stock talk
i'm a 26 year-old guy whose financial planning rarely goes far beyond making sure i have enough money for beers on the weekend. i couldn't care less about the stock market.
and yet, in spite of this, my new favorite program is cnbc's "mad money", a nightly smorgasboard of market analysis and investment advice featuring closet speed freak and massive coronary candidate jim cramer (pictured here preparing to grab an imaginary wall street bull by its horns).
for me, it's all about the "lightning round", a hyperdrive segment where jim prowls around his small studio like a rabid dog and fields callers' buy-or-sell inquiries regarding specific stocks, punctuating many of his picks with canned sound bites and effects that he triggers on a soundboard bursting with cartoonishly-large red buttons (it should come as no surprise that he's also the host of a stock talk radio program). a generic nu-metal riff played on loop provides the soundtrack and multiple cameras bob and weave frantically to capture cramer as he paces back and forth maniacally, barking out his verdicts with frenzied, bloodshot-eyed gusto and lapping up coffee like it's going out of style.
the chaos is completely contrived, and that's exactly what strikes my funny bone. economics and the stock market are staid, white bread and dreadfully boring topics, and such fabricated intensity represents yet another instance in media where gen X attitude has been presumptuously misappropriated.
in other words, "mad money" is a conceptual train wreck worth tuning in to.
posted by jomilkman @ 7:35 AM
6 Comments:
Yeah, I just saw this guy on TV the other night. Freaky. I'd like to see him in a cage match with Suze Orman.
He had a good appearance on Steven Colbert's Report Friday night.
Actually he's even more manic backstage and off-air than he is onair. Chaotic yes, contrived not by a longshot. Believe it or not, people try to calm him down a bit for the show.
BTW- thanks for the BlogExplosion battle btw.
it sounds like you're speaking from first-hand experience. when have you had occasion to see him in person? just curious. i actually don't doubt that jim's a genuinely wild personality. i think the man himself is thoroughly watchable. i just don't think that attitude and bombast alone can invigorate or render hip such an inherently dull subject as the stock market; it's a silly, presumptuous premise that "mad money" would have us believe at first blush.
I work at CNBC (actually NBC News but based in Englewood Cliffs CNBC World Headquarters).
BOOYAH SKI-DADDY!
I just caught his live-audience episode the other night. It is pretty much indescribable -- I almost had a coronary watching it. Love that Jim.
'MON BACK!
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