When MTV’s once-popular reality show The Hills premiered in 2005, it was a simpler time. Lauren Conrad was just a Teen Vogue “intern” living at the Palazzo across from the Grove. Her best friend was a still-human Heidi Montag. And Spencer Pratt was merely a far off nightmare waiting to happen. LA was their playground, and SBE’s popular nightclub Area was the scene of many of their nights out.
She seems to be into it. via SBE
Flashforward to 2010. I don’t feel the need to explain what’s happened on The Hills in the past five years, as MTV’s writers have done a good enough job of that on their own. However, as Area closed down last week, I feel it’s appropriate to take a moment to adknowledge the dead bar that gave the world Audrina, Brody, and Lauren Bunny.
Replacing Area comes Industry, a new futuristic, modern, club. Sounds original. Hopefully Industry can make its predecessor proud and eventually spawn some more trainwrecks that we’ll one day love to hate.
Industry is located 643 N. La Cienega Blvd in West Hollywood.
Those of you who have read previous entries will know that I have little time for the vapid enterprise that is MTV. For me it embodies everything bad about the world today; it is loud, bright, colourful, extremely fast, but has ZERO to contribute to the evolution and betterment of mankind. In fact, it is my contention that modern popular culture, particularly TV, is actively holding the human species back, keeping us in suspended animation while real life passes us by. Keeping us believing that winning the X-Factor is both possible and desirable. Fooling us that Susan Boyle is anything more than an avergely-good singer that Simon Cowell chose to be his latest cash-cow. MTV is the fly sitting atop the cone of dog shit that is modern popular tv.
‘Bully Beatdown’ is the latest offering for the delectation of the cerebrally impoverished. It is a show so tasteless, offensive and flawed that it beggars belief. Ok, the conceit is thus: A couple of wimpy, effete-looking guys have a problem. This problem always comes in the form of some large lump of scarcely-human organic matter, usually called something like ‘Duke’, who has been making their lives a ‘living hell’. Physical abuse, having loud parties, damaging property, refusing to pay rent, are all examples of what these morons do to their semi-female prey to warrant the show’s attention. Now, you might have thought that standing up for yourself, taking legal advice, or calling the police might be a suitable courses of action in such situations. Well, you’d be wrong. What is actually called for is whining to MTV and getting them to offer the bully the chance to fight an MMA professional (and possibly win $10,000) in the hope they will get their heads kicked-in.
The show is presented by a truly sickening individual known as Mayhem. Mayhem used to be a pussy, just like the pussies that called the show. He used to get bullied, just like the pussies that called the show. He decided to stop being a pussy, just like….no wait. Anyway, we see that this contest has two possible outcomes: 1. The bully gets battered and the ladyboys get all the cash, or, 2. The bully wins the fight and pockets some or all of the money. As this is meant to be popular justice, let’s briefly examine what the possible outcomes of this process teach us about right and wrong.
In scenario 1, the more commonly occurring one, the bully is left battered, humiliated, and potless. Revenge is truly sweet, the bully gets a taste of his own medicine and the victims get a decent slice of cash, presumably with which to buy new corsets. This is REAL justice, and, if you haven’t worked it out, if you ever get bullied, the same logic justifies you hiring someone to go and do exactly the same thing, or worse, to the person bothering you. REAL justice is, therefore, the preserve of those who are in a position to hire thugs, or those with access to MTV executives - maybe that’s the same thing. It is about revenge, it is about money. Nice. But is this what the Founding Fathers really imagined for the Republic?
Scenario 2, is even more problematic. Picture this: The pussies call MTV and inform them of their plight. MTV is ’sympathetic’ and challenges the bully to fight the MMA pro. Bully accepts and duly kicks the pro’s arse. Bully departs the scene with a wry smile on his face and 10,000 clams in his back pocket. Pussies are left stood there still feeling aggrieved and now knowing that they are also responsible for their nemesis’ increase in wealth. If that were to happen, would it be possible to sue MTV for any resultant suicide? Worth a thought.
Unleash your inner Guido — Anytime, Anywhere — with the Guidofy, a “super-advanced” new iPhone, iPod Touch application based on by the Guido phenomenon inspired by the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore.
With just a stroke of the fingertips, fans can tan themselves to a tangerine and get heavily-gelled — just like Ronnie, The Situation, Pauly D, and the rest of your favorite beer-guzzling barflies from the year’s most controversial reality smash.
Here’s how it works: Users transform themselves, friends, family, and even pets into well-chiseled Guidos with the help of a computer-generated makeover and a bronzer tool that gives fans the infamous Guido glow. The creators of the Guidofy are winning such rave reviews for the application, they’re already working on a guidette version of the program.
You can visit Guidofy.com for more information. To download the application, visit iTunes.Apple.com.
Anyone who did not grow up in the 1970’s or 1980’s would probably not even know what K-Tel Albums were.
If you grew up in that era, you had a lot of music filling the airwaves…..but very few options on how you could actually own particular songs.
If you had a favorite song…
You could go out and by the whole album in which the song appears…..but if you were like me, you were too cheap to buy a whole album for 1 or 2 songs that you liked, seeing as how you would be stuck with 10-12 other songs that you could not have cared less about.
You could buy a 45-RPM Single record of the song. These were easy enough, but buy enough .45’s and they start piling up all over the house, and having to go to the record player to change the dang record every 3-4 minutes was a real pain in the butt, especially for a World-Class lazy person like myself.
You could get your Ghetto-Blaster or Stereo System with the built-in cassette deck, and you could sit patiently by the radio, waiting for your favorite song to come on, at which point you could manually record it, along with endless chatter by the DJ at the beginning and end of the song in question.
When all those options were not enough, you had K-TEL.
K-Tel Records was a company that produced music albums from the early 1970’s to the mid 1980’s and beyond (Well beyond..). They were the “Mix-Tape” Kings of Record Albums, producing inexpensive Albums which contained a variety of the popular songs of the day. Musically, they were all over the place….. A typical K-Tel Album might feature everything from Barry Manilow, to Kiss, to KC and the Sunshine Band, to Engelbert Humperdinck, all on the same album.
Every K-Tel collection that was ever released was billed as “the greatest collection of hits EVER!!”…..
With such a variety of music, you might only like 10 of the 15-20 songs on the album, but price-wise, it was still the best route to go if you were too cheap to buy an artist’s entire album.
The audio quality of the songs were not always the greatest as the songs were heavily compressed to fit as many songs onto an album as possible. In some cases, songs were actually shortened in order to squeeze in more music.
Think of them as the “Dollar General” of Album production during the 1970’s….
I was heavily into the taping songs off the radio onto cassette tapes myself, but I did own quite a few albums, and a bunch of them were K-Tel Albums.
The company imploded during the DOT.COM bubble of the late 1980’s…..but did not die….
K-Tel International is based in Winnipeg, Canada and is still cranking out music compilations, often under the “As Seen on TV” logo.
If you are shopping in your local “Dollar General” or some other low-end retailer, and you see an amazing collection of modern music at too good of a price to be true……you are probably looking at a K-Tel product.
But, they are still going strong…..bringing inexpensive, cheap music to tightwads around the World!
Former So You Think You Can Dance Canada contestant Romina D’Ugo been dancing for her life since she was a small girl. She does it yet again, this time as the aspiring dancer/choreographer Zoe in the new MTV, made-for-TV movie, Turn the Beat Around (premiering, Friday, February 26, 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific)
In Turn the Beat Around, Romina, as Zoe, partners with a wealthy nightclub owner to take disco from offstage to back on center stage. For a review of the movie, click here.
Prior to the movie’s premiere, The Ride talked to Romina about dance and disco. Here’s what she had to say.
So how has appearing on So You Think You Can Dance – Canada prepared her for the movie?
Romina knew many of the other actors in the movie, who also happened to be contestants on the show, thus making the environment more comfortable. Generally, says Romina, some people (we’re talking about non contestants) take being on the show as asset; others don’t. Although she was in the Top 20 and left the show after 2 weeks, it shocks her that she is still recognized. In the end, she says, the show got her name out there.
So was Romina like the character, working a day job all the while dreaming of dancing professionally?
The most regular, non performing job she’s ever had was a lifeguard at age 15. When no patrons were around, she and a fellow lifeguard used to turn on the stereo and salsa by the pool.
Did she ever want to be a choreographer like her character Zoe?
Yes, especially when she was a little girl. She also wanted to open her own dance studio then and become a veterinarian. In high school, Romina was in a school sponsored choreographers’ workshop, where she and her fellow students got the chance to have their works performed on stage. Romina, who considers herself a “very visual person”, enjoyed the process of having to select the lighting, makeup and costumes for her dances. “The teachers allowed us to put whatever we want on. They allowed us to explore the other side of dance. It helped a lot of my performing as a dancer. “
How did she make the transition from dancing to acting?
Romina’s been dancing most of her life competitively and professionally. She was acting during the same period of time but not professionally. “I loved to do it for fun but I never really knew I could do it as as a career.” After college, she decided to purse acting in earnest.
She sees acting as important key to being a great dancer. For Romina, when dancing doesn’t include a performance element, it becomes mechanical. “It becomes art when you add the acting component.It gets audiences to move, to feel an emotional connection.”
'Turn the Beat Around': Romina D'Ugo and dancers at Jason Derulo music video audition (courtesy: MTV)
‘Turn the Beat Around’ has a disco theme; so what is Romina’s favorite disco song?
She says, “It’s difficult to narrow it down to one. I don’t have a favorite…I love all of ABBA. I love the soundtrack from the movie Mamma Mia.” And although she heard the song “Disco Inferno” numerous times while filming the movie and even afterward at a photo shot, she says she never tires of the song.
It’s no secret that some people aren’t fond of disco music (to say the least). So, I had to ask, why the hate?
Romina thinks that anything that has received such widespread popularity is going to receive some backlash. “It gets to a point where people say, ‘I don’t want to see it any more.’” Some of the hate, says Romina came from rock artists and DJs who she says “got bumped to the side” thus causing some “resentment” and “jealousy” and “started spreading the opposite sentiment towards [disco].” Disco, she says, which celebrates the “eccentric,” makes no apologies.”You either love it or hate it”.
What is her favorite dance style?
Like her favorite disco song, she finds it difficult to choose one. “I love salsa but I need hip hop, jazz, and fox trot too.” Romina loves it when a number of dance styles are blended in one performance. “I’m a medley kind of girl.”
Finale of 'Turn the Beat Around' (courtesy: MTV)
We know about the disco hate, what would she say to those people who don’t want to watch because it’s “disco”?
“It’s not a documentary on disco or a story about disco. It’s about human life,” says Romina. “Everyone has dreams. Everyone has issues. Everyone has things to overcome. It’s a story about personal journey not really about disco itself…It’s a feel good story..And the dance sequences are great. Visually compelling. There are so many elements to watch. It’s about whatever inspires you as an individual. For this character, it happens to be disco.”
Finally, what advice would she give young dancers?
Young girls and boys often approach her. They are afraid to be themselves, afraid to put themselves out there, their souls on display. Romina tells them that they must do it for the audience. “When you are on stage, in movies, or in theater, people see you live full lives, lives that they can’t necessarily live because they have shielded themselves,” says Romina.
“You have to make [your work as a dancer] about personal growth [as well as developing your technique], ” says Romina. “If you don’t add that element, like I said before, it becomes mechanical. When people go to the theater, they want to see your soul; they want to live through you.”
She also tells them that it’s a difficult task that requires hard work and perseverance. “You keep chipping away at this art. Little steps are like huge steps. I tell them not to give up, as cliche as it sounds.”
So one of my all time favorites–Terry Richardson–recently shot the boys of MTV’s the Jersey Shore for an upcoming issue of Interview magazine. A few of the, presumably unused, shots can be seen on Richardson’s web diary*. Bar Refaeli is also rumored to appear in the shoot, which is strange because I never took her for a boob-sling wearing, techno loving, foul-mouthed “guido” but I’ve been wrong before. Lord knows Leonardo is all about the G.T.L. Or not.
Long story short, Terry Richardson is a boss and Mike “The Situation” may or may not have a severe case of razor burn. Less G.T.L more shaving cream, Mikey.
I’ve been having a lot of really crazy dreams lately. I’m not sure what they mean or if they are meant to mean anything at all but I’ve been thinking that maybe I could write some kind of fantastical story from them one day. That is, if I can be bothered to add that to my long list of “stuff I’d really love to do that I never have time for!”
Anyways, I had one dream the other night that felt a bit like a monster horror film. The first part of the dream is a little blurry but I do remember the part where myself and a group of friends were trying desperately to trap a pterodactyl in a dungeon and set it on fire.
This isn't a real pterodactyl by the way... duh!
Goodness knows why I was dreaming about a pterodactyl but it was pretty scary. It was jet black with bright glowing red eyes and no matter how much I tried to prod the thing into this little dungeon, it kept trying it squeeze-out. At one point, I almost set it alight but it wriggled away. It was enormous!
Enough of my crazy dreams… I finally got round to watching and reviewing Thirst. I was in a bit of a reviews-based mood on Monday so I ended-up reviewing Up on DVD as well. Thirst was ok and Up is just amazing.
My review of Thirst
My review of Up
Next week I may review Jennifer’s Body on DVD although I’m unsure how much I’ll actually enjoy it. I’m sure my boyfriend will get some kind of enjoyment from that one (Megan Fox *ahem*)!
I’m currently writing this blog with MTV Two blaring in the background. It’s Fall Out Boy’s Top 20 Comedy Videos. “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne is really bizarre. I mean, Rachel Hunter doing a kinky lap-dance for what is, essentially, a really wee boy is a bit odd. Ah, good old MTV eh? I’m no prude and I do enjoy my fair share of musical MacDonald’s-for-the-ears once in a while, but I guess, it just seems bit too much sometimes.
We’re gearing-up to do our first gig of the year this Friday – These Monsters album launch. Everything seems to be in hand, which unnerves me slightly as something mostly always goes wrong. We shall see. I’m really looking forward to this show though and the bands are really ace plus most of our friends should be down – Friday night party!
Well, this blog post was just a mere distraction from actual work. I better get back to it. Hopefully no more dreams of weird, scary pterodactyls tonight!
Unleash your inner Guido — Anytime, Anywhere — with the Guidofy, a “super-advanced” new iPhone, iPod Touch application based on by the Guido phenomenon inspired by the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore.
