Arcade Fire will be performing live at the Grammys this year. It’s clearly going to be a fantastic show!
World-conquering Canadian rockers Arcade Fire are up for three Grammy Awards this year, including the all-important Album of the Year award for The Suburbs. And now, the Recording Academy has announced that Arcade Fire will perform at the Grammy Awards ceremony, which CBS will broadcast on February 13 at 8pm Eastern. That right there is a big TV moment in the making.
He just updated his Facebook page to share the news:
“Well friends, after five incredible years, I’ve decided to take my next steps and bid farewell to my amazing MTV family. My time at MTV has changed my life in ways I never imagined. That is due, in large part, to all of your support. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. It’s not goodbye, it’s just a new hello. See you sooner than you may think! In the meantime, we’ll always have fb and twitter to keep us warm!”
Just discovered a fun, new interactive website created by The Grammys to promote the upcoming award show that’s only a month away on February 13th.
Music Is Life Is Music invites visitors to tag their location with one of their favourite songs, with the option to add commentary, a few lyrics, and/or a photo of the artist. Only 3 people in London, ON have participated so far! Perhaps more buzz about it will spread closer to the event.
The series premiere of ‘I Used To Be Fat’ overlapped with the end of the holiday season, during which millions of people indulged in delectable home-cooked meals and family dinners. Now that it’s time to shed those extra pounds, MTV is stepping in by making a weekly hour-long weight loss infomercial targeted at youth. Each week, viewers can tune in to watch the transformations of college-bound high school seniors like Gabriella and Marci, who are tired of feeling embarrassed because of their weight.
In the first episode, Gabriella proclaims that she wants to become “fit, fabulous, and fierce” and expresses her determination to revamp her image by snapping her fingers. After showing close-ups of her holding her tummy and upper arm fat, the producers turn to her social drama, wherein she argues with her mother, Arleen, who wants Gabriella to be “perfect”. “I want her to be happy, but thinner”, Arleen says.
While chatting at the kitchen table, Arleen reveals she has treated Gabriella like some sort of science experiment, by leaving out a tray of cookies and tracking how long it takes Gabriella to start snacking on them.
Cue the peppy theme song with the lyrics, “this is a new year, a new beginning”, thus signalling that MTV aspires to inspire viewers to fulfill their resolutions, which are typically abandoned shortly after New Year’s Eve. As per the confessional style common amongst reality shows, Gabriella explains that she told herself in previous years that she’ll finally make big changes in her life, yet failed to follow through on her ambitions. I think her trainer’s best piece of advice was telling Gabriella to stop using the phrase “I messed everything up”.
In the end, when Gabriella steps on the scale for her final weigh-in, she looks much cheerier and satisfied with her now slender figure. Despite its inspirational potential however, it is questionable how the show will make a dramatic difference for the average American teenager. What about viewers who can’t afford their own silly band wearing personal trainer? What if kids with similar snacking habits lose hope because they think Gabriella’s success is mainly attributable to her new motivational sidekick, courtesy of MTV?
Should people know how awful a first grader feels after being called “fatso”? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean there needs to be an entire TV series about it. The concept of encouraging youth to lead healthier lifestyles is great in theory, but kids are humiliated enough as it is and there’s no need for people to watch them struggle with weight lifting or rock climbing.
If MTV wants youth to bear closer resemblance to pop stars with strict workout regimes than those who frequently supersize their order, they should offer fitness DVDs as giveaways at their shows.
As the World Health Organization revises its guidelines for exercise, with an emphasis on fitness rather than fatness, fat politics remains a culturally significant issue and one that MTV should carefully address in their latest series.
Here’s to reminiscing about the classic teenage love triangle and genre-defining drama, Dawson’s Creek…
Every day more and more people join the blogosphere and the most notable new blogger is actor James Van Der Beek, of Dawson’s Creek fame. Ten years after he infamously cried in the season three finale, James has launched his own Tumblr blog in which he posts videos of himself making comical melodramatic facial expressions. In the video introducing the blog, James explains that he was inspired by reading comments about the Dawson’s Creek clip and wanted to offer his fans more entertaining close-ups.
When he emphasizes that the original clip has been “digitally restored and re-mastered”, it reminded me of Disney’s commercials for their DVDs and Blu-Rays, in which they encourage parents to buy a brand new copy of a video they may already own because surely their children deserve to watch animated characters in the best possible quality. You may also enjoy his latest ‘Asshole for Hire’ video, which you can check out on his blog here.