Darn you VH1. After the Charm School Reunion (yeah, that fight was totally staged), I stuck around a couple seconds to see if Confessions of a Teen Idol was as cheesy as the premise sounded. Then sixty minutes later I wondered where the hour went. Darn you VH1. Why did Time Warner have to give you a last minute reprieve instead of axing all the Viacom owned cable channels? Hopefully Time Warner yanks the channel by the time Tool Academy premieres.
But I was sucked in from the get go. VH1 has to have the best editors ever because they seem to make the most inane things seem intriguing. Confessions of a Teen Idol takes seven former stars and give them another chance of stardom as men. Included in the mix are two Baywatch castoffs (Jeremy Jackson, David Chockachi), 80’s stars that I only know of because of their commentary from I Love the 80’s (Christopher Atkins, Adrian Zmed, and, um, I actually don’t remember the third guy but apparently he was in Fame: the series), and Eric Neis of all people. How exactly can you get someone whose lone claim to fame another chance at stardom? Beg the producers of the MTV Challenges to let him back on?
The only one of the bunch that you can really feel sorry for is Jamie Walters because the main reason why his career tanked was because a character he was playing pushed Donna Martin down the stairs. Guiding these formal idols through their journey: Chachi and Wayne Arnold. Also listed as producers on the show: Eric Bishoff and J.D. Roth. VH1, please give me back my soul.
The show seems to play off like an episode of Celebrity Rehab but the addiction is fame (as one of the therapist mentions in every promo for the show). But as it usually goes the least famous of the bunch, Neis, may turn out to be the most entertaining as it turns out he may be so insane that the producers had to put a disclaimer on the screen when he started talking about his ways to living a healthier life.
Verdict: Certainly not appointment television, but unless Time Warner actually pulls the station of its lineup, I sadly will eventually see most of the show through reruns. Darn you VH1. Confessions of a Teen Idol airs Sundays at 8:00 on VH1 and will repeat constantly throughout the week because it is VH1.
Quote of the Week: Fate can be changed, Eli, except for when it can’t. (Frank, Eli Stone)
Song of the Week: No music this week, except of course you count my list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008
Big News of the Week: Welcome to 2009: Is anyone else disconcerted that we are one year away from the end of the decade and we have yet to settle on a nickname for the 00’s. I prefer it as O’s as in Cheerios but I have also heard the Aught’s. Even VH1 copped out naming their (premature) rundown of the decade I Love the New Millennium. So just for clarification purposes, if I were to make any best of the decade lists this year, I would want everyone to pronounce the decade like Cheerios when you read the title.
Leverage: It was a little too soon for anyone to get injured on the show. The show is much better the lighter it is and they really should have waited until the second season at least before they made a partner in serious peril episode. With that said, a nice twist being able to solve a second case while in the middle of a different heist. You can stream current episodes over at TNT.com. You can also download Leverage on iTunes.
Eli Stone: Hopefully that was it for the dark arts. Of course with only three episodes left there isn’t much time for anything. Let’s hope the show goes out with a bang. Actually let’s hope it doesn’t so I don’t have to ponder an ABC boycott. Of course one quick way to a boycott would be not showing them or the final Pushing Daisies episodes so we aren’t stuck having to get the DVD. The least they could do is burn them on Saturday when they just show reruns anyways. You can stream current episodes over at ABC.com. You can also download Eli Stone on iTunes.
Free Download of the Week: Pony (It’s OK) – Erin McCarley (iTunes): I heard this catchy ditty a while ago and have been waiting to take a listen to a full album which comes out this Tuesday (although you can currently download it on iTunes).
Next Week Pick of the Week: Rock of Love: Charm School, Tonight at 7:00 on VH1: Nothing I watch returns this week sans My Name Is Earl, but what I am really looking forward tonight is the reunion show where Sharon Osborne, the headmaster of Charm School who was there to teach the contestant how to be more like ladies, beats down one of her pupils. It is a little fishy that she just happens to attack Megan Hauserman who just happens to be getting her very own reality dating show and apparently no charges were filed. Not that I am accusing that anything VH1 does is staged.
Every Saturday in January, the National Geographic Channel is airing a new episode of Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr. You may remember Barr from two years ago when he was famously bitten by a twelve foot long python. Well Barr has had time to recover an in the last episode in the series on January 24, he returns to that same cave again looking for rumored fifty foot pythons.
But before then, tonight Barr is on a journey to find the elusive Sixgill Shark (seen at right, so Spoiler Alert!: he finds them) which scientists have very little knowledge of the Jurassic sharks. Barr sets out to change that traveling to Central America, Puget Sound, Hawaii and 1,700 feet below the surface of the ocean (in the submarine seen at left). To put that in perspective, more people have seen the summit of Mt. Everest that been that far under the ocean.
Then next Saturday, Barr travels to South Africa to put satellite transmitters on crocodiles to see how they migrate after a dam threatens their current habitat and January will be on the hunt for the world’s largest salamanders which can grow up to five feet and eighty pound. I may go into further details about future shows later but until then, head over to the Dangerous Encounters website for these goodies:
"How to be like a gecko" Game: Take the Dangerous Encounters challenge and prove your gecko skills such as eye licking and wall climbing. How gecko are you?
Dangerous Encounters mobile trivia: Get your danger fix with weekly mobile trivia nd learn surprising facts about some of the world's most most menacing – and even some of the world's oddest – creatures!
Dangerous Encounters podcasts: Watch previews of Dangerous Encounters as Dr. Brady Barr travels around the globe on a series of death-defying, hair-raising expeditions to study reptiles and other creatures in their native habitats.
As someone who grew up with a heavy dose of Beavis and Butt-Head, I was a little weary of Mike Judge making a live action film. Granted Office Space was actually based on an animated short that was featured during Liquid Television but ended up turning into a first ballot Scooter Hall of Fame inductee.
Even though at the point I first seen the movie I had only worked part time in an office, I could see how brilliantly it portray the life sucking ability sitting in a cubicle for eight hours a day for extended periods of time where you only have mimesweeper to keep you sane (of course this was before the proliferation of the internet and time suckers like Facebook). But nothing stung worse than the passive aggressive bosses like Lumburgh or having six bosses who all point when you make a mistake.
And nothing cut too close more than Michael “why should I change my name, he’s the one that sucks” Bolton whose scenes I have lived out in my personal life multiple times like turning down my gangsta rap, which made up most of the soundtrack in the movie and my formative years, in the car whenever near an actual black dude. Also my freshman year in college I had a very old school printer, the kind that had the paper with the scrolls on both sides to feed into the printer. To keep the story short, finals week it wouldn’t print something and later turned into pieces similar to the scene in the movie.
The cast is pitch perfect from the dry humor of Ron Livingston (Band of Brothers), the previously mentioned Gary Cole (The Brady Bunch Movie) to the bumbling Stephan Root (Idiocracy) and even the smaller roles such as the guy that brought an “O Face” into the lexicon. Thank and many other lines from Office Space has had permanent place in my own personal lexicon over the past decade since it has been released.
Much apologies for being late on this but it does come before the end of the year. And even a day late, this may not be the definitive list that makes up the playlist on my iPod. To pull back the curtain of the 9th Green, typically I have two or three (or ten) drafts of the best songs of the tear before I am content with the results. I doubt I will ever change this post but maybe sometime in the New Year I will make a playlist somewhere for you to listen the songs and post that here. Until then feel free to dissect this list (and if you want to how all 189 potential songs actually ranked, shout me a holla and I will e - mail you my spreadsheet) and hope to see you all back at the 9th Green in 2009 when I have some major projects planned throughout next year.
First off, congratulations are in order Emily and Niv who both picked up Amazon gift cards for sending in their top ten lists and thanks to everyone else who also contributed to the list (check your e-mail that you sent your lists from if you haven’t got it yet). After sending all the ballots sent in this year through my patent pending algorism that makes the Electoral College seem reasonable in comparison, here is what it came up with. If you do not like the results start get ready to send in a list for 2009.
There didn’t seem to be a bunch of great mash-ups this year, but still plenty to create a list so here are the best that I have found the last twelve months even if some were actually created before 2008. Here is where I usually give my disclaimer of actually ever having or even hearing these songs for legal reasons, but since the RIAA recently admitted lawsuits weren’t the best course of action when it came to illegal downloading and gave up the practice I guess I know longer have to do that. Granted since Blogger doesn’t have a music upload service you will still have to scour Google if you are interested downloading these songs. Of course there are some links on my sidebar to get you started on your search. If you want the unaltered album version of the songs, on the second line I will list the main songs that make up the mash-up (note some have more songs than I’ve listed):
Last year I started a Best Performances of the year list mostly because of the overabundance of great performances at Live Earth. Despite the lack of any major cultural event, I thought I would continue the list for at one more year. Here the live performances that caught my ear this year. I have links to YouTube for those that have yet been pulled and there are even a couple that are sold on iTunes so check out the button for those.
1. Stronger/Hey Mama - Kanye West and Daft Punk (Grammy Awards)
2. Just Stand Up - Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Nicole Scherzinger , Natasha Bedingfield, Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis, Keyshia Cole, Ashanti and Ciara (Stand Up 2 Cancer)
3. Burning Up/Ray of Light - The Stooges (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony)
4. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer (Where the Light Is)
This may have been the easiest list to make ever because lets face it, there is nothing more entertaining than boob pong. After that it was a race for the other twenty-nine. I have embedded the first couple videos, the rest you can click the link to follow to YouTube and if you are interested in buying the videos, click the iTunes links.
castoffs (Jeremy Jackson, David Chockachi), 80’s stars that I only know of because of their commentary from I Love the 80’s (Christopher Atkins
, Adrian Zmed
, and, um, I actually don’t remember the third guy but apparently he was in Fame
: the series), and Eric Neis of all people. How exactly can you get someone whose lone claim to fame another chance at stardom? Beg the producers of the MTV Challenges to let him back on?
, I was a little weary of Mike Judge making a live action film. Granted Office Space was actually based on an animated short that was featured during Liquid Television but ended up turning into a first ballot 
), the previously mentioned Gary Cole (
) to the bumbling Stephan Root (
) and even the smaller roles such as the guy that brought an “O Face” into the lexicon. Thank and many other lines from Office Space has had permanent place in my own personal lexicon over the past decade since it has been released. 