Category: Television

I know that Jeff is quick to play the "Everything in the world can be tied back to Aaron Spelling" game, but another great behind the scenes television master has died.

Merv Griffin died today at the age of 82. (CNN Story) There aren’t any among us who weren’t sucked into The Wheel of Fortune mania of the 80’s. I remember when my uncle had a friend appear on "The Wheel" and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Sure, I was 11 or something, but still, there it was.

While The Wheel may seem a bit dated and old, Vanna’s graceful maintenance work not withstanding, Merv’s other major achievement is timeless. Yes, that’s right, Jeopardy. This show alone coined the term for innumerable jokes, situation comedies, and pop culture quips. "In the form of a question, please…"

You can always sit down and watch Jeopardy and be challenged and have fun arguing answers and even the categories themselves with anyone. Oh, and if the sheer coolness of Jeopardy isn’t enough, there was even a Golden Girls episode all about it. THAT is cool.

Wow, I’ve been my wife’s husband for too long, I am publicly admitting that a Golden Girls tie in makes anything cooler. Ahh well, so it goes.

God speed Merv, you entertained us well.

I was flipping through the channels last night and came across the brand new reality series The Two Coreys starring of course Corey Haim and Corey Feldman.

Based on the mere fact that these two guys are like Todd Bridges on drugs, OK, so I guess that would be just like Todd Bridges, when it comes to child stars gone bonkers I was immediately intrigued. Add to that, Corey Feldman has a SUPER HOT wife. Corey Haim is living with them, and Haim is fat you’ve got reality gold.

During what I can only assume is one of many fights during this upcoming season. Corey Haim says, "I don’t know why [Feldman’s wife, Susie] is involved in this at all. You’re not part of the Coreys. And you never will be!"

After which he storms out onto the patio.

That’s pretty much the most self-involved thing I’ve ever heard. I love it.

I guess that’s just Corey being Corey.

There are certain events that only come along once or twice in a lifetime. Events that one must be sure they are a part. Today I took part in one of those events. I went to Kwik-E-mart. There are 11 7-Elevens across the country that have been turned into full-fledged Kwik-E-Marts. The signage has been changed. Simpsons decorations have been put up and there are products on sale that can be found at a Kwik-E-Mart.

One of these 11 stores is in the Chicago area. It’s a few blocks from Midway airport. For those of you who don’t know where this is in relation to where I live, it’s roughly 120 blocks south, and 40 or so West. Not close, in other words. But, as I had no other plans today I decided to take a drive. I’m sooooo glad I did.

And yes, I took a camera. And, yes, taking pictures inside a 7-Eleven feels a little ridiculous. Hey Wang! What’s with the pictures?! It’s a parking lot!!

   
   

The World Series of Pop Culture 2007 edition began this week. I love watching this show, but every time I watch it, it makes me mad. I should be on this show every year, winning.

I blame my first year’s lack of participation on not knowing it existed. This year is Deana’s fault. See, she has a job (first mistake) and doesn’t live near me (second mistake). She was not able to come to Chicago the weekend they held tryouts, and thus we were not able to find a third person to help us kick the crap out of all these wannabe’s.

Deana now owes me money, and also maybe some prozac to level me out after watching this show.

This week was a big one for those of us who follow TV, and have an interest in such things. It was upfronts week. This is the week that each of the major network and both of the red headed step networks. Here are the things worth mentioning, at least to me.

1.) The CW is retarded.

There are many of you who only read that sentence and thought, "yeah? You’re just coming to this now? We knew this when we realized we weren’t Jr. High girls." But for someone who is a fan of the pretty-people-with-problems genre this is sad. The CW is of course the bastard amalgamation of  the UPN and WB networks. The networks who brought you Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Felicity. OK, those were all from the WB, except the last couple of seasons of Buffy. This week the CW canceled both Gilmore Girls (OK, seven seasons. I’m not gonna kvetch about this one, but I’ll miss it) and Veronica Mars. Canceling Veronica Mars is ridiculous. It’s one of the few network shows that had quality writing, interesting characters, and inventive story lines, so of course it had to go. It is being replaced by these new shows. Yet, another season of Beauty and the Geek, The Pussycat Dolls Present, Farmer Wants a Wife, a reality show about a farmer finding a woman, and America’s Next Top model, and AN ENCORE PRESENTATION OF AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL!!!! Dear God, they’re canceling really good scripted show and keeping on the air 4 vapid, brain dead reality shows. I find myself wishing the Vinnie Delpino got that job as a network programmer that he always wanted. It was after all his idea to put Rocky on after a Ronald Reagan press conference. He’d stand up for VM.

2.) This is an idea 20 years too late

ABC is putting a show on Tuesday nights based on the fucking caveman Geiko commercials. The thing that bugs me the most about this. What commercials could have been made into hit TV shows?

A Where’s the Beef show. It could have been a mystery about a woman who goes around solving beef related crimes. I’ve seen the dialogue on any CSI show. It couldn’t be worse than all of their act breaks.

A I’m not Herb show. A show about an amnesiac who spends all of his time trying to regain his memory and learn who he really is, all the while denying that he is Herb.

Those two guys from Bartles and James stumbling around old and drunk on wine coolers, but very very polite.

A summer camp show based on the McDonald’s commercial where the kid writes home to the tune of  "Hello Mother, Hello Father"

Those Wasssup guys. I’m sure their lives are interesting. Maybe they own the budweiser frogs.

Mr. Whimples fighting off numerous sexual harrassment lawsuits as his need to squeeze things finally gets the better of him and he begins to squeeze the asses of female shoppers.

Maybe a Ring Around the Color thing. I don’t know. Sweaty people can be funny.

I guess my point here is, this has got to be one of the worst ideas for a television show ever. ABC, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

3.) This isn’t about upfronts but National Bingo Night premiered tonight. I forgot to watch, but this idea is just about as good as the Caveman thing.

I’ve run out of steam after the Caveman thing, but there are so many awful shows on TV now. It’s a shame they can’t keep the one or two good ones they’ve managed to put on.

I have smote the TV industry with my wrath. Everyone can now sit back and watch it change. I am blogger. I have power.

I’m not sure I’ve ever come on here and said, go buy something, or at least put it on your Netflix, but this needs to be said.

I would imagine that most of you who read this have some memory of this show, but for those who don’t. WKRP in Cincinnati Season 1 has finally come out on DVD. This is perhaps one of the greatest sitcoms ever. It’s one of the few that you can watch today and still laugh at. All in the Family, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Simpsons, Southpark and WKRP. That may be it. If I’m missing one, please let me know, but for consistency, that may be the list.

The hold up on this DVD has been getting the rights to the music that was in the show. When this show was first aired no one thought to get the rights to sell these songs as part of the show in a format like DVD, so getting that all worked out has been something of a chore, and from what I gather, they mostly just had to give up on it and replace the music. I haven’t seen the new DVDs so I hope it doesn’t ruin the experience, but the music isn’t what stands out to me. It’s the characters.

Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson, general manager of the radio station. Horrible at his job and only in it because his mom owns the station. A much less scary Michael Powell.

Herb Tarlek, the sleavy sales manager in the plaid jacket, who wants nothing more than to bang the receptionist.

Jennifer Marlowe, the hot receptionist, who happens to be the highest paid employee in the company.

Less Nessman, newsman, with a bandaid and a dream. To have walls.

Dr. Johnny Fever, the drive time DJ brought in after he was fired from another station for being vulgar.

Bailey Quarters, Mary Anne to Jennifer’s Ginger

Venus Flytrap, overnight soul brotha, way too smooth for the rest of these jokers.

and Randy Travis, the Program director brought in to try and run this mess.

It’s a fantastic collection of characters in a great setting. Do yourself a favor, if you remember it or have never seen it, go get it. Watch it. Love it.

Oh, yeah, fellow babies. BOOGER!

Our long national nightmare has ended. I am no longer watching Dancing with the Stars. After tonight’s show, where Ian Ziering was one of the low level stars getting it done on the dance floor.  Well, Ian pulled out his Elvis impression, made famous in the episode where the gang flew to Vegas to stop Brenda from marrying Stewart (they stopped her, in case you were wondering) but it wasn’t enough to beat the other three "stars" left. I watched this show the whole season. It’s pretty damn near unwatchable. If not for the DVR and my fast forward button I don’t think I could have done it. It’s just not that interesting.

I was in it 100% for the 90210 factor, which doesn’t make me any less pathetic, I realize this, but I own my own OKness. We’ve been over this and over this. I’m OK, you’re OK. That there’s what it is. This circle is me. I won’t be sent into a shame spiral. I am a human being, not a human doing, or vice versa, I can’t remember which is the good one. And WE LIKE ROY!

Anyway, I voted last night. I used my 5 total votes. All for Steve Sanders with a cap on. All for naught, and all for love.

What makes me the saddest about this whole thing (aside from watching Billy Ray Cyrus dance) is that I fear this is the last we may ever see of Ian Ziering on television. I hope not. I hope he gets the post primary bump from this and gets a pilot or at least some guest starring role in whatever piece of shit Jason Preistley gets cast in next, but this may be it for this star that hath shone so brightly, if ever so briefly.

So that may be it for Ian. It’s certainly it for me and Dancing with the Stars. That is until Tim Reid, or Bronson Pinchot end up in next year’s show. I’d go out and buy whatever they were advertising to see Bronson Pinchot work in the Balki dance into the Cha Cha Cha, or the waltz.

Of the Canadian I’d least like to be stuck in an elevator with in 1988 is.

I know that’s a pretty specific category, but this is one award that has been well and truly earned. I was watching, thanks to Netflix and the WWE, the very first Royal Rumble, which took place in 1988 in Ontario, Canada. During the first match "Ravishing" Rick Rude vs. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat there was a woman, at least in her mid-thirties, sitting in the front row with a cartoon character T-shirt (I couldn’t make out which character), and that baseball cap with the two hands sticking ridiculously out the front and a string hanging down that causes the hands to clap if it is pulled. If this ridiculous get-up is not enough to qualify her, she also had a mega-phone. It was not the rap-master 2000, so no one thought she was Hammer. She used it from the start of the match t shout random cheers, or whatever it was she was thinking at the time, loud enough to be picked up by the mics.

I like to think the following conversation took place on the way out the door that afternoon.

"Boy, you got my Leaf hat?"
"No, Ma, I ain’t. Alls I got is this here hat with hands clapping on it. You want that one, eh?"
"You knob! How’m I s’posed to go to the wrastlin’ match without my Leafs hat? Give me the damn clapping hands hat. It’s better than nothin’ and if we end up on TV I want to look my best."
"OK, fine. You ready to go then?"
"Not until I get my megaphone. That Rick Rude thinks he so hot. I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind."
"Eh"

The best part of the whole thing is Event Security came down to her about 10 minutes into the match (all of this happened off camera, but if you watched any of this, you knew it was coming) and took her megaphone away from her. The next time you see her on camera she’s sitting there, with her hands in her lap, looking very sad.

I was reminded of this while I was watching the last five minutes of one of the NBA playoff games that was pretty much locked up. They took a shot of the one guy left in his section who was rooting for the home team. You could easily determine his affiliation by looking at the Raptors jersey he was wearing, or if you missed that, the fact that his face was painted his team’s colors and he was wearing a matching wig.

I have no problem with the face painting fan. And what I’m about to say actually comes from experience as I painted my face in a blue and white spiral emanating from my nose (which did little to deemphasize it) for the 1993 Class 2A Football Championship. After we lost the game, and brother it wasn’t close, I had to go back into the bathroom and wash all of that paint off. There is nothing sadder than the guy who was so excited before the game started that he spent at least 30 minutes in front of the mirror applying make-up standing there, pissed off washing all of that hope right off his face. As if losing wasn’t bad enough, you now have to physically remove your excitement.

The sadness that guy feels, and if he’s a Kentucky fan he deserves it, is nothing compared to the "worst Canadian of 1988" felt after her megaphone was taken away.