20.3.00

Too Much To Do

I always want to do too much.

It works like this: I see my pen and notebook and think, I should write something. I doodle for a few seconds, draw one of my ridiculous looking cartoon girls, forget what I wanted to do, and think, I should listen to some music. So I open up Winamp or put a cd on, sing along for a moment or two, and think, I haven't practice my flute for weeks. I find said flute and play for a while, then cast it aside (gently!) after being disatisfied with my atrophied tone and fingering skills. Maybe I should get something to eat. I find nothing in the kitchen worthy of breakfast/lunch, and get soft drink instead. Pick up flute again and play it some more, random tunes and fragments of television theme songs, wishing I had the resolve to find my old music books from school and learn something worthy of a challenge. Remember that around Christmas-time last year I was intent on arranging some well-known alternative tunes into something melancholy for flute, guitar and cello and forget about it shortly thereafter. Maybe I should work on a submission for 48 Colors. So I open up Photoshop and search around in my photo archives for something to twist in the name of art. Wondering what I can come up with that doesn't look like the wannabe work of a 12 year old using Paint and creating silly wallpaper images. There is nothing. Maybe I'll do a small art-y tribute to my sister and my nephew. I open an image of them and play with it. Decide that Alex and Dylan look interesting once they've been blurred beyond recognition, but there's no inspiration to be seen. Maybe I should play Minesweeper. Do this several times, then break my record and set a new one of 97 seconds for the "expert" setting. I should work on that story I haven't added to since 1997. Print out some pages of said story, settle down with my notebook and pen, scrawl down character names which have already been scrawled across the pages several times, realise that it's going nowhere. I should get another drink.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Many, many, many times.

Maybe it's a lack of inspiration, or more accurately, a lack of focus. There's so many things I want to put my energy into that I end up thinking about them all and doing nothing.

I have a day off tomorrow. Perhaps I can spend that time promising myself I'll do more things than I actually have the time to do.

Can somebody tell me why I'm finding myself so addicted to Popstars? I usually find "reality TV" to be a gigantic joke in the first place, and don't get me started on the synthetic nature of pre-assembled pop groups with their choreographers and songwriters and image stylists and whatnot, and yet... I'm strangely drawn to this series. I'm not even mocking it! (Well, there is some mocking, but I'll get to that in a moment.) There has to be something wrong with me.

For those who either escaped the hype and managed not to tune in, or don't actually live in this country, Popstars is a reality-documentary capturing the formation and preparation of a five-piece girl band (it's a blatant rip-off of the Spice Girls, no question at all about that), from "cattle call" auditions (at the very beginning, I just thought that the media was being unkind, but I've discovered it's some kind of "professional" term... apparently) to picking the final five, and right now the girls are dividing their days between escaping the probing media (i.e., radio stations challenging listeners to spot the popstars; trashy magazines publishing gossip from behind the scenes, people and huntsman spiders stalking their living quarters), getting even more skinny and defined in the gym, and recording their new album. It's riveting viewing and I can't explain why.

However, being me, I can't simply be riveted and leave it at that. I have to complain, and question, and yes, be snarky as well. At this point, I don't have anything bad to say about the girls themselves - just about their management, their stylists, and their songwriters. Tonight's episode featured the girls getting made over to give them each an image to fit their personalities (I have to wonder if the people that scultped the Spice Girls had this much trouble... or whether they all showed up all individually sporty, scary, posh, gingery, and babylike to begin with), and one of the girls looked extremely uncomfortable with the jeanshorts, teeny bikini-top and denim jacket ensemble she was given to wear. It looked tarty and whorish, yet one of the (more suspect) three managers was saying, "Well, it's about changing your image and going above what you'd usually do. You have to be extroverted, you can't settle for being normal anymore." Yes, but you can be extroverted and striking without looking like a skank, sir.

And the songs! Apparently the world's top songwriters have been commissioned to write the songs for the album. I suppose these top songwriters are the head of the tacky-pop league, because I feel the lyrics and studio-generated dreck they call "music" has nothing to do with brilliant songwriting. Sure, the girls have beautiful voices - I'm surprised they managed to get a lovely range when they had to pick only five - but to promote talent, you have to complement it with something worthy of the effort. For example, one of the first songs recorded for the album was a ditty called Poison, of which the main chorus goes:

Don't you treat me bad
Don't you make me sad
Our love could be deep as the ocean
You think I'll be true
I've got news for you
Don't you know that I can be poison?

I know pop music isn't noted for its depth and ability to make people think, but really - couldn't they give the girls better material to work with? At first, I thought it sounded alright, despite the immature, undeveloped nature of the words - that, however, was when they were rehearsing it with a piano. Once in the studio, they paired the voice parts with - predictably enough - this funk-laden, upbeat, synth-generated psuedo-music. It has a beat and you can dance to it, but there's no dignity. It takes what talent the group has and makes a mockery of it.

If they were going to make the effort to create a girl-band and film the whole process, don't you think they could have found someone to write meaningful lyrics and better backing music, at least, to give the whole project a sense of... grace, maybe? Come on, even the Spice Girls got lucky with Viva Forever.

Happily, one of the girls refused to do a typical sexy-whispery voiceover part in the middle of Poison. ("Don't give empty reasons, I don't want your lies, don't think you can decieve this poison deep inside." Exsqueeze me?) She did it at first, and did it well, but then all you can hear is, "That was really <bleep!-ed> <bleep!> I can't do that. It's too naff." Damn straight, and bonus points for use of the word "naff".

You know, the more I think about this, the more there is to complain about. I'm going to keep watching, though... there must be something seriously wrong with me.

! Count: 12 Days. I don't have the words anymore... I'm not scared, just excited in a wordless manner. Quietly nervous, anticipating everything gently.

Words of wisdom: none tonight, sorry. You could always go have a look at Georgina's effort to promote Hug An Australian Day (the 26th of April). Go on, hug me already. I don't bite. Unless you ask nicely.