Boxed In, with Regina Nigro: Nancy Franklin is Probably Excluded from Chicken Cutlet Night @4:20 PM
At the end of her New Yorker piece on the Jersey Shore phenomenon, Nancy Franklin (basically) concludes: "this reality television show is kind of trashy!" Yes, Nancy Franklin, it is trashy. It is the latest in a long line of reality series designed to showcase some of the worst—and most entertaining—aspects of human nature. And Franklin is the latest in a long line of critics and viewers to notice that these Jersey Shore people are kind of weird with their questionable aesthetic choices and their odd vernacular and also, they drink and go out dancing and occasionally mack on each other!
Unfortunately, Franklin’s piece, though it epitomizes the collective horror Jersey Shore has provoked, fails to go beyond stating the obvious and, worse, fails to articulate why Jersey Shore is so much more of an assault on our senses than a show like The Hills or Rock of Love (which, in its third season, featured one contestant drinking a shot out of another woman's vagina). I’ve begun to wonder how much of the lingering disgust cultural critics cough up on the page is not an objection to the violence—which has become a staple in a show that has so far aired only six episodes—but an aversion to this particular ethnic subculture. READ MORE 114
I don't know why I care, because I am not 17 to 24 and a lass, but I am pleased as punch with the cancellation of Alexa Chung's chat-Facebook-faux show on MTV. It was AWFUL. It was clearly garbage from the moment she announced it at the MTV ad-buyer upfronts. The head of programming crowed, "It's like if MTV and Facebook had a baby"! (To which we responded: "She is just Rocketboom plus Julia Allison plus platform extension, which I guess means there will be like eight girls locked in a room somewhere chatting on Facebook with viewers, sending messages that exhibit all the acumen and emotional connection of Eliza.") And now, we see the truth about "social networking"—her Twitter and her Facebook have gone all quiet. For once. 9
What You're Watching Next @3:50 PM
Now that "Mad Men" has concluded its season, the braintrust here at The Awl is in intense discussion over what television product we should next subject to scrutiny. I suggested this, but I'm getting some pushback from the rest of the team. Any ideas? 45
John Del Signore: Bite Me, Kanye! I Bum-Rushed the MTV Video Music Awards—Ten Years Ago This Week @4:00 PM
On November 9th, 1999, my morning to-do list included such items as "Make a list," "Pick up stuff from storage," and "Attend MTV awards, jump on stage, yell something nonsensical." I never made it to my storage unit in Park Slope that day, but the NYPD, while studying the list later that night, would crack wise about my busy day. They were also very curious about that storage facility.
I was 24 years old at the time, and bursting with vaguely grandiose ideas in that special way that only twenty-somethings smoking expensive, kief-encrusted weed can be. One of these ideas was a concept for a late-night, fake-reality TV series that would explore the mysterious lives of twenty-somethings living in New York City. It was to be sort of like The Blair Witch Project, but set in the city instead of the woods, and with navel-gazing instead of murder. The horror! In broad strokes, the idea was to make a Stonervision TV alternative for inebriates arriving home in the middle of the night. In truth, it was barely half-baked, but I saw no reason why that should stop a major network from broadcasting it, whatever "it" was, ideally at 3 a.m. Well. Need I tell you now that some very humbling video follows? READ MORE 11
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Rush Rules/Obama Challenge @11:40 AM
So I stayed in to watch Saturday Night Live last Saturday. I know you believe me, because, like my bio says, now I live at home with my parents. But that notwithstanding, I like to watch SNL, well, live. I'm sort of a news junkie and the 90 minutes of sketch comedy/whatever really tees up the Sunday morning talk shows for me. Remember that one Road Rules/Real World Challenge when Ayanna freaks out about sleeping in her game day clothes? Where she's so ready to compete that she sleeps in her uniform? Well, that's me every Saturday to Sunday. Except my uniform is sweatpants. And my competition is Jake Tapper tweeting about Peggy Noonan. READ MORE 7
Yep, We're OLD @3:40 PM
I'm a little late to this one, but Jesus: MTV has an explanatory biography for all of those viewers who weren't sure who the old dude who came out onstage Sunday at the VMAs with Katy Perry was. And now I guess it is time for me to catch my ice floe. 11
In Attempt To Destroy Itself, MTV Greenlights Puppet Show @11:22 AM
From today's press release: "Tony DiSanto, President of MTV Programming today announced that MTV has greenlit 'Warren The Ape,' the latest in a wave of new scripted series for the network. 'Warren The Ape is a live action scripted comedy that tells the tale of an ape trying to revive a career in Hollywood by any means necessary. This show truly has a unique visual style and tone as well as a creator driven voice that is fresh and exciting,' said DiSanto…" who will most likely be fired sometime during its run. 8
The VM Mehs @9:25 AM
Last night I was looking for the smoking section at the VMAs (there isn't one) and I stopped midway on the stairs from the lobby to the downstairs bathrooms. Behind a curtained-off area below, I could see below me all the web photo editors, speed-searching through incoming red carpet photographs. It was a hideous vision of the future, I tell you. A guy came up behind me. "Meditating?" he asked. (That was weird.) I was like, no, look at this digital sweatshop! READ MORE 32
On Sunday, Everything Could Change @4:30 PM
There is always the danger that we're being spun, or that this news is some kind of bizarre attempt at raising anxieties in rival camps, but this bulletin is of such great import that I feel we should pass it along on the chance that it is, in fact, all too true: No less of an authority than Lee Lodge—the creative director of MTV's Video Music Awards show—has alerted MTV News that Lady Gaga's performance at Sunday's ceremony "could be a classic VMA performance." We'll let you digest that for just one second before we continue. Lodge goes further and states that we may actually witness a "classic, Madonna-like performance." I know, dare we dream? We've been disappointed so many times before. But we have a feeling this is going to be different. It says here: Believe. We will keep you updated on this important story as it continues to develop. 27
MTV v. Landlord v. Media in Times Square @12:30 PM
It's hard to tell who's working whom in this tale of MTV and its Times Square lease. (This would be the problem with real estate writing in general and in the specific.) I am pretty sure it is the landlord working on the tenant, however, as the landlord is the one blabbing in the New York Post about how they are going to find a new tenant for MTV's first floor store and its famed second-floor glass-walled studio, which you know as the place where girls from Iowa used to gather to get a look at Carson Daly, and where now no one really sees anything. There's some weird omitted details here, such as how MTV reupped its lease in the building for a million square feet last year (for how long? Ten years?). But that was last year, and prices were different, and now they're either digging in to haggle with the landlord—or they realize it is a huge expense that doesn't really do anything for them, and the landlord is forced to splay itself naked and exposed in the press to find a new tenant by the end of this terrible real estate year. 4
MTV To Add Valuable Lyncanthropic Perspective To "Teen Wolf" Franchise @11:48 AM
MTV is "pondering a reinvention of '80s film 'Teen Wolf' in series format, with a greater emphasis on romance, horror and werewolf mythology." Good for MTV! My major problem with the 1985 Michael J. Fox film—and, to a lesser extent, 1987's Jason Bateman-starring Teen Wolf Too—was its lack of historical perspective regarding lupine therianthropy; I'm excited to see that this will be addressed in greater detail. 16
Columnist Objects To Coconut Facial @1:00 PM
Some lady in Chicago was not amused by the Enimem/Bruno stunt at Sunday's MTV Movie Awards: "Quite frankly, why would anyone want someone else's coconuts in their face . .. especially in public? The crowd was laughing … I wasn't!" 7
Is Alexa Chung going to be your MTV friend? @11:56 AM
On Monday night, Alexa Chung, new in New York as of April 27, went to the Music Hall in Williamsburg to see some bands.
Her hair is growing in from last month's radical bobbing. Then yesterday she didn't do a fucking thing. Tired! She spent seven days here in early April looking for an apartment; she went out three days out with a broker, and partied down at the Beatrice Inn, if briefly, as she was thrown out for turning the lights off and on. READ MORE 18
The Conversation Lauren Conrad Should Have Had With Herself Three Years Ago @12:02 PM
Guess what? We don't care that the premiere of the last season of The Hills was on last night! And you know what? There comes a point in every reality TV star's life when she has to have a frank conversation with herself and say, "Hey, I'm 23 and I've spent the last five years of my life in front of the camera, and maybe I'm just not that interesting anymore." 4
