Category Archives: a taste for tv

The Strange Places Your Favourite 1998 Rockstar Shows Up

Posted by plumpdumpling on March 3, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under a taste for tv, i used to be so cool, music is my boyfriend
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Kamran’s DVR has been 97% full for weeks now thanks to all of the “Criminal Minds” I’ve been recording from multiple channels, so I try to knock an episode or two or five out whenever I can. This morning while I was getting ready, I pulled up one with an intriguing synopsis about murders coinciding with a rock star’s tour schedule.

It started out with a band covering Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, one of the best songs ever, and I thought, “Hey, this is actually pretty good.” The lead singer’s Robert-Smith-esque white face and red lips were a bit copycat-ish for my taste, but his performance was so confident and real-rock-star-like that I couldn’t help but want to see more.

I thought, “How great must it be for this local band to get a break like this?” I thought, “This must be the greatest moment of their lives.”

And then I thought, “Wait, is that Gavin Rossdale?”

Now that I watch it again, it’s so obviously his voice. His perfect, perfect voice. So instead of it being some local band trying to catch a break, it’s actually a completely washed-out former rockstar now relegated to a TV crime drama.

And I couldn’t be happier! Now if only Daniel Johns from silverchair and Matthew Caws from Nada Surf would do episodes of “Law & Order” and “Burn Notice”, my high school lead singer crush trifecta would be complete.

Scotty McCreery as Alfred E. Neuman

Posted by plumpdumpling on March 2, 2011 – 12:15 pm
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Scotty McCreery American Idol

Watching “American Idol” last night, Kamran and I couldn’t stop talking about how much Scotty McCreery is totally Alfred E. Neuman from Mad.

Right?

“American Idol” is the Only Drama Left in My Life

Posted by plumpdumpling on March 1, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under a taste for tv, living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
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I kinda don’t have anything to say right now. Kamran’s finished with law school and the bar exam, so we’ve been doing crazy things like

1) going to the 3-Michelin-starred restaurant Kamran swore he wouldn’t take me to until I agreed to eat their signature oysters-and-caviar dish (and I did! (and liked it!!)),

2) driving to see our friend Anthony’s in Long Island with a bunch of other friends so he could make us a real home-cooked Italian meal in a house with a kitchen that’s its own separate room and not just a counter on one side of the living room, and

3) going for weekend walks in secret parts of the city and finding a 100-square-foot (i.e. normal-sized for Manhattan) wine store that happened to carry our favourite wine, the J.J. Prüm Riesling Kabinett Graacher Himmelreich 2008. We’re totally drinking with our preservative-free, microwaveable FreshDirect vegetarian meals now. One of us is drinking out of an actual wine glass that came with Kamran’s apartment (I was under the impression he had purchased wine glasses himself when I first met him and was impressed with how grown up it seemed, despite not actually liking wine), but the other glass broke at some point, so one of us is drinking out of a mug. Classy.

Anyway, life is good, and about the only thing stressing me out right now is deciding if I’m going to watch this season of “American Idol” or not. Obviously I watched all of the auditions, because that’s the only time you actually get to see people with singing talent. By the time you get around to the live show, the judges have weeded out anyone who doesn’t add Christina-Aguilera-ish runs to the end of every song.

I think the only reason I’m even remotely interested in watching this season is to see all the hacks and jerks get kicked off. A handful of the contestants are actually bad: Thia Megia, Tatynisa Wilson, Rachel Zevita, Kendra Chantelle, and Julie Zorrilla. A couple of the contestants are just unlikeable: Clint Jun Gamboa and Jordan Dorsey. There’s the one guy who’s an Adam Lambert ripoff: James Durbin. And most everyone else is just generic.

Here are the only four I care about:

American Idol Season 10

• Brett because he’s a total freak with a voice to match.

• Casey because he scats in a not-annoying way and because he’s what Kamran calls a slobthrob, which is of course a slob who also happens to be a heartthrob.

• Paul because he may legitimately be Rod Stewart.

• Scotty because his voice suits him so little it’s almost cartoonish. He could put out a country album tomorrow and have it sound better than anything out there right now.

I don’t think any of them can actually win, of course, because they’re all too good. Kamran promises me we’ll make it through the season with the help of the trusty fast-forward option on the DVR, but maybe I should make a pact with myself to stop watching once the four of them get kicked off to avoid the pain of having to watch someone like Lee DeWyze win again.

“Criminal Minds”, “NCIS”, and the Case of the Not-Cool Character

Posted by plumpdumpling on February 21, 2011 – 12:00 pm
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As you know, I’ve been all over the melodramatic crime dramas lately, and I’m finding myself a little bothered by characters on two shows: Penelope Garcia on “Criminal Minds” and Abby Sciuto on “NCIS”. Both of the women provide technical support and clownish whimsy to their otherwise all-business teams. They’re “alternative” characters, both perpetual teenagers in grown-up bodies. One is a girly-girl who brings trolls and ponies to decorate her desk when she’s working with the NYPD. The other is a goth who needs to be constantly fueled by 32-ounce sodas.

And really, I like that they exist on TV. They’re both super-smart, super-capable women playing invaluable roles on their teams and bringing femininity to their positions in ways that are beneficial rather than weak and detrimental. My problem with them is that they’re alternative in the way that appeals to middle America, alternative in the way out-of-touch TV execs imagine alternative to be. Abby wears black lipstick and spiked cuffs, but she talks with a baby voice, and you kind of picture her listening to Michael Bublé in her downtime. Garcia is brought in on cases where teenage boys need to be talked out of convincing their classmates to hang themselves, but anyone who was 17 fewer than twenty years ago knows no teenager would actually feel a connection to her; they’d think she was trying too hard.

The same goes for her team, who you know wouldn’t give her a second glance outside the office, except possibly to comment snidely on her multicolored hair and too-bright dresses. People really living lifestyles that differ from the norm have a hard time fitting in with the straight-laced set, but these characters are “alt lite”, societally-acceptable enough that your middle-aged viewer doesn’t feel threatened but zany enough that your middle-aged viewer feels a little bit hip quote-unquote knowing them. The problem is that anyone who’s the least bit hip themselves (I’m talking about me here, obviously) is going to see right through the ruse and like the shows less because of it.

What’s interesting is that Garcia also appears on the new spinoff, “Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior”. (It’s like there’s only room for one quirky fat girl on TV at a time.) Meanwhile, Janeane Garofalo, who actually is an alternative badass, plays a super-straight Special Agent in pantsuits and V-necks. Oh, irony.

I Need a Music Video

Posted by plumpdumpling on February 11, 2011 – 12:10 pm
Filed under a taste for tv, living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
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I kind of assume no one’s watching “Saturday Night Live” anymore except when Jesse Eisenberg‘s hosting, so you probably missed this quietly hilarious digital short from Andy Samburg and the Lonely Island boys that’s been stuck in my head all week:

I know that a lot of you get really tickled by turns of phrase like I do, and this one just doesn’t stop being funny to me:

I just had sex
And it felt so good
A woman let me put my penis inside her

I just had sex
And I’ll never go back
To the not-having-sex ways of the past

Plus, the whole singing-on-the-roof of 30 Rock (where Kamran works!) with the Empire State Building in the background thing really appeals to me in how singularly New Yorky it is. Even usually-dumb Akon adds to it with his leather pants! I want to do that, too! To PJ Harvey’s “You Said Something“, obviously. I would of course have some scenes in the light room up there, though (if it even still exists):

Top of the Rock Target Light Room
Look how young we are!

Top of the Rock Target Light Room
And how much better-looking Kamran is now!

All I need is the leather pants.