Posts Tagged Television

Between the Balloon Boy Hoax and John & Kate, it’s hard to get any actual news on the news these days.  It’s left me wondering (and honestly, despairing) about the apparent popularity of these shows.

My opinion on John & Kate is pretty concrete: The show should never have been made. It’s exploitation of children, plain and simple. To those who claim not: They are using their children to become wealthy. Is this not nearly a perfect definition of exploitation?

For the producers of these shows, the equation is pretty simple.  They want to make money. Reality TV is cheap to produce. There’s no script, so they don’t have to hire writers.  There’s no set or set designers to pay for.  Presumably, the “stars” pick out and provide their own clothing, too, so no wardrobe or costume designers either.  All you really need is a camera crew.

And people will watch. The ratings prove that. Experts call it a combination of empathy and Schadenfreude that keeps them watching: People both empathize with the people on the show, and at the same time, take pleasure in their failings and pain.

I’ve never found anything pleasurable or entertaining about Reality TV.  At its basest level, it’s an oddly interdependent case of voyeurism on the part of the watchers, and narcissism on the part of the people exposing themselves.  Where it’s sad is when some of the people being exposed (particularly children) are not in a position to choose whether that’s what they want.  In both cases, the Gosselins and the balloon boy, the parents are using their children to get attention, and it really does seem that it’s attention, rather than money, that they want.

I can avoid the TV shows, but even then, these people invade the so-called “news” programs to an extent that, even having never watched the shows (and not having watched the coverage of that balloon), I, nevertheless, have been subjected to every detail of what’s going on.

How is this newsworthy?  On celebrity TV shows it might make sense, but as sound-bytes in the middle of an otherwise supposedly serious journalism show?

If these people want to expose themselves, well, go ahead, I suppose, but children who cannot possibly understand what they’re doing should not be involved, and I really wish it would stay the hell out of my news shows.  It’s not news.

I’d also ask that producers bring back good TV with a story, acting, and art.  It might cost a bit more to produce, but at least it doesn’t ruin lives in the process.

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(Click Here for the Photo Gallery of the Con!)

Overall, the Con was just as awesome as it always is, though we saw fewer panels (we really only attended two) and attended fewer events.  There were fewer elaborate costumes this year, likely as a result of the economy, but those that were were some of the most amazing I’ve seen to date.  (Did everyone get  a chance to see that amazing Big Daddy Costume that won the Masquerade?)

BioShock Big Daddy and Little Sisters costume at DragonCon

The only really big disappointment of the Con was the photo-op with Bill Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, which had been the thing we were most looking forward to.  We found out afterwards that the stars themselves were upset about the way the photo op had been run – it was fairly clear that the photographer, Froggy-Photos, had over-booked to make more money and it was rather more like being herded vaguely and forcefully past the actors rather than actually getting to meet them, much less thank them for all that they have done and been to us.  Considering how much we paid for that photo, we most certainly didn’t get our money’s worth, and then to add to the annoyance and disappointment of it all, the photographer lost our photo, and those of several other people.  They re-printed them, but at that point we were disgusted enough that we’d almost have rather had a refund than our photo.  Not only did we have the expense of the photo, we had actually taken off work a day ahead of what we’d intended (losing pay for that day) and taken a hotel room for an extra night just so we could make it to that photo-op which, rather than being a wonderful experience, turned out to just be infuriating and disappointing.

Needless to say, we will not be wasting our money on any Froggy-Photo run photo-ops in the future, and I would suggest the same to others, no matter who the stars are. It’s not an opportunity to actually get to meet the stars, you’ll just get to walk behind them and don’t even have a chance to compose yourself before the flash and you’re herded off.

Dirk Benedict, Bryant, and Me at DragonCon

But before I get too ranty about that, the remainder of the Con, after that inauspicious start, was great.  Thanks to an additional Digital TV channel that got added this year, playing mostly tv shows from the 80′s, we’ve been watching a lot of the A-Team lately.  So we went to the A-Team panel that Friday with Dwight Schultz and Dirk Benedict, which was fun and really unexpectedly touching.  From there, we headed to the Walk of Fame, where we met Dirk Benedict and talked with him for a good long while about his books, one of which we bought and had autographed, and had our picture taken with him. As far as celebrities go, meeting him was the unexpected highlight of the convention.

The unexpected good things continued Friday night as we headed up to Nicholai’s Roof for what was undoubtedly the best meal I have ever put in my mouth.  Neither Bryant nor I had had foie gras before – we may be foodies, but we’re not exactly wealthy foodies – and neither of us like liver, so it was with some trepidation that we headed into the flavors that, for us, were experimental.  There was not one morsel I put in my mouth that was not absolutely heavenly.  If ever there was orgasm inducing food, that was it.

DragonCon Parade Banner

The parade was the next day, and as I said, the costumes were no where near as numerous or as elaborate as they have been in years past, which is understandable as everyone is tightening their belts this year.  Nonetheless, the parade is always fun to attend, and the people we ended up watching it around this year were pretty awesome folks.  We lined up well ahead of the event and had a chance to sit and talk with them for a long time.

We then headed to get in line for the Adam Savage panel.  To be honest, I didn’t expect the line to form as early as it did, but I’m glad I listened to B and we headed on over there.  We managed to be close to the front of the line.  The Sheraton employees proved to be just as rude and obnoxious as last year, but fortunately the DragonCon officials were having none of it.  (Seriously, you guys are my heroes!)  DragonCon continues to be one of those rare places where waiting in a queue for hours can actually be fun and interesting.

Adam was wonderful, as, of course, he would be.  I never did guess what his costume was at the Con (a chewbacca outfit that we must’ve walked past a dozen times and never recognized as him).  He proved to be yet another of those examples where it seems like the stars have just as much fun at the convention as the fans – something that seems to set DragonCon apart from other conventions of its kind.  He talked at length about how Mythbusters became so successful as an educational show rather by accident.  They had set out to entertain, and found out that the scientific method was simply the best way to do what they were setting out to do, and that it gave the show a natural narrative flow.

Saturday night, we went to the DragonCon at the Aquarium event, which was amazing and relaxing.  It was nice to get away from the congestion and the noise, and to sit and watch the whale sharks and mantas seeming to fly across in front of us was absolutely wonderful.

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent people-watching and relaxing and just generally being on vacation.  All in all, we had a wonderful time, and the things that we enjoyed turned out to be the unexpected things.

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I live on a very limited budget, in a rural area where the only cable TV is satellite TV.  So, when I moved out on my own I looked into ways I could cut out some costs.  I don’t watch a huge amount of TV (my leisure hours are generally spent reading or playing computer video games), but there are some shows that I definitely don’t want to miss, and living where I do I cannot be guaranteed even free network TV reception.

But I determined fairly quickly that I could do without satellite or cable TV.  I would have high-speed internet anyway for my gaming, and most of the shows I want to watch are easily available online legally (no pirates here!) through the network websites or through services like Hulu.  Add on a cheap but handy service like Netflix, and there’s very little that I can’t find, somewhere, streaming on the web, and what’s best is that I can watch it on my own time, according to my own schedule.

And I don’t have to watch it on my computer monitor, either.  I can stream it straight to my TV, thanks to things like MediaFox (a version of Firefox built to look good while streaming videos) or Boxee (A wonderful program which helps with streaming content to a TV/entertainment system that aggregates  content from Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and a ton of other providers).

So I can get the shows I want to watch for free (or at least very, very cheap via  Netflix) over the internet with no or very few commercials, or I can pay through the nose for a cable/satellite subscription.  Really, it’s a no-brainer.

Oh, and there are ways for folks outside the US to access services like Hulu or Pandora using proxy services, but I tend to hesitate to give out information on the proxy services willy-nilly, lest they get blocked too!

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