Occasionally Wright

Benefactor Goodness

It turns out my girlfriend's roomate in Athens knows one of the guys on Mark Cuban's new reality show, The Benefactor. I found this out while I was watching the show and after Mark had already intervied him one-on-one so I wasn't really paying attention to him. From the 'confessions' at the end of the show he looked like he could be a contender but who knows what Mark's criteria are going to be. The previews for future shows look awesome and include Anisa's friend Chris, who happens to be a former hockey player. One of the clips showed him in a Dallas Stars uniform out on the ice so it looks like he might get to show his stuff. The ABC Benefactor site has his audition tape along with all of the others and other extra footage.

This could end up being the best reality show ever. You might want to check it out since it's going to be what everyone is talking about this fall. If you don't know what I'm talking about you just missed the premiere.

And Today's Special Guest...

With J-Lo set to reprise her guest role on Will and Grace and Heather Graham joining the cast of Scrubs this fall I got to thinking about memorable TV guest appearances. Some end up being great, some are brutal. So here are my top 5 TV guest appearances, recurring or not:

Stephen Hawking- Star Trek: The Next Generation
John Cleese in his recurring role on Will and Grace
Brad Pitt on Friends (Pitt is way funnier than people give him credit for)
Jay Sherman on The Simpsons (nothing like a fake character guest appearing on another show)
The Rock on That 70's Show (The Rock played his own father, Rocky Johnson, and made references to himself)

Feel free to ad to the list. There are probably some great ones I'm forgetting.

Daily Clinton

Tonight on The Daily Show- former president Bill Clinton.

Thank You CBC

Three reasons I'm not going to mind being in Ottawa for the next few months:

1. CBC'c coverage of the World Cup of Hockey, as opposed to ESPN's coverage.
2. CBC's coverage of the Athens Olympics, as opposed to NBC's coverage which I endured for the 2000 Sydney games.
3. Bell's Making the Cut on CBC.

Map of Springfield

A ridiculously detailed map of Springfield, home of the Simpsons. The link comes compliments of Dwayne who isn't cool enough to have his own website which is kind of funny since he works with computers for a living.

Click on the map to explore what could be the most well-known fictional town in America.

Must See TV

How popular is Jon Stewart of The Daily Show right now? Well, has Richard Clarke been on Leno or Letterman yet? I have no clue because I think they both suck compared to The Daily Show, but I'm guessing he hasn't. However, the man that has been the White House's public enemy number one since launching his book Against All Enemies did an interview on The Daily Show last night and you could tell that Stewart actually knew what he was talking about when he was interviewing him. Well done John. Apparently The Daily Show is the place to be seen now.

Wrestling With Reality

When I first started this thing about 6 months ago someone read my bio and commented that they'd like to read an excerpt from my masters thesis. So here, for your reading pleasure, is the opening to Wrestling With Reality: Hyperreality Examined in the World Wrestling Federation. Please excuse any formatting glitches caused by going from a Word document to this format.

CHAPTER ONE

"I love the pageantry, the athleticism, the incredibly cheesy acting. I look at wrestling as theatre at its most base, and so do most of the fans. We know what’s going on. Is it sport? Is it entertainment? It’s both. It’s wrestling. Now let’s get something straight. I know wrestling is a show. But it’s not as fake as you think. Of course the moves of the match are predetermined and the violence is choreographed. However, the result of the violence is very real" (Blaustein 1999).

Introduction

Since the mid 1990s professional wrestling has experienced a dramatic increase in popularity. As wrestling has become more and more popular it has come to terms with its place in the entertainment industry. Gone are the days when professional wrestling claimed to be a legitimate sport. Gone are the days when professional wrestling even pretended to be a legitimate sport. When discussing the industry that he now dominates as the owner of both the World Wrestling Federation and the newly acquired World Championship Wrestling, Vince McMahon Jr. refers to wrestling as “sports entertainment.” As Sharon Mazer states in Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle, professional wrestling is “a sport that is not, in the literal sense, sporting; a theatrical entertainment that is not theatre (1998 3).” So what is it?

Worst... Fear... Factor... Ever

Tonight NBC/Global aired an all female episdoe of Fear Factor. I'm a pretty big fan of the show- I saw every episode of the couples competition- but this is by far the worst episode I've ever seen. All the girls acted tough in their intros saying how they were going to show-up all the other prissy contestants. The the first stunt started.

The stunt was simple enough. Each player was in a large vertical plexi-glass tube with air holes on the top and a hatch with 2 locks on the bottom. The tube was suspended in water leaving jst enough room for the girls to go up for air and the objective was to swim down to the bottom and turn each of the 2 wheels to open the locks and thus the hatch, freeing them. Oh yeah- the water was really cold.

The first five girls all quit- some after 7-9 minutes, 2 without even trying to turn the wheels. Pathetic. I'm a weak swimmer and I'm not a fan of small spaces but I know I could have done that one. There's plenty of stuff on Fear Factor I wouldn't be able to pull off but that was an easy, easy challenge.

So the last girl won $25,000 and for some reason the 5 quitters were brought back for day 2. One of them was even upset that the winner was allowed to compete for the rest of the money. Seriously- she quit and thought it was unfair that the only person that could do the stunt was allowed to keep going.

Stunt #2

They go into a cave and there's a bix plexiglass box "filled with" lots of boas, pythons and geckos. By filled with they meant there were about a dozen snakes and a few hundred motionless geckos hanging out on the walls and roof of the box. The object was to use a magnet to slide some little metal disks from the bottom to the top of the wall. The girls went head to head, elimination style. Easiest stunt ever. The snakes and geckos barely even moved.

Final stunt

Imagine a plexiglass hallway angled at about 30-35 degrees. there's a huge fan at the top blowing down the hall spraying water. All along the sides there are flags. The goal is to walk up the hallway grabbing the flags without slipping and slidding down the ramp. The floor was slippery of course, and it was windy, but where's the real challenge? I don't know. Do you remeber the 80's kids game show, Fun House? That was harder. I swear.

In case you were wondering the girl that won the first stunt won the whole thing.

Worst Fear Factor ever.

Ryan Adams' Wonderwall

When it coes to TV and guilty pleasures I have to admit I like the WB's Smallville, despite it's incredible chessiness and disregard for comic book canon. One of the things I like about the show is its tendency to work a really good song or two into just about every episode. Last week that song happened to be a cover of 'Wonderwall" that was at least twice as good as the original. Thanks to Google I was able to find out that the cover was by Ryan Adams who I am utterly unfamiliar despite the fact that several people I know who have impeccable taste in music really like him. I don't know why I haven't gotten around to listening to his stuff before now but that cover could seal the deal for me. If it's an indicator of what most of his stuff is like he could be getting some heavy play on my computer/stereo from now on.

Conan Part III

3-2 odds that someone is going to make a stink over Triumph the Comic Insult Dog's foray into Quebec last night on Conan.