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I don't know what it is about ShamWow shiller Vince that makes me like him. He's not an overly slick or polished pitchman, but he's not some schlep who wandered in off the street on the day they decided to shoot the not-quite-infomercial, either. He's obviously been selected because he fits some middle-aged executive wannabe's idea of "hip." Look, he's almost got a faux-hawk! Actually, he looks a bit like a dirty blonde Johnny Knoxville who knows that if he shows a little too much personality during this particular community-service gig, they'll stop giving him hours and start giving him jail time. Still, he can't help himself - he's gotta smarm it up just a bit.
Maybe that's exactly what it is about Vince that makes him so much more interesting to me than the average criminally overenthusiastic, set-chomping cut-rate product pusher. He just seems like a guy who knows he's got a cheesy job, but has discovered he has a little charming talent for it, so what the hell? He'll do the job, cash the check and be able to laugh about the whole thing at the bar, instead of leaving or picking a fight when somebody wants to buy the ShamWow guy a shot and a "wooooooooooo!"
I'm good for a round, Vince - whatever you want. And the "woooooooooo!" is completely optional.
Maybe that's exactly what it is about Vince that makes him so much more interesting to me than the average criminally overenthusiastic, set-chomping cut-rate product pusher. He just seems like a guy who knows he's got a cheesy job, but has discovered he has a little charming talent for it, so what the hell? He'll do the job, cash the check and be able to laugh about the whole thing at the bar, instead of leaving or picking a fight when somebody wants to buy the ShamWow guy a shot and a "wooooooooooo!"
I'm good for a round, Vince - whatever you want. And the "woooooooooo!" is completely optional.
Yeah, I'm still totally watching this crap, if only because the very first episode wasn't half bad, as far as cliche-dependent, gore-eschewing watered-down-for-TV horror dreck goes. The Eric Roberts episode was 'meh,' and I missed it last week (I was working on a final mix for the new Nessie EP - coming soon!), but this week's John Landis-directed episode provided me with a diverting round of Guess The Twist that lasted all of about, oh, seven minutes or so.Oh, John Landis. Has it really been 27 years since An American Werewolf in London, and 16 since Innocent Blood? And have you really spent that time directing episodes of Dream On and Psych? I was going to completely rationalize away any fault of yours with regard to your transparent installment. I was going to blame it on the bad actors reciting the hackneyed dialogue by the guy who wrote Jeepers Creepers. I was assuming you were saddled with inferior material and questionable talent. But you not only know that mugging human scenery-chainsaw from USA or TBS or whatever, you've worked with him!
The creepy-funny closeups of the children at the beginning were great, trademarked Landis touches. So was the screaming little girl running through the bride's tense-instrospection scene. But, honestly, this is the worst Fear Itself I've seen yet, and it came from the director of some of my favorite comedy and horror flicks. What's wrong with "In Sickness and in Health" is what's wrong with pretty much all American horror these days - it coasts on tired tropes. It assumes it can't show us anything new, and doesn't bother to try. Hell, it doesn't even bother to make fun of the stereotypes, something at which Landis used to subtly excel.
Becks is fairly addicted to A&E's Intervention, the compelling/depressing/sometimes uplifting/always arguably exploitative reality series in which real people suffering real holy-God-wow levels of addiction hit bottom for the cameras before getting blindsided with a treatment-or-shunnage ultimatum by their family and friends.
(I don't mean to be harsh - that's pretty much the definition of an intervention in the first place.)
For me, watching the show is always a surprisingly uncomfortable experience. It's like being on stage at your high school graduation, and the kid three names in front of you goes into a full-blown epileptic seizure right when the diploma hits the hand.
It also inspires this weird inner vacillation between wondering about my own drinking, and feeling totally fine about it because, you know, I don't see myself throwing up blood while sobbing (on camera!) shortly after threatening my mother with a broken bottle during a "discussion" about how infrequently I clean the part of the laundry room where I sleep (again, on camera!) anytime soon. Then again, I have thrown up on camera, and ruined the odd shitty job or casual friendship due to hangover or weakened brain-face filter.
What Intervention needs is a watch-along checklist, a rundown of the show's most commonly recurring indicators that those of us viewing the program at home might've progressed beyond the realm of "occasionally problematic lifestyle" and into "we went ahead and ordered the tombstone with this year's date on it." And here it is, after the jump:
(I don't mean to be harsh - that's pretty much the definition of an intervention in the first place.)
For me, watching the show is always a surprisingly uncomfortable experience. It's like being on stage at your high school graduation, and the kid three names in front of you goes into a full-blown epileptic seizure right when the diploma hits the hand.
It also inspires this weird inner vacillation between wondering about my own drinking, and feeling totally fine about it because, you know, I don't see myself throwing up blood while sobbing (on camera!) shortly after threatening my mother with a broken bottle during a "discussion" about how infrequently I clean the part of the laundry room where I sleep (again, on camera!) anytime soon. Then again, I have thrown up on camera, and ruined the odd shitty job or casual friendship due to hangover or weakened brain-face filter.
What Intervention needs is a watch-along checklist, a rundown of the show's most commonly recurring indicators that those of us viewing the program at home might've progressed beyond the realm of "occasionally problematic lifestyle" and into "we went ahead and ordered the tombstone with this year's date on it." And here it is, after the jump:
Continue reading A&E's Intervention: That's Not Me, Is It? Naw, That's Not Me..
1. Change that outside light bulb that's been burned out for, like, four weeks.
2. Pretend like it didn't matter, that it's just a stupid TV show, dammit.
3. Go to Push Ultra Lounge to see Palantine and Experimental Pilot.
4. Shower, for Chrissakes. I smellz like dieing.
5. Finish reading the Sex And The City issue of Entertainment Weekly, so it doesn't look like I'm stretching it out until the premiere.
6. Walk the dog. Milo is, seriously, a box of bon-bons away from being the sane young male dog version of a crazy old cat lady shut-in.
7. Edit Crider's Dethklok story.
8. Finish writing that song about the chick that dumps her boyfriend's body into the Bay, but it's not what you think.
9. Wash all the dishes, as opposed to just enough to make the dish rack seem kind of full.
10. The hustle.
"They're racist against tall people."
-- Some girl on the season premiere of So You Think You Can Dance that didn't make the cut.
-- Some girl on the season premiere of So You Think You Can Dance that didn't make the cut.
Dear Television,Please stop airing the following commercials immediately, on every channel, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. EST:
The one where the giant stream of urine arcs into the frame to strike the tip of the pregnancy test.
The one where the giant roach tries to get into the house by posing as a pizza delivery guy.
The one where Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe crawls under the condemned house and holds the dead rat up by its tail.
The one for the new Discovery Channel series Verminators.
The one where the cartoon parent bear cleans all the little balls of used toilet paper out of the cartoon baby bear's ass hair.
The one for Speed Racer. (What? All that color and motion can be a little nauseating.)
Any one for anything a woman might or might not wear inside her panties during a certain time of the month.
All of the ones for No Reservations that show Anthony Bourdain eating, like, wild boar anus or bone soup or whatever.
Thank you in advance for your prompt and considerate action,
Ravis
This week's good goes to Have Gun, Will Travel's CD release party at Ybor City's Crowbar on Friday night. Having witnessed a mixed record of attendance at the place, I was pleasantly surprised by an impressive turnout, and to see a lot of folks I haven't communed with in a while. The band rocked and the liquor flowed a bit too freely, two factors which always make for the kind of memorable evening you only sort of remember.
This week's bad goes to the DVD release of Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. Just call me a sucker because I keep hoping for a return to the Alien franchise's fine form of the Ridley Scott and James Cameron classics. The second installment of this offshoot story wasn't as anonymous as Paul W.S. "Video Game Graphics, Shitty Techno Score" Anderson's '04 launch, but it was too dark in color, too dumb in content and generally disappointing nonetheless. Like I said, blame me for expecting more.
This week's ugly goes to the weakest cold opening and "Weekend Update" segments since SNL came back from the writers' strike. Hopefully it's just a bump in the road and the show will remain on a roll; the new stuff is the funniest in a long, long time for a program that's dragged since Phil Hartman's heartbreaking demise.
This week's bad goes to the DVD release of Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. Just call me a sucker because I keep hoping for a return to the Alien franchise's fine form of the Ridley Scott and James Cameron classics. The second installment of this offshoot story wasn't as anonymous as Paul W.S. "Video Game Graphics, Shitty Techno Score" Anderson's '04 launch, but it was too dark in color, too dumb in content and generally disappointing nonetheless. Like I said, blame me for expecting more.
This week's ugly goes to the weakest cold opening and "Weekend Update" segments since SNL came back from the writers' strike. Hopefully it's just a bump in the road and the show will remain on a roll; the new stuff is the funniest in a long, long time for a program that's dragged since Phil Hartman's heartbreaking demise.
