Just a quick note to register my appreciation of the 'buzz' shows of the moment. Australian Idol is growing on me, even though the judges have no idea what they are talking about. Dicko is the only reasonable one, and even he too often slips into the mediocre tone set by Mark and Marcia. For example, the other night, Levi, a heretofore unimpressive candidate, actually managed to make a Savage Garden song sound cool. Yes, Savage Garden. And yes, cool. And yet the judges roundly criticised him! I couldn't believe it. I mean, he made a Savage Garden song sound cool! This is an enormous feat. And not one judge offered him the congratulations he so deserved. Rather, they gave him backhanded compliments about how pretty he was and how far he would go. Dicks. What the fuck do they know? They applaud utter crap. Kelly, the 'rock chick' [as if! I mean, she sings Evanescence and Killing Heidi songs for fuck's sake] sang atrociously, and still they told her she was great. Okay, so a few weeks ago she kicked arse with a Led Zeppelin song, but that was the song more than anything else. I am getting so god darned sick of hearing Marcia's 'critique' of her performances too, which never diverts from either "You are a rock chick. Congratulations", or "You are an individual. Congratulations". She has a keen eye, that Marcia. And Mark bleeding Holden, what a cunt. If he says "man, you know how much I hate to agree with Dicko, but..." one more freaking time. Okay! We get it! You are manufacturing a rivalry to make yourself seem relevant! WE GET IT! YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY IT EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME! AAAAGGHHH! Please, just stop the freakin charade. It's too fucking irritating. That's the major downside of Australian Idol. The utter cringing falseness. I mean, Mark is not a 'hip to the young folk' dude, man. He is a 'try-hard fogey' if ever there was one. And he doesn't help anybody. And Marcia is not the damn 'mother hen' either [and she really needs to have a serious talk with her wig-maker]. She offers nothing substantial in the way of advice, or analysis. She ain't preparing nobody for nothing and she is seriously coasting. Dicko at least sees a variety of potential in each of the performers, has some accurate smarts about his evaluations, and is less likely to trot out the pap of his cohorts. He's the only bearable judge. Sometimes likeable, and even laudable. He's not even harsh, which is the false though much-repeated allegation. Anyway, there's just this stamp of crap and 'role filling' behaviour all over the joint, in contestants and judges alike. It's totally shitty. But hey, I still tune in on Sunday nights. For all this trouble, Guy had better win.

The other buzz show of note is Queer Eye For The Straight Guy which I absolutely love. It just makes me happy and I go "hee hee" all the way through. My brother even told me that it feels like he's getting an injection of joy into his arm each time the show starts. This may be because the show immediately follows Idol, but whatever. The way he put it was that Queer Eye, like, lifts away the fog and blankness brought on by other crap. You just look forward to hanging out with these guys. And I was thinking about it, and I am not in the least bit blown away by the brilliance of their makeover suggestions. That's not the appeal of the show. The 'Fab Five' make this show a joy, and they do it without really delivering any dazzlingly astute tips that display any rare style acumen on their part. I mean, it's been more a case of "Hairy? Get rid of the hair", and "Glasses? Why not try contacts?", and "Dirty apartment? Let's clean it up", and "Old clothes? Let's get some new ones". They really don't do that much, and there's not much invention to what they do do, other than entertain them and our selves. Hairstyle guy Kyan's default position is to advise the heteros to 'work the product in from the back, and give it one final jooj just before you leave the house'. Food guy Ted's advice about wine in restaurants didn't extend past 'waft it and smell the bouquet'. Carsen buys clothes. He's hilarious, but is sometimes too 'Oprah make-over' [ie. bad square leather jackets] for my taste. By the way, I cannot wait for that episode when the guys feature on Oprah. It is thankfully inevitable. Sweet. Anyway, Carsen finds them some good jeans, and so acquits himself. And even though I love 'culture vulture' Jai and he's cute as a button and an excellent and indispensable member of the group, all I have seen him do over the first two weeks is to print some cards, tell a guy to 'circulate the room making sure to establish eye contact and talk to everyone, but not for too long', and then show another guy how to make plunger coffee. A whole episode went by, a whole day, in which an apartment and back courtyard [in the Lower East side of Manhatten, god damnit. Shit shit. My envy will kill me] was redecorated, and all Jai had done was visited a coffee shop, smelled some beans, let us in on a little 'secret' about the longevity and flavour virtues of buying beans whole rather than pre-ground, bought some beans, and then inducted the straight guy into the heady and sophisticated world of plunger coffee. This is how he filled his 'culture' brief! Plunger coffee! But I don't care. He's great. They're all great. And the quips just keep on coming. And Thom the interior designer actually does some work, which makes for a satisfying ending. Yay. Warm and friendly and manages, by virtue of its tone and camaraderie, to avoid the irritating crapness of other such shows. Yay.