Snapshot: Los Angeles

In an elevator somewhere in mid town:

The Great Fall TV Season Overview

No Frills. Not links. No Pics. Nada. Just the overview on this fall's shows. Not the worst season of television, but most definitely NOT the best.

Here goes.

New shows I like enough to watch every week:
Pushing Daisies. (Great acting. The chick is quirky and funny. There are musical numbers and built in tension every week, just because of the premise)
Dirty Sexy Money. (Pilot was awesome. It is hit or miss. I have hopes for it. )
The Big Bang Theory (I know, I can't believe it either but I find myself chuckling. I can see it getting really tired.)
Bionic Woman (But it is wearing out it's welcome. The lead is terrible. The premise is interesting. It will probably go away and we won't miss it)
Samantha Who? (I enjoy this in that classic 60's wacky comedy with dumb premise way. Think The Girl With Something Extra or The Flying Nun)

Returning reality show that I am excited about:
The Amazing Race (It's a perfect game. Perfectly presented. It deserves every award it wins)

Old Show I want to kick in the ass for wasting all that viewer currency:
Heroes. (Hiro is in the past but nothing in the present is affected? Peter doesn't know his power....that's the same story as last year. The end of the world??? Sylar wants to obtain powers?????? Is it the first season already?)

Pilot I enjoyed but can't bring myself to watch any more episodes:
Chuck (I am tired of Beta males and I don't want them saving the world anymore.)
Reaper (More Beta males. Neat premise. But I just don't have the time to root for guys I have no respect for)

Shows I wish would gain their footing again because they have had great moments this season but are not, generally, up to par:
How I Met Your Mother (This has all the makings of a classic. They are stuck with Robin in the cast and she is a 3rd wheel. Get rid of her and get back to the story)
30 Rock (Someone at NBC tampered with this fucker. You can just feel it. The jokes don't fly as fast or furious. It's like they told them "Slow down for your audience. They shouldn't have. It will kill the show)

Idiotic show I watch because the vanity card hooked me and I find myself laughing at least 3 times an episode:
Two and a half men. (Truly. Record every episode and watch the title card. If that doesn't convince you that Chuck Lorre is funnier than the shows he creates, you are hopeless. After that, watch the shows. There are some funny bits in there.)

Programs that should embarrass the actors every time they cash the paycheck:
Cavemen (Holy crap.)
Carpoolers (Just crap)
Back to You (Expensive crap)
Are you Smarter than a 5th grader (Viewers should know better crap)

Shows I used to watch because my wife would watch them but now that I have a tv in the kitchen.....fuck that noise:
House (Weird illness of the week meets crochety super doc. Got it)
Grey's Anatomy (Hot people have problems, too. Got it)
Medium (talking to ghosts can help you solve mysteries. Got it)
Ghost Whisperer (Talking to Ghosts can help them get to the light. Got it. Love Hewitt? What's with the fake lashes and ugly sidekicks?)
Numbers (Understanding Math can help you solve murder. Got it)
Criminal Minds (I should watch this but I just can't. I. just. can't.)
America's Next Top Model (America is filled with pretty vaginas. Got it.)
Desperate Housewives (Is this still on? How is this still in the top ten?????)

Shows I should watch because I was on them but they hold no interest for me because I have the attention span of a flea:
JourneyMan (My part was too small for me to watch the whole episode.)
Private Practice (My part was originally in Grey's so I don't have to feel bad)
CSI (My part was a few years ago and cut up weird)
CSI NY (I was asked to come back and reprise my part but I couldn't)

Shows that I recognize as being good but I get the joke and it isn't as funny the 30th time as people want you to believe (or STOP MAKING HOUR LONG EPISODES OF HALF HOUR SHOWS!)
The Office (One day, and that day WILL come, the world will realize that this show was nowhere near as funny as people think it is.)

Show I watch because I fully enjoy the Schadenfraude:
Deal or No Deal (For god's sake, somebody explain math to these idiots. If you have 2 big numbers left and you MUST pick 2 or more cases, your game is over.)

Shows I am supposed to watch because everyone says it's good
Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg. I hate Peter Berg. Long Story)
Everybody Hates Chris (The PR would have you believe that this show is funny. Ha! THAT's funny!)
Aliens in America ( I saw five minutes. It looked cute. I forgot it was on)

Shows I could give or take. In other words not as good as ice cream but better than brussel sprouts
Survivor China (CHINA? Why not Survivor: Tupelo?)
My Name is Earl (You know, it's funny when I see it. I don't mind it. But then again, I don't carea)
Smallville (I only want to see him do super stuff. I hate 90% of the storylines)
Ugly Betty (It's a good show. I just never seem to get around to it)

List of shows that I will never see and am glad to say that about:
Gossip Girl
NCIS
The Singing Bee
Bones
The Unit
Cane
Kid Nation
Phenomenon
Life
Viva Laughlin
Vegas
Supernatural
Phenomenon
Scrubs
Without a Trace
Men in Trees
The Next Great American Band
Moonlight
Women's Murder Club
CSI Miami
Extreme makeover: Home Edition
Cold Case
Shark
Dancing with the Stars
Rules of Engagement
(NO explanations necessary)

Long live the Green Monkey!

Okay, not a lot of time here, folks, but I must explain my selections over at splotch's site. (www.isplotchy.blogspot.com)
the topic was gender, I chose men, here goes.

Paul Stanley by The Hellacopters.
Seriously. What band names a song after Paul Stanley? A great band, that's who. And one who just announced they are dissolving after their next album.
The Hellacopters will be the subject of my next edition of "The Mop" over at www.shuffleboil.com If you haven't been there already, shame on you. Come on by, we're doing some cool shit.

Pablo Picasso Visita Los Planetos de los Simios by Adam Ant. Pablo Picasso visits the Planet of the Apes? Adam must have been high. Oh, wait, he didn't do drugs. So, seriously, what the fuck? The song is as weird as it's title.

Jonathan by Nerf Herder. "Please god, don't let me end up like Jonathan Richman. Says it all right there. Nerf Herder always made me laugh and here they beat up on Indie's sensitive roving quirkmeister. Ha, always funny.

St. Jimmy the Prankster - Dean Gray. My late daughter's (www.lizzielulu.com) favorite band was Green Day. She wasn't too keen on the mashup from last year but, hey, she didn't quite get it yet. Dean Gray (get it? get it?) does such a great job of pointing out that all songs have been rewritten and art is repetetive and vital and all that stuff. This was available for one day on Dean Gray Tuesday last year. the album is one of the best mashups I have ever heard.

Vincent - Don Maclean. Because it is the greatest song ever written about an artist and his work. It succeeds on so many levels. It is touching and sad. It uses the canvas of the painting to illustrate the subject matter. It might be perfect. And no one dares cover it.

ShuffleBoil

So very proud to be a part of this one. Please go over to Shuffleboil, subscribe and read the genius. Or is that genus? Brilliance, I mean. Oh, fuck it. I'm reviewing music over at a great new webzine. www.shuffleboil.com

Come on by!

The Seminal Seventh?

A short while back I posed a question. Scroll down and you will find it. It's pretty simple. As a decade shifts out of infancy into maturity it seems that some band, group, someone releases an album that pretty much defines the decade. The Beatles did it with Sgt. Pepper. The Sex Pistols, etc etc. The main point of this was to find out: Is it coincidence that each of those albums were released in the 7th year of the decade? And, more importantly, what is the album that defines the oo's.
I think we have our first candidate. And, even weirder, it's by a band that put out the last era defining piece of work: Radiohead.
My "review" of In Rainbows can be seen at www.shuffleboil.com, an exciting new webzine I am proud to have been asked to be a part of. So, please, mark your calendars and check out the stuff there.
Has there been more debate in the music industry than file sharing? Copyright? Price points? Has Radiohead really demolished the old model? I think they may have. Besides the fact that this album is among their best. It is also a massive statement. It may prove to be the most important album of the decade.
Cool.

What's the deal with time?

In 1973 Barnaby Jones debuted.
17 years later Seinfeld would bow.
It has been 17 years since Seinfeld's first episode.
I feel fucking old.

in rainbows (or radiohead changes everything)

blogging from the iPod touch:

I finally discover radiohead just in time for them to change the very fabric of the music industry.
News out of radioheadland: new album. $80 super disc/cd/vinyl/booklet/digital package. Sell through direct by the now labelless band
or you can just purchase the digital download: price? Donation only.pay what you want. Cut out the label! No middle man. No "agent"!

This is big.

Seminal Sevens

Today I listened, I mean, really listened to Radiohead's OK Computer for the first time. Fine. Shut up. I've been busy. And snobby. And I even followed it up with Kid A and Liked that, if you can believe it. Maybe I've mellowed or perhaps it was that oatmeal with Vitamin MDMA I had for breakfast.
Anywhoo, it got me thinking.

In 1967 The Beatles released one of the most important and ifluential albums of all time. You know it. You love it. This was the 40th anniversary of it. Yes, I speak of Sgt. Pepper.



Ten years later, in the fall of 1977, The Sex Pistols unleashed Never Mind the Bollocks and a paradigm shift from "classic rock" (read:corporate) to stripped down three chord aggro rock changed how we thought about music and fashion.



Ten years after that, after New Wave and Disco and synth pop and new romanticism, U2 put out the era defining album The Joshua Tree. I can't believe it's been 20 years. And I can't believe they are still making records. The Joshua Tree is still listenable today, as are most classic albums but it is definitely OF IT'S TIME.



Then, in 1997, Radiohead's OK Computer came out. I can imagine this being the theme song to just about every rave. With its devotion to ProTools and Cubase and it's slavish adoration of all things PRODUCED, the album seems to have held up really well. And, for me, it really helps to (here's that word again) define the time. Artists seemed to be less interested in following the dictatorial pattern of record labels and due to this and the explosion of the single song download, the reemergence of the one hit wonders appeared. Or, rather, artists that, in a different time, one absent of publicists, trl and 40000 music rags calling themselves magazines, would have only had one hit and been gone. Can you hear me, Sisco?



So, I ask you this:

What is the era defining album this year? Has the pattern been broken? Did I miss something? I am so hard pressed to believe that Justin Timberlake's Futurecrap/LoveDisco will be looked at 10 years from now as the seminal album of the decade. So, what is it?
Someone? Anyone?
And, if you are a blogger who reads this, could you ask your readers the same question? I'm dying to know.

You got the Touch! You got the Power!

Yeah, I couldn't fucking wait. You don't understand. I HAVE NO IPOD! My 60g photopod goes "sad Ipod" when the battery is EVEN SLIGHTLY low. I lost the teeny shuffle that someone gave me for working on their commercial last year (hey, Apple! What? You can't make it even smaller and easier to lose??) And, since my wife has a Nano I have been relegated to using her gum stick sized shuffle. Which sucks. And doesn't even work right. And has no space.
And I don't wanna switch to the death star. And I can't be sure that iphone updates won't relock unlocked phones (even though T-Mobile is the iphone choice in germany! Fuck, why not here T-Mobile!?!?! I mean, TMo is a GERMAN COMPANY! The phone was offered to you first here....ugh....)
So, I got the touch.
Freaking great. Small glitches.
The blacks are so black they almost seem negative. Have to watch on an angle. But, christ, what a big screen. So, not reason enough to return it.
BUT
Occaisionally when I am on the web and listening to music at the same time the music just.....stops.
This is not good. Makes me think I have a dud.
Gotta call apple.
No matter.
Freaking great ipod.

And the download feature from itunes???? Got a bunch of Danko Jones that I would ahve normally....um....looked for on blogs.
So, Steve Jobs, you may have found the answer to combating piracy.

But, shouldn't this be the commercial? I mean, it's music. It's video. it's The Touch. And when you get one, you "got the touch!"

Britney! Learn from the Brits that went before ye!

All this brouhaha about Britney.....allow Septenary to maintain perspective, please.

1963. Beatles "She Loves You" breaks the band stateside. Boys appear on Ed Sullivan. Phenomenon ensues.

1970. Beatles release "Let it Be". Then break up.
In between there are amazing albums, mind altering drugs, advances in technology and production, the Summer of Love, the riots of '68, Woodstock and man lands on the moon.



1999. "...Baby one more time" is released. Britney's schoolgirl midriff is all over MTV. Phenomenon ensues.

2006. Britney's mind breaks up.
In between boy bands come and go, twee comes, then goes, Indie Pop arrives, the White Stripes are the standard bearers for rock, George Bush starts a war and 3000 people die in the World Trade Center Bombings.



It's been 8 years since Brit's debut. Don't try to fuck with the laws of Septenary. You will lose every time.