Since today is the birthday of guitar god Slash, today’s music video of the day is for the third single to be release from Slash’s self-titled debut solo album. Slash told TheSun that this song began as a piece of music that he wrote as “a score for a scene in a strip club” and he decided to have Fergie provide vocals after hearing her cover Heart’s Barracuda.
The video features Fergie as an obsessed fan of Slash’s who apparently ends up killing him. Slash said that the idea for the video came from Fergie herself. The video was directed by Rich Lee, who has also done several videos for The Black-Eyed Peas, Eminem, Lana del Rey, and others.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Season 3 comes to an end!
Episode 3.16 “The Treasure of PCH”
(dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on December 31st, 1994)
The Dreams have turned into a reggae band!
At least, that’s the impression that one gets from the opening of The Treasure of PCH, which finds the Dreams performing on a pier at night as a part of the On The Pier Presents festival. The song’s beat has a reggae feel and it actually sounds pretty nice until the very white Mark starts to sing with what I think is meant to be a slight attempt at a Jamaican accent about how someday “you might need a friend when you least expect it.” Watching and, in some cases, re-watching these shows, I now realize that, musically, the Dreams actually had a pretty good sound but they were always tripped up by their simplistic lyrics. “Anytime you need me, I’ll be there….” I mean, if you want to sound like David Hasselhoff, that’s fine but it’s still a bit odd to watch the pier crowd act as if these lyrics couldn’t have been written by a computer program. In fact, maybe they were. Was AI around in 1994?
Anyway, the Dreams are totally excited because the Concert on the Pier promoter pays them a thousand dollars. “We’ve never gotten that much before!” Sam says but actually, I remember them getting paid that much during both the first and the second seasons. Lorena is worried that the Dreams are getting greedy, which is an easy thing to worry about when you’re already rich and have nice hair. Jake says that the money won’t change the Dreams. Lorena and Jake decide to test that idea by convincing the Dreams that there’s a fortune hidden at Sharky’s!
Fortunately, it only takes one forged letter to trick the Dreams. (As a group, the Dreams appear to have lost several IQ points when Matt Garrison moved away.) At first, everyone works together but soon, the Dreams are getting paranoid and vindictive. Lorena was right. Yay! Take that, Jake! However, Jake and Lorena don’t give their plan enough thought and the Dreams — as stupid as they’ve become — still eventually figure out that it doesn’t make any sense that an eccentric oldster would have hidden his fortune at Sharky’s. So, they turn the tables and convince Jake and Lorena that there’s a bunch of diamonds hidden at …. Sharky’s. Is there no other place to eat in California?
“DIAMONDS!” Jake yells, in a rare moment of the normally laid back Jay Anthony Franke overacting.
This was a dumb episode but it was also oddly likable. Sly running around and thinking to himself, “Gotta find the money …. gotta find the money….” made me laugh. For that matter, so did Tony literally picking up Tiffani when she tried to run off with one of the clues. The cast had enough chemistry that they were even able to pull off the show’s dumbest jokes. Of course, the best thing about this episode is that my favorite character, Lorena, was proven to be correct. Go Lorena!
Episode 3.17 “Tiffani’s Gold”
(dir by, originally aired on January 7th, 1995)
Every Peter Engel-produced sitcom had to have at least one episode where the least likely character got hooked on drugs, had a public meltdown, and then somehow got off drugs with a minimum amount of difficulty. The most famous of these episode was the infamous episode of Saved By The Bell, where Jessie got hooked on caffeine pills and sang, “I’m so excited!”
When it came time for California Dreams to deal with drug addiction, the end result was Tiffani’s Gold. In this episode, Tiffani is suddenly a star volleyball player who has a chance to make the national team and bring home a gold medal. Tiffani, who up until this point has been portrayed as a mellow hippie, is suddenly determined to win and the Dreams want her to win as well. Unfortunately, Tiffani is struggling to keep up with the other girls trying out for the team. So, she convinces Sly to help her get some …. dramatic music cue …. steroids!
You know what this means. Tiffani makes the team but she also starts to have mood swings and violent outbursts. Eventually, she makes a scene at Sharky’s and realizes that she has to stop taking drugs. What makes this standard anti-drug episode memorable is just how unconvincing Kelly Packard is as a drug addict. Don’t get me wrong. She tries really, really hard to capture Tiffani’s anger and moodiness. In fact, she tries too hard. Scenes like the one in which Tiffani throws Sly against a locker are meant to be shocking but they actually inspire more laughs than gasps because Kelly Packard doesn’t come across as if she’s ever lost her temper before. One gets the feeling that she was such a positive person that she didn’t even know how to fake anger.
As for the B-plot, Sly, Tony, and Mark compete to see who is the “bigger stud.” Despite not being in contest, Jake is declared the winner. Despite the fact that Jake and Lorena were supposed to be a couple, Jake is seen dating several other girls in this episode and Lorena doesn’t seem to care in the least. Considering that Sly is wearing the exact same outfit that he wore in the first episode of season 3, I’m going to guess Tiffani’s Gold was filmed and meant to air much earlier in the season but, for whatever reason, it was held back until the very end.
(Incidentally, Christy — who rejects both Tony and Sly before going off with Jake — was played by a young Fergie.)
This rather campy episode was the final one of season 3. Next week, we start season 4!
Continuing my series on the best of 2013, here are ten of my favorite songs from 2013. Now, I’m not necessarily saying that these were the best songs of 2013. Some of them aren’t. But these are ten songs that, in the future, will define 2013 for me personally. Again, these are my picks and my picks only. So, if you think my taste in music sucks (and, admittedly, quite a few people do), direct your scorn at me and not at anyone else who writes for the Shattered Lens.
I’ve occasionally been asked what my criteria for a good song us. Honestly, the main things I look for in a song is 1) can I dance to it, 2) can I write to it, and 3) can I get all into singing it while I’m stuck in traffic or in the shower?
Anyway, at the risk of revealing just how much of a dork I truly am, here are ten of my favorite songs of 2013.
10) A Low and Swelling Sound Gradually Swelling (composed by Shane Carruth)
This atmospheric instrumental piece comes from the soundtrack of the best film of 2013, Upstream Color. This is great writing music.
9) Giorgio By Moroder (performed by Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder)
From Random Access Memories.
8) Saturday (performed by Rebecca Black and Dave Days)
I make no apologies. Much like Friday, this is a fun song to sing when you’re driving to and from work. Plus, I think the video’s clever.
7) Brave (performed by Sara Bareilles)
I have to admit that I loved this song more before it started showing up in Nokia Lumia commercials.
6) Feel This Moment (performed by Pitbull, feat. Christina Aguilera)
5) Haunted (performed by ROB)
This is from the Maniac soundtrack. Much like the Carruth song, this is great writing music.
4) Work Bitch (performed by Britney Spears)
Not a day goes by that I don’t find an excuse to say, “You gotta work, bitch.”
3) A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got) (performed by Fergie, feat. Q-Tip and Goon Rock)
From The Great Gatsby soundtrack.
2) Just Give Me A Reason (performed by Pink and Nate Ruess)
1) Lose Yourself to Dance (performed by Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams)
What else needs to be said?
Finally, here are two honorable mentions. These are two songs that helped define 2013 for me but, for various reasons, could not be included in my top ten.
First off, Alison Gold’s Chinese Food is technically a terrible song but it’s so terrible that it becomes oddly fascinating. Thanks to the presence of Patrice Wilson, the video is probably one of the most unintentionally creepy music videos ever made.
(I should admit that I happen to love Chinese food myself and therefore, this song is one that I’ve sung a lot over the past few years.)
The second honorable mention is a far better song than Chinese Food: Icona Pop’s I Love It. I Love It was released in 2012 but it’s the song that I listened to nonstop last year.. So, even if it was released a year earlier, I Love It is still my favorite song of 2013.
Tomorrow, I will continue my look back at 2013 with 10 good things that I saw on television last year.
As I type this, it is a little after midnight which means that technically, I did watch the Super Bowl Half-Time Show last night.
Why Was I Watching It?
To be honest, this was the first Super Bowl I’ve ever actually seen. I’m not totally sure but I think this was also the first time that I’ve ever actually seen an entire football game. I wasn’t planning on watching the Super Bowl. As a matter of fact, I had already turned down an invitation to go to a super bowl party at my sister Megan’s precisely because I had decided I had no interest in watching the game. I also turned down an invitation to go watch the game with Jeff’s family. Instead, I thought I’d simply take advantage of everyone else watching the game by spending all of Sunday on a nice, big shopping spree. However, about two hours into that spree, my asthma started to act up so I came home early, turned on the TV, and there was the game. So, I left the game on while I did some online shopping (I nearly bought this until I noticed that it cost $725!) and then once I got onto twitter, everyone was talking about the game so I continued to watch the game and I ended up having so much fun commenting on it that I ended up watching the entire thing. I do have to admit that I was, for the most part, completely and totally lost as to what was going on but no matter. I had fun.
Anyway, once I started kinda watching the game, I realized there was no way I couldn’t watch the Super Bowl Half-Time Show.
What’s It About?
Apparently, every year, some other band plays the Super Bowl during half-time. This year, the band turned out to be the Black-Eyed Peas. I have something of a girlcrush on Fergie. Or at least I did until I saw the half-time show.
What Worked?
Uhmm…maybe this would work better if we start with what didn’t work.
What Didn’t Work?
Pretty much the entire show. The Black Eyed Peas have been performing this exact same show for a few hundred years now and they could pretty much do it in their sleep which is what they appeared to be doing here.
However, just saying that the Black Eyed Peas looked bored — well, that doesn’t begin to explain why this show inspired thousands of people to stare at their TV and scream, “Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!” like George C. Scott in Hardcore. It’s not just that the show was bad — it was that it was bad in so many different ways and, in each case, it stretched the boundaries of what had previously been considered to be a believable level of failure.
Hence, Will.i.am not only appeared to have been replaced by a robot but he appeared to have been replaced by a robot that was actually Cartman underneath a cardboard box. Fergie — who, in the past, I felt never got enough credit (her performance in Nine was one of the few exciting moments in that film) — was not only pitchy but actually sounded like she was auditioning for American Idol. The two other Black-Eyed Peas were — well, who really cares about them?
Then you had the dancers in the neon costumes who all looked like they had wandered off of the set of Tron. And, seriously, do we really want to be reminded of Tron at this point?
And then, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, Usher showed up. “Look,” I said to my cat, “Usher’s still alive.” “Meow,” the cat replied. Usher sang a few notes that pretty much evaporated in the stadium and then jumped in the air and did the splits. Which I guess would have been impressive except for the fact that he’s Usher and guys aren’t supposed to be able to do the splits like that.
I’m sure I could come up with a few more things that didn’t work but, quite frankly, I think my mind is repressing them right now.
What Worked?
Twitter. In the nearly two years that I’ve been on twitter, I have never seen everyone as united as they were in their general ridicule of the Super Bowl halftime show. So, in a strange way, the Black Eyed Peas brought the world together for about 15 minutes.
Here’s a few of my own tweets from the Half-Time Show:
Uhmm…is the half-time show a tribute to Tron? Where’s Jeff Bridges?
lol, Fergie couldn’t wait to get away from the rest of the Black Eyed Peas.
The Black-Eyed Peas are reminding me of that Stop Smoking Act from that episode of South Park.
The reason the crowd is cheering is b/c they can’t hear the Black Eyed Peas. That stadium is huge.
Oh good. I was just thinking that only Usher could save the half-time show.
And so, sadly, ends my girlcrush on Fergie.
Oh My God! Just Like Me! Moments
I can’t sing that well either.
Lessons Learned
The Black Eyed Peas are about to reach that point where they end up with a reality show on VH1.
Through the Shattered Lens 