Dude Looks Like A Lady

Good news, bad news week on TV.

Good news is, I should have more free time this spring since I doubt I will spend much time watching American Idol this season.   As some of you know, the kids and I have watched the last three seasons.  But without Simon Cowell the show is not worth watching.

The bad news is as luminous as Jennifer Lopez looks, Steven Tyler is terrible to watch and even worse to listen to.  All he does is cackle and try to make double and triple entendres.  As Andy Richter said on Conan this week, "Was that Steven Tyler?  I thought that was a creepy old lady."

Lopez looks fantastic but has nothing to say; Randy Jackson looks weird and has even less to say.  Jackson was always the third-most interesting person on the panel, no matter the season.  

This year the entire panel mimics Jackson: third-rate judges on an equally tired show.

On the other hand, I am enjoying the new Conan show.  Some of the writing is not that great some nights, but no matter how weak the jokes are the bottom line is: Conan is just funny.  And he's funny no matter what.  

The show's secret weapon is Richter.  He never seems to miss - though he and Conan failed to follow up his 'creepy old lady' crack about Tyler by cackling 'dude look like a lady!"

American Idol, American Poverty

So tonight was the annual 'Idol Gives Back,' a kind of telethon. According to Simon Cowell, 'IGB' raised $15 million for a number of worthy causes, mainly projects sponsored by Save the Children.  


For me - and Ariadne - the show was half impressive - $15 million is a lot of cheese - but half embarrassing.  Tonight's show focused on Kenya, Congo and other third world places that lack everything.  But IGB also focused on Appalachia, the inner city, and rural parts of Mississippi and Arizona.  It was an embarrassing display of poverty and neglect in the wealthiest country the world has ever seen.   


The low point had to be the teacher in southern California - a married public school teacher with a house, mortgage and two kids - who has to depend on a local food bank.  A working American serving his community that has to rely on a hand out, on free food, to fight off hunger.  Is there anything more embarrassing - or damning - than that?


The plight of these Americans looks even more stark when compared to a glitzy show - on Fox no less - like 'American Idol.'  But at least they are giving back, buying thousands of bed nets to fight Malaria in Africa, books in Appalachia, and sponsoring mobil health clinics in rural parts of the United States.


It also makes one wonder how we as Americans can put up with so much poverty?  The tea baggers whine about being taxed too much when we have teachers - whose salary is paid by taxes - dependent on free food in order to teach our children.  


Want to complain about taxes - complain about them being so low that a teacher can't afford to feed his family.


More Idol

• One odd sight and sound was Mary J. Blige singing 'Stairway to Heaven.' She did a pretty good job with that song, as she did with 'One' by U2.  She usually oversings when performing her trademark shlocky and overproduced modern R&B but Blige shows some restraint and more range when singing rock and roll.  
• Ellen Degeneres is funny.

February Hates CHB

Good thing it's the shortest month of the year, because February has been really cruel to all things Carolina and Hellenic.  It goes on today, with the Post taking a break from it's front page coverage of Greece's economic problems long enough to run an article chronicling the decline of blue-blood basketball programs like Carolina, Arizona, UCLA and Connecticut. 


Good riddance to February; I'm tired of talking about the problems with the two stales of my non-family, non-enviro life - hoops  and Hellenism (and it's not just Carolina; our hometown Wizards also had a horrible month).  


Hoops and Hellenism is a pretty good name for a blog, but I probably could not stand the competition for the Greek/basketball blogosphering public.


Finally, March will not be much better.  Just found out the Greek Prime Minister, Berkeley-born, American-bred George Papandreou, will be in D.C. for meetings with President Obama and others on March 9th, and of course a central part of the initial March Madness coverage will be reminders of the collapse of the defending national champs.


More hoops and Hellenism:

• When the Wizards traded Brendan Haywood then Antawn Jamison I decided to give up on our hometown team.  But the new look Zards, led by of all people Andray Blatche, are 3-3 including a win over Ty Lawson's Denver Nuggets.  Evan is no longer interested, but I'm thinking about giving this team another shot - and tickets on StubHub are pretty cheap.  Besides, they are only 8 1/2 games out of the eighth play off spot!
• NBA favorite player Haywood is thriving in Dallas. The Mavs are 6-0 in games he has started, and his numbers - though similar to the ones he put up in DC - are nonetheless impressive. In the six games he's started B-Hay is averaging 12 points, 11.5 boards and more than 3 blocks. His defense could make a team known around the league as soft a force in the playoffs.  Pretty ironic stuff for a guy once derided by know-nothing Wizards fans as 'Brenda' Haywood.   
• Seeing Haywood or more likely Antawn Jamison win an NBA championship this year with their new teams would take some - only some - of the sting out of this bad college hoops season.
• But my main rooting interest for the rest of this year will be the Charlotte Bobcats, led by second-favorite NBA player Raymond Felton. It looks imminent that Michael Jordan will purchase the Bobcats from do-thing black Republican Robert Johnson so they better make a run now before he screws up that franchise. The Cats are in 9th place in the east, in a tight race with Jerry Stackhouse's Milwaukee Bucks for the final playoff spot.
• Speaking of MJ, I received Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection, as a what-I-believe-to-be-sincere Valentine's Day present from Alison. I've been listening to it, especially disc one, a lot. That guy is really like Elvis, with a brilliant career that eventually choked in it's own vomit.  Disc one has three all-time great American songs by the Jackson 5: I Want You Back, ABC, I"ll Be There. The intro to I Want You Back, with the piano riff that quickly blends into a scratchy guitar part, is the ultimate Motown fanfare.  The rest of that disc includes Dancing Machine, Off The Wall, Shake Your Body, and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. But like the rest of the four-disc set, each one is a mix of brilliance - those songs, plus Billie Jean, Bad - and absolute dreck - Ben, She's Out of My Life, and his song to his chimp Bubbles.  But it's worth wading through the dreck to listen to Wanna Be Starting Something.
• In college I had a great mixed tape that had an excellent segue from Wanna Be Starting Something to Flashlight by Parliament, FYI.
• My admission of affection for Michael Jackson may be as shocking to some (though I grew up with The Jackson 5) as last year's blog about American Idol.  But this week I was reminded once again of one of the main reasons I watch AI (besides Simon Cowell):  an excuse to engage and talk to our kids about something they like, something especially important now that Ariadne is a full-fledged teen. On Wednesday night Evan went to bed early, so it was just me and my daughter watching TV. We sat there talking, discussing each performance, having a real conversation, goofing off during commercials, etc.  And when I came home from my Greek Language MeetUp on Thursday night she gave me an update on who had been eliminated on her way to bed.  Ariadne and I fight a lot more now than we ever have, but those casual conversations and happy moments - in this case spurred by American Idol - are pretty cool.

Undercover Boss + American Idol = ???

We’ve been snowed in for what feels like forever, actually five days. Today we are getting buried by our third snow storm in the last month. With today’s incredible wind our car, deck and yard are literally buried under two to three feet of snow.  Some parts of the yard have drifts up to five feet.

Today is also the one day we will not go out at all (except to shovel walk and take some pictures) Even with the blasts of the last week or so we had been able to walk to Politics and Prose, 7-11, Mazza Gallerie, the grocery store, the bank, etc., and the kids even had play dates yesterday.  But today we are stuck inside.


Having been stuck inside for the last five days has increased our TV watching (though it hasn’t been too excessive).  Two shows in particular prompted me to blog.


The first was ‘Undercover Boss’ which debuted right after the Super Bowl. The show documents what happens when a CEO goes undercover to work a variety of jobs within his or her company. The debut followed the CEO of Waste Management (next week’s episode follows the CEO of Hooters; wonder how that company made the show?) so the show emphasized among other things recycling.


Overall UB is pretty sympathetic to workers, who at Waste Management get docked if they take more than 30 minutes for lunch, have to do the work of 4 people at one site, and if you are a female garbage collector have to pee in a can as part of an effort to maximize efficiency.


We also caught up on a week’s worth of episodes of American idol via TiVO. It’s almost a cliché, but all the contestants on Idol want to improve the lives of their family and their economic station in life.  The thing that strikes me about the contestants is all of them are young, have jobs, but seem to be stuck in non-career type jobs. The show features lots of waitresses, fast food employees, sandwich makers, sales associates, etc. (there is a steady stream of high school students but not many college students).


The contestants on Idol remind me of the Waste Management employees.  I imagine most of the jobs that AI contestants have don’t come with health insurance, paid vacations, or many benefits at all.  And I’m not sure what the benefits are at Waste Management, but if you get docked for taking 31 minutes for lunch or don’t have time to stop to go to the bathroom they don’t seem that robust.


To me, both shows make compelling arguments for more unions. Last time I checked more than 30 percent of American workers do not have paid vacations or paid days off, another embarrassing statistic for the world’s richest nation of all time.  As these shows point out, Americans are working hard but the economy is not working for them.  To me, one remedy is to restore balance by allowing workers in every sector – from sandwich maker to garbage collector – to collectively bargain for more money, paid vacations, and lunch breaks long enough to go to the bathroom.  You shouldn't have to pin your hopes on winning American Idol - working should be enough to provide for you and your family.