Smurfette? On no she didn't...

Uh, yes. Yes, actually, she did.

Ahhhh Katy Perry, is there any childhood meme that she can't make hot?



You will recall her plunging neckline Elmo t-shirt on Saturday Night Live.

Read more about Katy as Smurfette here.

20 years late to the party

How did we never see the whole video to U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name?" How did we miss the story behind it? The band performed an eight song set on the roof of a Los Angeles liquor store before the LAPD came in and shut things down?!? What? Wow!

U2 and the video's director Meiert Avis had stashed a back-up generator on the roof in case cops cut the power to the main generator powering the filming and sound crews. The conceit was to reference The Beatles final live performance, which was on a rooftop in a public place.

Check out the marvelous music video here, with the audio of the cops and a couple of local radio DJ's who were on-air in that day in LA dubbed in over the song. The video won Grammy Award for Best Performance Music Video in 1989. So welcome the Clarion Content to the party two decades late...

Reality Rumor

Before leaving for Italy

Word is they are breaking up the Jersey Shore gang. This season, number five, currently being filmed in Italy, will be the last one for Pauly D, The Sitch, Ronnie, Sammi, J-Woww, Snookie and the rest of the cast. From Hollywood, CA to Belmar, NJ, beware! We have no idea where they are heading off to. Readers, your thoughts, on what's next for them?

Calm down, calm down, reality junkies! There are no plans to end the show, the Jersey Shore endures, a whole new crew of Jersey peeps are going to be cast to replace them. We can only pray they tape the auditions.

Breakout talent?

Keep an eye out for this kid!



The Clarion Content does not have a staff member assigned to watch America's Got Talent, but even we heard about eleven year-old Anna Graceman's stunning rendition of Alicia Keys hit, "If I Ain't Got You." We had to go to AOL of all places to dig up a link to the video. Check it out here... The B listers who are serving as celebrity judges obviously passed her along to the next round of their competition in Las Vegas.

Snooki on Southpark

One of our loyal readers from Hillsborough, NC sent this internet meme our way. The Jersey Shore's Snooki is satirized in cartoon form on Southpark. We were drawn to the physical depiction of Snooki. What crazy ass shit Cartman and the boys are doing with her hardly matters, because they cannot debase her more than she has herself on the Jersey Shore. In Southern parlance, she has shown her ass. Of note, she has also literally shown her ass and been arrested in the last two shows. Yet throughout it all, Snooks remains human and sympathetic. She is just a kid.

What's My Line? Reset

You may, dear readers, remember this author and Clarion Content guest columnist, one of Durham's own, from his on-going work of meta-fiction. The hilarious and wildly popular, The Unauthorized Autobiography of G.Ia.M'Rock. Read the old chapters here. Today he muses on memory and fame. Check out this piece and accompanying clip from the old television show, "What's My Line?"

It's a curious thing, fame. How someone who is well known to the nation or even the world at one time can be completely anonymous at another time, or vice versa. I doubt many of my compatriots could identify Humphrey Bogart, even in his trademark fedora and trenchcoat. And yet my grandfather would be at a loss to pick out Justin Bieber from any sort of lineup.

I don't know if you're familiar with the old panel show "What's my Line", but it's a guessing game where a panel of four famous contestants try to identify the occupation of someone of less renown. When the guest has a famous face, the panelists are blind folded, but in this particularly amusing section, someone whose face is now legendary, sits calmly in front of a group of people who have no idea who he is. At the end of the clip, he describes how big his fame has spread, and it makes you sort of wonder about the effects of advertising on our consciousness.

Bill Cosby tries to find North, SC

A grateful thank you to one of our oldest readers for sending this clip our way from PA. And while the little old lady Mr. Cosby is speaking to is living in Pennsylvania, she is actually from South Carolina. North, South Carolina. Which is ninety miles southeast of Due West, South Carolina. Funny ha-ha.

What they are watching...Episode XVII

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. We peer into their world through the lens of Youtube. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link and [scroll down].

The kids they still love the physical comedy and the slapstick humor. The message is in the action, not some highfalutin reference or irony. Check out the satirization of country singer Kenny Rogers below doing "Jackass", the eighth graders who sent this video our way had no idea who Kenny Rogers was, nor had they ever seen him. They still found this video utterly hilarious.

Rerun success

The current show we see as mostly likely to become a cult hit in reruns, a much bigger success in its second life than in first run, is "How I met Your Mother." It has been increasingly popular as a CBS network television show. Word of mouth has gradually built over the years, it has momentum. As the sitcom heads into a sixth season, "How I met Your Mother" is poised to enter another echelon of fame moving into syndication.

Katy Perry and Elmo

Not sure if you have been following the Katy Perry-Elmo saga, dear readers. The lovely and talented Katy was supposed to have a playdate with the Sesame Street star, furry, red Elmo. However, at the last minute under fire from the patron saints of Political Correctness, Sesame Street decided not to air Katy's pre-taped appearance. She and Elmo sing a version of Perry's hit Hot and Cold together. Apparently, there was too much cleavage for some folks, even though Perry was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking. Both Katy and Elmo have since appeared to talk about the non-event.

Elmo here on Good Morning America.

Katy here on Saturday Night Live.

Gotta like the self-deprecating sense of humor that Perry shows...

Census Taker

As you may have noted, dear readers, the Census is going on, every ten years the Federal Government counts how many people are living in the United States. Not by estimating or projecting or sampling and extrapolating, nope they map the location of every residence in the United States, and mail them a questionnaire. If the questionnaire is not sent back, they send someone door to door to follow-up and do an interview. Most times in probably does not goes as bad as things do in this old Christopher Walken Saturday Night Live skit. Sorry about the crummy video quality. If anyone can find us a better video we will gladly post it.

Ironman 2

Is anyone else irritated by all the Iron Man II advertisements? We do not mean the standard commercials for the movie, but rather the insidious product placement and fusion campaigns.

The Clarion Content has seen Ironman II footage and/or characters fused with ads for Dr. Pepper, Burger King, Audi and the NBA. It bugs that the movie is too present; it is everywhere, but because it is the sequel to one of the biggest movies of all time (sorta), we understand and expect that to happen. What is truly vile is the level on which these product placement ads cheapen the character and plot integrity of the movie.

This is not a new trend in the movies, the Clarion Content's editor grew up in an era where they ditched a planet of Wookies for a planet of Ewoks because they thought the toys would sell better. We would argue however that it is an additional iteration, another level, to see the Iron Man fused with the Burger King or to watch Tony Stark hop in an Audi like a real celebrity. This fusing of the fictional and the commercial eats at the core of story-telling. The willingness to suspend disbelief for a good story runs 180 degrees reverse course of humanity's hardened attempts to disbelieve advertisers. Getting sucked into a good plot is not supposed to make you one of P.T. Barnum's suckers.

This chafes our consciousness.

Remember this guy?

He was a sensation back in the day. It tells you how good advertising (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) is sticky. Who can forget the tagline, from an era when Federal Express was still an up and comer, "When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight." They said it could not be done. FedEx proved them wrong.

Another Reality Genius

Alicia Guastaferro (pictured above) another reality TV rocket scientist is suing ABC after being featured on the network's 'Wife Swap' two years ago. Now to be fair, the show was truly focused on her mother, the wife swapped. However, Alicia blames the show for a variety of problems in her life. One: she has supposedly gone from the honor roll, to being a special education student. Now besides ABC, another factor might be that her mother freely admitted on the program and subsequently demonstrated that she does her daughter's homework. Mrs. Guastaferro said, "She doesn't have time! I feel the way to Alicia's happiness is, give her everything she wants. Don't give her any rules. Why upset her?"

The episode of Wife Swap showed the Guastaferro's home life to be rather different. Alicia is described as the "princess of pageantry" and is given gifts every single day by her parents, who kept a Christmas tree up all year in the house. But it's ABC's fault?

The entertainment blog the Pop Eater reports, "[Her parents] Ralph and Karen Guastaferro plead guilty to felony money laundering charges stemming from a Canadian telemarketing scheme. Karen is also in hot water for not declaring wages at the family's glass-tinting business...she faces up to 16 months in jail, while he could spend up to 57 months behind bars."

So we'd guess that blaming someone else is about the only logical response left open to them.

Milgram revisted

State-owned, France 2 channel broadcast a documentary last Wednesday night. This documentary attempted to imitate the famous experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram's experiment, in his view, was a test of the collective culpability, the obedience component of the Shoah, the Holocaust.

The test involved one subject, one examiner and one accomplice. The accomplice played a test subject as well. The actual subject was induced to believe that both they and the accomplice were test subjects. The basic game is that the subject, called "teacher," examines the accomplice called "leaner," on word memorization. After wrong answers the subject/teacher was supposed to shock the accomplice/learner, played by a trained actor. No actual shocks were administered, but subject/teachers were convinced that they were doling out actual electric shocks gradually increasing in voltage for 15 volts to 450 volts, by the end of the "game." Literally convulsing the accomplice/learner. Crucially the subject/teacher was given a 15 volt real demonstration shock just before the start of the "game," so as to understand how it would ostensibly work for the subject/learner. (Wiki does a surprisingly good recap here.)

The French documentary attempted to recreate the scenario. In a non scientific sampling, 82% of participants, in the ludicrously named, fake TV show "The Game of Death" agreed to pull the lever to inflict electric shocks, gradually increasing in voltage, on their "opponents." Again instead of real subjects, they were but actor/opponents/accomplishes, not really being shocked. Interestingly the BBC reports that, "'The Game of Death' has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting "punishment" and a glamorous hostess urging the players on." A horrifying self-fulfillingly megalomaniacal set-up.

Ultimately, the Clarion Content, having read Eric Hoffer's True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, fears for our collective humanity. Careful with your demagogues, because who knows what we are capable of, six species epochs have gone before us.

Super Bowl ratings

The last time the Nielsen's were updated this was a cutting edge color TV

A savvy, local, Durham painter made an interesting comment to the Clarion Content's editor the other day. He said that he thought this might be the highest rated Super Bowl ever. The analysis behind his argument was tight. The mid-Atlantic Snowmageddon snowstorm guaranteed a huge chunk of the country is a captive audience. It also means that in that region far fewer folks will be watching collectively at sports bars and other peoples' houses.

Long time readers of the Clarion Content know that we have been highly critical of the Nielsen ratings for ages for just this reason. The Nielsen's are a monopoly and have not been pressed to get better. This flaw has existed for ages and they have ignored it. The biggest television spectacles and especially sporting events tend to be watched collectively, the Oscars and the Super Bowl are the classic examples. The Nielsen's in no way account for this. They continually underrate the viewing audiences for these events by counting television sets, not eyeballs. They do not account for sports bars. The Nielsen's are wildly wrong during the NCAA tournament and every Sunday of the NFL season.

We agree with our local painter, this Super Bowl could be the highest rated Super Bowl ever by Nielsen. But will that really mean more people watched it?

What are they watching... Episode V

Our weekly look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. This clip is a little racier, not so polite, but it is what it is. It is an except from the Boondocks cartoon series, part of the Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.

The Boondocks

What they are watching...Episode IV

Our weekly look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. We knew the 80's had made a big comeback. Seriously, who ever figured Journey, without Steve Perry, would be huge again? But we did not know it had gone this far.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Really?



Apparently so. Kind of cool in a strangely twisted way.

F*ck, Amazing

The Clarion Content has never really watched the HBO crime show, The Wire. We have always heard good things about it. Our favorite sports columnist Bill Simmons frequently raves about it.

This scene is two of the shows fictional detectives, McNulty and Bunk, investigating the crime scene of a murder. The amazing thing about it is the only dialogue in the scene is curse words, particularly the F-note. Yet they manage to brilliantly convey their changing theory about how the murder went down.

A put on?

Was Joaquin Phoenix being facetious about his budding rap career the other night on David Letterman? Andy Kaufman was a wrestler, anybody? Phoenix, who has a troubled family history, sounded sincere. He was wearing both sunglasses and a thick beard which made his expression very difficult to determine. Letterman, as always, played the willing foil to his guests mania.

Phoenix's appearance was re-cut together by Letterman and World Wide Pants to make it look especially loopy. (It ends with we owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett, what a reference.)

Check it out here.

Read People Magazines take here.