BuzzSugar

Stop One Show: The Results!

BuzzSugar — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:02:06 PDT

Three weeks ago, I launched BuzzSugar's first Stop One Show poll, which gave all of you a chance to vote on which show you'd most like to kick off the air to make room for something better. After more than 1,600 votes, it doesn't look like anything will catch up to the current leader. So I'm calling an end to the poll and declaring a winner - er, loser? - of the 2007 Stop One Show contest: "CSI: Miami"!

The silliest of all the "CSI" shows pulled ahead late in the second week of the poll and never looked back. I'm not sure what sparked the sudden hatred of Horatio Caine and his crew, but whatever the reason, this dubious honor is certainly well-deserved.

"CSI: Miami" wasn't a sure winner this whole time, though. "Ghost Whisperer" sprung out to an early lead and held it until "The War at Home" haters arrived. "War" stayed in front for a while, until "CSI: Miami" surged ahead. Several other shows were never far behind, though, so to read more about the results and watch a truly amazing clip from our "winner,"

ABC's "George Lopez" was never far out of the lead, but people didn't hate it quite enough; it finished third, barely ahead of "Ghost Whisperer." "ER" had a surprising charge, finishing fifth, with a huge gap between it and the sixth-place finisher, "American Dad." The least-hated show on my list? "Law & Order," followed by "Medium" and "My Name is Earl."

About that list. Someone pointed out to me that I didn't mention any CW shows. I have to admit that's not because I love all CW programming so much that I think it should stay on the air; it's because I don't watch enough of the shows to have a sense of which are the worst. Interestingly, there were a couple of write-in votes for "Veronica Mars" - one of the winners of the actual Save One Show poll.

A lot of people also suggested that I should have included reality shows, because even the worst show on my list is better than another terrible reality program. While I agree, I stuck to scripted shows because networks aren't choosing between renewing, say, "Survivor" and "How I Met Your Mother." Reality shows are cheap, and NBC, in particular, has said it plans to produce more of them to save money. So the choice is really between shows like "Medium" and "Crossing Jordan" and "Law & Order" and "Friday Night Lights" - at least one of which NBC is likely to cancel before fall.

While this poll was all in good fun, I did promise to write about the winner with the scorn and vitriol it deserves. So, "CSI: Miami," I've got my eye on you. To start, here's a wonderful - if borderline unwatchable - video of David Caruso's "greatest" "hits" (thanks to GiggleSugar for the tip). Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of CBS

Rewind: This Week's Buzz

BuzzSugar — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:37:20 PDT

If you could recast Ferris Bueller's Day Off with new actors, who would you pick?
This week, I really enjoyed Bjork's new song "Earth Invaders" and Bright Eyes' new album.
Well, I don't know about "genius," exactly, but it's shear something. Also, "Notes From the Underbelly" got to an underwhelming start. "Underbelly" is an icky word, don't you think?.
The trailer for Superbad, starring "Arrested Development"'s Michael Cera, looks so good, while Adam Brody is the only good-looking thing In the Land of Women.
If you could vote one of these scripted shows off the air, which would you vote for?
If you're interested in seeing one of the many thrillers this weekend, Disturbia is good, First Snow is chilling, and Perfect Stranger is a failure.
Check out Al Gore's impressive musical lineup for his Live Earth concert.
The "Friday Night Lights" season finale had me in tears this week. And then I discovered that they'd filmed two different halftime speeches! Sigh. I'll miss you, Panthers.

Which Show Would You Stop?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:30:57 PDT

Read my breakdown and then tell me: Which one show would you most like to kick off the air?

Law & Order

5%(88)

War at Home

15%(247)

My Name is Earl

6%(96)

American Dad

8%(137)

Ghost Whisperer

12%(199)

CSI: Miami

16%(266)

George Lopez

12%(201)

Medium

6%(92)

Prison Break

8%(128)

12%(190)

Total votes: 1,644

Stop One Show!

BuzzSugar — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:29:54 PDT

It's the time of year when the networks start plotting their schedules for next season, checking out new pilots and deciding what shows to bring back. It's always a frustrating time for me, as I wonder why so many terrible shows make it back year after year.

At the end of the week, we'll learn the winner of Kristin Veitch's annual Save One Show campaign, which will help boost the winning show's chances of renewal. Meanwhile, I'm starting a poll of my own: the Stop One Show contest.

If you could pull one show from the air to make room for a quality series, which would it be? Unlike Kristin, I don't have the ear of the networks, so I can't promise that your vote will do anything to get the winner (loser?) kicked off the air. But I do promise to write about the show with all the ire and vitriol it deserves.

I've stocked the poll with some of my least-faves, limiting the candidates to scripted series only; I don't think I could possibly choose just one reality series to cancel. And I'm sticking with the broadcast networks' primetime shows; sorry, but "Pimp My Ride" and "Maury" don't count. Obviously, this is all in good fun, so if I've listed your favorite show among the candidates, please don't take it personally. You can vote here, but first you can check out the candidates if you

"ER": The show is just a shadow of what it was in the Carter/Greene/Ross/Susan years. After 13 seasons, all of the original main characters have moved on; I say the show should follow suit.

"American Dad": I'm pretty tolerant of Fox's Sunday animated lineup, but I really don't understand why you would watch this when you could put on "Family Guy" instead?

"Ghost Whisperer": I'm sorry, but "Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot" is not a good enough explanation.

"War at Home": This show is a thorn in my side. It causes me physical pain every time I hear Michael Rapaport snivel about how men and women are different and kids ruin your life. Make it stop!

"My Name is Earl": Sorry, Jason Lee fans. I know "Earl" has become a staple of NBC's Thursday lineup, but frankly, I think it's the weak link. NBC can definitely do better.

"CSI: Miami": It might be one of the best comedies on TV, except it's meant to be a drama.

"Medium": I like to see my Arquettes succeed, but this show is nowhere near as good as many of the dramas NBC is threatening to cancel.

"George Lopez": It's nothing personal, George. It's just that ABC has put more episodes of this show on the air in place of almost every show they've canceled this year, and I'm over it.

"Law & Order": Yes, it started one of television's biggest franchises, but the rotating cast of female counterparts lost me a while ago. Sam Waterson's eyebrows deserve more!

"Prison Break": This show has its fans. But it should have lasted for one season, and as TV Guide critic Matt Roush recently wrote, there's nowhere good for it to go now.

Beyoncé Returns the Stage In True Style, Grace, and Sequins

Katie Henry — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:23:00 PDT

Beyoncé took the stage at the Revel Resort & Casino in Atlantic City last night ready to put on a high energy show for the sold-out crowd of 5,500 fans. In her first major performance since giving birth to daughter Blue she pulled out all the stops and changed into four jaw-dropping costumes. Ralph & Russo created Beyoncé's couture looks, which are encrusted with more than 500,000 Swarovski crystals, and took into account her high-energy dance routines when coming up with the designs. For her part Beyoncé delivered a two-hour set of her hottest tracks. From one of her more recent hits, "Run the World" to "Single Ladies" and "Halo" she kept the crowd on their feet all night. Perhaps one of the most surprising moments of the night came at the end of the show when Beyoncé shared new personal photos and film clips, including an image of the singer holding baby Blue in her arms.

Hysteria Director Tanya Wexler Talks Vibrators, Faking It, and Duck Sex

Tara Block — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:15 PDT

Don't be shy . . . It's time to talk sex toys! And Hysteria director Tanya Wexler is writing us a prescription for pleasure. Tanya's film - what she calls "the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to" - is in limited release and stars Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Rupert Everett. When working on a romantic comedy that centers around the invention of the vibrator, you end up with some entertaining and embarrassing situations along the way, and lucky for us, Tanya spilled all the hilariously dirty details. From teaming up with the film's partner Jimmyjane for a drive-by vibrator drop-off to a certain female Oscar-winner to trying unsuccessfully to get ducks to shag on command, Tanya was bursting with great stories from working on this very unconventional film. And while Tanya isn't ashamed to discuss the sexy subject matter of her latest film with us, the mother of four and her partner of 21 years did have a tricky challenge telling her preteen kids what her movie was about. (She eventually gave them the script and let them figure it out themselves!) Check out our interview with the fun-loving director now, and we dare you not to have a girl crush on her by the end!

TrèsSugar: What were some of the challenges to getting a movie made about vibrators?
Tanya Wexler: Getting the script right was tricky because if you just make a movie about the invention of the vibrator, it's actually a really short movie: you go "bzz" and it's done. And we had a kind of light romantic comedy. I say I made the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to. But some people wanted it to be raunchy or some people wanted it to be more serious and about feminism. People project a lot onto this movie of what they want, because there isn't a lot out there about vibrators and women's pleasure, and we still don't really deal with that topic very well, or we're overly antsy around it. And as a result, people have a lot of ideas of what the movie could and should be, and you can't please everyone. [laughs]

TS: Ha, good one.
TW: It's nonstop!

TS: Do you find sex toys inherently funny or something to be seriously celebrated?
TW: Yes!

TS: Both?
TW: Yes! Yes. I think they make me laugh, and I think that the inner kind of Beavis and Butt-head in all of us goes "[laugh]." You know, that inner 13-year-old, like, "Hahaha vibrator . . . " and yet they're awesome and fun.

TS: What shocked you the most when researching the movie?
TW: That ducks are the rapists of the bird world, and you'll see when you see the movie, because there's a little bit of questionable duck behavior - or awesome duck behavior - in the movie. It's totally a sidebar, but you cannot make ducks shag on command. I'm just saying.

TS: What about the whole history of hysteria being a medical condition?
TW: When I first heard the idea, I was like, "What do you mean it was invented in Victorian times?" I knew about hysteria, but the idea that the treatment was manual [British accent] massage deparaxism - which is what they called it - and, of course, the denial. The most shocking thing is the denial, that they didn't think it was sexual.

TS: Do you think they were really in denial?
TW: No, I don't think that some people were. My college roommate was with her high school boyfriend for two years and she had never had an orgasm. I think there's all kinds of denial, especially with women's sexuality. So the fact that there are young women today who haven't had an orgasm, whether self-induced - which is insane - or with a partner, then why wouldn't we think back then that women wouldn't know what orgasms were?

They would get a massage, and the doctor's saying, "Without a penis, this isn't sex, because sex is about procreation," so what is this? The best physical therapy you've ever had. So once you don't think of it as something other than what the doctor's supposed to do to cure your uncontrollable crying or uncontrollable laughter or whatever, then it's just an awesome muscle spasm. If you don't think women have their own inherent sexuality, then you're not thinking about it like that.

Keep reading for Tanya's thoughts on Fifty Shades and more!

8 Myths About Sex Differences

The Good Men Project — Fri, 25 May 2012 02:00:49 PDT

We're happy to present this story from one of our favorite sites, The Good Men Project. Today, Agustín Fuentes points out that when it comes to men and women, what "everyone knows" isn’t what science shows.

Everyone knows that men and women are really different. We think differently and act differently because we are wired differently. I mean look at our brains and genitals: they are just plain different. Right?

Wrong.

What if many of the things we assume about the biology of difference are not so different at all? What if it is not our “wiring” but the ways in which our bodies and minds develop and play out in society that makes us seem so unalike? Could it be that men and women are more similar than we think?

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Yes, women give birth and lactate and men do not. And yes, men are, on average, slightly larger than women and usually have greater upper body strength. There are these basic biological differences between the sexes and they are important . . . but why always focus on the differences and not the biological, and behavioral, similarities? Ahh, that would be because of gender.

Gender is a powerful reality; it is the perception and expectation of differences between males and females and it shapes both our bodies and our society. Gender differences are real and important, but they are not hard wired or even static. There is no biological or evolutionary mandate that only women really care for babies and show emotions, or that males are the best at economics and politics and prefer beers and skirt-chasing to domestic bliss. These are patterns of gender roles and expectations that shape the ways we look at our biology and behavior. They influence the way we expect the world to be. It is the strength of the societal myths about sex that fool us into thinking that men and women are so different by nature.

So let’s bust some of those myths.

Gender and sex are the same thing.

Sex and gender are interconnected, but not the same thing. Sex is a biological state that is measured via what chromosomes you have (XX or XY, usually) and aspects of your body and physiology. Gender includes the roles, expectations and perceptions that a given society has for the sexes. Most societies have two genders on a masculinity-femininity continuum. Some have more. We are born with a biological sex, but acquire gender. There is a ton of individual diversity within societies and sexes in regards to how sex and gender play out in behavior and personality.

There is an extensive body of data demonstrating this, but people interested only in specific differences between men and women choose to ignore it.

Male and female genitals are totally different.

Most people think that male and female genitals are about as different as can be: penis=male and vagina=female. But even this basic dichotomy is not quite correct: the genitals emerge from the same mass of embryonic tissue. For the first six weeks of life the tissue masses develop identically. At about 6-7 weeks, depending on whether the fetus has XX or XY chromosomes (usually), the tissues to start to differentiate. One part of the tissues begins to form the clitoris or penis and another forms the labia or scrotum. Another area begins to form into either the testes or the ovaries. This means that physiologically, male and female genitals are made of the same stuff and work in similar ways.

Male and female brains are different.

If there were really deep seated differences between male and female human behavior and biology they should show up in the brain. The genitals start in the same place and end up looking different, the brain does not. Our brains are pretty much the same. Male brains are a bit bigger than females’ (like their bodies) and females’ brains stop growing earlier than males (as with their bodies). However, whatever one may believe about other organs, in the case of healthy brains, size really does NOT matter one iota. There also might be a few differences in a small part of the brain called the straight gyrus (need more testing in this one). Other than these minor aspects there are no consistent and replicated reliable differences in male and female brains; it is a human brain . . . but how we use it is another matter.

Hormones make the difference.

Everyone thinks that males and females have different hormones . . . testosterone for men and estrogen for women. Nope, all the actual hormones in males and females are the same: there are no male-only or female-only hormones. Both men and women can get a flood of testosterone when they get into a fight or take part in an exhilarating sports match. Both men and women can get a flood of oxytocin and prolactin when they pick up a newborn baby. There can be differences in the levels, patterns, and impacts of some of these hormones in male and female bodies, but individual variation is often more important than the variation between the sexes.

Keep reading for the rest.

Nighttime Fasting: A New Way to Lose Weight?

Shape — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:09:52 PDT

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from Shape here on FitSugar. This week Shape turns to Cynthia Sass, a registered dietitian with master's degrees in both nutrition science and public health.

If you couldn’t let anything cross your lips from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m., but you were allowed to eat anything you wanted for eight hours a day and still lose weight, would you try it? That’s the apparent bottom line of a rat study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, which recently stirred up the weight loss pot.

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Scientists put groups of mice on different diet regimens for 100 days. One group of rodents ate healthy food while animals in two of the groups chowed down on high-fat, high-calorie feed. Half of the junk food eaters were allowed to munch whenever they wanted to while the others only had access to feed for the eight hours they were most active. The conclusion: even though they ate a fatty diet, the mice who were forced to fast for 16 hours were almost as lean as those who ate the healthy fare. Interestingly, the round the clock junk food eaters became obese and developed health problems, even though they consumed about the same amount of fat and calories as the time-restricted junk food fed mice.

See if a nutritionist thinks nighttime fasting works after the break!

Lil Links: Liz Lange Celebrates 10 Years at Target

Rebecca M Gruber — Tue, 22 May 2012 05:32:05 PDT

Molly Sims and Soleil Moon Frye celebrate Liz Lange's 10th anniversary at Target - Celebrity Baby Scoop
Gwyneth Paltrow's kids rock out at the Jay-Z/Kanye West concert - Celebrity Baby Blog
When motherhood is embarrassing - BabyCenter Blog
14 things to stop doing if you want to be a happy mom - The Stir
Time-tested tips for soothing crying babies - Parenting
Baby names inspired by TV shows - The Bump
Molly Sims opens up about lessons from her own mom - FitPregnancy
5 pizza toppings kids will devour - Yahoo! Shine
Tweets about life with kids that moms will love - Circle of Moms
10 money pitfalls for moms - LearnVest
What one mom misses most since having kids - HuffPost Parents
How to write a birth plan - Momtastic

Mad Men's 5 Maddest Moments: "Christmas Waltz"

Shannon Vestal — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:38:08 PDT

This week's Mad Men brings back a character we haven't seen in a while, Paul Kinsey, and gives us a look at a relationship between two characters - Joan and Don - who we don't often see interact (but wow, when they do, is it entertaining). Financial problems also start to make Lane Pryce sweat in a subplot that's obviously leading to something far more serious.

The Paul story line kind of feels like a filler-y diversion, but I still liked seeing the old character and getting to see a side of Harry Crane, who's been relegated to being made fun of by Don lately. There are big moments this week I want to discuss, though, so to get to it, just read more.