6 posts tagged “tv”

Because suddenly, there are a lot of them. We are less than two weeks away from:

• The season premiere of Project Runway.
  
• A new volume of Scott Pilgrim.
  
• The release of Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii.
  

To read today: Matthew's liveblogging of the MTV VMAs. I was hanging out at his place throughout the show, eating tacos and drinking Mexican Coke alongside the lovely (and fucking funny) Erik Bryan and Heather Rasley, and I think we got quite a little writer's room going there. Next up: our hostile takeover of TWO AND A HALF MEN.

If any of you are coming to this blog from that post, uh, welcome? Sorry this blog is about me doing laundry and shit. There's not much to see here, go read Erik's excellent Morning News pieces instead.

Video: Show us a clip of a TV show you miss.

I think it's fair to say that I am not exactly a fashion maven. I am still wearing a pair of jeans I bought in the spring of 2002; indeed, I think of the pair that I purchased in the summer of 2003 as my "new jeans," even though I've bought jeans since then.

My taste in clothes, like my taste in food, is very simple: I am a "jeans and a t-shirt" guy, although I do have standards for both the jeans and the t-shirt*, and I do give a lot of thought to how I look. I just don't have the financial means -- or, barring that, the insider know-how -- to construct a fashion identity for myself that would actually distinguish me in some way. I've never been the kind who enjoys clothes-shopping for shopping's sake (see the first paragraph, obviously), probably in large part because I'm disgusted by how much even my middle-of-the-road clothing (i.e. The Gap or Express Men) costs nowadays. But I do find the business and practice of fashion interesting, even though fashion "types" on the human level tend to irritate me in a way that few other artistic people do (they're right up there with out-of-work theatre actors for their unbalanced Self-Importance / Unbearable Obnoxiousness ratios). Or maybe I'm just talking out my ass because I really like Project Runway, the only reality show in which, despite the drama and amped-up interpersonal bullshit, creativity and accomplishment are actually rewarded. At the end of Project Runway, the contestants have actually done something worth doing -- they've created something -- and we have valued and congratulated them for it; we haven't just watched to see if they'll eat another girl's pussy to impress Flava Flav, or whatever else it is that passes for culture nowadays.

There was a time when I wore my lack of fashion sense -- although it was never a lack of sense, more a lack of willingness to participate -- as a badge of honor. I guess that was my attempt at maintaining some kind of masculine defiance** against the fashion-fag image that most gay men either embrace or have to shrug off (and make no mistake, I still think it's absolutely necessary to shrug that shit off whenever possible). But nowadays I really would like to put more effort into how I look, and I have arrived at a moment where just about every component of my wardrobe, from socks and underwear to shirts and pants to shoes, is ready (in some cases screaming) for a refresh. My unwillingness to spend a shit-ton of money is a huge obstacle, as are my ethical misgivings about how most clothing gets made (despite their sickeningly crude advertisements, I do try to buy American Apparel when possible, purely because it's domestically made on a living wage -- although I also like how their shirts fit), but there's really no reason why I can't gradually introduce a touch more class and style into what I wear over the course of the next year. One thing is for sure, though: I need to stop buying so many damn t-shirts, since I can't wear them to the office. The exception is the winter, when they're always covered with a sweater, but the rest of the year, that eliminates five out of the seven days of the week right there.

Of course, what clothing I can wear connects directly to how my body looks, which is a whoooole other can of worms that doesn't need to be opened in this post (stay tuned, folks!); suffice it to say that I've been planning my clothing reinvention around a hot-sexy-muscular body reinvention that's been, uh, a little delayed for over a year now. I like tight-fitting shirts, but it helps if there's something worth fitting onto under there, y'know? Oh lean, fatless pectorals and non-pencil-width biceps: why have you eluded me for so long?

* For jeans: No baggy legs, good on my butt, generally prefer darker washes to light ones. For t-shirts: Plain, solid colors; band t-shirts (I have entirely too many at this point, though I've taken to using them as home decor as well, which reminds me I need to buy a new set of frames for some of the shirts I've worn out or outgrown); occasionally something with a cool (or, ahem, nerdy) design, a la Threadless or my Magneto Was Right or INVISIBLES #1 t-shirts. (The latter recently purchased from Forbidden Planet; it's the silkscreened grenade from the cover of INVISIBLES #1 on a bright orange t-shirt. Rockin'!) It bears noting at this point that I never, ever wear anything with a clothing manufacturer's logo emblazoned on it. I'm sorry, there's already enough advertising in the world, and I'd prefer to use the real estate on my chest to promote something I support wholeheartedly -- like, say, THE INVISIBLES.

** Josh, if you're reading, I apologize for all the times I gave you shit when we went shopping together for, y'know, giving a shit about clothes. I'm sure you saw right through it and just didn't want to bruise my fragile ego. Thanks for that.

It's nice to see that, with the Christmas episode, STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP finally became A Show I Really Love To Watch. It's definitely the finest hour of the series so far; it's funny, it's adorable, it's dramatic (though less so than some previous episodes), it's vaguely touching. And I'm honestly starting to buy Amanda Peet in her part now in a way that I didn't at the start of the show, so she's obviously doing something right. And I will never complain about the addition of any member of The Kids In The Hall to any cast, ever.

Of course, there's not gonna be a new episode until January from the looks of things, but still, it's fun to know there's at least one TV series I'm following as it airs, since LOST won't be back for another long while... I'm curious to see what my feeling about that show is when it comes back, I managed to fall out of step with it for a while there -- my dodgeball team played Wednesday nights, so I generally only saw it in downloads and lost my MUST WATCH IT NOW! crack-fix mentality as a result.

Of course, TV on DVD is a whole other story... I've been binging pretty hard on VERONICA MARS (first two seasons), THE WIRE (first season), and THE X-FILES (about to start in on season 8), so it's not like I can cop a holier-than-thou "Oh, I don't watch TV" attitude when in fact I'm watching more TV shows than I have in years; just not on broadcast television. I mmmight make an attempt at torrenting the V-Mars I've missed and jump aboard season 3 before it's done airing, but I dunno, a late-August hyper-marathon (when the season hits on DVD) sounds kind of appealing...

When you were younger, were there any game shows that you religiously watched and wanted to be a contestant on?

I'm intrigued by the "When you were younger" component of this. Are children particularly known for an affinity for game shows?

Anyway, when I was like three years old, my babysitter used to cook me hot dogs and we would watch The Price Is Right together. I continue to love both hot dogs (eaten for lunch today) and The Price Is Right to this day. In fact, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, when I first came back to NYC I refused to look for a job until I'd gotten a chance to sit at home in my bathrobe and watch a game of Plinko on TPIR. Unfortunately, they don't play Plinko all that often anymore, and I had to give up and start looking before I finally saw one. This had nothing to do with the fact that it took me five months to find a fucking job.

I also grew up in a house where Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy! were both mainstays. I enjoy both, but I'm pretty convinced that the people who fail the Jeopardy! tryouts get shunted into the WOF green-room. Not the brightest batch of contestants. I would still love to appear on Jeopardy! some day, especially since the questions seem so much easier in the last couple of years (and I don't think it's my own burgeoning intellect and trivia-knowledge that's causing that effect). I think few people are really aware of how important the clicker strategy is in that game... I am also not all that fun to watch Jeopardy! with, as I will insist that you both shout your answer in the form of a question, and -- and this is the crucial one -- wait for Alex to finish reading the question before "ringing" in. But those are the rules, people! If you ring in too early on set, they lock your buzzer! You'd be toast!

UPDATE: I probably should've mentioned that I also got addicted to VH1 / Entertainment Weekly's World Series Of Pop Culture a few weeks back, and the next time they have tryouts I may attempt to put a team together. Seriously.