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Fall, 2004
Want Something
Praised...or "Slashed"? Send a note, and
we'll add it to the list!
Slash
: ...to TV Guide's Best and Worst List
for 2004, for calling Lord of the Rings' 11-Oscar win a
"Jeer," because it made the Oscars too "predictable."
Yeah; we really hate it when the Oscars actually give the award to the
film that deserves to win, don't we? I can take it when some twit
tells me they loved Terminator 3 because making the first two films' fight
against the machines worthless was "unpredicted." I can
take it when someone tells me they actually liked Matrix Revolutions
because an ending that makes no sense was "unpredicted."
However, if you are ticked off that an awards show actually gave the Oscar
to the most deserved winner: walk it off buttercup! Maybe next year they
will "unpredictably" toss the Oscar to the latest Annie Hall
clone du jour, but not this year. Bravo, Oscar! "Worst of the Year," indeed.
 DOT
: To the ouster of Survivor's latest
Richard-Hatch-wannabe, long before the
finale. Yes, we're talking about Ami from Survivor
Vanuatu, who was for the incessantly long time she was on the show
a walking paradox. She seemed to want to be the feminist leader of the
then-all-female tribe she belonged to, but seriously; how
"feminist" can a woman be who just a few years ago posed nude in
Playboy? Yet Ami acted like her tribe needed to band
together because they could be the first all-woman alliance to make it to
the end, even though she already had
made that plan impossible, when she helped boot fellow female teammate
Lisa instead of male teammate Rory. Yet what really was Ami's magnum opus
of hypocrisy was when she harped on and on about Twila's deception in the
game, when in just the prior episode, Ami had tried to vote off Eliza, the
very episode before acting like she was Eliza's best friend. Eliza
wound up feeling awful (or so she said) to boot Ami instead of Twila, but
how awful does she feel now, knowing that Ami was gunning for her just two
days earlier...? In the end, for all her talk about being there for the
women and wanting a woman to win and wanting the women to stick together;
the only real sexist contestant this season was Ami herself.
 DOT
: To the outrageous fun TV had with Halloween this year.
Some years we get mere repeats of Halloween episodes five years old, while one year
had "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" on one
obscure
night and that was it. Not only did nearly all sitcoms air new Halloween
episodes this season, but even most news and drama shows got in the act! Katie Couric dressed like Donald
Trump on the Today show, while on the new
drama Boston Legal,
two lawyers had to go to court dressed like Batman and Robin. Our Best
Costume Award, however, would have to go to Kimberly Williams as Catwoman
(left), in the prior week's According to Jim. It was almost enough
to make us forget all about that summer cat-astrophe about Batman's feline
fatale. The only thing this year's Halloween lacked was Peanuts' Linus finally
getting to meet The Great Pumpkin.
Slash
: ...to Citibank's "living
person touchtone phone" ad campaign. The idea had merit: show how
hard it is for people to get a real person to talk to in an
automatic-touchtone world. Unfortunately, something got wrecked in the
translation of this message, as a person acts like an automated phone next
to someone going "beep! boop! beep-boop-beeeep!"
as if they were on an automated phone talking to a machine. We get it;
automated phones can be annoying. No need to drive home the message in
this way.
DOT
: To the little detail that meant a lot to fans.
Players of Sly 2: Band of Thieves get a little treat in store for
them, in that the game is compatible with the Playstation-2's headset. Why
offer this, when the game isn't multiplayer? For cool realism, that's why.
Plug the headset into your PS-2 prior to turning it on, activate it in the
options menu, then all of those times your teammates give you tips while
talking to "Sly" via headset, will now speak to "you,"
directly through your headset. It's just one of those small little
touches that makes the whole game even cooler.
DOT
: To giving a cult classic --even at one season or
less-- a  second chance on DVD. Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
back in the late 1980's was a real treat; a imaginative piece of sci-fi
mixed with the fun of a classic spaghetti western, where law and order in
various one-spaceship space colonies would be kept in check by said
"galaxy rangers": a group of space marshals, each with a unique
enhancement, be it cybernetics or X-files like ESP. The big sales pitch;
it was the first cartoon series I'm aware of, to incorporate CGI into
its hand-drawn art; all computer screens were actual computer screens,
fully rendered and integrated into the 2D scenes. It was actually very
good, and now for cult fans things just got better; two discs of the
series' finest episodes are going to be available on DVD in October. Let
the fun times roll again.
Double
Slash
: I'm not one to abuse the privilege of giving a mock
"double" slash now and again --truly; this is only the sixth
time I've given one-- especially when looking at the always-dumb tabloids.
Be this as it may, Star tabloid really crossed the
line in my book, when in their September 13 issue they list the typical
prepubescent page-filler; the "In & Out" list. Trouble is,
this is an "in" and "out" list made by either a crack
whore prostitute, a pothead intern, or maybe the bastard child hybrid of
both. Among the pieces of mind-numbing minutiae of the "in" list
are fake breasts...and no; we're not kidding. This one entry in the
"in" column should tell you the mental capacity of the writers
of said list. What's even worse; the list claims that virginity is "sooo out." I don't think I'm crossing
any boundaries here when I say that the typical tabloid reader is in
junior high school (or at least the equivalent level of mentality). What
kind of message is it to our young teens that they should feel perfectly
"in" to get her boobs inflated as a 16th birthday present, just so she can lose that "sooo out"
virginity at her junior prom? In a day and age with AIDS,
even if this message about virginity being "out" was meant for
grown adults: are you insane??? Oh; right, you're a tabloid
journalist. Forget I asked.
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