I'm a believer.

I was skeptical when I heard that Leon Jackson had won Britain's X Factor some years back. He looked elfin and didn't stun with the winning song, When You Believe, previously covered by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Then everyone started talking shit about him, his new record dropped, and I found myself loving one of the singles. Alas, the jury seems to have decided that Leon's a dud. Poor record sales and a solid slagging from Simon Cowell cemented his status as reality show has been, worse mind you than the typical has been. Too bad because he is suddenly hot.


The single that converted me into a believer - Don't Call This Love. (I couldn't embed the MV, but here is a link. Um, Leon, Leon, Leon. Keep wearing those suits and walking through rain soaked cobblestone streets.)

A Little Bit

This is on repeat as my life spins out of control. Drake's remix of Lykke Li's Little Bit. Hot.



This video is what happens when some of my favorite people converge...Drake, Tony Leung, Wong Kar Wai...

High School High

My new and embarrassing obsession - Degrassi: The New Generation. I don't usually watch teen shows I didn't watch teen shows when I was actually a teenager so I don't know what to compare it to. Freaks and Geeks, My So Called Life, Dawson's Creek, The OC?? Essentially it is a spin-off of a popular Canadian youth series that never ends. (Full disclosure, I'm not a teenager nor do I own one, and in fact, my 10 year reunion is fast approaching, which probably accounts for my recent bouts of nostalgia.) Sneer as we might at kids and their petty problems, getting laughed at, finding friends, and surviving chemistry is a big deal when you're 16. Maybe one of the reasons we have so many adult wackos is because we don't take anyone seriously in their youth. I appreciate that this show maintains a conflicted if hermetic adolescent world that is neither overly saccharine nor alienating (see Skins, which I'm also watching now). It also enjoys surprising longevity for a show of this sort which gives the characters a chance to actually grow into themselves. A lot changes in those 4 years, and it's nice to see teen characters undergo similar transformations.

On a somewhat related note, I discovered the Dear Sister phenomenon thanks to a Degrassi parody of the episode where Jimmy gets shot. The whole bit is hilarious, so inspired by that and Huffington Post's useless poll of the day, here are my top SNL digital shorts (no links because I don't have access to Hulu).

1. Dick in a Box
2. Iran So Far
3. Motherlover
   
4. Dear Sister
5. Natalie Raps

Merlin returned for a second season with a small splash, according to the viewer ratings. I thought the first episode was fair. Silly BBC family fare with high production values have become my comfort food, so I did enjoy it, but my criticisms from last season remain. Bradley James struts like a 21st century jock in chain mail, Katie McGrath needs to move her face, and the stories generally could benefit from more emotional depth. I think it's missing what Richard Armitage brought to Robin Hood - a villain with an occasional conscience. Merlin lacks strong actors and characters with any nuance. Anthony Head and Richard Wilson are of course up to par in acting ability, but there's nothing satisfying about their characters. Uther (Head) will always be a model noble, erring on the side of righteousness more often than not - except in matters of sorcery. So too does Gaius (Wilson) rarely venture from his affable, wise old man role. Nevertheless, I hope a couple plot strands will inject some intrigue. Gwen (Angel Coulby) and Arthur (James) get things warmed up, Morgana (McGrath) explores her own powers, and boy Mordred makes another appearance.

Other tv news...looking forward to the return of SNL, rather Ryan Reynolds' guest turn...Colbert and Stewart are finally back from their 3 week hiatus...zero opinion on Emmys because if I watch American shows, I'm always several seasons behind at best...just started season 2 of West Wing. I do intend on keeping up with a couple shows this fall, however. Glee already occupies my Wednesday nights, and in the next couple of weeks we'll see Flashforward with Joseph Fiennes and John Cho (romancing Gabrielle Union - guaranteed to be the hottest couple on network tv) and Three Rivers with Daniel Henney. Of the two, I'm actually looking to the former for the content. The latter is mostly for extra eye candy.

Persuasion

Something I really want to watch right now.....Persuasion. Otherwise, nothing else to say. My mind is empty of thought.

The Hate that Hate Produced

Melissa Harris-Lacewell lays it down. I don't know how much more hate and stupidity I can take (the two go together), but I guess I better get used to it because it's not going away.

Better halves.

No political rant today because I'm lighting up the blog boards. Controversy du jour is Skip Gates and the white folks who are saying calm the fuck down - to which I say, people of color will calm the fuck down when we all admit that there is a problem with institutional racism and acknowledge that a black man does not see a white officer entering his home the same way that a white man sees it. And that's how I feel about that.

Artist of the Day: Keith Urban. I liked him a lot back in 2004-5. Then I went to China and there were sadly no country music stations. That's why we have youtube. Here is a live version of one of my favorite songs of his, Better Half.

Dumb Ass

Birthers. I don't even know why I'm legitimizing this shit by posting, but it's almost 8a and I haven't slept or done much writing and this just about makes me want to shit my pants it's so crazy. The dumb ass birther conspiracy goons have invaded cable news and will not get a motherfucking life. They brewed this Molotov cocktail of stupid, racist shit and now are lobbing it into every news show they can find. I can't even write about how illogical, unnecessary, and RACIST this all is. I've never smashed my head into a brick wall, but I don't need to; I just listen to fuck up birther goons.

Here is Chris Matthews squaring off with a straight up crook, G. Gordon Liddy. I'm posting this because of all the interviews on this stupid ass subject, Liddy's broke ass, punched in the face one too many times response sums up the whole deal. Matthews presents him with the facts and the evidence more times than he has fingers and all Liddy can say is Obama's step-grandma gave a signed deposition stating he was born in Kenya (later shown to be a gross mistranslation). Fuck you.

Round Three

Rachel spitting the truth.

Here's the shit that started it all, if you can stomach listening to this.

Let's kill racism once and for all. I'm sick of this guy. I'm sick of writing a thesis about race in the 19th and 20th centuries and drawing parallels to the 21st. Stop the hate already.

Round Two

Another Daily Kos post that refutes Pat Buchanan's nonsense. Word to your mother, fucker.

Pat Buchanan is racist and other observations.

Pat Buchanan has been spewing crazy again. He tussled with Rachel Maddow over the Sotomayor hearings, and the result was an ugly, intolerant, patronizing, self-absorbed train of verbal shit in a week where there was a lot of it to go around. It was racist plain and plain, effortlessly distilled into the one argument that "This country has been built basically by white folks." Yes, that's right, he said it. Rachel Maddow smacked that bitch around a bit, but he needs to be whipped (figuratively, not literally - no violence here). MSNBC needs to stop treating him like a grumpy old man because he ain't just a grumpy old man; he's a grumpy old racist man and there ain't no reason for that to be on television - unless it's some made-for-tv movie on ABC Family (is that channel still around?) about old school bigots back when Jim Crow was still flying high. Daily Kos breaks it down but you can find similar chatter all over the blogs. Bastard.

Glenn Greenwald offers an enlightened take on Walter Cronkite's passing, more specifically on the self-serving journalistic lovefest that these tv tributes are turning into. I'm glad he wrote about it because I had similar feelings watching Anderson Cooper 360 today. The Silver Fox gave a short memorial but he wasn't anchoring; in his place was John King who waxed lyrical about Uncle Walter's lasting contributions to journalism and to the nation and about his irreplaceablity. Clearly CNN did not see the irony in pushing two of its pretty stars to expound on the greatness of journalism past. I've said before that I do enjoy some of Cooper's reporting, namely on 60 Minutes, but giving him a show kind of ruins it. Once these cable folks get a show, they have to become a brand. Good reporting doesn't have to be snazzy though; it just has to be good.

U2's I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight. Sounds like a win-win situation. Actually sounds like my daily predicament. From their Letterman appearance earlier this year.