Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Death and the Piano | What 100 Random Japanese Peopl... »

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Department of Hideous Similes

posted by on May 9 at 11:05 AM

photo_320x240_city.jpg

I recently flew from Seattle to Florida and back on JetBlue, which means I was exposed to many hours of seat-back cable TV.

I saw many impressive things (I’d heard rumors that The Real World: Denver was composed entirely of alcoholic sex addicts, but holy shit!) but the thing that’s most stuck in my mind is a quote from City Confidential, A&E’s real-life mystery show devoted, in the episode I saw, to the murder of Mia Zapata.

Along with much lovely footage of the Comet Tavern and former Stranger/current Mercury news reporter Amy Jenniges, the episode featured this remarkable sentence, spoken by the narrator in voice-over:

“Finding Mia Zapata’s killer would prove to be as difficult as finding a needle in a mosh pit.”

I don’t know where to begin.

So I’ll start with the factual error: Finding a needle in a mosh pit—in early-’90s Seattle, at least—was not that hard.

Sigh.

RSS icon Comments

1


Is that some sort of heroin reference? Poor taste. Boo.

Posted by hey | May 9, 2007 11:13 AM
2

I love City Confidential, but it's hard to watch in the company of others due to its shameless employment of awful, awful similes and dunderheaded geographic generalizations. Georgia: Ice tea simile. Rhode Island: yacht club simile. LA: surfboard simile. And now, apparently, Seattle. Moshing.

Posted by sniggles | May 9, 2007 11:48 AM
3

Georgia is associated with iced tea? How about associating it with peaches or Scarlett O'Hara or insufferable humidity?

Posted by keshmeshi | May 9, 2007 12:32 PM
4

@3: Or Deliverance.

Posted by Sweeney Agonistes | May 9, 2007 12:50 PM
5

Deliverence was West Virginia.

I love the camp of City Confidential, I think they should take that aspect of it even further.

Posted by Dougsf | May 9, 2007 1:13 PM
6

I beg to differ.

James Dickey was a Georgia writer, and boy did he ever show off the very best of our state.

Posted by Sweeney Agonistes | May 9, 2007 1:22 PM
7

Ahhh... I stand corrected. THE FILM was shot in West Virginia, and assumed it also took place there.

Posted by Dougsf | May 9, 2007 2:57 PM
8

The film was actually made in northern Georgia, near the Chattahoochie? not sure of the spelling?

Posted by right turn ahead | May 9, 2007 7:44 PM
9

Listen people, you're killimg me here. WEST VIRGINIA IS FAMOUS FOR DELIVERNCE..OK? Why is that so? I don't know, it just is! Are the people of West Virginia so starved for landmarks they falsely brag about being home to raping banjo-ists? It sounds like that is the case.

Posted by Dougsf | May 10, 2007 1:43 PM
10

1. Deliverance is set along the Chattahoochie River in Northern Georgia. Where the AT runs through.
2.Weird. I also flew JetBlue this weekend and saw that same special on the missing girl.

Posted by southerner | May 10, 2007 2:16 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).