Strongly Worded Letter

Steve McGarrett Is My God

I can't swear that it is my favorite all-time TV show of the 1970s but it is almost certainly my favorite drama. That's why last month's Season Four DVD release of Hawaii 5-0 has been giving me hours of pleasure this summer.

The show ran from 1968 - 1980 and centered on the crime fighting (fictional) police force of the Hawaiian Islands, headed by super cop Steve McGarrett, who, I think you can see from the DVD cover of actor Jack Lord here, had possibly the best hair in the history of television. 

Last night Donna, her father and I watched Episode #71, originally broadcast on CBS  on October 12, 1971. 

It had a complicated plot about a hippie gone bad attacking an insurance company embezzler with a piece of driftwood to the head and stealing his wallet. Inside was the key to locker at the airport in which a briefcase was found with the $250,000 the victim has skimmed. The hippie was played by the late John Ritter and the embezzler by the late Vic Morrow. Their freakish, early real-life deaths should be bad news for other guest stars of the series.

Anyway, McGarrett's #2 man, Danno, is trying to help an old friend from Berkeley whose daughter is missing in the islands and he thinks she is the girl who burned up when the candle shop was set on fire but it turns out that was a cover up because the embezzler left his fingerprints all over everything slapping the girl around after she had already taken a fatal dose of heroin.

Cleo, the girl Danno is looking for, is actually the accomplice of the hippie gone bad and they are trying to board a plane to Asia when the embezzler kidnaps her and tries to hold her for ransom (well, his $250,000 back) in an abandoned airplane hanger that he somehow knows about. The hippie decided to ditch the girl and split with the money until McGarrett's #3 man, Chin Ho, nabs him while boarding the plane.

In the thrilling conclusion there is a shootout at the hangar and Steve wounds the now-fleeing embezzler in the leg with one incredible shot from about 100 yards away and the two wayward kids are safe and sound. The hippie gets arrested for stealing the stolen money but the girl is not charged as an accomplice because she knows Danno.    

Whew. As an aside, my 13 year-old Chow dog is actually named Kam Fong As Chin Ho as a tribute to this great character but we usually call her just Chin Ho for short. Or Chin Chin. Or The Chincess.

I love this show so much that I could write a whole blog just about Hawaii 5-0 but I see that someone already does, here.

There are dozens of websites with tons of great show information too including the Wikipedia page here and the single most comprehensive site about all things 5-0 here. Please enjoy!

P.S. And you'll get no argument from me if you say the show had the best theme song in the history of TV too!

       

Insane Clown Posse

The Summer Of Death continues over the holiday weekend with the reported deaths of two famous American clowns.

First, former Senator Jess Helms, Republican from the great state of North Carolina, finally responded to the will of the people and died at age 86. He was perhaps most famous for trying to filibuster the Senate's vote on making Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday in 1983. He likely represented the views of many of his constituents during his early terms of office but perhaps they continued to evolve on social and racial issues where he did not.

More significantly, how about that Bozo The Clown?

From the Associated Press report, "Larry Harmon wasn't the original Bozo the Clown, but he was the real one. Harmon, who portrayed the wing-haired clown for more than half a century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure, said his publicist, Jerry Digney. He was 83.

As an entrepreneur, Harmon licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos..."

Some fun facts I learned about Bozo from his obituary:

1. Pinto Colvig, who provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, was the first Bozo the Clown, a character created by writer-producer Alan W. Livingston for a series of children's records in 1946.

2. Bozo wore size 83AAA shoes!

3. The business — combining animation, licensing of the character and personal appearances — made millions, as Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets.

4. The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a superstation.

And my favorite, 5. Bozo — portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell — was so popular that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years. On the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.

While reflecting on Bozo, I was wondering, "Are there are any local children's shows anymore?". There used to be hundreds on television, including many that even went national like Romper Room, Shari Lewis, and Captain Kangaroo. And of course, the majority that did not, like Seattle kids' show legends J.P Patches or Stan Boreson. Does anyone know of any still being made today? 

1975 Revisited

I never really saw Saturday NIght Live in its first, oh I don't know, 20 seasons or so. All the talk through the most recent seasons, whether they were good or bad ones, is that nothing could compare to the glory years of the show. Generally that is understood to mean 1975 - 1980, the first five seasons.

Well, I had my chance finally this past weekend when NBC re-aired the very first episode of SNL from October 11, 1975. They did it as a tribute to the debut host that night, the late George Carlin, another recent victim of the Summer Of Death.

Guess what? I think the people were right.

I was really surprised how fully-formed the format of the show was from that very first episode. Monologue, sketches, commercial parodies, Weekend Update, musical guests, it was all there. Carlin did not appear in any sketches but did deliver some of his most famous routines from his best-selling comedy albums of the early 70s, like Baseball Vs. Football, What Do Dogs Do On Their Days Off? and Why Isn't There Any Blue Food?.

That night was the debut of the Not Ready For Primetime Players, including John Belushi (impossible to take your eyes off of), Dan Akyroyd (very funny back then, not so much now), Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Larraine Newman, and Garrett Morris (the original, "Hey, you're the black guy from Saturday Night Live").

I was also struck by how ambitious that first show was. Two musical guests, performing two songs each. Billy Preston's Nothing From Nothing was terrific and his disco suit even more so; Janis Ian looked terrified singing her then-current hit, At Seventeen.

Comedy genius Albert Brooks offered a short film that included one scene where the age of consent was changed to nine or something. I was more shocked that it aired on network TV here in 2008 then back in 1975.

How's this for a highlight? The show also featured comedy weirdo Andy Kaufman doing his signature Mighty Mouse theme song lip synching bit. I don't know if he had performed it on television before that night but I don't doubt that there were just as many people watching who were more confused than entertained by his...uh....  "alternative" approach to comedy. I loved it.

Not everything worked. There was a Muppets sketch too. Yep, Jim Henson's real Muppets. I didn't get it.  At all. Also a comedienne named Valari Bloomfield who was terrible. And, surprising to me, I thought Chevy Chase was the weak link of the cast. Not a good actor, not a good cue-card reader, not a skilled comedian. Perhaps he got better?

One more quick thing. How did they cram four songs, tons of sketches, three Carlin bits. another comedian, a Muppet piece, Chevy's Weekend Update, the Kaufman routine, and at least three fake commercials all into one 90 minute show?

Fewer commercial minutes might have been part of it. But the Number One reason I give the nod to Episode One over any Saturday Night Live show I have seen this decade is that back then the sketches ran out before the comedy did.

The current show makes every bit at least 25 percent longer than it needs to be, often more. If the new guys had come up with Belushi's 1975 Wolverine bit, instead of it being remembered as a comedy classic, we'd know it as that sketch we feel asleep to ten minutes in.

If you saw the show this weekend I'd love to hear your thoughts. I am now going to Amazon.com to look into a Season One DVD...

She's Got My Vote

There are many, many things that our local, state, and national government should be working hard on these days to keep our great country moving upward and onward. I ordinarily think interfering with legal, private enterprise should be last on that list, if at all. Let the marketplace determine the winners from the losers I say. Usually.

But California state representative Anna Eschoo (Gesundheit!) has had enough and I am right there with her. She has introduced a bill that will lower the volume on television commercials. Amen. She says, "I've had it with these loud advertisements. If I'm not close to my remote control to push the mute button, it practically blasts you out of the house. It's that annoying. And it's totally unnecessary."

The bill is called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. I love it and I love Ms. Eschoo and I want to vote for her for something. Seriously, if my iPod can play everything at the same volume then there must be an easy way that the shows and the spots can pay at the same level too.

I watch TV to be lazy. Don't make me work while I do it, even if it is only handling the remote and no, that's not a euphemism.

Click here to read more about the proposed law and read the lame excuses that advertisers and television executives are already giving my sweet Anna. Courage.  

Equal Parts Sad And Angry

Wow, wasn't yesterday a black letter day for the world?

Thing One: By every account, one of the most decent men in television died unexpectedly of coronary thrombosis in his office at age 58 (!). Tim Russert was, to me, the face of NBC News as a political analyst who appeared frequently across their whole day's news programming. He was also the longest running host (since 1991) of the longest running show in worldwide television history (Meet The Press, on the air since 1947, and on radio before that!).

I try hard not to write posts for StronglyWordedLetter.com about subjects that are going to be covered so much better elsewhere and there are no shortage of tributes to Tim all over the internet, on TV, and in print this morning. I urge you to seek them out to read about this giant of American journalism.

On last night's Dateline NBC special remembrance, they showed interviews with Russert's colleagues and friends in the news business who all spoke of his decency, his loyalty, his passion for his work and family, his deep Catholicism, his love of baseball, his patriotism and so much more.

I didn't know some of the stories I heard but do know that as a viewer I was always impressed by how smart, articulate, fair and prepared he was every time I saw him on television. In a medium that is increasingly filled with Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, John Gibson and other blowhards like them, Tim Russert was a rare broadcaster, one that made you proud of how he used his platform to educate and enlighten the audience.

Thing Two: Are you kidding me that R. Kelly was acquitted of all 14 counts of child pornography yesterday? Even though I have been predicting it for years, I secretly hoped I was just being pessimistic about the American judicial system.

For those who didn't follow the case, Kelly is a popular R&B singer who managed to delay this trial for nearly six years before it got to court last month. He was accused of having sex with an underage girl. The principal evidence in the prosecution's case was A VIDEO OF R. KELLY HAVING SEX WITH THE UNDERAGE GIRL!!!          

The defense attorney lied argued that it was not his client in the video even though the whole courtroom could see that the man on the tape was the man in the suit sitting next to the defense attorney. At one point it was argued that a couple must have broken into R. Kelly's house and filmed the sex tape there, then digitally altered the video to make it look like the singer and his underage goddaughter. (!)

That the defendant is an internationally known celebrity didn't hurt him; he has even had numerous Top Ten albums and singles on the pop charts even since the charges were filed. You won't convince me that having eight  African-Americans on the jury wasn't as good as a Get Out Of Jail Free card either. Go ahead and argue that the racial makeup was appropriate for the trial's location, Chicago, and I'll even agree with you. It would be hard to find eight blacks in America who want to see R. Kelly in jail, much less eight in one jury pool. 

All in all, a truly sucky Friday the Thirteenth this year.

Good Hands, Bad Math?

Tremendously exciting basketball being played in this year's NBA Finals so far and I have really enjoyed the games. I know I am not the only guy who insists on seeing sporting events live instead of on TIVO like nearly everything else I watch. Maybe it's because I'm afraid I'll see the score somewhere online or on another channel if I record the game and watch something else.

So that brings me to the commercials I now find myself sitting through. I've made a few notes.

1) Hey, movie company, don't waste your time buying commercials to advertise that Jumper is coming out on DVD.  No one, repeat, no one plans to buy that movie to own, not even Hayden Christensen. In fact, based on reviews of his performance in that film, maybe especially not Hayden Christensen.

2) Speaking of movies I saw advertised last night, Hell Boy 2 = no, Love Guru = maybe, The Happening = maybe, Incredible Hulk = no, Don't Mess With the Zohan = hell, no. That one looks so bad I am surprised Hayden Christensen isn't in it.

3) I am a rabid fan of Apple computers but  am sick to death of the Mac guy making fun of the PC guy. Dude, you are already dating Drew Barrymore in real life, You don't have to be a dick too.

4) So 24's President Palmer is alive and pitching All State auto insurance. He looks like a nice man (hey, I thought he died, no?) but I still find it hard to believe that "most accidents happen on Friday between 3 and 6 p.m." as he told me last night.

Is that possible? There are more car crashes in those three hours than in the other 165 per week combined? I find it possible that "more accidents happen on Friday between 3 and 6 p.m. than during any other three hour period" but that is as far as I'll go.

5) I love the NBA's playoff campaign this year, the There Can Be Only One commercials with a player from each team's face taking up half the screen while both are talking at the same time about competing, winning, or fear. They were directed by the husband/wife team that made the movie Little Miss Sunshine by-the-way. Saturday Night Live did a hilarious parody a couple of weeks ago using their Clinton and Obama impersonators.

6) Finally, to ABC, we don't care who The Mole is.

 

A Beautiful Monday In The Neighborhood

Over the weekend I received that always forwarded stupid email about the late, great Mr. Rogers' secret past. You know the one; that he was a sniper during the Vietnam war with many confirmed kills and that he always wore long sleeve shirts and sweaters to hide all the tattoos on his arms and neck. A ten second internet search easily debunks the rumors but the type of person who just hits forward and subjects his address book to that kind of spam is not exactly a critical thinker.

I remember reading a piece about Fred Rogers on MentalFloss.com last year that is actually worth sharing. It was called 15 Reasons Why Mr. Rogers Was The Best Neighbor Ever. I'll repost three of those reasons here.


He Made Thieves Think Twice
According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”


He Watched His Figure to the Pound!
In covering Rogers’ daily routine (waking up at 5; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I’m not sure if any of that was because he’d mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143. According to the piece, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three.”


He Was Genuinely Curious about Others
Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he’d often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn’t concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others. Amazingly, it wasn’t just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life—the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.


I wonder how many people are out there walking Fred's narrow path these days. The world still seems a little less cool without him. You can read the whole article here.

The Dead Zone

There were two show business obituaries this week of men whose names were not well-known but whose contributions were enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people the world over.

Earle Hagen was 88 and composed music for more than 3000 hours of television including the theme songs for The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mod Squad, That Girl, and, most famously, the Andy Griffith Show. If you are whistling in your head right now then you are thinking of the right song but did you know there are words to that one too?

They start like this:

"Well, now, take down your fishin' pole and meet me at the Fishin' Hole.
We may not get a bite all day, but don't you rush away.

What a great place to rest your bones and mighty fine for skippin' stones,
You'll feel fresh as a lemonade, a-settin' in the shade.

Whether it's hot, or whether it's cool, oh, what a spot for whistling like a fool..."

Click here to hear Andy Griffith himself singing the theme.






Fellow composer Alexander Courage was also 88 when he passed this week. He wrote music for Lost In Space, The Waltons, Falcon Crest, Eight Is Enough and many more. But his most famous composition was the theme from Star Trek, over which William Shatner intoned those famous words, "Space. The Final Frontier...."

That it is another iconic instrumental television theme that also has lyrics doesn't begin to tell the rest of the story. Snopes.com has the sad tale of how Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who wrote the words below, was able to use them to rook Mr. Courage out of half of the royalties he should have received for composing the music. Click here for the full story.

"Beyond the rim of the starlight
My love is wand'ring in star flight

I know he'll find in star-clustered reach
Love, strange love a star woman teaches.

I know his journey ends never
His star trek will go on forever.

But tell him while he wanders his starry sea
Remember me, remember me."

1000 Ways To Die

No, the title of today's post does not refer to my sad Mariners baseball team although watching their last three series against the Padres, Tigers and now the Yankees you might think so. 

It is actually the name of my new favorite TV discovery, on the Spike network. Here's what the voiceover guy says at the beginning of each episode: "The human body is remarkably resilient. Every day we fight a new war against germs, toxins, injury, illness, catastrophe and calamity. The fact that we survive at all is a miracle. Because, everyday we live, we face 1000 Ways To Die!"

Thom Beers, the brains behind the sensational Seattle based Deadliest Catch came up with this one too and the title says it all. Each episode is packed with true stories of actual bizarre deaths, including real footage sometimes (like the guy who got hit by a crashing race car that hit him at over 100 miles per hour and then stopped on top of him), along with re-enactments, animation, and interviews with medical experts to describe the details of the death.

Two of my favorites so far include the Philadelphia meatpacker who froze to death in just a few minutes after being "accidentally" locked in the meat locker, always kept at a less than comfortable -10F. The show suggested it was perhaps an intentional "mistake" by the company's owner, who was also the father of a knocked up 17 year-old daughter. What I also learned:  When people freeze to death they are often found with many of their clothes removed. Constricted blood vessels dilate, producing a sensation of extreme heat, prompting them to strip down. It is a phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing." Freezing to death is Way To Die #293.

 
  

I also very much enjoyed learning about the opposite way to go, six minutes at more than +200F. We saw a re-enactment of a young man at a Los Angeles hospital who, in the course of repairing an industrial dryer, found himself locked inside it as he shaked and baked to death. Ouch. What I also learned: Each year as many as twenty others meet death by dryer, or as the show so proudly put it, "in a machine set on tumble die!" Tumble Die is Way To Die #640.

Some of the tragic tales cover the same material as the well-known Darwin Awards, which i guess I could enjoy if I hadn't been fighting a years long battle to get people to stop sending me that stupid email about them over and over again. 

More on 1000 Ways To Die, including lots of clips here. Please enjoy!  

 

 

 

Kwyoo Vee See

I'm not what you would call the target shopper for the QVC television shopping network. A) I'm a man and B) I'm way under their average audience age of 54. I've bought maybe two things from them ever and do not make that channel a destination on my  DirectTV.

Having said all that I was still fascinated by the newspaper profile on QVC this week in USA Today. Did you know the channel was founded in 1986 by Joseph Segel, who also founded the Franklin Mint, a direct seller of collectibles, in 1964?

Here are more fun facts from the article. See how many you know:

1) What does QVC stand for?

2) Sales in 2007? Take a guess.

3) Orders typically received per hour?

4) Units delivered to customers worldwide last year?

5) Number of products offered on air annually?

6) Number of people who auditioned to be a QVC  host last year?

7) Number of new hosts selected?

8) Unique visitors to QVC.com in March?


Answers:

1. Quality, value, and convenience

2. $7.4 billion dollars

3. 15,000

4. More than 166 million

5. About 60,000

6. More than 3,000

7. Three

8. 4.2 million


Happy shopping!! Oh, and what have you bought from QVC? 

Becky, Quick!

So I'm watching the NBC Nightly News the other night and somehow a split screen appears that makes it difficult for me to hear or care what Brian "Haircut" Williams is even talking about. He's handing off the  story to Becky Quick,  whom I have since come to learn is a correspondent for CNBC's Squawk Box program.

Apparently I am late to Rebecca's fan club.  She joins a long line of News Babes with quite a following online these days including Fox News's Laurie Dhue,  CBS's Lara Logan, and of course, French TV's legendary and incomparable Melissa Theuriau.



Here she is later in the story  interviewing  investment guru Warren Buffett. With the billions of dollars of disposable income he has, he should be making Becky an offer she can not refuse right now.



Wait, she is throwing it back to Brian now. But who just walked into the frame behind her? Who is distracting me from my sweet Rebecca?

   

I'm not kidding. It's a...shall we say, older and plumper woman who I swear to God is eating a cupcake on TV during the national evening news. I hope Becky will order her killed.   

Million Dollar Idea #3

You could surely do a lot worse with just three dollars than going to Amazon.com and buying a copy of Bill Carter's book The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno & The Network Battle For The Night.

If you haven't already read it, then maybe you saw the HBO movie that was made of it featuring an actor with a huge, obviously fake chin playing Leno and another guy playing Letterman who inexplicably kept throwing a ball at an archery target. (?)

"But, Bean," you are exclaiming, probably internally because nobody talks out loud to a blog, "that topic is so 1995. Why bring it up now?"

Because the Network Battle For The Night Part 2 may be happening behind closed doors in Hollywood and New York right now.

Peep out the latest article from Mr. Carter, who writes about television for the New York Times here.  If you don't care to read it, here is the gist of it in the opening paragraphs,

"The Jay Leno chase is on.      

Four years ago, NBC made the comedian the lame-duck host of “The Tonight Show,” announcing with fanfare that he would be succeeded by Conan O’Brien in 2009.

Today, Mr. Leno is still the champion of late-night ratings, with no apparent desire to do anything else but continue on top. “What I do,” he has said on several occasions to colleagues, “is tell jokes at 11:30 at night.”

And so, nearly two years before he can officially be courted, suitors including two networks, ABC and Fox, and at least one television studio, Sony Pictures Television, are beginning to circle, doing everything they legally can to make sure Mr. Leno knows that they will make it possible for him to continue doing just that..."

Me now: Okay, so if I'm NBC and I've already announced that Conan takes over the Tonight Show in 2009 and now have to worry about the King of Late Night ending up being new competition against me on Fox or ABC, here's what I do. Put on The Jay Leno Show every weeknight at 10:00.

You get a guaranteed hit in prime time five nights a week. which raises the ratings for the affiliate 11:00 news and, in turn, the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien too. NBC has already proven, more than any of the major networks, that they can't come close to fielding 15 hours of prime time hits a week. With this plan they wouldn't have to anymore. 

Sure, there are a few niggling details that you could counter and some legal and logistical snags that might have to be worked out but it sounds like a winner to me. Networks are bleeding viewers. New hits are hard to find, afford, and promote. It counter programs well against anything else on the dial at that time.   

Boom goes the dynamite.

 

   

House Of Wachs

Have you just about had an ass full of this Writer's Guild strike? Are you going through major Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert withdrawals?

Well, until those shows return on Monday, here's a 5 minute band-aid. My friend Larry Wachs* has hooked up with a comedy site called SuperDeluxe to present the weekly webisode  What's Your Story?  Here's his latest episode.

I have known Larry since Air Supply were popular and believe him to be one of the funniest guys in America. It is endemic to the decline of radio in recent years that a talk show host as talented as he has been out of work for over a year at the same time the industry moans and whines about losing audience share to ipods and satellites.

Do yourself a favor and bookmark Larry's blog here. I see that he has recently implemented a new feature that is new to me called Ether. It looks like it is a third party application that can put two people on the phone together without either being able to see the other's phone number. Interesting. 

*Readers in Los Angeles or Atlanta will remember Larry's many years on the air as the more obnoxious and more right-wing half of  The Regular Guys.

Come On Down!

Ballard, Washington. The most Scandinavian place in the United States, outside of Minnesota.

I love that neighborhood of Seattle. Two of my favorite places in town are there: the Nordic Heritage Museum and the Archie McPhee novelty store, home of the  Electronic  Yodeling  Pickle.

Today I read about a pub on Market Street in Ballard called The Old Pequilar.  Once a week they hold a Quiz Night there and the place fills up with trivia teams who compete in 8 rounds of 10 questions each on topics from geography to movies to whatever. Apparently there is a nice haul for the winning team each week.

Three things I learned in the newspaper article about Quiz Night:

1) "Skepticisms" is the longest word that alternate hands when typing.

2) Slugs have four noses.

3) And one in every four Americans has appeared on television.

That's the one that got me to thinking. One in four? Wow! I mean, there have been 80,000 contestant so far just on American Idol, but still...

I was on TV once while living in San Francisco back in the eighties when CNN interviewed me on the street about the World Series in which the Giants were appearing.

Donna just appeared last year as a guest on the Tyra Banks program. I think it was "I Regret My Choice In Spouses" Week.

So we're two-for-two in this house. How about you? If this post gets 20 comments, five of you will have appeared on television. Let's see.

The Funeral

I'll admit it caught me by surprise a couple of Sundays ago while watching football on the TV when I first saw the commercial for the Ford Edge and recognized the music as being by the Band of Horses, a group I like very much.

It shouldn't have. These days, as many people, and virtually all fans under 25, believe "music should be free, man!" it is harder and harder for any musician to make a living. The band has already made something off of that song by licensing it to an episode of Criminal Minds too.

I don't have a problem with it. They created it. They own it. And they are free to do what they want with it. Do I wish i could make my own visual image instead of seeing an iPod commercial in my mind every time I hear those songs by The Fratellis, or U2, or Mary J. Blige? Sure. But even though I believe music is art, it is also has to be commerce if that's how you earn your paycheck.

A quick Google search, by-the-way, finds many music fans not willing to accept the way Band of Horses chooses to exploit  promote their songs. I found blogs that called them, "Sellout!" "Band of Hypocrites!" and my favorite "Band of Whores!"

Here's the song, video-free if you care to hear it.

Something To Be Really Thankful For

Thank you GQ Magazine for the pictures. And thank you  Mr. & Mrs. Panetierre for making Hayden. You are the real Heroes and have earned the thanks of a grateful nation.

You Don't Do Heavy Metal In Dubly, You Know...*

Okay, it's not the world's most pressing concern. but just because something isn't Darfur crisis bad, or even Dane Cook in another movie bad, doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed.

You know how you're watching, say, The Office, and the segment ends and you're chuckling to yourself that Jim and Dwight and Michael are all wearing fake mustaches in a botched Silly String raid of the Utica branch of Dundler Mifflin? And then a commercial comes on for, say, Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls, and instead of enjoying the guys in the ad dressed up in their wacky  costumes and maybe thinking about how delicious a Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowl might be you are instead diving for the television remote to turn the volume down before  your ears bleed and and the dog wakes up?

Well, finally someone is addressing the absurd volume disparity between the shows and the commercials/station promos. Our old friends at the Dolby Corporation are preparing to announce which TV sets and A/V receivers will have this new feature, called Dolby Volume, and will also be licensing the technology to third party manufacturers as well.

I am a technical zero so can't begin to explain how it works but here's what GizMag says about it, "In dynamically adjusting audio output the system applies principles of psycho-acoustics – the science of how the human brain perceives sound. At higher volumes the brain hears 'flat' sounds with the bass, treble and mid-range leveled out, but at lower volumes your brain misses bass and treble elements and your ears become sensitive to only the mid-range. This is where Dolby’s modeling technology steps in to compensate for the brain’s natural tendencies and continue to deliver all the nuances of the soundtrack based on what we actually hear."

However it works, it's a Hallelujah technological breakthrough in my opinion, and long overdue.

 

* "You don't do heavy metal in dubly, you know." - Jeanine Pettibone, This Is Spinal Tap, 1984

Those That Can't Do, Teach.

James Lipton, that bearded blowhard  from Bravo TV's  Inside the Actor's Studio   has just published his autobiography, called Inside Inside. If you haven't seen the hit cable show, now in its thirteenth year, Lipton sits for an hour or more with an actor as his guest and he asks him to tell stories about the movies and television shows he has appeared in.

At the end of the interview he pulls out the list of questions he says are inspired by French television host Bernard Pivot. Here are those questions, along with my answers:


What is your favorite word?    Dogloo

What is your least favorite word?  Nuclear, when it is pronounced Nookyuler 

What turns you on, creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?   A  beautiful photograph inspires me to try to take one as well.

What turns you off?   I get discouraged when I realize I do not have enough time to pursue most of my creative interests. 
 
What is your favorite curse word?   Heavens to Mergatroid!

What sound or noise do you love?   My Tater Tot makes 100 different sounds that I love.

What sound or noise do you hate?  Like everyone else, the alarm clock. It's not really the clock's fault as much as how early it is set to go off.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?  Easy, I want to be a runway model farmer.

What profession would you not like to do?  Assembly line work. Toll taker. Anything boring and repetitive.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly Gates?  There's been some mistake with the paperwork. We'll send you back down to live another 100 years. And say hi to the models for me.

P.S. To my fellow blogger friends, this list would be an excellent meme, no?

Million Dollar Idea #1

Here it is: Extreme Spelling Bee.

Nerdy 9-year old white boy steps up to the microphone and misspells   "vivisepulture." Instead of just a buzzer and a walk off, he gets pelted from the audience with rotten fruit.

Tiny home-schooled Mexican girl is next and misspells  "xanthosis." She gets shot in the forehead with a paint gun.

Indian pre-teen with fuzz on his upper lip correctly spells "prospicience." From the side of the stage come a litter of puppies to lick his feet.

Another home-schooler can't figure out "appoggiatura" and when she misses, a trap door opens up on the stage and down she goes into a tank of sharks.

And so it goes....warm Mrs. Fields cookies for the winners,  Montecore from the Siegfried and Roy show for the losers.  Spell it right and get a lap dance from Hayden Panettiere. Miss your word and out comes a needle full of smallpox.

Who could turn that show off? it's TV magic and it is yours for the taking!

      

I'm Not Asking You, I'm Telling You....

I haven't been impressed with any of the new fall season television offerings so far. 

Three of the shows, and they're the ones with some of the biggest buzz so far, all seem like the same show to me: Chuck, Reaper and The Bionic Woman.  Each is about a regular Joe/Jane who has something unexpected and fantastical happen to him or her and has to learn to deal with it. Watch their friends and family be amazed as they start fighting crime/capture souls for the devil/run really fast.

I feel like I already get all that and more that each week on Heroes, a much better show than any of them. 

But as excited as I am to have The Office, 30 Rock, House and Family Guy back, the debut I have been waiting for is tonight at 9:00 on NBC.

Friday Night Lights is the little show that won't quit. This is its third night on the NBC schedule and maybe the lack of Tuesday and Wednesday competition will being in some more eyeballs.

Critics and a small but fanatical following got the show renewed for a second season. Last year It ended up on almost every magazine's top ten list (Entertainment Weekly, Time, etc.) and was named by the American Film Institute as the best TV show of the year.

I could go on and on about the superior acting, the story, the music, how unfreakingbelievably hot actress Minka Kelly is, but I'll close with the most important thing to remember: IT'S NOT REALLY ABOUT FOOTBALL!  Just in case that is what has kept you away....

Just watch it! Mkay?