And now it’s happened. Fame, fortune, and power are MINE! <muahhahaha>

Well, not really. But the folks over at MamaPop, a pop culture blog with a feminist slant that I’ve loved since it’s inception, for some reason want me to join their crew. Which, OMG, is totally like your big sister letting you smoke with her and her friends. Well, if I had a big sister, which I don’t, but it’s too late for me to harbor resentment about that.

I’ll be posting over there on a variety of pop culture-related topics every Wednesday and Friday, starting today with my post on yet another Hollywood remake in the works. MamaPop has some of the best television recaps and pop culture commentary on the interwebs, and I’m honored that they’d let me snark and shake fists with them. I mean, they’re the ones that threw the bitchin’ party with a unicorn cake.

I really admire what Tracey and Amy have done with the site and for the women’s blogging community. Last year at BlogHer, I listened to their panel on feminism and pop culture blogging and was just in awe of their big sexy brains. So please, come over and check out the site. It’s really pop culture at it’s snarkiest and almost all of the commenters have great spelling and grammar skills. Win. The lovely Laurie of LaurieWrites and overlord at Draft Day Suit, lobbied hard for my inclusion, and for that I thank her. This all but ensures I’ll be dancing like Elaine at the Sparklecorn party at BlogHer this year in New York.

It’s like a full body dry heave set to music.

Lost ends Sunday. While I’m sad it’s coming to a close, I’m ready for (hopefully some) closure to a story I’ve loved for almost six years. What saddens me more is that there’s not one show on television I feel is a comparable replacement: character-driven with deep mythology. I like puzzle shows. I like mystery. I like a little sci-fi with my ‘shipping. ABC, too, seems desperate to find the next Lost, with V (mehhhhhhhh), Flash Forward (not renewed), and Happytown (isn’t even going to last a full season) all trying to capture an audience like Lost has. I can’t even believed I watched two episodes of Happytown. The name alone (plus that dude from Seventh Heaven) should have tipped me off to this Twin Peaks wannabe.

Sidenote: name one legitimately awesome thing a former Seventh Heaven cast member has done post-show. Yeah, I can’t think of anything either. Except maybe Jessica Biel climbing Kilimanjaro, but that’s not acting.

If you’re like me, waiting to find the next Lost, fall seems awfully far off and upfronts from networks show little promise. What to watch in the meantime? Put down the remote and step away from Big Brother. You’ve got things to live for.

Option #1–Spend your summer rewatching every episode of Lost.  I’ll decide if I want to actually do this after the finale airs. If it’s good, I’ll probably fire up the DVD sets, hoping gain new insight after at least a few of our questions are answered. Chris and I aren’t working over the summer, and we’ll have time for this. However, if the finale of Lost is like the finale of Battlestar Galactica, I’ll probably pass and wallow in my disappointment in Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

Option #2–Start watching Alias. Although I’ve read some people were disappointed in how Alias wrapped up, I might just satisfy my JJ Abrams cravings with his previous brainchild. With five seasons of material, I’d at least have time to settle in with the characters, and I’m sure there are pop culture reference points that would aid me in my quest to know everything about television merely through osmosis. This is a likely road.

Option #3–Fill in your own cultural gaps. I’d like to recommend a few Lost-ish shows that you may have missed when they originally aired. Netflix is your friend.

• Carnivale is one of my favorite shows that’s ever aired. It’s magical realism that pits good vs. evil in Dust Bowl America via a traveling carnival and a Methodist preacher. The casting is unreal, the mythology about as interesting as you can get, and it’s one of the most visually stunning shows ever created. The downside: HBO canceled Carnivale prematurely after two seasons, largely because its relatively lackluster ratings didn’t warrant its astronomical budget, despite a rabid, vocal fan base. I’d still recommend the 24 existing episodes, but don’t expect full closure when you’re done.
• I’ll be the first to admit that vampires have jumped the shark, but True Blood ain’t your daughter’s Twilight. And, please, don’t judge the show by the books. HBO took a pulpy, tawdry, mediocre-at-best book series and turned it into a sexy thriller. The first few episodes are slow, but give True Blood a chance. Set in rural Louisiana, the still-running drama focuses on a near-future where vampires have “come out of the closet” and live amongst humans thanks to the invention of synthetic blood. Anna Paquin’s accent grates, but you do get to see her boobs, alongside often-shirtless Alexander Skarsgard and Stephen Moyer.

Any suggestions on replacing Lost?

Tracklist

1. You Can Make Him Like You–The Hold Steady
2. Swim–The Glands
3. Me & Mary–Asobi Seksu
4. The Story I Heard (Daytrotter Session)–Blind Pilot
5. Like A Rolling Stone–Drive-By Truckers
6. Trying Gets You Nowhere–Goodnight Ghost
7. Section 12 (Hold Me Now)–The Polyphonic Spree
8. Chin Up, Cheer Up–Ryan Adams
9. Market Girl–Headlights
10. Chamberlain, SD–Marc Olson and Gary Louris
11. Cut Your Hair (Live)–Pavement
12. Good to Know–Stephen Brodsky
13. Portions for Foxes–Rilo Kiley
14. The Ghost of Genova Heights–Stars
15. Two Way Monologue–Sondre Lerche
16. Cool Yourself–Thao Nguyen
17. Red Light Love–Those Darlins
18. Lazy Line Painter Jane–Belle & Sebastian
19. My Name is Jonas–Weezer
20. Nobody’s Darlings–Lucero

Saturday, May 22nd

Kegs tapped at 6, trivia starts at 7

Teams between 2-8 people

$10/person; includes all the crappy keg beer you can drink

(although we may get one craft keg if we have enough interested)

Cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place teams based on pot

Mulligans: $5 each or 3/$10

Bring your own tables and chairs (what do you think this is, the VFW?)

Dice game AKA CLR. Bring $1 bills

Anticipating record crowds. No, seriously.  SERIOUSLY. RSVP below to ensure room for your team.

RSVP or questions? E-mail kbestoliver (at) yahoo (dot) com

]]> http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/04/06/announcing/feed/ 0 http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/01/17/avatar-sucks/ http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/01/17/avatar-sucks/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:39:42 +0000 KBO http://southcityconfidential.com/?p=265 This is why Avatar is bullshit: James Cameron spent $500 million dollars (sit on that number for a minute…) and couldn’t throw enough money towards the writing team to get more than an offensive collection of hackneyed cliches.He basically said, “Eh, forget the ‘story’. I really want to make jellyfish-like things pop out from the screen. Can we get the guys from District 9, the Transformer-looking motherfuckers? No? Call Michael Bay and see if can help out.”  Not only did I accurately predict exactly what was going to happen (and no, I didn’t really read any reviews), but our crew of four visiting the Tivoli Sunday morning predicted entire lines of dialogue. It was that cliched.   I mean, ****SPOILER ALERT*** is probably unnecessary because the entire plot is predictable as McGuire being on steroids, but I digress.

More atrocities:

• The valuable mineral, indigenous only to a planet six years away from Earth, is called “unobtainium”. No, really, that is what it is called.  This is but one example, the other being the horrid exposition via film noir-ish narration, of this movie assuming their audience is really, really stupid and can’t figure anything out on their own.
• Michelle Rodriguez’s character is, essentially, Ana Lucia from Lost.  They should have just made it a crossover.  Even her lines could have been in Lost: “You’re not the only one with a gun, bitch”. And if you didn’t crack up laughing when she joined the “natives” and the put WAR PAINT on her helicopter, I don’t trust you.
• Of course, the boss of security guy is a ‘roided-out, bench-pressing meathead who actually says shit like “I wanna get home before dinner, boys.” And his ship is called Valkyrie. <eyeroll> I saw Apocalypse Now. There’s a thin line between homage in the form of subtle allusion and unoriginal ripoff, and James Cameron  hurdled far, far over that line with at least a dozen different films.
• Could the Sigourney Weaver avatar be any more desperate looking?  I mean this: if I age half as well as Sigourney Weaver, I’ll be doing fine.  Bitch is a fine-ass middle-aged woman. So why did they feel the need to make her character’s avatar a (Stanford!) cropped-tee wearing coed?

Don’t even get me started on the tired, brokedown, racist-ass storyline.  Actually, I already saw this movie, and it was called 10,000 BC, incidentally the previous winner of worst movie I’ve ever seen, and it involves white guy saving “natives”.  Really?  The Navi are so busted that a self-proclaimed “former grunt” can easily learn and assimilate to their culture through a series of training montages accented with bullshit love story? And then he somehow rides this creature that like only five other “natives” have ever ridden so he becomes the leader?  God, fuck off, that’s so ridiculous.  The problem with movie plots like this is twofold. First, they totally simplify imperialism into obviously-good and obviously-bad teams. Imperialism, while brutal, was and is more often a more nuanced, complex situation.  To suggest that any similar situations would be as overtly cut and dried totally diminishes actual corporate imperialist shenanigans going down right now. Mountaintop removal in Appalachia by coal companies comes to mind. Secondly, using the tired “natives who love nature” (hi, I saw Dances With Wolves) protagonists, and then having the source of all beliefs and actions (the mother-earth type deity) be totally mystical, instead of grounded in, you know, science, makes those of us who do think we need to live more in tune with nature look like crystal-worshipping lunatic treehuggers instead of rational thinkers who understand the limits of our current relationship with our natural environment. So there’s that.

Also, I don’t care if it’s “visually stunning”.  All that does is give James Cameron an excuse to totally neglect the entire plot and execution of the film and make a shit-ton of money.  So it was in 3-D.  BFD.  Did you see the previews for other 3-D movies?  Um, another Shrek shill, Toy Story 3, and some so-awful-I-thought-it-was-fake piranha horror movie?  Is there a law against making a decent “visually stunning” movie that assumes that it’s audience has a brain? So visually stunning that the Navi look like Jar Jar Binks?  It was cool, but not so cool that I can forgive the rest of the film’s asshattery.

FIVE HUNDRED MILLION, bitch, and that’s what they came up with?  You can praise the FX innovations all you want.  I don’t care if you made Janet Reno look like Sarah Palin blowing up the Taj Mahal on Mars with talking rats, if your story is garbage, your movie can’t be worth that much money.

Honestly, there’s probably thirty more completely inane, guffaw-inducing points to be made here, but I’m trying to forget I ever saw this movie, because it made I Got The Hookup look like Faulkner penned it. I’m off to read a book.

What about this? I mean, robots are hot right now, right? I could have told a sitcom starring two people named Dick Christie and Marla Pennington wasn’t destined for timelessness.

In all seriousness, thank you so much for all the comments, tweets, e-mails, and overall good karma after my last post.  I’ve been drafting some form of it for months, and the positive feedback from all y’all made me feel really good about finally clicking “publish”.  Even better, you guys reaffirmed that we should all feel okay talking about our mental health issues, particularly in light of the recent health/insurance reform debate.  Let it be know we need desperately need improved coverage.  Big hugs and inappropriate French kisses all around.

Did we just have a moment?

Moving along, if you didn’t see it already, check out the Novice Foodie this week, as I document my participation in a cooking class.  I made fish joints.  Tasty, tasty fish joints.

Also, I have big, big, big news on Monday.  For me, anyway.

Let’s talk about fall television.  Briefly.  Nothing more than 140 characters per show:

• Survivor should be called Survivor: Stupid/Sociopath Islands. They’ve let the inmates take over the asylum.  Cool if you like overt racism.
• ABC’s Flash Forward has some great potential, if you can get over Joseph Fiennes slow-mo running to overly poignant (read: cheesy) music.WTF?
• Believe the hype about Glee. Any show that realistically portrays gay kids coming out is cool in my book. Plus: Jane Lynch.  No-brainer.
• The Office: still funny.
• The Biggest Loser is ten times better if you DVR it and fast-forward through the bullshit. All of the triumph of the human spirit, none of the soul-crushing product placement.  (okay, this one was over 140, but it’s TBL, so it’s apropos)
• Top Chef: Las Vegas has some of the best chefs we’ve seen. I’m personally rooting for Jen and Kevin.
• Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother give me faith in both CBS and the traditional sitcom. Too bad they split them up to try to force me to watch the misogynistic drivel that is Two and a Half Men. Never.