Failure Island

If I were trapped on an island and could only bring one thing with me, that thing would be Jeff Probst.

Reality TV show Survivor has once again cast off (get it?) for what I believe is the forty millionth season.  My knowledge of geography has also expanded to encompass Caramoan, which according to Wikipedia is in the Philippines, apparently.  They've again gone with the Fans vs. Favourites format.  This is awesome because the previously played players playing means that as viewers we have to spend less time waiting for them to become vengeful, manipulative little fucks to each other.  Television at it's finest.

As I looked up from my Mac that was playing Survivor and spotted My Kitchen Rules on the TV in front of me and heard Masterchef recapping from a different point in the house, I got to thinking about reality TV.  More specifically the contestants of these 'programs' and how these 'people' come to be selected for these highly noble, advantageous voyages.

MKR is a show that I'm relatively underexposed to - I've only seen the stuff that's impossible to avoid, ie: the giant billboards, the home page of your local Fairfax publication, the free homeless people blankets they give out at the station - but if I understand this show correctly, eventually hosts Mr. Manic Smile and Le French Guy poison everyone for being completely useless.

Masterchef, which is now based in Melbourne, further elevating our sense of foodie-entitlement (it now wears a cravat), seems to be about watching confident personality types speak to camera about being impossibly awesome then epic-failing under the pressure of a challenge which relates to the thing they said they were awesome at.  Nice follow through, motherfucker.

If I had to (let's say at gun point) compare my life just to contestants who signed themselves up for cooking shows I'd feel pretty good about myself.  I appear to be sane.  I'm not 100% egotistical to point of nausea.  I understand that bones don't disintegrate if you boil the fish for a brief amount of time.

As I pondered the glorious relativity of it all another thought feel out of the sky and hit me like bird shit:  Thats the point!
These show's purposely hire contestants who make us feel some vague sense of good.
By 'good' what I think I mean is superior.
By 'superior' I mean, not epic-failing.

We live in a culture that cultivates failure for it's entertainment value.  Let's face it, failure is pretty much the best thing ever, when it's not you - and watching people fail to the point of epic, makes all your failures seem like successes!  It's a win win! (actually, it's a lose lose - double negative - becomes a positive - BAM!).  There's just something beautiful about watching someone's soufflé collapse after they've applied themselves to some extreme level that it brings them to tears.  Or the awkward stance a contestant adopts when a judge cuts into an undercooked piece of meat, then pushes the plate back towards them.  To me, nothing confirms that my life is on track more.

MKR & Masterchef are perfect examples of the failure-security-blankets reality TV provides.  Best of all it's not just limited to cooking shows.  Often all we need to do is watch people standing around in order to feel that beautiful sense of 'at-least-i'm-not-them'-ism.  This expands our horizons to things that end in Kardashian, Housewives of Guys Who Have a Thing for Girls Addicted to Plastic Surgery,  and Big Brother for the generation born post 1984.

The reality of reality TV reveals that us westernised humans will make successes out of failures.
And there art goes again, imitating life.

Someone should make a show about that.
And call it Next Tuesday,
Dx.

1000 Words: the road trip

As promised this entry shall have something to do with the world being a beautiful place, or whatever the fuck I said.  Let's do this.

It's friday and for us people with jobs that keep the machines of business hours running, we're all about ready to snap.  Violently overturn our desk, throw the computer out the window and tell our bosses they can 'suck it, I quit!'.  But the salvation of a sunny Melbourne evening reassures us that in just a few hours time, we can start drinking.  Then we have two whole fucking days to do whatever.    

Weekends are Awesome.  

Weekends that involve road trips are even more Awesome.

A few weekends ago I went on a road trip and took a fucking fuck ton of photos.  

I then dump the photos into Final Cut and set it to music.  

I then upload the video to YouTube and force all my friends look at it and say nice things to me.  

I then can sleep at night.

I do that sometimes.  Pretty much every time I'm in a passenger scenario on a journey that takes a while, I'll set the camera (Canon EOS 5D MII)  to stalker-paparazzi-mode and capture the absolute fuck out of the situation I'm in.  The result it a choppy sort of time-lapse...thing.    

I call it:  

1000 Words: the road trip

(duunt dunnnn dannnnnnnnnt!)

I always choose a song that is significant to the situation in some way.  To me this song feels both chillaxed and a bit chaotic in spots.  It is also one of the best fucking songs ever and if you don't think so then....we won't be going to Ikea together, ever.

I hope you enjoy it and say nice things to me because I was being serious, my sleeping patterns are directly linked to how much external validation I can absorb - psych! - you can hate it if you like. 

If you didn't vomit from motion sickness all over your pretty top and are interested in seeing more, check out my YouTube channel.  And if you did vomit then you're welcome. 

Maybe rub some soda water into the stain. I'll take it to the dry cleaners, should be ready by next tuesday,

Dx

Ethics. And other shit we pretend to have.

The Grammys recently showered their glorious golden syrup all over our eager faces and I am once again reminded that the world is a fabulous place that simultaneously makes me dry wretch with sweet sadness and vomit sugary coated balls of disgust.

Chris Brown & Rihanna.
Is there really a better example of what's wrong with the world?
Take a seat Global Warming.
Step off eons of religiously fuelled violence.
Calm down threat of nuclear war.
Take a chill-pill likelihood of E. Coli super virus immune to antibiotics.
Go home, you're drunk, starving people of....you get the idea.

The problem I have with Chris Brown and Rihanna, (who I shall now refer to collectively as CBR, which makes it sound more like some catchy auto-tuned virus) is they are successful.  This says more about you and me than it does about them.  Let me explain.

CBR each have a limited amount of talent and each was able to achieve a level of commercial success independently prior to colliding into each other.  This in and of itself is okay, they hadn't done anything too bad just yet.  Pop music norms such as auto-tune, inability to perform live (at least singing, but check out that video they didn't want you to see), the overly sexualised film clips, etc will always be the characteristics of this market that are both easy and somewhat redundant to attack.
Easy because it’s true.
Redundant because they're not going anywhere.

'Bad' in this instance is more about their 'relationship' and to be more specific, the way their relationship has played out publicly, how it will continue to play out and how CBR seem to be now purposely capitalising on it.

I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I'm pretty sure this is what happened:
So, these two were going out - or whatever, and like, tabloids were into that, duh - and then like, one time Chris, like totally punched Rihanna in the face and she like, feel down the fucking cliff, right, and then they were doing some like ninja shit all up the dairy section of the supermarket, and the store manager came out and was like, 'get the fuck out of my store' and then she like, called the police and they came, and were like, 'don't hit her', and he was like, 'I love you, I'll fucking kill you', and she was all, 'take a bow, motherfucker', and then like, restraining order and now they like are fucking again.

Whilst most of that was clearly bullshit, the parts that are less bullshit (they were together, there was violence, then separation, now they're back together) is what makes me really question the relevance of human beings, because we (those of us who are not CBR) apparently crave this shit.  We eat it up like heroin flavoured ice-cream.  We rub it all over our bellies and rejoice in the entertainment value.  We tune in everyday to get our fix and this makes us feel awesome and gives us something to talk about.

Meanwhile most people I know, including myself, find it difficult to get through an entire telecast of a news program (real news ie: ABC, SBS) because why?  It's too depressing.  All financial crisis, and terrorism, and starving citizen's of North Korea.  It's fair to say that I feel a slight disconnect with what versions of depressing we are happy to define as entertainment and what is so depressing we can't watch it.

The real kicker for me, what brought the story full circle, turned my stomach and made me fall into a pool of my own bile, is that clearly CBR are utilising the publicity of their relationship, fuelling the machine that pushes their tabloid trauma on us and furthering the gain for themselves.

Now for some home truths...I have to admit that I like some of CBR's music.  Rihanna seems to have an uncanny ability to deliver catchy songs, and Chris Brown's continued success after the public reveal that he smacks around his girlfriend, was kind of hypnotising.

So hypothetically, is pirating their music furthering their career?  A friend asked me and I was like, I only just got into blogging, like 10 years after everyone else, I don't know who Torrent is...

I promise that the next thing I post will be about how the world truly is a beautiful place.
But I can't escape from the fact that, sometimes, it's just not.

Sometimes it is on Tuesdays.
Dx