- As promised, I tuned in for the premiere episode of Greek on ABC Family/ABC and was pleasantly surprised. It’s not a groundbreaking, medium-changing mega-series that will change the television landscape, but the show is still pretty good. It straddles the line between being a drama and a comedy, with geeky lead actor Jacob Zachar providing a few laughs and some other interesting characters making for good viewing. The series revolves around Zachar’s character Rusty as he begins his academic career at prestigious Cypress-Rhodes (doesn’t sound like an actual college, I know) College and looks to join a fraternity. With a roommate who is a “borderline racist”, an overzealous religious individual and an outright geek, a popular sister who doesn’t like to even own up to having a brother and the respective fraternity and sorority members around him, Rusty has a whole lot of adjusting to do. While some of the dialogue is a bit stilted and some parts of the series fall victim to normal clichés about Greek life, for the most part the acting is good and the story is interesting enough to hook you. While I’m reluctant to become too attached to any new series for fear it could be cancelled within a few weeks, I’m on board with Greek and plan on watching it regularly throughout the rest of the summer/fall and I suggest you do the same.
- It’s a two-for-one special in the NBA today on suspending mentally unstable, extremely violent miscreants. Commissioner David Stern has handed down seven-game suspensions to both Stephen Jackson and Ron Artest for separate legal incidents they have been involved in this past year. Jackson pleaded guilty last month to a felony count of criminal recklessness for firing a gun outside an Indiana strip club last fall, when he was with the Pacers, while Artest pleaded no contest in May to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge stemming from a March 5 dispute with his wife, the latest in a string of off-court problems. It’s nearly impossible to be surprised any time these two are suspended; the true shock is if a season passes without one of them being suspended. Remember, they were the most prominent characters in the worst incident in NBA history, going into the stands in Detroit to fight a fan who threw a cup of beer at Artest as he lay on the scorer’s table in protest of a referee’s call. Jackson punched a fan, Artest attacked the wrong guy and the league suffered a ginormous black eye in the process. Both Jackson and Artest have move on from the Indianapolis Pacers, their team at the time of the melee, but they’re actually geographically close to one another with their new teams, Artest in Sacramento and Jackson with Golden State (in Oakland). So maybe these two nut jobs can hang together and attack random people on the street or get a two-for-one special at their psychiatrist’s office to pass the time as they are forced to sit out the first seven games of next season…………
- People do ridiculous and absurd things to get free stuff. Sometimes vacationers attend a sales pitch for a time share to get free tickets to an amusement park, while college kids often sign up for a credit card with an insanely high interest rate to get some free swag. However, I think I’ll draw the line at what I’ll do for something free at having some hack hypnotist try to determine whether or not I’ve ever had sex before. Guess that means I won't be receiving a free ticket to the premiere of producer Ken Davenport’s new off-Broadway show, My First Time. Davenport decided to give a free ticket to any applicant who could prove they were a virgin……..but how to be sure? As it turns out, Davenport believes hypnotist Sebastian Black, a self-named human lie detector, is able to analyze people and determine if they are being truthful about never having had sex. The whole premise of the show is getting people to talk about their first sexual experience, but to me Davenport and his whole hypnotist charade sound like a major gimmick to try and draw attention to his show. I’m not biting, and my guess is that once the free tickets are gone, neither will most theater patrons.
- Raise your hand if you saw a preview or commercial for the new “torture-porn” movie Captivity and said to yourself, “Hey, that looks really good.” No hands? No one? Everyone I’ve talked to who has even a remote idea of what this movie is about and what it looks like in previews has said roughly the same thing: It’s gonna suck. If it can't even make a good impression in previews and a small, small number of people will even consider seeing it before it comes out, how do crappy movies like this get made? Sorry studio execs,
but casting a smokin’ lead actress like Elisha Cuthbert isn't enough to convince most people to see your movie. We can find hot chicks on any TV show and in any movie, so you need more to offer than some T&A and tired, played scare tactics to make people buy a ticket. Cuthbert plays a New York supermodel who is kidnapped and tortured by some mysterious stranger, subjected to rehashed tricks like being buried alive in sand, etc. Predictably, Cuthbert and a fellow handsome male captive hook up during the movie, following another tired cliché. The villain tells us the story of what’s happening, chapter-by-chapter, and it’s an excruciatingly boring ride. Here’s hoping if you’re not smart enough to avoid this movie that you’re smart
enough to walk out by the midway point of it’s short-but-still-too-long run of one hour, 25 minutes.
- In an unsurprising development in the race for the White House in 2008, Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani says he opposes the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Gee, you mean a Republican is against legalizing a helpful, effective drug that can be a great help to patients suffering from debilitating diseases like cancer and the pain they cause? Wow, I’m flat-out stunned by this. What’s next, you’re going to tell me that another Republican candidate favors giving tax breaks to the rich? Or perhaps you’ll tell me that another Republican is openly promoting and financing a totally unnecessary, indefensible war in a country where we don’t belong and sacrificing thousands of American lives in what is actually a civil war we have no stake in, all the while lying to the whole country about what’s going on in the war……….oh, that’s actually true. The day any Republican has the balls to openly embrace a logical, sensical and compassionate stance that incorporates a “radical” notion like legalizing marijuana for medicinal use only will be the day William Hung and Fergie team up to write the greatest album in the history of modern music.
No comments:
Post a Comment