IN DEFENSE OF SWAMP PEOPLE
A while back while cruising through Twitter I noticed that the TV Swamp People was a trending topic. I happen to like the show, but here in Canada it's run much later than it did in the USA, so I clicked on to see what people were saying.
One vacuous pinhead tweeted: "Swamp People is on. Those people are so stupid."
Seriously, there are people who actually think that way. I checked that person's Twitter feed and had my suspicions confirmed, their Twitter output consisted of praising the shopping choices of people named Kardashian.
For those of you who don't get cable of any kind in their cave Swamp People is a show about Cajun alligator hunters in Louisiana.
For 1 month of each year they are allowed to hunt alligators to sell their meat and hides for some good money. In fact many of these hunters can make their year if they bag big gators and lots of them. Now the hunt is regulated by the government and each hunter has a certain number of tags, one for each alligator they bring in, and if they "tag out" one year, they can get more tags for next year's hunt. However, if they fail to tag out, they get fewer tags the next year.
The show is chock full of the sort of drama that makes good reality TV. The prey itself can kill a man pretty easily, the method of hunting requires considerable physical strength, courage, and marksmanship, and then there's the characters you meet on the show. While they're not sexy, fashionable, and yes, some are missing teeth, they are charming, intelligent, are not wrapped up in an empty headed consumerist culture, and live way better in their environment than I do in mine.
The show does very well in the ratings, usually appearing in the top 5 for cable shows, and getting viewership numbers that most broadcast networks would envy.
Doesn't sound like they're stupid at all.
Now they don't get the hype that their lower rated competition gets because they don't really serve a need that Hollywood has. That need is product placement.
Sure, you don't get as many eyeballs trying to keep up with Kardashians as you do with Troy Landry the King of the Swamp, but those few eyeballs will buy what their reality idols tell them too.
Who is being stupid now?
SPEAKING OF TRASHY REALITY STARS
Amateur porn star turned publicity whore Kim Kardashian was at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington DC over the weekend.
While there President Obama offered her the job of Secretary of State, but she turned it down, telling the President that she doesn't type.
SPEAKING OF TRASHY REALITY TV
The E! Network is trying to branch off from 24/7 coverage of the has-beens, never weres, and never should be celebrities, to develop a slate of scripted programming.
Now I won't judge the slate they're putting together. They do have some heavy hitters behind them, so the shows could turn out to be pretty good.
However, I doubt that E! is really capable of ensuring those heavy hitter producers and showrunners are happy, and properly marketing original scripted programming when they've been so dependent on following the "D List" when they go shoe shopping to fill their schedule for so damn long.
IF YOU'RE A WRITER YOU WILL PROBABLY WANT TO SKIP THIS STORY.
Uggie the dog from the movie The Artist will be releasing his autobiography this October from a major international publisher.
That's right, a dog that appeared in one award winning, but only modestly successful has a book deal.
If you listen very carefully you can hear hundreds, if not thousands of unpublished writers who dedicate their lives to their work screaming in anguish.
So if you're a struggling writer who can't even get read, let alone published, ask Uggie whose leg you have to hump to get a book deal. He knows.
Meanwhile ask a publisher what they do, and they'll tell you that they're the gatekeepers of quality in literature, and they want you to take them seriously.
Amateur porn star turned publicity whore Kim Kardashian was at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington DC over the weekend.
While there President Obama offered her the job of Secretary of State, but she turned it down, telling the President that she doesn't type.
SPEAKING OF TRASHY REALITY TVThe E! Network is trying to branch off from 24/7 coverage of the has-beens, never weres, and never should be celebrities, to develop a slate of scripted programming.
Now I won't judge the slate they're putting together. They do have some heavy hitters behind them, so the shows could turn out to be pretty good.
However, I doubt that E! is really capable of ensuring those heavy hitter producers and showrunners are happy, and properly marketing original scripted programming when they've been so dependent on following the "D List" when they go shoe shopping to fill their schedule for so damn long.
IF YOU'RE A WRITER YOU WILL PROBABLY WANT TO SKIP THIS STORY.
Uggie the dog from the movie The Artist will be releasing his autobiography this October from a major international publisher.
That's right, a dog that appeared in one award winning, but only modestly successful has a book deal.
If you listen very carefully you can hear hundreds, if not thousands of unpublished writers who dedicate their lives to their work screaming in anguish.
So if you're a struggling writer who can't even get read, let alone published, ask Uggie whose leg you have to hump to get a book deal. He knows.
Meanwhile ask a publisher what they do, and they'll tell you that they're the gatekeepers of quality in literature, and they want you to take them seriously.
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