MADE From Bad to Worse

Today I watched a lot of MADE. I was bored, okay?

Two of the three episodes were about cheerleading. The first one was actually not completely horrible. The second one was, though! Why are cheerleaders so whiny?

Was that horribly vague? Good.

The last episode I watched, which was a premiere, was by far the worst, though. Absolute crud. It was about some crazy anime fan who gives all anime fans a bad name. (Here is a video. Thanks, MTV, for not letting me stinking embed. You are so sensible and fair.)

"Amanda," whose name will be in quotes because she's practically a TV character herself, is an insanely awkward, overweight MySpace user (and this is in a post-Facebook world, mind you!) who claims to have no friends or social skills. She wants to be an "independent woman." In her spare time, she likes to make MySpace accounts where she role plays as Sonic the Hedgehog and some really plain-looking moe girl. The latter's profile pic is of the girl lying on her back, pulling her shirt up and probably not wearing underwear.

Moving on.

Despite how awful I'm making her sound, "Amanda" didn't seem that bad, as far as weeaboos go. Sure, she doesn't know squat about any anime that hasn't been on Adult Swim or butchered by 4Kids, but most people haven't, sadly. But then she started crying. Over and over and over again. She would never, ever stop crying.

Her MADE coach was this really obnoxious girl named Julie who would make "Amanda" do all of these idiotic exercises to make her like herself. She also made "Amanda" wear makeup and the hottest fashions one can buy on the cheap from the 2003 store. Okay, whatever. Julie, however, also made her stand on a street corner in Times Square like a cheap prostitute holding a sign reading, "I Have Self-Esteem Problems. Compliment Me." Yes, Julie, that's definitely going to raise her confidence. The stupid girl stood in the middle of the busiest, brightest stinking spot of the loudest city this side of Beijing wearing some ugly sweater and crying her eyes out for the fifth hour straight. It was really pathetic. It would have been sad if I didn't hate this whiny brat so much.

Later on in the show, "Amanda" asked Julie if she could go to Mokucon, which is some stupid anime convention in Rutgers of all nasty places to hold a convention that doesn't even have a website or anything. She wants to go because Vic Mignogna (seen at right) was going to be there. That's when I knew this girl sucked. I love FMA, too, babycakes (sorry, I say that sometimes), but anyone who knows squat about Vic Mig knows he's an borderline insane Evangelical Christian. And I mean, I love Evangelical Christians as much as the next girl, but...wait, actually, no, I HATE EVAGELICAL CHRISTIANS. (No offense to any Evangelicals reading this? Not that there'd be any.)

So, after being denied, "Amanda" starts - guess what? - crying. AGAIN. "I wanna meet Vic, waaaaah, he loves me, I love him, I wanna go to Rutgers and spend $60 so I can touch his perfect effeminate face, maybe he'll kiss me and give me his cowboy hat and spew his pure Christian ideals that I usually pretend to not know about onto my antisocial cheeks!" That's a paraphrase, obviously, but you know.

But GUESS WHAT? Because Julie is soooo "cool" (a word the coach on the okay cheerleading episode used to death, ugh), she gets Vic to go out to dinner with "Amanda"! And the entire time, Vic says, "Sweetie, no, yer beautiful! SwEEEtie!" and then he laughs obnoxiously. "Amanda," after embracing Vic for what has to be the eightieth time during their dinner (which consists of huge and numerous plates of fried meats), tells him about her lifelong dream. You guessed it! She wants to be a VOICE ACTOR. Because that's ENTIRELY POSSIBLE.

And from then on the episode spirals from being an irritating but not completely intolerable romp in the land of Weeaboo-nia to be a nightmareish rollercoaster ride through someone's unfortunate life. She begins pursuing acceptance into the New York Film Academy's acting program. Obviously, she's terrible at voice acting, regular acting, speaking in a voice that isn't annoying (and trust me, I know and am a master of annoying voices), but people keep leading her on, telling her that she's awesome. One particularly saddening part is when her dad is talking about how expensive the school will be: "But if there's anyone who's gonna get dat der talent scholarship, it's 'Amanda!'" And then we see her acting. It's awful.

In the end, though, she gets into the bloody school. The bloody school where my man Joseph Gordon-Levitt once lectured. It's...it just doesn't make sense. At all.

There was more that I just skipped over, but they were stupid and not worth mentioning. (Parties, pssh, who cares? Visiting Stony Brook of all cruddy places? Boring.) MADE isn't known for being, you know, very realistic or anything less than annoying, but I don't usually find myself so bothered by what I'm watching at the end of the episode. So, thank you, "Amanda," for making it my first time.

Six

I guess you've heard of Glee. If you've ever been around at least one 15-year-old girl, or one 28-year-old guy (yeah, I don't get that, either), then you most certainly have. And if you know about the show, then you probably know that they have the second most obnoxious fanbase out there.

Until last Friday, I considered myself to be sitting on the lowest rung of that scary collective. That is no longer.

What do we blame? We blame "The Power of Madonna."

Background you don't care about: I stinking hate Madonna. Yeah, her songs are "catchy." Yeah, her style was cool. Whatever. I don't care. I don't like her. (And Desperately Seeking Susan was so bad that I couldn't watch more than 45 minutes of it. Sorry.)

For some reason, Ryan Murphy and his gang of gal pal writers thought that people my age and younger/very slightly older idolized Madonna. They also thought a lot of other stupid things that they deserve to be slapped for: they thought they knew what was a satire was. They thought they knew what a capella was. They thought they knew that it's totally cool to leave the toilet seat up in the bathroom. (FYI, it's not. At all. So put that seat down before I jam it up a place it shouldn't go...yeah, no, I won't do that. But please, I appeal to you, put that toilet seat down. Do you know how many animals die from falling into the toilet each day? MILLIONS. Yeah. Think about that.)

In actuality, they knew nothing. I was enticed by Glee at first by the happy-go-lucky musical numbers by some truly good singers and the promise of satire. I was let down, again and again. For thirteen weeks in a row, I was let down. Those musical numbers? Yeah, they weren't even live. They were overproduced and Auto-Tuned so much that even T-Pain would cry from the sheer faux perfection. That satire? Excuse me, what satire? How is this supposed to be the anti-High School Musical, again? Oh, because you have like fifteen pregnant characters? Oh, that's original! Oh, because the obviously gay kid actually comes out of the closet? Oh, that's original! (Even more original is that the fat black girl with the awesome voice, yet another innovation by the Glee creators, fell in love with him because she COULDN'T TELL HE WAS GAY. YEAH. THAT WOULD TOTALLY HAPPEN, RYAN MURPHY. TOTALLY. And when he came out of the closet, he cried and acted as if NO ONE COULD TELL. SERIOUSLY GUYS. ROUND OF APPLAUSE.) Oh, because the high school sophomores are played by some blatantly obvious 28-year-olds? Have you seen Dawson's Creek, Ryan Murphy? How old did you think they were? 16? HA. FUNNY.

 Oh, is this another example of your winning satire, Glee gang? Oh, that's just precious.

The show is not tongue-in-cheek. The show is a teen drama. All of the good reviews it gets are by people who want so badly for it to be good that they read all of this (melo)drama crud into it. I mean, dear god, people. Really? "Glee is one of the darkest shows on television. When Rachel sings 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' to herself with her hairbrush, it really shows how lonely she is inside; in fact, it may even be a metaphor for the suicidal tendencies she will most definitely soon display in an upcoming episode, and it gives her some great characterization and emotional depth." NO. NO. THE GIRL IS SINGING WITH A HAIRBRUSH. SHE IS NOT PROUST. SHUT UP. 

Why the heck do you hire Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison if they're NOT EVEN GOING TO SING LIVE? Oh, because you want those stupid little girls who are going to buy the songs off iTunes later to be able to hear the exact same song? WHO CARES? Obviously Ryan Bleeding Murphy cares more about his brand than his integrity. But then again, WHAT STINKING INTEGRITY? THIS IS THE GUY WHO MADE THE SHOW ABOUT PLASTIC SURGERY GUEST-STARRING ROSIE O'DONALD.

Despite the overproduction, the music is the best part of the show. But is that saying much? Because the writing is horrible, the editing makes me want to punch babies, the acting is sub-par, the smugness, the self-righteousness, the awkwardness, everything ignites a fire in me. A FIRE THAT BUUUURNS. This fire is outta control -- wait, this is not the time to be singing that.

So, what does Madonna have to do with me going from enjoying this show, despite pointing out its very obvious and numerous flaws, to hating it so much that I am forced to write a long and angry post punctuated with obnoxious capitalization? Because last week they showed "the" Madonna episode. Yes, as if every show worth its weight in anything needs a Madonna-centric episode. And the Madonna episode was probably the worst episode I have seen of this show so far. In fact, it's one of the worst episodes I've seen of any show this year. And I watch The Office on a regular basis! (Oh, snap. If you want to hear me rant about that show, then you'll have to give me another good three hours. We'll save that for another day.)

But first, the good. Um. Jonathan Groff was there. I love Jonathan Groff. I mean, he was pretty bad, but just the fact that he was there was nice. Um, the 4 Minutes scene was pretty awesome? Yeah. That's kind of it.

The bad? Um, does "everything else" count? Sue Sylvester just isn't that funny. That "Vogue" scene was sososososososo bad I can't even begin to explain it. The "Like a Virgin" scene? No. No. No. NO ONE DOES THAT. NOT EVEN IN DREAM SEQUENCES. And they tried to make that scene so "powerful," so interesting, but really, it wasn't. It was so painful for me to watch that whatever sad poignance it was supposed to have was totally lost on me.

This show just tries to do too much in too short of a time. It tries so hard. It's like that annoying girl in your tenth grade Earth Science class who is like, "Yeah, I do this, this, and this, and I'm awesome, and I'm so good at everything I do, because I do a lot and that makes me awesome and yeah and stuff and um, crud, do we have a test today, because I totally did not study, like, at all" and then they go and they suck at everything they try to do, and you would applaud them for their effort if they weren't so annoying, and then you have to be fake friends with them because you don't want to be mean and then you go and you take to your little blog and you go and you rant like crazy and everyone has no choice but to agree with you because you are so irritated. Yeah. It's exactly like that.

Glee. It's definitely not as bad as that show I saw once on ABC after Modern Family, The Middle, but what makes it so irritating to me is that people seem to be oblivious to its flaws. People can't watch it with a true unbiased eye because of the sparkly magic power of MUSIC by "HIGH SCHOOLERS" who are SO VERY DIVERSE. I mean, there's even a dude in a WHEELCHAIR SINGING! HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE 'EM?

Well, for me, I find it very easy. Try to watch that Madonna episode because it was really, really bad. I can't talk too much about it because my arm is starting to hurt and I might have to bite it off soon if I keep typing. Maybe the show will pick up, but personally, I doubt it, and I don't even know if I want to stick around to see if it does. I'll probably wait out Jonathan Groff's guest appearance and then just cut ties with this machine. Glee's on tonight (Tuesday) at some time that I can't remember on FOX if you care to check it out for yourself.

Here's Looking at You, Kids

Do you know where the title is from? If you said anything other than "Casablanca," then off to the chair for you!

But seriously, folks, it's from Casablanca, which, according to Yahoo's 100 Movies to See Before You Die list, is one of the 100 movies you have to watch before you meet your (hopefully neither untimely nor unpleasant) demise. Have you seen it?

I have! Seeing it for the first time stands out as one of those nice little bright spots in my short life. Too bad I didn't even know what it was at the time! (I, obviously, figured it out eventually.) Despite that, I wholeheartedly agree with its inclusion on movie "bests" list.

Looking through the list, I found that these were the movies I had seen:

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Annie Hall
3. Casablanca
4. Citizen Kane
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
6. Do the Right Thing
7. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
8. Goldfinger
9. The Graduate
10. A Hard Day's Night
11. It's a Wonderful Life
12. The Matrix
13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
14. National Lampoon's Animal House
15. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
16. Princess Mononoke
17. Psycho
18. Raiders of the Lost Ark
19. Rebel Without a Cause
20. The Silence of the Lambs
21. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
22. The Sound of Music
23. Star Wars
24. This is Spinal Tap
25. Titanic
26. To Kill a Mockingbird
27. Toy Story
28. When Harry Met Sally...
29. The Wizard of Oz

Dang, I'm only 16 and I'm already more than a quarter of the way through that list. But at the same time, there are tons of movies on the list that I've wanted to see for awhile and still haven't. I should get on that. 

How many have YOU seen? ...Oh really? That's nice...Yes, yes...Okay. Okay! Stop talking now. This is my blog. You wanna talk, you go make your own.

Sorry about that! Yahoo also has a "Modern Classics" list, which has movies from the 90s on. You know what this means, right? Brace yourself for another list of which ones I've seen (not including the ones that overlap, though)!:

1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Dazed and Confused
3. Ed Wood
4. Forrest Gump
5. Four Weddings and a Funeral
6. Babe 
7. Clueless
8. Fargo
9. Being John Malkovich
10. Election
11. Fight Club
12. The Sixth Sense
13. Best in Show
14. Donnie Darko
15. The Royal Tennenbaums
16. Elephant
17. Finding Nemo
18. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
19. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
20. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
21. Brokeback Mountain
22. Borat: Cultural Learnings blah blah blah
23. Pan's Labyrinth
24. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
25. No Country for Old Men
26. The Dark Knight
27. Slumdog Millionaire
28. WALL-E

Hey! I've seen almost the exact same amount of "modern classics" as I have ones from the other list! Of course, this isn't including the ones that overlap, which means I've actually seen more modern classics than, well, classic classics. But can you blame me? I'm actually surprised that I saw that many of the classic classics, anyway, because I perhaps am not the most cinematically literate when it comes to movies made before...I don't know, the 60s or 70s? It's quite sad. That's why I recommend that we all keep this list as a little guideline of what we need to see.

I don't personally believe that this list is the most comprehensive, though; Yahoo is not what I'd call a reputable cinema source. However, it's not that hard to tell what a truly great movie is, especially if you're looking with nostalgia-tinted glasses, as most film critics are...Not that old movies are bad by any means, but I feel like a lot of reviewers/people in general are pretty elitist when it comes to them. People say, "Oh, well, I don't watch movies made after 1975 because they're all horrible!" Well, how would you know that? Based off their trailers? Based off hearsay? It's not very fair.

I will admit that I can be a film elitist, too. When I read through that modern classics list, I rolled my eyes several times. Even before I read it, the article from which I found it phrased it so that it sounded like having a list of modern classics was a negative thing. The list isn't the best, but not because it exists, but because it's missing several things and there are some movie choices that I completely disagree with. But having a list of modern classics in theory isn't bad. Oh, but I think it should be limited to everything before, say, 2008; the inclusion of things such as Avatar and The Hurt Locker read very strangely to me. I don't think a classic movie necessarily has to be an old one, but c'mon, Avatar's not even on DVD yet.

Although personally I don't think it should even be on the list at all. I'm kinda just an Avatar-hater. But what do they say about haters?

That's what!