Welcome to my Personal Blog
All day today I will be watching E!, the cable network, uninterrupted, so give you regular commentary on both the content, and the effect the content is having on my psyche. I’ve done this once before, with MTV. You can read that project here. Last time, my girlfriend came along for the ride, serving as photographer. This time, tellingly, she will be far, far from my house, leaving me to take my own pictures. There will be updates every hour or so.
Final Hour 4:00 - 4:17
101 Best Kept Hollywood Secrets
Hollywood has the crappiest secrets.
The twentieth largest secret of Hollywood is NOT that Winona Ryder dyes her hair.
E! has beaten me. My head hurts too much to continue torturing myself for negligible reasons. Bah! Nine hours I’ll never get back.
Hour Nine
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
101 Best Kept Hollywood Secrets Secret #40 Some of The Apprentice was staged showmanship. Does this really count as a secret? Really?
Secret #38 One of the Bond Girls was really a man!
I just saw an ad for KY Jelly on daytime television. Weird. The ad has a chick who wants some play from her dude. He’s too busy reading to make with the sex, until she pulls out the KY personal lubricant. Suddenly, her guy’s interest is aroused. I didn’t think you could do commercials like that at three o’clock in the afternoon. Yay for lube!
Secret #34 has nothing at all to do with Hollywood. Really.
I’m less than halfway through this exercise, and I don’t think I can go the distance. I am numb. Nothing seems funny, because E! has killed my capacity for joy. I liked joy. I miss it.
Secret #29 Ozzy Osbourne will pee on anything.
Oh god, my head is throbbing.
I refuse to believe that the imported light beer that I get says a lot about me. Actually, I reuse to get imported light beer.
Secret #26 An actor not being a director’s first choice is not a secret. It’s barely noteworthy. And bothering to say that something on this list is stupid is a unnecessary as saying that I’m stupid for watching this list.
Hour Eight
2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
101 Best Kept Hollywood Secrets Secret #50 Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain might be about Warren Beatty.
Did you ever realize you were watching a five hour program that you hate in order to write a few lines of mediocre commentary for a nonexistent audience? The first time I did this, it was almost fun. It was tortuous, but I had a partner in crime. Now, I’m alone in this. And it’s just kind of dull.
Secret #44 Celebrities have weird riders in their contracts. They already did this secret somewhere in the 80’s. No, really, same “secret as before.” Same commentary by D list celebrities as before. IT WASN’T A GODDAMN SECRET THE FIRST TIME! NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN THE PAST TWO HOURS.
Nothing, that is, except my good will toward mankind.
Hour Seven
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
101 Best Kept Hollywood Secrets Secret #76 David Carradine wasn’t Tarantino’s first choice to play Bill in Kill Bill.
Whoah! Dustin Diamond doesn’t look anything like Screech these days.
Secret #70 Rosie O’Donnel wanted to host the Tonight Show.
I don’t think the producers of this show have a solid grasp of what constitutes a secret.
Secret #69 Bill Murray thought Charlie’s Angles sucked.
Secret #63 Chuck Barris, creator of the gong show, was a CIA assassin. Apparently, the secrets don’t have to be true.
Hour Six
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
101 Best Kept Hollywood Secrets Oh boy. It’s countdown list time! “Secrets”! Things you didn’t know and presumably may have wanted to!
Secret #100 Janet Jackson scratched her cornea once.
Remember that old Coke commercial with the “I’d like to teach the world to sing” song. It became a classic that we remember thirty years later, because it wasn’t just hucking a product, it was presenting a vision of global community and connection. One world, united (by Coke.) Coke has resurrected the song with new lyrics, and a new message: “Everybody Chill.” I guess getting along with foreigners is no longer something we encourage.
Secret #93 Reese Whitherspoon has ancestors.
I had intended to take pictures to accompany this project. Unfortunately, I wasn’t being realistic.
Secret #89 Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are not the same person.
More secrets in an hour!
Hour Five
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
E! True Hollywood Story: Amber Frey What’s the deal with Scott Peterson? I clearly read the wrong magazines. Do the tabloids editors periodically get together, choose an appropriately skuzzy crime, and agree to follow the story with fanatical attention?
The true Hollywood story of Amber Frey is my first exposure to the Laci Peterson murder case.
The story as I understand it is this. Scott Peterson killed his wife, while dating a nude model named Amer. Then he went to Paris IN HIS IMAGINATION!!! Then Gloria Allred joined up with Amber and together they fought crime. Then a giant lizard tried to destroy Modesto County, But Amber destroyed it with the help of a magic fairy name Bluton. Then her dad roped some steers.
I’m finding it hard to focus on the television.
Hour Four
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
The Soup
Life is Great with Brooke Burke
The Soup is to E! News as The Daily Show is to actual News.
This show ain’t good. But it’s honest. It feels like the one time E! is allowed to admit to itself how dumb the whole celebrity scene is.
Is there a name for the culture of celebrity worship? There should be.
Life is Great chronicles the rise of people who have found success after stints on reality television.
I’m starting to fear this was a mistake. How do you make interesting commentary on programming about nothing? Part of my motivation for watching E! today was to try to understand why people are captivated by celebrities and pseudocelebrities. I don’t get it. A full half hour of Life is Great, and I have retained nothing. No interesting people. No interesting stories. No conflict. No humor. I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch this.
Hour Three
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
E! News Weekend Whew! For a minute I thought that I was going to enjoy myself today. This is more what I was expecting from the day. I cringe that this show can get away with calling itself “news.”
This sort of antinews lives in a separate universe from the one I normally spend time in. I don’t understand why anyone cares is Demi is maybe, possibly, potentially pregnant. This does not seem significant to me.
Did you know that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s relationship is known as “TomKat”? Did you know that Brittney Spears’ sister is a celebrity? Did you know that “Lifestyle Brand Designer” was a job? There is a whole world of things I don’t know about uninteresting beautiful people.
I just watched a segment on what pants Tom Cruise likes to wear. My attitudes toward jouralism are forever changed. A whole new world of pants related reporting has been revealed to me.
Hour Two
8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Fight For Fame Five wannabe actors debase themselves to obtain an agent. I actually found this one kind of good. I wasn’t digging the manufactured drama, or the bitchy “confessionals,” but you could see how badly these schmucks wanted to win. Their careers were on the line. I think you have to be a certain type of crazy to purse acting, and this show captured that crazy well. And they were all talented. Watching them improv was genuinely engaging.
The standard reality show approach to melodrama annoyed me, but I like that they had a whole competition within one episode, like a lame dating show, instead of drawing it out over an entire season, like most competition shows.
I have already been more entertained by this episode than I had expected to be entertained by the whole day’s viewing.
Hour One
7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
Behind the Scenes
Coming Attractions
My day of pop culture begins with a thirty-minute ad for the new Fantastic Four movie. The program alternates between footage from the movie, and interviews with the actors. It’s kinda neat to watch people telling you how good a movie that obviously is going to be very bad. Three times I heard the line “The cloud has fundamentally altered our DNA.”
After a half hour long movie trailer, we got a half hour of theatrical trailers, presented as actual programming. During one of the commercial breaks, they played a trailer for a movie they had just shown the trailer from in the actual “program.”
Brother’s Grim: I like con men and fairy tales as much as the next guy, but this movie like it got churned through the formula mill. Coming from Terry Gilliam, that’s damn disappointing.
Dark Water: I was so disappointed to find that this movie wasn’t about pirates searching for the thirteen treasures of Rule.
Wedding Crashers: Vince Vaughn. Owen Wilson. Hijinks.
Stealth: This movie looks incredible. An fighter jet with artificial intelligence turns evil. Oh nooooooo! Jamie Fox and the hottie from 7th Heaven must stop it before it blows stuff up! This could be the shallowest blockbuster yet.
Dukes of Hazard: This will be awful, but it looks like it will have some sweet chase scenes, so there is balance.
Chicken Little: Doesn’t look funny.
King Kong: Maybe.
One hour down, twenty to go.
What's new at C:WF?
If you've never been here before, read my stuff. Some of it is cool.
I've been posting many things at my LiveJournal, posting less things here. Oh ah.
E-mail Caution: Wet Floor at isaac@cautionwetfloor.com
We can fight the universe. With our guitars! We live in a world of change. All things, even those seemingly secure and bound by the anchor of tradition give way to the unrelenting waves of evolution. This website is no exception. Expect its format and contents to be dynamic, flowing ever into the future. All contents are governed by a Creative Commons License held by Isaac Kelley, unless otherwise noted. Many pages on this site will claim otherwise for a while, because I am lazy. Ignore them. Or not.