Archive for the 'Boob Tube' Category
June 9, 2008 12:04PM
By Cody Willard
I know that I basically ticked off just about every urbanite single woman on the planet when I started my anti- “Sex in the City” (or “Sex And the City”…whatever) rants a few weeks ago.
To reiterate my rant’s main point — urban single women take the fantasies put forth on this TV show and think that they somehow should base their own lives and base the rationalizations of their own lives’ actions on it.
In Style’s Katrina Szish and many other urban women let me know that they think I’ve got it backwards…that the show’s successful because it’s based on the actual lives of urban single women.
Fact is, it’s impossible to tell what’s based on what at this point because the show itself has become such a full-on ingrained part of our culture. But when everybody tells you that “Everybody’s got a Miranda and a Samantha in their life”, somebody’s gotten confused about reality and fantasy.
I gotta tell you guys though, that after seeing the endless parade of stilettos running around Soho this weekend, I’m more convinced than ever that Sex and the City and the drunken, loose, high-fashion times that it showcases is the chicken to the egg that’s causing a lot of the drunken, loose, high-fashion times that so many urban single women are choosing to live.
Don’t get me wrong — I tend to like the way a woman looks when she walks around with her heel up propped four inches off the ground. But I recall many a women lamenting to me over the years about how the most unrealistic aspect of Sex and The City is how Carrie’s always walking and running around the city for hours on end in her four inch stilettos…
But sure enough, the vast majority of women walking and running around Soho for hours on this weekend were choosing to do so in their four inch stilettos.
The worst part is that you just know that someday in a couple decades when all the back problems from running around in stiletto heels for hours on end for years are coming home to roost that some celebrity is gonna go testify in front of Congress asking for billions of tax dollars from us responsible sneaker-wearers to help fund research for people with back problems from running around in stiletto heels for hours on end for years.
June 3, 2008 10:59AM
By Cody Willard
Everyone’s watching, to see what you will do
Everyone’s looking at you, oh
Everyone’s wondering, will you come out tonight
Everyone’s trying to get it right, get it right
Everybody’s working for the weekend — Loverboy
Last night, I lost a lot of sleep as I fretted, worried, stressed, and otherwise thought about my job as a co-anchor of Happy Hour on Fox Business Network. It’s a new network, a new show, and I hadn’t really much of a clue about what doing TV for a living was like when I signed up…
My current least favorite part of talking on TV for an hour a day about stuff I care about — studying the core of how you present and communicate yourself and your thoughts for an hour a day for months on end…Why didn’t I stop that question there? What insecurity did that guest’s comment uncover that made me backtrack? I mean, you sit there watching yourself, trying to improve how you interact with people so that it’s more enjoyable, more fun…and it’s your very job to obsess about doing so. How can I quantify my interviewing skills so that I can track any improvement (hope-for improvement, at least!).
At any rate, like I said, I was really stressed out about my job after a tough-behind-scenes episode last night…and then I come in this morning for another hard, stressful day at work and they tell me here’s one of my guests I need to prepare for today:
Grand scheme of things, I probably shouldn’t complain, huh?
PS. I wonder if I whine enough and worry about my future enough that maybe I can convince the public and Ben Bernanke to give me billions of dollars to prevent a downturn in my economy. It would be for the good of everyone, I promise — you know, in the same way that the guys on Wall Street keep convincing everyone that unless Ben Bernanke gives ‘em billions to prevent a downturn in their economy, everyone’s gonna suffer as a result.
PSS. If nothing else, my quoting Loverboy says a lot about my own appetite for risk…who quotes Loverboy? And their main hit at that? What’s wrong with me? Pardon me, I better get back to self-analyzing.
May 18, 2008 11:47PM
By Cody Willard
Loose hearted lady, sleepy was she,
Love for the devil brought her to me,
Seeds of a thousand drawn to her sin,
Seasons of whither holdin me in.
Oh woe is me
I feel so badly for you
Oh woe is me
I feel so sadly for you in time
Bound to lose your mind
Live on borrowed time
Take the wind right out of your sails — Seasons of Wither, Aerosmith 1974
My recent Big 3 rant about my hatred for Sex In the City stirred up as much controversy as anything I’ve written since my rant about why we outta eat pesticides if we wanna help starving people in Africa. Aside from the obvious and depressing theme the contrast in topics there underscores, it seems that while Montel Williams caught my point and had a few words of advice on the show, many others including Katrina Szish completely missed what I was saying. Shocker, I know, that someone would misunderstand. Even bigger shocker that I’d be misunderstood by a woman, right? (And why then am I one looking confused in the picture below?…)
At any rate, what I said was: “I hate “Sex and the City.” Truly, as I blame it for confusing a whole generation of single New York women about the difference between reality and fantasy. Hey New York City girls, “Sex and the City” is a fantasy. Get a freakin’ grip.”
Katrina completely misunderstood that to mean: “The mere mention of this ultimate chick flick makes him feisty. He insists “Sex” is a fantasy world that no woman has ever truly experienced and therefore the premise of the series — and its legion of followers — is ridiculous.”
No, no, no…
My point is exactly that an entire generation of NYC women HAVE LIVED THEIR LIVES PRECISELY TO EXPERIENCE THE SEX IN THE CITY LIFESYTLE in their personal lives. And they’ve really messed themselves (and men like me, frankly) up because the lifestyle those fun-living, hard-drinking, fast, easy girls in the show who are able to weave their shallow personal lives neatly into a thirty minute episode each week is indeed based on fantasy. Which means the very premise by which so many of these women I’ve known, dated, seen my friends date, seen date each other, and so on, have based their personal lives on is a fantasy.
Meanwhile, we guys on the other side of this equation — well, let’s just say I think it should be rather obvious that I’ve not chosen to base my personal life on say, the Sopranos. Great show and all, but let’s keep it real, right? Right?!
It’s almost enough to make you long for the Victorian principles of yore, you know? I mean, isn’t there at least a place for a little patience, honesty and respect in today’s fast-paced, ever-connected, hyper-driven single scene of NYC?
PS. Check out Tesla’s 2007 cover of the little known Aerosmith classic I quote above — it’s available on iTunes while the Aerosmith song isn’t.
Check out the first round on YouTube
May 14, 2008 11:52PM
By Cody Willard
I just couldn’t get a post written today, as I brought Lobo into meet the team at Fox Business today. (I do think he was quite a hit, though I admit I am far less than objective about this new best friend of mine…)
After realizing we had a promo shoot before the show and then I agreed to do American Nightly Scoreboard (I stormed off the set in mock protest when the viewership voted 61% to sell my man Neil Diamond..David Asman does such an amazing job on all the shows he does, and, man, he does a lot of shows), I decided I couldn’t keep Lobo around all night while I was on set so I had to run him back home to Soho.
Back from an hour back Lobo-sprint, Cody-bikeride, a little bit of training, and I’m finally crashing from this day. But you guys seen this? You can keep track of the Big 3 here on The Cody Word in print now, on Happy Hour every day at 5 and 11pm on cable and also on YouTube. Here’s today’s Big 3, for example (don’t ask me why I can’t embed it here…I don’t have that ability despite all the advantages of now having this blog hosted by Fox). Like we’ve been talking about, the addressable audience for content is exploding as the costs of distributing that content collapse. Content is king indeed.
Here’s what I was doing when i was not being voted off Happy Hour Idol today:
1. They Can’t Stop the Downside
2. Bearish Signal: My Gut’s Bullish
3. Life Cycles Matter Too
1. Corporate spreads are at multi year highs meaning that capital remains and is getting ever more expensive out there. The government and Wall Street can try all the games they want but they can’t actually change the fact that the cycle has turned, and by the way, that cycle turning is okay, it’s called a cycle ’cause it turns. For crying out loud, you idiot bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats who keep trying to stop what you cannot. Let it be.
2. I don’t trade anymore, but looking at the blinking green lights on my quote screens today as stocks like Sandisk, Vm Ware, Akamai, danced 30, 40, or 50% above their recent highs, sure did make me miss it. My gut was turning. I’ve often noted how hard it is to measure sentiment, but I can guarantee you could measure that bullish sentiment in my own gut right now and that by the way makes me even more bearish. You gotta flip your own sentiment. Think about it, guys.
3. My dear friend, Steve MaKowski, the father of my high school sweet heart and dear friend Cecily and Candace Makowski, was laid to rest this week. I spent many a night for years with Steve and he was an important and positive influence on my life, which we all need. My prayers are with you and everyone in your family. I love you all.
Check it out on YouTube
May 7, 2008 1:45PM
By Cody Willard
I really do have an amazing job. I go to the storied Waldorf Astoria everyday to talk to some of the smartest, famous, beautiful, interesting, hardworking, inspirational, challenging, powerful people in the world.
And that’s amazing.
But it’s also very stressful. I feel a lot of pressure. Sometimes, more than others.
And I did just see a commercial for our show on Fox Business — not exactly a rare event, I know — and it just struck me once again that I have to be on my A game and fully prepared for some of the smartest, famous, beautiful, interesting, hardworking, inspirational, challenging, powerful people in the world today. And again tomorrow. And the next day. I even just got invited to co-host a Milton Friedman event next week at the Waldorf. Mighty dog, that’s cool. But mighty dog, that means more work and pressure and being on an A game for SMART people.
I really do wonder sometimes, what the heck I’m doing in NYC and especially on TV.
April 25, 2008 11:59AM
By Cody Willard
I miss writing for the FT, and was happy when I knew I’d get to see some of the people there at the fifth annual “Meet the FT” party. It was a great set up — at the top of 30 Rock. As I walked in with my Jedi Master, James Altucher, we passed NBC Universal CEO, Jeffrey Zucker, coming out of the building. I got a kick out of telling James that Zucker had eyed me as we passed because he knew who I was. LOL
But the whole evening did feel rather surreal. I mean, I already do TV for a living, and I’ve been dealing with the idea that I now live in four realities in which I have to somewhat keep track of what I’ve done where, when, and how.
That is, I have my real life. My on TV life. My off-air, but still wired up and being heard by dozens of people whom I don’t know life. And my writing life.
Is that four? I’ve lost track. And I’ve lost track partly because taking a car service to go to a party for the FT at the top of 30 Rock, where I remember seeing my first NYC-celeb sighting as Billy Crystal came out of 30 Rock during my first week working at Oppenheimer back in 1996, was indeed rather surreal.
And I’m always still feeling a bit out of place in the city — any city — because I really did spend my whole life in the country, far far away from apartment buildings and subways and skyscrapers. Further, it’s a trip hanging with all these incredibly powerful, smart, and successful businesspeople and media people. I turned to a friend of mine who used to run PR at FT (that’s exactly my point, btw — How and when did I end up in a place of calling someone who runs PR at FT a “friend” of mine!) and said, “How the heck have I gotten here?”
And that’s just about the time one of me got asked, “How you doing on the show, Cody?”… and the writer/real-life Codies tried to answer for that TV life Cody in as honest a way as I could. And now I see one of (all of???) the Codies’ names in headlines all of the blogosphere. And this writing life Cody now asks, “How the heck have I gotten here?!”
Cody Willard: “I Don’t Have Any Idea What I’m Doing” Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | April 24, 2008 02:32 PM
And I’m now Catholic? When did that happen:
Apr 24 2008 2:05PM EDT
Maybe I’ve been thinking this line of thinking about my life (lives) lately because UNM had asked me to come home and talk about what it took for a naive, native New Mexico kid to survive a dozen years in NYC. After the FT event, I’d been bumming that I’d forgotten my Flip Camera to record some of the night for the upcoming music video I’m making off the song I wrote as I wrote that speech for UNM about dreaming big and never letting go (name of song, coincidentally enough: Dream Big and Never Let It Go)…
But seeing this headline and layout…pretty much made my week. There’s even a picture of the Empire State Building in the background…I’m just gonna record some footage of the site itself and that Cody guy’s name in the headline.
You do gotta love it, no? Right, Cody? Cody? Any of you?
PS. Had more than one strangely competitive conversations with execs and producers from that competing biz network at the event too. Is this actually my life? I mean, these are actually my lives. How the heck did I get here?
March 12, 2008 2:48PM
By Cody Willard
Not a coincidence that YouTube’s making a bunch of news announcements and opening up much more of its inner workings to developers on the day that NBC and the guys I work for at Fox roll out Hulu.com.
Hulu’s not supposed to compete with YouTube per se, though YouTube does want to compete with Hulu. Yes, even though YouTube is by far the most dominant video site on the net, it’s the one who wants to compete with Hulu here.
Hulu’s the first shot serious mainstream attempt at delivering a decent library of decent quality content for free over the Internet to the consumer.
Think there might be a market for that? Uh, yeah.
Google and Apple are still very much the best conduits. The content owners like News Corp and GE’s NBCU are the best content plays — content is king!. And yes, the cable companies are still the best shorts as their cable broadcast conduit can’t compete with “Freely pulled over the Internet”.
PS. We do talk about this on Happy Hour all the time, btw. And of course you can search this site or TheStreet.com or the Financial Times and read hundreds of thousands of words or analysis and predictions and what not that I’ve written about this Internet Video Revolution for the last five or seven years or so.
March 10, 2008 6:54AM
By Cody Willard
I didn’t see the first season of Lost until after James Altucher had convinced me it was the “perhaps the greatest television program ever” and I went on the DVD buying binge to make up for lost video ownership years.
So I watched a good half of the first season during what started out as a three day weekend of endless work, sorta in the background until I found myself glued to the 109″ projector in my office. As the series bounced back and forth from the perspective of each character, both from before and after they’d found themselves plane crashed on this island, I think I might have watched about 9 episodes in row without barely leaving the room.
By the time I’d finished the last episode of the first season, the second season was well underway. So I started downloading episodes on iTunes, since my G5 at my office was also hooked up the 109″ projector. Though the difference in quality between the standard DVD and the iTunes episodes was marked, the quality of the content and the story itself was so good, I blew through most of the second season over just a few more weekends.
Then I think I started watching the third season on my personal MacBookPro. But I forgot it at the office one night and I wanted to watch get my Lost fix on, so I downloaded a couple episodes to my iMac at my apartment.
And then I watched a few episodes on my iPhone on that mostly disastrous trip to Italy (though in this digital age, I did just get “friended” by the Italian girl on Facebook, btw). But as I mention in this month’s newsletter, I’ve run out of storage capacity on all my computers lately, and since I’d rather delete the $1.99 episodes of Lost than “priceless” personal photos, videos, songs, etc, I deleted all those shows.
And now I have no idea where to start again. I don’t want to read those descriptions on iTunes because they usually ruin the first 40% of the episode. And frankly, it’s been so darn long since I last watched Lost I can’t remember where the story stopped anyway.
I often expound on the virtues of the Internet Video Revolution, including how sweet it is for ABC et al to have gotten me on board with Lost even though I’ve never actually seen the show broadcast on ABC to a television set.
But, man, do we need more storage more cheaply and do we need it now (again, as noted in this month’s newsletter and often on Happy Hour, that means stick with Seagate and Western Digital and perhaps nowadays with Sandisk again too) as underscored above.
And while it’s really nice that my iPod and iTunes now ask me if I’d like to download the purchased songs from my iMac to my MacBookPro’s and vice versa when I sync it back and forth from one to the other, I’d really like to just have some sort of easy storage and organization of my commercial video content.
Best publicly-traded plays on organized commercial video content? Google and Apple still, of course silly. This is part of the vision of my RevolutioNetwork too.
Wish we’d get us there already. I’m losing it by being Lost without my Lost. And, please don’t tell me what’s happening on Lost right now!
Btw, I’ll be sitting down with Mike Workman, the CEO of Pillar Data, on Happy Hour tonight, and we’ll certainly be talking about the data storage aspect of this.
February 27, 2008 9:56AM
By Cody Willard
I’ve been a fan of Whoopi since my old friend Neil got his first break in Clara’s Heart after being discovered at an acting camp in Las Cruces.
But I’ve never seen more than maybe 30 seconds at a time of The View. With Whoopi booked for the show tonight, I’m watching this show for the first time. Strange job, I have, in that I never would have pictured growing up in Ruidoso or playing hoops at UNM or working at Oppenheimer that watching a women’s day time talk show would be “work”. I’m getting paid for watching this?
I’ve definitely become a student of talk show TV in the last few months, and this The View show you can see, really has put it together, with amazing guests, lots of production…
Happy Hour’s Quick Shots, one of my favorite segments, sure takes some theme from the Hot Topics segment on The View, eh?
Whoopi’s asking Sheri Shephard just now, “Who’s your brother in law…Fred Sanford?” That got me laughing out loud.
I used to poke fun at the permabears and the mainstream media for constantly grabbing any negative datapoint and doing their best Fred, “Oh, this is the big one. I’m coming to join ya’ Elizabeth” proclamations of economic doom.
Problem is that with all these bailouts and bubbles that we’re living through right now really are going to bring a big one some day.
But I am thinking spring of 2008 is probably going to be as okay as Fred was during that long, glorious run of Sanford & Son.
