can't get enough.

guilty pleasure.

reality tv at it's finest. how pathetic it is that I am actually saddened by the ending of the hills. i literally take to heart the 'watching them grow' line. watching laguna beach in my basement in high school, I still defend team kristen to the end. the line DUNZO. I mean come on... it's the end of an era kids

ab fab.

I have recently busted out my complete series of BBC's Absolutely Fabulous. If you have never seen it- watch it. If you love british humour, drinking, fashion and pop culture it's euphoric. Mary anne faithful reigns as god- nuff said. [drinking red wine with a girlfriend will heighten viewing pleasure].

xoxo

Last night was the return of one of my favorite television programs Gossip Girl. Now, before all you haters have your piece I want to explain what this post will entail. I wish to explain for those of you who do not know, what is Gossip Girl. Why I enjoy it, and finally, why it can be the worse thing since 90210 for teenage girls to watch. In addition to why it’s actually a positive thing for teenagers and their parents.The show is set in the Upper East Side of New York City and focuses of the lives of the wealthiest teenagers in New York and their parents. Drinking champagne, limo escorts, penthouses, and brunches at five star hotels are no big deal to the characters. All of them openly have sex and even participate in role-playing and other tantric sex games. Drugs, affairs, political scandal, are all very typical in the lives of these characters.So why would an educated young girl like myself subject myself to such superficial programming, because that is not my life. Shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills are not relatable to my current situation, so a fantasy world is created and escaping there for an hour a week is fine by me. Much like the feeling I get from watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, its enjoyable to watch young socialites fret about what designer they will wear for the Masquerade Ball. If I wanted something to relate to I’d stare at people at the library doing what I am doing.Sadly, I cannot say the same for young girls watching Gossip Girl. Mimicking the bullying ways of Blair Waldorf and demanding elaborate birthday parties and clothes like the characters on gossip girl. When you are older, you can understand that it is an exaggeration of wealthy kids in New York’s socialite circle. However I feel younger girls can not, and think “I should get that...”.Is it really all that bad though? Issues such as drinking, and sex and drugs are brought to the table. It gives parents an opportunity to watch something with their teenagers and discuss. The Team Canada Women’s Olympic Gold medal winners recently received a lot of flack concerning their drinking, questioning their ability to role model. Yet once a week a program is aired normalizing consumption of luxury, sex, drama, bullying, hierarchies and of course drinking…
Image: Flickr carla mh lopez

name that tune.

TV theme songs are impossible to ignore when discussing television programming. Some theme songs are even more identifiable than the cast or plot of a show. A good theme song does not promise a shows success, however it can definitely help it. Good theme songs create awareness of a TV show and draw viewers to a show, especially when channel surfing. TV show theme songs have played an important part of blending programs into culture. Real World Producer, Jonathan Murray explains our love of TV theme songs, “A lot of generation Xers grew up knowing words to songs better than words to a poem in school. We’re trying to speak to them in their language, which is often music”. A great resource of old TV themes you can’t put your finger on, might be found at this site: http://www.televisiontunes.com/index.php. Some of my favourite TV theme songs include: Weeds, Big Love (old and new), True Blood, The Sopranos. Enjoy this lovely video of 22 different TV themes in seven minutes; it’s really well done and a pleasure to listen to if you are a TV sitcom fan.
Image Source: flickr- sugaroni

hung

HBO’s show Hung needed a little bit of attention to promote the show. The series features a forty something father, with no money and decides to turn to prostitution to get the funds to win his kids back. An Auckland based marketing company, Colenso BBDO, was sought out by HBO to promote the show and to generate publicity. BBDO is currently one of New Zealand’s highest ranked ad agencies and was ranked top ad agency of the decade by Campaign Brief What they erected, for lack of a better word, is definitely creating publicity. Located on Victoria Street in central Auckland, an enormous crotch with the show’s title plastered on it rests. Despite one’s personal opinion of the show, it is impossible to deny the eye catching success of the billboard. Sex sells, and when the series’ title is ‘Hung’ might as well get right to the point. Is this overtly sexual add too much to be on a billboard? Or is it no different then any beer campaign with scandalous women in revealing clothes, or perfume advertisements alluding to sex and rape. Sex selling advertisements however are usually due to a an attractive person having little or nothing to do with the product being advertised. However, in this case, the subject matter is exactly what is being displayed, clear and concise. So is it fair to say that the advertising company is using sex to sell, because it really is just selling the product it self.Image: coolhunter.com