The State | Geekscape

I Want MyTV – The Top 10 Things MTV Gave Us That Have NOTHING To Do With Music

by DJAJSantiniAugust 5, 2013

“Why doesn’t MTV play music videos anymore?” is the battle cry for a few generations whose adolescence occurred as a precursor to Y2K, September 11th, and the boy band resurgences of ’99 and ‘012, respectively. But rather than jump on the whiny bitch-wagon and yearn for the simpler times of day-glo, skinny ties and songs with drum machines (wait a minute…), let’s look at what exactly MTV has accomplished and influenced in our culture while completely ignoring the meaning of the “M” in their station’s moniker (for better or worse…):

10. House of Style

I didn’t care about fashion. I don’t know that anyone I was acquainted with did. But everyone I know watched “House of Style.” Why? Cindy Crawford. Cindy embodied the corn-fed, All-American female from her almost-Brick House measurements, to her playful attitude, up to her trademark beauty mark. While Daisy Fuentes, Rebecca Romijn and Molly Sims were all suitable replacements, House of Style was all about Cindy (and sometimes Pat Smear, guitarist of the Germs, Nirvana and Foo Fighters). My cousin even bought her workout video and brought it over one late night to watch it with me. Being an idiot, I thought we were supposed to actually do the exercises she was instructing, until I looked back mid-leg lift and saw his hand in his… Well, that’s for my therapist. Denis Leary sums up the programming shift from 24/7 music videos to original programming better than I can:

9. MTV Sports

I’m convinced there’d be no X Games without this show. While the extreme sports market was already in place in certain areas of the country (probably mainly So-Cal), MTV Sports really brought it into the living rooms of people who normally would be stuck with football, baseball and basketball as their only three options for physical activity. MTV Sports, hosted by Dan Cortese, really embodied the alternative spirit (eventually even using the Descendents’ “Coffee Mug” as their theme) for active adolescents who couldn’t give two fly balls about traditional organized sport. Two words: Freestyle. Frisbee.

8. The State

Sketch comedy wasn’t new in 1993, but “The State”’s style of comedy was. From satire to absurdism, Nazi war criminals to Nancy Spungen, the show remains funny to this day, unlike many sketch comedy shows like “In Living Color” and “Saturday Night Live,” where most of the material becomes dated after just a few months. Without this show, there would have been no “Reno 911!,” no “Wet Hot American Summer,” no “Night at the Museums”, and no one to yell “GIVE IT ALL YOU GOT!” in a crackly voice in “I Love You, Man.” Now, I have to go dip my balls in something…

7. Remote Control

This was MTV’s first original program. A game show hosted by Ken Ober that put people like Colin Quinn, Adam Sandler and Denis Leary in our faces every week. It was basically Jeopardy! for couch potatoes and slackers, but with categories like Six Feet Under, Boy Were They Stupid and Celebrity Flesh it was perfect for the demographic.

6. Jackass

Skateboarding. That’s the major theme to how two groups of people from opposite ends of the country got together to make a show that not only sped up Darwinian natural selection across the country, it also made huge stars out of Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Wee-Man and Bam Margera (plus his entire family and most of my hometown of West Chester, PA). While the CKY videos Bam and friends were doing were all the rage with the skaters in my little neck of the woods, it wasn’t until I saw these guys flying in shopping carts across the parking lots on national television that I sat back and went, “This is gonna be huge.” And it was. Two years on TV, three movies and quite a few Bam spin-offs later, these skaters-turned-superstars were cultural icons and movie stars. R.I.P. Ryan Dunn.

5. Choose or Lose

The youth were mostly ignored in politics. Maybe we couldn’t vote this time around, but MTV understood that it’s never too early to get involved. The Choose or Lose campaign was aimed at getting young people interested and age-appropriate people registered. But what endeared President William Jefferson Clinton to an entire generation (and what kept people on his side through most of his mishaps with mistresses) was his appearances on MTV. Whether he was playing the saxophone, meeting with Pearl Jam or answering questions about his underwear preferences, he ushered in a whole new era of young people being politically active that hadn’t necessarily been the case for a few decades. The Vietnam War, Watergate, Reagan’s “Morning in America” nostalgia and the first Iraq war made generations of citizens feel isolated, apathetic and disgusted with our system. Putting candidates on MTV changed the face of politics in a way that hadn’t occurred since JFK debated Nixon on live television.

4. True Life: I Have a Summer Share

Literally the precursor to “Jersey Shore,” this installment of MTV’s “True Life” series showed a group of North Jersey cheeseballs (you are what you eat…) clubbing, drinking, fighting and actually looking for love in Seaside Heights. This was more genuine than the later manufactured “Jersey Shore,” (which, we can have a whole debate about another time), and it showed a lifestyle that was very appealing. This one episode is responsible for ushering in the EDM revival in music, the stock prices of creatine and hair gel rising over the past few years and one of the greatest YouTube videos of all-time, “My New Haircut”.

3. MTV Films

While they started off terribly with a feature length film based on the quirky promo shorts “Joe’s Apartment,” MTV films really hit a few out of the park. “Beavis and Butt-head Do America” is obvious, but “Varsity Blues,” “Election,” “Save the Last Dance,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Blades of Glory” and the Jackass films were definitely highlights. While none of these are Oscar-worthy revelations into the majestic art of cinema, they are perfect extensions of the MTV brand: entertainment for a certain-aged demographic. Dawson yelling “I don’t want your life” at his father is just the next generation’s “What do you wanna do with your life?” “I WANNA ROCK!” And they’re both perfect. (Also, have to mention MTV Books here, without which, who knows if we’d have the coming-of-age classic “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”?)

2. Beavis and Butt-head

While they did spend an inordinate amount of time making fun of the very videos that MTV used to get famous (isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?), Beavis and Butt-head broke new ground in animation, programming and influence. Remember that kid who dropped the bowling ball off the overpass? What about the people who actually went couch fishing? The entire controversy over “Fire!”? I’m sure a few people actually played frog baseball. There would very possibly be no South Park, Family Guy, Jackass, Daria, King of the Hill, Office Space, Idiocracy or Clone High had it not been for the success of Beavis and Butt-head. It was originally a sketch for Liquid Television, an MTV animated show that also launched Aeon Flux, and blew up from there. Thank you, drive thru.

1. The Real World

Chuck Klosterman already wrote an entire diatribe on why “The Real World” was so engrossing in “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” (which will be turning 10 this year), so all I’m going to say is – reality TV would very possibly not exist had this show not worked. The spin-offs (Road Rules, Real World vs. Road Rules challenge) and every single reality program on MTV and every network and cable channel imaginable became must-see-TV. We wouldn’t have rich housewives, moonshiners and honey boo boos turning into overnight celebrities without the success of this franchise. The confessional was coined here where the participants would talk into the camera and narrate their own lives. You didn’t need writers, you didn’t need a plot, you didn’t need actors, you didn’t need to pay anyone but camera people, editors and a landlord who owned the building and you had a hit TV show that voyeuristic gen-Xers could not stop watching ad nauseum (especially on marathon weekends). It was simply a revenue machine. “That could be me” was all it took to make the screenwriter’s guild almost a non-entity in telelvision. It’s responsible for YouTube and Instagram and Vine. It is the precursor to the entire way we now live. For better or worse…

A.J. Santini has been an audiophile since pre-natal care. Having 15+ years DJ experience, a brief stint in terrestrial radio and an extensively diverse collection of books, vinyl, cassettes, VHSs CDs, DVDs and MP3s (plus one Led Zeppelin 8-track) qualifies him to rant nonsensically and wax poetically about popular culture. He also hosts QUIZZO trivia nights to feel superior to the masses of the population. Check out some of his DJ mixes.

Geekscape Book Review: You’re Not Doing It Right By Michael Ian Black

by inaudible_mumbleMarch 14, 2012

On the threshold of forty most men would inevitably find themselves crumbling under the weight that is a mid-life crises. Michael Ian Black however uses this milestone as a means of evaluating his life thus far, and unlike his demographic counterparts it is done without measuring his life in terms of youth squandered. He retrospects his life in search of an answer to one question. How exactly did he get to this point in his life?

What follows next is Michael Ian Blacks newest book You’re Not Doing It Right the journey into adulthood as told with the frankness and sincerity only allowed by one who truly understands and loves his subject material: By subject material meaning his family, though I’m sure he loves himself as well. Actually he may in fact love himself more so then his family, or so it seems at times in the book through some of his descriptions and accounts of interactions with the aforementioned parties (for example his use of “cocktail wieners” while describing his wife in the chapter “I Hate My Baby” made me cringe and laugh simultaneously)

You’re Not Doing It Right is most easily described as a memoir (by me, the book publisher and by the technical definition of the word according to Webster’s so it must be true; though I wish I could find a more fitting word that doesn’t come across so decidedly french and pretentious). Throughout the book Michael Ian Black tracks his life as told in a series of events that are allowed to unfold in their own chapters, by following this format Michael Ian Black has created a novel that builds upon itself freely and comes across refreshingly accessible.

You’re Not Doing It Right is written with the wit and comedy that one would come to expect from someone who has made a career out of making others laugh. Surprisingly to some however may be Michael Ian Black ability to be his funniest when he is just being honest with his audience. Allowing them a rare glimpse at the man behind the stage persona built for the public eye.

Chapters like “I Hate My Baby” are told with such brutal honesty you can’t help but find yourself laughing while completely relating to the situation he is found himself in, even if you have never been in that particular situation yourself. As a whole the book reads this way a lot. If viewed simply as a snapshot some chapters should based on subject matter alone be more accessible then others. For instance not everyone will have had a direct experiences like those described in the chapter “Dead Dad Kid” where the author talks about his experience with the death of his father. His ability to write chapters like this with such clear prose of emotion it affords the reader the chance to enter the situation themselves; not as a third party to a tale retold in hindsight but as a guest embraced lovingly by the moment itself.

Full of laughs and heartfelt sentiment from start to finish I would recommend this book to anyone who is married, has kids, or hopes to someday be a member of one or both of the previous parties (aka that’s a recommendation to everyone if you couldn’t figure that out for yourself).

Geekscape Movie Reviews: Wanderlust

by MCDaveMarch 3, 2012

Paul Rudd’s once up and down career has blossomed into a solid body of work. Beginning his upswing in 2004 with the instant classic Anchorman, Rudd then followed suit with another excellent supporting role in the hysterical comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin. After a few more successful secondary stints, his career finally took off when he starred in the 2009 smash hit Role Models. Just a mere three years later and Rudd finds himself once again teaming up with his Role Models director David Wain. But Wain and Rudd are no strangers to one another. The friends and colleagues have worked together on every film that Wain has directed, including their most recent collaboration, Wanderlust.

Wanderlust follows George (played by Rudd) and Linda (played by Aniston), a young married couple living in New York City and already struggling to make ends meet. But when George unexpectedly loses his job and Linda’s attempt at a documentary gets turned down by HBO, the duo can no longer afford their mortgage. While trekking to Atlanta to shack up with George’s more successful and far more intolerable older brother Rick, the husband and wife discover Elysium. Elysium is a commune-like property filled with dozens of free-spirited members living under the direction of a divine leader named Seth. Although the notion seems far fetched, could Elysium be just the lifestyle that this couple needs?

Wanderlust is an overly simplistic and re-hatched attempt at R-rated humor. The film’s story becomes lost behind the overly animated characters that exist on screen. As Wanderlust serves up its obvious plot twists, it becomes apparent how brutally shallow the movie really is. Rarely does a film cause its audience to give up on its leading characters so quickly. Pinpointing the problems in David Wain’s Wanderlust becomes a daunting task, mostly because there’s so much blame to go around.

In addition to its aimless plot, Wanderlust finds little solace in the performance given by its leading actress Jennifer Aniston. Although her co-star Paul Rudd is far from spectacular himself, Aniston is simply woeful throughout the film. With remarkable ease, the actress elevates her already unlikable character to a whole new level. But despite its questionable stars, Wanderlust does offer a wide variety of outlandishly comical side characters. With the aid of a few minor roles, there are a handful of laugh out loud moments which manage to keep the film mildly entertaining.

Unfortunately for fans of well written comedic genius, “shock comedy” has become the latest craze. Everything from the bathroom scene in Hall Pass to Maya Rudolph defecating on the street in Bridesmaids, the bigger the shock the better. Wanderlust rides this bandwagon and musters up plenty of full frontal nudity (both male and female). But don’t worry, I promise I won’t spoil the movie’s biggest shocker of all.

Wanderlust is a drifting hour and a half adventure to nowhere. Centered around over the top side characters and containing very little substance, the film becomes a somewhat purposeless experience. As is the case with any comedy, Wanderlust has the occasional highlight. However, the distant gap between these rare moments is far too difficult to withstand. Heed my advice and stay clear of Wanderlust

Stars: 1 and a half stars out of 4

Grade: C-

Note: When MCDave isn’t creating havoc at Geekscape, he’s critiquing films at Movie Reviews By Dave