In a way, this was meant to be the missing half of my Hannah Montana piece from some months back. Astute readers pointed out that my take on the multi-hyphenate one-woman omnimedia engine phenomenon was incomplete, because it skipped any analysis of the teenpop music that ostensibly drives that engine. Now, obviously, Ashley Tisdale is Ashley Tisdale and Hannah Montana is, well, Miley Cyrus — but it’s Ashley Tisdale who recently dropped a new and much-hyped album, Guilty Pleasure, so it is she who goes under the lens today.
A late-inning defensive substitution? Sure. But Tisdale is something of a professional second-stringer anyway. Before her star turn in the straight-to-the-B-list Aliens in the Attic, she specialized in wacky sidekick roles, most notably on Disney Channel’s Suite Life [sic] of Zack & Cody, where she was billed below the Sprouse twins, talent-free muppets whose adorability quotient — never particularly high — has plummeted with encroaching adolescence. She’s best known as the would-be diva Sharpay Evans in the High School Musical series, playing comic foil to the earnest, dull lovebirds Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. Notionally, she’s the Rose Marie of Disney Channel (which would make Corbin Bleu its Morey Amsterdam, I suppose).
I’ll be honest with you — the High School Musical movies are a hell of a lot more fun than they have any business being (thanks, in part, to Robbie Nevil’s songs), and Tisdale is pretty terrific in them. She’s an able comedic actress, nailing Sharpay’s essential comic paradox — she’s both vapid and scheming — with nimble timing. To the standard of The New California Beauty as laid down by the likes of Paris Hilton and Hayden Panettiere (i.e., salon blonde, orange tan, squishy nose and a general softness that renders her cute rather than actually pretty), the Tiz adds a pleasing mobility and expressiveness, along with a willingness to pull goofy faces. (more…)
A winter chill crept into our sunny spring Sunday and we all donned heavy coats to go to a baseball game. Tickets to the World Baseball Classic between the United States and Japan had unexpectedly come our way, and we jumped at the opportunity for an early ball game before the regular season began. We didn’t expect much of a game, but at least it would be a good show. After loading into our old white minivan, we started the hourlong journey to Dodger Stadium with the sun still hanging on and the sounds of High School Musical blasting through the stereo speakers courtesy of Sophie’s iPod.
That high-pitched squeal you hear belongs to the millions of young girls screaming at the release of Disney’s 