How's Your News?

I don't come here very often anymore but I wanted to point out a note of interest for anyone who may or may not be reading.
How's Your New's? started airing it's first season on MTV this past Sunday night. I'm not sure how successful the rating are, though I would hope they are well enough for them to get at least another season. I would like to see them come through Chicago, whether it be for them to play a live show or to be filming for their television show. Why didn't that happen yet? I would love to meet them. These people are better than you and despite their disabilities, they are worlds ahead of most of us. When's the last time you had a television show airing on a major network? That's what I thought.

Anyways, i'll tell you the same story any old press bio will probably tell you as well. Camp Jabberwocky (which probably would be the coolest place to work, by the way) had been making videos for fun for years before they caught the eye of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. They decided to give them a certain ammount of money to make a full length movie based on the travels of a handful of people from the camp. I'm not sure which came first - that offer or the "Pilot episode" of HYN (available on the DVD which came out in 2004), but the basics of it are putting these people with disabilities in situations where they not only get to see the world but meet people and do street interviews with them. The show is a little more high scale, as in the first episode alone they got to go to the Grammys and also had guests such as John Stamos, Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, but the documentary is just as good. Here is a clip from that which includes the amazing Sean Costello telling us some of the highlights of what you can do and see in Texas. They also visit an auction.



Bobby bird has invented his own language which is all he can speak. He can, however, understand most of the things that are said to him. With the people who don't just walk away due to not understanding him, you can hear some words of English slip out and understand how happy he is to be doing what he is doing. This is NOT exploitation, and while I'm sure plenty of people will be laughing at them and not with them, they also are very aware of this. They get to put themselves out there and have the times of their life, all while capturing it in a format that they not only get to meet very important people, but will be able to look back on and watch when they are older.

Larry has cerebral palsy and can't speak. When they set him up with interviews, he holds a microphone while someone else assists him in holding up the questions for the interviewee to read. In the case of the documentary, most of the times he was just placed in a high volume area with a microphone holding a sign that simply read "How's your news?" The reactions he gets from people who decide to ignore him are just as interesting as the ones where people take a moment out of their day to talk to someone who is obviously there wanting to communicate with them. You can learn a lot about what a person is like by watching something like that happen.
Like Bobby, Larry can understand things on the same level as the rest of us, but he has been put on this earth in a body that does not let him communicate that so easily. Once again, when people stick it out and spend time with him while he is conducting an interview, you can tell that he is very excited to be where he is.

Sean is one of my favorites, though I really can't pick and choose because they all have their high points. He is very soft spoken and polite, likes fried chicken and baseball, and also has Down Syndrome. My favorite Sean moment may be in the documentary when he is interviewing some ladies who are on a bench, and when one of them starts to grill him a little too hard about what he is doing and tell him they maybe shouldn't be filming her because she doesn't have her makeup on Sean get's seemingly frustrated and throws his hands up and lets her in on it "Lady, this is pretrend. It's like... How's Your News? It is not real." The thing is though, it is VERY real.

These are only a few examples of the amazing people that comprise the HYN team. Get more acquainted by watching them.

They also have a full length album out which you can direct order from them or listen to in it's entirety on their website.>


This is the trailer for their series.


You can watch the whole first episode right now at
http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/hows_your_news/series.jhtml
I would imagine as the weeks go by you will also be able to watch each episode after its television premiere. Do it. Chances are you won't regret it. So watch their show on MTV, buy their movies and music from them, or netflix the original movie. Please?