“Drawn Together,” a new show on Comedy Central, describes itself as “TV’s First Animated Reality Show.” So you can pretty much figure out what the premise is from there. The characters, forced to live together, are a Spongebob Squarepants type, a Betty Boop type, a Disney type, a quest video game type, a Pokemon type, a Superman type and a black lesbian dominatrix (I’m not sure what type she’s supposed to be, but I agree that all shows, both animated and not, should add a black lesbian dominatrix regardless).

The Spongebob and Disney characters.

I’ve seen two episodes so far, the first episode and the fourth. The first I quite liked, with Betty Boop confessing her compulsion to slice her upper thigh with a razor and the Disney character showing her unintentional racism and hidden lesbian desires. It’s good stuff. The fourth episode, however, I actually walked away from. I never thought a show could go too far for me, but the fourth episode of Drawn Together I actually wandered away from. My wife, however, loved both and I’ll be downloading episodes 2 and 3 as soon as I get out of my inlaws house.

The Pokemon character and the “Internet Download.”

Having had a little time to digest the spate of new shows that arrive with what our friends call the ‘fall season’ I thought I might give them an old run down on the Bluegerm’s no-one gives a fuck but I’m doing it anyway what’s hot and what’s not TV listing.

First up is Deadwood. This was the most heralded of the new shows and coming from HBO I was anticipating sopranos in the wild-west sort of effort. Which seems to be what they were going for and though all the individual elements – the acting, sets etc.- are excellent it seems to add up less than the sum of its parts. The characters, apart from the odd hooker with a heart of tinsel, are all amoral, out for themselves sons of bitches which makes difficult to care what happens to them. The one or two good guys are dullards who lack the charisma to inspire you to root for them. The shows is seasoned with much swearing and ‘cussing,’ everyone’s a cocksucker, which normally I’m all in favour of but you get the feeling that every time a line or a scene in the script is looking a bit flat they just drop a few more in to liven things up. May well improve if you stick with because I got disenchanted after a few episodes and gave up.

Next Battlestar Galactica. A remake of a show I have fond but rather vague memories of. Humanity gets its ass kicked by the Androids it first created and then had banished, in a surprise attack. The surviving couple of hundred thousand humans go on the run in search of the mythical lost colony ‘Earth.’ Naturally rich in allegorical possibilities –creating cold blooded machines who can kill without conscience for convenience who come back and bite you on the ass, Al Qeueda anyone? – this show knocks the spots off the tired Star Trek franchise to become the first real contender for the title of the great sci-fi show of this decade. It becomes the first TV show to really harness the free reign to the imagination that CGI technology brings. Everything is on a massive scale, the ships, the sets, the battles but it’s the level of detail in the story and characterization that carries it off. A must see.

Wonderfalls is a comedy drama set in Niagara Falls featuring a girl leading an apathetic, slacker lifestyle – living in a trailer, working in a souvenir shop – until, wait for it- the souvenirs start talking to her. If she doesn’t do what they say bad things happen to the people around her, if she does bad things also happen but they turn out to have unexpectedly good consequences. Delightfully weird and offbeat it is so sublime at times I’m beginning to suspect a hand of genius is involved. The show is a grower and having seen it for the third time last night I was struck by the thought that no show I like this much could possibly survive. Sure enough I discovered today it was cancelled by Fox after four episodes, presumably for engaging in the twin evils of subtlety and intelligence. It’s showing in Ireland on TV3 at eight on Thursdays.

And finally Arrested Development is a sitcom about a family who have never had to grow up due to their father wealth until the father is incarcerated and they have to begin to fend for themselves. The eldest son attempts to assume the role of father figure and get his siblings to start taking responsibility for their lives. The monstrously selfish, deeply silly family wholeheartedly resist his efforts and simply transfer their mooching tendencies onto him. Narrated by an ‘all seeing I’ it follows the family shambolic attempts to get it together with a slight sneer that seems to glory in the absurdity and futility of ‘getting a life.’

From last night at the bar….

What’s black and blue and sucks my dick?

My 8 year old son.

My new hero

A few years ago, while amassing the 65gb of mp3s I now possess, I was a huge fan of the massive winamp playlist. You know the one. It’s irresistable to make one of these - a playlist with say, hundreds or even thousands of songs within it.

My thing was “mood.” I’d try to make massive playlists that matched a certain mood I’d want to experience. So playlists called “mellow”, “angry,” and “fun” began developing. While exclusively listening to music this way, I wondered idly about whether mp3 was a signifier of the death of the album. Back in the days of the LP, the 8 track, the cassette, and the CD, the only way to mix and match music was to create mix tapes or to use 6 disc CD changers. Otherwise, you were left with hearing the songs in the order the original artist wanted you to hear them.

Now, of course, it’s much different. We can now hear CD quality music in any damn order we please, and even, if we want, become our own DJs, beatmatching and mixing wildly diverse material with home studio programs - as b00mb0x is already a testament to. Coincidentally, the recording industry itself was already becoming single obsessed, often paying no attention to their rich, back archive of albums and album oriented artists and instead gearing into being a business that was set up to sell 5-6 mega-pop star artists and their singles every year. The album these singles came packaged in was merely a wrapper for pretty pictures and some crap(ier) fluff songs that came in between the 2-3 singles.

What is interesting about the age of the mp3 download is that now, instead of having to work to break out of an album and artists tracklisting, you have to work to maintain it. The impulse of mp3 software is to mix and match. If you want an album, you are probably going to have to work a fair amount at organizing your mp3 collection to create the acutal albums themselves - and then teach your software to play it in the correct order every time and with ease. As this becomes more and more the way we all listen to music, the artistic death of the album does indeed become a likely possibility.

Personally, I thought I was happy about this turn of events. Which is why I’m surprised by how much I enjoy 1by1.

1by1 comes from a deceptively simply premise. It shows you, on the left side of the screen, a Windows Explorer type interface. Then, on the left, it lists all the mp3s in the folder you’ve clicked on. It’s not pretty, but it’s damn intuitive and easy. Here’s a screenshot:

As you can see… it’s not pretty. But if, like me, you’ve already organized your mp3 collection into folders by artist and then by album, 1by1 converts you into being an album freak again - because in 1by1, it’s easiest to listen to one artist at a time, and one album at a time.

Better still, 1by1 is one of the few players left that is not a resource hog. This thing doesn’t want to burn cds for you, it doesn’t want to rename your entire mp3 collection from the cddb, it doesn’t want to take your mother out to dinner - it simply wants to play your mp3s - 1 directory at a time. Minimum requirements? A 100mhz processor. If you don’t have a 100mhz processor then… I don’t understand how you’re reading this. Hadn’t they not invented the World Wide Web when people were using 486s?!

So nowadays, I’m relying on two players. The relatively resource light Winamp 2.85, which you can still get at oldversion, for when I want to do those cool, massive playlists, and 1by1 for when I want to simply… hear an album. I’m tending to use 1by1 a lot more. Let’s face it, individual artists, you know, real artists, not spoiled no talent bastards like that Simpson kid, spend a lot of time working on albums and figuring out the best way to deliver you an emotional and interesting experience. Your Winamp or iTunes “Shuffle” button does not do anywhere near as good a job.

Download 1by1