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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

All about the Benjamins

It’s hard to admit it now but I used to heart P. Diddy. I thought he was the coolest person in the world. I know. How lame was I? But it’s true and I’m all about admitting my faults. It’s easy when you don’t have a lot of them.

I loved myself some Diddy for many reasons.

First of all, I’m a sucker for an underdog makes good story and Diddy definitely started out as an underdog. Raised in a Harlem housing project by his mom because his dad, who apparently was pals with Frank Lucas, the famous NY drug lord who brought cocaine into the US via soldiers caskets and was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the bio pic, American Gangster, was shot and killed in his car outside a party. His mom kicked ass to do right by Diddy on her own, and she did a fine job sending him to Catholic school and then on to Howard University for college. Combs is only a year older than me and when he was at Howard so was one of my best friends. I never met him but I always imagined that if Pat Noel and I had run into Diddy, we would have instantly been friends.

So, anyhow, underdog Diddy, pulls himself out of poverty and becomes this super successful record producer and artist. An American dream come true. I loved it.

And then there was his close friendship with Biggie which I thought seemed legit, not like some of the fake friendships you see in Hollywood, and well, everywhere. Diddy and Biggie seemed to really care for one another. And in the whole East Coast/West Coast rap war, I’m from Maryland so as talented as Tupac was, I had to side with the East. Plus compared to Suge Knight, Diddy was a kitten. Big Red, the character based on Suge in The Five Heartbeats (which by the way is an awesome movie), still gives me nightmares. People with no conscious are the scariest people of all. And I am 100% sure that Biggie AND Tupac were either both killed by Suge Knight OR are living on an island together with Elvis. No doubt about it. But anyhow, sorry for the tangent, my point was that on the East, Diddy was a pretty big deal and I bought into his fabulousness as much if not more than anyone.

I cried when Diddy and Faith Evans (who by the way is a million times cooler than Lil Kim) and Sting sang “I’ll be missing you” at the 1997 VMA awards.

I thought Farnsworth (I refuse to call him Fonzworth) Bentley was cool when he was hanging around Diddy and dancing with his umbrella in the Outkast videos.

I shook my tailfeathers with Diddy and Nelly and Murphy Lee. And I passed the Courvoisier to Diddy, Busta Rhymes and Pharrell. I thought the love between Diddy and J. Lo would last forever. Yes, Diddy cast a spell on the world and I had no problem falling under it but like most good things, it had to come to an end.

Slowly, the image I had of Diddy began to taint. He made up that lame slogan for the 2004 US presidential election, “Vote or Die”. What does that even mean? It was idiotic.

And then he took over “Making the Band” which just introduced the world to that nasty Aubrey O’Day from his failed band Danity Kane. Making skanky people like that famous was something none of us needed to be subjected to.

Then he was quoted at the Concert for Diana as saying that he felt a connection to Lady Di because she was royalty in her country just as he is royalty in his. Did I miss the part when someone crowned Diddy King of America?

And then finally, a friend of mine in NY told me a story about how he and Diddy worked out at the same gym and Diddy would troll the gym trying to get people to play pick up basketball with him and then cry when he got beat. Apparently none of the regular gym patrons wanted to play with him because he was such a sore loser. Image shattered.

So I wasn’t a fan anymore but I wasn’t embarrassed about my past love of Diddy. Until yesterday, when I learned that Diddy had an extravagant birthday party for his son, Justin, over the weekend that was filmed for MTV’s worst show ever, My Super Sweet Sixteen. A show that makes stars out of spoiled brats who yell at their parents and throw tantrums when the diamonds on their tiaras aren’t big enough. It makes Jersey Shore look worthy of PBS.

And what did young Justin get for his birthday besides a rocking televised party? A sports car called a Maybach that is apparently worth $360, 000! For a car. For a sixteen year old. Now, I am not one to tell people how to spend their money but there is a recession going on in this country right now. There are people without food or homes or jobs. Oh, and there’s also that little problem in Haiti. You know, where the whole county was demolished by an earthquake and no one knows how it’s ever going to be rebuilt? And while all this suffering is going on, Diddy is out there yelling “Look at me! I’m rich! I use money to wipe my ass!”. Unbelievable.

Like so many boys from my past, I can’t believe I ever gave that fool a second look.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Maybe TV's not so bad afterall

What a difference a week makes. Last week, Jay Leno and the idiots at NBC had me so mad that Bobby and I were practicing our collaborative Boo Hiss routine (I boo, he hisses) around the house on the off chance that we should ever see Leno on the street. The mess NBC has made of their weeknight schedule made me question our future together – me and TV. This was rough because we’ve been together a long time but TV was looking pretty bleak. Then something awesome happened Monday night and my faith was renewed.

It was almost 10pm and we were switching channels around. Something caught my eye so I stopped on MTV. Their 9pm program Teen Mom was just wrapping up. This show infuriates Bobby because he thinks that dumb teenagers might see the life of a teenage mother as somehow romantic and want to try it. He’s right. A lot of teenagers are super dumb and easily influenced by movies, television and their friends. Teen Mom may look like a cautionary tale to actual adults but to kids it looks sort of sweet and nice to have someone who loves you unconditionally even if that person craps his pants and steals your freedom. Unstable, love starved teenagers don’t think rationally so putting this kind of programming in front of them is a recipe for disaster and nothing else.

MTV and their sister network VH1 are notoriously bad about setting a good example for kids. No one wants their child to grow up to be Snooki from Jersey Shore. I don’t even watch that show and I know that my little boys will end up with a cheese ball hooker like that over my dead body. Nobody wants their kids mimicking anyone on Frank the Entertainer’s Basement Affair. And For the Love of Ray J, no one even knows who Ray J is (okay, I do – he’s Brandy’s little brother who made a sex tape with Kim Kardashian and For the Love of Ray J, I wish I didn’t know that!).

So anyhow, the MTV/VH1 programming these days is trashy to say the least (Heidi Fleiss on Dr Drew’s Celebrity Rehab gives me actual nightmares). But I had read about this new documentary series that was premiering and I wanted to give it a try. What a fantastic decision on my part. MTV’s The Buried Life may have saved my faith in television and in humanity in general. The show rocks.

The basic point of the show is that these four young guys make a list of 100 things they want to do before they die and then they head out across the country in a bus to do them all. Every time they check something off their list they meet a stranger, find out what’s on his list and help that person do one of the things he’d like to do before he dies. I love the show on many levels.

First off the guys on the show are in their early twenties, the perfect age to do something like this. You have no responsibilities yet. Why sell your soul to corporate life when you’re so young? This is the prime time to get in a bus and do crazy stuff with your friends (unless, of course, you’re a Teen Mom in which case the baby needs to be changed). I had lots of fun as a young person but I also had lots of drama and responsibility. I can’t imagine how awesome it would have been if I’d been able to chuck reality and get in a van with Fissy and Nancy and Anne and just drive around the country getting into all sorts of crazy hijinks. I LOVE crazy hiijinks! Amazing. I envy these guys.

And I admire them because they’re not just doing it for themselves; they’re doing it for other people. To have that kind of social consciousness at twenty is rare. In the premiere episode they sneak into a party at the playboy mansion (their goal) and they help a teacher they meet get a new computer for his 5th grade classroom at an LA charter school (stranger’s goal). The meeting is obviously staged but that doesn’t take away from the end result – they helped this man with a lofty goal and they brought attention to schools in need and to the need for people to care about one another. I’d kill for an opportunity to do stuff like that. Have fun, be young AND make a difference. Pretty heavy stuff for an MTV show these days.

I also love the idea of having a list. I never saw The Bucket List because I knew how that was going to end but I did really like that song Tim McGraw sang called Live like You Were Dying. In the song McGraw, who is fast becoming my favorite singer turned actor, recounts the story of a forty-something man who thinks he’s going to die so he “went sky diving, he went rocky mountain climbing, he went two point seven seconds on a bull named Foo Man Chu” . I’m sure many people think the song is cliché and are gagging on their syrupy sweet vomit right now but it gets me every time because when it comes down to it, I think he’s right. We’d all benefit from the chance to “live like we were dying”.

Unfortunately, most people never slow down enough or take stock in their lives to see what’s important and live without regret. But these four young guys, Ben, Dave, Duncan, and Jonnie, seem to get something that lots of much older people miss. They live life to the fullest in a way that is completely unselfish. They are what I want more boys to grow up to be like.
So Bravo MTV. You may have actually redeemed yourself. Now if LOST can hold up to the hype next week, me and TV might actually make it after all.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Books never looked better

This week NBC finally decided to cut their losses and cancel the abysmally rated Jay Leno Show. And now their big brilliant plan is to put Leno back on the air at 11:35pm, push Conan and The Tonight Show to 12:05am and put poor Jimmy Fallon on at 1am.

I’m hoping Conan and Fallon bolt because the way they’ve been treated is reprehensible. Sure, Conan’s ratings have been less than impressive but that’s because no matter how much you love late night talk shows no one wants to watch 3 plus hours of them! It’s much more likely that viewers are watching series programming from 10-11pm on Fox, ABC or CBS and then staying with that channel for news at 11pm and into late night TV if they’re so inclined. So Letterman, obviously, is going to have a better lead in than poor Conan who was stabbed in the back by Leno before he even stepped on air.

Remember how one of my new year’s wishes was for people to just quit and be gone? Well, Jay Leno you’re number one on my list of people I want to disappear. I never thought you were funny, but I did think you seemed like a nice person. Now I think you seem like a talentless egomaniac who has not only ruined the success of Conan and Jimmy but also taken down a whole network. Wow. Kudos to you, Leno. That was huge. And yes, I know it wasn’t your idea, but you could have walked out with some class when you retired from the Tonight Show. Instead you hung on for dear life at 10pm. What a pathetic, selfish, dickweed move that was. Bravo.

Now, of course, Leno is not totally to blame. The network executives at NBC are obviously the biggest bunch of morons to hit television since Peter Liguori took over at FOX and made the brilliant move of cancelling Arrested Development. What? Discovery Channel has hired Liguori as their new COO? Well, I would just love to comment on that but I’m too busy thowing up in my mouth.

There are people out there who understand business AND entertainment. People who can balance a budget AND have actual creative ideas. Not retreads of old ideas. CSI Mars? Greenlight!

And trust me; I am not one of those people so I’m not campaigning for myself here. I hate Excel spreadsheets. There is no place for me as an executive. But I have met people who could do both well. So why do we keep seeing the same jackasses hired over and over again?

And why when we were already subjected to a movie called The Pacifier with Vin Diesel as a Navy Seal/Babysitter, do we now need a movie called The Spy Next Door with Jackie Chan (the man who is ruining the Karate Kid franchise – don’t even get me started on that) as a Spy/Babysitter? Isn’t this the same movie? And wasn’t it a lame idea to begin with?

It’s only week two of 2010 and already I’m feeling let down by the entertainment industry. Things better turn around or I’m going to have to take up reading.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

What's in the punch?

I stopped watching MTV’s The Real World a few years ago because it was getting a little too ridiculous. Too staged. And honestly, too skanky for me. Plus, I know I’ll learn who the standouts from each cast are sooner or later when they start making regular appearances on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge which, sadly, is a habit I just can’t seem to break.

Last week my not watching The Real World streak ended when The Real World DC finally premiered. Since I’ve lived in the tristate area my whole life, I wanted to see where they would go so I had to tune in. In episode one, they basically just move into the house and then head out for dinner at Buca di Beppo, a chain restaurant with family style Italian food. Are you kidding me? You’re in the nation’s capital and the most exciting place you can think to spend you first night is a chain restaurant? Hopefully, in episode two they’ll head into Virginia, the chain restaurant capital of the world, and hit up The Olive Garden for some all you can eat breadsticks.

So the week one locations were not too impressive. Sure their house rocks but if you’ve ever watched a Real World episode you’ve already been there, done that, on the over the top accomodations.

The only thing left to make the show stand out is the cast. Here’s how that broke down for me.

Andrew is some sort of weird compulsive liar with a big uncensored mouth that he uses mostly for shock value and offending the other roommates with racial or sexual slurs that he thinks he can get away with because he’s so quirky. Oh, and he claims not to be a virgin, but the fact that he has supposedly made it with “several women in the Niagra Falls area” is a dead giveaway.

Ty comes all the way from Baltimore and has a sad back story about being left in an abandoned building as a baby and later adopted when he was five. Do to his rough beginnings he’s an atheist who thinks anyone who believes in God is stupid. I hate people like this. Not the atheist part – we’re all entitled to our own beliefs - the disrespecting and questioning the intelligence of people who choose to have religion in their lives. Believing in God doesn’t make you stupid just like not believing in God doesn’t make you bad. And at the risk sounding like Brit Hume, Ty, maybe the fact that you were found and adopted by people who loved you regardless of bloodlines is proof that there is a God. Or at least that there are people in the world who aren’t assholes. So lighten up.

Emily seems dumb; she believed Andrew when he told her he was a professional cage fighter even though he looks like someone William Zabka would shove in a locker. She grew up in a hard core religious family and now she’s rebelling against that by partying and being promiscuous. That could draw her to Ty who is buff and anti-religion.

Mike thinks he’s bisexual but he’s obviously wrong because there is no such thing as bisexual. Mike is gay. Which is fine, by the way. I have no problem with people being gay. I firmly believe it is not a choice – you are what you are and some of us are straight while others are gay. But no one is bisexual. College girls who make out with their friends are just being extra slutty. And guys who think they’re bi are gay guys who aren’t ready to admit that. I’m not sure why it’s hard to admit because being gay is so much better than being bi. When you pick your team no one gets hurt. When you go back and forth someone always gets hurt. Just ask Ellen and Steve Martin who were both burned by Anne Heche’s supposed bisexuality. Or Melissa Etheridge and Lou Diamond Phillips. Phillips’ wife Julie Cypher left him for Etheridge, had a couple of kids with her thanks to David Crosby’s sperm and then left her for some dude named Matt. My point is, you can’t have it both ways. Be straight. Be gay. But make a choice and stop dicking around, Mike. And if you need someone to man up and make the choice for you, I will. Mike, you’re gay.

Ashley seems bossy, opinionated, difficult to fight with and politically charged. I’ve had problems with real life people like that in the past so I kind of want to punch her.

Callie is the blonde girl version of Babe, Pig in the City – in awe of everything and a little scared. I imagine she’ll say stupid things and cry a lot.

Erika is the “edgy” music chick from Chicago. She’s obviously hoping someone in the industry watches the show and discovers her because she’s already jumped on the keyboard in the house and belted out one of her many original songs.

Josh thinks he’s Lenny Kravitz. I sort of hate Lenny Kravitz. And I hate anyone who tries that hard to be cool. So I think I’ll punch him, too.

And right there is my core problem with The Real World, and most reality shows. I always want to punch the roommates. I used to joke with Bobby about how if I was ever on a reality show, I would be the first one to vote myself off the island because I just couldn’t take being with those people for so long. It’s painful enough to watch on TV. I can not even imagine the unbearable agony of living with them. And I realize I’m part of the problem because by watching and keeping these shows on TV, I am helping to encourage a whole new generation of young people to grow up and become media whores. But I just can’t turn away. They’re in my city. They’re insane. And someone is going to get punched.