I love the first season of reality TV series. It’s after that where the good ones start their decline.

I can give you countless example of what happens, but here’s the formula:

Season One: Your introduction to a person or people in an unusual circumstance doing cool things that you wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. These episodes are very documentary in style. They stand back and let you view the action from a relatively close proximity. Their characters come out through normal actions. It’s fun.

Season Two: The producers realize that they have a hit, and that’s why they have a season two. So everything must be BIGGER and BETTER. So the producers stop the documentary nature of the series and start forcing the “stars” of the show into fish-out-of-water situations. Their reactions — whether of fright or of excitement — are captured and teased at every commercial break.

Suddenly, the situations are no longer real. The reactions are, but the people in the reality show would never be there without the reality show.

Season Three: Everything falls apart completely, as the “stars” of the reality show start to think of themselves as “stars.” They’ve seen their press. They’ve watched their episodes. They know the drill. Now, they overact and overemote. Everything is life-and-death. The once documentary nature of the show has drifted into complete dramedy, only missing a script by the barest of Hollywood technicalities.

See “Jon and Kate” for the prime example. We went from being amazed at their grocery gbills to watching them appear on Oprah to watching the paparazzi stalk them as Kate discusses her life as a celebrity to the camera. See “Cake Boss,” which went from making cakes for local people and small organizations to making cakes for the Army AND VISITING THE BASE TO FIRE WEAPONS along the way. See “The Real World,” which hasn’t been the same since the cast grew to expect to have jobs or to have their one big vacation or to wonder who they should kick out of the house for maximum drama. See “Survivor,” where players learned to play the game from previous seasons and now play the game more than the people. (This is almost forgivable. It is, ultimately, a game show. But, still, you can see the producers working harder and harder to come up with outrageous stunts, crazier personalities, and new twists in the game play.) See “Big Brother,” while you’re at it.

The competitive shows suffer from this to a slightly lesser degree, but it still holds. Look at “Dancing With The Stars” or even “So You Think You Can Dance.” SYTYCD has ditched its old stage for an overlarge glitzy neon-fest, while the judges rip the dancers apart whenever they fail to deliver a five star performance. It’s almost like nothing is good enough for them. Look at “DWTS” where they add bigger casts (still fitting in the same molds — football star? Old man? Olympic athlete? etc.) and push them even harder to the point where a new one is injured every week. They’re not just doing one dance every week now. They often do two, or an extra group number, or a faster Quick Step, etc.

Here’s what the second season of “Cake Boss” has taught me: Enjoy the first season of these reality shows. Then move on, because they’ll never be the same again

Back in the late 1970s, one town was preparing to dome itself over. Depending on your point of view, it was a great way to score some free money from HUD, or it was the Greenest and boldest plan of all time.

Either way: Only in Vermont. . .

One night in 1979 a group of its creative young city planners went to dinner and Mark Tigan, then the city’s 32-year-old director of community development and planning, decided that not enough attention was being paid to energy conservation. Then, in the way that only a few glasses of wine can facilitate brainstorming, someone said, half tongue-in-cheek, they should put a dome over the city.

The next morning it still seemed like a good idea — or, at least, not necessarily completely absurd.

Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge

Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs.

What do you do when you, an editor, are laid off? Why, you edit the pink slip! This is hilarious, with a picture included.

I’m not quite sure what to make of what happened here. Who set up who? Are those misbehaving kids in costume? Are those, er, “little people” actors? Were they told to act goofy and steal the scene?

If you believe it, it’s hilarious. I giggled out loud. What do you think? Are you more cynical than I?

Ewoks Go Nuts

The moonwalking part had me in tears.

• Man, Microsoft’s push on-line isn’t making them very much money, is it?

• Could be worse.  You could be a newspaper.

• What happens in an electric car pile-up? See for yourself.

• 10 recently discovered photos. Very historic.  Very cool. Includes Florence Nightengale as a young woman, Neil Armstrong’s face (while on the moon), Lincoln’s inaugurations, and more.

A couple of weeks late, yes, but a thought:

Will Chef Ramsay ever again hire someone whose hair would pass a health inspection?

Will Chef Ramsay ever pick the right winner?

Did they cut the budget this year?  Is that why the final two only got one hour of two?  Is that why they didn’t get to decorate their restaurant and bring in their family members to help?  Honestly, I didn’t miss that part too much.  It always seemed like false drama to me when something would go wrong during construction just at the end of the halfway point.

And will the producers ever have the guts to invite in contestants for their cooking abilities rather than their abilities to fit into a two dimensional caricature/archetype that they can exploit for drama?

Despite all of that, I can’t wait for next season.  Which prompts the final question:

When will Chef Ramsay run out of restaurants to staff?

Let’s see if I can sum this up quickly:

Net income increased 68% to $199 million in the third quarter, or $0.45 per diluted share, compared with net income of $118 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, in third quarter 2008.

That’s good.  There’s some adjustments made due to weaknesses of currency conversion, but the whole press release is good news for AMZ, my retailer of choice for as many things in my life as possible.  The Kindle must be doing very well for them.

I gave up waiting for Twitter to answer their help desk tickets.  So I started new, using @AugieShoots as my handle, borrowing from my photography blog name.  I’ve been on there a few days now and am getting in to the swing of things again.  Here’s a sampling of recent Tweets:

• A short list of NFL players charged with murder, or related crimes:  http://bit.ly/26fPE0
• @JAFlanagan – Baby kicking is the coolest, especially since it’s not the man’s stomach baby is kicking. :)
• Now that I’m back on Twitter, I need to decide if I’ll be judicious about blocking the spammer types, or just let it go and not waste time. [So far, I'm being all laissez faire.]
• @mikesterling ALF was always the first topic of discussion in Art Class on Tuesday mornings. But then that was sixth grade or so. Heh
• Doc says my daughter is developing normally. Too bad I’m falling apart.
• I’m getting 1 photo approved on iStockPhoto.com for every 4 I upload, I think, now. At this rate, I’ll have a portfolio there in a decade.
• Went to a Fall Festival type thing today and didn’t get any good nature shots. You have to try really hard to throw an unphotogenic event.

A couple weeks back, I applied to four different on-line microstock photographic websites. Two of the four denied my application, citing an abundance of the kind of work I was peddling. The other two accepted me.

One of those two is iStockPhoto, and this weekend they formally accepted my first picture submission. So, now, if you want to buy an image I created for use on your website or your company’s brochure or website or some such thing, you can get it for as low as $1 at iStockPhoto.

I don’t plan on retiring with this. The photographer, generally speaking, get a small percentage of each sale, and the successful ones are those who devote tons of time to stock photography and have thousands of images posted. I guess this is more of an egoboost thing for me, but if it nets me a few bucks to spend on a new hard drive to back up all my pics, it’ll be worth it. Even then, it’ll take months, if not years.

Wow:

Music publishers: iTunes not paying fair share

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all.

These groups even want compensation for iTunes’ 30-second song samples.

You play a thirty second clip to see if it’s the song you want to buy, and the music industry feels it’s owed money. How’s THAT for entitlement?

(Via DaringFireball)