Quotulatiousness

June 25, 2011

“How very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid”

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:23

I think my niece mentioned this show over dinner the other night. Ilkka explains:

I recently watched two episodes of “Swamp People“, another low-budget realimentary that sets the camera to follow people with exciting and physical jobs and edits the result down to a highlights reel of action and drama with some narrative added on top. The show not only reminded me of the essay “Rednecks” by Fred Reed, but also of Tommi’s old observation of how very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid, really just simple and predictable automata. Armed with but a boat, a baited hook and a shotgun, these fellows hunt, kill and pile up 500-pound prehistoric monsters that will then be given a more useful and productive existence as delicious meat, suitcases and boots. Come on, you can’t tell me that this show doesn’t beat the initially amusing but then later just repetitive and a little bit too obviously scripted “Pawn Stars” any day…

June 9, 2011

Arizona’s First Police Armoured Division goes into action

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Earlier this year, facing a looming threat, with ordinary police procedures considered too ineffective, Arizona teamed up with Hollywood for a solution. Rather than sending a squad car to serve the warrant, Maricopa County unleashes the awesome armoured power of the 1st SS Panzer division police plus actor Steven Seagal:

We have previously followed the feudal system created by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona. Arpaio’s insatiable desire for media attention has led him to turn over areas of his office to Hollywood producers. Last week, Arpaio’s unhinged administration gave the public another bizarre scene as Steven Seagal was seen attacking a home with a tank, armored cars, bomb robot, and dozens of SWAT team members. The crime? Suspected involvement in cockfighting.

The police acknowledge that there was no evidence to suggest that the man was dangerous or that he was armed. He was indeed arrested without a struggle and no guns were found in the house. Well, without a struggle on his part. The armored Seagal attack blew its windows out and caused the neighborhood to think that an invasion was afoot. The huge operations (and its attendant costs) was basically a stage set up to give Seagal good footage for his reality program, “Lawman.” Seagal is shown riding in the tank in the assault on the suspected cockfighter.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

October 29, 2009

An appreciation of Norm Abrams . . . and a hearty damnation of ‘Reality TV’

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

By way of a Twitter update from Gerard van der Leun, an entertaining post from Sippican that combines a farewell to TV woodworking great Norm Abrams and a nicely judged condemnation of that modern atrocity called “Reality Television”.

Norm Abram is the penultimate example of true “Reality TV.” He made real things, and encouraged others to do so. No pretense. Not a scam. The balloon boy’s father will get his 15 minutes, but being part of Katie Couric’s nightly geeks and freaks sideshow act is a virtual reality, it’s not real real. He’ll get a book deal or an ankle bracelet, maybe both, but he literally contributes nothing to the sum total of the world’s worth. If you count up just the Twitter time he wasted, which is all waste anyway, he was the most destructive force on planet Earth for a week. But you didn’t have to look. I didn’t. You can’t even dissect him as an example of a media frenzy, because there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s all just stupid.

“Reality TV” is an absurd concept to people that live in the real world of work and worry. They get reality every day, they don’t need a faux one to amuse themselves. Cubicle-bound endomorphs think a contest that looks like figuring out a subway map, a bus schedule, and an airport tote board is an “Amazing Race.” Catching a trolley is not a bloodsport, no matter how heavy your backpack full of energy bars is. Adults going camping while participating in activities too silly and sedentary for an overweight child’s summer camp, with office politics thrown in, hardly makes them a “Survivor.” I’m told that when you’re all done watching all this onTV, you’re going to weave your own clothes and barter with your next-door neighbor, the grizzly bear, with Kruggerands. Sure you are.

There actually is one hint of unreality to Norm. The workshop isn’t his; not many people know that. It belongs to the producer of the show. Norm, as successful as he is, has been dragging his ass to the factory every day as if he was just another schlub.

October 20, 2009

Only in America? Yup.

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:18

Colby Cosh makes a convincing case that “the hoax apparently cooked up by world’s-worst-dad frontrunner Richard Heene” could only have happened in America:

Richard Heene obviously wanted to be an experimenter-entertainer in this American, Edison-meets-Barnum tradition. He was, allegedly, willing to embroil his family in a criminal conspiracy to advance the cause. His determination was so total, he doesn’t seem to have given any thought to the possibility that the suspected domestic-violence complaint recently investigated at his residence might be revealed. What sealed his fate, though, was a near-total lack of genuine scientific knowledge or understanding.

When it comes to detecting folderol, television networks have a poor track record, but even the suits at ABC detected the stench of flim-flam on Heene, who had been a success on their series Wife Swap. His pitch to the network consists of a mix of tiresomely familiar classroom experiments, untrue folkloric claims he obviously didn’t bother to double-check, plain nonsense and furiously-brainstormed wackiness (“How long can we drive before having to pee?”). Even an explicitly stupid show made by a presenter who still thinks of lasers as enticingly novel would surely be unlikely to succeed as entertainment. There are fools all over the world, but the awesome chasm between Heene’s ambitions and his actual abilities — and the sheer disrespect he had for his own limitations — that, I think, could only be found in today’s America.

September 10, 2009

Criminals get creative, use “reality TV” ruse

Filed under: Europe, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Apparently, “reality TV” does have a use: it allows criminal gangs to kidnap women and sell their pictures on the net:

Turkish military police said today that they had stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine women held captive after being tricked into believing they were reality TV show contestants.

The women were rescued on Monday from the villa in Riva, a summer resort on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to a spokesman for the military police in the region who carried out the raid. He said the women were held captive for around two months, but refused to provide further details.

The women were led to believe they were being filmed for a Big Brother-type television programme, according to the Dogan news agency and other news reports. Instead, their naked images were sold on the internet by their captors.

Given what could have happened, these women seem to have gotten off quite lightly . . . and it raises the question of whether this has been done/is being done in other areas.

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