ah, pride: á la riviére, the qafeteria is closing, and other fun stuff
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

In celebration of Gay Pride Month, Bravo TV has once again produced a "reality" series, this time called "Gay Riviera". Thus far, it is somewhat of an improvement over last year's Fire Island: The Pines.

Somewhat.

@ 11:15 PM CST [Link]

power, ants and scarves
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

In their attempt to create a personalizable, modular summer schedule, VH1 created a show called "What's My 20?" Basically, the idea is to use internet polling to create customized countdowns of various types of songs and videos. Upcoming episodes will include the best lead singers, the top songs from movies, the best cover song (whatever that means), etc.

@ 10:56 PM CST [Link]

a.i. versus super-toys
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

It's just sad, really. I've been watching as the previews and commercials for A.I: Artificial Intelligence get more and more detailed. (Quicktime required to see the preview at the site.) And it's to the point where all you can do is wonder whether or not it's got anything at all to do with"Super-Toys Last All Summer Long", purportedly the source for the movie.

@ 10:19 PM CST [Link]

anvils in eden
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Why do people think westerners are quirky, wholesome, quirky, tolerant, and quirky? From whence did we acquire this reputation? Inquiring minds would really like to know.

First, I must say: I actually liked Big Eden. I have to say this up front because it's really not going to look like that. But honestly, I did.

@ 10:06 PM CST [Link]

under
Tuesday, June 5, 2001

HBO has restored my faith!

For weeks -- no, months now, I have felt deeply and sincerely betrayed by HBO.

Once upon what seems a long time ago, ABC's The Practice was an interesting show. The characters were a little different (for television lawyers, anyway) and I really liked Steve Harris' character of Eugene, and the sort of conflicts he was having about the things he was doing and the difficulty he was having respecting himself; I liked Camryn Manheim's Ellenor, her passion and her insecurities. And then, this season, The Practice, shall we say, jumped the shark. Fell into the slough of despond. Big Time. Every single week, battered or abused women, wives and children. Every single week, the demonstrably innocent went to jail and the demonstrably guilty went free. Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) would moralize frantically, despite actually breaking the law on at least two separate occasions during the season. (Mind, I'm only talking about the first half of the season.) Lara Flynn Boyle's character was becoming the most incompetent prosecutor known to humankind -- not counting those moments where she was following her conscience and alienating her coworkers and supervisor. And frankly, I got pretty sick of the whole damn thing.

But there were TWO (count 'em) alternatives!

First, like every gayboy in the country, I tried to watch Showtime's Queer as Folk. Seriously, I really did try. But, unfortunately, it left me pretty cold. Yeah, you got guys kissing. Yeah, you got naked men. Yeah, you got simulated sex. Big whoop. The people in it are stunningly shallow, I don't for a second believe that the people in the central relationship are gay, and somehow in what is supposed to be Pittsburgh (as played by Toronto doing its usual trusty stand-in job as the Generic North American City -- although the Pitsburghers I've seen talking about it do grumble a bit) ... somehow in neither Pittsburgh or Toronto could they find but ONE person of color. I'm not talking about being a major character, even having all that many lines or anything. I'm saying that the only person of color worth their notice was a Japanese rentboy who didn't speak English. I mean, I'm used to being near-invisible, but that's just damn ridiculous. After three episodes of ridiculous plots (such as they were) and hideous writing, I pretty much despaired of the whole thing.

In what must have been an unusually competitive time slot, scheduled directly against The Practice and Queer as Folk was HBO's Oz. And lo! I fled to its thick stone walls with a feeling of relief. You could watch Chris Meloni's Keller flashing the chocolate starfish (yes, he really did), You could watch Lee Tergesen's Tobias Beecher being homosexually and otherwise conflicted. You could watch murders and penises galore! (The general rule of thumb for Oz seems to be One Corpse and One Penis per episode. Episodes with several penises and no corpses are usually followed by episodes just swimming in blood.) And it didn't matter that in most ways, Oz is not a particularly realistic depiction of prison. (Yes, there's violence and sexual assault and drugs and weapons and all that other stuff, but any prison with a murder rate as high as that one would find its staff replaced -- frequently -- and possibly under direct federal oversight, which is exceedingly unpleasant.) And The Practice could fade away until it was merely a very bad memory, reminded only when the Mighty Big TV episode recaps came out. (And since the person doing the recap loathes the episodes even more than I do, the recaps are immensely entertaining.)

In any event, after its run, Oz was over. Gone. Finito. Done. But wait! The Sopranos was beginning its new season! Surely it would save us all from the wasteland of The Practice and Queer as Folk.

Only ... it was scheduled an hour earlier than either of them. (Against the wasteland of The X-Files, which, against all sanity, I continue to watch.) And I was therefore thrown back onto one of the two hideous options.

Yes, I went with Queer as Folk. I tried to go with The Practice first, I really did, but the first time back, they were doing a case with a mentally retarded girl who had been sexually assaulted, and the only witness was a drunk, and I just bailed.

Hey, at least there was eye candy, of a sort.

And then QAF went on its hiatus for Further Tales from the City to be shown during May sweeps, and all was good. But then May sweeps ended, and QAF threatened to return to televisions everywhere.

But lo! HBO saved me from a fate worse than death (or from having to just turn the damn thing off, which would probably have been the most reasonable option anyway). HBO put on a new series, Six Feet Under, a tragicomedy written by Alan Ball of "American Beauty" fame. In the first episode alone, the patriarch of the family, which owns a funeral parlor somewhere in the Los Angeles area, is hit and killed by a bus while in his new hearse. The eldest son, who is headed back home for the holidays, shtups a total stranger in a closet in the airport, and then gets The Call just after. The other son, extraordinarily uptight and rigid and conflicted, is gay and having an affair with a black LAPD officer. The daughter (played by Lauren Ambrose, "Chiclet" from Psycho Beach Party) has apparently just taken her first pipe of crystal meth when she gets The Call. The mother is cooking and flings dinner across the kitchen when she gets The Call. And the episode just kind of ... gallops off from there. (The mother admits, during the funeral, that she's been having an affair for years. The daughter discovers, during the funeral, that her brother's gay. And, peculiarly, everyone has problems with the concept that the gay brother even knows a policeman. No other problems -- well, they don't know that he's gay, to be sure, but they don't seem to have problems with anything else but that the man is a cop. I'm hoping that this will be explained in future episodes, one way or another.)

Throughout the whole episode, the father's ghost appears to various members of the family. They all wind up seeing him, talking to him, but not necessarily exorcising him. (Although it is implied that one character does, in fact, exorcise him, but from what I've heard of future episodes, he comes back with a vengeance.) Apparently, this is a device that will be used throughout the series, much like Providence and Syd's mother's ghost. (Actually, that particular device was never something that bothered me about Providence, so much as the feel-good cloying plots ... but I digress.)

For some reason, there are fake commercials scattered through out the show. They're intended to be ironic commentary on what's about to happen, and parodies of ads just past their prime, but they are just a bit ... much. There is the potential for the commercials, for the ghosts, to end up being a bit too precious, but we'll see what happens.

I must admit, I am a bit ... worried. Already, I find myself having sympathies with the uptight gay brother. (Yes, yes, I realize I'm uptight, but I'm not THAT uptight.) It's actually purely because of two moments in the episode. One comes where he's having to deal with someone else's funeral that the family is handling, and in one of the odd little moments scattered through the show, the camera zooms inside his head, and we get to watch him scream every time someone talks to him. And I do remember those moments, after someone you care for has died, when you have to do things, when you have to function, and inside there's just a whole lotta screaming goin' on. The other was the moment at the end, when he falls to pieces, and I remember that moment, too.

Nonetheless, personal identity crisis aside, it looks like it will be a very interesting series. It's intelligent, well-written, well-acted, and for those who like that sort of thing, Peter Krause seems to get dressed every so often.

And, most importantly, it will save me from Queer as Folk. Such things cannot be underestimated.

Random Media Moments:

Everyone should hear "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child, and should watch the video. Truly, seriously, kick-ass dance tune. But do NOT, under any circumstances, actually pay attention to the lyrics! Seriously, they're even more brain damaging than "Survivor".

What the heck is U2 up to with "Elevation"? I just want to know, is that video meant to be taken at all seriously? Even as a movie-tie-in vid, that is one seriously STOOPID video. (The concept of The Edge using his instrument as a lethal weapon ... well, I do know some who say that he already does, but they don't mean it in quite the same way.)

Everybody should read Confessions of a failed Southern Lady by Florence King. Really. Although how the person who wrote that book and lived that life grew up to write for American Enterprise and the National Review, I'm sure I don't know.

@ 12:02 AM CST [Link]