think I have preached enough for today. If it were my decision, I think I would play a videogame, those at least require some input from you to get the output, instead of the straight output you get from regular TV.
I don’t want to put off the impression that I am perfect, I have some weekly shows that I watch either on the internet or from my bunny ears. Heroes is the one that is on right now that I like to watch. Then of course there is Lost, which I believe is one of the best shows on TV right now. These shows have some mystery and suspense, plus they are written by professionals and not producers coming up with situations and just recording the results.
Well I think that is all I have for you right now. I just needed to put this out there because I need a good rant every now and again or I get the shakes. I guess it got a little long, my bad; thats what I said, to her. haha, I walked right into that one.
Peace,
Seth
There is an old saying I saw on some sort of movie once that goes something like this, “If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out; but if you put a frog into water at room temperature and slowly start to boil the water, the frog will stay in there and burn to death.” To me, this saying means that if you are around something while it is happening you won’t notice it as much as much as you would if you are somewhere else and come back to find this thing in full swing, and you are left flabbergasted wondering, “What the hell happened?”
One good example of this is when a radio station wants to change it’s sound. They will occasionally play something totally different and out of the ordinary and then go back to the regular programming. But as time goes on (as it always does), this new style of music becomes more and more prominent until one day… BOOM, that is what the station is about. That is fine; the entertainment business needs to keep things fresh to keep up with people’s increasingly short attention spans. There is one style of entertainment that I feel needs to just stop. I am talking about reality television.
Now I know that this has been a very obvious statement for about the past five years, but now I feel it is moving up to epidemic proportions. Moving back to that quote at the beginning, I have been experiencing a “frog in boiling water moment” for about the past year, which I suppose is longer than a moment, but I am going to move on anyway for the sake of myself.
When I lived in the dorms and in my first apartment, there was cable TV in both of them. So I would suppose I have had cable in the places I’ve live for a little less than 2 years total, I never had cable as a kid. Now there are some fine programs on cable, I love the nature shows and history channels and all that stuff. Even [adult swim] and some comedy central and syndicated sitcoms from when I was little are good for me sometimes. During those years I was also subjected to many of said reality shows. Particularly the last year when I was spending a lot of time around this girl who had an affinity for crappy TV (I will get into her in a future post perhaps). One of the shows I was exposed to was called “Flavor of Love.” Now for those of you not familiar with the show it stars this guy who resembles what it would look like if the devil ate a giant clock and it passed through her digestive tract only to be crapped out on the floor with the rest of the Devil's shit named Flavor Flav, who was a drummer or producer or something and I think he is famous for wearing Viking hats, giant clocks as medallions, and inventing the stereotypical black man slang. Anyway, on this show, he sleeps with a bunch of girls because he is trying to find love, also he can’t remember their names so he gives them nicknames.
Since then I have seen examples of some pretty ridiculous shows. One was called Rob and Big, in this one there is some guy who is a skateboarder named Rob and a fat black guy whose name is Big, and they go around town and get into trouble and cause ruckus. Now I approve of ruckus, but not when it is contrived by some 50 year-old producers that sit on their highchairs in MTV headquarters that decide what the kids are going to think is cool this year.
Another one is VH1’s celebreality, this is where you take celebrities that were popular when the 18-24 demographic was younger and put them together and make them fight and sleep together and wish they could get real work. This is actually where Flavor Flav comes into play. I guess viewer eyeball focus was up when he was yelling “Yeeeeeeeah Boooooooy” so they decided to give him his own show as mentioned above. On this show was an angry black girl that he named New York. I am not sure if she won or not, but since Flav came back for Flavor of Love 2, I guess it didn’t work out. Anyway, yesterday, while at the Wellness Center, I was running on the treadmill and glanced up at the TV to watch Seinfeld (great show by the way). Next to Seinfeld was another TV tuned to VH1 or one of those worthless channels; and on this TV was this New York girl with a new boob job alternately eating and watching these guys fighting. I think that is the entire show. Now that was scary enough on it’s own, but what really freaked me out was the title of the show. The show was called “I Love New York 2.” Enough of you people watched whatever happened on the first one that the network thought they would make more money by making a second one.
I think the worst one that I know of is one that I saw a commercial for a month or two back. I am not sure what it was called but I think it is on the E! Network. It stars this girl named Tila Tequila. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is this girl who had a bunch of friends on Myspace and then she posed for Playboy or something like that. But the point of the show is that she is trying to find somebody to love, don’t we all. Well that seems like typical reality show fodder, there is a twist to it. She tells us she is bisexual, so she is gathering around 15 straight men and 15 gay women together to decide who is really right for her and to probably pull some shenanigans. My God, I don’t know if there are words to describe how terrible that is.
Now I have talked to some of you about this before and you tell me, “I only watch reality shows when nothing else is on,” or “I only watch them to make fun of them” now at this point in the conversation I would nod and say “ok” or something to that effect, but what I really wanted to say was something like “give me a fucking break.” I do like those people, In fact I love some of them, I just have a different point of view, which I just happen to think is better because it is mine.
I could tell you a bunch of things you could do instead of watching reality shows, but I am not going to, I think I have preached enough for today. If it were my decision, I think I would play a videogame, those at least require some input from you to get the output, instead of the straight output you get from regular TV.
I don’t want to put off the impression that I am perfect, I have some weekly shows that I watch either on the internet or from my bunny ears. Heroes is the one that is on right now that I like to watch. Then of course there is Lost, which I believe is one of the best shows on TV right now. These shows have some mystery and suspense, plus they are written by professionals and not producers coming up with situations and just recording the results.
Well I think that is all I have for you right now. I just needed to put this out there because I need a good rant every now and again or I get the shakes. I guess it got a little long, my bad; thats what I said, to her. haha, I walked right into that one.
Peace,
Seth
Kitty was never the same after he discovered televison.
No comments:
Post a Comment