Current TV

Well, whatta ya know, I actually found something I enjoyed on TV this weekend other than Tim and Eric or 30 Rock. I feel that television today is filled with nothing but awful reality shows, brain-numbing music/dance/talent/competitive sitting shows, and boring medical/swabbing prosthetic bones with q tips shows. The worst part is, everybody thinks these are the best shows ever except me. I get tired of hearing about Dancing With The Stars, The Bachelor, America's Got Talent, and who can forget my favorite, CSI. However, I do enjoy this CSI thing, simply because it's so bad it's good:

This weekend, my fiancé and I took a quick trip up to St. Louis to visit a friend of hers, and everybody went to bed early except for me. So, without my usual solution of hanging out with friends, going on my computer and looking up crap, or playing videogames, I decided to settle and watch TV.

I flipped past the usual late night bs of VH1 countdown shows and reruns of SportsCenter, and then something caught my eye- a show called "The RottenTomatoes Show". Now, if you know me, you know that I adhere to RottenTomatoes almost religiously. For those of you who don't know, RottenTomatoes.com is a movie review site where reviews from newspapers, magazines and movie review sites are aggregated. The higher the percentage of positive reviews, the better the movie tends to be (At least to me. Your Mileage May Vary). When a bunch of friends are going to see a movie, discussions typically go like this:

Positive outcome

Friend: Hey, wanna go see Up in the Air?

Me: Sure, it got an 88% on Rottentomatoes. I'm in!

Negative outcome (far more common)

Friend: Hey, wanna go see Law Abiding Citizen?

Me: Never. It got a 16% on Rottentomatoes. Also, Gerard Butler is quickly becoming an actor I can't stand! (expect a blog soon about actors I can't stand. Expect that blog to be long)

Anyway, the idea of a RottenTomatoes TV show seemed to good to be true. And it was indeed a wonderful show- an honest look at movies with insightful commentary and movie deprecation galore! I was sold. Best of all, I found out you can watch the show online here.

Next, a show came on called "Viewer Created Content" or VC2. Normally, I would flip the channel on anything that uses "squared" in it's title. But I was bored, so I figured, "All right, I'll give this show a chance". Basically, the show works like this: The creators of the show give out a topic, like "Movies" or "Family". Then, viewers create short documentary videos (usually 5-15 minutes) about the topic. The episode I watched was about "Alcohol". In the hour I watched, I learned about absinthe, the rising wine market in India,   a British guy's struggle with alcoholism, and a girl ranting about how she hated trendy bars. The clips were interspersed with a quick introduction to the videos, and that was it. There were no frills, no stupid cgi effects, no quick cuts to stock footage (I'm looking at you, History Channel...), just pure, authentic film experiences from viewers around the world.

After "VC2" ended, I decided I had better get to bed. But then, a documentary on the Burning Man Festival came on, and I got sucked into that. I had always wondered what the heck the Burning Man Festival was, and the documentary definitely answered all my questions. I thought, "Where has this channel been all my life?!"

So, there is still good t.v. out there. Unfortunately, I don't think Current TV is available in most cable markets. Wonderful...