|
The first night that MTV came on
the air, way back in the Pleistocene age, I stayed up until dawn watching
bands lip-synch, taking fashion notes and wondering how that geeky Martha
Quinn got such a cool job. But (brainiac that I am) after a few days I
figured out that some videos are created more equal than others, hitting
heavy rotation their first moment out of the gate. From "Hungry Like the
Wolf" to "White Wedding," from "Money for Nothing" to "Sledgehammer," the
same pieces of film flickered in an endless, mindnumbing loop.
Things are, if anything, worse over at the slick conglomerate these days. The same videos play over and over (note to Alanis: Look up "ironic" in the dictionary), there's little new music, and of course, that annoying smirk of Kurt Loder's remains. Part of the problem is that there are too many quote-unquote ideas bubbling in the empty vee pot and not enough follow-through. Whatever happened to the music, man? Instead, we've got the vapid "Choose or Lose" campaign to drum up youth interest in politics (Yo! Tabitha! Buy a clue!), the ill-fated "Squirt TV" (which, rumor has it, was recently pulled off the air due to the squirt pulling a Culkin-esque routine on his hapless parents), the insipidly insulting "Singled Out" (nah, too easy a target -- even for me) and the absolute nadir of moronicism, "Yack Live."
Sound cool? Well, it isn't. Unless, of course, you think that reading dozens of comments like "Alannniiisssss SUUUUUCCCCCKKKKSSSS" and "Hey, how come nothing I say ever gets on TV?" and "GREEN DAY RUUUUULES" is good fun. If that's entertainment, I've got a swell bridge to sell you, nice and cheap. The FAQ about (the show? concept? what the hell is it?) "Yack Live" is an unintentionally hilarious document, cautioning participants like this: "When we pick the comments we are looking for stuff that's entertaining. After all this is supposed to be entertainment. What we WON'T put on air: Swear words or any creative variations.What we WILL put on air: Creative, witty, relevant comments about the video/artists that is currently on."Excuse me while I hurl.
Elsewhere, we hear the following snippets of gossip and catty innuendo: Sharon Stone and Dweezil Zappa are no longer an item, but their brief affair was highly entertaining to Los Angeles residents who followed their antics in the trade papers. The Sex Pistols are slated to play a surprise gig at a Huntington Beach nightclub that advertises heavily on radio station KROQ. Oh, and courtesy of "MTV News," we find that a certain songwriter/musician's recent death was due to "auto-erotic asphyxiation," helpfully defined by MTV VJ Tabitha Soren as, "He accidentally hanged himself during the course of a solitary sexual act." Gee, classy move to spell it out for the kids at home; I'm sure his family is just thrilled. Bah. Ring me up when all those "creative witty, relevant comments" come flooding in. Just now I think I'll turn off the damn TV and read a nice book.
Julene Snyder is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. E-mail can be sent to nose@lycos.com; http://www.well.com/user/julene is her home on the World Wide Web; archives of former nose.for.noise columns can be found there.
|
In case you've missed this stellar example of why we should put a gun to
our collective head and be done with it, "Yack Live" is a split-screen
deal, wherein the top half of your set contains a teeny image of a video
and the bottom portion contains the insightful comments of actual MTV
viewers scrolling by in (sort of) real time.