Digital Delights

A show of hands, please, from everyone who, like me, had their ass kicked to the curb by that mondo-killer strain of flu that made the rounds from here to California last month. I'm not one of those people who make a habit of getting an annual flu shot because, quite frankly, I haven't had the fucking flu since I was in high school. Oops. Super, I thought as I ran a 100-degree fever for 48 hours and sweated through every item of comfortable sleepwear I own. This is just what I need. Overnight, I was transformed from my jovial, vivacious, fun-to-hang-around-with self into a dull, neutered, flattened, sleepwalking zombie -- wiping my nose raw, popping over-the-counter pain killers and debating between taking my own life and praying for death.

There was no way I could bend down to tie my own shoes, let alone leave the apartment -- I mean, even my hair hurt. Tragically unable to put on make-up, I was forced to cancel many social activities, including an interview with a famous rock star, a date to see my friend Frank's band, The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, who were in NYC from LA (sorry, Frank!), and several planned adventures with friends. So you can understand my mood. After about 10 days of feeling like I had been hit and run over by a truck, I slowly started to feel close to human again. What a relief. There's one positive aspect of the whole ordeal: in order to chase away brain death while I convalesced, I ended up watching a lot of TV.   I like to watch TV.

During my state of existence-limbo, I had a rare if somewhat unwanted opportunity to examine the curious fact that the $45 worth of cable I pay for each month, somehow, just does not afford me enough cable access to make my life complete. Arriving at this conclusion in a fever delirium late one night (I think I was watching the brilliant Insomniac With Dave Attell on Comedy Central), I dialed my cable company and ordered an upgrade to digital cable -- providing me with, like, 200 channels of god-only-knows-what-kind of visual pop culture garbage delivered right to my face, and 25 channels of commercial-free cable radio.  Hallelujah. If I didn't need some form of human contact on a regular basis -- and vitamin D from the sun -- I could easily never leave the Chickpad again. Ain't that America.

Digital cable rocks! I cannot fathom how I lived my entire life up to this point without eight different channels of HBO. Without any doubt, the acme of digital cable is MTV2, a music video channel where -- you're not going to believe this -- they actually show music videos. I'm talking all music videos, plus they throw in some music news about bands that don't sound like Creed or Staind, or who I might actually walk across the street to see, like The White Stripes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.  Of course, this being a less-than-perfect world, they do show a lot of (c)rap videos, but that's easily remedied by clicking over to the second-highest peak on digital cable mountain; VH1 Classics. This is the channel where, apparently, all those 80s videos have been hiding out while awaiting their resurrection. Jesus God! I actually saw an Oingo Boingo video! (For those of you born after 1980, Oingo Boingo was a wildly popular band back before New Wave turned into gay techno dance music, and Punk splintered into indie rock and -- gag -- nu-metal.) I am already watching MTV2 and VH1 Classics with an obsessive fervor. It is already  too late to turn back.

For me, MTV2 and VH1 Classics are the points around which all other channels orbit. While VH1 Classics allows me to blissfully remain in a retarded state of emotional development as I re-live my youth over and over and over, MTV2 provides a useful tool for screening the dozens of CDs that arrive in my mailbox each week, or deciding what I need to buy that I didn't get for free. Like, I finally got to see a video by this singer/songwriter hottie Pete Yorn, whom everyone is talking about. Pete sure could give Jim Morrison a run for the money in the "brooding sex appeal" department, but his music actually is pretty average, hook-free fare. (John Mayer is a new singer/songwriter whose stuff I like much better. I saw his video on MTV2 as well).  In other words, Pete Yorn is riding the media hype machine, and more power to him. At least he doesn't sound like a sixth-generation photocopy of Eddie Vedder. That's $18 MTV2 has already saved me. It's almost worth having to endure that astoundingly mediocre Dashboard Confessionals video.

VH1 Classics also has a Headbanger's Ball--style 80's metal show, and I nearly lost my mind when they played Motley Crue's video for Wild Side (you can tell it's an old video because Vince Neil is still thin and doesn't yet resemble John Lovitz) back to back with -- oh my god! -- Faster Pussycat's Bathroom Wall! I do not believe it gets any more thrilling than that.

Anyway, as I sit here with my TV Guide in one hand and my day planner in the other, scheduling my future social life to achieve maximum alone time with the digital cable box, I'd like to talk about some other shows I enjoy watching. Perhaps they are already favorites of yours as well. If not, listen up.

Survivor, Marquesas: the Best Show on TV

My best friend, Linda, is responsible for getting me hooked on Survivor back in the spring of 2000, when she called me one evening, screaming into the phone that people on this show Survivor were eating huge live maggots! Now, I am a pretty squeamish person -- I don't even eat sushi -- but this was before that stupid show Fear Factor made stuff like live-maggot-eating totally passé, so I just had to check it out. It turned out that  two "tribes" of people, stranded on an island in the South China Sea as part of a contest to see who could out-backstab the others in order to win a million dollars -- all the while living without showers, toilet paper or digital cable -- had to compete to see which one could eat the most live insect pupa without barfing. I don't recall if it was a Reward Challenge or an Immunity Challenge, but it was hardcore. I became a fan instantly.

Everyone who knows me well knows not to ask me to do a phone interview, review a band, attend a party, or become distracted in any way between the hours of 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM on Thursday nights. I don't even answer the phone while Survivor is on. Few truly understand my obsession with the show -- hell, even I don't quite get it -- but those who make ignorant, derisive comments like, I'm proud to say I have NEVER watched that show do not sway me. Considering these people don't know what they're talking about, they sure sound confident that they aren't missing anything. It's their loss.

The current season of Survivor: Marquesas returns the show to a familiar island setting, after the second season's trek to the Australian Outback (which was pretty good) and last season's adventure in Africa (which, with hindsight, was rather uneventful, but still better than anything else on network television). The two tribes of Survivor: Marquesas are Rotu, the serious worker-bee, self-described "love" tribe, and Maraamu, the lazy-ass slacker, evil bastard tribe.  Since Survivor is my favorite TV show in the universe, I could easily talk about it for the rest of this column, but that would be like trying to explain the nuances of a long-running soap opera to a first-time viewer (i.e. meandering and pointless). But I wanted to get a consenting opinion on why Survivor kicks so much ass, so I did.

My good friend and fellow rock critic, Sharon, is obsessed with Survivor as well. She told me about getting turned on to the show a little late, but nevertheless falling under its seductive spell. I missed the entire first season of Survivor. I didn't understand the craze, and the commercials highlighting the eating of rodents turned me off. I even developed an elitist attitude about being in the unpopular cult of the initiated, Sharon confessed. By the second season The Australian Outback, my curiosity got the best of me. One episode and I was hooked. What fun to have a God-fearing farmer/teacher, Roger, as a new hero. How could I ignore the fate of a cute Jewish boy, Ethan (the $1 million winner of Survivor Africa), whose kosher lifestyle superseded the conditions of starvation? What sweet justice befell Survivor Africa's lazy, spoiled twenty-somethings when their bad karma turned on them. Now, on Marquesas, new "tribe" members strategize about the value of relationships, patience, doing your share and being a good person versus being ruthless and judgmental in the face of self-preservation. That makes Survivor a lot like real life, where human nature breeds the good, the bad and the ugly, winners and losers, and those in between. Survivor succeeds in putting all the best and worst of people in a riveting media time capsule.

I think Sharon nailed it: each episode of Survivor only mirrors something of a universal constant. Survival of the fittest is one thing, but at the end of the day -- the strategy of the game aside -- honesty and personal integrity go a long way towards deciding who comes out on top.  As opposed to The Real World, where each houseguest/would-be actor/model possesses an unquenchable taste for his or her own publicity, Survivor maintains the naked feel of unscripted authenticity. Survivor rules! No other reality show on network television even comes close.

Six Feet Under Buries the Competition!

Family values, the bonds of friendship, emotional conflict, kinky sex and Dyin' La Muerta Loca!

As a recovering Goth, I became intrigued by Six Feet Under -- a jaw-droppingly brilliant drama/comedy centering on the Fisher family, who run a mortuary business -- as soon as posters advertising the show started showing up on phone booths and bus shelters around the city. After getting a promotional copy of the soundtrack in the mail one afternoon, I knew I had to get HBO immediately. This CD's excellent collection of obscure 60s classics, popular hits, modern hard rockers and strange ethnic/ambient instrumentals plays like a favorite mix tape. Feast your eyes on this track listing: Stereo MC's "Deep Down & Dirty"; Peggy Lee's "I Love Being Here With You"; Zero 7's "Distractions"; PJ Harveys One Time Too Many; Classics IV's "Spooky"; The Dandy Warhols' "Bohemian Like You" and on and on. The soundtrack to Six Feet Under is easily my favorite album of the year so far.  Everyone loses their mind over The Sopranos, but that show is about one-tenth of one percent as fascinating a look into the American Beauty-esque underbelly of normal family life as Six Feet Under. What it lacks in visceral shock value (which is, I think, the core appeal of The Sopranos) it makes up many times over in oddly resonant real-life quirkiness. Love is not strong enough a word to describe how I feel about this show.

Sharon doesn't subscribe to HBO and has never watched Six Feet Under, but she was totally sucked in by the soundtrack album. "I thought I wouldn't get it, since I, literally, do not get the show," Sharon told me, "but, wow! This is a great stand-alone recording. My favorites include Craig Armstrong's 'Let's Go Out Tonight' (the realm of Springsteen/Tom Waits in one cut), the great Dandy Warhols' cut, and the appeal of Peggy Lee, which can't be denied. The CD is initially misleading, as it begins with [the show's title theme]; a moody trance-scape of sound, but ultimately this record transcends any one thing, and evolves into a who's who of artists and music I want to learn more about."

Ian, who runs the music and pop cultural media website Ink19.com, had these thoughts on the show and its haunting soundtrack. "Every episode of Six Feet Under begins with a death and, in an eerie fashion, Peggy Lee (who contributes "I Love Being Here With You" to the series' first soundtrack) passed away a couple of weeks before the album was released to the press. Of course, the unspoken fourth horseman in 'Sex and Drugs and Rock n' Roll' is Death, and there's plenty of that to go around in Six Feet Under. Most plots are drenched with one or more of these topics, and the eclectic soundtrack provides a presence as strong as any character's passions, or the specter of death. Thomas Golubicc and Gary Calamar, the show's musical supervisors, display an encyclopedic knowledge of music, and they put it to good use. Sure, it's easy to come up with the ideal musical cliché -- funk for the sex scenes, strung-out '60s sitar for the drug scenes -- but these guys prefer to do things the hard way and select the perfect song for the mood, whether the viewer will recognize it or not. Often, they do their job so well that the music blends into the set, and it's not until you're watching a show for the second time that you realize where the tune driving you mad all week came from."

If you live in Manhattan, it costs a whopping $6.95 a month to add HBO to your cable service. If youre not on the phone with your cable company right now, I dont want to know you.

The Osbournes Keep it All In The Family

The best thing to arrive on MTV since the game show Remote Control or the second season of The Real World,  and currently the only reason to even flip over to that channel, The Osbournes -- a voyeuristic peak into the daily life of ex-Black Sabbath front man and heavy metal rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, his wife and manager, Sharon, and two of their three teenage children -- daughter Kelly and son Jack -- is the biggest hit in MTV's 20- year history. As pop culture's latest flashpoint, The Osbournes has exploded into an unforeseen success and singular media phenomena.

A hilarious slap in the face of preconceived normality that was automatically rubber-stamped as a masterpiece the day after its debut (and rightly so) The Osbournes is filmed on location in and around the family's Beverly Hills mansion and the surrounding Los Angeles/ Hollywood area. Taking the Behind The Music ethic to a ridiculous extreme, ubiquitous camera crews track the family's every move, inflating the deadening treadmill routine of modern life to near wide-screen proportions. Inquiring Minds want to know: Who is Ozzy Osbourne? The real Ozzy Osbourne and not just the comic book, Satan worshipping, biting-the-heads-off-bats version that we all know and love. The show leaves no stone unturned in its maddening quest to answer that question. Whether you're spying on Sharon and Kelly's shopping spree on Rodeo Drive, squealing with glee as Ozzy chucks a piece of wood through a noisy neighbor's window, or cringing at Ozzy and Sharon's futile attempt to get some sleep while the kids entertain friends at 2 AM -- Andrew W.K.'s "Party Hard" blasting from the stereo -- the show is absolutely riveting. The Osbournes' fanatical popularity over the past six weeks since it debuted certainly points to it as having touched a nerve. Even the notoriously conservative TV Guide gave it a glowing review! Looking for Must-See TV? This is it.

Oddly enough, I first heard of The Osbournes' impending premier when my friend Marley, who is the HR gal at my day job, told me about seeing Ozzy's house featured on an episode of MTV's Cribs, which she watched with her husband. "Ozzy has all this satanic stuff in his house and he held up his little dog for the camera and said they were going to sacrifice him!" she enthused. "We were laughing our heads off." Now Marley and I discuss the previous night's episode of The Osbournes first thing each Wednesday morning. She says stuff like, "Wouldn't you love to meet them? They seem really warm and nice."  It took a show like this to break the barriers of the public's opinion of freakishness and turn it into "warm and nice." And I must say, the fact that Kelly sports pink hair has done wonders for my ability to walk the streets unnoticed.

Having already surpassed viewer-ship numbers of the two most popular cable programs, HBOs Sex & the City and Six Feet Under, The Osbournes is the show that everyone seems to be watching. First impressions were amazingly positive across the board of demographics, despite or maybe because of  -- the fact that the TV censors are having a field day bleeping out the familys colorful language. How many times can YOU say fu#k and sh*t in a half hour? Sharon, my writer friend, said to me. It's fu#king great when that sh*t is the natural language of the Osbourne clan. It's as usual as How was your day, dear? was to Leave It To Beaver's June Cleaver. This is the life we all wish we had: A dad who converses with his daughter about her vagina as freely as a parent discussing school, or a mom who fends off noisy neighbors by slinging chunks of food over a fence. Of course, it is the intrigue of Ozzy, the wild man of rock and roll, doing the mundane that connects him to my world. We look into a life both unlike our own, and yet so familiar. The Osbournes: just an average American family -- tattoos, devil heads and all.

It bodes well for the show's street credibility that other musicians seem to dig it just as much as the general public. Gina Shock, drummer for the Go Go's, turned out to be a big fan when I interviewed her recently. Asked if she'd been watching The Osbournes, she totally freaked out. "Oh, Jesus Christ!" was my first clue that Gina might be a fan. "I was just at the bank and on the way back I saw my neighbor. This guy, John, he's a photographer who does mostly heavy metal stuff, and he's acquaintances with Ozzy. I said to him, John, you know what my favorite thing is? and he said What? and I said, The Osbournes, it is the best fucking show on TV! I saw the third episode last night, but I'll watch the same one over and over, because I keep finding different things. If I watch it a couple of times I'll pick stuff out that I missed. They are so funny. It is my favorite show on TV. I get so excited to watch it. Its just fucking awesome!

Judy, drummer for the LA-based rock band Tadpole, agrees with Gina. The Osbournes is the best show ever! she says.  Its classic TV! We stop band rehearsal early so we can watch it. OZZY RULES! Tadpole does our own tribute to Ozzy and Black Sabbath called Black Tadpole ... it's something to see.

Jamie, a publicist who refers to Sharon Osbourne as her "idol," never lets a hectic Tuesday at the office keep her from her favorite show.  "I run home to watch The Osbournes every Tuesday night," Jamie told me.  "It is one of the best shows on television, and I think the idea for it is brilliant. It really humanizes someone who has been a rock GOD and an idol to so many people for years."

Jana, a musician living here in New York, discovered the show she considers "a laugh riot" by accident. "I was not even aware that this show existed [until I saw] the Osbournes on The Today Show.  What a completely disturbing show!  It's so much more real than The Real World. The big question is, why the hell would the Osbournes want to do this? Why would they invite the world into their comically dysfunctional home?"

The answer is quite simple: This exhilarating slice of cinema verite has done more to boost Ozzy's flagging career than any publicity stunt or media campaign his publicist could even have a nightmare about. And wife Sharon -- whose formidable reputation precedes her as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to handling her husband's career -- is obviously the one who set this crazy train in motion. Rhonda, also a publicist, agrees. "The Osbournes' new show on MTV is brilliant, and I am sure that Sharon Osbourne was behind it. As a music publicist, I would have probably advised against doing the show. I would have thought that a reality show based on one's mundane life (cleaning up dog poop comes to mind) would interfere with being a rock god. In fact, the show did the exact opposite. It humanized Ozzy Osbourne and I think the show is so successful and endearing because you see him with his wife and his children, whom he absolutely adores. You get to see what it is really like to be a rock 'n' roller over the age of 50. [As we see], it isn't easy."

There's just something about Ozzy's confusion when confronted with the task of changing the liner in the kitchen garbage cans, or bearing witness to his discussion with Kelly about her upcoming trip to "The Vagina Doctor" that makes you want to keep tuning in. Its appeal works on a direct inverse principal to a show like Survivor, which takes ordinary people and turns them into media stars.  MTV has taken a famous celebrity and turned him into a real person.  Its so simple, yet pure genius. It appeals to my voyeuristic side, says musician/computer programmer Jim, but there is something about watching Ozzy try and relate to his family, and have normal day-to-day discussions about the dogs, or the rugs, or whatever, all the while realizing this guy is one of the biggest rock stars EVER! The Osbournes might possibly be the funniest show to ever come on television!

When you get right down to the bare-bones appeal of the show, my pal Sharon offered this insight: "Ozzy's clan is the epitome of what families are or should be -- funny, frantic and driven by love. No scriptwriter could do any better."

They're, like, a great family; I want to live with them! Gina says. 

"We watch the show as a family," Marley concludes. "I love it."

Heres the major revelation of the show: Ozzy is just a Regular Dad. Gee wiz, I wish he was my dad.  Ozzy has consumed enough illegal substances to kill 10 men, and yet is trying to be a good father and husband! Jim writes in an email. It is just too surreal!"

Jana agrees, "The most hysterical part has to be the fact that Ozzy is portrayed as the bumbling Dad. But it's because he is! The man can't even figure out how to take out the garbage and replace the trash bags in the kitchen." 

"You find that Ozzy is like so many other people's dads in some ways and, understandably, totally different in others, says Jamie.  If you did not already love Ozzy before watching this show, you do by the time the half-hour is over."

"The coolest thing about the show is that you root for this real-life Addams Family because they simply don't give a fuck," says Jana. "That's exactly what makes it fun. On the other hand, though, it's also kind of painful to watch.  It's like living in an apartment building and overhearing your kooky neighbors having sex.  Except of course for the constant swearing and the fact that the mother/child roles are almost entirely reversed."

Which brings me to the somewhat disturbing (yet still highly entertaining) aspect of The Osbournes; that being the high cringe factor inherent in observing the antics of Ozzy and Sharon's pock-faced, bloated, ultra-foul-mouthed, smart-ass, clinically unhappy, 15-going-on-30 -year-old son, Jack. It is so painfully obvious that Jack is in immediate need of a serious, old-fashioned parental ass kicking. On this past week's show, Jack's fondness for staying out until dawn/partying/club-going/pot smoking/drinking (keep in mind this is a 15-year-old we're talking about) finally caught up with him. Attempting, albeit 10 years too late, to reign in their teens-gone-wild, Jack and Kelly (who, despite being caught with a fake ID, is like a fucking saint by comparison) were subjected to a hilariously ironic parental lecture cum group therapy bitch-fest by Ozzy and Sharon.

Allow me to digress far from the beaten path for a few hundred words, because I need to get something off my chest and get real here for just a second. What is the deal these days with kids having no self-control and no tangible sense of respect for their parents or anyone in a position of authority? What's up with that?  No one I know had parents who would let you party like a wild animal and show unrelenting disrespect as a teenager -- I mean, in my family it wasn't even an option. If we even looked cross-eyed at our parents, my brother and sister and I would have been stripped of our phone privileges, our car keys, and most of the skin on our asses. Maybe I was raised by a couple of strict corporal- punishment freaks, but I turned out OK (really, trust me). And according to popular consensus, the way many people in my age group were disciplined as kids went something like this: first came the lecture, covering one's supposed misdeeds (in my household, saying a swear word was a popular transgression) and why such behavior was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. Then came the beating. Negotiation or -- god forbid -- talking back or walking out on a parent while they were speaking to you, as Jack was seen to do, was just unheard of. I would have been decked after the first words of opposition came out of my mouth. No quarter given.

Sharon says that she and Ozzy raised the kids out on the road with their dad, "So's we could be a family," and that's really sweet and sincere and her heart was in the right place. You can't help but have great empathy for Sharon and Ozzy having to deal with a problem child like Jack, but you don't do your kids any favors by failing to structure some boundaries. Jack seems like a good kid at heart. Let's hope he gets some kind of symbolic beat-down soon (say, enrollment in one of those "Outward Bound" type whip-your-troubled-teen-into-shape, Spartan wilderness excursions), so he can experience a much-needed epiphany and not go through life as an arrogant, misguided shithead who thinks the world owes him a living because of his last name. I hate people like that.

Basically, Jack is trying to be his dad. He's hanging out at adult clubs in some desperate attempt to be popular, even if it means he's late to school (my guess is he's in the 8th grade) the next day. How many people reading this column would have been allowed to miss school because you stayed until last call at The Viper Room the night before? WTF? Also, Jack's apparently starting up some kind of nu-metal record label under the influence of an inflated sense of entitlement, but the only reason he's able to get into these clubs, or why anyone pays him any mind whatsoever, is because he's the son of Ozzy-freaking-Osbourne.  People think Ozzy is cool because, musically speaking, he's worked at being cool for 30 years and has earned his reputation. No one's denying that he did a lot of fucked-up shit along the way. I mean, this is the guy who out-partied Motley Crue! Ozzy even told Jack during the ill fated "Don't Do Drugs" parental guidance session, "Look at what happened to ME! Stay away from that stuff!" The thing is, people also respect Ozzy because as a musician, as a parent, as a husband and as a man, he's learned how to Walk the Talk. Jack is just a spoiled brat who needs a reality check. I have no problem with adults doing whatever rocks their boat -- drink, take drugs, bang whoever you want, party like a rock star -- but kids -- THEIR STATUS AS CHILDREN OF FAMOUS ROCK STARS NOTWITHSTANDING -- need to follow some rules, be grateful for what they have, and show some respect.  Plus, I understand Jack's the one who picks all those shitty bands for Ozzfest. Clearly, he must be stopped.

I've loved Ozzy for years and years, but I adore and respect him even more after seeing this show and realizing that, despite the fact that he walks around in a mild state of "Where am I?" dementia, he's not one to take refuge in his own enigma. Ozzy rocks!! The guy really does love his wife, his children, and his fans. Thats blindingly obvious to even casual viewers of the show. Hell, I even feel for Sharon's bad rap, because I see how hard she tries to help her husband's career and be a good mom while maintaining some kind of grip on reality. Sharon Osbourne may be a hard-ass businesswoman, but the truth is, she's a great manager. Getting her husband to agree to have his privacy invaded for four months was the most brilliant move any manager could have made on behalf of her client. You can't buy publicity like that. Rock on, Ozzy. Never Say Die.