Point/counterpoint (Part II)

Note the lower-case "c."

Having just heard Sarah Palin's speech in Dayton, all I can say is that the GOP has either lost their collective mind or really just wants to spend the next 4-8 years rebuilding.

Honestly, I spent most of it laughing.

They have one weak ticket this year and she is the weakest link. The only card they have left are identity politics, but that could be a tipping point for many.

Point/Counterpoint

Obama/Biden meet McCain/Palin.

On one hand, you could say that this is identity politics, but I reckon that with identity playing such a major role, it may actually mean that they will have to actually focus on the issues.

As of this moment, it looks like another close election--for whichever party wins.

Without A Doubt...

...That was a speech.

I only hope that the Congressional elections will help him fulfill half (and if we are truly fortunate, all) of those promises, because god, our problems are truly that bad.

Sometimes it would be nice if we just had a Prime Minister instead

Not that it should be necessary, but just to underline the point: Yes, I am voting for Obama.

Yet something is amiss.

He doesn't stir me in any way shape or form. It's more case of he's the Democrat, I vote in Wisconsin, Wisconsin is generally a swing state, so voila.

Yes, I understand the importance of the first African-American nominee. I'd be a fool not to note it, but where is the genesis of the hype? (Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Obama = MLK connection, but I'm not the target audience.)


Or have some (not necessarily all) just finally come to the conclusion that the issues most always be more important than the ego?

I've watched the main speeches so far, and while my vote is a given, I find the issues and the plans for the future more stirring than anything else.

I find more solace in the upcoming Congressional elections rather than the Presidental ones, because at least I feel that these issues (health care, education, THE SINKING US DOLLAR) are going to be addressed. However, it seems oddly befitting of our indirect "my vote is really just a suggestion, if you don't mind" presidental electoral system, that we are being obsessively courted by both political parties to vote for a figurehead. (We just happened to have a really ignorant figurehead with several Machiavellis behind him for the past 8 years.)

The true power remains in the collective cacophony that is Congress, and that is where the true battles will be fought, it is where the most innovative ideas will be hatched, and it's where we will have to be vigiliant against the enemies within.

Sometimes I reckon that when we tossed the British out, we made up our minds to have a nation founded on being (irony intended) bloody minded at all costs.

Tuesday Jukebox Just Wants To Shake Its Thang

About 15-18 years ago, MTV ran a promo that featured two "around the way" girls reacting to a supposed controversy over a music video they appeared in. For some bizarre reason, I still remember their lines.

ATW Girl 1: "They just told us to shake our thang..."
ATW Girl 2: "...real fast."

It is the spirit of those two girls (read: actors) that brings us to today's jukebox, featuring Japanese trio YA-KYIM, which seems to best personify Japan's answer to booty-shaking music.

To be blunt, these women are fierce performers when it comes to dancing. (Vocally, they're no SOULHEAD, but booty-shaking music is not so much about great singing.)

Let's start off with their latest Super Looper, which really seems to be...well, I have no clue what the video is all about, but it does make you want to shake it...fast.



YA-KYIM - Super☆Looper

We're going backwards in their career, which means that the next stop is 2007's Superstar.

YA-KYIM - Superstar


And our final stop for the day is the lyrically nonsensical, but damn catchy Happy The Globe Part II from 2005.



YA-KYIM [Happy The Globe Part II]

Bonus: Korea's own booty-shaker Moon Ji Eun's performance of Unsure Unsure from this past July. Considering how conservative Korea is, it's amazing that she got away with basically slutting it up for the cameras. (Although I reckon the lyrics are probably tamer than When I Grow Up.) The beat could be faster, but she certainly gives it her all (no double entendres intended).

Moon Ji Eun - Unsure, Unsure (20.07.2008 Inki Gayo)

Please Don't Rock Me...Baby

New York is woefully unprepared to deal with earthquakes, says a study from Columbia University.

Even though I'm going to be leaving New York in less than a year, this is news I do not want to hear.

Hell, anyone who lives above the 3rd floor does not want to hear this!

Let's think happier thoughts about rocking:

Kara ~ Rock You
Uploaded by JonnyHill

The August Video Log: Better Late Than Never

When will this month end?

Or is that the point of August?

All this in the out-of-sync video log for the eighth month of 2008.

Sunday Jukebox Goes Yugo(slav)

While the August Video Log is uploading, let us go back...

Once upon a time there was a country that was communist with a little "c." Sure, the Communist party ran things and pretty much dictated what went on, but it liked to do many things outside of the Eastern Bloc, such as buy Western aircraft for the national airline, participate in multinational singing contests, and send chirpy ditties about men being pricks.



The bitter theme seemed to work well for the Yugoslavs, although some of the entries were a bit ahead of the time. Apparently, Brazil makes a lot of sense when you view it as a socio-economic commentary about that country as opposed to a song about some washed up singer trying to get her end over in South America.



Or maybe it was the woeful performance in Rome.



In my opinion, the Yugoslav entries were actually at their best in the 1970s, where you couldn't tell whether they were being darkly comic or just depressing.

1971 (And he really brought the bipolar emoting live)



1973



1974 (It is supposed to be wry, seriously)



1975 (The group's name translates as Blood & Ashes, by the way)



1976 (the ultimate "I-hate/love-you" entry)



Given what we know now, it is rather surprising that Yugoslavia's only win was with a song devoid of any emotion whatsoever...although it could be interpreted as a commentary on the rest of the world ignoring the fact that the country was going to fall apart at any moment.



On second thought, it's just a daft number that happened to just luck out.

When Criminals Don't Even Want Your Money...

First it was the Supermodels saying they want to be paid in Euros.

Then it was shops in the US accepting Euros.

Now organised crime and drug dealers are--according to the ABC--wanting to conduct monetary transactions in currencies other than the Canadian & US dollars.

Ouch.

Friday Jukebox Goes Danish (part 2)

It's Media Day here at this corner of the internet and the Jukebox is honouring/roasting Danish Eurovision entries from the 1980s and 1990s. On with the show!

1990: Lonnie Devantier may look and move like Denmark's answer to Tina Turner, but I don't think Tina will be covering Hallo, Hallo at any time in the near future.



1992: Alt det som ingen ser may sound like a classic German oompah-pah-pah band drinking song as sung by demure schoolteacher and a hair rock singer, but if you read the lyrics it's really about justifying one night stands. Damn catchy without a doubt.



1997: Denmark sends a rapper with a song about harassing the phone operator. Danish is oddly suited for orchestral rap.




1999: The song takes a second place to the interesting body language between sex-on-legs Michael, his confidence and slightly nervous Trine. I reckon it's better in Danish, myself.



We won't mention 2000...hehehehe.

Bonus: As much as I like Denmark, I have to say that Wogan really nailed the annoying presenters in 2001.



Then again, my personal taste was for the slick and cool Swedish presentation of the year before.

Friday Jukebox Goes Danish (part 1)

With all those reports about Denmark being the happiest country in the world, I reckon it's time for a Danish Eurovision prespective.

1981: Denmark sends Danish Tommy Seebach and the US-born Debbie Cameron with a bouncy song about racial harmony.



1983: Denmark sends a perky woman in fashinonably ripped clothes to tell us that the world is spinning.


1984: Danish group Hot Eyes begins their 2 year run of representing Denmark. The first entry pretty much sets up the formula: do a 2-step to a happy synth beat, and a key change.


1986: Trax (supported by Danish dancers with rickets) tell us we are full of lies, even fact we're real all out scummy, but at least she's doing it to the jauntiest beat imaginable.



1988: Hot Eyes is back, and Kirsten is heavily pregnant. Whether there's a running gag here or not I'm not certain, but the song's title roughly translates as "Can you see what I said?" and it is sung by a chastising pregnant woman...




1989: Denmark gives perenninal Melodi Grand Prix runner up Birthe Kjær an ode to graffiti.

The New Season: FOX

Alright, News Corporation Propaganda Arm, make me care about you*:
* Out of courtesy to the other networks, I'll keep my critiques limited to just the Fall premieres.

• Do Not Disturb: Now this show has been getting lots of promotion. The idea is basically a retread of Faulty Towers, with Jerry O'Connell as Basil and Niecy Nash as Sybil, except they aren't married. This show is interesting in that it started out with O'Connell being the one with the show resting on his shoulders, and Nash just part of the ensemble. Now they are hyping up Nash as much as possible. Even more interesting is that I reckon that even if the show fails (and the odds are against them, let's be real), Nash's star will continue rising and O'Connell gets no career boost. Worth watching if only to see if there's any on-set tension spilling out into the performances.
• Fringe: This is just as confusing as next year's Dollhouse, but at least it's being promoted that way. At the risk of turning people off, I am going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone can do drawn out make-it-up-as-we-go-long series, it's J.J. Abrams. The man made a show about a lovelorn college student extremely complex, engaging--complete with time travel--and it still seemed believable. I'll definitely give it a shot, and I reckon it'll stumble into another season. (Hell, Prison Break is still on.)

Wednesday Jukebox is AAA

AAA is rather hard to categorise. There's 7 members (5 male, 2 female), they all dance and sing, but their sound varies wildly between electrothrash and the omnipresent cute side of JPop. If you remember the '90s Mickey Mouse Club band The Party, that might be a good comparison...except I reckon nearly nobody remembers them.

AAA (short for Attack All Around, which begs the question "what or who are they attacking?")'s latest release is the schitzophrenic double-side single MUSIC/ZERO.

MUSIC is from the frothy side.


ZERO is clearly isn't. (Well it is the theme song for a show called World Destruction, which is actually more upbeat than the video--seemingly)



I'm inclined to believe that the sugary sweet side of AAA is pretty much on the wane. This is a group whose first single was entitled Blood on Fire.

The New Season: the CW

aka the network designed to make anyone over 15 feel decrepit.

The CW is like Fox in the late 90s: trying to shock everyone while actually really just doing variations on the same theme: Teens seemingly behaving badly. (All that depth  in characterisation that the old WB teen dramas had is g.o.n.e.) 

Driving this point home is a resurrected 90210, to which I have to say: why? The show only went off the air 8 years ago, and I just see this falling flat. (By the way, why didn't the CW wait 2 more years so the show could have a premiere date of 9/02/10?)

Then there's the pointless Privileged, which seems to mostly ride on the whole Gossip Girl bandwagon. I don't know about you, but how can this show be of interest to any sentinent being? Idealistic young woman become tutor to 2 self-absorbed brats in "Palm Beach." Sounds more like a low-ranking TV movie from the 1960s rather than enough to base a whole TV show on. It's like a very shallow version of Up the Down Staircase in reverse.

In Harm's Way sounds like it was aiming for the Discovery Channel but wound up on the CW instead. Apparently the network thinks no one else has seen early evening basic cable.

Since the CW is living in a timewarp, they have also come up with Valentine, which seems to channel both the failed series Cupid and The Addams Family. I see another bomb here as well.

Finally, the network bizarrely rips off ABC's Dirty Sexy Money, which is not exactly setting the Nielsens on fire, with Easy Money. All I have to say is that Laurie Metcalf must've been hard up.

The CW: You ignored them before, you'll ignore them again.

When In Doubt Raid The Archives

The Banana Splits are back.

In a decade where there isn't even agreement on a name for this period of time, perhaps the plethora of adaptations are a way of giving a sense of comfort and reassurance.

...Or just lazy execs.

The New Season: ABC

So what does the Mouse House have in store for us for 2008?

Very little that's new, to be honest, and can you really blame them? They've got our eyeballs in a vice grip, ratings-wise, so why rock the boat? 

But here are the few freshmen:

• Opportunity Knocks: A game show where apparently some game show just plops itself on the front lawn of some family, asks them questions about themselves and the crap they own...or something along those lines. Personally, I don't see the point, except that it's asinine. For some reason, ever since those days of Who Wants to be A Millionaire, ABC is hellbent on having some primetime game show. 
• Life on Mars: Adaptation of the BBC series of the same name about a NYPD cop who goes from the present day back to 1973. I found the original ambitious, but confusing. That said, this might have some legs, and may actually make it through the year. Not appointment television for me, but the appeal is there for the Grey's crowd. (Life will follow Grey's Anatomy.)  

You Must Be Kidding Me, NBC

Even though for the most part I've been content with switching from Uncle Charlie at ABC to Brian-is-he-stoned-Williams at NBC, I must say that NBC in Olympics mode is insufferable. 

Yesterday, Nightly News didn't get to any non-Olympic coverage (Hurricane-to-be Fay, Obama-McCain at the gluttonous preacher's hoedown, the conflict in Georgia) until the last 15 minutes. 

I understand Phelps-mania, but shouldn't he get the last 15 minutes as opposed to the first?

Naughty, naughty, NBC.

From the "You Must Be Joking" department

Marie Claire magazine declares Milwaukee the "sexiest city," according to an article in The Journal Sentinel. 

They have the most ridiculous rationale whatsoever, in my view:

"A long list of summer festivals, moderate seasonal temperatures and upcoming events such as the Governor's Cup weekend at the Milwaukee Mile, Arab World Fest and the Harley-Davidson 105th anniversary celebration made Milwaukee the G spot - as in a go-to spot, for those of you with your sex-crazed minds in the gutter."

It's spelled C-A-R-T-E-L

You could argue that all these airline alliances are cartels of some sort, but this BA-AA deal is just a little bit too cozy for comfort.

"We believe our proposed co-operation is an important step towards ensuring that we can compete effectively with rival alliances and manage through the challenges of record fuel prices and growing economic concerns," said Gerard Arpey, chairman and chief executive of AMR Corp, the parent company of American Airlines.

Oh really?

If two of the most largest airlines on the planet can't make it work...

Seriously though, this is some serious spin. Granted fuel prices are hitting every business (especially airlines) hard, but please! I'd like to believe that the US government won't approve it, but you-know-whom and his ilk are still in power until January of next year, so it just might squeak through.

August has failed to live up to the hype (so far)

Before you start wondering if I've lost my mind, let me just point out that this particular August was supposed to be action-packed: the Olympics, the DNC, and every tense point in between.

What have we gotten instead? An Olympic games that is like a suburban housewife smiling on the outside waiting for her Percoset to kick in, an almost surreal conflict between Russia & Georgia that is playing out as if it's 1966, and the presidential candidates are sniping at each other like two drag queens giving each other shade--because really there is seemingly little policy difference between the two.*

* That being said, all those "Gore & Bush are the same" people from back in 2000 should eat their words, given what has transpired over the past 8 years.

Times were that even in the slow month of August, there would at least be a new season to look forward to. Fox used to roll out its shows starting in August, but not this year--unless you consider the return of the very suspicious Moment of Truth notable.

The new season--which I'll get into as it gets closer (mid-September! You lazy network bastards had extra time plus a political convention bump--which means people will definitely want non-political programming--and most of you programming execs aren't rolling out shows until mid-September!)--is relatively lacklustre, in my opinion. The only new show that I'm interested in is Kath & Kim (because it will be a car crash, even with extremely talented leads, since NBC has a near perfect record with screwing up adaptations when they should actually just let the writers and performers DO THEIR JOBS) .

Oddly enough, the only new appointment television I've found are the old UPN sitcoms now in reruns. I had studiously avoided All of Us during its original run mostly because I despise Will Smith and suspected that it would be another one of those "moral of the week" shows, and have found that surprisingly it isn't. It's flawed, and I can see why it's cancelled, but it really isn't half bad. As for Half & Half, I didn't even know it was on. (Did anyone know what was on UPN beyond America's Next Top Model & Everybody Hates Chris? And this was UPN's 4th most popular show!) Again, it turned out not to be a "moral of the week" show, and despite some journeys into hack joke land, it showed a lot of potential. Plus there's the added bonus of seeing which old black star from the late 1970s/early 1980s will turn up in any given episode.

Yet to end on a lighter note, it is probably good to have a quiet month to garner up strength before the chaos that is September/October/November/December (four months which seem to fly by in a nanosecond).

Tuesday Jukebox Remembers Isaac Hayes

It takes sheer genius to make Burt Bacharach* songs deep and soulful, but he did it with ease.






* Don't get me wrong, I like Bacharach & David, but the original orchestrations do come across as a bit shallow.

Tuesday Jukebox Watches Daichi Miura Grow Up

Meet Daichi Miura, former child JPop star turned young adult JPop star. (In 12 days he can drink in the US, and he was born in 1987! I remember 1987--vividly--I'm getting old.)

Anyway, Daichi was originally part of a group called Folder, around the time he was 10, and as Wiki.theppn points out, he split when his voice changed. Personally, I think he's better now than as a preteen, but judge for yourself.

The Folder years:







It's pretty standard for any prepubescent male singer to tackle Jackson 5, but he manages a decent job with I Want You Back.



And as a solo artist:







Bonus: Completely unrelated to Daichi, here is something for the comedy files. The jukebox has already paid tribute to Mika Nakashima as well as SMAP, so it's quite appropriate to see what happens when the two collide. This past July, Mika along with a female comedy troupe released a single called I Don't Know under the name MICA 3 CHU. MICA 3 CHU went on SMAP's show and as always the SMAPers perform with them. Given that this is a collaboration with a comedy group, I'm going to say that the lyrics are meant to be funny, but what even makes it funnier is the earnest performance of SMAP--even though I reckon everyone onstage pretty much knew that they were singing a bunch of nonsensical English--and the aural/visual pleasure of seeing a demure Mika Nakashima (via Bif Naked) and a surprisingly mellow Masahiro Nakai sing "you've got a lot of balls."