Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts

Thursday, January 22, 2009

On How Being "Cool" is Just Not Cool

The last three blogs of mine have been kind of heavy, preachy and long. So here is one that is light, short but still preachy.

One of my favorite pastimes is watching videos on youtube. I discovered Goodness Gracious Me, some good music and most recently, the American Talk show host Craig Ferguson. I find Craig Ferguson spontaneous, warm, great with expressions. More importantly, his brand of comedy is markedly different from the usual galaxy which includes Letterman, Leno, Colbert, Kimmel and many others.

Anyway, I happened to see an interview of Paris Hilton by Craig.



Paris looks stunning, the flowing blond hair, the red frock-ish outfit, just gorgeous. However, I really got irritated by the way she spoke. Let me clarify one thing. One has heard and read a lot about Paris. But I think she has potential. For one, I do think she can look like a heiress when she puts the effort. And I have seen videos in which she has tried different things. (Not those, you pervs!) But this interview put me off. I strongly disapprove of this "umm... yeah... I umm.. well, yeah" kind of talk. The body language is put-off-ish. The giggle comes across as artificial and disingenuous. The school girl giggle, few people like it on school girls, but on a woman it is just not nice at all.

Writing is indecent exposure and I guess what I am about to say also reveals something about me. Well, what the heck. My favorite women characters in American sitcom (in order) are Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Elaine, Patricia Heaton's Debra and Cobie Smulder's Robin Scherbatsky. So, I looked at the video of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' interview with Craig.



She is a billionaire heiress too. But she starred in such a plain Jane role in Seinfeld and her bits for Saturday Night Live are also pretty good. Most importantly, since she is not being "cool", look at the folksiness, the ease with which Craig and Julia banter along. Must be the upbringing which makes all the difference.