Sign of the Times and Picking The Hoarders Dry

Much like the elusive thirteenth floor in a hotel I am having trouble finding signs that reflect reality. Or at least the reality as I see it.

For example, today as I was on my morning run around DC, I ran through a Capitol Hill park where I saw a sign that said “Pick Up After Your Pet”. Fine…..I can appreciate that. Nobody wants to step in poop when just walking down the street. But the picture was of a dog squatting over the sidewalk and a guy bending down to grab it. Fine, we all get it. Dogs are the primary poopers of our fair park. But what about the few odd cats who go out for walks? How come they aren’t on the sign? Or the potbelly pig owner, where is their sign? Well I’m never one to point out a problem and not provide a solution. I think, in the name of inclusion that we should have a much longer sign with all the different pets pictured so that owners of non-dogs are aware that the law applies to them as well. Sure it could run the entire length of the park (especially if we include the fish and the frogs) but isn’t it worth it to know that everybody is aware of the policy!

I also want to share my idea for a great TV Mash-up/Crossover/Spin-off. What if the people from American Pickers and Storage Wars came over to the houses in Hoarders and started perusing all the “junk”? I think this may be “gold”. Sure, most of the stuff is really junk but I think you might find a valuable antique or two or at least some stuff that the storage locker guys can sell in their second hand shops. How do I keep coming up with this stuff?

And The Lord Said, “No! Use The Other Remote”

So you live too far from the nearest Synagogue to manage to get there for the holiest days of the entire year. What do you do? Previously you were s#$%^t out of luck. You either missed out on some of G-ds loving touch or you pulled your ass off the sofa and made the trip. But not now. Technology has brought you a new option. Just reach that arm out and grab the remote.

Shalom TV is a free Video-On-Demand Jewish cable network currently available in more than 38 million homes. This year it will broadcast the Jewish High Holiday services via national cable TV for the first time. According to the network, its “designed for those who cannot attend a synagogue service” They will air Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur congregational programs beginning the week of September 5. The different parts of the services will be presented as individual programs such as liturgy, Torah readings, Shofar Service on Rosh Hashanah and more led by Rabbi Mark S. Golub, president of Shalom TV from his home community in Connecticut. Shalom TV is available through Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, Verizon FiOS, Cox, RCN, Bright House, Armstrong, Service Electric Cable vision, Buckeye CableSystem, MetroCast, Blue Ridge Communications, Frontier and Rogers Cable (Canada).

Wow!

I’m totally sitting on my ass this year. And the best part is when I fall asleep in the middle of the sermon, I can just rewind and watch what I missed later in the day!

I love technology

Stop Chewing...That's My Cousin Leroy!

Perhaps I have too much time on my hands…no check that….I definitely have too much time on my hands. Because only I could make the observations I’m about the make about a commercial I saw on TV. First, I ask that view the following commercial for Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheat cereal:



Ok now you’ve seen it…here we go:
What’s with the masochistic cereal? Why do they continue to quiz this kid for his history exam when he’s preparing to drown their family in milk and weight them down with strawberries???

It’s not like I should be surprised, after all Charlie the Tuna or the Jolly Green Giant never slapped the taste out of the mouth of the people in their commercials that were eating Chicken of the Sea or their canned peas.

Still I think that these squares of shredded wheaty goodness should strike back and gain a measure of revenge. They could do it the easy way and just cut up this kids windpipe and intestines on the way “down” or they could be smart about it and just do what I would in the same position (not that I’ve ever been in the position of a piece of cereal about to be devoured by an 8-year-old kid but still)….they should give him all the wrong answers so he fails this test miserably which will lead him to drop out of school by the time he’s 15 and lead him to a life of crime and drugs which will result I him ending up in jail for a good chunk of his life. Now that’s how I spell REVENGE.

Dry Your Eyes, It’s Only Oprah.

If you thought that we’d hit a new low in terms of marketing and licensing of television and movies, you thought wrong. Oprah “My VaJay-Jay Hurts” Winfrey is teaming with ABC to promote “Oprah’s Big Give” show coming up on March 2 by including packages of tissues in your Sunday newspaper’s TV section. The tissues will be branded with “Tears of Joy” to remind people that while watching Oprah and the latest “Extreme Makeover” (you know the show that gives people a new house which they promptly have to give up when they can’t make the tax payments on the renovations) that it’s ok to cry.

Kleenex? Are you kidding me? How about swapping those out with a package of batteries so I can make sure my remote control is well stocked so I won’t have a problem changing the channel when these new lows in American television air. For more on this story click here for the MediaPost’s take on it.

By the way…Strong Bad’s latest e-mail takes aim at licensing products. It’s worth the few minute distraction.

I also want to take this opportunity to point out that American Idol is now more popular then anything else in America. According to the latest Neilson Ratings for Tuesday (2/19) night’s show, 25% of all televisions on in America were tuned to Fox and these priming pre madonas who think that they are the latest “shiznit”. As only Don King could say, “Only in America!”

New Year, New Me?

Well not really (again, Hertz should be paying me for these constant plugs!) but I am excited for the year upcoming and all the posts to this blog that will accompany it. To start things off I want to thank our hosts for New Years (you know who you are) as both Mr. Blogger and his wife (Mrs. Blogger) had a great time with friends and hope to do it again soon.

Now speaking of New Year’s I want to take a moment to take issue with the so-called “New Year’s Eve” programming that the networks (both broadcast and cable) trotted out this year to entertain those of us sitting at home. Every year, it seems, these bastions of mindless entertainment out do each other in the vapid, idiotic, and down right OUCH they manage to program into a few hours every December 31.

Here is just a sampling of what I saw: (in alphabetical order)

ABC

Dick Clark is alive, we get it. He looks pretty good for a man his age especially considering his recent health scare. However, to hear him talk for even a few moments is intensely painful and reminds us that even before the stroke people accused him of being a robot with human skin. Well to their credit he looks even more so now, only this time around his speech matches his amour plating.

I realize that taking Mr. Clark off the air entirely would leave the job up to Ryan Seacrest (Out) but it might be worth the sacrifice. At least this way I could skip the American Broadcasting Company’s programming all together. Seacrest had some in depth observations when talking to New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. When the mayor said he wouldn’t run for President (I still don’t believe him), Seacrest stood there with the “err…what do I say to this guy now?” look on his face. He did however seem more at ease with Carrie Underwood and the Jonas brothers (who?????)

CNN

Pretty-boy Anderson Cooper hosted from New York and other then the timeouts for national news (the same national news that had been airing since 12pm in the afternoon) was just as painful. Perhaps its my high aspirations for national news networks that they might find better stories in the “crowds” of Times Square then the broadcast networks do but alas, even the mighty CNN went with the “we’ve found a lady and her kids here who are immigrants and she just became a US citizen….” Boy am I excited! WAAA-WOOOO and junk. STOP NOW….

ESPN

To it’s credit at least the “4-letter” didn’t have a correspondent in New York broadcasting live from the ball drop telling us about all the sports celbs in attendance. They also didn’t go live to Alex Rodriguez as A-Rod conveniently dropped by the NBC Carson Daily show (read the whole story here ) to let everybody in America know how much he “loves” New York (and managed to really make me ill with his “makeout session” with his wife at the stroke of Midnight). No instead ESPN took us live to the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. You know the one, behind “The Strip” on the other side of the expressway, that bastion of Cool and Hip (and cheap….this is one of the places that you get those $30 room specials on-line). There at a specially designed site, we could watch a world record attempt at motorcycle distance jumping. All of that might have been well and good if the show when started at 1130pm EST got right down to the jump and then we could have tuned into another station to see the ball drop in NY. No. That was not the plan. Instead we had to be introduced to 4 “co hosts, “ all of whom were washed up former athletes who nobody in the audience (including their own families) cared anything about. Then we were treated to an hour, that’s right the damn jump didn’t even occur at midnight (in any time zone!), of packages on the preparations for the jump, how the physics of the jump would work, and oh yes, how the “jump measured up to other events in the world of sport that featured supreme acts of athleticism!”

I beg public television to get it’s HD hat in the ring. Please get a camera on the clock and the ball, leave it there and then just after all the confetti is done falling, go to the celebration in the next time zone (Chicago or something). It’s either that or next year I’m going to stick my head in the sand and wait for the tap on the shoulder that it’s now 2009.

Blogger man… OUT!