What I Learned Over My Summer Vacation: The Season in Entertainment
1) Not All Vampire Stories are Created Equal: If you haven’t heard by now – and if this is the case, you clearly don’t go food shopping, where in the checkout aisles every magazine cover screams “Vampires Make a Comeback!” – blood-suckers have been everywhere this summer, and the trend has been curling the toes of both fanboys and housewives alike. Still, for every fantastic send-up of the supernatural staple, like True Blood, HBO’s sophomore watercooler hit (which, if people overhear said watercooler conversations about shape-shifting pigs, orgies and blood prostitutes, makes you seem batshit crazy), there’s a Twilight. And Twilight, the Stephanie Meyer book series that’s been converted into a visual “film” saga, merits no heralding. For those of you who haven’t read the series, stay away from the poor writing, unlikable characters and lack of momentum. And for those of you who have read the series and enjoyed it…why? There’s only more to come as far as vamps are concerned: The CW’s tentpole new series for the fall is The Vampire Diaries, a screen version of another “popular” book series. Let’s hope True Blood stands the test of the trend and sucks the rest of ‘em dry.
2) Esquire Can Make Literature Sexy Again: For their July issue, the staff of Esquire put a hot nude model, Bar Refaeli, on the cover, but instead of daisy pasties and strategically-placed headlines covering her girly parts, they painted on the first few lines of a new short story by horror god Stephen King. Men go crazy, read the story and get to the very end before realizing that it’s not a transcription of a porn.
3) Becoming a TLC Superstar is a Huge Ego Buster: What will happen to the kids?! Who’s cheating on who?! He’s already dating again?! What the fuck is up with her hair?! These were just a few of the questions that seemed to captivate the country this summer when the titular couple of Jon and Kate Plus Eight absolutely fell apart. Magazines spread the latest updates and “news” as fast as herpes spreads in the Big Brother house, and Average Joe Americans gossiped about the trouble in millionaire-land as if the Gosselin clan were their own neighbors. In the end, there were no winners…except, of course, for TLC, who saw the show attract 9.8 million viewers at the height of the scandal.
4) Depressing Kids’ Movies are Totally All the Rage: Can we be honest for a second? Up was not fun. It was not cute. It was sad and tragic and scary and not okay. (SPOILERS AHEAD) From the “You Can’t Have Kids Because You’re Barren” moment to the old man’s house – filled with all of his wife’s dead but loved possessions – catching on fire, the animated Pixar film was enveloped in sadness. Then, you know, there are kids being shot at with rifles, old men falling off of a high-flying blimp, insinuations that helmets used to belong to snooping pilots long since murdered, and a friendless boy scout with a mom who is next to useless and a dad who makes empty promises…and probably hits him. Maybe it was just because the movie featured humans as characters instead of adorable fish or monsters or cars or rats, but altogether, this film was the definition of “too real.” I wish Disney-Pixar hadn’t falsely advertised it…after witnessing the mood it put me into, it really should have been called Down.
5) Artists Can Release Five Different Versions of the Same Song and Still Enjoy Moderate Success: By now, I think I’ve heard Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” a solid 400 times. It’s a great song, don’t get me wrong, but it sort of perplexes me. Last year I enjoyed the song as a fun, acoustic piece showcasing Mraz’s vocals, but soon after, I heard the mainstream radio version and was surprised to hear additional bits of Mraz’s strange, kooky scat syllables. Then there was another version – with alternate scats and nonsense words thrown in – sometime after, and this summer, the ode to courtship is continuing to demonstrate longevity with a Lil’ Wayne remix. Really, Jason Mraz? Weezy? Soon, I suppose we’ll be hearing a Taylor Swift cover and an additional remix featuring Celtic folk backgrounds.
6) Moving to Mexico Can Kill Your Show: Dear Weeds, when did you stop making me laugh? Oh, right…it was when your writers made all of the characters unlikeable and shifted the perfect balance between slapstick and risk-laden sticky situations by sapping all of the fun out and just making the show a full-on tragedy. Nancy gets pregnant and avoids being executed by her random political leader lover! The family moves to Mexico when their house burns down in a town-destroying fire! 14-year-old Shane, recent victim of puberty’s sweet, sweet seduction, loses his virginity in a threesome, sells drugs to his teacher and then murders the teacher’s bird, squeaking “Gimme my money!” Nancy gets ass raped! Andy fucks Nancy’s annoying sister! Andy tries to build a legitimate relationship with Nancy, which is all but ruined when he has to suck her nipples to relieve Nancy of her milk-filled boobies! Breastfeeding…yum. If that’s not comedy, I don’t know what is.
7) The Radio Censors Are Confusing: Only in this country would a radio station bleep out the word “ho” in 3OH!3’s inane “Don’t Trust Me” but allow Lady Gaga’s “Lovegame” to go uncensored. I mean, are you serious? “This beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”? We’re allowed to hear that not-at-all-veiled innuendo, but we can’t hear the abbreviated form of whore? While we’re on the subject, I’m still bitter about the “If You See Amy” debacle from earlier this year, which made Britney’s instant classic absolutely irrelevant.
8) Some Sharks are Highly Trained Acrobats: Rent Megashark Versus Giant Octopus on Netflix. It will be the best decision of your life. Don’t believe me? See here: Greatest Scene Ever. Keep in mind that the rest of the movie – and I know, because I watched the whole thing – is made as a series apocalyptic thriller. No jokes, no sarcasm, no irony.
9) The MPAA Clearly Has Lowered Its Standards: Now, I’m not one for censorship, but I do think that if it’s going to be there, it should be consistent. That’s why I was pretty shocked walking out of the PG-rated Up, which I don’t think was made with kids’ best intentions in mind – it wasn’t one of those kids’ movies that worked on two levels, one for adults and one for kids. It works on one level: scary/depressing. But enough about Up…I was also taken aback by the PG rating on the exceptional Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Between the horny wizard lust manifested in innuendo-filled dialogue as close to dick jokes as possible and the scary-as-balls, super violent ending with those creepy ass Gollum-on-acid Inferi, I fully expected it to be PG-13. And Bruno? Let’s get real…some of those garbage-laden, unnecessary scenes are essentially NC-17-meriting porn. Like I said, I’m not arguing for tighter MPAA restrictions – I’m just saying that what separates a PG from a PG-13 and an R from an NC-17 needs to be more clearly defined. What made HP6 lighter than the PG-13-rated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?
10) Love Always Feels Like a Battlefield: So you better go and getch your armor. Just because.
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