| |
|
|
| Archives | Archives |
 |
Rotten Television (VH1) Johnny Rotten wants you to listen to him. He really, really wants you to listen to him. Desperately. So much so that when his little daily syndicated radio minute, "Rotten Day", fell through, a couple of years later, he's pimped out to VH1 with a half-hour show that wants to be half Michael Moore, half Tom Green. And it kinda works. When he's getting kicked off the Roseanne show, it's Tom Green with righteous indignation and a hidden camera that doesn't work well at all. But buying rock memorabilia from an auction, including a Sid Vicious "Death Note", and then blowing it up with a tank, is inspired teevee. As is taped auditions for a ficticious VJ spot on the show, saved by Johnny being incapable of dealing with a wacky, 49-year-old, vaguely foreign grandma. Other bits, like gushing over a hooker slash foreign pop star's "childlike honesty", and going off on people who wouldn't show up, expose the problem with Rotten TV, which is Johnny Rotten. Sure, he's saying all the right things about integrity and individuality and whatnot. Hell, most of the time, I agree with him. But there's this air of desperation to his monologues, the middle-aged punk who's still convinced that if people would just listen to him, Utopia would be around the corner, so why won't anybody listen to him! But showing the focus group tapes was a borderline hoot, I'll give him that much. |