Hint: if you used the words pretentious, boring and irrelevant you are on the right track.
STEWART: If you’ve ever been at a party and got inadvertently locked in a conversation with someone you didn’t really know, who told meaningless self-involved stories with unfocused and unfunny payoffs, then you have met Martha Stewart. Fifteen minutes in and you want to fall forward into the dip. I admit it, I didn’t like her that much even before she was a felon. Telling me how to decoupage my mailbox didn’t seem like a major life priority. My subscription to the Martha magazine lapsed before it even started. But millions obviously disagreed then, and millions more may disagree now. Friend O Mine, more informed about this empty world than I ever was, tells me the first week ratings for her post-jail show are not terrible. All I know is that I watched three of them, each one worse and more deadly than the last. I gave up about three quarters of the way through the hour-long birthday salute to her 91-year-old mother who she calls Big Martha. Little Martha, it should be noted, seems scared and unsure in her mommy’s presence. Even her live studio audience, filled with Martha groupies I presume (Little Martha, not so much Big), wasn’t responding, and it seemed to me they had to artificially “sweeten” the applause track. The show is humorous the way your grandmother’s funeral might have its light moments, and warm and genuine like a Katrina speech by George Bush.RELIEF CONCERTS: New Orleans music, Cajun music, as I understand it, has a natural spirit and optimistic view of life
even in the most serious of circumstances. Why then were the two separate hour-long fund raisers for that region on the broadcast TV and cable networks turned into the most dreary and unimaginative experiences? Sure, the intent was good (so is Jerry Lewis’) but the results had virtually no feeling, no impact. Flat. The artists showed up, they performed or read poorly from cue cards, and they went home. Everything was slick and packaged and carefully produced and disconnected from any genuine emotion. And then there was the PBS concert over the weekend, a never ending poorly executed four hour tribute not so much to the dislocated people down south but to the egos of certain folks from Lincoln Center, to executives at the public broadcasting network, and to hosts who seemed to have a great need to deliver lengthy clichéd lectures about our moral obligations under these unfortunate circumstances. Aside from Mark O’Connor doing a beautiful violin riff on Amazing Grace, Robin Williams with a spirited, disciplined and funny few minutes (for once), and a cornet player whose name I missed, the performances were uninspired. I assume the audience in the theater stayed either because they were too embarrassed to get up and leave, or because their bodies were numb and they became immobilized, or because they trained for the ordeal by attending the new Martha Stewart Show.
EMMY AWARDS: Here’s what was good: Donald Trump in overalls singing Green Acres, and William Shatner and Frederica von Stade “singing” the unsingable theme from Star Trek. Here’s what seemed genuine: the response to Jennings, Brokaw and Rather. Here’s what was oddly stilted and slightly embarrassing: Letterman’s reading of the tribute to Johnny Carson, and the hosting of Degeneris throughout. Here’s what was terrible: everything else. I found myself almost longing for Martha Stewart.And now the new television season begins. Oh boy.
