Twisted Spinster

I’ve been on a CSI/Doctor Who jag, but never mind that — what I can’t understand are the jags everyone else is apparently on: or in other words, what is it with all these Sturm-und-Drang-filled, fire-breathing diva-chef restaurant-setup shows? Is there really an audience for this type of thing? I can’t imagine anything more boring than starting a restaurant (or a clothing store, or any other type of small business, sorry but this subject just bores me, at least as a spectator sport), and I can’t imagine anything more unpleasant than an hour or two of watching an unpleasant man (say, that Ramsey bloke on Ramsey’s Kitchen Disasters or whatever the hell it’s called) berate sullen or sobbing cooks, waiters, and restaurant owners while their misbegotten meals burn on the filthy stove, etc. It’s not funny, it’s not interesting, it’s just nasty, and gives me the squirmy feeling that comes from walking in on your neighbors while they’re in the middle of a degrading domestic argument. There’s another one, also on BBC America, called “Last Restaurant Standing,” and it looks like it will be just as squick-making, only the drill-sergeant chef is an unpleasant Frenchman instead of an unpleasant Brit. There were or probably still are some similar shows on the Food Network, the Fine Living Channel, and so on.

The fact that this sort of “confrontational” television has become so popular puzzles me, but then a lot of things about popular culture puzzle me. My different drummer marches to a different drummer — I am the sort of person who rarely is attracted to a trend. “It’s not for you” is the message I usually get. Here’s another example: a show called “Intervention,” which is on A&E. It’s another “reality” show, only this time no one’s on an island — the loser drug addicts who are the focus of the show have agreed to invite the viewing public into their own homes so we can wallow in their degradation (and that of their sobbing relatives) along with them. I am afraid that I am heartless and cruel, and my only response to the spot of the drug-addicted arthritic woman sprawled on her kitchen floor next to the pet’s water bowl was to laugh. Also to vow never to let someone film me while I am collapsed in a drunken stupor on my kitchen floor next to my cats’ water bowl.

Then there are all the ghost shows. You know — “Paranormal” this and that, cashing in, rather belatedly, on the Blair Witch/Amityville Horror craze. Or so I guess; I can’t understand what else could have caused studio heads to okay hour programs consisting of dull, ordinary people stumbling around in the dark followed by a shaky camera, every once in a while shrieking when their own shadow startles them. The bad lighting, the crappy “real life” clothing everyone wears, the flat, ordinary tones of the “real” people talking about their ghosts — and a set of boring, commonplace ghosts they are, the usual dead kids and evil old women. If you’ve grown up on real horror movies that were done with a care towards atmosphere and style, not to mention contained actors such as Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, then this sort of thing is just sad.

By the way, did you know that rain! Real rain! In Florida is now the reason for breathless, dramatic reports on the news? We’re apparently getting some disturbed weather hereabouts because of a cold front moving in, and you’d think a hurricane was on its way. Oh — there was a tornado in Brevard County earlier today that tore! the! roof! off a condo and dumped it onto another condo. “We’d just had it repaired from Hurricanes Jeanne and Frances” said the rueful (tossed-onto) condo owner. “Oh my God!” sobbed the newswoman, as if she’d just learned a cruise ship full of starving orphans had been swallowed by a giant shark. Of course there is a tornado warning for the whole of Central Florida now. It just finished raining in my location. It was soft, gentle rain. But! That! Could! Change! (Cue ominous music.)

Yep, a t-shirt for me.

Anyway, I caught the tail-end of BBCAmerica’s obsessive coverage of “Super Tuesday” last night, and listened to a few minutes of Obama’s speech. He has a good voice, but what I heard — vague stuff about “change,” something about how we need to help kids playing next to a boarded-up apartment building (which just made me think they were waiting for their meth to finish cooking), and a slogan consisting of the empty phrase “Yes we can!” (which the hopped-up crowd chanted enthusiastically) reminded me nothing so much as the Doctor’s sensible questions to Martha Jones and Captain Jack Harkness on why they thought the Master’s hypnosis-enhanced campaign for Prime Minister of Britain sounded so good: “What were his policies? What did he stand for?” After all this time Obama’s appeal is more elusive to me than the flimsy plot of science fiction story.

Or… is John McCain really the Master? Check it out:

McCain!

The Master:

If he whips out what looks like a pen, duck.

Heads up, all you media people who have been shoving diabetes-inducing sugary-sweet cute kiddies-infested “HATE is a four-letter word,” “if you can’t say anything nice missy then don’t say anything at all” rancid slop down my throat for my ENTIRE life…

There’s a reason that Severus Snape is considered by many fans of the stories to be their favorite character in the Harry Potter universe. I think he is followed in popularity only by Lucius Malfoy. Okay, those were some scary links.

Anyway… this outcry was prompted by reading this about the TV series 24 — which by the way I’ve never watched, I just think it’s a shame that yet another apparently hard-hitting and gritty show is going to be shoved into the Very Special Lesson cesspool — as well as months of having to endure television commercials on how we should teach our kids not to hate anyone — really, including, say, pedophiles who rape and kill children? After all, hate would at least keep the kid from feeling he should get in the car with the strange man — and recently two extremely obnoxious Global Warming Will Kill Cuddly Things spots, one by the World Wildlife Federation (due to the length, the lies told — it uses those shots of polar bears floating on ice floes as emotional manipulation devices, images which we know to have been edited in such a way as to not show the fact that the bears were floating next to much larger and more solid ice sheets which they could easily reach by their usual method of just swimming over to them — and the gulpy sobbing voice of the actress they used I have resolved never to give them a dime in contribution); and another by some website which uses the anti-appeal of a Cute Widdle Kids montage of them each saying “Tick.” “Tick.” “Tick.” “Tick.””Tick.” until I hit the mute button lest I put my fist through the television. All it makes me want to do is “Slap!” “Slap!” “Slap!” “Slap!” “Slap!” their smugly stern little faces. Way to get me on your side, Glopaholics.

But it’s always been like this. Dealing with what our so-called entertainment media sees fit to serve up to us here in the US of A has always been an exercise in torment for anyone who thinks that art should not take a back seat to teaching five-year-olds how to share their toys. Unfortunately to get into power in this country (and probably others, but I know my own country the best so I’ll just focus on America right now) you have to be the sort of person who really believes that the rest of the nation is comprised of toddlers clutching their dollies stubbornly to their chests. I don’t think I have to give any examples, do I? Just think of the upcoming election, or look at the night’s television schedule. The media, of course, is part of the powers that run this country. Back when I was young the problem was an entertainment industry hamstrung by the need to be “proper” according to the standards of no later than twenty years previous. In the Sixties and Seventies that meant the Forties and Fifties was the touchstone of progress, and Depression-era decorum was the norm, which meant only women on TV wore white gloves and hats when they went outdoors. Today, in the supposedly progressive first decade of the 21st century, our Baby Boomer-run media empire has stalled in those halcyon days when women considered themselves “emancipated” if they were living with bearded stoners, being called “my old lady,” and serving mushroom tea instead of coffee to all the bearded stoner’s bearded stoner pals. There have been a few attempts to crawl at least into the Reagan era, but for the most part we’re stuck in the commune, and the natives are no more tolerant of “different” viewpoints than the squares of Eld were.

(The title, by the way, is a quote from the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie, and is Snape’s response to Harry’s memory of a photo of his parents waving and smiling at him. I know, I know — but I don’t know if I’d be able to stop myself from saying it either, and I like Harry. But Snape is my Evil Unreal Boyfriend, or maybe Counterpart.)

Update: more details here, in case you didn’t go to the link in Ace’s post.

Yeah, but is this character as irritating as the Token Black Sacrificial Lamb* in the Dungeons and Dragons movie? (The lousy one with Jeremy Irons phoning it in for a mortgage payment on his vacation home and That Guy Who Looks Like That Guy (But Isn’t) From Sliders and Crossing Jordan, not the Surprisingly Good Other One that I caught on the Scifi Channel a while back. By the way — future post tie-in! — the Lousy One had Classic! Doctor Who’s Tom Baker in a cameo role as some sort of Elder Healer Elf, and he threw the whole mishegass off by actually acting instead of droning his lines or chewing the scenery like the other cast members — I hardly want to call them actors. My ex-boyfriend made me watch that movie and it wasn’t So Bad It Was Good — it just sucked.)

(Via Kathy Shaidle, who must now fear my eventual appearance at one of her bad movie shindigs now that I have a car. I know how to get to Toronto, Kathy! I have Google Maps!)

PS: no, really, Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God was surprisingly good. Mostly because the actors — all no-names to me — played it straight, without that “shit, this is just stupid, at least I can pay for the Ferrari and the condo this month” vibe at all perceptible. It’s the only way you can do these things — any indication that you’re “in on the joke” causes the whole thing to fall apart. That’s what used to be called “acting,” by the way. Nowadays “acting” is just another word for “upset your grandma” — even if grandma’s a hippie who smokes a bowl every night before she drinks her Cepacol.

Update Edit Note: Bruce Payne appears in both D&D movies — the lousy and the not-so-bad — as the character “Damodar.” I can’t remember him in the lousy movie — probably because my mind, what was left of it, was overwhelmed by the suck of Jeremy Irons’ performance as the Mage With The Wall Street Stockbroker Haircut, and that of the Token Black Screaming Dying Guy, whoever he was. A waste of CGI, that first movie was.

*Trust me, this character had “You want him to die” written all over him. I’m talking Adric-level He Must Die-ness. It doesn’t get worse than that. Or so I hope.

Terrorist tea pot.

Um.

(Via.)

Via Mark Steyn on the Corner, Tim Rutten at the LA Times wonders in his review of some intellectual’s wistful lament on how much better things would have been for the West if we’d been conquered by Muslims:

…it’s fair to wonder why, if that’s true, the West ended up with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution and the Islamic world got chronic underdevelopment, a pervasive religious obscurantism, Al Qaeda and the trust fund states of the Arabian peninsula?

Silly! I can tell you the answer to that: it’s all our, the Western World’s, fault! See, not letting the Muslims conquer Europe in the long-ago hurt the Muslims’ self-esteem. It made them feel bad. They had no choice but to let their countries become women-oppressing, slave-owning, terrorist-growing dumps.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

The word “blogosphere” is in the Oxford English Dictionary? Shit.

(By the way, Bill Quick is going to be way pissed that his invention of the word is passed off here as “an ironic joke.”)

Fred’s out! His fans are hysterical. Me? “Who needs a quitter” I say. I’m going to do what I usually do in this situation, and NOT CARE. (Yes, I know Flea is Canadian. Foreigners care more about American presidential elections than Americans do. I can’t watch BBC America’s BBC News because all they talk about is… America. It’s CNN with a British accent.)

I wonder what would happen if a majority of people voted for him anyway? Would he have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the White House screaming “Noes! I don’t wanna be preznit!” But it won’t happen. The usual reaction of my fellow Americans to people who withdraw from an election is “Thank God, someone I don’t have to think about anymore.”

PS: more crying and sobbing can be found in many posts at Ace of Spades HQ.

A tale of two photos. Even now, with the truth about the Vietnam War trickling ever so slowly out into the world, I’ll bet most people still accept the “received wisdom” about these famous photographs. I know I had no idea.

Via The Anchoress.)

Steve H. has the same problem that led me to my very first banning of a commenter in about a year:

When you blog, one of the realities that you face is that people read three lines of every entry and then feel completely prepared to comment.

It’s never a case of they’ve gone carefully through your screed before deciding to hit the keyboard. It’s always to do with the fact that certain words or phrases somehow stimulated their remaining three or four working synapses — in my case “Katrina” (as in, the hurricane) and possibly “NOLA hysterics,” as none of these Einsteins think they are anything but calm and rational. Even when they start emoting about their grandmas who are not in New Orleans and so have nothing to do with the problem I was posting about. One thing I forgot to ask “doctor2ju” — if he’s so worried about his grandma having to live in a town that is still “slabs, tents and trailers” why doesn’t he go and get her and install her in a more aesthetically pleasing part of the US?