Folks, it’s time to get the pitchforks and torches:

Folks, it’s time to get the pitchforks and torches:



The Media has finally crossed the line. In fight club Tyler Durden says “where you are now, you can’t even imagine what the bottom will be like.” But if he watched TV he’d see it. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown have a reality show, Michael Jackson and his crazy kinfolk will possibly have a reality show about the Jackson trial.



In fight club they talked about how people have come to realize they can’t become rock stars and movie stars. But thanks to such shows as Chaotic, Anna Nicole Show, and The Osbornes I think we realize “god why would I want to?” the problem isn’t just reality TV but it dovetailed with something I heard at the comedy club “We don’t have a short attention span, we just have a short attention span for ****” I’ll let you use your imagination for the 4 letter word for digestive byproduct used.



Reality TV, like musical trends, and movie trends shows that when one thing is good by a fluke the entertainment media establishment decides 200 more would be 200 times better. In reality it is maybe twice as good, but spread out over all 200 products (and sadly not evenly). Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, and Michael Jackson all feel that reality TV will some how make their pr problems better. But if you look at shows like the Osbornes, Nick and Jessica: newlyweds, Chaotic, the Anna Nicole show, and the next live with the marginally talented or broken down celebrity show the only thing memorable about those shows is how depressingly sad the celebrities life is. Even in the “The Simple Life” show we had two people who were deemed famous for reasons I can’t explain at least doing different things.



And then we have music. We take two girls from the Mickey Mouse Club; put them in music videos depicting both scenes from dirty old man fetish for little girls, and then years later we wonder why they become total sluts and skanks. It’s because we made them to fit a mold of titillation and not a mold of talent. While Christina has more talent of the two it is quite clear they were both pushed on sex. I’m not saying that its wrong, what I am saying is when musicians more packaged then 8 Oscar Meyer wieners, we wonder why folks are downloading music. No one wants to pay for this garbage, and people want good music from bands with real talent. Yes I know Musicians have been packaged and molded for my pleasure for decades, but at least in the past they made some chance to seduce me into thinking that this was a real moment, and not some hype. The recording industry uses an archaic business model and figurative blood will have to be shed before we resolve this problem. But just like reality TV with its packaged and prepared reality, we see to weariness in the audience of music. But music the weariness and apathy has bread for so much longer.



Movies are between the two, and the problem of the silent revolt we don’t see in film in the same way we do with Reality TV and Music. It costs me for a large pop corn, a few rounds of video games, a large drink, and a movie ticket for myself –because yes folks , I am a loser ;-)- about as much as the more expensive end single film DVDS. So really, the theater experience is the only think I can say to remotely justify showing up in the theater.


Being in a theater of teen mall walkers, and children abandoned by their already absentee ( to be polite) parents and their tendency as almost all teenagers do –yes myself included, as my mother would probably tell you ad nauseum if you ask- to wreck and mess up everything. And lord help you if you pick a movie this horde, in a matter reminiscent of Genghis Khan descends upon because of some slavish trend. The theater experience, depending on when you go can be close to the 3rd circle of hell... I think that’s the one where we have people stuck upside down in dung.



But when the movie environment has become very unpleasant in the theaters, almost by formula you know if a movie exceptionally well on a fluke –The Passion of the Christ and diary of a mad black woman as exceptions- you will see half a bazillion films along a similar line in 2-3 years time.



I once laughed at the Steven Segal/Jean-Claude-Van-Damm movies, now I see it just took a few years for the studios to show they were already on that level of idiocy. The me-tooisms can work out good (say the trend of well produced superhero movies) but eventually the banality sets in.



Why does the Entertainment-Media complex do this? Because folks we are sheep. Just as; we channel flip till we find something good, we download music, or we wait for the DVD which ends up being a cheaper experience we are endorsing the garbage.


We need to listen to the wisdom of Jay Sherman and ignore that which “stinks” and try our best to sort the wheat from the chafe. Be that an artist, an individual work, or even a whole production company.


When we stop endorsing their idiotic behavior entertainment-media will improve.