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Tue, 10 Jan 2012
Teen Caffeine I don't want to out myself as someone who watches ABC Family, so let's just say that I happened to slip and fall on the remote control, which fatefully switched the TV to channel 54. No, wait, let's say channel 732, because this scenario looks a lot better in high definition. Here's something I've noticed: All of the teenagers on ABC Family are constantly drinking coffee. Actually, they never seem to literally drink coffee, but they are always pouring themselves a cup of coffee as they talk to their moms about the heavily organized day ahead of them. At other times, they walk around casually gripping a thermal travel mug (usually color coordinated to match their outfit) or a basic white to-go cup from a coffee shop. Is this real? Something tells me this isn't real. I don't know a lot of teenagers, but the ones I do know never drink coffee. When I was a teenager, no one drank coffee except for the special-needs girl who drank it at room temperature out of a mayonnaise jar, punched out windows, and swore at passersby in French. Coffee was an adult beverage, and if you tried to sneak some, you'd be reprimanded about how it would stunt your growth and destroy your nerves. The gallons of Jolt Cola I drank until I was a quivering mess, however, was just fine apparently. There are several possible explanations that I can imagine.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
Sun, 18 Sep 2011
Things Learned From Watching TV at 4am People are deathly ill. Like seriously ill. If you watch TV at noon, the commercials will make you think that everyone on earth has a cold. But at 4am, everyone has stage 4 cancer. People eat horrendous junk. During primetime, you normally don't see so many commercials for Long John Silvers, is what I'm saying. People have no shame. At 4am, you'll see a lot of commercials for bizarre clothing items, most of which resemble large, zippered sacks made out of polar fleece. Pajama Jeans are a favorite, but last night I learned about Forever Lazy. I'd recommend watching the video on that website. People want something for nothing. There are a lot of products and devices that allow you to exercise without really exercising or diet without really dieting. Basically what people want is to get the results they desire without having to put in any of the effort. They want to make money without working and to get their degree without going to school. People are litigious. When all else fails, sue. There are lots of people on TV at 4am willing to help you squeeze blood from a turnip. But you get the idea that all the promises they're making to people who suffered terrible side-effects from a medication or slipped and fell in front of a Starbucks don't really ring true. It's just another way of wanting something for nothing. Someone is going to get rich off of this, but the thing is, it's not going to be the victim.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
Mon, 13 Jun 2011
Kids These Days "There's no TV. Have you seen a TV, Mike? I haven't seen a TV. Do you know what it means when there's no TV? No MTV." — Corey Haim, The Lost Boys Last week, we watched the MTV Movie Awards. I'm not sure why exactly, since watching award-show TV or really any kind of TV as it is airing is not something that is typically done in this household. But it ended up shining its flashy images in front of us and sucked us in and I guess that's how these things happen. MTV is extremely good at what it does. I don't know how they do it, but I think it involves hiring unsuspecting suburban 18-year-olds as guinea pigs, making them sign a contract they can't be bothered to read, then chaining them up in a warehouse somewhere and flashing provocative images in front of them while measuring their vitals. They're kept alive exclusively on Adderall and Monster. They get paid less than minimum wage, but they earn a semester of credits from the University of Phoenix. Plus the room smells awesome. But anyway, the movie awards. I can't recall if I'd ever seen this particular award show before, but holy shit was it a mindfuck. As you might expect, every person accepting an award was under 25, or at least it seemed that way. As you might not expect, many, many of the people presenting awards were much older. It was incredibly embarrassing. Standing at the front of a room full of beautiful young people with hair and abs ... Jim Carrey? Seriously? Twisting his neck and making a funny face and doing a funny voice and oh god it's like your dad just came down to chaperone the make-out party. Not only is it embarrassing, but it's embarrassing that it's embarrassing. I mean, Jim Carrey isn't even 50. Of course it might have something to do with how he was never actually funny, but that's not entirely it either. Reese Witherspoon won the "Generation Award" which I guess is something akin to a lifetime achievement award? Jesus. Reese Witherspoon is 35. I'm not exactly sure who this award show is made for. I guess you can get some insight by realizing that the awards are all people's choice style, and that Twilight and its cast pretty much won every single award for which it was nominated. So ... 12-year-old girls and their moms? That's the audience? Lupe Fiasco performed his song, "The Show Goes On", which bears a striking resemblance to Modest Mouse's "Float On." I'm not sure about the business end of things like this, how things like this happen. Of course sampling has been around forever, but this isn't really sampling. It's more like sampling/remixing/parody. Basically, it's taking a song that already exists, changing the lyrics so that they're (let's face it) dumber, and putting more of a hip-hop/pop spin on it. All of which is fine, because obviously Modest Mouse or whoever owns the rights to the original song signed off on it and just wants to make money off it, but what gets me is that the fans singing along and taking cell-phone photos of the performance are completely oblivious. Speaking of which, after the award show, MTV showed its latest remake, a TV version of Teen Wolf. Of course, this has pretty much no relationship to the 80s movie starring Michael J. Fox. The rebooted Teen Wolf is handsome, ripped, broody, and completely humorless. Even his sidekick, Stiles, is humorless, and Stiles was originally the comic relief within a comedic movie. That's how it rolled in the 80s. Today, everything gets the Twilight treatment. I mean would it have killed them to at least refer in some way to Stiles' awesome "what are you looking at dicknose" T-shirt? Nah. Just give Styles a graphic tee with a target on it from Urban Outfitters. That's good enough. He isn't traditionally handsome, which I guess is what passes for funny now in and of itself. Kind of like in the 1950s how a character was considered funny merely by being Chinese. I wonder about this. I mean, I know a handful of 18-year-olds, and they seem to have a sense of humor. But none of their mass media recognizes that. They also don't seem to be all that interested in their mass media. It doesn't carry much weight for them. When they want to laugh they go to YouTube and watch people get kicked in the nuts. During Teen Wolf there was a trailer for the upcoming remake, Fright Night, which is also based on an 80s comedy/horror movie. They even used the original font for the title. And likewise, all of the humor seems to have been drained away. Abs, hair, and despondency. Oh, Twilight. You've ruined an entire generation. And their moms.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
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