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2011 odds and ends (music)

For work this week, Zach Baron and I had a little back-and-forth to sum up the year in music. You can read it here. Zach is a tremendous writer and thinker and a positive motivating force within my writing life. I really think that he makes me better.

Anyway, on a solo and, by my logic, worsened tip, I have a few stray points and elaborations about all this (and also a rant about Facebook) left to share, and so they are below:

Another really good woman

 

Just when you thought you saw the best old lady of 2011, along comes the mother of Lidia's Italy's Lidia, who openly lusts after show guest Stanley Tucci and explains, "I'm an old lady, but I like young boys. What you wanna do?" A declaration and a proposition. Merry Christmas.

The best woman

 

Ugh, this week, right? For the sake of posting something, anything, here is Editta Sherman, who in my opinion, stole the show in Bill Cunningham, New York (not an easy thing to do from an also-amazing man who happens to be the subject of said documentary!). The self-aggrandizing that is so popular in our culture and that I tend to loathe in most people is endearing here. I guess when you've been around for 96 years, you've at last earned the right to toot your own horn. A legend and a fixture, indeed.

Maybe my favorite thing of the year

 

I saw this during Everything is Festival at Cinefamily this summer and fell in love -- it's a highlights reel of a video sex advice column Heidi Fleiss and Victoria Sellers did years ago for Laugh.com. Their flippancy and tendency to give guidance that amounts to, "Get a hooker!" reminds me of...another duo of online advice dispensers that are not to be trusted. Mmmmm...who could I be talking about? (But really, seeing this was, in a warped, fun-house way, like looking in a mirror for the first time after having living life oblivious to the existence of mirrors.) Fleiss has never been more endearing and Sellers alternately hilarious and really sad (especially when she talks about her black outs)! (Also, the language is totally NSFW, if that's even a thing, and this does involve a life-life latex vagina being poked at, so BEWARE.)

Also, Cinefamily is doing this live streaming telethon starting Saturday at noon and its lineup is insane. It's a good cause, as they are an unending source of the weird shit that makes pop culture fun. Also, I love them. Please give.

You should probably see this

For work, I devised an alternate Christmas viewing canon, full of weird shit like Tim & Eric's Awesome Show Great Job! Chrimbus Special, The Anna Nicole Show holiday special (Cousin Shelly for life!), The Monster's Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night, Part 2. I love all of these and look forward to watching them every year. One new addition to my perennial favorites is George King's Ten Thousand Points of Light. It's 30 minutes of tacky Christmas insanity (which is the best kind of Christmas insanity, in my experience), as it documents the final years that this family in suburban Atlanta named the Townsends crammed lights and Christmas shit in every corner of their house and then let people walk through it.

It's shot on VHS and better for it, as the blurred picture gives it a home-move vibe and gives you the strange sensation of remembering something you never experienced (weirdly, when B. of STFU, Parents introduced this to me, I initially felt like I'd heard of it before, but in actuality had not).

Anyway, here's the trailer.

 

I highly suggest you get on this this now, but I plead my case further after the jump.

America's Next Top Model isn't...

...Angelea.

A very important JCPenney denim fashion show

 

On Thanksgiving, yet another Dancin' on Air reunion/retrospective aired on Philadelphia's local PHL17. It was very much like the first one, so I won't get too deep into rehashing, but I do think I'd be remiss if I didn't share this fashion show of gorgeous denim goods from JC Penney with you. This is so cheesy that it'd make Sue Ellen from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead say, "NOT IN MY BACKYARD!" Unfortunately, Suell wasn't quite the commentator as the dude who's announcing this stuff.

Sex and the shitty

"It just hurts 'cause I wanna be respected as a good model," said Laura about her elimination. From this show. America's Next Top Model. The one that has for years struggled for credibility as a circus, let alone a talent search. Is that to say Laura's been hurting this whole time, or does she just yearn for the respect from those whose respect is largely considered to be a hindrance? She's better off getting Wanda Sue to sew her together some respect than looking for it here.

Merry Jack-mas!

 

This may be one for the amuses-only-me file, but I've long wanted to replace the music from Poetic Justice's "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" scene with something more absurd. So I did. Very TV Carnage move, but I talked to TV Carnage's Derrick Beckles about it this weekend, and I think he's fine with it.

(Spoiler alert! Using this song has nothing to do with Janet Jackson's childhood nickname of "Dunk." At least, not consciously.)