Monday, December 25, 2006

TV Heaven/Hell

Ideas & Trends

Rip Van Winkle Awakens to a Flat-Screen Life

Illustration by The New York Times

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By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
Published: December 24, 2006

I’M what you’d call a late adopter. Very late.

Last month, after most of my adult life without one, I bought a television. Not just a television, but a 40-inch Sony Bravia XBR L.C.D. flat-panel high-definition, or HD, television. My only other set, which followed me to New York from college in 1974 and got lost, was 13 inches — smaller than my current laptop and more like a radio than the electronic billboard I live with now.

Caught by the great cresting wave of retail that is the holidays, I helped make 2006 the year of the big-screen, flat-panel television, when larger sizes and lower prices converged to make last year’s luxury item a new market commodity. Analysts project that 6.3 million flat-panel units, in sizes 40 inches and above, will be sold in the last quarter of 2006, more than a 100 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Everything else is television history.

My Bravia XBR arrived at my apartment with handlers, like a celebrity walk-in, or valet parking. Two employees from Best Buy in matching polo shirts installed it, hoisting it onto a table where I kept books, and showed me how to use the remote control, which has 47 buttons. A cable man activated a package of 150 channels, with a credit-card-like device he slipped in the back.

“Nice television,” he said as he left.

Then it was just us, newly engaged and alone. Evening fell awkwardly. Why not watch television, I thought. I picked up the remote, pressed the right corner, and we were on.

What is television like? I can tell you, because it’s likely that, after years of viewing, you can no longer see the forest for the trees.

A few quick observations.

Every other show is “CSI.”

Television sounds loud at any volume.

Karaoke is a cherished plot device.

PBS is even more serious in HD.

Last Thursday night, on “Smallville,” Clark Kent told an alien just landed on Earth, “Wherever you’re from, go back.” She replied, “I can’t.”

I know exactly how she felt.

“We should do a study on you,” said Robert Kubey, a psychologist and director of the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University, when I called, curious about the effect of introducing television into my life. Was it like a rash trip to the gym — could you sprain yourself psychologically, socially, culturally? Or after two decades of nonparticipation in the national discussion are you damaged goods? I missed all of “Seinfeld” and “Sex and the City,” faking it at the water cooler and at parties with a nod and a smile, like someone who can’t speak the language.

Dr. Kubey, and others, took the interest in me that they might have taken in an isolated tribe. I had no concept of a rerun.

“Television is just like making a hole in the wall,” said Albert Borgmann, a professor of philosophy at the University of Montana who studies technology’s impact. “All kinds of stuff comes in, on the screen, that we would never allow to come in through the door.”

And quickly. Though I surf the Web with high-speed Internet access, television, with 150 channels at 40 inches and powerful stereophonic sound, was like white-water rafting. Light flew out of the set like spray, as I gripped the remote and rode the river from CBS (2) to PBS (13), “Entertainment Tonight” to “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer.” Then I shot the rapids through the rest — Marvin Hamlisch (food tips), QVC (wrap tops, sold out in two colors), Queens Public Television (children praying), Spike (mixed martial-arts fights).

And prime time was still around the bend, sluiced by ratings and sheer with rock. At 8 o’clock, the season finale of “The Biggest Loser ” (the diet Oscars), “America’s Next Top Model” (a kind of reverse of a talent show) and “CSI: Miami.” At 9, Anna Deavere Smith and bikers against child abuse. By 10 o’clock, “CSI: NY.” Have I told you that every other show is “CSI”?

The most important, quantifiable effect on a person exposed to television, experts told me, is time shifting.

“You shift time to the television,” said Annie Lang, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. “If you start watching television, there’s something else you’re not doing. Who knows what you were doing before?” Reading, seeing friends, bonding with partners, theater, film, restaurants — toast.

(In an e-mail, Dr. Kubey from Rutgers told me I would begin eating meals in front of the television. I have. Over a bowl of spaghetti and a glass of red wine, I watched “Battlestar Galactica” until my neighbor complained about the noise — something that I marked proudly as a rite of passage, as he went back upstairs to begin anticipating the worst. It did bring us closer together.) Given the popularity of the personal computer, and worry about its use, I asked Ms. Lang if television was still Public Enemy No. 1 as far as studies of how a pervasive presence might become corrosive over time. “Historically, we always go after the new technology,” she said, explaining that the computer is only being demonized in its turn. “We always say that it will physically hurt you — it will hurt your eyes. There was research on whether computers cause miscarriage. Then the next wave of research is, ‘Will it hurt children?’ Then, ‘Will it hurt society?’ That’s the pattern of looking into a new technology.”

Computers and televisions are rapidly merging, though, into what could be a super-adversary (or friend), and screen size is the first frontier of that future, media experts agreed.

Because television is “new” again, reincarnated as large flat-panel television, content has to be new, too, to support the excitement, said Mr. Borgmann of the University of Montana.

“You have a mining of taboos and experiences that haven’t been tapped into before,” he said. “The two go together.”

A larger screen also demands more attention, or primary viewing — you sit and you watch it — and less “secondary” viewing, when you walk in and out of the room doing other things. You develop what experts call “attention inertia,” and it becomes difficult to disengage.

Last week, I watched an evening of television. I liked “30 Rock.” I now have an opinion about “Survivor.” And “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The O.C.” wish they were “CSI.” As I got ready to turn the crowd of voices off, stand up and go to bed, I skipped through a few quick channels (the remote has an incredibly light trigger), and decided to watch an episode of “Sex and the City” instead. It felt like reaching for the last beer in the fridge. In rerun, Carrie Bradshaw sounds like she’s imitating Sarah Jessica Parker, someone who became famous to me as Carrie Bradshaw, in a show I’d never seen.

Ms. Lang told me that my age may save my life as I knew it. My brain is too old to rewire.

“It’s lost its plasticity,” she said. That’s why they study children.

I could start getting out more. But my last great outing was shopping for a television.



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// posted by Joe Paris @ Monday, December 25, 2006 0 comments

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas Tricks

The Way We Live Now

Snowed

By WALTER KIRN
Published: December 24, 2006

Last December, as I do every year, in honor of what most parents know down deep is the true purpose of the holidays, I set out to find a new way to dupe my children about the existence of magic in the world. My son was 4, my daughter was 7 and the job of enchanting them with winter myths, from toy-maker elves to peace on earth, was getting more difficult. It wasn’t just that they were growing older; the problem was that I was aging, too. Twice divorced and in my 40s, I’d learned that deception, no matter how well intentioned, is really a form of moral layaway. Our lies are like gifts we’ve put on hold at Macy’s: the day always comes to pick them up and pay for them. Still, because I had a pretty good trick planned, I suppressed my qualms and drove into town to a crafts store for supplies. I picked out a strip of raw leather, a few tin bells and a bolt of red felt. Back home, in my garage, I got busy turning them into props for the illusion that I’d dreamed up: a sleigh crash.

The scenario had a slightly morbid feel, but given recent world events, which had a profoundly morbid feel, a touch of darkness seemed appropriate. And it wouldn’t be a disastrous sort of accident, just a minor mishap in the snow. “St. Nicholas must have drunk too much punch,” I’d quip as I showed my children the debris field. If the illusion was convincing, my kids would bend down and touch a dented sleigh bell, a tattered length of rein or a torn corner of Santa’s suit, and they’d think to themselves: This is a wonderful life. Our dad’s been telling us the truth!

Some parents, I reflected as I worked, scratching the leather with a nail and bashing the bells with a hammer, did tell their children the truth at Christmastime. (The cool parents, we called them when I was growing up.) Their kids then disillusioned the rest of us: The North Pole is really Target. This made these kids seem cool as well — it gave them a swagger. But it gave me a stomachache. Their theory made sense, and there was evidence for it, but what did this say about my parents, I wondered? That they’d never matured and really believed in elves? Or that they understood the facts full well but deemed me incapable of handling them? Whatever my parents’ reasons for misinforming me, I concluded that it was wisest not to catch them at it. If I unwrapped a present and glimpsed a Target sticker that they’d forgotten to peel off, I’d pretend not to see it. Then, when they weren’t looking, I’d peel it off myself.

I spread the bells, cloth and leather around the yard, remembering how it felt at Christmas to have to show wonderment on command. The skill with which I’d learned to play the fool, to gamely roll over for others’ frauds, beginning with those perpetrated by my parents, had not served me well as a person, I decided. Maybe, I thought, I should make another plan.

It was only 8 at night, and I wouldn’t be picking my kids up from their mother’s house until 11 the next morning, so there was still time to start over, to stop the cycle. Instead of staging a sleigh crash for my kids and forcing us all to dwell in falsehood, I could, perhaps, prepare a talk on art. “Christmas is a work of art,” I’d say, “and art is a lie that tells the truth.” How complicated. And did I really want to give my children literary criticism for Christmas?

Still unsure about my course, I left the bits of wreckage in the yard, since I could always retrieve them in the morning. Then I went to bed. I didn’t dream of sugarplums — I didn’t dream at all. I crashed, which I tend to do when problems loom. And when I woke up the whole thing seemed unimportant, at least when compared with wrapping presents, baking up a tube of cinnamon rolls and bringing the kids back to the ranch.

(The ranch. I should have mentioned that. I live in Montana, on a ranch, and residing with me part time has taught my children a lot about how animals — deer, specifically — really live and die.)

“What’s that stuff?” my daughter said as we neared the house, all cheery from singing carols in the car.

It snowed in the night but not enough to hide the evidence of Dad’s insanity. I stood very still and eyed the impact site, which I’d half-decided to clean up but hadn’t gotten to in time. Then I glanced over at Charlie, my little boy. He seemed confused and apprehensive. He stayed by my side as his trusty older sister, a bright, inquisitive girl, investigated.

“These could be pieces of sleigh,” she finally said.

I couldn’t help feeling gratified by this, since I’d put in a lot of effort on my scheme. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, just a bit of lively Christmas mischief that would be remembered someday with smiles.

“Like maybe a reindeer crash?” I said.

“Maybe it is,” my daughter said. She cast a look at Charlie, who was suddenly showing signs of coming undone and possibly even “going No. 3” (my daughter’s term for throwing up). I could see in her eyes comprehension and then compassion — compassion not only for her anxious brother but also for her aging, conflicted, deceitful father. “Except that if it were a real crash, there’d be blood,” she said. “Blood and fur. So I guess things are O.K.”

And things were O.K. that Christmas — or, at least, as O.K. as things can be.

“Come on, you little angels — inside,” I said. “Let’s go find out what Santa brought from Target.”

Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor, is the author of “Up in the Air,” among other novels.



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// posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, December 24, 2006 0 comments

Christmas at Home

Stultification: How Sweet It Is

Gary Hovland

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By MIKE ALBO
Published: December 24, 2006

WHENEVER someone asks where I’ll be for the holidays, I always do the same thing: roll my eyes and say, exasperatedly: “I guess I’m going home for Christmas. Hope I don’t go insane!”

It’s been part of my conversational repertory since my early 20s, the time when you start having to prove to yourself that you are a self-governing adult, but before you realize that adulthood basically involves complex and enervating tasks like Internet dating, shopping for jeans, trying to remember your 15 various log-on codes and passwords, and deciphering your Verizon bill.

Now I am 37 years old and I can’t wait to go insane at Christmas in that comfortable padded cell known as “home.” Instead of being tedious, going home has become an indulgent retreat from my fried-out issue-driven city life. It is a place where I line my mind and body with the fatty lard of my suburban youth and experience not one moment of regret.

For a brief week, I get to be as ugly and out of it as Americans are always accused of being, and no one has to see it.

I have almost no choice. Every year I arrive at my parents’ house in Springfield, Va., armed with my healthy self-edifying projects — big leafy Penguin classics, Chomsky-explains-it-all books and a backlog of fortifying magazines. And every year I think I am going to actually read a paragraph of one of these things. But then I walk in the front door, say ‘hi’ to my mom and dad, stand at the kitchen counter and start eating cheese.

That’s not all that’s in the house. In case there is a terrorist attack at the Price Club, my mother has stocked up on boxed food, durable bags of meatballs, bins of croutons, an entire spectrum of cereal, jug wine and other pleasures that would never be reviewed in food and wine supplements.

After inhaling some combination of sustenance entirely made of carbohydrates and trans fats, I will go upstairs and change into an infantilizing outfit of fleece sweat pants and an old high school T-shirt that says “Go Spartans!” on it.

Then I go back downstairs and begin to watch television. In this consumer Green Zone, I can finally, really, watch TV. I am unfettered, and free of my ironic eye, op-ed anger and Web site snark, I can enjoy TV the way it was meant to be enjoyed — sitting there with my mouth open, too lazy to get up and go to the bathroom.

There are no Whole Foods here, no Bikram yoga, no concerns about my personal carbon emissions. I lose touch, for once, with my online pals, bloggy buddies, Netflix friends and MySpace chums. Finally I am logged off from the incessant broadband stream of information of my daily life. I don’t have to eat properly, act locally, think globally, sync up, detoxify or Move On.

I don’t have to check the label of my carefully selected non-animal-tested facial scrub to make sure that there are no secret traces of benzene. I don’t have to take only two minutes of my time to provide a free mammogram to another low-income woman by simply signing an online petition.

Instead, I simply sit there, eating Edy’s ice cream and watching a marathon of lesbian "Next" episodes on MTV. For once, I have zero concern for the homeless, global warming, my future and Darfur. It’s like my brain has been deprived of vital nonnutrients. I sit there on the couch in the living room drinking up the lack of intellectual stimuli like a steamy hammam of nothing important.

Under my bed is a suitcase that contains my old diaries. There are entries from when I was a 19-year-old member of Queer Nation and Act Up, and I would come to the dinner table filled with a defiant anger, quoting Annie Sprinkle, the self-described post-porn modernist sex activist, while saying grace.

If that 19-year-old saw me now, he would roll his eyes. He would think I had been padded and stupefied by the entertainment-industrial complex. He would say that the American consumer machine has swallowed me up in its accommodating mouth.

But I seem to remember that 19-year-old needed this week to relax his white-knuckle grip on reality, too. He would creep down the stairs at 3 a.m., grab a stack of windmill cookies, and channel-surf through the late-night infomercials beaming from the screen like a soothing strobe light.

Mike Albo is the author of two novels: “Hornito” and “The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life,” written with Virginia Heffernan.



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

// posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, December 24, 2006 0 comments

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Winter Solstice & Onine shopping

Online Shopper

A Chill in the Air, and Ennui in My System

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By MICHELLE STATALLA
Published: December 21, 2006

The clock said morning.

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Leslie Lammle

It was very dark.

The clock must be lying.

I can hear my husband, whistling as he shaves. What is wrong with him?

“It’s 6:30,” my husband called cheerfully.

He must be lying.

He threw open the curtains to reveal no light.

“We’re going to get soaked walking the dogs,” he said in the sort of enthusiastic tone that would be more appropriate for announcing a surprise trip to Paris. In springtime.

“You never used that hearty voice before we were married,” I said.

He clomped off happily to find his rain boots, leaving me to consider the day ahead. It is cold; it is gray; it is wet and it will be another 12 hours before I can start a fire and have a glass of wine.

Under these conditions, how can people stand to get out of bed, much less finish their holiday shopping?

Lots of other people in dark bedrooms are asking themselves the same question, but it gives me no comfort to know that as many as 14 million Americans experience full-blown cases of seasonal affective disorder at this time of year, with as many as 33 million more suffering from milder symptoms. We are the ones who may have less energy, more crankiness and annoyingly cheerful spouses.

We are the ones who drag ourselves to the computer in the morning and, waiting for the effects of the coffee to kick in, make a list of all the remaining things we need to do during the holiday season.

One day last week, my list said:

1. Back-ordered magic kit (check delivery status).

2. Umbrella stand (buy).

Buying an umbrella stand was my husband’s idea. He realized, after a few days of tripping over puddles in the entryway, that it may make sense to corral the dripping pile of umbrellas before hordes of guests started to arrive.

Whatever.

I scrutinized the list. At No. 3, it trailed off into lethargic doodling.

I wanted to care about the list. And I knew, vaguely, that I needed that magic kit — or to be more specific, that “award winning” $49.99 Legends of Magic kit with “quality props to perform more than 200 illusions” — for a gift. On Dec. 10, I ordered it from backtobasicstoys.com, along with another item. Then its estimated availability date was Dec. 13. But, three days later, a “confirmation” e-mail message announced shipment of the rest of my order but made no mention of the magic kit.

I tried to get myself worked up as I went to backtobasicstoys.com to double-check the description of the Legends of Magic kit. There, the fine print had changed in the days since I placed my order. It now said, “Expected Availability 12/22/06.”

Under typical circumstances, this would drive me crazy. After seven years of shopping almost exclusively online for holiday gifts, I have developed a low tolerance for glitches. But as I phoned customer service, I knew I was doing it more out of a sense of duty than because of any real urge to get to the bottom of the mess.

“We’re getting 20 of the kits today,” the customer service representative said.

“The site says available Dec. 22,” I said.

“Maybe the 20 kits are all going to fill existing orders,” she said.

“Like mine?” I asked.

“Call tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll know more.”

“O.K., thanks,” I said and hung up.

O.K., thanks? This was all I could muster? With this kind of an attitude, there was no way I could proceed to No. 2 on the list.

When it came to the weighty question of ordering an umbrella stand, I was in no condition to make an educated decision. At bellacor.com, the Symbolo stainless steel stand with a plastic insert (regularly price at $78) looked fine. At smithandhawken.com, the small Bronze Leaf Bucket (regularly $59) looked fine. Even an umbrella stand that was shaped (incongruously) like a pair of Wellington boots ($179.95 at victoriantradingco.com) looked like a perfectly reasonable candidate.

What was wrong with me?

“Short days,” said Randy J. Nelson, a professor of psychology at the Ohio State University Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, whose studies of depression and anxiety in hamsters lend insight into how seasonal changes affect humans. “Here in Ohio, we’re at about the same latitude as you, and the shortest day is about eight hours of light,” Dr. Nelson said. “Anywhere less than 11 hours is a short day.”

Short days lead to winter blues. Short days cause hamsters’ brains to shrink. Short days impair their ability to remember and to learn.

“Do hamsters ever get too listless to shop?” I asked.

“It’s tricky to measure mood in animals because they aren’t verbal,” Dr. Nelson said. “Most rodents tend to stay out of an open area during short days, and to stay on the periphery. If you gave a hamster Valium, it might venture out into the open.”

“Or white wine?” I asked.

“We haven’t tried that,” he said.

Many people treat themselves with bright light, particularly in the morning, sitting in front of a light box equipped with bulbs that emit 10,000 lux, like the seasonal affective disorder lamp from Uplift Technologies ($199.99 at Amazon.com).

But doctors warn against self-treatment for some patients.

“If you have a mild sort of winter blues, it’s O.K. to use bright light on yourself,” said Dr. Carol E. Watkins, a psychiatrist in Baltimore who discusses seasonal affective disorder at ncpamd.com. “But certain people should be cautious, like people with bipolar disorder. It can make them manic.”

In my case, Dr. Watkins said, I might feel better if I did the rest of my holiday shopping offline.

“It’s much more of a communal activity if you go out shopping and see other people,” she said. “Go shopping with a friend.”

“That might work for buying the umbrella stand,” I said. “But what about this magic kit that may never show up?”

“In a way, it’s a good thing,” Dr. Watkins said. “People get so many presents, all at Christmas, that they can’t appreciate them all. If the present comes a month later, that will make it unique.”

The next day it was still raining. I phoned Back to Basics Toys again.

“We are expecting more than 300 magic kits tomorrow,” the customer service representative said. “And you’re on the list. Phone Monday to make sure they came in.”

“O.K., thanks,” I said. Then I put on rain boots and went to the mall.

E-mail: slatalla@nytimes.com



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// posted by Joe Paris @ Thursday, December 21, 2006 0 comments

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Manatee Love

So This Manatee Walks Into the Internet

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By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: December 12, 2006

The skit, as scripted for the Dec. 4 installment of “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” was about absurdist college sports mascots that the host and his writers would like to see someday.

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The Web site hornymanatee.com has its own sorts of shows.

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James Lipton did the dance of the manatee on “Late Night.”

Among them were “the Boise State Conjoined Vikings,” who had been born locked at the horns, as well as something Mr. O’Brien called “the Webcam manatee” — said to be the mascot of “F.S.U.” — which was basically someone in a manatee costume rubbing himself or herself provocatively in front of a camera (to the tune of the 1991 hit “I Touch Myself”). Meanwhile a voyeur with a lascivious expression watched via computer.

Who knew that life would soon imitate art.

At the end of the skit, in a line Mr. O’Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned that the voyeur (actually Mark Pender, a member of the show’s band) was watching www.hornymanatee.com. There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.

In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.

By yesterday afternoon hornymanatee.com — created by Mr. O’Brien’s staff and featuring images of such supposedly forbidden acts as “Manatee-on-Manatee” sex (again using characters in costumes) — had received approximately 3 million hits, according to NBC. Meanwhile several thousand of Mr. O’Brien’s viewers have also responded to his subsequent on-air pleas that they submit artwork and other material inspired by the aquatic mammals, and the romantic and sexual shenanigans they imagine, to the e-mail address conan@hornymanatee.com.

One viewer sent a poem. Mr. O’Brien asked James Lipton, the haughty host of “Inside the Actors Studio” on Bravo, to read it on “Late Night.” It included the lines: “I want to freak thy blubber rolls,” and “The product of our ecstasy will be half man and half a-’tee.” After that a curtain opened, and Mr. Lipton gamely danced with the manatee character. Another viewer wrote a song, which Mr. Pender, the band’s trumpet player, crooned to the character. Set to the heavy metal band AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” it included the lyrics “She had big black eyes/no discernible thighs” and “The waves start shakin’/the ocean was quakin’/my pelvis was achin’. ”

Reached by telephone at NBC yesterday, Mr. O’Brien said he was stunned and overwhelmed by the viewers’ response to what had initially been a throwaway line, and by what that response, collectively, suggested about how the digital world was affecting traditional media like television.

“We couldn’t have done this two years ago, three years ago,” Mr. O’Brien said. “It’s sort of this weird comedy dialogue with the audience.”

He added, “I still have an abacus.”

Regardless, Mr. O’Brien and his staff are digitally savvy enough to seize an opportunity when it presents itself, particularly in the aftermath of such Internet comedy phenomena as “Lazy Sunday,” a filmed clip from “Saturday Night Live” that drew large audiences on the Web last year, initially as a bootleg. After the taping of the Dec. 4 show, Mr. O’Brien said the show’s executive producer, Jeff Ross, informed him of the problem, then asked him whether he wanted to mute the mention of the site or buy the Web address.

“We didn’t want to take it out,” Mr. Ross said yesterday, “so we bought it.”

In explaining to the audience the next night what he and his writers had done, Mr. O’Brien marveled, “For $159, NBC, the network that brought you ‘Meet the Press,’ Milton Berle and the nation’s first commercial television station became the proud owner of www.hornymanatee.com.”

Now, by clicking on “tour,” visitors to the site are drawn into a netherworld of mock-graphic images with titles like “Mature Manatee” (with a walker of course) and “Fetish” (a manatee in a bondage costume) as well as dozens of viewer submissions, including “Manatee & Colmes,” a spoof of “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News.

Mr. O’Brien said he knew he was on to something when, on Wednesday night, he was at a Christmas party in the lobby of a friend’s building and a waiter approached him with a platter of salmon and toast points. When Mr. O’Brien politely declined, he said the waiter drew in close and whispered in his ear, “My compliments to the horny manatee.”

As he prepared last night’s show, Mr. O’Brien said he was planning to give the bit its first night off, although he was confident it would soon return.

“We don’t want the entire show to be ‘Late Night With Horny Manatee,’ ” he said. “Though, of course, it will become that eventually.”



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

// posted by Joe Paris @ Tuesday, December 12, 2006 0 comments

Sunday, December 10, 2006

30 Rock(s)

I Like to Watch

 It's official: "30 Rock" is the funniest new show on television. Plus: Tyra Banks' condescending clown routine reaches new heights of absurdity.

By Heather Havrilesky

Dec. 10, 2006 | As Neil Young once so memorably sang, a man needs a maid. A woman, on the other hand, needs a combination of a maid, a nanny, a masseuse, a therapist and a certified public accountant, one who also cooks, teaches yoga and knows how to get dog hair off fuzzy sweaters. Aforementioned woman wouldn't mind if her maid/nanny/CPA/etc. also possessed basic secretarial skills and was particularly good at, say, writing witty thank-you notes or even longish letters to close relatives. It also wouldn't hurt if she were a gardener, a dog sitter and a notary public who dabbled in copyright law, or maybe a wet nurse with a background in prostitution and a license to drive heavy vehicles.

We live in a service economy, after all, where the ultimate goal is to pay other people to do every single mundane activity that might be asked of us, so that we can spend our time doing more important things, like eating crème-filled crullers and flipping idly through Christmas catalogs for gifts we might want our maid/assistant/aromatherapist to purchase for our family. (Actually, since she's the one who writes them letters and fields their phone calls, she should probably choose their gifts, too.)

Ah, the American dream! To fulfill exactly none of our God-given roles, escaping instead into the alternative reality of televised entertainments, ultra-violent video games and the Internets. Just imagine it! Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could while away every single waking minute on My Yahoo and Google News, while someone far more qualified than you scrubbed your bathtub and walked your dogs and paid your bills and breast-fed your baby and massaged your husband's feet? Oh, how I long to lie around like Jabba the Hutt, big and soft and purposeless, content to do nothing but glower over my service staff, chuckling heartily at the outrageousness of their modest requests ("Jabba no botha!") and shoving live frogs down my gullet!

Money talks, boshuda walks

Ah, but if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride! Or rather, beggars would pay someone else to ride, and to brush down their horses and feed them and clean out their stalls and so on. But wishes aren't horses, so beggars are surrounded by dirty dishes and scummy bathtubs and crying babies. Beggars daydream about lives that are glamorous and special while they microwave chicken pot pies and pull dog hairs off their sweaters and navigate lives that are one "Calgon, take me away!" moment after another. Beggars can't be choosers ... because they're losers.

For further proof, just ask Liz Lemon, Tina Fey's character on "30 Rock" (9:30 p.m. Thursdays on NBC), who's constantly being told by those around her just how lame every aspect of her life is. Take the night that Liz is working late, and her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) comes in and finds her eating a wilty little sandwich at her desk:

Jack: Lemon, what tragedy happened in your life that you insist upon punishing yourself with all this mediocrity?

Liz: What, because I'm eating a turkey sub?

Jack: Your turkey sub, your clothes, the fact that a woman of your resources and position lives like some boxcar hobo, or maybe it's the fact that while I'm saying all this, you have a piece of lettuce stuck in your hair.

Unlike the suave heroes of Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60," the other show this season set behind the scenes of a "Saturday Night Live"-type sketch comedy show, Liz is a TV writer who's not only something of a schlumpy loser, but she's recently resumed dating her lame ex-boyfriend, Dennis, a guy who sells beepers and is allergic to all fish that isn't fried. When Jenna (Jane Krakowski), one of the stars of Liz's show, finds out Liz has started seeing Dennis again, she's floored, but Liz has a perfectly convincing explanation:

Jenna: So when did this happen?

Liz: Well, last week was my birthday, and everyone forgot except Dennis. And he called and we went out, and it wasn't too weird!

Jenna: And how is the sex?

Liz: Fast, and only on Saturdays. It's perfect!

Liz is not just the antidote to the smug, self-important, melodramatic boy-men of "Studio 60, " she's also the antidote to every adorable, perky, good-natured heroine on TV. That's right, I mean you, Calista Flockhart and Anne Heche and Sarah Paulson, you with your deeply feminine values and your giggling fits and your cute little button noses. Liz not only isn't adorable and sweet, she's irritable and sort of weird and she always settles for less. Whether she's dancing like a sad honky to Chamillionaire in the writer's room or making the racist assumption that another actor on the show, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), can't read, Liz makes mistakes that are far more pathetic than sympathetic. Liz is the human embodiment of a bad hair day, and so naturally I love her like a sister.

Best of all, though, instead of painting life in Hollywood as sexy or exciting, "30 Rock" makes TV executives and TV writers look like a pack of miserable little humans with crummy existences. Take the scene where Liz tells writer Pete (Scott Adsit) that she's worried assistant Cerie's (Katie Bowden) revealing clothing is keeping the writers from focusing on their work.

Liz: That's it, I've got to talk to her about her clothes, she can't dress like that.

Pete: What?! Yes she can! People like the way she dresses!

Liz: No, come on. It's distracting, it's inappropriate.

Pete: You're inappropriate, you jerk with your big stupid face!

Liz walks away.

Pete: No, Liz ... Listen, listen. Look at me. Look at how bald I am, look at my life. Please, just give me this one thing!

And when Jack tries to urge Liz and her writing staff to indulge in the wonders of product placement ("Product integration: Setting a new standard in upward revenue stream dynamics ... for all of us!"), the conversation might as well be directly aimed at the self-aggrandizing of Aaron Sorkin and Co.:

Liz: We are not your shills!

Jack: Oh, oh, I'm sorry. That's right, they're artists, like James Joyce or Strindberg. Get real, kids! You write skits mocking our presidents to fill time between car commercials!

Of course, the writers of "30 Rock" are happy to mock Sorkin to fill time between car commercials. In one scene, Liz and Pete walk around the studio, talking, when finally he asks, "Did we just go in a circle?" "Yeah, I was following you," she says. "I was following you," he replies, and then, as they part ways: "OK, good walk-and-talk!" -- a clear parody of the witty exchanges while striding down endless hallways Sorkin made famous on "The West Wing" and now "Studio 60."

While Liz Lemon and her band of sorry entertainers are worth the price of admission alone, the best thing about "30 Rock" is Alec Baldwin, hands down. Baldwin infuses every single bit of dialogue, even the throwaway lines ("Sorry I'm late, I was at a luncheon for Ann Coulter's 60th birthday") with a delightful flavor of solemn self-seriousness. Like an unholy mix of Donald Trump, Ricky Gervais in the original "Office" and the boss in Dilbert cartoons, Baldwin perfectly captures in Jack the essence of the humorless, out-of-touch corporate executive. He employs odd cadences that are at once natural and incredibly funny, and has a way of making even the most deadpan delivery hilarious. Baldwin tackles the playfulness of the hopelessly square, uppercrust man with a focus and spirit that remind me of Harry Shearer.

"Are you familiar with Six Sigma?" Jack asks the writers in a half-whisper, his question landing somewhere between a casual aside and a conspiratorial confession. "Six Sigma is the elite G.E. training course. To master just its basic concepts one must brave a five-day conference at a Sheraton."

Apparently someone at NBC attended a five-day conference in TV programming at a Sheraton, because the network has recently moved "30 Rock" to Thursday nights and renewed it for a full season despite lackluster ratings. You know what that means: Stay where you are after "My Name Is Earl" and "Scrubs," because "30 Rock" is on right after those two shows, and damn it, it deserves to be a hit!

In fact, get your secretary/personal trainer/chef to go on iTunes right now and purchase the episodes "Jack-Tor" and "Jack the Writer" so you can see why "30 Rock" is the funniest new show on TV.

Tyra no botha!

OK, fine. It's not nearly as funny as anything with Tyra Banks in it. Even longtime fans of "America's Next Top Model" have been stunned by Tyra's hysterical antics this season. Yes, it once seemed that Tyra couldn't possibly be more egocentric and obnoxious than she'd been so many times before, both on "ANTM" and on her unbearably cheesy talk show, but leave it to Miss T to outdo herself.

If narcissistic tics were horses, then Tyra's would ride roughshod over a nation of stunned viewers. This season on "America's Next Top Model," every time the camera was trained on Tyra, she seemed to take up the entire screen with her big, bossy, buxom buffoonery. What other TV personality could dish out self-serious life lessons, ramble on about her brilliant career, then clown around in the most affected, unnatural way, only to pull herself together for a moment of scoldy condescension toward her "girls"?

Yes, the moral of "America's Next Top Model" is, "Everything that you can do, Tyra can do better." Each time the models are asked to complete a task, Tyra has to bust into the scene and show them how it's supposed to be done, usually with all of the subtlety of a drunk Jane Russell impersonator at a tranny show. The classic Tyra moment this season came when Tyra leapt to her feet, mid-judging session, because she couldn't help demonstrating just how good she is at "modeling through" a Spanish style of dancing. Notice I didn't say that Tyra was good at actually dancing -- the point is to look really good while you look like you're dancing.

Mid-faux-dance, though, one of Tyra's high heels fell off! What did Tyra do? She modeled through it, of course. We at home could see that Tyra was modeling through it, but she still had to turn to the girls afterwards and say, "You see what I just did?" Then she explained, with all of the self-seriousness of Jack Donaghy filling us in on elite G.E. training courses, that instead of calling attention to her lost shoe, she had sallied forth and continued to look sort of like she was dancing in what might look like a Spanish style, if someone took a photograph of it at some point.

Or how about when this season's winner, CariDee, was posing in a freezing-cold pool, and after several minutes her teeth started to chatter and she started to feel downright horrible? Naturally, Caridee was afraid of admitting that she felt like crap, since confessing to having any problem at all during a shoot is, without fail, interpreted as a sign of weakness and used as an excuse to eliminate a model. Appearing near death, Caridee finally told Tyra and Co. that she needed a break, and Tyra promptly berated her for not telling anyone sooner that she was feeling bad. Then, during judging, Tyra once again scolded Caridee for not mentioning that she felt crappy, but also told her that the judges wondered, now, if she could really hack modeling since she so clearly couldn't tolerate hypothermia.

Sadly, the more Tyra trots out her crazy, patronizing Medusa act, both on her tedious talk show and on "ANTM," the more all of Tyra's little minions chuckle along and the more hideous and demonic Tyra becomes in turn. Yes, there is a price to pay for having a small army of professional minions doing your bidding: You become a larger-than-life ego beast, a drooling Rancor, a frumious Bandersnatch of self-centered hatefulness!

Of course, you're a frumious Bandersnatch that gets its carpets steamed and its nails done with clocklike precision, one who sucks down fresh carrot juice and triple-shot vanilla lattes before its feet even hit the floor, one who gets to watch the first season of "Freaks and Geeks" on DVD while professionals make sure its children are clean and well-fed and constantly entertained. Yes, as much as you might like to shun the frumious Bandersnatch of this high capitalist service economy, let's face it: It's worth it!

Or, in the immortal words of one Jabba the Hutt: "Jabba no botha!" which of course means, "I can't be bothered to do such a thing, I have old of episodes 'Battlestar' to watch!"

Pop Quiz!

Wondering what you've learned today? Take this quiz and find out!

1. The main point of this column is:

a) The American dream is to do nothing but consume extravagantly while paying other people to accomplish stuff for us.
b) If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride straight to hell, where Bryan Adams would be performing around the clock in the "Sartre Lounge."
c) Anything worth knowing can be taught in five days in a Sheraton conference room.

2. What do you have in common with Jabba the Hutt?

a) I share his thinly veiled sense of disdain for his service workers.
b) I, too, am very large and soft and have an enormous, mucus-covered mouth.
c) Like Jabba, I enjoy laughing heartily at the foibles of the sad little mortals around me.
d) I, too, have a trap door that leads to a dungeon underneath my bedroom.

3. What does Tyra Banks have in common with Jabba the Hutt?

a) She shares his thinly veiled sense of disdain for his service workers.
b) She, too, is very large and soft and has an enormous, mucus-covered mouth.
c) Like Jabba, Tyra enjoys laughing heartily at the foibles of the sad little mortals around her.
d Tyra also has a trap door that leads to a dungeon underneath her TV studio.

4. Which of the following would you most like to have?

a) A certified public accountant/masseuse/therapist who walks dogs and washes windows.
b) A wet nurse with a background in prostitution and a license to drive heavy vehicles.
c) A young, sassy Princess Leia in a metal bikini on a short leash.
d) A big snack bowl filled with live frogs.
e) A TV studio with a dungeon underneath it.

5. If, as Neil Young asserts, a man needs a maid, what does a woman need?

a) A man with a maid.
b) A male maid.
c) A merman.
d) Ethel Merman.
e) I hope Neil Young will remember, high-maintenance woman don't want him around anyhow.

Answer Key

1. a, 2. a, 3. d, 4. c, 5. e

-- By Heather Havrilesky



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

// posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, December 10, 2006 0 comments

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