February 2004 Archives

Nelly Furtado's rendition of "O Canada," the Canadian National Anthem, at the NBA All Star Game on Sunday night was the worst version of any anthem I have ever heard. Mind you, I have considered myself a Nelly Furtado fan. I think her first album was pretty good, but this was absolutely terrible. She missed so many notes, and it seemed like she was just lost musical on a couple different occasions. At least, Carl Lewis' infamous version of the "Star Spangled Banner" was bad to the point of comedy, and Roseanne's version was comedy(which I did find quite amusing).

Furtado was followed up by Christina Aguilera attempting a creative version of the "Star Spangled Banner," performing with just a drummer's sparse and interesting accompaniment, but Christina tried for some crazy notes at the end of the anthem and just came up a little flat. I respected her for trying to do something interesting and inventive with the anthem, but it seems like she has let everyone saying how she has an amazing voice get to her head a little bit and forgot that even she cannot hit all notes.

Outkast performed "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" as the All Stars were being introduced, and while I really enjoy both of those songs, they have performed them too many times, and performing them for the intros of the players was sorta awkward, even though Andre 3000 was super cute as he came out as a popcorn vendor.

Beyonce's halftime performance was incredibly entertaining. She did a version of Donna Summer's sultry "Love to Love Ya Baby" miraculously without a microphone, yet somehow that didn't harm my enjoyment. She then was graced with the gift of microphone and performed "Crazy in Love." I only wished Jay-Z would've performed with her. I heart Beyonce.

I love the NBA All Star Weekend, and most specifically All Star Saturday. I love the fun competitions. I love the playful atmosphere. I love these great athletes showing their skills in a different way than in a game setting.

The (got milk?) Rookie Challenge (actually on Friday night) is always a really fun display of the future of the league, and this year was probably the best example as we saw a Rookie team led by Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony go down in defeat to a Sophomore team led by Yao Ming and (game MVP) Amare Stoudemire.

The (Foot Locker) 3 Point Shootout and the (Sprite) Rising Stars Slam Dunk both ended with two time champions (Peja Stojakovic and Jason Richardson, respectively) being upset. Voshon Lenard, a journeyman sharpshooter, finally hit pay dirt after coming up short in past contests by being especially accurate on the multi-colored 2 point balls (9 for 10), with Peja missing his final shot with an opportunity to tie. Richardson probably had the best dunk of the competition, but missed too many dunks and Fred Jones (of Gresham) had one spectacular dunkaroo and took the crown. The Dunk competition was a little anti-climatic at the end, but the overall event was a "SLAMAROO DUNKIEDOO!" Plus, you get to hear Charles Barkley making fun of a lot of his NBA friends.

I found some sort of Paintball Championship for a paintball league on some deep Fox Sports channel. All of the commercials were for paintball guns, and they were pretty extreme. One of the commercial had all this bleeped out swearing. It was so weird. Who knew these things existed. Commercials on TV for paintball guns!?!?

I have been watching a lot of Trio TV recently. It's a really good example of a channel that is only available on digital cable and why these new channels provide redemption for the higher cost of digital cable. Trio tagline is "Pop, Culture, TV" but it's not pop culture in a way that E! is or what might come to mind when you think about the phrase pop culture. Trio seems to be mining the dregs of pop culture for us and finding stuff that is hard to find or that was originally looked over. Trio shows episodes of NBC era Dave Letterman, the entertaining EGG! the Art Show, they have a series called Brilliant but Cancelled that every night shows a series that was quickly lost and forgotten but is really a gem.
I have been watching their 9 Sharp series which focuses on one of my favorite formats that tv takes on, the medium length documentary. Recently I have seen shows such as Boys Alone and Girls Alone which were separate one hour shows where a group of ten boys (and ten girls separately) all eleven years old were left in a big house all by themselves for five full days. The shows were both really interesting, mildly disturbing, and a really solid study of social interactions and dynamics of young people, and the two show display differences at how the genders deal with one another and with an unsupervised news situation.
I also saw a show called Bike Like You Mean It that was about the biking culture in Austin, Texas. It was a really well made documentary showing the struggles in one community of biking activists versus some government offices (texas department of transportation), against some forms of public opinion ("this is texas and you can't take our trucks from us"), against the police (illegal arrests and harrassment)l, and against one another (the more radical critical mass dudes vs. the less confrontation texas bicycle alliance). It also showed some wonderful projects such as the The Yellow Bike Project, a bicycle circus, and some other cool stuff. The feeling I was left with was that this was a really goof example of one communities cycling community achievements and struggles and that surely would be echoed similarly in many towns across the country.
Another interesting documentary I saw watching 9 Sharp on Trio TV was called Culture Jamming about the act of culture jamming, which I interpreted as changing the context of advertising, and retail in the public space with some sort of subversive act (changing advertising, guerilla theatre, etc.). The most interesting group that they focused on was the BLF (Billboard Liberation Front) based out of the San Francisco Bay Area that has been changing advertising on billboards for over twenty years. It's really bold action. Billboards are huge, and illegally changing their content takes some serious homework, guts, and stealth.
Finally, Trio has a new series called Parking Lot which was created and produced by the same folks who made the cult classic short film in 1986, Heavy Metal Parking Lot. The show is a study of fanaticism and a half hour episode will visit three different events and interview some of the folks attending. An example would be one episode visited a 50 Cent show, a Yanni show, and a WWE event. The show is really intense and dark at times due to the somewhat delusional vibe the fanatics can tend to give off, but it remains pretty entertaining. Trio has been airing Heavy Metal Parking Lot as somewhat of a primer for the new Parking Lot series, and it is really a fun documentary. It's so cliche, but it is shocking to think that the scenes represented in that film were from 1986, when I was alive. It just seems so alien, but needless to say, there are some real characters with some amazing lines in Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Trio TV offering up solid stuff.