Craptacular!

Truly, I did not know that this particular program was available for general consumption by the cable-having public. I couldn't figure out what freak of "logic" told TiVo that Charles in Charge would be a good choice for me. I mean, I understand that it thinks I really want six hours worth of This Old House Classics and Kitchens and Baths 2000 because my top Season Pass is for America's Test Kitchen. However, I don't think I've even watched a half-hour sitcom, much less recorded one.

(Was Charles in Charge funny? Does anybody remember? Did anybody actually watch that show when it was on?)

The house porn is kind of depressing. I see these folks pouring all this money into their renovations, and they come out with these terrible looking houses. I watched one show where they gutted a lovely Craftsman bungalow, completely stripped it of character. Unfortunately the TV crew came in to take pictures before they had the landscaping redone, so this spendy rehab was sitting on a plain dry dirt lot.

Oops.

I was watching live teevee for a few minutes this morning after I finished deleting all the bits of shows that TiVo hadn't actually recorded, and I was exposed to a few minutes of Glitter. Remember Mariah Carey's film debut? OK, we managed with drugs and therapy to put that misadventure out of our national consiousness, but it's back and it's playing on HBO in September.

In the time I watched, she wore like six different outfits, and I think all but one of them involved hot pants.

It's not a great bad movie on the level of Gymkata or even Thank God It's Friday. And since we're on the subject of warblers, I know I'm not the only one who watched the horror that was tonight's American Idol. Those songs. It's as if they had a contest for the stupidest song in Stupidville, and came up with a tie!

I thought the chyk with the striped hair was clearly better, but with material like that... god help her career.

The only thing that even began to approach the stupidity of the bottom-of-the-barrel-scrapings they threw together for those poor kids was the appearance of the winner from the original show, the one in Britain. His little song sounded like a reject from the Barney soundtrack. Y'all think I'm kidding, don't you? It sold more than a million copies. The whole experience made me feel vaguely unclean.

So if anybody's looking for me later this week, I'll be in the shower.

before - after