fourfour

Happy I'm Not Here To Make Friends Day!

New year, new video, new rules. Just kidding. It's the same rules as the first video and last year's '08-'09 roundup (in a nutshell: be vile on reality TV), except people are saying it more than ever (this only spans the year's time since the last video and it's the longest of the three supercuts) and on non-competition shows like Sober House, Addicted and (my favorite) Ice Road Truckers. Everybody hates everybody! It's a tale as old as time.

You'll notice that like my Under the Bus supercut, I'm Not Here To Make Friends '10 entry has been uploaded to the Videogum player. How's that for irony? I had to call on FRIENDS to upload this video about not making them. Anyway, I did this because when I uploaded the video to YouTube this morning, as I have for the past two years, it took a while to process and then told me that it would be blocked in some regions. Upon further investigation, I found that it would be blocked worldwide, a development that is decidedly new for '10. Here's the screen (click to enlarge):

 

Fucking Viacom! I'm guessing that this has everything to do with the recent dismissal of Viacom's case against YouTube. How YouTube knew that my video contained bits (seconds at a time!) of Viacom-derived material is anyone's guess, although I think it may have read the titles I put in the actual video (I make sure to keep any signs of contraband out of the tags). I don't know. I'm going to try to upload it later without the title cards, but I feel like they make the video what it is. Mostly, I just want to experiment, toy with YouTube's genitals.

Anyway, it turns out that I can dispute this if I'm so inclined. YouTube recommends that if I want to do so on the grounds of fair use...

 

...I should employ a lawyer, which is not going to happen, because even though I'm less certain as to why I'm here than the people on reality shows, I'm certainly not here to hire lawyers. Whatever. The whole bitch of trying to get this thing uploaded matches the pain-in-the-ass, bitchy tone of the video above. It isn't justice, but it's almost poetic.

The things I never got to this year (Part 2)

Continuing from yesterday's post...

Best friends for never

Two awesome things happened on last night's season finale of Paris Hilton's My New BFF:

1. Despite having been eliminated last week because he's a boy (even though he's had that penis at lest since the first episode annnd even though Paris picked a boy, Sam, to be her British Best Friend), Stephen won!

 

(I think in addition to being her new BFF, he's also in the running towards becoming America's Next Top Tim Gunn.)

He didn't rejoin the competition or anything: when Stefanie and Tiniecia were standing in front of Paris at the final elimination ceremony, she called out his name instead. Her rationale was, "Although he’s a boy, he’s sweet, kind, cute, funny and real." I'm glad that a little thing like external genitalia didn't hold him back. Since boys are to this show what plus-size models are to ANTM, I found Stephen's win to be particularly triumphant. We should all eat some ice cream and wear (at least) clear mascara in his honor.

But really, I totally queened out and gasped in a room by myself last week when Paris eliminated him, so clearly, I was emotionally invested.

2. When it was down to (what they thought was) the Final 2, Tiniecia attempted the old reality trick of throwing her competitor under the bus via rationale I've never before witnessed: she accused Stefanie of smelling bad.

 

That was seriously the long and short of her explanation as to why Stefanie would make a bad friend. And it was mostly long, as she said it over and over and over again, each time more hilariously:

"She don't bathe a lot. It's not a good smell."

"Instead of saying, 'Stef, you funky, you stanky,' I just was like, 'Stef go ahead and get dressed while you take a bath...you know, you go ahead take a bath and I'll get your stuff ironed.' And she was like, 'No.'"

"I always was throwing her hints like, 'I'll get your clothes ready, you go take a shower.' That's a clue that you have a smell."

"She don't bathe and I throw hints in a nice way all the time. You know, 'I'll get your stuff together and you go take a bath.' She couldn't even take the hints. I wasn't about to be like, 'Stefanie, you funky, come on now.' I wasn't about to do that. I threw nice hints and if she can't take them, that's her being funky."

I love all the self-administered back-pats here. Clearly, Tiniecia is the Gandhi of restraint. This lack of self-awareness is almost good as that in this other quote from Tiniecia:

"Stefanie said I was inconsiderate. I went the fuck off on Stefanie." Yeah, there's no better way to prove your consideration than by going off on people.

Is it any wonder this chick didn't win?

And Steven or no Steven, I think we all (well, all four of us who follow this shit) know who the real winner was:

That's all the time the straight-dude competitor's name was mentioned in a single episode (I think the fifth). They were obsessed with him and he totally gave them something to do. Not that they appreciated it!

Paris, not brilliance

The biggest revelation contained in last night's airing of Paris, Not France on MTV? Paris Hilton's chihuahua Tinkerbell never wears the same outfit twice in public. Otherwise, it was 62-minutes of hand-held vanity with an alternating aspect ratio, as if to signal that what we were watching was constantly distorted (and since this was done with Paris' obvious permission, you bet your night-visioned ass it was distorted). Shot in 2006, it was also irrelevant -- a recent challenge on Paris Hilton's My New BFF, in which her potential besties ran a prison-yard obstacle course in high heels has more to do with her present reality than this film. What a waste, what a stupid waste. But then, of course it was.

A documentary made within the past year on Paris might have been illuminating, since she's been humbled by prison and a decrease in interest (you can only be adored for nothing for so long). She's slightly more likable now that she's received as the joke she always was. The Paris in the film is a Paris that I never had interest in: no hasbeendom was in sight, little-to-no self-aware sense of humor was detectable. The Paris of 2006 maybe wasn't a blind star, but she did have a sort of celebrity glaucoma that impeded her perspective. To wit, Paris in Not France is bursting with contradictions. Among them:

- She complains about the press running her through the mud, but admits that she's addicted to reading it.

- She talks about the importance of being humble, but then refers to a gaggle of squealing Japanese admirers as "worshiping" her.

- She talks about how real she is ("I knew what I wanted to do and it didn’t involve learning much of anything, except to be myself"), but also says that people are surprised to hear her speak in her actual voice, sans the trademark baby coo.

- She's very defensive about having not been giving anything and working to pay for her house and her cars, but obviously she was given a primed-for-fame birthright. And really, I know that she is always busy, doing...stuff, but modeling and attending parties and appearing on reality TV and attaching your name to hair extensions and perfume and whatever seems like as close to a free ride as you can get. It's not like she's built an "empire" (so much for humility) off manual labor.

- Proof that her public life is built on contradiction lies in this direct quote: "I also don’t want people thinking I’m this blonde, heiress whatever airhead, but that is kind of my brand. I make a lot of money by doing that."

- And this one: “I just want to be happy and, I don’t know, find out who I am. I know who I am but I really don’t."

- And also this one: "I’m always on camera. It’s hard to really be your total self.”

She seems to be unaware of the irony of saying the last item on camera, or how futile that makes the entire exercise of the supposedly revealing Paris, Not France, or how the quote above that makes Paris Hilton an unreliable narrator for a film about Paris Hilton anyway. I understand that contradiction is an extremely human quality, and we're all existing in some sort of flux at any given time, but the Paris in Not France is only existing in that state and thus is ultimately intangible. You get the sense that the doc is supposed to show her as down-to-earth, which is a big problem for someone who can't or won't be pinned down. Adria Petty's film is littered with odd camera angles, random flashes from color to light, jumpy transitions and (as mentioned above), a shifting aspect ratio. It's a whole bunch of nonsense to veil a complete lack of substance. It's a fitting portrait, but that doesn't make it worth looking at.

The year in "I'm not here to make friends!"

A year ago today, I posted my supercut of people saying various iterations of "I'm not here to make friends" over and over and over again on reality TV. So much has changed since then -- Obama became president, the sinking economy went belly up, Sarah Palin became queen of her own ass, then sank, then went belly up, etc. And yet, as the video above (containing examples of my most favorite of televised cliches that have been uttered in the time since the first video) proves, they've also stayed much the same.

Original video is below, in case you don't know what I'm talking about.

Wild, colorful and fun, but slightly tragic

All you need to know about this week's Paris Hilton's My New BFF is that this exchange took place:

 

Oh, and a girl was persecuted for dressing up for a red-carpet challenge as though it were a pageant (even though the winner of said challenge was eventually named Miss Paris), the plus-size girl got kicked off for basically being bigger than the rest and the other girl that got booted ("Bowhead") cursed at Paris when she was let go. It was kind of epic, except not at all.

Oh, oh and one more thing! She asked another one (the boy) what his favorite planet is. It's Venus. "'Cause it rhymes with your favorite thing in the world?" Paris wondered. No, bitch, because it rhymes with your favorite thing. You know they're all lemmings following your every cue and BJ.

Slut shaming

On this week's episode of the best-worst-I-don't-even-know-anymore show on television, two girls were eliminated for acting like strippers and whores.

 

They did this in the context of a bachelor party. Generally speaking, aren't the types of women who are asked to the kind of bachelor parties that Paris Hilton's friends would throw, in fact, strippers and whores? Wouldn't they otherwise risk getting kicked out for not doing their jobs?

Fake as my fake boobs

If you missed last night's premiere of the second season of Paris Hilton's My New BFF...

 

...you obviously missed a lot. I mean, glitter sprang forth from her head, like she's some sort of fruity Zeus.

Actually, that's exactly what she is.

Paris Hilton loves things and stuff

I watched an entire season of Paris Hilton's British Best Friend, and all I got was this crappy supercut of the things that she likes and doesn't:

Actually, I got a lot of joy out of it, too. She's getting quite endearing in her irrelevance, I must say. Four years ago, I would have rather cut my fingers off than blog about her. Now, thanks to two reality shows, I kinda can't get enough. Kool-Aid, consider yourself drank!

(Big up to Paris Hilton Online for supplying my crack!)

fourfour's 44+ reasons to love 2008 (Part 5 - 4-1)

At last, we've come to the end. I can't believe how ridiculously time-consuming this thing was! It was seriously like packing a year into a week. Actually, take the "like" out and that sentence is just as accurate.