Classic Dishes...

Gaah-Gaah

Alright, this one’s been simmering for a little while. Prepare to go to full rolling boil.

(Incidentally, you have my S.O. to thank for this one, who regularly sends me links to Go Fug Yourself.)

Lady Gaga. She’s this generation’s Madonna. I will even admit, some of her music is pretty catchy. (And some of her music that isn’t even completely her music is also pretty catchy: let me direct you to DJ Tripp’s mashup of Just Dance and Don’t Stop Believin’.)

(An aside: What the fark with this whole “mashup” business? What the hell was wrong with calling it a “remix”? Where’s my onion? Get off my goddamn lawn.)

Anyhoo: Gaga’s gimmick seems to be to do her thing (and “her thing” seems to range from “performing in concert” to “going to the store for oatmeal“) wearing the most unwieldy, whacked-out outfits imaginable. (Yes, that second one isn’t a ‘Shop. Platform hooves.) Some suggest this is some kind of real-time performance art on her part, an ironic commentary on the tragic state of celebrity in the public eye or some silly nonsense like that. Others suggest she’s just an attention whore. I figure, hey, she’s not hurting anybody, if she wants to go out dressed like she’s hoping to hell Monty Hall will walk up to her out of the blue and offer her $500 or whatever is behind Curtain Number Two and call it a social statement, more power to her.

In the last week, though, I think we’re starting to see the Implosion of Gaga. Which brings us to the grand revival of our 7-Eleven Golden Slurpee Award.

Let’s start here:

“Another whacked-out outfit, so what?” you say. This is how she showed up a couple of days ago…to HER SISTER’S HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATION. Nope, couldn’t just go and be normal JUST ONCE and let her sister enjoy her special day, she has to show up looking like a sexually-confused Raiden. Klassy-with-a-Kapital-K.

But this one is the kicker: Just yesterday, she decides she wants to go take in a baseball game. Wonderful, nothing wrong there. Apparently nobody told her that she was seeing the Mets and not the Dodgers, since she rolled in during the fifth inning. Fine, she’s a busy girl, probably at the podiatrist getting her arches checked out or something. Let’s look in on her, shall we?

   

Yep, that’s what ol’ Gaga wears to the yard.

And, as you would expect, photographers at the game immediately turned their attention to her. Time for today’s quickie quiz: How do you suppose she reacted? Did she:

a) Ignore them
b) Smile demurely, showing off her oh-my-god-I-am-so-outrageous outfit, or
c) Get pissy, retreat to a luxury box, and spend the rest of the evening flipping off anyone with a camera

Well, with apologies to Peter Sagal, one of the erstwhile photographers in attendance provides us with the answer to that question:

Sorry, sweetie, no. If you want to sit in Row B of Citi Field, right behind the plate, dressed like you’re about to attend the annual Hell’s Angels Beach Getaway, you do not get to complain when people want to take a picture of you. This has nothing to do with you being famous, and everything to do with you looking like a goddamn freak at the ballpark.

At least pick up a Mets hat at the concession stand first.

Lady Gaga, You Just Suck. Enjoy your Golden Slurpee.

June 11th, 2010 | Category: Golden Slurpee, Music, Rants | 6 comments

Whatchoo Talkin' 'Bout

Just a thought on a Thursday morning:

When you’re an entertainment show running a promo about Gary Coleman and the reactions to his death from the Diff’rent Strokes crew, expect people to misread a graphic trumpeting "Secret Wills."

I was wondering why Todd Bridges would have a stand-in. Just saying.

June 10th, 2010 | Category: Television | Leave a comment

Now You’re Cooking

At the end of May, Fine Living Network breathed it’s last breath, and from its ashes rose Cooking Channel.

"What the hell? I’ve never even heard of Fine Living Network," I hear you say. You would not be alone. (And now you know why it folded.)

All of this is under the umbrella of Scripps Networks Interactive, who also own a good-sized chunk of Food Network.

You in the back, again, yes, speak up: "Wait a second. I used to watch Food Network. It was cooking shows all day long. This company already has a Food Network, and now they’re starting up a Cooking Channel? Again I say: what the hell?"

Exactly. Anyone whose watched Food Network lately knows that it has about as much to do with food and cooking anymore as MTV has to do with music. With the exception of anything with Alton Brown on it, it’s a lot of Sandra Lee opening cans, Guy Fieri being a douchebag, and Rachael Ray doing, erm, whatever the hell Rachael Ray does.

And so Scripps has decided to rebrand FLN as a cooking channel. Because the one they had isn’t a cooking channel anymore.

And I’ve been watching the last couple of days. Near as I can tell, Cooking Channel is about 30% new content, coupled with about 70% old shows that used to air on Food Network back when it was, um, about food. I swear sometimes it looks like they just went into the vault, whipped out a 10-year-old FoodTV aircheck, and slapped it on the VTRs.

And even at that it’s still miles better than anything Food Network has done over the last couple of years.

So when the MTV runs their course with Jersey Shore 3: Revenge of the Snooki, Yo I Herd You Like Wacky Stuff Done To Your Car, and My Awful Goddamn Special Teenage Entitled Spoiled Brat, I’ve got an idea for them: thirty years ago, you used to see these short little mini-movies that singers and bands and such would make. Sometimes there would be some dialogue, but usually it was just one of their songs playing and the band or singer would make like they were singing along while they did stuff related to the song (most of the time). You could just show those, one after the other. It would be like listening to the radio (or your iPod, for you little bastards who are still on my lawn who don’t know what radio is), except with pictures.

Get four or five people to introduce them in shifts, you’re good to go. (You couldn’t call them "DJs," though, since they’re not really playing discs. You’d need to come up with another name for them. I wonder if anything rhymes with "D.")

Boom. Cheap programming. My ideas are available for franchise opportunities.

(Yeah, I know. It’ll never work.)

June 7th, 2010 | Category: Cooking, Food, Television | 1 comment