Feeling Old
Due to a combination of a.) wanting to broaden my horizons and b.) having Michelle staying with me, I found myself watching a fair amount of MTV this weekend. I've come to terms with the fact that they don't play music videos anymore (those have been banished to the poor-stepchild MTV2 network.) But everything I saw this weekend indicated that not only am I NOT in MTV's target demographic, I may not even exist in their blond-streaked, body-glittered, text-messaging, Hollister-shopping universe.
Saturday kicked off with a marathon of "My Super Sweet Sixteen," which follows the travails of blond (surprise!) girls - most of them suspiciously from Southern California - planning their ultimate sweet sixteen parties. Not your usual cake-and-candles affair down in Mom and Dad's basement, either. The tearing point for me came when one girl (probably named Madysyn or Ashlee or Mikayla or something equally trendy-cum-mutilated) burst into tears because her father wanted to wear an Elvis suit to the $450,000 party that HE was throwing for her.
From there we moved on to "Laguna Beach," which I'm not even going to bother writing about. It's basically "The OC" but without those pesky concepts of "plot" and "character development", and sans the benefit of semi-professional actors.
I'll give my highest marks to "Date My Mom," in which blond body-glittered girls - noticing a trend? - compete for the affections of a male contestant (inevitably an Ashton Kutcher lookalike in clothes that don't fit) by having their mothers go on dates with him. Think you've seen forced, wooden dialogue punctuated by popular buzzwords? Think again:
Boy: So, I gotta know - does your daughter wear granny panties, thongs or does she just freebird?
Mom: Hee hee, what does Freebird mean?
Boy: Ha ha, I'll take that shit with a side of diced tomatoes! (I am not making this up)
Mom: Hee hee.
If some kid ever referred to my daughter as "that shit" and expressed a desire to eat her with diced tomatoes, I hope I'd counter with something a little more thought-provoking than "hee hee." Like a knuckle sandwich, perhaps.
In short, the MTV you knew as a kid - with the bouncing astronaut, Poison videos and Kurt Loder - is dead. I even found myself sadly nostalgic for "Beavis and Butt-head." Maybe a decade ago, when we were all wearing flannel, smelling like Teen Spirit, and MTV was fawning over us, the "original" 1980s MTV generation was shaking its head at how ridiculous we looked. But at least we knew what the "M" stood for.
And back then they had those bad-ass Stridex commercials. Do they even make Stridex anymore?
posted by Jamie @ 7:42 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Welcome to the old age club, we have jackets. The benchmarks of membership are yawning at 9:30 PM and beginning any sentence with the following phrase, "I need to get up..."
Of course, MTV is only too happy to tell all potential viewers that they are not cool, young, hip (do they use that word anymore?), trendy or sexy enough to be part of the "in" crowd. Maybe part of the idea is that you should want to look/act/smell/talk like the people on MTV, so maybe you'll buy some of the products they use.
And it looks like VH1 is trying to bookend the other side of the market. With shows like Celebrity Fit Club and the Surreal Life, it seems to be trying to reel in thirty somethings who remember who these bozos are.
That leaves us twenty somethings watching Family Guy and Chappelle's Show, lamenting the loss of Friends, and yearning for a time when The Simpsons was still sharply written.
Well, with the dramatic downward spiral that the "traditional" big networks are in, there is very little to entertain people in the evening (daytime watchers will inevitably sit through any drivel) except these pitiful excuses for shows. It's no wonder that so many people our age have turned to the internet for our entertainment and news.
I don't know what you are talking about, America's Next Top Model is fantastic television. Of course, it's on UPN, so the only thing it could do was exceed expectation.
Well, it looks like there are remedies for both of us, Liz.
VH1 is having an "America's Next Top Model" marathon and TBS is having a "Friends" marathon. Looks like they understand what the people want.
Oh, the joy!
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