{"id":342,"date":"2004-04-11T22:48:46-04:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-12T06:48:46+00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/wordpress\/?p=342"},"modified":"2004-04-11T22:48:46-04:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-12T06:48:46+00:00","slug":"spice-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/2004\/04\/11\/spice-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Spice of&nbsp;life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='e-content'><p>At the risk of destroying whatever smidgen of credibility I&#8217;ve gained with folks out there, I&#8217;m going to confess that I actually watched&#8211;and, worse, enjoyed&#8211;<cite class=\"title\">The Nick &amp; Jessica Variety Show<\/cite> tonight.  There were high points and low points&#8211;Jessica&#8217;s <cite class=\"title\">American Idol<\/cite>-worthy wails on <cite class=\"title\">Take My Breath Away<\/cite> being the worst of the latter&#8211;but overall it was an amazing simulation of a better-than-average 1970s-era variety show.<\/p>\n\n<p>High- and low-lights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Both stars handle self-parody well: <cite class=\"title\">Nick La Shave<\/cite> and the <cite class=\"title\">Mouseketeer<\/cite> bit were probably the most fun.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not sure exactly what Simpson was trying to accomplish in her duet with Jewel: was it mockery of Jewel&#8217;s style, an impression of Cher, or the way she actually sings?<\/li>\n<li>Mr. T.  I pity the fool who doesn&#8217;t like T.  <cite class=\"title\">Ten Seconds Of Awkwardness<\/cite> wouldn&#8217;t have been possible with anyone else.<\/li>\n<li>The goofy jokes in the <cite class=\"title\">She Works Hard for the Money<\/cite> montage&#8230; heard &#8217;em all, but again they were able to pull them off.<\/li>\n<li>The real Kermit and Piggy, straight from the Muppet Show set, and not the impostors that have replaced them for the last 20-odd years.<\/li>\n<li>Jessica&#8217;s&#8230; um&#8230; <cite class=\"term\">smashes bottle over head<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><cite class=\"title\">I&#8217;ve Got You (Babe)<\/cite>.  It had to be done, it had to be the finale, and it worked.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been contemplating writing a screed about how current popular music is overwhelmingly angry&#8211;I even have difficulty listening to <q>Weird Al<\/q> Yankovic&#8217;s last album of parodies, and I&#8217;ve been a fan of his <em>forever<\/em>&#8211;but the show tonight was enough goofy, simple, plain ol&#8217; <em>fun<\/em> that I&#8217;m just too happy to get any of it down.  They got it <em>right<\/em>.<\/p><\/div><div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the risk of destroying whatever smidgen of credibility I&#8217;ve gained with folks out there, I&#8217;m going to confess that I actually watched&#8211;and, worse, enjoyed&#8211;The Nick &amp; Jessica Variety Show tonight. There were high points and low points&#8211;Jessica&#8217;s American Idol-worthy wails on Take My Breath Away being the worst of the latter&#8211;but overall it was&hellip;","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mf2_syndication":[],"venue_id":0},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"kind":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}