MagneticMediaFed

missy aggravation / some sacred questions

BENTHAM!! Wait. Who?.. Why? (Spoiler-riddled Lost thoughts after the jump…)

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I had the great pleasure of seeing my friend Kevin perform stand-up in Kentucky on Thursday night. There, we both appeared on Fist City, the radio show* hosted by my friends Brock and Greg. You can listen to the whole show by clicking here (scan ahead 1 hour), or a not-so-brief clip, that I’ve embedded below.

*internet-radio show

Chances are no one is watching this show. Chances are the damage is already done. When there is the option of watching a group of rich, petty, semi-alcoholic non-actors bounce throughout the “hottest” clubs in southern California or seeing a collection of future Darwin Award winners vie for the love and admiration of a bisexual, anorexic* stripper, it’s probably pretty hard to care much about a collection of wholly average white kids attempting to put out a school paper. And that’s too bad, because MTV’s The Paper is not just solidly entertaining but paints one of the most realistic portraits of suburban high school ambition this side of Tracy Flick.

It’s the type of show MTV should have been making all along. Like the first incarnations of The Real World, The Paper doesn’t seem particularly interested in “producing-up” the action, and instead does what the reality genre was suppose to always be: documentaries with a hyper-kinetic visual style. That being said, this shouldn’t be mistaken for the early 90s alterna-rock-pesimsm from days of yore. The series is Gen-Y to the max, and perhaps that is also what makes it so relentlessly watchable. The tone of the show is super-upbeat, but the characters are just vicious. It’s packed with eye-rolls and secret-laughs and plotting and back-stabbing and ad sales and layout and editorials and sports coverage. I guess in other words, it’s just like a high school.

Check out the show while you can (there are still two episodes left and the first six are available online). Future seasons will suffer from the kids having seen the previous slowly morphing the drama from reality to “Reality.”

*speculative

One year ago I spent the entire upfronts week feverishly clicking my refresh button looking for the latest information on the coming fall television season. What a difference a year makes. After the 100-day writer’s strike left most of the network’s schedules flopping on the dock like a hooked but forgotten flounder, no one (not the advertisers, not the networks, and certainly not the audience) seems particularly thrilled about the network announcements (or lack of announcements) for their future plans. This week is, after all, FOR the advertisers, and since network television is no longer viewed as being all that lucrative those advertising dollars are looking for something more than the typical slate of potential prime-time disasters. Take ABC, for example. The network plans on adding a whopping TWO new programs to its fall prime-time line-up, choosing instead to bring back almost all of it’s fall ‘08 slate (minus, Carpoolers, Cavemen and October Road). But who cares, especially this early in the process? More after the jump…

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Am I the only person who isn’t particularly offended by the news Jimmy Fallon will be taking over Late Night next summer? This isn’t to say I’ll be watching, but as a strategic move in chess game of late night programming, it makes perfect sense. Let us not forget the genre is clearly in its waning years. Really, network television, like newspapers, aren’t a particularly sound investment right now. That being said, the transition from where we are now to where we will eventually be isn’t going to be immediate, and frankly, we probably won’t see it happening. One day we’ll just wake up, go to work, stumble over to the water cooler and say to whomever is standing there, “Hey, did you watch Letterman last night?” To which they will undoubtedly respond, “What’s a letterman?” And then you will realize that they don’t even have televisions at the nursing home and that you haven’t gone to work in 23 years. More after the jump…

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I’m trying to adjust to a new work schedule and so my daily television regiment has been thrown for a loop. (Eight to five? Have to wear a tie? What kind of madness is this?) And since I currently don’t own an actual set and have to wait for content to be loaded online I’ve been at least a day behind on everything. That being said, I wanted to make sure I hit a few points before the weekend:

• Gossip Girl — OMFG. There are cliffhangers, and then there are CLIFFHANGERS. In a way I’m surprised this wasn’t the season finale, but I’m also completely relieved. Since the strike-break, this show has gone from being more or less awesome to unquestionably fantastic.
• Reaper — Speaking of a post-strike resurgence, this show has completely solved its problem with being wildly inconsistent (and sadly predictable) in terms of storytelling and it doesn’t hurt that its also funnier than its ever been.
• Top Chef — Love Stephaine. Love Richard (which is odd since I used to hate Richard… though I still find his hair objectionable on every level. Love Andrew. Like Spike. Like Antonia. Dale? Well Dale is in a gotsa-go situation. I mean Jesus Christ man, RELAX!
• 30 Rock — The Jack in Washington plot line was perhaps the funniest thing that show has ever done. (The rest of the episode wasn’t so bad either.) “It’s not a leak, you can see the report.”

I’ve listened to This American Life on NRP (or PRI, or whatever) here and there since I started obsessing over talk-radio back in the fall of 1999, but it wasn’t until their Showtime program began last spring that I really became a fan. Before that I don’t think I really “got it.” The pacing is such that you really have to give it some time before you get sucked in (not unlike a really great television show) and if the first story doesn’t happen to grab your attention during the dial can be awfully easy. But the series changed all that. Maybe it’s because I was already spending so much time parked in front of the television. Perhaps it was bound to happen. All I know is the storytelling was remarkable, the visual style felt unprecedented in its richness and by the time the six episode had aired I had become a vegetarian (which lasted through the summer).

So when some friends told me about a live This American Life stage show that would be put on in New York City and then broadcast live to movie theaters across the country, I felt that it was something I should certainly attend. I’ll tell you about it after the jump…

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