LURKING IN THESE SPECIALS: IDEAS FOR BETTER SPECIALS.Byline: David Kronke TV Critic Delegates and protesters of the Democratic National Convention might've found tonight's offerings on the Travel Channel handy a couple of weeks ago. Tonight, they'll just be able to watch what they've missed. Presented under the umbrella title An umbrella title is a formal or informal name connecting a number of individual items with a common theme.[1] It is most often used in lieu of listing separately the separate components or providing a convenient "label" for a collection of disciplines. of ``Travel Channel Secrets,'' ``L.A. Scandals'' and ``Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. - Life on the Edge'' purport to present less prominent sides of our city. ``Life on the Edge'' could use more edge, but offers some intriguing glimpses into the city, while the only thing scandalous about ``Scandals'' is how lame it is. ``Life on the Edge'' offers the Bizarro-World tour of L.A., eschewing Hollywood Boulevard For uses other than the original street, see Hollywood Boulevard (disambiguation). Hollywood Boulevard is a boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, beginning at Sunset Boulevard in the east and running northwest to Vermont Avenue, where it straightens out and Rodeo Drive Rodeo Drive (IPA: /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/) generally refers to a famous three-block long stretch of boutiques and shops in Beverly Hills, California, United States, although the street stretches further north and south. in favor of Necromance, a shop where you can buy real human skeletons, and Skeletons in the Closet, the L.A. Coroner's now-popular gift shop. It stops at the beaches only long enough to take in an early-morning workout, called Optimum Boot Camp Software from Apple that enables an Intel x86-based Macintosh to host the Windows XP operating system. Boot Camp is used to divide the hard disk into Windows and Mac partitions, to install the necessary drivers and to create a dual boot environment. , run by a drill instructor, and to watch schools of tiny fish called grunion grunion: see silversides. grunion Edible Pacific fish (Leuresthes tenuis) found along the western coast of the U.S. In the warm months, it lays its eggs in beach sand during a full or new moon when the tide cycle is at its peak. mate in the sand. Visits to CalTrans and ATSAC ATSAC Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System , which try to keep the city's traffic in motion, are more enlightening than you might imagine. It's hard to imagine, though, that it takes such a high-tech system simply to get our cars moving in the beleaguered be·lea·guer tr.v. be·lea·guered, be·lea·guer·ing, be·lea·guers 1. To harass; beset: We are beleaguered by problems. 2. To surround with troops; besiege. spurts that they do (ATSAC, it's revealed, will trick up the city's stop lights and slow us all down in order to help buses behind schedule catch up). Hard to imagine, however, anyone outside the city would find these segments as fascinating as Angelenos will. Not everything on ``Life on the Edge'' is particularly obscure - The Magic Castle is a fairly legendary monument, and Wacko is just one of the novelty shops in the Los Feliz/Silver Lake area - but chances are good that no matter how long you've lived in L.A., there'll be something here you didn't know about. No such luck with ``L.A. Scandals,'' however, a cut-and-paste job A cut-and-paste job is a form of attack on a perceived opponent in some public controversy. It consists of selectively quoting the opponent's words, out of context, and/or in misleading juxtaposition to each other in order to leave the impression that the subject has said something that that retreads stories so embedded and rehashed in the area's history that most Angelenos could've knocked off this special, just working off the tops of our heads. Bugsy Siegel, William Mulholland's aqueduct, the Black Dahlia, Marilyn Monroe - they're all given cursory once-overs so bland it's hard to imagine any of these stories once seized our interest (the biggest shock: no O.J.). ``Chinatown'' is invoked (apparently, the documentarians are unaware that the story is fiction) as is former police chief William Parker, as we're given a tour of Parker Center that's fairly irrelevant to the subject at hand (second-biggest shock: no Rodney King). Making matters worse is the purplish prose emanating from the vaguely hard-boiled narrator's mouth: L.A., he tells us, is ``where a chrome-plated typewriter's chrome-plated tales become a writer's bread and butter.'' Monroe's crypt, we're told, holds more than her body: ``Sealed inside are the secrets of her death.'' Maybe they should stick this documentary in there, too, where no one can get hold of it. THE FACTS --The show: ``Los Angeles - Life on the Edge.'' --What: Travelogue through quirkier, less famous L.A. attractions. --Where: Travel Channel. --When: 10 tonight. --Our rating: Two and a half stars --The show: ``L.A. Scandals.'' --What: Self-explanatory documentary. --Where: Travel Channel. --When: 9 tonight. --Our rating: One and a half stars |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion