Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Creepy MaGee... Celine's New 'Do

Okay, I'll give my American Idol commentary in a second, but first to address the most comment-worthy look of the night - Celine's new butch look. Okay, Celine Dion is a pretty and classy star, pitched to diva status because of her elegant features, long flowing hair, "foreignness," and crystal-shattering high notes. Well, ladies and gents, if you saw Oprah yesterday or CBS tonight, you know that she's traded in her Pantene mane for a super cuts buzz and a $6 Miss Clariol faux-blonde dye job. Celine, honey, even I can afford good highlights. Her look borders even closer to that uncomfortable line of gender bending because she is wearing male suspenders, a white oxford, flowy pants, and "sensible" shoes. She's slim as ever, waistless, flatchested, and generally speaking, the new crowned Prince of sin city. Without a doubt, this is the worst I have seen a star look in years. Who manages her? Who would cut her hair like that -- don't hairdressers have moral code?? Where have ethics gone? Being the Las Vegas expert I am, after my five-day observation and anthropologists fieldwork trip last spring, I can assure you that most of the ex-hooker cocktail waitresses in dingy old Vegas look better than the new macho Celine. My father has had a crush on Celine for years, and this is when you know it's bad, he said she's not worth $125 with this new haircut... one wonders if he was talking about the ticket price for her Caesar's show or something else...

So an unimpressive and slapped together Idol tonight. Okay, first and foremost, where was the disco?? At least twice last week, we heard that this week's theme would be disco, but tonight, brandishing a cowboy hat (but not daring to mess up his messy 'do) one Ryan Seacrest told us otherwise and told us we'd have the bimboed airheaded Olivia Newton-John on hand to judge a country-rock contest. She's been the lamest of the celeb judges to date, she had very little to add to make the show better or even make the contestants shine. As far as I am concerned, she's a B-list star, on a good day, and probably doped up on the same happy pills as Paula. This was also the first week in a while of cramming all ten stars into a single hour, rather than meandering around a two hour event. My first question is: what in the hell does country-rock mean?? There was no agreement tonight and I think the judges all seemed out of it, at a loss for anything to say aside from Randy's signature "What up, dawg? Doin' your thing... you look good." But the songs came from all over the place... since when is Doby Gray a country star? Josh did a good Garth Brooks show, but the perfomances were spotty and I don't even think anyone hit the genre right. I guess the genre is best defined by its known stars - so much "country" music makes its way onto top-20 stations so it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins, but I think most of the songs could have been weeded out. Ruben was good and effortless as always, I think Kimberely Locke redeemed herself after a few shitty weeks, and Trenyce, one of my usual favorites, just bombed. I didn't like the "genre," but even less, I didn't like that people seemed to choose whatever they wanted and just wiggle around what they were told to do. Hell, if the theme is country rock, let's here some goodies like "friends in low places," or I don't know, just more contemporary radio songs. My rule of thumb, to this point, it's not country music unless it mentions beer, rainy nights, or a pickup truck. Nothing rocked tonight (shy of Rooo-ben) and nothing screamed line dancing, tight levis, cattle ranchin', boots, or redneck hicks. In this contest, I think you've lost it if the average viewer, take me for instance, doesn't recognize your song in 10 seconds. I am a music addict with a wider taste and familiarity of music than most people AND STILL there were plenty of songs I have never heard tonight, and I think that if I had heard them, professionally recorded and spoonfed to me by some moron disc jockey, I would flip the station. Overall, weak show tonight. My predictions to go? Bottom three: Trenyce had an awful night - she didn't win my vote, as an upset and a surprise, she might go. Despite the praise, I also think helium-huffing Rickey might be at the end of his game. I think yodellriffic Carmen might win votes because it's her birthday, but I think Julia DeMato is overdue to fall off the edge of the American Idol stage into hasbeen heaven. So what, disco next week without an explanation? I feel like some screwiness went on backstage and the choice they opted for was a oneway bus ride to disappointment city.

This is the point in my tirade where the average person steps back and humbly says: who am I to judge? I'll tell ya, I am a viewer in America. We're the most critical people ever and we know what we like and we know what others can pull off and get away with. Someone has to draw the line and lay down what is acceptable, good, and tasteful and what falls embarassingly short. Simon didn't do his job tonight, so I think he summoned the critic in all of us to lash back, claws flayling, and get it out there. For saying all of this... I deserve whatever people are thinking about me, right now. I think it's important to be critical (maybe it goes a little far sometimes, I know for sure I've tried to tone this down in the past) but the cruel world out there IS judgmental. Don't trust that damn musical preaching, "Anything Goes," it ain't true. Anyway, I ordered another book from Amazon today, it actually looks very good and I am eager for it to arrive while I am still all geared up to read and television is a false friend - but it's called The Smart Student's Guide to Getting your Master's or PhD by Robert L. Peters. Amazon offers a preview, so I read the first chapter online and it seems like this Stanford grad knows what he's talking about and admits that these are lessons he and other people learned the hardway. When it arrives, I'll have more to say, but from what I was reading today, I guess I was struck as to how poltical the whole process is. At some point, I think you decide if you are a political person or not. I think we each have the choice of seeing every situation as a game, as a game you can potentially win or advance in by making catagorical moves. If you subscribe to this paradigm, you see every relationship as beneficial, entwined with power dynamics, and you believe that every change is a zero sum game: in order for you to get ahead, someone else can't or someone else loses something (this is the Survivor mentality). If you don't want to play games, and by all means I don't think you have to, you can be happy with what you've got, see your peers as gifts unto themselves, and not bother getting caught up in knit-picky comparisions of yourself and other people.... but anyway, Peters says that grad school is hard, political, and too many people go in not knowing what to expect or how to get what they want. He says that most people end up taking much longer than expected to finish their dissertation so it pays to be prepared early, be focused and pick a realistic thesis topic, and play the game. Realizing that going in blindly might cost me years in the end, well, that's scary. In the first chapter he says that in order to curry favor - you need to dress the part (hard on a budget and working for peanuts), act the part (make "witty yet erudite conversation with professors while drinking sherry"), and be the part - work your ass off for very little reward up front. From what I know - grad students are competitive, complainy, arrogant, wax intellectual, and broke - good to know that I'll be in the company of kindred spirits. So, proof again, that maybe life is a business of judgment, criticism, and gaining the favor from your fans at every opportunity. So, so aptly stated, American Idol is preparation for life. You have to look good, you need to pick the right song, your eye needs to twinkle and your tonsils better not fail you when everyone's lookin.'

ps - My mother is giving my dog the highly scientific hearing test as I write... this consists of clapping, yelling his name and whistling. Consensus is that he is, again, deaf.
posted by lmjasinski at 9:59 PM