The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - 5
You can't deny
the Nation'
After watching three weeks'
worth of CBS's "Kid Nation,"
I have come to the following
conclusions:
1. Deserting kids in the desert is a
great idea. Summer camps have been
draining bank accounts for years, and
it's time to start sending the nation's
youth to live inside abandoned movie
sets in New Mex-
ico. It's a win-win
situation: Parents
don't have to leave
their kids with
Phish-lovingcamp
counselors, and
New Mexico gets
a reason to exist. -
MCHAEL
2. The collec- PASSMAN
tive minds at CBS
are brilliant. While everyone in the
industry is losing his mind over Ben
Silverman because he revived "The
Bionic Woman," originally a spin-off
of "The Six Million Dollar Man," CBS
quietly captured the snarky-college-
newspaper-TV-columnist demo-
graphic with "Kid Nation." Combine
that with the rest of America, who
sadly believes "CSI: Romulus" would
be a good idea, and you've built your-
self quite abase.
3. I would have been the worst
"Kid Nation" contestant of all time.
The only thing my 9-year-old self
could do was operate a Super Nin-
tendo and name all of the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's no
way in hell I would've been cooking
and cleaning in a ghost town for any
reason at age 9. Something is wrong
withthese kids.
4. The show is actually pretty
good. I've resisted reality television
for years, but I simply cannot deny
the "Nation." It's not a good show in
the sense that "The Sopranos" was,
but it's fun to watch and rivals TV's
best in terms of watchability with a
group of cynical people. DVR "Push-
ing Daisies" tomorrow, and watch
"Kid Nation" with your friends.
But as enjoyable as the show is in
its current incarnation, it could be so
much more. For the sake of argument
I'm going to pretend lawyers don't
exist, and we'll throw conventional
morals and ethics out the window
- which shouldn't be too difficult
considering I'm discussing reality
television. At this point, season two
of "Kid Nation" looks like a sure
thing, so it's time for CBS to open up
the playbook.
The first major change "Kid
Nation" needs to make is fundamen-
tal to the premise of the show. In an
annoying move to convince spon-
sors that CBS wasn't trying to get
kids to kill each other in the middle
of nowhere, the primary goal of the
show is to see if all the kids can coex-
ist. The kids are divided into four
groups for the purpose of assigning
jobs, but CBS hammers home the
communal nature of the town. The
kids are not competing with each
other for real estate or power. They're
just workingtogether.
So now that the first season has
established that kids can kind of
live on their own - with producers
making sure no one gets mauled by
wolves or something - it's time to
create a real town to see if kids can
live in opposition to each other, not
with each other. We need corrupt
politicians, roving gangs, radical reli-
gious factions, political parties and
permanent economic disparities. It's
supposed to be Kid Nation, a nation
of kids with different groups and
agendas. I am unaware of any nation
where everyone works together for
the greater good.
Next, the cast needs to be a ran-
dom sampling of real kids, not the
special kids CBS handpicked for the
show. One of the kids this season just
happens to have apprenticed with a
butcher, so when the group needed
to kill chickens, they knew what to
do. Real kids don't apprentice with
butchers. Real kids work at Dairy
Queen. Are we in feudal times? Is his
brother apprenticing with a black-
smith? I'm proposing a nationwide
draft that requires kids between the
ages of 8 and 15 to register for "Kid
Real kids don't
apprentice with
butchers. They
work at DQ.
Nation." It's the only way to get a
legitimate sampling of real kids on
the show.
And finally, kids should not be
allowed to leave the show whenever
they want. When I was 10, I wasn't
allowed to leave summer camp when
I wanted to, and that place had a
fucking trapeze. These kids agreed to
be on a TV show that tests their lim-
its and isn't comfortable, yet they can
go home whenever they want? If we
really want to see kids live on their
own, they have to go into it knowing
they are stuck there. The kids are a
little too comfortable with the situ-
ation right now because they know
in the worst-case scenario, they can
just take off.
But for now, we'll just have to make
do with the show as is. Roving gangs
might not be stealing gold stars, but
I hear some of the kids accidentally
drank bleach one time, so we've got
that to look forward to.
- They kill chickens? They're
eight. Jesus. Reason with Passman
at mpass@umich.edu.
Krug's chaos
spins its own
fairy tale
n "Winged/Wicked
Things," Spencer Krug
- Sunset Rubdown's
versatile frontman - chimes,
"And chaos is yours and chaos
is mine." It's not so much a
single line in
a fine song as ****
it is a mani-
festo - one Sunset
Krug exhibits
throughout Rubdown
the band's
Random Spirit Random
Lover. Spirit Lover
Just look to Jagjaguwar
"Colt Stands
Up, Grows
Horns." Easily the most bemus-
ing track on the album, Krug
employs ridiculous fun-house
piano convulsions to connect
the catchier, single-heavy first
third of the album with the
dreary yet effervescent middle
third. It can be considered the
lucid link that defines Random
Spirit Lover's movements, or it
can be viewed as the most dis-
jointed, frustrating track on an
album with no other purpose
than for Krug to show some
pretentious edge.
But that's what Krug wants:
a chaotic mess that only works
when the entire storybook is Hedonists.
read from cover to cover. If
2006's Shut Up I Am Dreaming Feral Days," which finds Krug
was a dark novel that showed assuming the role of a lover
his melodramatic front, lacing in turmoil as he belts, "Cause
tracks with poetic prose and you're the one who's riding
dreary, sweeping melodies, then around on a leopard / You're
Random Spirit Lover is Krug's the one who's throwing dead
frantic fairy tale that shows birds in the air," or "The Tam-
one of music's top harmonizers, ing of the Hands that Came
keyboardists and lyrical virtuo- Back to Life," where he drawls,
sos, proving that we may have "Don't get too close / You'll
the next man that expands the detect the West Coast air in my
genre of indie rock. chest / And the way I hold it in
Random Spirit Lover is very there." Both tracks are seem-
much a fairy tale. It's lengthy ingly idiosyncratic, but when
- just shy of an hour - and it taken in context with the rest
has complex tales intertwined of the album, each seem a little
with images of courtesans less odd, allowing the listener
and leopard riding, thespians to explore the undertow of the
and lepers. Krug's metaphori- lyrics rather than the absurd
cal, whimsical lyrics continue imagery.
to identify Sunset Rubdown, Though Sunset Rubdown is
just as they have done with his very much Krug's brainchild,
other bands Wolf Parade and the emergence of Camilla
Swan Lake. Take "Up on Your Wynn Ingr's lovely falsetto
Leopard, Upon the End of Your melds magically with Krug's
cOURTESY OF JAGJAGUWAR
masterful piano hysterics.
"The Mending of the Gown"
hectically probes a complicated
tale of a gown and two lovers in
which Ingr and Krug's vocals
reverberate together, while the
frantic keyboard freight-trains
toward a climax of "And the
running and the running and
the running and the running
around!" The same can be said
for "The Taming of the Hands
that Came Back to Life," which
thrusts the final portion of the
album toward clarity after the
fashioned chaos of the midsec-
tion. Ingr's silky cries ground
the beginning of the track
against a dominant percussion
set before Krug takes over. The
track might be self-reflexive
since he explores his thoughts
on songwriting. But even Krug
realizes his pitfalls, reacting
See SUNSET, Page 8
ARTS IN BRIEF
A Beatles
fan could
do worse
By MATT RONEY
Daily Arts Writer
The past year has been a great time to
be a Beatles fan. There
are rumors of anew song *
(seriously), "The U.S. vs.
John Lennon" brought VariOUS
John's political life to
nationwide theaters, Artists
PaulandRingoappeared
on Larry King with the Across the
widows of George and Universe:
John and we've seen the Music from the
production of two Bea- Motion Picture
ties-themed shows: the
Cirque du Soleilextrava- Intscape
ganza "LOVE" and Julie
Taymor's movie-musi-
cal Across the Universe," as well as their
accompanying soundtracks.
The LOVE album was the project of the
"fifth Beatle," the producer George Martin
and his son Giles. Effectively a mash-up
album, it employed re-mastered versions
of the Beatles's original tapes to create an
entirely new sequence of classic songs. Of
course, despite its rearranged mix, LOVE
had one major thing going for it - it was
still the Beatles playing all the parts.
Across the Universe doesn't have that lux-
ury. When it comes down to it, these are
covers, and nothing can anger a devoted
fan - and Beatles fans are nothing if not
devoted - more than a butchered cover.
Fortunately, Across the Universe: Music
from the Motion Picture avoids disappoint-
ment, at least mostly.
Amazingly enough, the album falters
most with the songs performed by U2
leader and tiber-star Bono - "Lucy in the
Sky With Diamonds" and "I Am the Wal-
rus." "Lucy," that masterpiece of sparse
See UNIVERSE, Page 9
You can't earn the respect of "Sapes" if you can't establish a Sicilian defense. Amateurs
That dumb Geico ad?
ABC makes it work.
DVD
DVD offspring
from 'Knocked
Up' as good as its
parents
"Knocked Up: Unrated Two-
Disc Collector's Edition"
Universal
If fan appreciation is mea-
sured in terms of DVD release
content, Judd Apatow is the
people's champion. Like "The
40-Year-Old Virgin" before
it, Apatow's second feature
is offered as part of a loaded
double-disc set that rivals any
DVD release this year.
Theunratedcutof"Knocked
Up" is basically the same
movie you saw in theatres last
spring, but merged with a few
extended and deleted scenes.
That is to say, it's arguably the
best, most polished comedy in
years.
The vast majority of the
deleted and extended scenes
are not synched in with the
rest of the film, but span the
two discs. Also included are 22
on-set video diaries from Apa-
tow, a couple mockumentaries
about the film's production,
more than10 other featurettes,
a full-length commentary and
a hidden "you know how I
know you're gay"-off between
Seth Rogen ("Superbad") and
Paul Rudd ("The 40-Year-Old
Virgin") recalling their "40-
Year-Old Virgin" days.
And in the age of double-
dip DVDs and special edition
releases months after the ini-
tial DVD launch, it's refresh-
ing to see a feature-packed set
hit the market right away. Apa-
tow knows the 20-something
slacker demographic better
than any other filmmaker at
work today: He makes mov-
ies about them, and he makes
DVDs for them.
MICHAEL PASSMAN
TELEVISION
'Carpoolers' not
even worth a
silent ride
"Carpoolers"
Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m.
ABC
While it's true you save
money by driving with other
people, it's not worth it when
you're riding with morons.
"Carpoolers" gives us four
men driving to work together,
plain and simple. Although
centering a show on a com-
mute is a serviceable con-
cept, ABC blows it by having
strange, ignorant characters
with nothing intelligentto say.
That doesn't stop them from
saying it, of course, which is
the main problem of the show:
a silent, 30-minute car ride
is preferable to "Carpoolers"
- this one is just pointless.
Jerry O'Connell ("Crossing
Jordan")istheonlyestablished
cast member, playing the "cool
guy" of the crew. He's also the
dumbest, which is quite a feat
if you look at the rest of them.
The storylines aren't especial-
ly entertaining, either. A wife
buying a $400 toaster doesn't
eat up half an hour.
The cheap humor of "Car-
poolers" might give an initial
chuckle, but after the first
commercial, you might find
yourself wishing that someone
would cut their brakes.
JOHN DAAVETTILA
By MARK SCHULTZ
Daily Arts Writer
By now the GEICO "Cave-
man" commercials are such a
part of the public conscious-
ness that
during last
November's *
Duke-UNC
basketball Cavemen
game, Tar
Heels fans Tuesdays
held up at 8p.m.
signs say- ABC
ing "Beat-
ing Duke
- so easy a Caveman could do
it." A sitcom might seem like
the logical next step in whit-
tling these Neanderthals into
a primitive niche in popular
culture - just because a com-
mercial has never been made
into a successful TV series
doesn't mean it can't be done.
And, actually, there's a good
chance it can.
Joel (Bill English) is a mod-
ern-day caveman who shares
an apartment with younger
brother Andy (Sam Hunting-
ton, "Superman Returns")
and best friend Nick (Nick
Kroll, "Best Week Ever"). Like
their commercial counter-
parts, these cavemen are tech-
savvy and trendy to a satirical
degree. They have highly lit-
erate conversations using
phrases like "pregnant with
meaning," do Sudoku puzzles
over their morning coffees
and whine woefully when the
If you laugh,
does that mean
you should
switch to Geico?
Wikipedia server is down.
Joel works at an Ikea-like fur-
niture store - Whose products'
names are the most inscru-
table Norwegian words and
dates sexy Homo sapien Kate
(Kaitlin Doubleday, "Waiting
..."). Andy plays too much "Wii
See CAVEMEN, Page 8