The Deadly (Kinder)Garten of Television

Television is the subsidized ersatz "intelligence" provided by your culture so you don't have to go to "all that work" of thinking, and of course it is the best thing going next to drugs.

And since I can't tolerate drugs I have to tolerate television.

It's the closest I can come to mind-altering substances apart from poetry, and that gets old sometimes.

Vincent D'Onofrio.

I remember he had such promise as an actor. I still watch his crappy version of the Law & Order franchise (reruns) and I always get irked. He's a good actor. And I'm shocked to find I now find him sexually appealing. I never did before. It must be the intelligence. Well, that and the way he can bend over at the waist so appealingly. He's one of those men who improves a quality suit. That was something actors did so well in the thirties. The waist thing. Remember when men knew that trick. Well, Montgomery Clift was still doing it in period pieces to perfection. Vincent can do it too, and he's a big man. A big man with craggy, rather unattractive features. The old joli-laid thing. Vincent D'Onofrio is like Vince Vaughn without the immaturity and ADD issues. Which means he isn't going to make nearly as much money in this culture.

I just get irritated because he's in every fucking frame of that show. Is that the only reason he does the show. And I get it. He's canny. He's wily. He outsmarts the criminals. It's like Miss Marple but with testicles. I feel so bad for his main female costar because she's so relegated to mousy sidekick. Sometimes she gets to hold her gun and that's about as good as it gets. She's only there to parrot his thoughts and marvel at his wisdom. And the black guy. Same deal. Everybody else on the show is just this drywall the producers found down at Home Depot. Oh well, I guess it's a paycheck.

And maybe Vincent is a nice guy, good father, and took this role so he could be home at night and show love to his kids (if he has kids). I don't read celebrity bios that often. He could do worse than being a multi-millionaire with a relatively easy job.

The writing is pretty crappy and predictable on most episodes, although tonight there were a few decent twists on the one episode on the gifted kid whose father murders some people to get him into a prestige school.

It's just I remember when Vincent was "the next big thing." I remember his funny cameo as Orson Welles in the one Tim Burton film. But did he do that awful The Velocity of Gary gay movie? Or am I misremembering. I imagine he thought that was "edgy" but it was just crap. Okay, maybe that wasn't him.

Sometimes the Gary Sinises Vincent D'Onofrios etc. etc. of the world all start to blend together into that crappy white man trying to recapture the wholesome white hetero hero of the movies of old, actors like Glenn Ford or Henry Fonda. Okay, Henry was a slightly better actor I guess than Glenn Ford. But I could take or leave them both.

Give me the creep actors. Peter Lorre. Emil Jannings. Even James Cagney will still make some viscera vibrate in your body. And they were all funny too.

Why am I talking about all these dead white people.

I should talk about actors in different shades.

Okay, the guy in the Old Spice commercial is hilarious. Somebody cast him in a movie. He's on a horse. Perfect timing to that commercial lol.

It's scary when you start to realize that Johnny Depp probably has one of the widest ranges of any actor in his generation. But it's probably true. I loved when he played those two diametrically opposed parts in Before Night Falls. That was such a mindfuck. And he was sexy as both. God, what a great movie that was. Javier Bardem. Wow.

I'm horrified just thinking about that new Ryan Reynolds movie, Buried. They showed a few clips and I felt like I was going to throw up. I know it's gimmicky but I can't deal with that claustrophobia.

I think the Spanish director (is he Spanish?) is in love with Ryan. The way he gushes about him. Scary.

Lee made me catch up and watch the dvr'ed American Idols.

I'm largely indifferent to all these people this year. I guess Lily (Lilly?) is my favorite. I love the way she makes whore eyes at the camera. They're all coached to do that but she's like a vintage Californian porn star with that look, those eyes. She makes me feel all sleepy and woozy. I loved the Beatles cover she did.

The girls are pretty amazing this year, but there are too many hippie, jazzy chicks.

Too many of them are doing similar things.

Crystal Bowersox is pretty good and you just know she can do the Joni Mitchell thing and a bunch of the other classic voices. It's okay to do those types of singers again now that jazz has vaguely infiltrated pop music through about a dozen mega-successful female artists.

And everybody keeps saying that a bunch of the girls sound like Estelle (that her name?) or Duffy?

Why don't they go back to the source and say the original singer/songwriter they all sound like is Laura Nyro. Did everybody in the industry already completely forget her? See what happens when you get cancer in your forties and leave the party early?

I think it was a crock that America sent Joe Munoz home. He has an amazing timbre and I love that he covered a Jason Mraz song but it was a Jason Mraz song nobody really knows. Mraz is one of the best songwriters going and isn't half done developing (I see him having the longevity of a Tony Bennett but with even greater pop success) but if he had done one of the poppier (if a tad annoying) songs like "The Remedy" he might still be on the show. But maybe not. It's so looks based, the show, and he does have that Mexican lycanthropic eyebrow thing going on, sort of like a more werewolfy young Ben Stiller. But I loved his voice. It's just his phrasing was so weird on the song. Which is funny to say, because if anything makes Mraz stand out as a songwriter, it's his absolutely genius sense of phrasing.

So they kept the crappy kid that looks like gay California porn (they got rid of one of the crappy kids that looks like gay Cali porn) over Joe Munoz.

And they kept Haelay (or however the fuck she spells her name) even though her performance was like putting cats through a blender.

When they sent the latina chick home, she was PISSED. She looked like she was going to put a knife through somebody. Usually, the girls fall to pieces or show their chipper, plucky spirit, but she was ready to rumble. She bit those words off when Ryan was grillin' her. It was unfair. She was better than some who stayed.

I like the boy with the mullet (awesome voice but may prove too one trick pony) and the country singing boy (with the two Mommys) has got to get over the shyness and stop doing country songs that nobody knows or he'll be history, even if he does get the young girl and middle age pedophile votes each week.

The guys in general aren't as strong as the women this year, but there are a few that could really surprise.

I think the Oscar for best performance by an actress this year should go to Cynthia George for her role in that real life murder.

I've seen that case covered on about eight different networks and I can't believe she got sprung.

She so had her lover killed. He was a bit of an asshole, but it was the father of her one child and she only had him killed to keep the rich, stupid husband.

I loved her performance seated in the car outside the prison when they asked her what she will tell her kids (she has a bazillion but nannies raised them---the nanny gives the real dirt in all the documentaries) when she gets home, and she replied "Clean this place up!" with an endearing Mom-the-Murderess smile.

The husband is still standing by her.

He's like twenty years older and doesn't have many brain cells left.

If she hadn't been a former beauty queen, she'd still be eating tuna in the pentientiary tonight.

I smell a series of judicial blowjobs.