"What's changed about [the practice of interviewing Famous People] is the more papers panic about sales, the more they want lowest-common denominator, headline-grabbing, negative stories, and the more celebrities become paranoid of it. There are old-school celebrities who see the interview as being a tool to help them, whereas the newer people just think of the celebrity interview as an irritating fly they have to swat."--Chrissey Iley describing an encounter with Mila Kunis.
The full article (From Rhys Ifans to Madonna: writers on their worst celebrity interviews) can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/jun/07/rhys-ifans-worst-celebrity-interviews?CMP=twt_fd
Friday, June 7, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Rock critic Dave Marsh on new book about U2's Bono.
Reprinted from an e-mail sent by Dave Marsh's ROCKNRAP CONFIDENTIAL:
RRC Extra No. 35 May 2013
Bono: Mascot of Neoliberalism
by Dave Marsh
reprinted with permission from CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
In 1984 I wrote a hostile (to both music and words) review of U2’s Unforgettable Fire. Some weeks later, I found myself dragooned (by a force too absurd to mention) into a late afternoon conversation with Bono. It wasn’t an interview. He wanted to talk one-on-one about why I’d written such a negative estimation of the record.
I arrived bemused, only to become more so when I was sent to the hotel’s penthouse. I knew this hotel, the Who made it their New York headquarters (Keith Moon got the suites about to be remodeled to save on demolition costs). I’d interviewed some other famous rockers in their rooms there, too. But I had never been to the penthouse. Yet here sat a young Irish star, who’d never had a top ten album or a top 20 single in the States.
We had a conversation, not that either of us listened too much. I asked Bono if he knew why I’d brought him a copy of my book about Elvis. He didn’t. “Because, if you read it, you’ll know pretty much exactly what I think about Elvis,” I said. “But I’ve listened to that song, ‘Elvis Presley and America,’ a dozen times and I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.” He didn’t have anything much to add. Or subtract.
This is the part that’s hardest to believe: For roughly the next ten years, every time I ran into Bono, he tried to re-engage me about that review. Once, backstage at Madison Square Garden, he walked the circumference of a small knot of people that included Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel, in order to pursue Moby Reviewer. It was dumbfounding.
But after reading Harry Browne’s The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power), I think I understand. I had said no. The review called him out as at worst a fraud or at least an incompetent. Face to face, it may never have happened again in the last three decades.
The Front Man is about a boy who never grew up or faced facts. Through very careful accretion of detail it left me feeling that Bono resembled no entertainment or arts figure nearly as much as that other sad, sheltered boy, George W. Bush. In fact, what surprised me most about my reaction to the book was how my response changed as I read. At first, the prose seemed too reserved, too cautious, incapable of capturing the outrageousness of Bono, one part talent to nine parts hubris. But as the pages turned, what engrossed me was another portrait: Bono as that little boy in man’s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea. In the end, Harry Browne’s Bono is not so much a huckster as a sucker; not a con man so much as a victim of the world’s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities (well, at least his own). If this were a movie, you might be able to measure the price paid just by the way he looks at himself in the mirror.
Most less than adulatory writing about Bono, including my own, is a blend of anger, contempt, condescension and frustration. The Front Man recognizes all these instincts, but keeps them under tight command. For instance, Browne allows himself to be angrier (in tone) at Bono’s wife, Ali, whose business machinations are real but comparatively trivial, than at Bono, himself. There’s kind of a shadow behind such moments, as if we’re meant to glean that the book’s protagonist can’t be judged like other men, not because he is extraordinarily gifted or brave or empathetic, but because he’s so lost, frightened and pathetic. Bono may be the personification of all that’s evil about contemporary celebrity culture and all that’s worse than bankrupt about liberal capitalism (and liberal capitalists) but there’s also a real person in there, and he’s spent most of a lifetime making himself what history must surely judge—perhaps not with as much restraint as the author—as a fool.
Does this make Harry Browne’s Bono less easy to despise? Probably but it also makes him easier to understand. Here, Bono becomes less the many-sided symbolic figure and more a fallible (sometimes likable, sometimes detestable) human. Think of the former Paul Hewson as the first self-created one dimensional man (all front, no back). Browne’s dug past the PR and the rhetoric and found…a Mad Men cliché for our times.
But that’s not why you need to read The Front Man. You do need to. Not because you want to better understand Bono, let alone empathize with his plight, but because what topples is not only Bono’s stature but the excuses his chosen trade, liberal philanthropic paternalism, makes for itself. Langston Hughes wrote that the animal that should be chosen to represent liberals is not a donkey or an elephant but an ostrich. This book could be subtitled Bono (With His Head in the Sand).
The Unforgettable Fire was just sort of a second-rate record by a pretty good but not great rock band, one of maybe a hundred records I reviewed that year. I wasn’t a U2 fan. I was disappointed because I thought the previous album was better. But U2, not its front man was my concern as a critic.
So I didn’t start writing about Bono—not U2, Bono– and talking about him on the radio because he seems charismatic. (Too desperate for attention and adulation for that.) Bono proves a useful tool for understanding the forces around him because his behavior exemplifies the way that liberals, especially neoliberals from Clinton and Blair to Obama, not only played into the hands of reactionaries but vanished every time they got a chance to act like liberals are supposed to act.
Liberals have usually not lived up to their rep. They derive the bulk of their glory by taking credit for the achievements of radicals. The current crop, whose respect for civil liberties is nil and whose attitude toward the suffering is STFU, sets new lows. It is now easier to name a liberal Supreme Court Justice who thinks Roe V. Wade a mistake than to find one who will make any meaningful effort to stop illegal detention, de facto segregation in everything (schools, housing, jobs, the Obama cabinet), or prevent the incarceration, even murder, of political opponents without trial. Liberals claim the entirety of the moral high ground as their turf, but at best, they’re absentee landlords.
Harry Browne reserves his sense of outrage in The Front Man for a rendition of the liberal and neoliberal subversion of human rights. He pays especial attention as that subversion is accomplished under cover of noble goals as articulated by Bono and his guru, the austerity (for others) loving pinhead Jeffrey Sachs, one of the early proponents of TINA (there is no alternative). The TINA doctrine almost literally forms the wool over Bono’s eyes. It boils down to the rich should rule the world, and the richest become the most powerful. The portrait here of how Bono, a man of only marginally inconceivable wealth, has been passed around, mostly without compensation to the suffering or often even himself, resembles a nonfiction Sister Carrie. If I knew how to get my remaining liberal friends to accept evidence-based political journalism, I’d say this book has redemptive power. Alas, there is that ostrich and an abundance of sand, already forming a dune around the person of the former Goldwater volunteer.
The Front Man is, in addition to being an important book about Bono and celebrity, one of the few books about contemporary music that understands issues of colonialism and white privilege, especially in regard to Africa. But Browne doesn’t spend enough time on religion, and in defining the Christian humanism that informed all of Bono’s early work and still empowers his evangelical rhetoric about TINA. This is why Bono is not a unique figure. Actually, he’s a type and the type is not all that new. Consider a paragraph that C.L.R. James wrote in 1950:
“The Christian Humanists have a systematic political economy. They propose decentralized self-governing corporations of private property with every worker in his place. They have a philosophy of history. They believe in the eternal ambiguities of the human situation and the impossibility of ever attaining human freedom on earth. They have a theory of politics. The natural and ideological elite must rule, the masses must not have absolute sovereignty. Since evil and imperfection are eternal, they say, the alternatives are either limited sovereignty or unmitigated authoritarianism.” (from State Capitalism and World Revolution)
Even Browne has given us no better way to account for why Bono misunderstands the meaning of his own successes (there have been some, and not only onstage) and why he cannot recognize his most significant failures, either as a rock star or as a political figure.
Browne also doesn’t talk enough about music, which is especially disappointing because he’s insightful where he does. He was probably prevented by neoliberal copyright laws from quoting many of Bono’s lyrics (a mixed curse in this case) but there are elements of the group’s music, the way it is powered and the way it is manipulated, the sources it draws upon and who it is (and is not) aimed at that merit inclusion in this discussion. So far, no copyright act prevents one from describing and drawing conclusions from guitar licks and drum beats and vocal phrasing. So far.
But that’s not much to complain about. For the activist beginning to confront the obstacles neoliberalism places under all of our footsteps, as well as the rock fan trying to imagine a world without charity records and broadcast benefit concerts, and especially for those who still revere Bono and his many works, The Front Man serves as both an effective cautionary tale and an excellent how-to-book on avoiding the traps of neo-liberalism. On top of that, it offers the tale of a mannish boy who’s genuinely incapable of grasping why some folks just plain don’t like his act.
Maybe Bono himself will read it. It might be painful but even that couldn’t hurt.
RRC Extra No. 35 May 2013
Bono: Mascot of Neoliberalism
by Dave Marsh
reprinted with permission from CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
In 1984 I wrote a hostile (to both music and words) review of U2’s Unforgettable Fire. Some weeks later, I found myself dragooned (by a force too absurd to mention) into a late afternoon conversation with Bono. It wasn’t an interview. He wanted to talk one-on-one about why I’d written such a negative estimation of the record.
I arrived bemused, only to become more so when I was sent to the hotel’s penthouse. I knew this hotel, the Who made it their New York headquarters (Keith Moon got the suites about to be remodeled to save on demolition costs). I’d interviewed some other famous rockers in their rooms there, too. But I had never been to the penthouse. Yet here sat a young Irish star, who’d never had a top ten album or a top 20 single in the States.
We had a conversation, not that either of us listened too much. I asked Bono if he knew why I’d brought him a copy of my book about Elvis. He didn’t. “Because, if you read it, you’ll know pretty much exactly what I think about Elvis,” I said. “But I’ve listened to that song, ‘Elvis Presley and America,’ a dozen times and I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.” He didn’t have anything much to add. Or subtract.
This is the part that’s hardest to believe: For roughly the next ten years, every time I ran into Bono, he tried to re-engage me about that review. Once, backstage at Madison Square Garden, he walked the circumference of a small knot of people that included Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel, in order to pursue Moby Reviewer. It was dumbfounding.
But after reading Harry Browne’s The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power), I think I understand. I had said no. The review called him out as at worst a fraud or at least an incompetent. Face to face, it may never have happened again in the last three decades.
The Front Man is about a boy who never grew up or faced facts. Through very careful accretion of detail it left me feeling that Bono resembled no entertainment or arts figure nearly as much as that other sad, sheltered boy, George W. Bush. In fact, what surprised me most about my reaction to the book was how my response changed as I read. At first, the prose seemed too reserved, too cautious, incapable of capturing the outrageousness of Bono, one part talent to nine parts hubris. But as the pages turned, what engrossed me was another portrait: Bono as that little boy in man’s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea. In the end, Harry Browne’s Bono is not so much a huckster as a sucker; not a con man so much as a victim of the world’s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities (well, at least his own). If this were a movie, you might be able to measure the price paid just by the way he looks at himself in the mirror.
Most less than adulatory writing about Bono, including my own, is a blend of anger, contempt, condescension and frustration. The Front Man recognizes all these instincts, but keeps them under tight command. For instance, Browne allows himself to be angrier (in tone) at Bono’s wife, Ali, whose business machinations are real but comparatively trivial, than at Bono, himself. There’s kind of a shadow behind such moments, as if we’re meant to glean that the book’s protagonist can’t be judged like other men, not because he is extraordinarily gifted or brave or empathetic, but because he’s so lost, frightened and pathetic. Bono may be the personification of all that’s evil about contemporary celebrity culture and all that’s worse than bankrupt about liberal capitalism (and liberal capitalists) but there’s also a real person in there, and he’s spent most of a lifetime making himself what history must surely judge—perhaps not with as much restraint as the author—as a fool.
Does this make Harry Browne’s Bono less easy to despise? Probably but it also makes him easier to understand. Here, Bono becomes less the many-sided symbolic figure and more a fallible (sometimes likable, sometimes detestable) human. Think of the former Paul Hewson as the first self-created one dimensional man (all front, no back). Browne’s dug past the PR and the rhetoric and found…a Mad Men cliché for our times.
But that’s not why you need to read The Front Man. You do need to. Not because you want to better understand Bono, let alone empathize with his plight, but because what topples is not only Bono’s stature but the excuses his chosen trade, liberal philanthropic paternalism, makes for itself. Langston Hughes wrote that the animal that should be chosen to represent liberals is not a donkey or an elephant but an ostrich. This book could be subtitled Bono (With His Head in the Sand).
The Unforgettable Fire was just sort of a second-rate record by a pretty good but not great rock band, one of maybe a hundred records I reviewed that year. I wasn’t a U2 fan. I was disappointed because I thought the previous album was better. But U2, not its front man was my concern as a critic.
So I didn’t start writing about Bono—not U2, Bono– and talking about him on the radio because he seems charismatic. (Too desperate for attention and adulation for that.) Bono proves a useful tool for understanding the forces around him because his behavior exemplifies the way that liberals, especially neoliberals from Clinton and Blair to Obama, not only played into the hands of reactionaries but vanished every time they got a chance to act like liberals are supposed to act.
Liberals have usually not lived up to their rep. They derive the bulk of their glory by taking credit for the achievements of radicals. The current crop, whose respect for civil liberties is nil and whose attitude toward the suffering is STFU, sets new lows. It is now easier to name a liberal Supreme Court Justice who thinks Roe V. Wade a mistake than to find one who will make any meaningful effort to stop illegal detention, de facto segregation in everything (schools, housing, jobs, the Obama cabinet), or prevent the incarceration, even murder, of political opponents without trial. Liberals claim the entirety of the moral high ground as their turf, but at best, they’re absentee landlords.
Harry Browne reserves his sense of outrage in The Front Man for a rendition of the liberal and neoliberal subversion of human rights. He pays especial attention as that subversion is accomplished under cover of noble goals as articulated by Bono and his guru, the austerity (for others) loving pinhead Jeffrey Sachs, one of the early proponents of TINA (there is no alternative). The TINA doctrine almost literally forms the wool over Bono’s eyes. It boils down to the rich should rule the world, and the richest become the most powerful. The portrait here of how Bono, a man of only marginally inconceivable wealth, has been passed around, mostly without compensation to the suffering or often even himself, resembles a nonfiction Sister Carrie. If I knew how to get my remaining liberal friends to accept evidence-based political journalism, I’d say this book has redemptive power. Alas, there is that ostrich and an abundance of sand, already forming a dune around the person of the former Goldwater volunteer.
The Front Man is, in addition to being an important book about Bono and celebrity, one of the few books about contemporary music that understands issues of colonialism and white privilege, especially in regard to Africa. But Browne doesn’t spend enough time on religion, and in defining the Christian humanism that informed all of Bono’s early work and still empowers his evangelical rhetoric about TINA. This is why Bono is not a unique figure. Actually, he’s a type and the type is not all that new. Consider a paragraph that C.L.R. James wrote in 1950:
“The Christian Humanists have a systematic political economy. They propose decentralized self-governing corporations of private property with every worker in his place. They have a philosophy of history. They believe in the eternal ambiguities of the human situation and the impossibility of ever attaining human freedom on earth. They have a theory of politics. The natural and ideological elite must rule, the masses must not have absolute sovereignty. Since evil and imperfection are eternal, they say, the alternatives are either limited sovereignty or unmitigated authoritarianism.” (from State Capitalism and World Revolution)
Even Browne has given us no better way to account for why Bono misunderstands the meaning of his own successes (there have been some, and not only onstage) and why he cannot recognize his most significant failures, either as a rock star or as a political figure.
Browne also doesn’t talk enough about music, which is especially disappointing because he’s insightful where he does. He was probably prevented by neoliberal copyright laws from quoting many of Bono’s lyrics (a mixed curse in this case) but there are elements of the group’s music, the way it is powered and the way it is manipulated, the sources it draws upon and who it is (and is not) aimed at that merit inclusion in this discussion. So far, no copyright act prevents one from describing and drawing conclusions from guitar licks and drum beats and vocal phrasing. So far.
But that’s not much to complain about. For the activist beginning to confront the obstacles neoliberalism places under all of our footsteps, as well as the rock fan trying to imagine a world without charity records and broadcast benefit concerts, and especially for those who still revere Bono and his many works, The Front Man serves as both an effective cautionary tale and an excellent how-to-book on avoiding the traps of neo-liberalism. On top of that, it offers the tale of a mannish boy who’s genuinely incapable of grasping why some folks just plain don’t like his act.
Maybe Bono himself will read it. It might be painful but even that couldn’t hurt.
How I ruined it for everyone.
Here's a coda to the Yahoogroups CobaltPoets situation:
I recently accessed the at-that-time-open archives for the purpose of seeing whether a poet who hosts one week of the Rapp Saloon's reading series (I host the second week) had posted an announcement there.
Only then did I notice the discussion about the Monsanto protests.
To restate my earlier opinion in a more temperate way--I do understand the list proprietor's feelings that it's his domain to regulate as he pleases. But once the not-a-poetry-announcement subject of Monsanto appeared (and was allowed to stay), then it should have continued, so long as the participants didn't try to strangle each other rhetorically.
Of course, it doesn't help that the list proprietor and I have had a history of disagreeing with each other--though I have, on occasion, acknowledged his talent and value (the latter in terms of his long-running reading series and pioneering poetry website).
I'm not comfortable with keeping things secret (whether they're poetry announcements or discussions/arguments within the "poetry community").
But other people are.
So now you have a poetry listserve mainly consisting of poetry announcements (which, ideally, should be available to the entire public) kept under lock and key. And you have to be approved by the proprietor before being allowed to join.
And it's all my fault.
Or is it?
UPDATE: Rick Lupert, CobaltPoets proprietor, replies to the above. Here's his complete answer.
"oh, dear...no...I've received a couple of request from people (one recently and one not so recently) to delete past messages that had content they had written that they were concerned would come up as potential employees researched them on the web that they thought might not shed the best light on them. It was suggested to me that making the archives available only to members would make those posts not accessible by google searches etc while still allowing anyone who was part of the group (which is open to anyone to join) could still have access. So, yes there is an extra step for the public to get to the archived material, but it's still available and you, So you've ruined nothing and, Terry, you are more than welcome to rejoin the list if you'd like access to it. Re the Monsanto piece, I also received NUMEROUS requests to nip the conversation in the bud and a handful of "Thank Yous" after it was done...people tend to be pretty finicky about the amount of email they receive and when so much, to them, irrelevant material is posted to a list they're really just looking for poetry information on, it leads to people unsubscribing in flocks...many folks would just unsubscribe without bothering to send an email requesting the list remain focused on poetry...the main point being that the Cobalt list's primary purpose is to support the Cobalt reading...although it's very liberal on allowing other people to post news and information and marginally liberal on allowing occasional commentary and conversation on things involving poetry, when items like the Monsanto conversation come up directly cause people to want to leave the list, it becomes clear that the main purpose of the list begins to take a back seat which does not serve well the reading series or anyone interested in that primary purpose, which is most people on the list. Thanks, by the way, for the kind words you wrote about my website and me. I enjoyed your occasional picture from Italy and hope you and Valerie had an extraordinary experience there."
I recently accessed the at-that-time-open archives for the purpose of seeing whether a poet who hosts one week of the Rapp Saloon's reading series (I host the second week) had posted an announcement there.
Only then did I notice the discussion about the Monsanto protests.
To restate my earlier opinion in a more temperate way--I do understand the list proprietor's feelings that it's his domain to regulate as he pleases. But once the not-a-poetry-announcement subject of Monsanto appeared (and was allowed to stay), then it should have continued, so long as the participants didn't try to strangle each other rhetorically.
Of course, it doesn't help that the list proprietor and I have had a history of disagreeing with each other--though I have, on occasion, acknowledged his talent and value (the latter in terms of his long-running reading series and pioneering poetry website).
I'm not comfortable with keeping things secret (whether they're poetry announcements or discussions/arguments within the "poetry community").
But other people are.
So now you have a poetry listserve mainly consisting of poetry announcements (which, ideally, should be available to the entire public) kept under lock and key. And you have to be approved by the proprietor before being allowed to join.
And it's all my fault.
Or is it?
UPDATE: Rick Lupert, CobaltPoets proprietor, replies to the above. Here's his complete answer.
"oh, dear...no...I've received a couple of request from people (one recently and one not so recently) to delete past messages that had content they had written that they were concerned would come up as potential employees researched them on the web that they thought might not shed the best light on them. It was suggested to me that making the archives available only to members would make those posts not accessible by google searches etc while still allowing anyone who was part of the group (which is open to anyone to join) could still have access. So, yes there is an extra step for the public to get to the archived material, but it's still available and you, So you've ruined nothing and, Terry, you are more than welcome to rejoin the list if you'd like access to it. Re the Monsanto piece, I also received NUMEROUS requests to nip the conversation in the bud and a handful of "Thank Yous" after it was done...people tend to be pretty finicky about the amount of email they receive and when so much, to them, irrelevant material is posted to a list they're really just looking for poetry information on, it leads to people unsubscribing in flocks...many folks would just unsubscribe without bothering to send an email requesting the list remain focused on poetry...the main point being that the Cobalt list's primary purpose is to support the Cobalt reading...although it's very liberal on allowing other people to post news and information and marginally liberal on allowing occasional commentary and conversation on things involving poetry, when items like the Monsanto conversation come up directly cause people to want to leave the list, it becomes clear that the main purpose of the list begins to take a back seat which does not serve well the reading series or anyone interested in that primary purpose, which is most people on the list. Thanks, by the way, for the kind words you wrote about my website and me. I enjoyed your occasional picture from Italy and hope you and Valerie had an extraordinary experience there."
Saturday, June 1, 2013
No pro-and-con disputes on Monsanto allowed on CobaltPoets list.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CobaltPoets/message/17384
Rick Lupert takes the floor:
I'd like to ask once again that this conversation be taken elsewhere. The Cobalt Poets email list is open to anything revolving around poetry, poetry events, , poetry announcements and any civil conversation regarding issues of poetry.
Rick Lupert takes the floor:
I'd like to ask once again that this conversation be taken elsewhere. The Cobalt Poets email list is open to anything revolving around poetry, poetry events, , poetry announcements and any civil conversation regarding issues of poetry.
Thanks in advance for not responding to this email or any future emails to this list on the topic below.
R
[I was out of the country on vacation, so I came to this dispute on CobaltPoets' Yahoogroups list only a few minutes ago.
But I'll butt in and say that--even if the topic inspires heated and sometimes ill-considered remarks--topics such as Monsanto and its practices pro-and-con should get a discussion on a poetry listserve, for the sake of those who write poems about topics that aren't intended for workshops/MFA classes.
Someone like Phil Ochs would have a tough time on some of today's poetry listserves.]
CODA (6/3/13): The CobaltPoets Yahoogroups archives are now blocked to non-members.
CODA (6/3/13): The CobaltPoets Yahoogroups archives are now blocked to non-members.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Forwarded blog post re the continuation of the "small poetry audience" ethos.
Noticed on Facebook--and presented here for your comprehension:
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/why-poetry-cant-find-its-public/
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/why-poetry-cant-find-its-public/
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Analyzing badness of ONE LIFE TO LIVE in its Prospect Park-produced version.
A lot of soap fans--glad to have their shows back in any form--seem to be superwilling to take without complaint what's handed to them online by the company Prospect Park (which, worried about profit, recently cut the episodes-per-week of ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN from four to two).
Here's a list of reasons (based on the episodes I've seen) that ONE LIFE TO LIVE is suffering artistically (and, yes, I'm aware that a head writer has been jettisoned since the episodes began prediction) in comparison to its long-running-on-ABC predecessor:
1. Not knocking the Snoop Lion-produced theme song, but the opening-credits sequence is an unfortunate nod to the dancing-cast openers of THE COSBY SHOW.
2. OLTL tends to think that, in its new basic-cable-friendly form (meaning more sexual innuendo, young cast members in underwear, occasional deployment of PG-to-PG-13 language), the younger cast (plus the bedrock Bo-and-Nora older couple) are interested in few other things than what Erica Jong once called the "zipless f---." And, when in need of variation, there's a few scenes in a nightclub playing tame electronica and with other cast members (including Shenaz Treasury--who left THE MINDY PROJECT, where she played a human being--for this, plus J-Woww from JERSEY SHORE) playing tight-outfitted bar staff.
3. A hallmark of the late-period ABC OLTL was a willingness to cast plus-sized female actors (most notably Kathy Brier, who played Marcie) as viable characters/love interests. Not happening on Prospect Park's version of the show. In fact, one character named Destiny (who had a baby with the Matthew Buchanan character) was recast from plus-sized to slim-and-conventionally-gorgeous.
4. One more knock on the young characters: they seem to be little more than selfish louts--particularly the Matthew character (also recast from the ABC series), who doesn't give much of a damn that he's had a child out of wedlock and has little interest in helping in the child's raising.
The new OLTL isn't a complete shambles. When the storylines center on reliable scene-stealing actors such as Tuc Watkins (David), Robin Strasser (Dorian), Roger Howarth (Todd) and Trevor St. John (Victor), the show most resembles its previous incarnation, albeit in a diminished way.
Here's a list of reasons (based on the episodes I've seen) that ONE LIFE TO LIVE is suffering artistically (and, yes, I'm aware that a head writer has been jettisoned since the episodes began prediction) in comparison to its long-running-on-ABC predecessor:
1. Not knocking the Snoop Lion-produced theme song, but the opening-credits sequence is an unfortunate nod to the dancing-cast openers of THE COSBY SHOW.
2. OLTL tends to think that, in its new basic-cable-friendly form (meaning more sexual innuendo, young cast members in underwear, occasional deployment of PG-to-PG-13 language), the younger cast (plus the bedrock Bo-and-Nora older couple) are interested in few other things than what Erica Jong once called the "zipless f---." And, when in need of variation, there's a few scenes in a nightclub playing tame electronica and with other cast members (including Shenaz Treasury--who left THE MINDY PROJECT, where she played a human being--for this, plus J-Woww from JERSEY SHORE) playing tight-outfitted bar staff.
3. A hallmark of the late-period ABC OLTL was a willingness to cast plus-sized female actors (most notably Kathy Brier, who played Marcie) as viable characters/love interests. Not happening on Prospect Park's version of the show. In fact, one character named Destiny (who had a baby with the Matthew Buchanan character) was recast from plus-sized to slim-and-conventionally-gorgeous.
4. One more knock on the young characters: they seem to be little more than selfish louts--particularly the Matthew character (also recast from the ABC series), who doesn't give much of a damn that he's had a child out of wedlock and has little interest in helping in the child's raising.
The new OLTL isn't a complete shambles. When the storylines center on reliable scene-stealing actors such as Tuc Watkins (David), Robin Strasser (Dorian), Roger Howarth (Todd) and Trevor St. John (Victor), the show most resembles its previous incarnation, albeit in a diminished way.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Arrivederci Roma.
There will be plenty of good memories of this past week's trip to Rome (with day-trips into Tuscany and Florence). As I walked through the Orto Botanico (botanic garden) in the Trastavere area this afternoon, I savored the clear skies and the peace of visiting a public area on a weekday.
It's good to travel abroad when possible to learn something about other parts of the world--and, also, get some perspective as to one's place in the world.
Hoping that I can regard personal/professional problems as smaller and more manageable after this one-week push of the metaphorical pause button.
It's good to travel abroad when possible to learn something about other parts of the world--and, also, get some perspective as to one's place in the world.
Hoping that I can regard personal/professional problems as smaller and more manageable after this one-week push of the metaphorical pause button.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Hello from Rome.
It's the first vacation in Italy for my wife and I. We landed at Fiumicino Airport yesterday, slept off our jet lag and explored the immediate neighborhood today.
One thing I noticed was a toy being sold by street vendors on Via Nationale; it's a gelatin-like creature that spreads into a puddle when dropped before reconstituting into the original shape.
There's probably a universal metaphor to be found in the toy, but lingering fatigue isn't helping me to discover it.
One thing I noticed was a toy being sold by street vendors on Via Nationale; it's a gelatin-like creature that spreads into a puddle when dropped before reconstituting into the original shape.
There's probably a universal metaphor to be found in the toy, but lingering fatigue isn't helping me to discover it.
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