Selling the Brooklyn Bridge?

It was a blizzard, and chataqua was snacking on MTV-Hits. And the "All Because of You" video was playing--U2 doing a Beatles- and U2-esque surprise concert on the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere in the middle of the city. (Something that can actually almost overwhem New Yorkers). And the next video was Good Charlotte's "I Just Want to Live." A good, parodic video with classic style.

But in betwen them was an advert was inserted--or possibly a blipvert, as it was only 20 seconds--for the "classic first season" of Newlyweds. Yes the Jessica Simpson- and-what's-his-name-show. The 'new Sonny & Cher' (we really don't think so).

we couldn't help but speculate as to why? why would any network traffic director in his right mind do such a thing? There must have been just too much authenticity (a/k/a Rock-&-Roll!) in these too videos, which would overwhelm these ten minutes of pseudo-network television. Hence, the blipvert, pitching a copy of one of the least credible 'reality' series, featuring the least-likely-to-become genuine stars, since the Partridge Family. How reassuring.

So this phenomenon was: The Inauthenticity Strikes Back.
You'd think that MTV could have at least found something about the 1967 Monkees to run.

P.S. since we've seen the video, we heart Good Charlotte!

Four years ago it was warm, but rained all day.

We were in a psychology class at the noon hour today. Wonkette has nice coverage of that ceremony in DC. Did she bang all that out on a Blackberry? Check out the 11:49AM entry.

Inauguration Alternate Reality-Maine

Remember all those important news stories from four-and-a-half years ago? We didn't think so. Today's Globe reports on the aftermath of one of them:

A slender man... kicking the tires of an 18-wheeler as he readied the behemoth for a journey down the star-lit highways. that have become his unexpected lifeline.

After 30 years as a reporter, 29 of them at the Portland Press Herald, Ted Cohen six months ago embraced a new profession: trucking.

This trucker is the former reporter who broke--or rather, tried to break--the story about George W. Bush's arrest for drunken driving in Kennebunkport. The story, and eventually, its reporter, was squashed by spineless editors. So the reporter, rather than taking up blogging, took up trucking.

Tsunami Europae

n.b. blogging continues: Our favorite WiFi cafe has redecorated and reopened.

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A good commentary on the Tsunami appeared in the Boston Globe: Scot Lehigh compared the Indian Ocean disaster to the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon on All Saint's Day, 1755, and caught most of the city's population worshipping at mass. Thus, the Tsunami was widely interpreted--as it should be--as an argument against the existence (or the benevolence) of God.

The Philocrites blog has commented on this article's representation of Voltaire as against theodicies (technical jargon for any question that reduces to the form "Why did Job lose everything?"). They see Lehigh as finding that Voltaire's view (against theodicies) 'has become commonplace today.' We think the evidence suggests that the philosophe's view is common in some places more than others.

Happy New Year!

Belated, yes -- you really can't expect bloggers to post when they're hungover -- but in the spirit of New Year's revelry & mummery we recommend Lily Burana's artcle in the current Nerve, on how teenybopper pop iconography has been replaced (& superseded) with housewife iconography.