Entertainment

The project where I read a book a week this year. See more about my project here (and feel free to leave your book suggestions). You can read my other 52 in ’11 posts here.

Book 26: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Rating: A fun read

I pre-ordered this book right after I finished Jay Asher’s smash debut, 13 Reasons Why. I knew this book would be different, mainly because this book he co-authored with another teen author, Carolyn Mackler. My understanding is Asher wrote the chapters that were written from Josh’s point of view, and Mackler wrote the ones from Emma’s point of view.

The plot is basic: It’s 1996. Josh and Emma are 16 years old and best friends. Emma gets the Internet. Only when she logs into AOL, she sees something no one else does: Facebook. Emma and Josh get a peak of their lives in the future — and a chance to change how things turn out for them.

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The project where I read a book a week this year. See more about my project here (and feel free to leave your book suggestions). You can read my other 52 in ’11 posts here.

Book 25: Falling Backwards by Jann Arden
My rating: Must-read

OK, I admit, being a fan of Jann Arden’s might make me a little bias to review her book in a fair and just manner. However, don’t let that dissuade you. Arden’s memoir, which takes us through her childhood pretty much up until she signs her record deal at the age of 30, is one of the best books I’ve read this year (and I’ve been aiming to read a lot.)

This is not Arden’s first book — she has published two other which were based off her online journal entries (Arden’s never called it a blog, so I’m hesitant to call it a blog). Those books are far different from Falling Backwards. If I Knew, Don’t You Think I’d Tell You  and I’ll Tell You One Thing, and That’s All I Knew were written in an abstract tone. (And as an Arden fan, I’ll even admit I was not a fan). Falling Backwards is not like the books that preceded it.

At a speaking engagement for her book last month, Arden told me that because of that, writing this book was much harder than the two that came before it.

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Is it just me, or has TV suddenly discovered Twitter?

Sure, TV shows or personalities tweeted before: Survivor‘s Jeff Probst has live-tweeted episodes for the past few seasons, so has Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race. But suddenly, it seems every TV show wants you to tweet with them while you’re watching the program. Some even give you a hashtag to use with your tweets.

Some recent examples include 60 Minutes (#60minutes), 20/20 and CBC’s The Fifth Estate. Sure, these programs are all newsmagazines, so I can see why they might want to engage their audience on this new medium (and hey, trying to get people to watch live TV again and commercials instead of having them PVR it, is a better business model). But there’s one show who’s sudden interest in social media perplexes me.

The Good Wife.

Yes, that Good Wife. The courtroom show. The women’s show that men also happen to like so it’s a hit.

A couple weeks ago for their season premiere, viewers were invited to follow the actors feeds (and the main Good Wife account), while they tweeted during the episode.

That alone caught me off guard. While I don’t mind keeping half an eye on my iPad while watching Survivor or The Amazing Race, The Good Wife is a show I want to pay attention to (and typically it’s a show you need to pay attention to, it leaves a lot unsaid).

But the I found this: A fake gossip website that’s blogging about things that are happening in storylines in the show.

It leaves me a little perplexed. I know that women tend to use social media more than men, but I wonder how much traction stuff like this gets. Do people tweet while watching the show? Is there an appetite for some gamification around the web? Will the show’s demographic even participate in an online game based on the show?

I’m not sure where The Good Wife is going with all of this, but I’m interested to find out.

Ever since I was 13 years old, I’ve been in love with George Clooney.

He does have that smoulderingly handsome thing down, doesn't he?

I’m not kidding. In my Grade 8 yearbook, most of my friends left comments wishing me well on meeting Clooney marrying Clooney and living happily ever after in Hollywood. During my Grade 8 trip to Ottawa, I spent all my souvenir money on an ER T-shirt and candy.

I taped every TV appearance George made. For years. It was labelled my George Clooney tape. Along with the the Leno, Rosie O’Donnell and Letterman appearances, I also had key ER episodes recorded on there. I think I even managed a rare Roseanne episode featuring Clooney.

You don’t even want to know about my magazine clippings. Or how at 17, I convinced my mother to buy me an issue of Playboy because an interview with George was in it that month. (She did, cracking jokes how I was just buying it for the articles, wink wink.)

And I had a plan. Once I turned 18, I was hitting the road, going to L.A. and finding him. Did I truly believe something would come of it? Likely.

I was more than a little obsessed in case you can’t tell.

Soon, I moved past George. I never went down to L.A. I sod my clippings book and the George Clooney tape on eBay or 50 bucks. Just because a movie came out with him in it didn’t mean I had to rush out and see it.

I still had my moments though. Four years ago, George came to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A friend told me where the after party for his movie, Michael Clayton, was being held. I spent two hours waiting outside the location on Bay Street. Finally at 1a.m., I went home without an autograph or even a George sighting.

Like really, would one crappy picture be worth hours of waiting?

Flash forward to this year. It’s TIFF time again don’t know you know, and who was expected to attend? Mr. Clooney. Again, a friend in the industry passed on when and where his press conferences were being held, and I managed to find out where he was staying via Twitter, but watching the news the first night of TIFF made me realize something.

The report was from the red carpet of Brad Pitt’s new flick, Moneyball. A woman in her 40s, maybe even 50s, was waiting to see Pitt with her daughter and her husband, who she had instructed was to say he was her brother if Brad asked. His job was to take to the photos. And he did. The woman was ecstatic after Brad rushed by her and “knew she was alive.” They had waited hours to grab a glimpse of Brad Pitt.

It was about then I realized that even if George Clooney was in town, I had better things to do with my time than wait around at the Ritz to see if I could grab a peak or try and sneak my way into a press conference I didnt belong (not to mention what getting caught doing the latter would likely do to my career).

It was odd to think about because I am exactly the type of person you would think would be in to all this celebrity hunting stuff. I read all the magazines, pour over all the gossip online, but when it comes down to it, I’ve got better things to do than “run” into George Clooney after camping out somewhere for 12 hours waiting for him to show up.

And really, if he ever met me I’d just be a crazy-assed fan anyway. I’d much rather be me all of the time and read about him, and all the other celebrities in my magazines.

I came across an article that really piqued my interest and bothered me, both as a journalist and an avid TV watcher.

The article, The Sexual Proclivities of Friends, was written by Mike D’Avria and aimed, I think, to discuss how disgusting and shocking it was that over the course of 10 years, six characters had 85 sexual partners between them.

I don’t know why this is shocking, many other series did it too. He sites Sex and the City as an example of one character who has many sexual conquests, but as I remember the series, it wasn’t just Samantha who jumped into the sack (or sac as he wrote it) with every man she saw.

But I digress.

Do these Friends sleep with too many people?

How did D’Avria come to his conclusions? By watching the series again? Of course not. Instead, he went through and read “every single outline, and look(ed) at the guest star cast list, for every episode aired in the ten seasons on NBC.”

He admits the number could be “way higher” (but not way lower) because of the way he collected his data (which the column header refers to as “important”).

(And in case you’re wondering, Chandler scored the lowest and Joey scored the highest.)

The first comment on the piece rips apart a number of the partners that D’Avria sites in it, pointing out that those people never had sex with any of the friends, they were in relationships — or just casually dating them. D’Avria responds to the comment, admits he didn’t rewatch the series “something that would take an extremely long time,” and even congratulates himself for admitting his mistakes saying, “I wanted to show how I got to my conclusion — wouldn’t it be nice if all journalists were as transparent in their reporting?”

Here’s the thing, if you’re going to do an analysis of something, you need to commit 110 per cent to that analysis. If that means renting the DVDs and spending a weekend watching over 200 episodes of Friends, you need to do that.

According to the article, Joey slept with 1.7 women a year over the 10 years we knew him. Oh, the horror.

And just what are D’Aviro’s qualifications to write such an article? He has a journalism degree. That’s it. And sure, there’s a lot of so-called “criticism” from self-proclaimed critics on the Internet these days, but really there should have been something more here. Like what, exactly, is D’Aviro criticizing, we never really get a thesis in the intro to his piece except, “Hey, remember that show Friends? Yeah, they had a lot of sex.” Uh, OK.

As an aside, my partner wonders what the next piece of D’Aviro’s will be. Perhaps the fact that Dexter kills more people than any other character on television before him? Oh the outrage.

If you’re going to try to your hand at criticism, you need to know what you’re criticizing and actually do the work involved to properly criticize your subject. Journalism is not just looking up stuff on the Internet, there’s offline work to be done as well.

This piece has almost inspired me to rewatch the series of Friends and do a proper analysis of their sexual conquests. Who’s in?