x-posted from Rock the Goat, a shortlived blog with Jess
Laguna Beach is one of my go-to Saturday morning shows – I expect from it the same substance I expected of Saturday morning cartoons when I was little. Saturday morning TV is high calorie, low content delicious mental break tv. It’s not supposed to do much more than entertain a numb mind before Saturday actually starts.

For a show with three seasons and two spinoff series, Laguna Beach has remarkably little content. People talk, but not about much (and say “like” at alarming rates.) Entire conversations are replaced with looks, gazes, stares, sneers, and all manner of non-verbal communication. Rarely does plot advance beyond “and then we went to so-and-so’s house/the beach.” Laguna Beach must have something going for it – and I’ve come to believe it’s just the stunning B-roll – because absolutely nothing happens on the show.

I was curious how much nothing happened: it’s a lot. Try out this interactive “Laguna Lacuna” and discover for yourself just how much content is left when you take the pictures out of an episode of Laguna Beach.

I (and the rest of the world) spent a lot of time looking at Obama and Romney smiling and blinking while the other debator was talking. I wanted to see what it would look like if both of them were just staring at each other.

This is a double embed of the ABC News coverage of the debate on Youtube. These are different parts of the debate, at times when one was talking and ABC went with the side-by-side shot.