It is fair to say I live a willing
sedentary lifestyle. I do not do much in the way of out and about,
never properly have. I wouldn't call myself lazy, my job is pretty
physical work. More just, I am kind of a defeatist. I guess Homer
(Simpson, not the poet guy) said it best when he said “What's the
point of going out, we are just gonna wind up back here anyway”.
And with this attitude, and like
Homer, I have gotten pretty cosy with television. A sort of constant
companion to the disinclined, if you will.
The way you feel about your various
television personalities has been termed a 'parasocial' relationship.
It's behind why we all hate Willem Dafoe, even though he is a
vegetarian. He just looks like a bad guy, plays a bad guy, feels like
a bad guy. Though some of that must surely be on the writers.
Write your way
outta this one, shithead.
This effect is,
of course, more pronounced when it comes to non-scripted
personalities. In this case, however, there is less to hide behind.
As a morning host, game show guy, reality television star, weatherman
or dude who does weird in-show info-mercials; you are playing a
version of yourself.
This is not the
same as Matt LeBlanc playing a version of himself in Episodes or
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing versions of themselves in The
Trip and it's sequel. If anything, the non-scripted personality is
playing the best possible version of themselves. The arse-hole
without all the shit. Here is five to think on;
David Koch.
Where do I start
with this guy? Basically he is the worst. I will start with the
nickname, 'Kochie', I have it on good authority that is a nickname he
gave himself. Something he perpetuated into being, something to make
him feel like an ordinary bloke, which he certainly is.
But to the deeper
stuff, the stuff that really matters. He wore channel 7 plugging
shirts after the walk on the Kokoda, arrogantly jumped in the back of
the ambulance after the rescue of the Beaconsfield miners, connected
the bombing of the Boston Marathon to the “Irish” and wrote this
horse-shit article after shitting on new mothers: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/kochie-breastfeed-anywhere-anytime-discreetly/story-e6frezz0-1226558512202 Who has a problem with a bare tit in the
gob of a baby
This Dude!
But
really beyond and above that, he is very annoying. I wrote earlier of
non-scripted personalities, though maybe I should have written of
non-personalities. Especially when considering this waste of a good
load....
James O'Loghlin
Did someone say,
the most annoying prick of all time? A host, by their nature, should
draw you in to the show, make something potentially boring all the
more appealing. People like Letterman ran more than thirty years on
this very ethos. People didn't tune in to see the guests, they had no
clue who they might be, they tuned in because they liked Dave, he was
the draw.
James O'Loghlin
has reversed this concept. He was the host of The New Inventors, a
show I would have definitely and religiously watched if not for him.
I watched sometimes anyway, in spite of him, and found the concept to
be sound. But the ABC oddly missed a trick. They are usually so sound
in their...'casting'.
Annoying People
Out Of Good Things From Way Back.
I love Tony
Jones on QandA, likewise Kerry O'Brien on 730 and more recently 4
Corners and once more Jonathan Holmes and Paul Barry on Media Watch.
All these personalities enhance the program they helm, James
O'Loghlin undercut this, the way Judas undercut Jesus.
Andrew O'Keefe
How far can the
apple fall from the tree? You figure with bounces its going to end up
a few meters away. Shit even with hurricane winds it is going to be
mashed against the fence of the same field.
Apparently not.
If you don't know what I am talking about, Andrew O'Keefe is the
nephew of Johnny O'Keefe, The Wild One, Australias first rock star.
JO'K brought the cool the same way winter brings the shitiness.
But his nephew?
Not so much. Be it the constant 'Boo Yahs' (a concept I am sure he
made up), the improvised and terrible jokes or his annoying way of
calculating the costs of things; make no mistake, this is a turd of a
human being.
Again, this is a
show I would watch. Probably wouldn't love, but would watch,. There
is just one gigantic and obnoxious anus in my way.
Grant Denyer.
Another game show
host. Family Feud. Part of my issue could be that this show is
simulcast on all three of Tens channels (that is One, Eleven and
Ten). He is the face of the show and so, yeah, I blame him
And what a face.
But it is more
than that. He is a weasel. He is a slimy kind of a person; he hoots
and hollers, brings bad impressions and jokes to the table and when
all else fails, goes to that loud register that everyone seems to
love.
My mother, who
used to also hate this kind of thing, now has a fondness for him.
Apparently because he treats the contestants with respect and
kindness. I think fondly on the days when we would jointly call him a
short-arse, a sad little man with something to compensate for.
George Calombaris
I am growing to
like MasterChef. I find it an innovative show with an interesting
concept, good challenges, a solid structure and always with
contestants to go for. Again I am being hypocritical on my hatred of
wankers.
Though
importantly I learned this year that the portions are so piss-weak
because the idea is to eat like ten of them. I still don't give a
good god-damned about presentation, but thease novice chefs have
genuinely good ideas for recipes of seemingly left-field ingredients.
The other thing I
am warming to is the judges, whom I thought all wankers for sure.
What I have been enlightened to is that Matt Preston, the wankiest
looking of all three, is actually a meat and potatoes kind of guy,
And that the British guy with the dark hair is a fair judge and cuts
more slack than he probably should given it is all gourmet bullshit.
Which just leaves
one, George. Yes his face annoys me, but so did the other two before
I started watching. There really is nothing less appealing than
watching others eat. A wank, as my English tutor pointed out, is a
self-indulgence and eating the kind of food on MasterChef is nothing
if not a self-indulgence.
But what really
bothers me is the way he sucks-up. Our version of MasterChef is known
for getting high-end chefs in to issue challenges. They issue, the
contestants freak out, deliver something and then comes the tasting
table.
That Pretentiousness was a Little Overdone.
Matt and Gary
comment on the sauce or some other bullshit and then George will
comment on how it is slightly too salty. Then comes the hero chef. We
recently went through Marco-Week, which was three-time Michelin star
winner Marco Pierre White week. George commented on the consistency
of the sauce, Marco commented on the lack of prunes in the dish and
George jumps in with the benefit of prunes to the dish.
He is licking the
anus clean. Well. And truly.
But perhaps most
fucked up of all is that all of the above are popular, or were, and
are still on television. If this is our A-Game, we sincerely need to
look at ourselves. Not only that such awful people are allowed the
wrong side of the camera, but that we lap it up like the last
skerrick of milk in a cats bowl.
NP.
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