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wThe Whine Column |
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I'll try to keep the actual whining to a minimum, I promise. But this is where I'll rant about work, stupid people and the like, plus make mention of the random interesting things in my life. Email me at quizbabe at yahoo dot com if you want to whine back.
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wSaturday, January 18, 2003 |
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What I've Learned from VH1
I've been watching a lot of VH1 lately, in particular "I Love the 80s" and "100 Moments that RockedTV," and it's been very educational. Here's just a few of the things I've learned:
~Germans love David Hasselhoff, and I think it's because he sang on TV when the Berlin Wall came down. I can only imagine that whoever sang when the Declaration of Independence was signed was *huge* for a while in 1776.
~VH1 has a knack for getting B-list stars to comment on just about everything. Sure, every once in a while they throw a Paul McCartney into the mix, but it mostly is people like Hal Sparks and Ali Landry who are telling us about what they remember about the 80s or their memories of TV's magical musical moments.
~The Super Bowl Shuffle was nominated for a Grammy, and Walter Payton had been a dancer on Soul Train. I learned this from watching "One Hit Wonders," in the same episode that I learned that Cotton-Eye Joe, deemed a hit at sports stadiums across the states, was a number one hit in nine countries in Europe. Sort of makes sense if you know that the band Rednex is from Sweden.
~I don't knw who came up with the 100 moments that rocked TV, probably a panel of VH1 and TV Guide "experts," but I think they were wrong on their choice for number one. How does Bill Clinton playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall top, say, the Beatles playing for the first time on Ed Sullivan? Or Michael Jackson's Thriller video? Or, for that matter, the start of MTV? I'm a bit perplexed by this.
~Whoever told Molly Shannon that the outfit she was wearing looked good should be shot. It was a stupid outfit (the shirt moreso than the leather pants) and it made her look dumpy. She's not a glamour girl to be sure, but she could at least have worn something flattering for five hours of TV that VH1 is sure to show over and over again!
Anyway, I always love a good countdown show or 80s nostalgia trip, and seeing the top five one-hit wonders paying homage to the posterior was fun.
posted by
Allyson at 2:32 AM
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wFriday, January 10, 2003 |
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Notes 'n' Stuff
To update you (because I know how much you all care), the hole in our ceiling has been filled, though will not be plastered over for a few days yet. Still, as noted before, it's better than having water all over the bathroom floor.
Couple stories that caught my attention today ("today" being Jan. 9, even though this is being posted under a Jan. 10 header): this one, on the front of the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe. Not quite sure what to make of this guy, though he certainly seems like he could give any of us a run for our money. Interesting read, if nothing else.
This story frightens me, if only because I suspect my first house will cost about as much as this town but have about 60 feet of land, not 60 acres, and I'd be living in a cramped neighborhood full of soccer moms and people driving SUVs for no reason other than to be snooty. Sure, this town is probably not the ideal place for either Matt or I to ply our trades, but hey, it's got water access and fiber optics -- how bad could it be?
In an entirely unrelated matter, have you seen the new Sprint PCS commercial? This one is easily my favorite of them all, and I got quite a kick out of "the Captain and Tenille" and "a monkey with a cold." I won't spoil the hilarity for you, but let's just say it involves animals at the opposite end of the spectrum size-wize. I laughed so hard when I first saw it the other night that Matt got out of bed to see what was causing me to nearly pee my pants. Alas, it's not available on the company's Web site like the counting sheep commercials for Serta, but I'm sure if you've not yet caught it you will soon enough, like all their other commercials.
Off to Mohegan Sun this weekend to gamble away our Christmas money and start gearing up for our big trip to Vegas this summer. I really hope that we manage to not come home with our pockets turned out like Hoover flags. (Like the U.S. history reference there? Don't remember it? Look it up yourself! What do I look like, a librarian?)
posted by
Allyson at 1:29 AM
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wWednesday, January 08, 2003 |
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Monsoon Season
I woke up shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday to hear my husband cursing and water coming from somewhere. As it turned out, it was pouring through our bathroom ceiling vent, then once it stopped from there was dripping steadily through a newly-developed crack in the ceiling above the toilet. The importance of it being over the toilet is twofold: good on the one hand, as we only have one bucket and it was already under the vent; but bad on the other because, well, you couldn't use the toilet without getting dripped on.
Matt called the emergency maintenance number, but alas, they could not do anything for us given that it was Sunday and the guy he talked to assumed it wasn't as big a drip as it was. He agreed to come on Monday morning to look at it. And when he did, he was absolutely floored that a crack that big and that much damage had all happened in one day.
Turns out the pipe from the tub drain in the apartment above had rotted out, causing the water to leak into the open space in between their floor and our ceiling; luckily it was just from their shower and not their toilet.
So it was like an episode of "This Old House" in here on Monday, with anywhere from one to four guys in my bathroom at any given time either taking down the ceiling, cleaning up the plaster and stuff that came down, replacing the rotted pipe, etc. I was excited because I heard them talk about using teflon tape and I had seen that on TV.
At any rate, monsoon season is over in our bathroom. But there's a 6-by-3-foot hole there now from where they took down the ceiling, and it's unclear when the plasterer will be able to come in to patch it back up. It's made the bathroom get colder, and I keep getting up early to shower in case the guys come to fix it, because inevitably the day I sleep late and wait to shower will be the day someone will come to fix it and I won't be able to get to the shower, but compared to having to mop up water on our tile floor I can't complain too much.
posted by
Allyson at 1:21 PM
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wSaturday, January 04, 2003 |
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Laugh Tracks Suck
Before I rant, I'd like to wish you all a happy 2003. Those of you not here in the Rhode Island/Massachusetts/Connecticut area were spared the Christmas snow-messiness that prevented my aunt, uncle and cousins from traveling out to the northwest corner of Rhode Island for family holiday festivities (despite the fact that they live a mile from my parents, from whence my travels began that evening, and my family (parents, sister and husband) and I all made it out there OK). Not exactly what I was looking for in a "white Christmas," but hey, I drove slower than I ever thought possible on the Mass Pike (30 mph!) and got home just fine.
Matt and I spent a good 4+ hours watching the first 12 episodes of "SportsNight" tonight (my gift from my sister), and it was really great, except for the laugh track. I can understand their purpose on shows that suck -- I mean, it's easier to believe that a show doesn't suck if you hear "people" laughing, clapping, hooting with glee, etc. But in my opinion (and in the opinion of a lot of other people with more credentials to have an opinion on this than me), SportsNight just didn't need a laugh track. The same thing was/is said about M*A*S*H and for much the same reasons.
I (sort of) understand the reasoning; SportsNight (to stick to just one example) was a sort of a ... oh, I hate this word, but ... "dramedy." It wasn't always funny so someone with "authority" decided that people should be told when to laugh -- when it was OK to laugh, if you will. Not to let viewers see and hear irony or sarcasm or just plain humor for themselves, because those qualities might get lost in the tension, drama or whatever.
But at the same time, no one puts fits of laughter in dramas when a funny moment happens. Someone on "CSI" cracks a corpse joke and there's no "spontaneous" giggling from a disembodied audience (though that would be really weird, right? Disembodied responses in a morgue scene?)
Anyway, it seems like there should have been a way for the laugh track to have been removed for the episodes released on DVD. It's just a separate audio track, right? (My knowledge of TV series production is not very good, having only done news/sports stuff, so I'm not exactly sure how that all works.) Or maybe make it so you can watch the shows either with or without the laugh track -- sort of the anti-director's commentary.
Don't get me wrong. You should still watch SportsNight in its entirety, though as Matt noted, between Ted McGinley in the early episodes and Paula Marshall in the later ones, the show was doomed even if people had been watching (and shame on you all for coming late to the party, once TV Guide declared it the best show no one's watching, which in and of itself is a kiss of death, right?). And of course, watching this show plus West Wing and the movie The American President lets you play "six degrees of Aaron Sorkin." It was only a matter of time before Joshua Malina joined the West Wing cast, wasn't it? (Though Sabrina Lloyd is on the next new Ed, which isn't an Aaron Sorkin project but is on the same night as one, so that almost counts ...)
posted by
Allyson at 12:44 AM
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