Thursday links

[yendi]

Not bothering with linkdumps every day, as too many links are worth their own post, but here are a few tabs that needed closing:

1. Depending on where you're coming from, Pam is Single! Or MinuteMan is single!

2. Pavoratti is dead. :-( I mean, it wasn't unexpected, but he always had a bigger-than-life quality about him.

3. Because you demanded it (I'm talking to you, raptorgirl): Morrissey: The Musical.

4. Dude. Julie "Earth GIrls are Easy" Brown is writing a Disney Channel Musical!

5. Also, how come I never knew that there was a video for "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun?"

6. Inspired by my wife's suggestion: I Can Has Fug. A blog combining LOLcats with celebrity fashion mistakes.

7. Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy have written a kid's Sci-Fi book!

8. Kickasss Cupcakes is opening up in Davis! Deep Fried Cupcakes!

9. Attention linguists: slipjig needs translation help.

10. Finally, you know that the fall TV season is coming when the Parents Television Council issue their annual complaint that TV networks hate America. As always, there's much unintentional amusement in their release (or there would be, if some folks didn't take them seriously).

Comments

[raptorgirl.livejournal.com]

Eeeeee! As a diehard fan, I must see this musical. Thanks for the link!

[fiddledragon]

Yeah, how did you not know about the video!? ;)

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

As the mother of a girl-who-will-be-10 at the time, I foresee repeated viewings of the Julie Brown musical in my future. On the bright side, I think it can't help but be better than 90% of what Disney is trying to get my daughter to watch, so... :)

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

...and cable has made the "prime-time family hour" as obsolete as Saturday morning cartoons. Who needs a special hour of TV aimed at families when there's whole entire networks chock full of family-friendly goodness 24/7?

I suspect reasonable people could disagree on whether or not that's a good thing in terms of the overall culture: should "family" programming go into some cable ghetto? What about people who don't have cable? Is there a place for TV that manages to entertain both children and adults? (Cartoon Network has a few shows that succeed at this, but not even close to all of them.)


...also, I, as a human being capable of critical thought, was struck with one question about the Parents Television Council: "What constitutes an act of foul language, sexuality, or violence?" Do they draw the line at "Damn"? Does a quick peck on the cheek constitute sexuality, or do tongues need to be involved?

[lovingboth]

In the UK, broadcasters need to be aware of the numbers of children likely to be watching. 9pm is the 'watershed' where you can stick more adult material generally. Before then, the various soap operas have assorted adult themes in their plotlines, but don't use words like 'fuck'.

My stupid (?) question is if the family hour is 'the first hour of prime time', why does the clock on the cover of their report show it as two hours?

[beldar.livejournal.com]

Ah, the PTC, that unAmerican group that wants Big Brother to take over all our televisions -- cuz that worked so well in the Soviet Union.

And if all that TV filth is gonna destroy America, shouldn't we have already been destroyed by now? I mean, NYPD Blue and Married With Children should have destroyed us *years* ago.

Wonder if they're still up in arms about that "Keen Eddie" episode that only aired twice a couple of years ago -- never mind the show was lame and the series didn't last past its first season, because no one was watching it anyway.

And if you're gonna treat FOX News as holy prophets delivering today's Gospel, you'll have to put up with the regular FOX network -- which actually shows stuff we like.

And Steve Allen was an ovverrated hack. There I said it. =P

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

The "watershed" in the US seems to be 10 pm, with "prime time" starting at 8, so yes, the "family hour" was 2 hours long. Go figure.

...and that's one reason I wanted to ask: What exactly constitutes "foul language"? The 'seven words you can't say on TV' are still in force; nobody on broadcast TV is dropping the F-bomb, and even on basic cable they save most of the outright cussing for after 10 pm. They make their position sound reasonable - nobody wants their kids hearing foul language on TV! (never mind that Junior hears Daddy use those word all the time...) - but if in reality they've drawn the line somewhere between "gosh" and "darn", it doesn't reflect mainstream America.

[muse0fire.livejournal.com]

I sang "Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" in the eighth grade talent show, and it was hilarious (had a bunch of my friends acting it out in the background.) Nowadays I'm pretty sure I'd be expelled for even singing it.

(Unfortunately in the wake of Columbine and VTech, it IS hard to find the humor any more...)

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Hee. I noticed the irony of the Fox vs. Fox thing. Fox has consistently lowered the bar for tasteless programming getting on the air, year after year...I suppose in both the news and entertainment divisions. :)

[beldar.livejournal.com]

I got the biggest kick out of when FOX owned The Family Channel (wow, Satan's networks hosting the 700 Club) before they dumped it off to ABC.

[beldar.livejournal.com]

The quibbling over content (note the PTC were the only people complaining when "Saving Private Ryan" ran unedited in prime time, with plenty of warnings to the few viewers who didn't know about the R rating) is just a smokescreen.

The PTC is run by neocon Brent Bozell, who thinks the Puritans were a tad too liberal. He wants the GOP-controlled government, via the FCC, to make the "Liberal Media" its bitch and this is the perfect tool to get both prudes and well-meaning parents to rally to his side. It would all be so funny if the political aspects weren't so scary.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

yeah! Man, I always used to get so excited whenever it was on MTV.

Thanks for the link, yendi!

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about this. Back then it was like "no one would ever do that, it's way too crazy." Now, though...

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the pimpage! How on earth did anyone know anything before the Internets?

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm no fan of theirs. I want to know their standards and definitions as much because it gives me the opportunity to discredit them as anything else.

...and apparently I'm blind today; I just found the link to the "full report" which will tell me this kind of thing.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

You know... I remember vaguely seeing the Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun video back in the day...
Sad things related to that:
a) I still knew all of the lyrics by heart... egad
b) That video could never be made, let alone shown today... this "post-Columbine" OMG-he-drew-a-gun-expel-the-little-monster society we live in today wouldn't allow such songs as THCQGAG and "I Don't Like Mondays" to get recorded let alone played on the air.

Sad.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

you and I noted the same thing...

The song wouldn't even be cut today... or the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats... sure, he's "Sir Bob Geldof" now... but he would've been expelled from high school for that song if it were recorded in today's atmosphere.

[muse0fire.livejournal.com]

I was going to post about this in my own LJ, but haven't gotten around to it - I'm re-watching all of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons, and one of the first things that struck me was that the part that seems the most unrealistic to me now is that she wouldn't have been immediately expelled if someone even noticed a stake in her bag, let alone engaged in fighting in school (justified or not.) Shows how things have changed, and how quickly.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Not only did Stephen and Lucy Hawking write a children's book, but it's also awesome. My editor is the American editor for it--he's actually in the UK right now, at the pub party for the book. It's a great, entertaining, smart read.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Isn't it funny and tragically sad...

:(

i can has mocking

[tabslock.livejournal.com]

I Can Has Fug makes me insanely happy. You know, in the good, healthy, wicked-fun-at-others'-expense way. Thanks ever so!