By Jon Graef
Staff Writer

As I watch more and more episodes of "I'm From Rolling Stone" I realize something about MTV reality shows that perturbed me. It's that, as god-awful as shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" and "Maui Fever" and "Why Are You Goddamned Kids Watching A Show About Conversations That Are Being Had At Your High School Every Single Day Of The Week?" are, they are at-least conflict driven by nature. Granted, it's a totally asininely soap-opera-esque conflict, but it's a conflict all the same.

The core weakness with the show "I'm From Rolling Stone" is that there are no conflicts to the show's conflicts and no drama to the show's drama.

Episodes three and four are perfect examples of this lack of tension. In episode three: Russell, the bad boy juvie who is easily the most talented and accomplished of the all writers, decides to piss everyone off because of the fact that one of the editors told him that his piece on Nellie McKay needed revising.

In the immortal words of the philosopher Judd Nelson in his epic, seminal treatise On School Mandated Detention (err, rather, The Breakfast Club), B-O-O H-O-O. Though Russell revels that he has bi-polar disorder, he still comes across as a jackass who refuses to do his work, rather than someone who is struggling to be psychologically stable.

There are other minor conflicts in episode three as well. Peter's decision to cut back on the sauce whilst writing, for example, while Tika's (who competes frequently with Russell for the title of best writer on the show) quasi-sort-of-but-not-really nervous breakdown as she leaves her notebook containing her story about The Roots on the subway is the other.

It's one of the most contrived freak-outs I have ever seen on reality television. The piece on The Roots was supposed to be only 750 words, but on her webcam confession, she shows an entire workbook full of material for the article. Did she ask ?uestlove hard-hitting queries about his dental records? Did she interview somebody’s second cousin? Jesus, it's a magazine blurb, not a magnum opus the likes of which rival Moby Dick.

On top of all that, she manages to lose her notebook on the subway. Tika does all of that extra work and essentially takes a huge dump on it. I thought she was supposed to be one of the professional ones? But lo and behold, she turns in the article on time. Big fucking shocker.

Apparently, what had happened was that there was a Deus ex Machina, but since MTV producers decided that viewers wouldn't know what a Deus Ex Machina was even if they saw one, the show-runners all voted to edit it out of the show.

Watching these non-conflicts made me wonder who was at fault for the lack of drama on the show. Is it the fault of MTV for filming the action in a particular way? Is it the fault of Rolling Stone for not sending the young-uns on the right assignments? Is it the contestants themselves, for being boring? Or is it that the project itself is a bad idea for a TV show?

The answer to all of these questions is, of course, yes.

It's MTV's fault for shooting the live footage in the most boring and pedestrian of fashions. For the fourth episode, the lads and lasses are assigned to cover the Roskilde festival in Denmark. Though the festival boasts a lineup which includes Bob Dylan, Morrissey, Kanye West, and Roger Walters, we the viewers were lucky to get a 30-second clip of the artists in question (if that).

Instead, the majority of the live footage in the fourth episode consisted of reaction shots of the wannabe journalists watching the live music that was going on at the time. Because why on earth would we ever want to watch live music from a perspective that only a select few have when instead we could watch someone merely reacting to the music which is being played? I mean, it’s not like its music television or anything like that. God forbid we actually hear something resembling a melody.

The rest of the episode consists of most of the "characters" bumbling around and trying to find a story. Khristine is the most unbelievable out of the bunch because she just sits around the whole time complaining about how she can't get a story and then proceeds to doing nothing about it.

All the while, thousands of fans are listening to music made by hundreds of musicians, some of whom have had something interesting happen in their lives, presuming they achieved success and stardom in ways other than photosynthesis. Inadvertently, I have answered the question about whether or not Rolling Stone is at fault for not giving interesting assignments.

The Roskilde festival has been around for almost 30 years, maybe even more. Unless all of the attendants for all of the 30-plus years of the festival have been blind, deaf, and mute, (which itself would make for a terrific human interest piece) someone there has a story to tell and is waiting for someone to ask them about it.

So that leaves whether or not the contestants themselves are just boring or the project itself was a bad idea. My vote is for the project itself being a bad idea.

Music journalism is the sexless study of a sexy subject. The world of pop music can be a glamorous one, but you are there just to take notes about it. If you involve yourself in it, then you risk compromising your objectivity, or worse, you risk becoming the story itself. The lineup for "I'm From Rolling Stone" could have been filled with the world’s greatest, most award-winning journalists, but they would have to take a backseat to the action itself.

Or do they?

Becoming the story just might be the only way to report the story. At the very least, it's a good approach for a live review, which was the task for the third assignment for the writing contest. The problem was that the live review was supposed to be of a show that you had seen in the past month. At the time the assignment was posted, the past month hadn’t even become the past month yet.

The only show I had been to was at the Double Door, and I was only there because a friend of my roommate’s won a contest where the prize was free admission and an hour of free Bud Light from the bar.

Needless to say, my entry was not chosen as one of the finalists. What I can say is that I learned the value of the difference between details and descriptions. I feel that details are often mistaken for descriptions and vice versa.

Details, to me, are entirely fact-based endeavors, the who, what, wheres, etc. Descriptions are sort of the garnish of the journalistic trade, the embellishments of those hard facts. If a coat is brown, that is a detail, but if you say that the coat was the kind of brown that one sees on fall trees, then that is a description (and one probably written by Dr. Seuss).

The descriptions are there to give one's piece a little pizzazz, but if you give too many descriptions, then you are giving the reader a poor idea of what actually happened. You are instead just describing the sights, sounds and maybe smells of what happened, as oppose to what actually...just happened.

I pumped my review full of descriptions of the music, but not the details regarding its creators or the title that was granted to the song. That was my flaw. I talked about what I was drinking, but not what about the band was thinking. I hadn't had my notebook there, so I really was pulling out this review straight from the nether regions of my buttocks.

The finalists have a lot of descriptions, but also more details. I need to do the same.

I get an opportunity to do so in the form of contest four, which is to curate your own music festival. I need to curate a festival which tells everyone how awesome my girlfriend is. I struggled to come up with a single idea for this contest, but Autumn manages to think of 3 really solid ideas off the top of her head.

She tells me that I can write about one (a festival devoted to rehabilitation for drug addicts), and that she would write about another one of hers (a benefit for the Falani people of Africa). We both edit each other's work, and I am really happy with how good hers is. It's detailed and unique enough to grab someone's attention. Her piece also informs the reader of different kinds of African music, and African music is not really being written about or discussed, despite the fact that Africa has been in the news so frequently.

A gut feeling tells me that she'll be one of the finalists. I am right. You can read Autumn's piece here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/imfromrollingstone/index.php/2007/02/02/week-four-finalist-autumn-notters-wota-memam-dhon-come-be-with-us-festival/

This Wednesday, you'll find out if she won and find out what I think of contest number five. Until then...I'm still not with Rolling Stone. Not even close. For myself, maybe that's all the conflict that I need write now. I have enough going on in my own life. Why should I watch a show about how screwed up someone else is?