Thursday, February 01, 2007

TV As Eyes

I had this dream last night that the TV was on, and the news was showing all these people in the streets wearing surgical masks, as if there had been some outbreak of bird flu or something. The voiceover said "Many of the people were wearing official KISS Army masks." I looked more closely at the TV, and sure enough, some of the people in the crowd had masks with the KISS Army logo printed on them. I never got any explanation, though.

Some good things I saw on TV while awake:

For some reason, I have started watching The White Rapper Show on VH1. Another American Idol ripoff, with the white rappers all living in a house in The Bronx together and competing, but maybe a little more interesting because they have to write their own rhymes every week. MC Serch is the host, and well-known rappers and producers appear on each show (Grandmaster Flash, Kool Keith, Just Blaze, Brand Nubian, and on and on) to assist in various competitions or comical hazing incidents (Prince Paul hosting a Family Feud-style game show similar to I Know Black People). None of the rappers are terrible, but none really great, either. I do like Persia, not so much for her rhymes as for the force with which she delivers them. Refreshingly, the rappers are actually getting sent home in the order I would want them to be, with the weak ones getting picked off early. I guess you could maybe argue that that's a weakness, as some of the drama from these shows comes when someone really good has an off-night and gets sent home, but I prefer it this way.

The last two episodes of Extras on HBO have been hilarious. First, David Bowie spontaneously composing "Little Fat Man (Who Sold His Soul)," then Dan Radcliffe acting the fool the following week. Non-stop hilarity! And if you get a chance to catch Dave Chappelle on The Sundance Channel's Iconoclast. It's from a while back, but they've been rerunning it a lot. Dave spends the day with Maya Angelou, and it also has footage of Dave's post-"the incident" standup.

I used TCM On Demand last night for the first time. Watched His Girl Friday at my own convenience. Great movie, by the way--I'd never seen it before. It just might be the Greatest Scewball Comedy that everyone says it is. And I did watch the triple feature of The Show, Freaks and The Elephant Man they showed earlier this week (well, Freaks was on, I only watched parts of it). The Show (a Tod Browning silent about carnies) was pretty good. I guess I like Browning more for his subject matter than his directing prowess (Freaks notwithstanding--you can't deny he did a great job with the Freak Vengeance sequence), and I'm always a sucker for a movie about carnies. But The Elephant Man...wow. I don't think I've seen it since catching it on HBO back when it came out, long before I knew who David Lynch was. Incredible film, and I was surprised at how it's totally a David Lynch film.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home