So I'm sorting through the gym bag that usually keeps vital work-related materials I take to the workplace, pills, work shirt, body spray and random free newspapers I have read on the subway with articles I hadn't finished importing into my brain. Garbage in, garbage out.
I can understand keeping an issue that boasts one of my letters to the editor. Those may not be thrown out except by accident. Whether I should keep them or not. But since it is perfectly acceptable and thoughtful to leave a Metro or Eye Weekly on the subway seat, I have chosen to stuff the most worthless material in my gym bag. So as I throw these papers out it's a review of the year's news that isn't quite news.
Jerry Lewis went to Australia and when asked if he liked playing cricket he said, "That's a faggot game" and did some physical comedy miming use of a cricket bat. So there's an article about GLAAD slapping him on the sturdy wrist and asking him for an apology. Like millions of Rat Pack fans will abandon Jerry for using the "new F-word." It amazes me how lobby groups seem to be in the business of telling people to lie to them. I don't have to pathologize Jerry for being out of touch with the latest edition of Newspeak. But you can understand if he has lingering resentment for the 2002 TV movie Martin and Lewis that was made about him where a guy from Will and Grace - Sean Hayes - played him. I remember saying to a friend after seeing a clip, "I didn't know Jerry Lewis was gay."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318908/
That gives an idea the kind of time and thought wastage results from reading a newspaper.
Did I have to know about that? When Issiah Washington was fired from Grey's Anatomy for calling T.R. Knight the same derogatory term for homosexual, my first instinct was that this is an over-reaction and extremely political (read: cowardly). T.R. crying on Ellen's couch didn't help boost his preferred image as the stoic leading man he was destined to be. Somehow since those articles we have more recent useless information that his role has been reduced on the show since Mr. Washington went to the Bionic Woman (much to the glee of snarky, fey critics). I'll be honest, I thought the Bionic Woman pilot episode was okay and I like Katee Sackoff as a satirical antagonist. A can't comment on Gay's Anatomy, because I've never seen an episode.
Still the new Bionic Woman pales by comparison to the original Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man which have been mired in a legal dispute between Universal and I forget what company. I try to google it and the term "Million dollar" is pretty common and "Bionic Woman" tends to bring up reference to the new-fangled version.
I seem to be finding a lot of blurbs about the apparent comeback of Tom Cruise after having supposedly killed his career. Imagine Tom Cruise in the early days of Top Gun and Rainman, with Barbara Walters bringing in a psychic to tell him this: "You will be very popular for many years until what kills your career is that you are so happy that you jump on Oprah's couch - but of course that's not enough to REALLY kill your career; you also criticise Brooke Shields."
What else hurt him? Of course Sumner Redstone making a point of saying that his behaviour hurt the box office of Mission: Impossible III. I see in another trash blurb that they have since reconciled and had lunch, but only after Tom had to become head of MGA/UA. Old Redstone seemed to be administering the death blow, and he was motivated because his lovely wife had a head full of this disposable tabloid crap. The guy manages to survive as a top Box office draw with a name like Cruise and what almost sinks him is an old man's wife reading the kind of crap I'm now finally throwing out.
What I can't have the pleasure of physically trashing is the sort of "news" feed you get signing into certain websites for e-mail. How do they choose these columnists? It has never been more true that somebody got a job by giving a blow. Do I really want to see an idiot's list of the "forgettable movies of the year" or a rant against Mel Gibson and the gossip about his marriage? Just another distraction. I have to reign myself in or I'll spend all of my time e-mailing incompetant cyber-columnists. Those that actually have a talk-back e-mail provided. Even then, likely it only bolsters the impression that people are reading the shite.
I won't mention a local Toronto film community that has a pressence on the web and sends out shameless viral marketing. I like the people involved but I've had to withdraw from involvement or the loop of promotions. It's too much. You get double and tripple versions of the same link and it takes up space in your Facebook feed even if you sellect "less from" this friend. And again I've had to confront this mentality and I've been told point blank that their columnists deliberately take extreme and controversial positions - many of which are inarticulate and non-persuasive - to get people fired up and attract feedback. I just thought why make myself crazy. Throw it all out. Ignore, ignore.
Now I'll have to look at my mostly blank Day-timer from last year, with its pages used as a notebook for some random ideas and snippets of dialogue. Maybe I'll actually have more time to plan things to do this year if I'm not wasting a little bit at a time paying attention to the sickening void of pop culture.
I should add another note for the sake of the few knee-jerks who might happen upon this blog and take offence at my issues with GLAAD and groups like them: I'm all for gay marriage and gay adoption and all of those many bench marks of progress that won't have an impact on what I want or have to do in my own life. But we live in a climate where we don't know each other and few intelligent people dare say anything that isn't affirmative. I'm not surprised to see a full-page article about the return of Andrew "Dice" Clay to comedy. People may very well need to listen to something that is expressing a very valid feeling of discomfort. I don't think discomfort should be lumped in with fear and certainly not hated to the point where someone's disinterest or a market's disinterest in something is branded "non-inclusive." I think it's great that the net version of Star Trek has introduced Captain Kirk's gay nephew, but I'm not rushing to find out how that is illustrated. Live long and prosper, as long as I don't have to pretend T.R. Knight is cool. Roddenberry was bucking the system to deal with race and staff the Enterprise with a multi-racial crew, but these days to buck the system is to be politically incorrect and outrage lobby groups.
All of this cluttering my head as I haul fresh new garbage out the door.
No comments:
Post a Comment