6/21/2001 06:32:22 PM
Lord, I forgot that there was an abortion on Real World Los Angeles…but it’s like, well, one season it’s AIDS, the next season it’ll be homosexuaity, another it’ll be suicide. The disease-of-the-week mentality of the show really flattens much of its supposed potential for social advocacy. The controversial stuff becomes the thing that happens on TV, on the Real World (which is fake anyway), not necessarily the real world.
6/21/2001 06:20:38 PM
Why on earth did the Hawaii cast get nude on the first day of the show? Well, the chick who got nude first said she didn’t want to get tan lines, but look and you’ll see the sky is overcast!
6/21/2001 06:15:35 PM
Judd: “The President of the United States went and called Pedro to find out how it was. I think that really says something about the show.” No, I think it says something more about Bill Clinton and his mercenary sense of empathy.
6/21/2001 06:13:19 PM
One girl trying out for the next installment of the Real World says she found the Ruthie really inspirational: does this mean she’s gonna follow her lead and go out and become a recovering alcoholic?
6/21/2001 06:06:21 PM
That’s about the sixth time I’ve heard the wrestler-guy say “you either want this, or you don’t” on some ad. Logicians call such statements tautologies; true in every case, they are basically meaningless. Well, the wrestler isn’t using it as a tautology but an intensifier, like when people use “you know” or “like” in statements. It still makes me think of Wittgenstein.
6/21/2001 06:02:21 PM
Is there any channel that shows more shows about itself than MTV? MTV is televisual narcissicism central.
6/21/2001 05:58:16 PM
Whenever I watch MTV, I always get the tremendous urge to play some music over it, to annihilate and rebuke what I see. I wish had the Electric Eels’ “Cyclotron” readily available on MP3.
6/21/2001 05:52:11 PM
Teck: “I need people to like me…but stop grabbing my butt.”
6/21/2001 05:44:08 PM
See Jerwin…that’s what happened to Eric Nies.
6/21/2001 05:42:17 PM
Puck has seen waaay too many Real World episodes. He’s watched them too closely and met too many participants. He’s the weirdo who still hangs out at the college that he was kicked out of. He crystallizes a certain kind of pathetic we all are too familiar with.
6/21/2001 05:37:16 PM
Puck…I’m racking my brain to think of who reminds me of…
6/21/2001 05:34:01 PM
John Norris and his can’t-look-away hair again. Before that, Puck. (See what I mean?)
6/21/2001 05:31:20 PM
Is it manipulative? Duh. What makes it worse is that most of these folks are teeners…
6/21/2001 05:30:20 PM
Indeed, I don’t think there’s any channel so dependent on the attention-starved to provide its entertainment, and this applies to Tom Green, your average troupe of sorority sisters who think they can sing, or the kid who wants his e-mail to show up on TRL.
6/21/2001 05:22:48 PM
A guy who looks like a real street performer — a guy who makes a living at this kind of audience-pulling schtick, as opposed to just doing for a drunken Spring Break lark — gets shit-canned. I never give money to street musicians, but there’s something a bit hertbreaking in that.
6/21/2001 05:14:12 PM
I’m gonna order me some Taco Bell. Just so you know.
6/21/2001 05:06:41 PM
The judges have allowed the plastic-bucket drummer into the swimming pool of winners. Only people who’ve never been to New York would ever be impressed.
6/21/2001 05:04:18 PM
Another Sink or Swin? Yeah, a another one, and I can tell that’s a different one than before because the token hiphop judge is Olivia and not Ludacris, and because Dave Holmes is wearing a a pretty rad Aloha shirt. (It looks like a real one, too — one sure-fire test for authenticity is if the pocket fabric seamlessly matches the rest of the shirt.)
6/21/2001 05:01:04 PM
Carson Daly: “Justin’s new haircut mesmerizes me.”
6/21/2001 05:00:39 PM
Bad realization: N’Sync’s “Pop” not just hearkens back to the cod-tuff sound of the New Kids’ “No More Games” but also Michael Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone.” This song has just horrible bloodlines. I supoose I should be pleased by the fake beatbox part, but it’s too calculated and been done before anyway.
6/21/2001 04:56:40 PM
Well, it looks like the Backstreet Boys’ latest has taken a backseat (did I really make that pun? I must be delirious…) to N’Sync’s track on TRL‘s charts, as is only fitting ’cause it’s probably the blandest thing I’ve ever heard from them. Another slow jam, another echoey block of wood Pro-Tool’d to perfection, who cares…
6/21/2001 04:51:05 PM
Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal” again. Nothing says “junior league punk band” better than a shamelessly mugging bass player, moving his body in the kind of spastic-stiff way common to those poor souls who were born in a video.
6/21/2001 04:45:44 PM
At least there’s Destiny’s Child, one of the few pleasures of my day so far…and they end it prematurely before I can get into it.
6/21/2001 04:44:52 PM
John Norris looks like he’s a trying a combover even though he’s clearly (or probably) not bald. I know it’s a cheap thing to make fun of one’s hair, but seriously, I can’t NOT look at it, it’s such a follicular train-wreck.
6/21/2001 04:40:09 PM
Did I just see a tampon ad with “Rock Around The Clock” in it?
6/21/2001 04:36:51 PM
I’d like to think Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” is actually about anal sex. With women.
I love how the video has a shot of the group’s handlers (managers, bouncers, security, etc.). It’s almost an unconscious admittance as to who’s reeaallly running the show at any concert, loud-mouthed brat with a mike or no loud-mouthed brat with a mike.
6/21/2001 04:30:17 PM
Yeah, Blink 182 again. I wonder if they play ’em on Radio Disney.
6/21/2001 04:27:46 PM
Wasn’t Vin Diesel the host of MTV Sports? Nah, it was some other bald guy. Still, this guy is plugging a new movie, The Fast and the Furious, which, thanks to all the ads I’ve seen today, I already know too much about.
6/21/2001 04:21:09 PM
I’m amazed at how small the TRL studio is. Is that enough room for live performances, even just the song & dance ones, and an audience. It feels awfully claustrophobic just looking at it.
6/21/2001 04:18:47 PM
OK, more than a bit of the church in his vocals.
6/21/2001 04:17:36 PM
Nope, Sisqo doesn’t provide pop jackoff, just a lot of oddball R&B tension: a springy slide guitar loop and just a bit of the church in the vocals.
6/21/2001 04:13:26 PM
We’ve had forty years of rock & roll, and Sisqo still thinks the way to credibility is the Hollywood movie. In this case, I can say without pretension or ancestor worship that Elvis truly died in vain.
6/21/2001 04:08:41 PM
Sisqo is trying to establish a distinction between Return of the Dragon and Return of Dragon. He also explains that Michael Jackson’s handshake is surprisingly firm, as if he’s been lifting weights, more proof (as if I needed any) that Michael Jackson is just trying waaaay too hard lately. Man, Sisqo better not disappoint in his live act…I’m totally jonesin’ for some pop action, and in spite of its reputation, MTV hasn’t provided any today.
6/21/2001 04:00:23 PM
Sum 41. Evil. They’re punk rock, but funny! You know they’ve got “Weird Al” Yankovic box sets in their collection. And you know from the one-minute metal parody-homage at the end (they become the “Metal Sluts”) that if they ever heard Turbonegro, they’d disintegrate.
6/21/2001 03:52:25 PM
I’m scared that I can accurately identify Mandy Moore’s voice. She’s lame. I loved Pete Baran’s comment (I think it was his) from a past Focus Group that if “Candy” was indeed candy, it’d be the sugar-free kind that’d be given out by vicars.
6/21/2001 03:49:49 PM
What’s creepy about TRL is the illusion the show gives that any of their viewers have any input in the show in any meaningful sense. Nobody can tell me the viewer calls or e-mails have any serious bearing on the what gets played and what doesn’t. Even if the folks at MTV actually tabulated such things, the channel still is the primary determinant of what gets shown, and hence what can be reasonably considered a possible choice for Top 10 inclusion. (Social Theory 101)
6/21/2001 03:43:51 PM
Two explanations for the success of Eve 6’s “Here’s To The Night”:
1) It’s the perfect alt.rock post-graduation song, filing the same cultural niche that the Verve Pipe’s “The Freshmen” did, only it’s not as good. “Tomorrow’s gonna come too soon.”
2) The lead guy is cute as the dickens. Short red hair and firm forearms, what’s not to love? (Answer: the totally overdetermined tattoos.)
6/21/2001 03:37:50 PM
Dave Holmes is on again, and I just want to take this opportunity to say it’s a good thing the fucker doesn’t frost his hair anymore.
6/21/2001 03:35:24 PM
No. Not raining. Overcast, but not raining.
6/21/2001 03:34:45 PM
How out-of-it am I? I live 40 miles from Manhattan. Total Request Live is on now, and I can see it’s raining in Times Square. Yet I don’t know if it’s raining where I am. Let me look.
6/21/2001 03:32:09 PM
Sink or Swim is almost over, and I have yet to say something sexually suggestive about Dave Holmes, fancy that. Eh, the thinner he gets, the less cuddly he becomes…but the lime-colored guayabera shirt rocks.
6/21/2001 03:28:48 PM
Ludacris just admitted he used take part in high-school talent shows. That’s like discovering Woody Guthrie belonged to a Glee Club (which is true, btw).
6/21/2001 03:27:02 PM
I feel sort of guilty I’m not saying about the commercials, especially the local commercials….no, ESPECIALLY those quasi-PSA MTV commercials which apparently are trying to equate MTV with horrible sexually transmitted diseases. In advertising, you sometimes get truth in the stinkiest, smelliest places.
6/21/2001 03:23:22 PM
And this guy is doing yo-yo tricks in fake dreadlocks. Feh. I don’t think MTV has the GUTS to go for true Gong Show-style depravity.
6/21/2001 03:18:11 PM
“Oh man, not only did you lose your eyebrows, but they rang you off!”