The Emmys, 2010

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Here we are again.  Another award show, another winner-picking competition between me and my new wife, Johanna.  And after slogging through a few shows that, while fun, were ultimately inconsequential (The ESPYs, The Daytime Emmys, and the MTV Movie Awards) we finally have a big one: The Emmys.

This has traditionally been my award show of choice; I’ve always been more of a television guy than a movie guy, I guess.  Plus, I don’t usually get around to seeing many of the nominated films before the Oscars, whereas I’m always pretty invested in the Emmys and opinionated about the categories.  It feels like the recent golden age of television has faded a bit, and my interest has waned slightly, but this remains my favorite masturbatory Hollywood event.

Tonight is big for Johanna, too.  My friend Alex, in anticipation of tonight’s competition, asked me if Johanna had won any of these.  I quickly said that yes, she had.  While I knew I had taken the last few, I thought we were actually pretty even.  Having gone back to check, though, I’m surprised to report that I won The Grammys, The Academy Awards, The MTV Movie Awards, The Daytime Emmys, and The ESPYs, with Johanna only claiming the Golden Globes, the first one of these we did.  I’m up five to one!  She needs a win.  In preparation, she’s been scouring the internet for expert predictions.

As always, we choose for the most part whom we think will win, not whom we want to win.  Never is that more true than with the Emmys; trust me, I’m no fan of The Good Wife or, heaven forbid, Glee.  Categories and winners are in bold.  Johanna has concocted an Emmy cocktail containing peach vodka, Sprite Zero, and a splash of grenadine.  She’s named it the “Leading Lady.”  It’s better, both in name and taste, than the drink she fixed us for the Daytime Emmys.  Let’s do this.

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7:41 – Taco night is over, the red carpet has begun, and I’m filling out my ballot.  All of these interviews are so unbelievably awkward and cringe-worthy.  I instinctively reach for the mute button.

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8:00 – Here we go.  We’re opening with a shot of the director’s booth.  This is such an ego move; it’s like they think we’ll assume the show was put together by elves if they don’t show themselves.  Johanna just thinks it’s hacky and compares it to starting a school paper with a Webster’s definition.

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Lollapalooza, 2010 (Through the eyes of others)

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As I said in my previous post, all of the videos I took at Lollapalooza were pretty terrible.  I didn’t have my Flip or anything too fancy, so I was just taking them with my digital camera, which doesn’t allow me to zoom in or out once I start filming, and also doesn’t have the highest video quality.  Plus, I’m pretty unwilling to stand with my camera in the air for the entirety of what were, in most cases, my favorite songs by whichever band I was watching.  I’d get one chorus recorded for posterity and then turn the camera off and enjoy the rest of the song in the moment.

Some people, however, are much more prepared/professional/devoted than I am.  YouTube is awash in Lollapalooza videos far, far superior to my own.  For the entry that had all of my personal thoughts on the shows, I wanted to only use my own photos and videos.  But as a follow-up, I thought it would be nice to pick out some better representations of the artists I saw.

The New Pornographers – “Challengers”

Dirty Projectors – “Cannibal Resource”

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Lollapalooza, 2010

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For the third year in a row Johanna and I attended Lollapalooza in Chicago.  It’s become a tradition and a great excuse to return to a city we love.  (As I type this, I’m watching My Boys on TBS.  Yes, I love Chicago so much that I’ll even watch My Boys.)

I thought I would share my belated thoughts on the festival, along with some photos I took and a few terrible, shaky, fraction-of-the-full-song videos that I took.  Because who doesn’t love terrible videos?

Friday, August 6th

4:00 – 5:00 The New Pornographers

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During the first act of a music festival I’m always relatively distracted trying to get my bearings and people-watch, so it’s a shame that we started things off on Friday with The New Pornographers, a band that I actually like quite a bit.  I don’t remember much from their set.  I know Neko Case was wearing a big floppy hat, and I know that they played a nice version of “Challengers.”  That’s about it.

5:00 – 5:50 Dirty Projectors

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Reviews of this performance were pretty mixed, and seemed to be less about the performance and more about how much the individual reviewer actually likes Dirty Projectors.  Well, I like Dirty Projectors and loved Bitte Orca, and I thought they were great.  The tempo of the songs was even less stable live, and several seemed just about to collapse before Dave Longstreth pulled everything back together.  The erratic nature added a nice bit of tension and seemed to snap me to attention, which was good since I’d been sleepwalking during the New Pornographers.

Johanna and I really enjoy this stage because it’s usually easy to get pretty close to the action, and also because we’ve seen some of our best afternoon/early evening shows here (Sharon Jones, Santigold, Band of Horses).

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The ESPYs, 2010

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So, I’ve never watched the ESPYs.  I’ve actually never even thought about watching the ESPYs.  I doubt I know anyone who has watched the ESPYs.  They’re a non-event, kind of like the Daytime Emmys, except they seem even more artificial and tacky.  (Note: I spent about five minutes trying to think of a joke about an imaginary Daytime ESPYs and came up empty.  This is how I spend my time.)

That said, Johanna and I must soldier on in our 2010 award show winner-picking competition, so we’re going to slog through it.  Luckily, Seth Meyers is hosting.  Also, there will undoubtedly be ridiculously dressed athletes.  And, as Bill Simmons always points out, women in high heels who are not used to wearing high heels.  So that’s fun.

Let’s get this started.  In the sporting, masculine spirit of the evening, Johanna and I will be sharing a bottle of 2009 D’Autrefois Pinot Noir Rosé.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

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9:00 – Picking winners in these categories was really hard; this has been a crazy exciting and dramatic sports year.  Great Super Bowl, amazing March Madness, Phil Mickelson defeating his wife’s cancer at the Masters, a super-long tennis match, perfect games and no hitters, Celtics vs. Lakers, the World Cup.  The Olympics were sort of meh, but hey, it’s still the Olympics.

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The Daytime Emmy Awards, 2010

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So, guess who stumbled across The Daytime Emmy Awards in the cable menu while setting up the DVR for the week?  That’s right, me!  The Daytime Emmys, everybody!  I could not pass up this opportunity to have another winner-picking competition with Johanna.  I mean, what other award show features categories like this:

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL CLASS SPECIAL

WE ARE ONE: THE OBAMA INAUGURAL CELEBRATION AT THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL
HBO
CLEAN HOUSE: THE MESSIEST HOME IN THE COUNTRY
THE STYLE NETWORK

ON THE EDGE: THE POVERTY CRISIS IN AFRICA
FOX REALITY

That’s right, Clean House up against Obama and poverty in Africa!  Also, since when did Fox Reality Channel have shows about things like poverty in Africa?  Neither of us has even heard of a lot of these shows, let alone see them, so our choices will be almost completely arbitrary.  This is going to be more bonkers than our MTV Movie Award competition.

Believe it or not, not only was there not a printable ballot to be found online, I wasn’t even able to find a list of the categories than were going to actually be in the telecast.  So I printed the huge list of unbelievably specific awards off of the Emmy site, and then set about eliminating all but the seemingly most important categories.  I brought it down from sixty pages to a concise eight.  We’ll find out together whether or not I chose the right categories.

Johanna has made a special cocktail for the occasion out of pear vodka, cranberry juice, and lemon.  She’s calling it the “Bitch Slap.”  It tastes delicious, but I’m going to give her the first hour of the show to punch up the name.  Let’s get started.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – You know an award show is extra-classy when it comes to you live from beautiful downtown Las Vegas.  They’re listing all the performers and presenters here, and outside of our host Regis Philbin, I think the biggest star is Simon Cowell.  Chubby Checker???

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The MTV Movie Awards, 2010

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I don’t usually watch the MTV Movie Awards.  It’s not like I think I’m too good for it; I love these MTV train wrecks and was really upset when I realized I had missed the most recent VMAs and had to watch it online.  But the Movie Awards show just isn’t usually on my radar.

This time around, though, Aziz Ansari is hosting, and since I am both a fan and a Twitter follower of his, I’ve been looking forward to this.  As I was setting it up on the DVR it occurred to me that I should compete with Johanna in a winner-picking competition like we’ve done in the past with the Oscars, Grammys, and Golden Globes.  I went looking for a ballot online, but shockingly was unable to find one.  I guess not as many people participate in office pools for the MTV Movie Awards as they do for some of the other awards shows.  I decided to make my own ballot, so I went to the MTV site and looked up the categories.  And that’s when I really got excited about this.

Best WTF Moment.  Biggest Badass Star.  Best Scared-As-S**t Performance (MTV’s asterisks, not mine).  Plus, I’m pretty sure that the winners were all determined by online polls.  So, to correctly pick winners, I have to put myself in the mindset of a fifteen-year-old girl.  I haven’t even heard of some of these movies, let alone seen them.  This is going to be epic.

Just a warning, my usual strategy of taking photos of my actual television for these live events works out even worse when the show is not in HD.  And Time Warner Cable down here does not have MTVHD.

Let’s get started.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

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The Lost Finale

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So, Lost is over.  I was out of town and therefore a few days behind on everything, but I managed to avoid spoilers and sat down last night to watch it with an open mind.  When I went to bed after watching not only the finale, but also last week’s episode and the two-hour recap show that had aired immediately prior to the finale, I certainly had some questions.  I felt mostly satisfied, though.  Then this morning I found myself getting kind of angry about it.

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“The End” was a fitting end to this season, and I think it was pretty great as a stand-alone episode.  The final season was not a fitting end to the show as a whole, though.  It’s not even a matter of tying up older plotlines; there are enough holes in the recently introduced plots alone that there is no way that this finale will age well.  The more people think about it, the worse it’s going to get.  Which is why everyone who wants to love it unconditionally is telling the rest of us we’re thinking too much about it.

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A Model Day in Disney World

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I’ve spent the day getting hyped for my trip to Disney World, and also looking for music videos on YouTube, and the two activities somehow merged and led me to these.  They’re time-lapse videos that use a weird lens to make it look like a stop-motion movie made with models.  Or something?  I’m not totally sure what’s going on here, but I know that they appeal to two of the major facets of my barely-suppressed dorkiness, a love of Disney World and a love of models.

A Model Day at the Magic Kingdom

A Model Day at Epcot

So yeah, hopefully after Disney I can get some posts with some substance up.

Music Video Monday

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Could people please stop making their own music videos for songs?  Or at least label them clearly as “homemade”?  I’m getting sick of having to dig through all of the personal photo montages set to favorite songs.  The worst was when I was looking for videos for my Beatles list.  Honestly, earnest chubby guy with glasses and a goatee, I really don’t need to see your acoustic version of “Blackbird.”

Vampire Weekend – “Giving Up the Gun”

I actually prefer both the song “Cousins” and the video for it, but this one has all the famous people in it.  How did Vampire Weekend even come into contact with Joe Jonas?

I’m also posting this over “Cousins” because it seems like Johanna and I are the only people that actually still like Vampire Weekend, but I know this song has had some crossover with the haters.

Local Natives – “Wide Eyes” (Live)

I’ve been listening to these guys a lot lately, and I’ve been patiently waiting for them to make a video that I could post, but I can’t seem to find anything.  I’ll have to settle for this high-quality live performance.  Why are all of these good live performances coming from Britain?  This one is from the BBC, and I’ve used a ton of videos from Later…with Jools Holland in the past.  Search for “Jools Holland” on YouTube and tell me you wouldn’t watch that show if it were on over here.

(Edit: Video removed for some reason.  I put up a different performance)

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Music Video Monday

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It occurred to me after I had already picked my five videos for this post that I should start focusing on bands that are going to be at Lollapalooza this year so that I could expose myself to some of the artists that I haven’t heard before I go.  It looks like I was way ahead of myself, though, because three of the five here are, coincidentally, going to be at Lollapalooza.  That’s a testament to how great the line-up is.

Side note before we get started: when I saw that the LCD Soundsystem was posted to YouTube by Parlaphone and not the band itself or whoever, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use it.  It’s been my experience while doing these posts that record labels generally disable embedding on their videos, which is so shortsighted and counter-productive of them that it always made me mad.  Isn’t the point of a music video to have it be seen by as many people as possible and then, you know, sell records because of it?  Anyway, Parlaphone (and hopefully the other record labels) seem to have figured that out, so, hooray and enjoy!

LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”

As much as I enjoy his feature-length films, part of me wishes that Spike Jonze would completely devote himself to music videos, because every single one he makes is unbelievably good.  I wish I had half as many ideas in my brain as he does.

The xx – “Crystalized”

Shout out to Johanna’s sister Becca for giving us this CD for Christmas; they had somehow completely slipped under my radar (even though Pitchfork had their album ranked as the third best of the year), and now I listen to them constantly.

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