Ellen Leventry: February 2009 Archives

So it's Sunday night around 10 p.m. and you're looking for something to watch because Dexter" and "True Blood" are on hiatus. I suggest you turn to the Travel Channel and check out "Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga."

I first fell in love with Mark and Olly during the first season of the "Living With the Tribe" series.  The series showed former British army captain/professional adventurer, Mark Anstice, and award-winning journalist, Oliver "Olly" Steeds, living with the Kombai of West Papua, a tribe so remote that it was discovered less than 30 years ago.

Watching the men ingratiate themselves into the community and learn about the ways of a community that hasn't changed much in 15,000 years was absolutely fascinating.  The show was full of drama as the duo tried to navigate tricky customs and it was also full of comedy as Olly's adoptive family labeled him "lazy" compared to Mark.

You may not have heard of British reality TV star Jade Goody, best known for her appearances on the UK Big Brother series, but she is now inspiring writers from Time Magazine to the New York Times to pick up their pens. The former dental assistant with a big mouth--and even bigger ambition--is dying and doing it rather publicly.

A poor man's Paris Hilton, someone who is famous for merely being famous, the 27-year-old daughter of drug addicts has been the beloved object of the UK media's derision and the British public's fascination.  Initially, the tabloids ridiculed her for having astounding gaps in her basic knowledge of Britain and its history, but then they took her to task for using racially offensive language while harassing Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, a fellow housemate on Celebrity Big Brother.

Hoping to shed her reputation of being a racist, Goody appeared on India's version of Big Brother, only to be told three days after filming that she had late-stage cervical cancer. Since then, Goody has continued to film a series of reality shows with Living TV.  Even though the shows began filming prior to her diagnosis, the shows now follow the progress of her cancer treatment.  Sadly, the self-made star was told the day before Valentine's Day that she had only weeks to live the day.

When I read last week on HuffingtonPost.com that Nancy Cartwright, a.k.a. the voice of Bart Simpson and devoted Scientologist, was making robocalls on behalf of a church event in the voice of everyone's favorite 10 year-old troublemaker, I was curious to see what response Twentieth Century Fox* would have.

Back in the early days of the Internet the company aggressively pursued fan sites that used images, videos, and audio clips, and I was curious to see how they would be dealing with one of their own using the beloved copyrighted character to promote an outside organization's event.

Audio of the call, which was posted on YouTube and featured on PerezHilton.com, TMZ.com, and many other celeb sites, was quickly pulled and replaced with a "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Twentieth Century Fox" message. Although the recording can still be found on other websites.

Cartwright, who is currently auditing on OT VII, invites fellow Scientologists to the Flag World Tour event at the Hollywood and Highland Center, sprinkling the message with Bartisms and punctuating the message with his famous laugh. Listening to the call is an odd experience as Cartwright's natural voice is so close to that of the Bart character's that it's hard to tell where one starts and the other begins. It's as if Mel Gibson had left you a voice mail promoting traditionalist Catholicism in the voice of Rocky from "Chicken Run." Just not right.