#5 - American Idol

It was the decade when...

An Idol was no longer a golden calf.

American Idol - A series of memories

I remember Kelly Clarkson, voice sand-papery as Tom Waits after a bender and as teary as a newly crowned beauty queen, squawking her way through the First Season's climatic ballad A Moment Like This for what felt like the 20th time. Indeed, American Idol became a new kind of Miss (or Mr.) America for the 21st century. Only bigger. Kelly Clarkson couldn't have known it when she became Idol's first reigning champ but, the show was about to change (and dominate) the music industry in the aughts, the winner all but guaranteed a one-way ticket to super-stardom. And the runner-up, in the case of the Justin Guarini (he of Sideshow Bob coiffure), a one-way ticket to total irrelevance.


I remember Clay Aiken, eliminated during prelims, getting the chance to redeem himself as a wild card selection by singing Elton John's Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, nailing every note and giving Idol one of its greatest, and cheesiest, performances ever. Somewhere Barry Manilow was smiling. Clay would go on to win America's heart but lose the competition. Ruben Studdard, a performer whose repertoire of gestures while performing consisted of a numerous ONE. (Smile earestly, Place hand to heart, then reach out. Keep smiling) took the top spot. Clay, you were robbed. But it's OK because now you're a big happy gay daddy.


I remember Fantasia (easily the best name for a pop star since Madonna), acting like she had already won the competition, sitting down stage center, delivering George Gershwin's Summertime with more soul than any American Idol contestant had ever before or would ever again. When the single mother took the prize later on in the season, it all just felt like a bygone conclusion. Fantasia remains, despite her lack of mega-selling records, at once the rawest and most polished talent Idol has discovered.


I remember Dunkleman. Sorta. Do you?


I remember William Hung, a man who did the impossible. From an ocean of horrible auditions - a veritable smorgasbord of delusional losers, attention hungry pranksters, ostentatiously costumed narcissists, and mentally unstable psychos - one man sunk so low he reached new heights. William Hung, performing the now definitive rendition of Ricky Martin's She Bangs at his American Idol audition, was so atrociously awful, so deliciously inappropriate, so the opposite of talented, that the "singer" became nothing short of a celebrity in his own right. Public appearances followed, as did a record deal. Some of Idol's top 10 contestants can't boast that. Was Hung a performance artist whose act demonstrated a deconstructionist critique on the concept of "talent" and "fame?" Or maybe he was just the kid in the class who didn't know that he was being made fun of. Probably the latter. Hung, alas, dropped out of UCBerkeley to pursue his music career. The Grammys have not been forthcoming. Hung's fame brings to the fore one of Idol's most troubling elements: its cruel, (admittedly) hilarious, and ethically dubious audition process. Sure, many of the show's more over-the-top wanna-bes are cognizant enough to realize the nature of the dog and pony show that they are about to put themselves through. Many court the shame. But a great swath of the contestants appear truly convinced of their own aptitude for Pop stardom, only to be laughed out of the room by the judge's panel (and, through extension, by America). These individuals, often decidedly void of social skills and marginally disturbed, are paraded in front of a snide and salivating public who, eager to gawk at the freaks, live vicariously through the judge's caustic and dismissive remarks. William Hung was a success story of a sort I suppose. To call it a triumph of mediocrity would give Hung too much credit. Perhaps his narrative is more a revenge of the un-gifted. And, like most revenge, it's ultimately unsatisfying. And so we are left with question: Who was this joke on anyway? Hung? Or us?


I remember "nice judge" Paula Abdul promoting Idol on Seattle local news, sounding like she had spent the morning doing body shots to help the Quaaludes go down easier. She was rarely more coherent on the show.


I remember Melinda Doolittle singing like a superstar week after week and then, maddeningly, acting as demure as some virginal giesha during her interactions with the judges. Having misplaced her neck week after week, Doolittle nonetheless consistently displayed utter showmanship with her full-throttle, highly focused and vocally controlled performances. To make My Funny Valentine tolerable to hear yet again is an achievement. To make it one of the best performances in Idol history? That's a miracle. Her Achilles's heel: the girl couldn't take a compliment. It's hard for America to put you on a pedestal if you act like a doormat. She was voted off before the finals.


I remember Simon and Ryan, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Just kidding. I mean, that's silly. I mean, it's not like they are making homophobic gay innuendos at each other all the time or anything. I mean, not on a show that only featured an (kinda) openly gay contestant in its most recent season. I mean, nah, they would never kiss, in a tree or elsewhere. I mean, that would just be gay.



I remember Sanjaya's hair. We must all worship Sanjaya's hair. A pompadour of endless mutability, the skinny Indian boy's one-of-a-kind coiffure gave a far better performance on Idol than the singer did, Sanjaya himself being Idol's worst top-10 contestant in the show's history. But the hair, that was a thing of beauty. A piece of modern art to be displayed in a museum and pondered over. Or perhaps vacuum sealed and dissected in a lab. Or maybe pickled and left in the catacombs of a church the way they do the rotting appendages of Saints. The locks of Mr. Malakar are a national treasure and must be preserved!


I remember some blond boy bursting out into strange popping noises in the middle of his song. Trying to bring a unique spin to his performances Blake Lewis utilized his mad skillz as a beat boxer on America Idol in the biggest effort yet to turn the art form into a mainstream trend. And the boy was good. Since Blake's second-place finish, the results have not been promising; Beat Boxing remains a fringe music style. Were all of Blake's efforts for naught? Not really. There are some consolations to be had. For example, everyone knows who you're talking about when you reference "that beat-box guy."


And finally, I remember Adam Glambert, who, employing the magic of eye liner, black hair dye and vocal cords of indestructible carbon microfiber (well, one assumes) gave artistically limping American Idol (Lambert would have eaten the previous season's runner up, Bop! magazine ready David Archuleta, for breakfast) a shot of pure Ziggy Stardust-quality. Deeply anachronistic, Lambert's theatrical, glam-rock persona was a throwback to a musical era of high artifice, ambiguous sexuality, and musical experimentation. Perhaps this is the reason that, despite the consistently brilliant performances delivered by the leather lunged rock n' roller, the more palatable, "good 'ol Southern boy," Kris Allen ended up snatching the prize away from Glambert's black fingernailed hands. America's tastes remain guarded. David Cook, that's edgy. Adam Lambert, that's full on Studio 54 territory. But Kris Allen's victory was Pyrrhic; since the finale the media coverage has been focused not on the apple-cheeked winner but on his flamboyant runner-up.



You AUGHT to remember.

#7 - Fake News

It was the decade when...

The real news seemed fake and the fake news seemed real.


Let's face it, a lot of shit went down this decade. Compared to the temperate seas of the 90's, a decade so devoid of dramatic news that years were spent obsessing over a presidential hummer, the aughts were a roiling tempest of global turbulence, financial meltdowns, ecological disasters, foreign wars and game-changing historical events which, when seen in totality, mark this as the most significant decade for news since the 1960's and maybe earlier.

The news itself was news this decade. With the method of information dissemination being reinvented daily by the Internet, traditional news sources found themselves scrambling to keep up and stay profitable. On television, all three of the long-standing grandfatherly network news anchors either retired or expired, and with their passing so too the primacy of "the Nightly News" as the central authoritative televised presentation of the days events. Even Walter Cronkite finally gave up the ghost. No television program would ever be able to fill the role that the "Nightly News" used to play, not in the fragmented and blog-filled world that we suddenly found ourselves living in. That being said, there was one news program in the aughts that reported the news thoroughly and accurately while at the same ladling the comic absurdity of the modern world over every story it reported. I am of course talking about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, without question the decades most important news program.

Ushering in a golden age of satire The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reasserted irony as the primary weapon of truth-telling in civil society. The show was the news media's sarcastic conscience in an era of unabashedly biased cable networks, barking media "pundits," political "spin-rooms", and shrinking financial resources for bread and butter field reporting. The aughts were an era where sycophantic "reporters" with dubious credentials infiltrated the White House press corps, lobbing softball questions to GW in times of great national crisis. An era when the 24 hours news cycle amplified every political skirmish into a hysterical crisis only to be discarded and forgotten by the next day. An era in which the talk show host with the most stringent views or most outrageous performance skills garnered the highest ratings, truth and thoughtfulness be damned. It was in this context that The Daily Show, though far from unbiased, acquired a carapace of authority and integrity shared by no other television program. To those who counted on a fair analysis of the news The Daily Show became a nightly ritual for many Americans, replacing both late night talk and traditional evening news. Host Jon Stewart went from being a successful stand-up comic and sporadically employed film actor to the most trusted man in America. Eminently astute and endlessly hilarious, Stewart combined old-fashioned borscht belt humor and the hyper-intellectual comedy of Ivy League publications like the Harvard Lampoon, with a dose of Tim Russert's inquisitional rigor thrown in for good measure. Unlike the self-congratulatory echo-chambers of 24-hour news networks, The Daily Show actively courted intelligent debate of a kind not seen on television since William F. Buckley gave us his parting switchblade smirk on Firing Line.

The shows most important function was its role as a media watchdog, ruthlessly exposing the lunacy and hypocrisy of the "legitimate" cable news channels, which, in the show's meta-analysis of the field, come across as inane and opportunistic loci of blathering idiots and any-for-a-rating gambits. How else to explain Glenn Beck or CNN's Star Wars hologram? By dismantling the edifice of legitimacy that the "real news" claimed a monopoly on, the void left behind was to be filled by a different kind of program, one with no obligation to seriousness but which nonetheless was executed with the utmost of integrity. The Daily Show's ridicule of mainstream news paved the way for its own meteoric rise to success. When Jon Stewart appeared on CNN's long runing debate program Crossfire the comic all but torpedoed his hosts, turning his appearance into nothing less than a full-blown confrontation, accusing his hosts of "hurting America." The show was canceled a few months later, all but coronating Stewart as America's voice of reason.

The Daily Show grew so popular it became a miniature star factor with many of the series' correspondents moving on to widespread Hollywood success. Steve Carrell joined Judd Apatow's cadre, transforming himself into a major film star. He then conquered the small screen yet again as the read role in TV's hit sitcom The Office. Ed Helm's eventually joined Carrell on The Office and later landed big screen success in 2009's biggest comedy smash, The Hangover. Rob Courdroy too has cultivated a modest film career after his tenure on The Daily Show.

But it was former correspondent Stephen Colbert who turned his faux-newsman persona into a one-man cult of personality on The Daily Show's remarkable spin-off The Colbert Report. A lampoon of blowhard talk show hosts of a sort popular on Fox News, The Colbert Report is even purer satire than its source. Never breaking from his assumed egomaniacal pomposity and party-line conservatism, Stephen Colbert (the character, not the actor of the same name) is a textbook lesson in satirical construction. From the beginning Colbert had his finger on the pulse of America. Introducing the word "truthiness" into the American lexicon during his first episode, the word could arguably be the most vital addition to the American vocabulary in years. When Colbert was plucked to bring his act to the Annual Press Correspondent's Dinner in 2006 his set left the room in a dazed silence, the routine being a sustained and penetrating critique of the Bush Administration's policies and the press' coverage thereof. After bombing in person, when the footage hit the internet Colbert's speech immediately turned into a sensation, eventually running a victory lap as the most watched video on iTunes. It still remains one of the most overtly confrontational and politically brave moments by a member of the press during the Bush administration.

With The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (as well as their cousin in print, the sublimely hilarious weekly news periodical The Onion) satire and humor acted as the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of go down. As real news veered ever closer to the precipice of absurdity, more and more did the silly and comic approximate the actual texture of reality, even when the truth was anything but funny. With an administration and congress more closely aligned with the ideological perspective of the Daily Show's creative team now in power, it remains to be seen if the show will be able to maintain its critical satiric edge. But whatever happens, without the fake news of the past ten years the real news would have simply been unbearable.

You AUGHT to remember...

#9 - Reality TV

It was the decade when...

Reality got really fake.

Growing like a cancer throughout the Aughts, Reality TV began as a benign fad that quickly metastasized into a full-blown fixture of television programming, threatening the health of the entire medium. Reality TV was junk food: cheaply made, bad for your health, greasy, deeply addictive and prone to cause indigestion. Never had the term boob tube seemed so apropos. As the appetite of the audience grew more and more insatiable, the competition to create new content devolved fast into a race to the bottom, the shows growing ever more outlandish and sensationalistic. With nearly as many channels as there were viewers to watch them, the need for cheap and salacious material to stand apart from the fray became all consuming.

And who were the stars of Reality TV? From the evidence on display in show after show, the only casting criterion was that you be as unreal as possible. A unappetizing lot of stripper skanks, desperate nobodies, muscular meatheads, nerds with the social skills of small rodents, and celebrities climbing their way back onto the D-list, the stars of reality television were Hollywood's shortbus of non-talent would-bes and has-beens. Though they all ostensibly have passed psychological exams, watching the programs one would be hard pressed not to suspect that a few unscrupulous doctors were slipped a bribe or two; how else to explain the Charenton Asylum level of insanity on display?

As the decade wore on the format consolidated into recognizable mini-genres, each with their own cliches and quirks. A quick run-down of the two most popular, and abysmal, types:

Celebrity Verite
Beginning with the surprise success of The Osbournes, Celebrity Verite was one of reality television's most durable genres. The idea: take a quirky, off-beat celebrity and document their daily life, it's bound to be entertaining. The Osbournes worked because, despite the obvious eccentricities of its leading man, the show captured an honest dynamic of family life. As with all reality TV trends, when series came and went the spark of originality soon disappeared, replaced instead by ridiculously contrived scenarios and spontaneity-free dialogue. Whatever gonzo verisimilitude made The Osbournes a surprising charmer is totally absent from more recent Celebrity Verite exercises. The unwatchable Keeping Up With Kardashians is proof enough of that. Other prominent examples: The Anna Nicole Show (Anna Nicole Smith), Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica (Lachey and Simpson), The Simple Life (Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie), Hey Paula! (Ms. Abdul), Hammertime (M.C. Hammer), Hogan Knows Best (Hulk Hogan), The Girls Next Door (Hugh Hefner), The Two Coreys (Haim and Feldman), Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood (Tori Spelling), My Life on the D-List (Kathy Griffin) and Being Bobby Brown (Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston).

Reality Romance
Reality dating (quite opposed to dating in reality) in the Aughts began with a sour note, the now legendary Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire, a one-night special aired on Fox in 2000 in which a terrified blonde named Darva Conger found herself betrothed to a "multi-millionaire" with a lounge singers name, Mr. Rick Rockwell. The marriage, it need be noted, did not last. It wasn't even consummated. From this blatant glorification of gold-digging and misogyny, the only place to go was up. And yet, descent was achieved. With the bland Bachelor and Bachelorette as the template, dating shows became the most formulaic of all Reality TV. The Set-up was always the same: A central "bachelor" is looking for love. A harem of contenders longingly pines for their would-be suitor. A weekly event or outing or contest helps determine that weeks elimination, chosen, ostensibly, by the bachelor him/her self. At the end of the series our lead selects his/her soul-mate; riding off into the sunset together they live happily ever after. (Or at least until they receive residuals.) From show to show, the structure is practically set in stone.

The difference between one show from the next is the novel band of contenders that the producers select and whatever manipulative twist can be thrown in at the last minute to spice up the otherwise tired formula. Same-Sex romance was explored on Boy Meets Boy (gay bachleor, with both gay and - unbeknownst to the lead - straight boys vying for his affections) and the hastily canceled Playing It Straight (the exact opposite of Boy Meets Boy, with a bachelorette seeking a male companion). Those of ample appetites got their moment in the reality sun with More To Love, the dating show for people with waistlines as big as their hearts. Various has-been celebrities got into the act, looking for love as the star of their own dating reality show. Tilla Tequila swung both ways on A Shot at Love, while Brett Michaels made it his goal to nail each of the contestants on the ludicrously skanky "Rock Of Love." Rap star and human timepiece Flava Flav scored big ratings with his show, Flavor of Love. It lasted three seasons despite its star finding true love at the end of each iteration. Curious. Failed Flavor of Love contestant "New York" proved so popular that the outlandish loudmouth got two seasons of her own dating extravaganza, I Love New York.

Fooling no one, the pretense of romance on any of these programs is about as authentic as Tila Tequila's breasts. That's not the appeal. We just like to watch the carnival. The freak-show is alive and in full force. My favorite of the genre? Joe Millionaire, the 2003 Fox dating show in which a gaggle of airheads think they are being courted by a dashing young millionaire only to be told in the finale that he is, in fact, a construction worker. The show was nasty, ridiculous and impossible to stop watching.

The structure of reality dating has been copied in other reality shows from America's Next Top Model to Scream Queens to the dating-in-all-but-name Brody Jenner vehicle Bromance. The format itself has gotten so old it almost makes one pine for the days of Love Connection.

Of course there is so much more to Reality TV! I didn't even get to talk about the surfeit of dance-focused shows like So You Think You Can Dance or Dancing With The Stars. And what about competition programs like the original reality phenom Survivor or Emmy darling The Amazing Race! Wife Swap gave us the "God warrior" as well as Richard Heene, the man who would go on to give us the hoax of the decade - the balloon boy. And RuPaul's Drag Race! I didn't even get to talk about RuPaul's Drag Race! Our cups runneth over...

And lest anyone be concerned about my viewing habits after reading this, fear not; I don't actually watch this crap. I learn everything I needed to know from The Soup!

You AUGHT to Remember...

#11 - Tweens

It was the decade when...

Grown men and women were forced to use the word "tween."


Pop quiz. Before you were a teenager you were a....what? Well, for almost all of human history you were, simply, a child. But, one day the early-mid aughts, some corporate douche (actual it was probably a whole boardroom full of doucheitude) realized that he could drum up a whole consumer base by inventing a new demographic to exploit. Enter the "Tween." As in, "inbetween." As in, "inbetween childhood and high school." Clever? I thought not. Those oh-so-magical years from 8-12, notoriously the worst of all youth (especially the later few, with the inchoate stirrings of puberty in the background), are now the focus of our national attention and the drain funneling away our excess cash. A demographic defined almost entirely by what it consumes, a tween cannot be extracted from their taste in music, or clothing brand loyalty or movie going habits. With almost all other media splintering down into more and more refined niches, the Tweens represent the last remaining monolithic mass market to advertise to. No group is more susceptible to slavish groupthink than a pre-teen, the age when solidarity with and acceptance by one's peers is paramount to ones own sense of identity. Sell to one, sell to all. You are what they buy. And they bought a lot. Tweens, funded by an apparently endless stream of cash from their dazed and clueless parents, shopped with the abandon and mouth-foaming need that only a child could summon guiltlessly, when cost is nothing and obtainment is all. I don't think there were a lot of piggybanks cracked open, it was more like an ATM.

A massive, synaptic-ally interconnected, multi-platform, synergistically marketed network of TV shows, pop bands, movie-musicals, fantasy-novels, clothing brands, and video games - to those in the matrix Tweendom is all. It's celebrities are just the biggest things ever! The music's like, the most fun in the world. Duh! To those unplugged, Tween culture is a hermetically sealed media-dome, inaccessible to those outside yet totally transparent; the tweens themselves were a kind of body-snatched alien race living amongst us. The circular totality of Tween culture is its most amazing feature. Tweens were a self-contained subculture that metastasized into the decade's most game-changing (and profitable) pop-culture phenomenon.

Acting as a kind of central ventricular pump for all things Tween, the Disney Channel hatched more bankable stars this decade than anything other media incubator. A locus of pre-sexual romantic angst, blandly cheerful gonad-free pop, pixie-stick hyper situation comedies, and white-strip-print-ad-ready cherub superstars, the Disney Channel was ground zero for the pre-teen set in the Aughts. From here we can sketch our new Raphael-ian tableau. (The school of Athens? The playground of Tween!) To do so, I have to channel my inner 11-year-old-girl, so, here we go...

Oh My God! So like you have to talk about Zac first, cause he's like hottest boy evah! Seriously though, super serious now, he has really proved himself a worthy, like, mega-star since his debut in HSM. He has so pushed his mad skillz as an actor! Like, for example, he really stretched himself in Hairspray cause he went from playing a singing and dancing hunky high school student to like, a singing and dancing hunky high school student in like the 20's or 60's or, you know, ancient history. I totally bought it! But speaking of HSM..VANESSA! VANESSA HUDGENS! She is like, so beautiful and so talented and it's so not fair! And she gets to date Troy Bolton in HSM and then really date Zac in real life. Again...not fair!! Ok, yeah, she sexted. Like, so what? LOL! I totally love her. But not as much as I love JOE JONAS! He is the middle one in the Jonas Brothers and, OK, like I love them all, I do, I love all the Jonas Brothers, but Joe...is totally the one. Just something about him is so dreamy. And you know he'll be totally a gentleman cause he always wears his purity ring. And of course, I can always listen to his music. Oh, and if you're gonna talk about awesome music you can't not talk about Miley. Miley Cyrus OMG! Only the most awesome biggest most amazing actress/singer/songwriter/dancer/producer ever!! The star of Hannah Montana, the best show on TV! Miley is like, everyones hero. I can't believe that you hadn't heard of her, she's like the most famous person on the planet, duh! Ok, gotta run, my Mom got tickets to the matinee of Wicked; I've seen it, like 10 times. I'm totally Galinda! Yeah..HSM, Jonas, Hannah Montana. That's all you need to know. There is like, totally so much more but I'm gotta go. CYA!

You AUGHT to remember...

#13 - Skinny Ties

It was the decade when...

We all dressed like Mad Men.

Neck wear of ratpackers and reservoir dogs, the skinny tie had been hibernating for decades before resurfacing with a vengeance in the late Aughts. Men of all ages rediscovered the joys of the svelte necktie slowly, the girth of the apparel shrinking little by little over the decade, from the fat, iridescent slabs that dominated millennial neck wear (Thank you Regis Philbin!) to the sleek and chic near near uni-dimensional style prevalent today. (For proof of this evolution see Ryan's Seacrest's wardrobe over 10 years.) The effect is young, fun, streamlined and classy. Adjectives like swag and swinging are not inappropriate. For those of a stylish mien, the skinny tie has all but cornered cool. Somewhat less flattering on those of a more portly build, the skinny tie looks best on men as lean as their neck wear. Sporting a tailored suit, an anachronistic pair of brightly colored converse sneakers, and a skinny tie loosened around the open neck, the fashion-forward man of the late Aughts looks not unlike a slacker substantiation of the The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.

Of course, that gray flannel suit was itself wiped clean of mothballs this decade with the hit television show Mad Men on AMC. Probably the most fastidiously accurate (and luscious) recreation of mid-century fashion and design since Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven (another of the decade's artistic highlights), Matthew Weiner's Mad Men is like attending a design showroom of early 60's modernism. Skinny ties and thick rimmed glasses abound, with perfect matching handkerchiefs poking out of every suit's breast pocket. It's style porn. Luckily the show surrounding the vintage duds and leather backed Eames Chairs is equally rich in characterization. Dramatizing a glamorous, lost New York of rigid workplace gender roles, two (or three+) martini lunches, incessant cigarette smoking and flush post-50's abundance, the characters of Mad Men nonetheless teeter on the edge of a social and sexual revolution that would come to uproot the customs and mores of their lives and the world. It's telling that no decade featured such a revolution of style from beginning to end than the 1960's did, a signal of the more real turbulence quaking beneath the shallow fault lines of the fashion world.

Some might chalk up the rise of the skinny tie and the success of Mad Men as two unrelated phenomenon, but I can't help but suspect that the two are more inextricably linked; when fashion trendsetters and the Hollywood hoi-polloi converge on the same aesthetic seemingly independently of each other it's a clue that something is afoot in the American subconscious. Perhaps we, like the employees of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, are living in a world where the center can't hold, the new revolutions heading our way threatening to collapse the apparatus of stability and material comfort we strained to erect. In the sixties it was the sexual revolution and newly energized leftist movement that undid the world of the Mad Men. The vague but persistent march of globalization and ecological disaster threatens ours. Though I lament to say it, if I had to guess what style of necktie will be popular in ten years, I would expect a resurgence of the loud and bombastic variety that dominated the late 60's and persisted in popularity through the whole of the 70's. Made with thick and heavy synthetic fabric and featuring bright, unsubtle stripes, the tie of the teens is (well, will be) what happens when the whole edifice of civil society starts to fall apart, as it did in the 1970's.

The mens necktie as barometer of social unrest and economic stability? Yeah, I'll go there. (College students, there is an essay for you!) For now, the skinny tie and the slim suit are emblems of control and simplicity in a world that is increasingly anything but.

You AUGHT to remember.

#27 - Tattoos

It was the decade when...

Tattoos got the Tramp Stamp of Approval!

Remember when tattoos were edgy? When having a tattoo marked you as a rebel, an outsider, a fringe member of society with a distaste for authority? You probably drove a motorcycle (or your boyfriend did) and had a penchant for Led Zeppelin and clothing made entirely of leather . If you want to really travel backwards in time, you may have been a sailor, the classic anchor tattoo a permanent record of your years in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Or if you really, really want to go into the annals of tattoo history, maybe you starred in a Mel Gibson film wearing little more than a loincloth and nose ring. (OK, that's 2006, but you know what I'm saying!) What's important about the tattoo is that it branded you as non-conformist and slightly threatening. Having the tattoo mattered far more than what the tattoo actually was. And no one thought a tattoo was art.

As part of the general trend of mainstream culture appropriating fringe aesthetics and commodifying them accordingly, the tattoo underwent a major perceptual shift this decade. The badge of the bad boy became the trendiest of fashion statements. (Of course, the lingering scent of social transgression that for so long defined the tattoo in the collective psyche is the very thing that allowed the tattoo to become and stay so popular, a reality which will persist until tattoos have become so commonplace and neutered by popularity that any association with their original aura of danger will have become totally neutralized. How will we know when this had occurred? It'll be some obvious nuke the fridge moment; perhaps Miley Cyrus will get a tattoo. Oh wait...uh-oh.) The Aughts, without question, have been the golden age of the Tattoo and we have the TV shows to prove it.

Our decade saw no less than three television series about tattoo culture. Inked was A&E's reality series about the curiously legal-firm sounding Hart & Huntington Tattoo Company. Located in the Palms casino in Las Vegas, Inked was too corporate by a half. (H&H opened a outlet of the store at the touristy Orlando Universal City Walk in 2007. A Hells Angel or salty-toothed sailor wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near.) Less about the art of the tattoo and more a standard reality-show soap opera, Inked was a letdown. The show lasted two seasons. More interesting and authentically urban was Miami Ink and it's later spinoff LA Ink. Both series put the art of the tattoo front and center making the intramural drama and bickering more contextually justified. Celebrity clients would swing by to get their new permanent body art. Regular people would share their stories about why they wanted the tattoo they did. Miami Ink's breakout star was Kat Von D, who after being "fired" from the Miami store opened her own parlor in Hollywood and spearheaded the spinoff, LA Ink.

The body was a canvas in the Aughts, and the men and women who practiced the art were modern Michelangelos of the flesh. The work being accomplished now is nothing short of astounding. Sadly, for every beautiful back tattoo done to look ancient Japanese screen painting there are 10 tacky "tramp stamps" that look like a pirate flag or Batman logo. As with any fashion, there is no accounting for taste. And while the idea that in 50 years masses of seniors will be playing shuffleboard with faded and distorted tattoos covering their flabby and sagging flesh is somewhat bizarre (not to mention unappetizing), for now, especially for the young, a tattoo is a must-have fashion accessory, a deep and permanent means of self-expression. Whilst I have yet to feel the itch to defile my own body with a tattoo (I don't, as a matter of course, care for things that I can't get rid of: tattoos, herpes, children, college loans ) it may only be a matter of time before unadorned folk like me are the exception and not the rule.

You AUGHT to remember...

#29 - Dr. Phil

It was the decade when...

Folksy, homespun, judgmental advice and tired catchphrases replaced psychology.

The Ballad of Dr. Phil.

(Sung to the tune of the Ballad of Davy Crockett)

Born in Oklahoma at the half century.

To Jerry and Joe, (Oh! Jerry is a she.)

Bald as an egg since he was only three,

A bald Phil McGraw is a fait accompli.

Dr., Dr. Phil

Boy of the wild frontier.

Annulled his first marriage in '73,

A real purdy gal but not enough for he.

Cheated on her with a girl menagerie.

Now she runs a liquor store in Kansas City.

Dr., Dr. Phil

At least he 'aint no queer!

Now, Phil was real strong and big and tall

So he got himself a scholarship to play football

Tackling Phil was like hitting a wall.

But in the big game he scored almost nothing at all!

Dr., Dr. Phil

He needs a new career.

Phil had it in his mind to be a headshrinker

Just like his daddy before, of that he was sure.

"Dr. Phil" was born, a man you cannot deter,

A so-so shrink, a great entrepreneur.

Dr., Dr. Phil

Psychological buccaneer.

Now a piece of advice from those in the know:

To get rich and famous go on Oprah's show.

Be tough and folksy and next thing you know,

You've got best-sellers and your own TV Show!

Dr., Dr. Phil,

A celebrity who knows no peer.

Now out on his own, McGraw was up to bat,

Taking a swing, he knew where it was at.

How to reach America and not fall flat?

Just talk about diets cause they're all really fat!

Dr., Dr. Phil

Obesity profiteer.

No longer a shrink, McGraw's just a guy,

Who says what he thinks while his guests sit and cry.

But Phil kept his title, though it's kind of a lie.

But if Phil's not a "Dr.", well then, no one would buy.

Dr., Dr. Phil

He's not quite sincere.

Over ten million is his yearly paycheck,

for telling his guests how their lives are wreck.

And his advice is a notch above dreck.

Follow up with guests? Why? No one will check!

Dr., Dr. Phil.

His judgment is severe.

His Nielsen ratings are beginning to slip.

Once neck and neck with Oprah, he's losing his grip.

His southern drawl is anything but hip.

Let's all give the "Dr." a bird we can flip.

Dr., Dr. Phil.

The end must soon be near!

You AUGHT to remember...

#34 - Sex & The City/Desperate Housewives

It was the decade when...

Feminism officially died.

What's is so fucking great about Manolo Blahniks? Will someone explain this to me? I may be gay, but the shoe fetish gene was left off this particular homo's chromosome. For all six season of HBO's massive hit comedy Sex and the City its fashion obsessed heroines discussed, fantasized and worshiped the exclusive footwear label in terms so rapturous that short of inducing an orgasm upon slipping on a pair (The "thwunk" sound you hear is Michael Patrick King smacking his hand to his head saying, "Why didn't I think of that?") it was hard to fathom what the fuss was all about. Of course, one could ask the same question about Sex and the City? What was the fuss all about? A weekly chatterfest about four gay men single women, all in their thirties, gallivanting around the Big Apple on the hunt for cock, cosmos and couture, sustained by what could have only be Madoff size bank accounts, (How else are they to afford their Imelda Marcos sized closets to store their incessant parade of big-label apparel?) Sex and the City was, one can safely assume, difficult to relate to for most women. So why? Why did this often shallow and periodically vulgar cosmo-quiz of a show become a major cultural landmark in the Aughts? Why did women and the men who did thier hair keep watching and dissecting Sex with such fervent enthusiasm?

Sex and The City was first-class escapism of the most ingenious sort. Its women were liberated and modern, sexually open (Had a women ever discussed the taste of "spunk" before on television?) and libidinally ripe. Piggybacking off of the hard won battles for women's lib in decades past, the Sex and the City girls were a new archetype for the gender; neither wives nor whores, these were power-girls: self-sufficient, financially independent, sexually satisfied (or admittedly insatiable) and really, really HOT goddamn it! The kind of women other members of the sex might pretend or wish to be. But underneath the Donna Karan skirts and horseshoe necklaces were women so old fashioned as to make Mary Tyler Moore look like Gloria Steinem. Obsessed with men - dating them, screwing them, analyzing them and, above all, marrying them - these women, particularly the series' perpetually lovelorn narrator Carrie Bradshaw, were as concerned with finding a mate as any in a William Inge play. Hardly career obsessed, for the Sex and the City gang work exists only as a backdrop to explain (unconvincingly) the deep pockets in them Prada pants. Carrie, already clearly raking it in as a lifestyle columnist and freelance writer (first a suspension and then a total expulsion of disbelief), nonetheless selects for her on again off again paramour an even wealthier master of the universe called Mr. Big, reinforcing the dream of Cinderellas everywhere that a rich man will, in the end, be your prince charming, generic name included.

And so it was, by the time the series finale had the girls sipping what we had hoped would be their last $20 cosmopolitans, all four of our protagonists were either married or coupled; even the sexually voracious and commitment phobic Samantha has settled down with the (or at least a) man of her dreams. Even The Golden Girls had the good sense to keep Blanche single! Really girls? You all need a man to have a happy ending? Can't we have an finale a little less retrograde?

Speaking of retrograde, another program this decade focused on the trials and tribulations of four gay men attractive thirty (ok, forty) something women. Deeply silly and relentlessly un-PC Desperate Housewives was a trashy, sassy, all too silly Sex and the City meets Dynasty hybrid, a prime-time soap opera with a catty cast of just-this-side-of-young knockouts. Unlike City's single-but-looking characters, the women of desperate housewives are, as the title suggests, already defined by their men. Taking place in one of those nebulous could-be-anywhere-but-always-wealthy suburbs that overpopulate TV shows and movies (as if every Suburbanite lived in a gorgeous restored Georgian four bedroom), Wisteria Lane had little to do with real America or reality in general. Where Sex and the City maintained a gloss of verisimilitude, both in style and content, it's writers clearly attempting to care about the shows characters, in all their excess and predictability, Housewives shows no such compunction; when not veering toward the ludicrous the show's plots leaned toward the totally absurd. Housewives courts camp in every moment. Can something really be a guilty pleasure if it's openly sold as such?

Desperate Houswives was a massive hit when it first premiered in 2005, but its importance to pop culture has waned. Though the series won no points in its presentation of women as, well, desperate housewives, I can't help but think that the obvious silliness and debauchery made the audience less willing to take the characters as seriously as the ones on Sex and the City. For this reason it's Desperate Housewives that's the less culturally damaging entertainment. At least we know we aren't supposed to idolize these women. It's also really fun, but then again I'm biased. How gay is Desperate Housewives? Most episodes are named after Sondheim songs. 'Nuff said.

You AUGHT to remember...

#42 - Jon & Kate+8 & the Octomom

It was the decade when...

Mothers didn't have children, they had litters.

Darwin was wrong. It's true that nature selects certain individuals to be barren, but not out of genetic deficiency. No, natural selection is not always the culprit. Sometimes nature, in her infinite wisdom, is just trying to spare everyone else the shitstorm that ensues when certain individuals have babies. But we humans, prone to thwart nature's guidance at every possible turn, have made it possible for these progeny-less souls to not only birth a single child but a whole gaggle of them, making Homo Sapien gestation resemble more a rabbit than a bipedal mammal.

Jon and Kate Gosselin were a sweet couple. Unable to conceive children without the assistance of fertility doctors, the pair gave birth to a pair of beautiful twin girls. Tempting fate, the Gosselins felt another child was in their destiny and so back to the experts they went, hoping to add one more bundle of joy to their family. This time medical science proved too efficient. Six embryos decided to park in Kate's uterus and 9 months later the Gosselins were parents to a group of babies larger than some softball teams. TLC saw a marketing opportunity and before the befuddled parents knew what they were doing they had a hit basic cable television program on their hands. The barely submerged tension between the high strung Kate and the lackadaisical, mildly recalcitrant Jon gave the show it's hook, and, in a way, it's heart. In a household of two adults and eight children the environment is bound to be somewhat more tense than an episode of The Waltons; their imperfections were a signal of their humanity. When the friction turned to fire the resulting inferno was beyond anyone's wildest imagination. In the episode where the couple announced their decision to separate, Jon&Kate garnered its highest ratings ever with some 10.6 million viewers tuning in to watch a family get destroyed in almost real time.

Since then, the duo has become tabloid celebrities of the highest (lowest?) order, each week a new fathom southward in their ongoing public squabbles. Jon has regressed to total douchebaggery, pimping out his fashion style, partying in Vegas, and dating younger women of poor character while Kate has become a tear-prone talk show regular, onetime co-host on The View, and, with her "reverse-mullet" coiffure, the most influential trendsetter for women's hair fashions since Jennifer Aniston sported the "The Rachel." When Posh Spice is imitating you, you know you have penetrated pop culture in a way never before reserved for reality TV stars. Lost in the maelstrom are the real victims of Jon&Kate, the individuals now destined to their own paparazzi filled futures and reality show contracts, the eight children thrust into a media spotlight so bright it would make Stevie Wonder squint.

While Nadya Suleman, better known to the American populace by the supervillain sounding title of "Octomom," has no reality show of her own (yet) she has nonetheless ratcheted up an impressive amount of television coverage, mostly on the Dr. Phil program, which, despite weekly protestations by the host to stop discussing the story, continued to give this womb with legs blow-by-blow analysis. As always, media-whore Gloria Allred was there wearing a brightly colored suit of righteous indignation, shouting loudly about "the children." Suleman, already a single mother of six (all from in-vitro fertilization), decided in 2008 that what her life needed was more mouths to feed. After implanting six frozen embryos the 33 year old found herself pregnant with 8 babies (two had split into twins) and in January of '09 she gave birth to the lot of them, transforming herself from pathetic anonymous welfare mother into the now infamous Octomom. With a small of army of children around her, the Octomom became the postermom for the reckless use of fertility technology. Something of dish, it's no coincidence that this Angelina Jolie lookalike was offered One Million dollars to star in a pornographic film, an offer which she later turned down. Not necessarily a wise decision; the movie could have paid for at least three if not four college educations. Only ten more to worry about.

A freak show and domestic disaster parading as a news story, the only thing really interesting about the Octomom is trying to figure out who is going to be more fucked up, her kids or the Gosselin clan. I, for one, can already imagine the worlds most exciting episode of Family Feud.

You AUGHT to remember...

#52 - Project Runway

It was the Decade when....

You're either in or you're out.

Once the network of high-brow arts programming and the fawn-a-thon that was (is?) Inside the Actor's Studio, BravoTV underwent a major makeover in the Aughts. It seems the success of Queer Eye convinced the suits at Bravo that all the channel's programming should be equally homosexual. And what's gayer than haute couture? Thus was born Project Runway, a show that made fashionistas of us all.

The secret to Project Runway’s runaway success was the alchemy of its permanent cast - from Heidi Klum: vapid, Helen-of-Troy beautiful, and parrot-like in her fashion analysis ("Ya, I agree with Michael, I did think the dress did look a little too much like Eleanor Roosevelt at Studio 54") yet still likable through some miraculous and unfair power she possesses, to Tim Gunn’s officious and anal, but ultimately endearing and empathetic tutor, to the weekly exercise in bitchery that is Michael Kors, to Nina Garcia with her exhaustingly predictable criticisms on the designers lack of technical skill in garment construction (“That hem is not even.” “It looks like it was just thrown together.” “Is that glued on?!?” asked as if she were accusing the designer of employing the skins of orphan children as material.), these personalities had struck the delicate balance of sass (Kors and Garcia) and sweetness (Klume and Gunn) that a competition reality show needs to succeed; lean too far one direction and the flavor goes either cloyingly sweet or cheek sinkingly sour. Tent poles in place, season to season Project Runway felt comfortably familiar even if the contestants were wildly different.

And what contestants! A motley crew of gays, fierce gays, weepy gays, HIV-Positive gays, outré gays, dashing gays, foreign gays, Mormon gays, and Austin Scarlett. Oh, and there are women too. But I'm not being fair; the talent of the female designers on Project Runway is so good it makes one wonder if there is indeed a glass ceiling in the fashion world given the preponderance of men in the highest echelons of design glory. (Yes, of course I know about Coco Chanel and Donna Karan, I'm not brain dead.) In the current season, not a single male has made it to fashion week.

Everyone has their favorite designer. Though I loved Malan Breton, with his Turnbull&Asser suits, brilliantined jet black hair, and a cackle to rival Dwight Frye, he disappointed on the runway and was eliminated far too early in Season 3. Then there was Laura Bennett, who had so much class and WASP affectation I was shocked her last name wasn't Vanderbilt or Astor. With a penchant for fur and vintage cuts, Bennett should have probably won the competition...if it had been on Television it '55. Richard Avedon would have photographed her gowns beautifully. And who doesn't tip their chapeau to "Tranny-Fierce" Christian Siriano, or as he is known amongst my friends, "the gayest gay in Gaysville." Though he may have looked like a Chihuahua, when it came to fashion design, he was a tiger. Not only did Siriano (deservedly) win the competition but he was lampooned, hilariously, by Amy Poehler on SNL, no small feat! No other Runway contestant acquired such pop-cultural saturation.

Though Christian made quite an impression, no designer on Project Runway won my affections as much as gutsy, hilarious, pompous, fearless and all around show-off Santino Rice, Season Two's wildcard contestant. Santino's secret: Behave as if you were Dolce&Gabbana rolled into one, then push the envelope...to the breaking point. (It's a daring choice to make a lingerie line inspired by liederhosen, it's another level of ballsiness entirely to emboss the words "Auf Wiedersehen" on the ass of the panties, all but begging for Heidi to supply you her own trademarked rendition of the German farewell.) Santino lost the competition after a surprisingly tepid fashion week showing but his irrepressible personality won him a seat behind the judges table on the equally addictive reality competition show RuPaul's Drag Race. With Santino, love him or hate him, you're bound to have an opinion. After six seasons on the air, Project Runway has made armchair Anna Wintours of us all, dispensing instant and cruel judgement on other people's style.

With Season Six shifted to both Lifetime (after a long lawsuit between Bravo and Harvey Weinstein) and Los Angeles, Runway might be running out of seam. (Not a typo!) It's getting harder to surprise on the Runway, the challenges more achingly familiar each week. Worse, the format itself has become a cliche, imitated on Bravo's attempt at Runway replacement, the abysmal "The Fashion Show" and more successfully on Bravo's other big hit Top Chef. As Runway catwalks on, the lack of a truly successful break-out designer makes one wonders if Project Runway is really a successful sifting process for new design talent. Of course, long term success for the contestants is not what any reality show concerns itself with; the immediacy of the moment till the next commercial break is all. It's really just entertainment. What...? Did you think the ability to make a dress out of nothing but plastic shopping bags and corn husks tells you anything about a contestant's potential to be the next Halston? Not even close. It's the mini-human dramas and silly design challenges that keep us coming back for more, not curiosity about the minutiae of the fashion industry. While in the next decade may see the show dissolve into total irrelevance, for now Project Runway is still with us. We can count on our weekly fix of sartorial sinfulness, snide commentary and those three little words of advice that sum up what Runway (and maybe life) is all about: "Make It Work."

You AUGHT to remember.

#58 - Fat TV

It was the Decade when...

It got tubby on the tube.

America is fat. Television has a lot to do with that. The most sedentary of activities, near synonymous with lethargy and laziness, watching television is the opposite of working out. A couch potato is more likely to consume a six pack than have one. No surprise then that television producers finally started creating programming starring its target demographic: fat people.

Just this year, two of the more salacious entries into the genre premiered: the dance-a-thon cum weight-watchers meeting titled, unsubtly, Dance Your Ass Off, and an otherwise by-the-books dating show for people with More To Love. The former has as its appeal not only the inspiring stories of heavy people losing weight in a creative and fun fashion but also the baser thrills of watching big 'ol folk shake their groove thing, making the tutu clad hippopotami in Fantasia look like Rudolf Nureyev. More to Love gets its purchase from the (non-)novelty of watching every reality dating show cliche being performed by porkers. Food/sex innuendos are surfeit. Other shows with Zaftig casts have been around longer. Celebrity Fit Club stuck around a few seasons but proved less a dieting show than a platform for strained attempts at regaining former fame in the most obnoxious ways imaginable (Dustin Diamond I'm looking at you!) or drug-induced celebrity meltdowns (Jeff Conaway!). All these shows came after one program in particular proved that, as a ratings niche, fat was the new gay.

A freak show posing as a game show while portending to human drama, The Biggest Loser was Fat TV's breakthrough hit. A weight loss competition program, the format was simple: lose as much weight as you can every single week of the competition. If the poundage should stick to you longer than your competitors you'll be sent back to your Lay-Z-Boy, eating Doritos in front of the boob-toob in no time. The first episode of the season is a smorgasbord of shame. Unafraid to indulge the audience's appetite for humiliation, the contestants are led (as they shall be every week) to the cattle-size scale while wearing the skimpiest of outfits legal on network television (the men are, grotesquely, topless), serving to each viewer an opportunity to gorge their eyes on the bloated and corpulent flesh center stage. Near nude, wholly unattractive and standing before millions, the person suffering this indignity either winces at the number displayed next to her or he'll (and it's almost always the men who have this reaction) mockingly smile, shrug and laugh in a sad attempt to defuse the horror of the moment with a gesture of comic acceptance, as if to say: Yep, America...I'm a big boy! Here - go ahead and stare. Is this a penance for one's gluttonous sins, or will people simply do anything to get on television?

Scaling uphill from the exploitative depths of the season opener, The Biggest Loser proceeds to pit half the cast against the other, assigning each team a hard-assed but ultimately empathetic trainer who whips their fat-asses into shape. As the show grinds on, expect reality TV-cliches in abundance. Shallow biographical backstories and tearful farewells are par for the course. There are also silly "challenges" every week in which these roly polys are filmed running, cycling, dancing, kayaking etc., displaying all the ease of a bear on roller skates. Seeing a 300lb man traverse a CIA-trainee level obstacle course ought to be enjoyable for neither participant nor viewer. As the lbs fall away and butterflies emerge from their former pupa-like phenotypes, The Biggest Loser asks its audience to embrace and love and root for the same individuals who only weeks before they, admittedly or not, stared at in embarrassment and self-satisfaction. This is having your cake and eating too, even if watching the show kills your appetite.

The Biggest Loser, for all its unscrupulousness, is nonetheless a show that knows and admits what it is: a slickly produced mainstream reality TV program which has the twist of being about fat people. The audience knows it, the contestants know it and the critics know it. If the show trades on the currency of pain and shame at first blush, the stories usually cash out with a happy ending, the much-slimmer contestant singing the praises of the show and the self-transformation it facilitated. The Biggest Loser at least breaks even ethically. For sheer exploitative audacity nothing can compare to the clinical, faux-journalistic basic cable specials about morbidly obese patients. Inside the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, The 650lbs Virgin, World's Heaviest Man - just turn on TLC any night of the week and you're likely to see footage of a person being forklifted out of their house. The insidiousness resides in the patina of professionalism and solemnity that these "documentaries" project. Make no mistake, these programs exist to parade the freaks. When channel surfing late at night it's hard not to stop on a show called World's Heaviest Man Gets Married. I have been ensnared more than once. By filming the story as if it were Frontline expose, the producers hope to assuage the obvious guilt that should attend such gawkery. I would prefer the freak show at Coney Island; the carnival barker is more honest.

You AUGHT to remember...