Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
Here’s a link to a pretty good story on NPR’s Morning Edition. It includes a little “where are they now?” bit about the original “VJs.” (Spoiler: JJ Jackson died of a heart attack in 2004).
And just to tell you how old I am: I remember distinctly a time in which people thought “this is stupid,” and I also remember a time when all MTV showed was videos (and they only had about 150 videos) and we’d watch it for like six hours at a time. Times have changed, eh?
A must-see I came across via Boing-Boing: Star Trek meets “Knights of the Round Table:”
Okay, okay, I’ll go mow the lawn. Finally….
… and probably won’t be around for that long. But in the meantime, two things I came across this morning:
A directory of each and every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.
All about South Park, which includes (I think) every episode of the show.
The second one is particularly interesting to me. Given that high speed internet access is coming online fast and given all the other ways that there are television shows online for free or for a small fee, these two different boxes, the TV and the computer, are indeed merging into one. Heck, the stereo is already stuck inside this particular box….
If you are a Lost fan (Annette and I am, though I am a new fan this year), you might be entertained by the LOST-Theories.com web site.
The Amazing Race, that is. BJ and Tyler just won the latest season of the only reality show that I watch with any regularity; actually, it’s kind of a family event around here. In any event, congrats to the hippie dudes, now $1 million richer.
It’s kinda cute. Worth a look…
In sort of a “prelude to work” moment just now, I’ve done a little web surfing about the Stephen Colbert routine at the annual White House Press Corps Dinner. Here’s a link to a story that suggests Colbert’s talk on “truthiness” was, ah, a tad uncomfortable for everyone. And here’s a link to some video of about the second half of so of the speech. Funny stuff.
Say, are you feeling bad about current events? Do you want to see the glass half-full? Then check out “The Great News Network.”
Because not all news is bad news. Oh, and because every once in a while, I for one need a news story that will not piss me off.
I don’t usually blog about TV shows specifically, but I just got done watching the premiere of The Unit, which is a show on CBS about a military unit sort of along the lines of “Delta Force,” though this particular unit, which appears to be made up of four people, is one of those so secret that it doesn’t officially exist kinds of deals.
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect that the “reality” of this show is closer to the reality of secret military operations than, say CSI is to forensic investigation. I mean, I think CSI is a great show and everything, but Jesus, can’t these people turn on some damn lights or something?
I digress.
In the first episode of The Unit, we see the team do all kinds of cool military things to thwart a terrorist attack while they jump back and forth to the wives of the older and more experienced Unit folks coax the new wife into the fold.
Well, that’s not a very good description, is it? But trust me, it’s a good show. Check it out next week.
I don’t know what this says about me, but I for one enjoy watching Entertainment Tonight. I sometimes watch the show to mock it and our stupid fame-obsessed culture, but I more often watch to participate in/be victimized by our culture’s obsession with entertainment and fame for fame’s sake. Besides, there’s nothing else on at 7:30.
Anyway, lately ET (and just again on ET “Weekend” this past Saturday– hey, what can I say, I can’t get enough of the ET) has really been working this “Fat Suit” angle, as this story on the ET Online Web Site explains. Since November, I swear they’ve had some version of the fat suit on at least once a week, and it’s starting to drive me a little crazy.
For those of you not up to speed on this, let me try to explain: ET “Reporter” Vanessa Minnillo, an extremely attractive woman (a former Miss Teen USA, according to her bio) who probably is about 5’5″ and maybe 120 pounds dripping wet, is put into this elaborate “fat suit” to change her into a 350 pound woman. Then they send her out with a film crew (presumably a hidden camera kind of thing) and watch people react. Inevitably, Minnillo is surprised– hurt, even!– to find out that most people react poorly to her in her fat suit. As she says in the “news story” I link to here, “[N]ot only do I have a new perspective on people with weight problems, it’s an experience I will never forget.”
Oh, where to begin?
First off, there’s overweight, there’s “fat” (like me), there’s “wow” fat, and then there’s this look. No offense to anyone out there reading this, but dude/dudette, if you are five-foot five and 350 pounds, well, you’ve got issues. I mean, this picture doesn’t do justice, but this outfit makes her look circus freak show fat. In my mind, a more effective test would be to dress Minnillo in a “chubby” and/or merely “fat” suit, maybe around 200 pounds, and see what happens.
Second, I have no doubts about the basic premise here: overweight/fat women (men too, but more women, I am sure) do get looks and hassled by people. But because Minnillo looks so downright freaky in this get-up, you have to wonder how many people are looking at her and thinking “wow, look at that super fat woman,” and how many are looking at her and thinking “wow, what’s up with the woman in the fat suit?”
Third, it doesn’t surprise me that Minnillo reacts with such shock at being ignored in the fat suit because she is so freakin’ good looking in “real life” that she has certainly never been ignored before. They did a couple of “fat suit”/”sans fat suit” comparisons on the weekend show that had me laughing. First they showed fat suit Minnillo getting into the subway, demonstrating how people either ignored her or were obviously not pleased about being next to the fat woman (or just the freaky woman with a fat suit fetish). Then they showed Minnillo without her fat suit try to get her hot little self on to the subway, and it was like she had a magic wand or something. “Excuse me,” she said in her cute girl way and the crowd parted. It was hillarious. Of course, she still was stared at, though for different reasons.
Anyway, I hope ET gives up on this fat suit thing soon before I have to write a stern letter. Maybe they can try a different angle, like get Minnillo to haul around a little kiddie wagon full of poo and see how strangers react to that.