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I got off work early this morning. Tonight is the only night I get off in a span of seven days, so it would be a good time to focus and invest some sweat equity in elbow grease and pound some digital pavement. But why would I want to do that? Or I could catch a healthy sleep cycle. Who am I, Robert Van Winkle? No, that was Vanilla Ice. What was the name of the guy in the story who slept for twenty years? Terrence Malick?

I was reading a Chuck Klosterman book Jerome lent me this morning when I got a completely novel idea invented by me alone that’s called “plagiarize Chuck Klosterman.”

The guy whose idea I am stealing.

See, this is my first experiment with live blogging (?) in which I will be embellishing this blog throughout the course of this. Yeah, apparently I can edit and add on to posts after I publish them. In the future, I plan to make outrageous claims and then delete them from the post after being called out, thus making comments against me appear delusional. If this works as the internet is supposed to, as this thing grows it will counter-intuitively get less substantial and more addictive (not necessarily to you, the reader, but hopefully at least to me). I have started at VH1, and I feel such an acute sense of dullness that time has already grown fuzzy and abstract. I’m hoping to counteract this painful disinterest by starting on a unit of the great/poisonous beverage Four Loko. I will try to watch nothing but actual video based music programming today in an effort to catch up with what is above the radar.

So far, as I have written 400 or so words of drivel, I think VH1 has played at least 40 videos, of which I vaguely recall 2. John Legend has a nifty tune that put a smile on my face courtesy of Andre 3000. Damn I love that guy. He’s about the only guy I know who really does make sobriety look fun. Then there was one I saw twice I’m pretty sure with a buxom blonde straining to look mature. This was done mostly with that low-depth-of-field style that somebody apparently thinks is still the height of artistry. This makes most of the image a semi-abstract blur while a thin slice of space is sharply in focus. In case you didn’t notice, she makes a point of bobbing into and out of that narrow strip of focus. Either this is purposeful or she can’t hit a mark. It is very confusing and frustrating to how many males watch television when an objectified female’s face is in focus, but her cleavage is not.

And off we go! I’m liveblogging! This is sooo crazy and interactive and it happens in time that is almost real! Join me on the comments if you’d like to document for internet posterity what you’re up to when you should be working! This is so hyperpresent! I’m taking a break! See you in a bit.

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This exercise is proving useful as I’m finding out who many temporary pop stars I keep reading referents to actually are. Turns out that lady with the funny name I already forget again is a buxom blonde. Who would have guessed? Maybe the media is not evolving as fast as they say it is.

The Killers are now performing in the middle of a canyon now failing to evoke either U2’s The Joshua Tree or Pink Floyd’s “Live at Pompei”. I’m not a big fan of the Killers, as their transparent attempts to recall more resonant acts highlights only their own flaccidity.

This VH1 countdown is constantly telling me to stick around for the premiere of a video by some female “first-and-last-name” act I’ve never heard of. Every reminder and sneak peak makes me care less, and I really did not care to begin with. You could say my level of concern is now “Less Than Zero”, which is both an Elvis Costello song I’d rather hear and a Bret Easton Ellis based ’80s yuppiesploitation cocaine movie I’d rather be watching. Robert Downey Jr’s first memorable (fictional) portrayal of a drug-addled, out-of-control, over-indulged wastrel maniac. Great soundtrack, too. LL Cool J was ambivalent about returning to the West Coast.

Kelly Clarkson continues to be accessibly cute and fun to listen to with some song that sounds an awful lot like “Since You’ve Been Gone”. She’s very good at doing the poppiest, most whitewashed version of the Pixies’ soft-loud dynamic possible. And singing in the accusatory second person. She’s still out there, creating unrealistic ambitions for American Idols to come.

About ten seconds of Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce anthem. I think it’s called “Marry Me, Richie, I Dare You”. Did anybody see Etta James take her fine ass down to size? It was awesome. I wonder if Garth Brooks conceived Sasha Fierce just so there would be a more ridiculous alter-ego than Chris Gaines in the world.

Britney Spears. Still a whore, and it is even less fascinating than it never was. A circus theme does nothing to improve this cipher.

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Second video I’m seeing for a second time and am not compelled to remember (apparently it’s the All-American Rejects if that helps). Already I’m thinking of it as “that song” and I don’t recall if I heard it the first time today. The music on the commercials (Human League for space age brooms) is much better than actual programming.

Klosterman acknowledges that his piece is not novel, which is not surprising, but I wonder if by ripping off Klosterman ripping somebody else, I’m just ripping off Klosterman more thoroughly. Some guy named Jim something who has been not illuminating me throughout this program is reminding me of what I may have missed. I missed Kanye West’s “Heartless”, which is actually fairly awesome, which is why VH1 probably hurried to truncate it while I was urinating.

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So Taylor Swift is number one for two weeks in a row. And now I know who she is. A buxom blonde. Like Homer Simpson, I never thought I’d say this about TV, but this is kind of stupid. “You be the prince and I’ll be the princess, it’s a love story so baby just say yes” and then the verse thinks this is a great premise to extend. So it turns out Taylor Swift is a girl, and I learned something today. She’s also young and dumb, which is probably why she’s number one.

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Funny local commercial for Don Marcari. The opening phrase is “As a young JAG officer…” but it sounds unmistakably like “As a young jack-off…” Not very sophisticated, but almost as priceless as goofy men getting hit in the groin. The older he gets, the more he plays up his connection to A Few Good Men, a movie that was supposed to be good at the time but nobody remembers well now (go ahead and try to recall some dialog beyond “You can’t handle the truth!” that doesn’t involve Jack Nicholson malevolently discussing oral sex). Come to think of it, aside from This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride, Rob Reiner made a lot of move lots of people thought were good but didn’t remember over the course of time. Now he just makes movies nobody thinks are good. The Bucket List my ass. There was some statement in that Marcari commercial indicating that if you’ve seen the movie, you know he’s a good lawyer or something, which is a selective assessment of any Tom Cruise performance. Cruise always plays hyperskilled guys with an admirable vocation, and that is what Marcari is bragging about. I would love it, however, if the commercial narration slipped and said something along the lines of “If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Don Marcari is trying way too hard in a creepily desperate way to overcompensate for…something, I don’t want to get sued by the Church of Scientology.” Anyway, I’m now way too deep into “Rock of Love Bus” on VH1, and that is a can of retarded, depressing worms I don’t want to open right now. Off I go in search of music programming.

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Of course neither MTV (”Music TeleVision”) outlet on cable is programming music videos right now. BET is rocking “Judge Hatchett”. I’m forced to CMT (”Country Music Television”) and it looks like a 24-hour news network. The videos are crammed into the upper right corner beneath a banner labelled “CMT Power Picks” and advertising Rhapsody. The left side tracks a live vote for the next video. The bottom banner advertises the station you are watching and it’s online counterpart, CMT.com. A scroll reiterates all of these points. Kid Rock just won with a song that references “Sweet Home Alabama” over the instantly recognizable piano line for Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”, but I still suspect radio country fans will continue to spit in my face about how goddamned wrong sampling is supposed to be. The vote on the left is between two buxom blonde artists. I suspect this format quickly learned that this kind of showdown was necessary, because in the general pool of heavy rotation CMT videos, the buxom blondes always won the internet vote.

I don’t know if I can keep this up, and I noticed that AMC is playing Death Wish movies today, because that is completely acceptable mid-day cable programming. Sure, copious traumatic rape set-ups for Charles Bronson murder sprees, but still more wholesome than Britney Spears or Kid Rock. So at least for awhile, this project is going to alternate music coverage with musings on the most prominent reactionary vigilante saga in cinematic history. I will see many scumbags get theirs, and then fantasize about pop stars meeting the business end of Bronson’s persuader. Should be fun.

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Charles Bronson just shot two men who looked a lot like Herbie Hancock, the man who gave Death Wish a great score. Paul Kersey, the bleeding-heart liberal turned unstoppable petty-criminal-killing machine Bronson depicts, watches television coverage of new vigilantes he has inspired, the first of which is a sitcomical old black woman who chases off muggers with a hatpin. I wonder if this was supposed to mitigate the queasy racist undertones of the film. The next scene addresses these concerns with dialog at a cocktail party populated by similarly sitcomical young, rich, white liberals. They seem not entirely inaccurate to type.

Back on CMT, the most generic song I have ever heard is accompanying inexplicably slomo footage celebrating Nascar and the American flag. I wonder if the cumbersome visual format is there so one can distinguish “programming” from “commercials.” Anyway, they mention quite a few American cars by brand name emphatically. Strange that none of these artists seem to hail from Detroit.

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I’m officially out of music video programming, and I feel sad for the individual who loves that shit. I relate to him or her, recalling when I was 8 and MTV still played videos and I couldn’t get enough of it while my dad grouched about how ignorant it all was. I don’t understand it completely, either. As a format, music videos have produced countless hours of no-content derivative garbage, but have rewarded us with an uncommon amount of visionary genius. Think of how many of our finest filmmakers (David Fincher, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonez, Tarsem etc) hail from the format.

If one was inclined to watch hours of television daily the way I have come to molest the internet, I don’t think music video programming would be a particularly better or worse way to spend it than anything else. How forsaken that person must feel when small blocks of video programming inevitably give way to depressing reality shows. Sure, they occasionally pose good questions like “What is George Clinton doing on CMT taking shit from one of the guys from Big & Rich? Shouldn’t he be outside of Tallahassee smoking crack?” Ultimately, though, these shows and their manufactured drama (which comes off much phonier than narrative, fictional television) just leave one feeling hollow and malnourished. Music video does the same thing, but faster.

The adjusted plan right now is to follow the Death Wish saga while unenthusiastically catching bits of reality music programming. We’re about 12 TV minutes into Death Wish II and Paul Kersey, now in LA, has already managed to have his wallet stolen by an improbably multi-ethnic gang, unconvincingly brutalize a younger, faster, stronger black man, and have his home broken into by said gang who traced his address from said wallet. Not only is Kersey, who just moved into town, remarkably prompt about updating his ID and information, but the gangs that haunt this series are remarkably fond of tracing addresses from random encounters for risky rape/assault/murder/death/kill missions with no real goal but destruction. Why don’t they spend any of their time, say, robbing businesses? For what it’s worth, Paul Kersey is a magnet, and horrifying crime is steel. Anyway, I think both Paul Kersey’s pretty maid and his cute daughter are violated and dead now. It is hard to tell on the cable edit, which cuts out Larry (not yet Lawrence) Fishburn’s

Morpheus as '80s gang rapist.

It looks like George Clinton and Mickey Dolenz of Monkees fame are both eliminated from the CMT reality show, which I’ve figured out is called “Gone Country” (I’m very smart and perceptive that way). Now I don’t know who anybody is except Big or Rich and Uncle Kracker, who for some reason is on this episode to advise people. Dude, there’s like, no music on television right now.

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Charles Bronson quote from Death Wish II:

“…so I left New York, but I’ll be damned if I leave LA.”

Any New Yorkers reading, please entertain me with a colorful, profanity-laden comment about why this sentiment is bullshit.

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Paul Kersey has to take the bus and run through bushes and across yards in this one. The cop tracking him from the first one needed a taxi to keep up. The climactic shootout takes place across big spaces with trees to duck behind and feels more like a western if not for the machine guns and garish fashions. A car rolled down a hill and exploded in a neat ball of fire (which is what happens when cars roll down hills in movies). Compared to the brief, close quarters handgun confrontations of the first movie, Death Wish II clearly illustrates the contrasting landscapes of America’s two largest cities.

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As Death Wish II is wrapping up, AMC is informing me that the next feature will be one of the most influential pre-MTV music movies, Saturday Night Fever. Not only do I consider the original soundtrack to be second only to Superfly, I actually love this movie. At least I think I do. It has been awhile. This is one of those movies with iconic sequences (John Travolta dancing in a white leisure suit at the disco) that overwhelm many people’s impression of the actual film (which most people my age or younger have not actually seen). The dance scenes are glorious and timeless (in the ’90s we thought they were dated, but then we were such foolish slackers), but the film is more resonant and substantial than that. Saturday Night Fever is actually a very cynical, purposefully funny, realistic, rough movie that cannily contrasts the intoxicating local stardom of Travolta on the dancefloor with the very limited circumstances of himself and his friends in working class New York. There is real heart and tragedy in this movie. I think. I’ll spend the afternoon seeing if I remember correctly. I’ll periodically check to see if any channels find it worth their time to play music videos.

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Yeah, I honestly love Saturday Night Fever. The songs are great from the jump, and are accompanied by expressive camera work and rhythmic editing. When I see movies that influenced scenes in Boogie Nights, I’m often surprised at how blatant the “homage” is. This is also a real New York movie, full of detail and authentically fucked-up looking character actors, and an invaluable time capsule, with a tactile feel to the disco scenes that no recreation has really captured. There is great traumedy in Italian family strife, youthful drug abuse, and public backseat sex squabbles. The protagonist is allowed to be a complete unredeemed asshole and admired by other asshole characters for it. This is the one instance (and don’t even bring up the lazy mess that is Grease) where Travolta is actually perfect. His dancing is virtuoso, and his cocky strangeness works great in every interaction because he always gets to play the foil, either to the other dumb kids at the disco who worship him or to his family that (correctly) thinks he’s weird and kind of useless. Did I mention the script is very hostile and funny? The idiot dialog here is brilliant and profound.

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I think this is where we say goodbye, as I feel momentum dying. I have eroded my own interest, which only took about 6 to 7 hours. What are the bullet points? I don’t just love Saturday Night Fever, I lurve it. Death Wish movies are fascinating but troublesome. And no station on basic cable loves music. Maybe this is why I’m starting to prefer the internet. This experiment may have been a failure, but if that is the case, then it is a success for producing a result. Don’t watch too much TV, particularly Tuesday morning and afternoon. Seek out new music. This is what I say as a young jack-off.

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The scene at 2001 where the kid asks the young former priest if the pope might give him a dispensation for his girlfriend’s abortion always breaks my heart and plays perfectly because no similar scene has ever played like this in a big movie. Damn Saturday Night Fever gets sad. It gets even worse, by which I mean it gets better.