Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Ranty McRant!

* Back to bad pop music: I am missing something/the emperor has no clothes: does Destiny's Child ever sing an actual *song*? Try singing one of their songs sometime--I dare you. Any one of them. There's nothing to recreate, no nothing. Not just no melody (which makes it sound like a different complaint), but no focus. Just alotta warbling. Occasionally there is some momentum in a chorus, but that's it. I really can't stand them. I don't think they're mining a new genre with their warbling either--they just suck.

* Stephen Trask wrote the soundtrack to that new whatsit flick w/ Hugh Grant...wonder if it/movie is any good.

* Geraldo's summing-up after an all-aghast "report" on his show about "pro-ana" [anorexia] websites: "Gross." Makes me think of (goddamn, I suck) the Julia Philips passage about Drew Barrymore, about people with their hands in the air, all shocked at what they've created, only they don't realize...

* Fox News is as bad as it says it isn't, as bad as others say it is. It is the older brother with his hand on your forehead, laughing callously while your arms flail impotently underneath, a few inches away. They are so snarky, so biased, so defensive, so ready to defend what they aren't to the death. Just deadly smug. And it just doesn't stick. Whoever writes their headlines/crawls is goin ta hell.

* Insomniacs will know what I'm saying when I say that at 5:00 a.m. Joyce Meyer is actually kinda interesting. Plus just 'cause I'm interested in Christian culture. Not all of it, but the overlaps with other things, I guess. I dunno. I like things that are hiding in plain sight.

* Last night I craved very specifically some really greasy food. So I had just the right amount of Houli-Benni-Friday's grizy appetizers, and watched the Independent Lens doc about the first woman firefighter in the NYFD and bawled my head off. Goddamn. That woman. Those WOMEN.

* Still a little odd/close to home to see repeat of GGirls w/ Jesse reading Punk Planet. Makes sense, but still is odd.

* Naomi Judd is perhaps my least favorite celebrity of all time. Well, she's in that last circle of hell, whatever. Never seen anybody who exudes such neediness--need for fame for any reason--than she. Just yucky. And the public pilloring she encouraged of her daughter for her weight makes me wanna fuckin strangle her. Yer basic mediawhore I'm SORRY!

* Soon there will be a term for the phobia of the aftermath of losing weight: that is, one of the results of cable TV is constantly running into footage of surgery (GAH!) or people about to operated on (GAH!), which means a common, common image these days are bodies, post-drastic weight loss. All the hanging drapey skin folds and creases that used to define much more flesh. Getting a little tired of that startling sight (also of all the fucking surgery footage...blech. And animals killing other animals on Animal Planet. Need some warning). But it occured to me last night...this will have a name someday, this image is starting to haunt us, become iconic. Oh, the essays to be written.

* The ever-earnest Sarah J Parker on Oprah last night. Talking about how she doesn't let her son use the word "fat," tries to get him to see people of all sizes, spoke herself fairly neutrally about seeing a fat woman on the street in NYC in this particular situation. Was interesting (well, duh)--wished so much any other POV could have been represented there, somebody fat who could say if it's okay to be fat, it's okay to say fat. And what a big lame-o O is. But still.

When I wrote my interminable ranting review of that piece of shit book by Jennifer Weiner, I lumped Sex and the City with all aspects of our dieting, weight-obsessed culture as an example of it all,, but I've come to see (now that I've actually seen the show a lot) that if nothing else that show is more complicated than that. The end result with the heavy visuals could very well be the same, and the Weight Watchers episode of that show goes down in the annals of the most retardando, woman-hating, stupid, unevolved piece of shit ever created, but...the characters eat. A lot. There is actually a slightly different *feel* to what you see than the usual. What it all adds up to, I haven't decided, but the messages are somewhat complicated.

* The media is COMPLETELY overlooking the role of Chicago actiivists in the immigration rallys recently. Sidebar: I don't think the media think there is a Spanish-speaking population here period, despite the fact that it is currently topping 3 mil.

2 comments:

Demandra said...

God, how I want to write a small novella response. I'll try to shut my yap as much as possible.

1. Oprah did a show and rambled on about fat? OMG! How shocking! How rare! How surprising!

2. Destiny's Crap: a sound engineer told me once that the kind of crap you're describing is an industry trick for people who can't really sing. A half naked chick who can't really sing, shaking her ass on tv? OMG! How shocking! How rare! How surprising!

3. You know I love me some Xian culture, but I wanted to stab Joyce Meyer in the face after she got a ton of plastic surgery. Oddly enough, right around the time millions of dollars were pouring in for a new building she desperately needed to SPREAD THE WORD.

4. I'm reading "Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner. It's freaking me out. When did Weight Obsessed Woman become the norm? I blame Oprah. I am the fattest muther fucker alive, and I just can't relate to that shit. Do you ever get the feeling that they're trying to convince us that neurosis and self-hatred are normal and healthy? Hmmm, why would they want to do that?$?$?$$

The rest: You rock.

I shaddup now.

Elizabeth M. Tamny said...

oh REALLllllllllly (Joyce Meyer) - see, I'm just gettin into the whole JM thing. The fact that she ends every program beggin for $ and showing herself Helping those (Darker) Than She put my hackles up, but still -- I was gettin interested in a vague way. Also because she's so concerned with health...was getting ready to see how she reconciled christian stuff with that. How INTERESTING. I'm sorry, that's the best facelift I've seen in years, if it is. Who'd guess that Christian evangelists would get the best surgeons...hehehehehee.

Good in BEd IS the book that I ranted and raved about, check it out:

http://www.scarletletters.com/current/070202_nf_lt.shtml

I warn you, I go on and on and on. But it deserved it.

Yours in rantiness!!