Hungry

This title I borrowed from Paul Revere And The Raiders. Back in the mid sixities, when the "British Invasion" was occurring in music, the Americans fought back with our own brand of contemporary rock 'n' roll. Bands like " The Young Rascals", " Tommy James And The Shondells" and Sonny & Cher were making hits to counteract what the Brits were importing from across the pond. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I still like that stuff. But that's not the subject I'm barking about today. No I'm griping about....sliders.

Lately I've been hearing tons of ads for sliders. They are a new breed of hamburgers that are small. That's about all I know about these things. The name alone is enough to make me want to get a stent in my veins. The title "slider" implies a greasy, slimy piece of undercooked meat. Hardly something I'd go out of my way to ingest. The most ads I hear are for White Castle, one of the earliest fast food establishments here on the east coast. Their hamburgers are capable of creating enough gas to power our major metropolis into the next millenium. So a White Castle slider sounds like double the cholesterol and five times the gas. But as somebody who keeps missing the mark as to what is popular and what's not. These things are BIG. Not size-wise but as a phenomenon. There's a definite market for this type of belly bomb, why is a mystery to me. Is this just a conspiracy to serve us less and charge more? Our news services are peppered with reports about the obesity plague in America, and yet we still want to eat sliders. Just an aside, but not only are we deluged with warnings about how overweight we are as a nation, but we're also innundated with lawsuits about models being unrealistically thin and how many people are developing eating disorders to mimic and unrealistic image. What's it going to be? We can't have it both ways! Either we have to decide if we're going to be a nation of fat slobs or aenemic anorexics, which is better for us? I'm not aware of many fast food establishments that serve fruit or veggies to any noticeable degree. Sure, you can get a salad at Wendys or McD's but is that really nutritious? Especially once it's drowned in oily dressing? I'll never cease to wonder why so many of the things I find unappealing are so popular. I guess I'm just out of synch with the world I live in, or maybe I'm the one that's right and everyone else in the world is wrong. I wonder if I'll ever find out which is the right answer?

TV Is King

I grabbed this title from a song by The Tubes. It came out in the 1980's and was a minor hit on some progressive stations, but that aside, I'm sure it was quickly forgotten by all but a few rock afficianados. But as always, this isn't about the music it's about...television.

In the past few decades, more and more vintage television shows have been morphed into Hollywood movies. In most cases, they were incredibly BAD. It makes me wonder what the hell has happened to creative writing? Can't those doofuses who finance these disasters read? Here's a list of some of the more memorable forgettable movies
in no particular order....
Dennis The Menace( although this was a TV show based on a comic strip)
Dragnet
The Wild Wild West
Mission Impossible
Bewitched
The Addams family
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Flintstones ( TWO bad movies based on a cartoon)
Charlie's Angels
Lost In Space
Get Smart
The Brady Bunch
Maverick
and the ever dreadful...Starsky and Hutch
Just to name a few, I'm sure there are some others that I've forgotten for very good reasons. But I have to wonder why so much of what we see has gotten solame? I used to look forward to the start of the new televsion season, which always coincided with the start of a new school year. I'd go to class and we'd talk about the shows we saw the night beofre. There was a writer's strike a few years ago, and that put the television season off to a late start. In the interim a bunch of "Reality Shows" wer eput on, one because they required no writing. They were inexpensive to produce, since there were no high priced stars to command big prices. The production costs are minimalized by the lack of sets and props. I have to admit that I actually watch many of these shows. The most famous is "Survivor" and after twenty seasons, I'm still hooked. I also like the programs dealing with custom cars, bikes etc. The novelty wears off too fast though. I liked "Monster Garage" and "Monster House" they had short runs and didn't ge to the point where they were tiresome, although Monster Garage's projects became a bit too bizarre towards the end of its' run. "American Chopper" has gotten to be more about the fmaily squabbles of the Teutel clan, which I have zero interest in. I want to see how radical customs are created, like in "The Great Biker Build Off". Even "American Hot Rod" got to be overdramtized as it grew older. One never knows how much the editing process plays in how this phenomena proceeds. What's left in and out can totally change one's perspective, so a bit of creative cutting can make a mountain out of the proverbial molehill. The stations that watch tend to have the stuff I want to see over the old networks. I don't care who the "American Idol" is, who wins "Dancing With The Stars" or who wins " The Amazing Race". There are shows about cooking, hair cutting, getting ahead in business, fashion modeling, weigt loss, and a plethora of other subjects, each with a core of followers. I consider myself to be a fairly competent writer and I would enter a contest to prove it to myself that I'm not delusional...but I cannot imagine a more boring reality show than one about writing. so I guess that's about all I can add to this tirade.