Lileks loosed the cannons of his immeasurable wit the other day to lambaste an article about 24, which I have never watched, though I have googled Elisha Cuthbert’s stats; c’mon, who wouldn’t want to know more about this vixen? I am, of course, speaking to the male-oriented of the species. There’s a certain something about cute chicks in show business who also happen to be your age. You wonder, could there be a chance that one day, some distant day in the near or far future, that you could bump into her one day, you hit it off, you get together…
Dreaming.
And now you know that I have a schoolboy attraction on Elisha Cuthbert. Well, I’m glad that it’s out now. It means I no longer have to hide behind a curtain of embarrassment whenever someone mentions 24 or The Girl Next Door (which I haven’t seen yet, despite Elisha playing a former porn star…)
Eeesh, what am I saying here? Okay. Backpedal, Eason Jordan style.
No, I personally do not have a crush on Elisha Cuthbert. There are some people who believe other people in the “blogging sphere” have a the kind of crush on [an] entertainment personalit[ies]y, possibly one of which is named Elisha Cuthbert. These bloggers, though, have their hearts, eyes, and bookmarks in the right place.
This does bring up an interesting point about how there used to not be a thing/phenomenon called “fanboy”. Remember? Before the interwebs came about, they were called just fans. Some of them occasionally exhibited signs of “celebrity fixation”, leading some (one) to shoot presidents. True fanboys did not emerge, however, until sometime during the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring<homer_drool>Sarah Michelle Gellar</homer_drool>. If you doubt the power of obsessives, consider this fact: 1999′s Cruel Intentions received the gushing attentions of nearly 5 million fanboys simply because of the power of SMG and the Internet. At best, it was worth, oh, about two. Just plain two.
Now fanboys exist for nearly every personality, the flames of whom only Google can truly fan. But there’s a lesson here: not only can you use Google to find racy photos of your favourite tv sitcom actress or rising teen star, but I can easily lose my original thought after only five paragraphs. And technically I lost it after three.
My point in linking to Lileks’ rant on this article on 24 was to complain that TV is still a gigantic wasteland, and that no television show should be even remotely considered to be an index of our nation’s collective beliefs and policies on people groups that may or may not be construed to have terrorist intentions. The idea behind 24, from what I can gather, seems to center around the fact that this guy Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) gets to fight domestic terrorists twenty-four hours a day. At some point during the first or second season, I guess the producers figured out that a show featuring guys dressed in black constantly trying to kill one or more of the main characters had a limited future, and decided to go for men dressed in headscarves and suicide vests instead. Not surprising, since most airlines and crowded buses aren’t usually the terrorist targets of, say, three year olds from Sri Lanka.
So the show features Islamic terrorists. Big deal! At least it doesn’t feature blacks still working for free out in the cotton fields. It’s a progression, see. In a hundred years we’ll be watching HHHDTV (High-Higher-Highest Definition Television) shows where humans band together to fight the Militant Giant Snapping Turtle Overlords (they move slowly, but have excellent body armour and snapping jaws). Some reporter will write up an article on behalf of PETA decrying the depiction of Militant Giant Snapping Turtle Overlords as violent, human-tissue rending animals.
That seems to be the general cycle of things, at least since the late sixties. Hmmm, hippies started emerging about that same time.
It’s all coming together now…
Well, I’m off to pitch a show about the detrimental effects aging hippies have had on the soap and shampoo industry. They’re the kind of people who affect the morale and general well-being of anyone they happen to be standing upwind from. I know, I know. A crass, impersonal, slightly stereotypical representation of a people group. But hey, do you know of anyone else who doesn’t bathe on a regular basis?
– Did I just hear someone say computer-bound fanboys? Hmm. Guess not.