Does wishing for the demise of a show set in my home town make me a bad person?  I hope not, because I was glad to read this:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — “The O.C.,” the once-hot teenage soap opera that saw its ratings plummet like a delinquent student’s grades, has been canceled.

Based in the affluent Orange County, California, city of Newport Beach, “The O.C.” caught fire in its first season, 2003-04, as the top-rated drama among advertiser-favored young adults and with a total audience of nearly 10 million.

“The O.C.” didn’t sustain its momentum, dropping to about 7 million weekly viewers during 2004-05 and then to fewer than 6 million last season. This year, returning in November after Fox wrapped its postseason baseball coverage, “The O.C.” has only drawn about 4 million viewers.

Somehow, the real Orange County became a magnet for producers of bad television over the past few years.  “The O.C.” scraped the bottom of the 90210-esque barrel from day one, yet somehow found enough of an audience that it spawned two Orange County-based reality shows:  The Real Housewives of Orange County and Laguna Beach.

I’ve seen all three shows, just out of curiosity.  There are definitely people who live that way, but they’re a relatively small number.  TV show fans do weird things sometimes; I wonder how many folks have moved here because of those shows, and what they think of the place after living here for a while.

The true reality of Orange County life goes down two seperate paths.  The high-life that everyone associates with O.C. is frequently a person with a $100,000 income living in an overpriced, rented apartment and driving a $150,000 car, leveraged to the hilt in order to finance an lifestyle they cannot afford.  That’s not going to last.

The other reality is comprised of ordinary people living normal, sensible lives.  I’d say that accounts for 95% of the county’s residents.

What you don’t see on TV is the sense of entrapment the real estate values place on homeowners here.  I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who say that they couldn’t move even if they wanted to because the high cost of real estate and the step up in tax basis on their home would make even a downward move unaffordable.  They’re wealthy on paper, but that’s it.  There are homeowners with multi-million dollar homes on Balboa Island who couldn’t even afford to pay the property tax on their place if it wasn’t for Proposition 13.  They’ve simply owned the place for 30 years and bought when it was affordable down there.

I suppose these nuances don’t make for good television, but I dislike the reality shows because there’s a segment of the population that expects and wants Orange County to be as vapid and shallow as what ends up on screen.  It’s perplexing.  When shows like “Dallas” were on the air, nobody thought it represented the real city of Dallas.  Of course, that was twenty years ago; the definition of “reality” has undergone some plastic surgery since then.  I hardly recognize it.

I like Orange County.  I just don’t like the way it’s portrayed to the world on these B-roll TV series.  The sooner they go, the better.  Let the glare of Hollywood’s reality craze warp someone else’s community for a change.

It’s not just a movie anymore.

Vaginal rejuvenation costs thousands of dollars and is done with a laser. It includes a variety of procedures, such as women getting their labia made smaller because it is uncomfortable for them to engage in physical activity or have intercourse, women getting their vaginal canal tightened as it was pre-baby delivery, and other women going one step further by getting their hymen (the gateway to the vaginal canal) tightened. This last procedure can, in a sense, make a woman a virgin again.

You’d think this would come from some scurrilous sex-related site, but alas it’s from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s “360″ show weblog.

I know this kind of thing is common in parts of the world where women who aren’t virgins (and sometimes, even if they are) get a free stoning in the town square.  But isn’t it ironic that, although this procedure is available in the U.S. for largely cosmetic reasons, we share this odd distinction with countries like Saudi Arabia?  They’d never consider botox.  But a hymenoplasty?  Get thee to a doctor, stat!

Cooper’s article was sort of humorous, but many of the comments it engendered were just plain sad.  Here’s one:

In 1983 I taught English at the Women’s branch of King Saud Univ., in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Being a virgin when one marries (and it is always an arranged marriage) is, in many cases, a literal matter of life and death for a young woman in that country, and parades of men, led by a new groom bearing proof in the form of bloody sheets after the wedding night, were de rigeur in outlying districts. This type of surgery was, if sub rosa, not unusual at that time in the country, even if a woman was a virgin but had lost her hymen via other means, so that there would be no doubt in the groom’s mind. The attitude toward virginity was summed up by a male student I discussed this with: “Would you rather buy a new car, or a used car?”

Nothing quite like a university student who is unable or unwilling to differentiate between a car and a human being.  The commenter was referencing events from nearly a quarter of a century ago, but I’d imagine it’s much the same there today.

Of course, if Saudi Arabia is a bit too far away for your taste, you may not have to travel that far.  Chad from Austin, TX writes:

There are still culturally rich places in America, like my birthplace in South Texas, where a woman’s virginity in the marriage bed is a source of honor for her family and groom; its absence had been grounds for annullment and disowning. I’ve seen billboards for vaginal rejuvination there for at least 3 years.

Some of the most relaxing moments of the San Carlos dive trip were had during surface intervals on the boat. A ’surface interval’ is a period of time spent on the surface in between dives. This time allows the body to naturally rid itself of excess nitrogen accumulated while breathing compressed air at depth. Without an appropriate surface interval, a diver runs the risk of having this nitrogen come out of solution in the blood and form bubbles which can cause pain, vomiting, paralysis, and even death.

Anyway, our surface intervals were typically in the 60-90 minute range. We’d use the time to eat lunch, fish, and just relax. Well one day, David put the new Foo Fighters CD, In Your Honor, in the boat’s CD player. It’s a two disc set — one hard rock, one acoustic. The acoustic side was just mellow enough to fit perfectly with that quiet contemplative time out on the water. I really loved it and made a mental note to pick up the album once we got back to the States.

I finally got around to it today, and the first thing I did was rip it to my hard drive so Retrospect could back it up tonight along with the rest of my data. Few people back up CDs for disaster recover purposes, but who among us hasn’t scratched a CD just enough to turn it into a $14.99 coaster? I also use the local copy to free myself from having to schlep the CD back and forth between the car and house.

So much for simple plans. I discovered that Sony uses a copy protection scheme on the album which prevents the listener from burning an archival copy of the CD. The technology, from Sunncomm International, is called MediaMax. It stops rippers (I tried Winamp, Easy Media Creator, Nero, and Media Player) from doing the deed. Some may appear to rip the tracks, but when you listen to them they skip incessantly.

Got an iPod or use iTunes? Then you’re out of luck, too. As Sunncomm explains it, “Apple’s proprietary technology doesn’t support secure music formats other than their own, and therefore the secure music file formats on this disc can’t be directly imported into iTunes or iPods.” You’re essentially limited to using Windows Media Player or another ’secure’ player that MediaMax can get its claws into.

Needless to say, this stinks. Thankfully, J. Alex Halderman at Princeton University has dissected the MediaMax copy protection system and found an easy way around it.

Basically, MediaMax works by installing a proprietary driver as soon as the CD is inserted. This driver not only prevents ripping of protected content, but won’t even allow said content to be played unless the appropriate licenses are present. So disabling the copy protection is as simple as a) disabling the MediaMax driver, and b) ensuring the Windows auto-play functionality doesn’t have a chance to reinstall it.

For the nitty gritty, check out Halderman’s site. The instructions were stone simply and only took me 30 seconds to accomplish. Since then, I’ve been able to rip, archive, and play the Foo Fighters CD as though the copy protection scheme never existed. Because as far as my computer is concerned, it never did.

To the best of my knowledge, circumventing MediaMax neither immoral or illegal. I’m simply making an archival copy for my own use, and not doing anything I could’t do by simply carrying the CD around with me wherever I go. Reverse engineering the MediaMax software is prohibited by the license agreement, but then, I never agreed to it. And even if I had, I’m not reverse engineering anything. I’m simply removing a driver from my system — something I’d want to do anyway. Windows gets so cluttered up with needless software that it slows boot up times and consumes precious memory. Efficiency and security both dictate that any services not absolutely required for operation be disabled or downright removed from Windows.

If I’d known this copy protection junk was on the album, I never would have bought it in the first place. I love the music, but at the end of the day my money went to support — and therefore encourage — Sony’s adoption of intrusive software which prevents me from using music I paid for in ways which are completely legal.

Hey, if a random professor can invent a holiday (Kwanzaa), why not Jerry Stiller?

Many real people are holding parties celebrating Festivus, a holiday most believe was invented on an episode of “Seinfeld” first broadcast the week before Christmas in 1997.

“More and more people are familiar with what Festivus is, and it’s growing,” said Jennifer Galdes, a Chicago restaurant publicist who organized her first Festivus party three years ago. “This year many more people, when they got the invite, responded with, `Will there be an airing of the grievances and feats of strength?’ ”

Those two rituals — accusing others of being a disappointment and wrestling — are traditions of Festivus as explained on the show by the character Frank Costanza. On that episode he tells Kramer that he invented the holiday when his children were young and he found himself in a department store tug of war with another Christmas shopper over a doll. “I realized there had to be a better way,” Frank says.

So he coined the slogan “A Festivus for the rest of us” and formulated the other rules: the holiday occurs on Dec. 23, features a bare aluminum pole instead of a tree and does not end until the head of the family is wrestled to the floor and pinned.

The actual inventor of Festivus is Dan O’Keefe, 76, whose son Daniel, a writer on “Seinfeld,” appropriated a family tradition for the episode. The elder Mr. O’Keefe was stunned to hear that the holiday, which he minted in 1966, is catching on. “Have we accidentally invented a cult?” he wondered.

Maybe.

More like ‘definitely’. Somewhere out there, the real Frank Costanza lives. And now we know his name.

“Seinfeld” continues to amaze me. Can you think of any other television program that has been responsible for the establishment of a new holiday? It cracks me up that Festivus predates the show.

In fact, that’s what was so perfect about “Seinfeld”. It’s life imitating art imitating life. Cosmo Kramer is based very closely on Kenny Kramer, a real guy. George is Larry David. Jerry is himself. Even the soup nazi and the festivus holiday were based on real live things. The genius of “Seinfeld” is that the situations they came up with every week were so insane that they just had to be true.

Gold, Jerry. Gold!

Leave it to Seinfeld to break new ground by inducting a sitcom joke into the Smithsonian.

The outlandishly unfashionable shirt worn by Jerry Seinfeld on his hit TV show went on display Friday at the Smithsonian, alongside Kermit the Frog, Archie Bunker’s chair and Dorothy’s magic slippers from “The Wizard of Oz.”

At the end of its nine-season run, “Seinfeld” — the “show about nothing” — left lots of well-loved lines but few tangible relics suitable for enshrinement in the National Museum of American History.

Thus, The Puffy Shirt, which appeared briefly in a single episode. What makes that bit of wardrobe so memorable is that it serves as an icon, not only of “Seinfeld” but American popular culture.

The show’s been off the air for six years and yet its power — much like the lingering scent of a stinky valet — only seems to grow. Part of the current resurgence in Seinfeld can be credited to savvy marketing. After all, the first three seasons are to be released on DVD in just a few days.

But with the astronomical syndication fees, the Smithsonian, the success of Curb Your Enthusiasm ( another “show about nothing”), and the depth with which Seinfeld has been ingrained into popular culture, it’s clear that there’s still a large following for the show.

Speaking of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is the real genius behind all this. Witness the post-Seinfeld careers of the cast. Despite new projects from everyone except Jerry (who prefers stand-up), the only one who’s been able to recapture the magic and success of Seinfeld is Larry David. In fact, his HBO show is probably what Seinfeld would have looked like if it hadn’t been on network television and saddled with all the attendant restrictions on language and innuendo.

I’m glad Seinfeld was on NBC, though. There’s something about the warped creativity David used to push the envelope that made the show what it was. On HBO, there are no such restrictions, and as a result Larry David goes hog wild. Curb Your Enthusiasm is still brilliant, risky, and groundbreaking, yet somehow always remains in the shadow of its predecessor.

I’m sure Charmaine Simmons, the costumer who created the puffy shirt, has designed some beautiful clothing in her career. Yet the one thing she’ll be remembered for is a god-awful looking joke of a shirt. A very Seinfeld-esque irony, don’t you think?

Well, it’s official. God has forsaken the civilized world. I know this because I just saw the first Christmas decoration of the 2004 season in a store.

On July 7th.

To be fair, it was an online store. Specifically Hallmark.com’s free e-card section. But if it’s being done online today, you know it’s only a matter of time before early July becomes the accepted start date for holiday merchandising in the malls.

You know the little miniature advertisement you have to watch while your e-card “loads”? This was an ad encouraging the viewer to be the first to get a look at the highly coveted, must-have, don’t-care-that-Christmas-is-as-far-away-as-it-ever-gets freaking keepsake ornaments. The Hallmark marketing guru who ok’d this ad probably never considered how it would raise my blood pressure by 50 points, but there it is.

Feh. Perhaps I’m overreacting. After all, there are only 168 shopping days left until Christmas…

I’m officially ready to cast my vote for the world’s most annoying person.

It’s Matthew Lesko.

No one else even comes close. He is living proof that you can get rich by annoying people. (If you ask, he’d probably tell you there’s a government grant available for it, too). His voice is annoying. That idiot suit with all the question marks all over it is annoying. His mannerisms, his products, even his web site is annoying.

As far as I’m concerned, Janet Jackson can do whatever she wants on TV. Just get rid of Matthew Lesko. I’d rather watch a marathon of Britney Spears videos and Homeboys in Outer Space reruns than be subjected to one of his infomercials. Ugh.

A new radio network with a liberal slant called Air America hit the airwaves today. It’s getting a lot of press — as it should. I wish them all the best. Their marquee host thus far is Al Franken. Not exactly my cup of tea politically, but Al’s certainly funny guy. He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and I guess we’ll see if people really like him.

The most puzzling aspect of this network is the name. Air America was a covert “airline” owned and operated by the CIA in Vietnam. It supported most of their operations there and was so secret that even some of the employees didn’t know who they were working for. John Deakin, a former Air America pilot, has written a bit about flying for “The Company”.

I’m not sure why a liberal talk radio network would settle on this name, but I’d bet it’s intentional. Even the Air America Radio logo looks like something the CIA would have come up with.

I do believe Rich is onto something with his article on “elite speak”.

One undesirable side effect of technology’s march has been the proliferation of abysmal spelling and grammar. We all spend a lot of time at a keyboard dealing with email, instant messages, and other forms of the written word. So it’s tempting to nix things like capital letters, punctuation, or coherent sentance structure to save time. Unfortunate, but understandable.

What I don’t get are things like “elite speak”. It’s not humorous or creative. It conveys no sense of intelligence, education, or wit. For lack of a better word, it’s pointless to a fault.

Thankfully, most people’s dalliances toward elite speak are nothing more than laziness. My own pet peeve is “e.e. cummings disease”–all lowercase letters. It’s surely a sign of advancing age that I’m really starting to respect those who craft the English language, not so much for their talent but simply for making the effort.

Perhaps that’s what it’s all about–the effort.

How ironic that the easier it gets to edit what we write, the less we actually do so. Think about it. It has never been simpler to correct a typo or revisit a poorly phrased sentance. No correction fluid, stuck keys, or worn out ribbon. No need to retype an entire page just to insert a paragraph. Computers will check our spelling, examine our grammar and even format a page automatically. Yet more and more we just let it slide.

“Elite speak” and its ilk only strengthen my resolve to avoid reinforcing the lowest common denominator when I write.

My pal Rich Manning has some serious concerns about who is–and isn’t–being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After looking at this year’s list of honorees (George Harrison, ZZ Top, Prince, Jackson Browne, and Bob Seger), your humble host joins him in weeping for the future.

I hate to bring up the obvious, but shouldn’t there be a “freak factor” limit for inductees? For example, even if Michael Jackson were the undisputed hands-down greatest musician of all time, should he be inducted if he’s convicted of molesting 50 children?

What would happen to the list of eligible artists if some common sense were injected into the process of selecting inductees? Let’s take a look.

In Prince’s case, he would fall victim to the “your name must be pronounceable without using a complex series of clicks and whistles” requirement. Any artist whose name cannot be uttered without mastering the conjugation of verbs in Esperanto should not be in the Hall of Fame until they’ve bought the world a Coke–and a set of Hooked on Phonics tapes.

Both Prince and Jackson would be eliminated from consideration by virtue of the “cannot have tried to change your skin color from black to white” rule.

And can I get an “amen” on some limit to plastic surgery? The artist being inducted to the Hall of Fame should at least bear a slight resemblance to the person who recorded the music. If you’ve intentionally turned yourself into the Elephant Man or obliterated any clues as to your gender, you’re out. See ya, Jacko.

Of course, this sort of genuine-draft-cold-filtering process could get ugly. The Hall of Fame shouldn’t be burdened with such politically explosive decisions. Therefore, prudence dictates that they let me make the call. If I hate the artist in question, they’re out (see ya Jacko, redux). If I like them, they might have a chance (again sayeth the Lord: see ya, Jacko).

“It’s gold, Jerry. Gold!”

Seger, Browne, and certainly George Harrison are ok. But ZZ Top? Please. If it was my call, they’d be out on their banjo strumming butts. They belong in the Confederate Moonshine Drinkers Hall of Fame, not the Rock Hall. Anyone who hasn’t shaved since Nixon was in China doesn’t need to be in the Hall of Fame. What they need is to undergo a “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” makeover by the Fab 5.

Perhaps the real problem is that the Hall of Fame is like Movieland Wax Museum, only less relevant. And it doesn’t even have an integrated Starbucks coffee shop like Movieland. Let’s face it, wax gets a lot more interesting when you add coffee to the mix. If only it was that easy to fix the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…