With a large number of talented artists and writers available who would be more than capable of producing an animated show of worth (Jhonen Vaszuez, Roman Dirge, Elmore Leonard, Fred Venturini, Chuck Palahniuk, Neal Stephenson, etc…), it’s a wonder why Fox is trying to beat a dead horse with Napoleon Dynamite.

If Fox isn’t even going to give deserving talent a shot at creating something unique, may I suggest that they rethink their choice of source material?  Do something with a bit of an edge to it.  Something with a bit of bite.  Something that will not only give the artists something entertaining to work on, but also give the viewer a television show that’s worth thirty minutes of their time.

If they’re going to dig into the round bin of history and rehash existing material for conversion to animation, may I suggest that they consider the following movies?:

Eraserhead
Schindler’s List
Ichi The Killer
Leaving Las Vegas
Blue Velvet
The Road
The Killing Fields
Midnight Cowboy
Million Dollar Baby
The Elephant Man
Se7en
The Pianist
The Wrestler
The Human Centipede

Just once I’d like to wake up on Saturday morning, pour myself a heapin’ bowl of Apple Jacks, plop down on the couch and zone out to the escapes of an animated Joseph Merrick as he limps heavy-bone about town (while uttering his catchphrase, “So sue me for forgetting!”), comically proportioned Detective Mills and Somerset as they agonize over what’s in the box, and a celebrity-voiced Henry Spencer as he daydreams about the singing lady in his radiator.

Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to throw in the towel and try to cash in the passe past, count me out.  Let me know when you’re willing to gamble on something interesting.  Only then will I subject myself to a television show whose sole goal is to get me to watch advertisements.

I’m not sure how this obsession came into being, but one day he started saying “Choo Choo!  Choo Choo!” and hasn’t stopped since.  And what do we do?  Only the stupidest thing ever…we bought him a Thomas & Friends DVD.

When he first laid eyes on that DVD his entire body seized up, then he went into a disturbing set of shivering convulsions as he held the DVD stiff-armed in front of his wide-eyed face.  After a couple of minutes he calmed down, took a deep breath, then proceeded to shout “CHOO CHOO!!” over and over again, clutching the DVD close to his chest in a death grip (but it was the cutest lil’ death grip I ever saw) until we left the store.

And now Thomas & Friends is all he ever wants to see.

After the 100th viewing of Thomas & Friends I began to deeply regret buying that DVD  

And what is Thomas and his friends, anyway?  Are they alive?  Robots?  Sickening Mengelesque medical experiments gone horribly awry?  They seem to be sentient beings, albeit in train form.  They can converse with each other and blindly take orders from a squat man in a tall hat.  Are these trains capable of independent action, or do they require that an engineer be on board?  They obviously have a primitive social hierarchy, and are continuously in a competitive struggle with each other employing increasingly bizarre and twisted mind games.

If they are, indeed, living creatures, do they possess souls?  Are they immortal?  Do they die like all other living beings eventually do?  If so, what happens whey they die?  Are funerals held?  Do they bury their dead, or instead recycle them?

So many questions.  But I guess I’ll have time enough to contemplate them as I watch Thomas & Friends for the 300th time with Tyler.

Thanks, Thomas…

Stay classy, Maury. Stay classy…

And I wonder how, if they’ve sold out of a particular item, why does it reappear during their next segment in full stock and at an even cheaper price?

I tell myself to simply skip this show entirely the next time I’m mindlessly channel surfing, but without pause something incredibly improbable and mind bending invariably flaunts its ugly flanks in my face, slowly undulating left to right in a hypnotically rhythmic motion, daring me to pause like a sheltered rubbernecking soccer mom whose only thrill in life is to slowly drive by gruesome highway accident scenes praying to God nobody was injured but secretly hoping to see a little bit of blood.  This time around the good presenters on the Hourly Watch Bonanza (or whatever they’re calling their show nowadays) were trying to pawn off on their good viewers a watch of such gargantuan proportions that I seriously wondered at what point their arms were going to tire while holding up this ridiculous hunk of cheap metal and spinning gears.

When does a watch stop being a watch and instead graduates to the rank of “clock”?  This particular watch is water resistant up to 100 ATMs (that’s 3300 feet).  So the next time you’re diving at over half-a-mile underwater you can rest assured that this watch will not only be dragging you down to your certain doom with it’s sheer weight, it’ll be keeping excellent time as it does so.

Who wears such a ridiculous looking watch anyway?  This watch is so huge that the manufacturer suggests that anyone with a wrist circumference of less than six inches should not wear it, lest you snap your little girly arm while showing off your wicked new wrist clock to your amused office mates who don’t have the guts to laugh in your face.

The heft of this watch should qualify it as a weapon, considered lethal in most states, and with a deadly minimum range of ten feet requiring a danger-close warning every time you raise your arms too quickly.

In all honesty, the next time you want to look like an ass, give me the $1000 you were going to blow on this overblown, unnecessary accruement and I’ll follow you around your office for an entire week with a black eye and a split upper lip claiming to your colleges and coworkers that you abuse me every night with a well worn rubber mallet under the 1000-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets of your plush California king-sized bed.  This way you’ll be giving your money to someone who truly needs it, and I’ll be saving you the embarrassment of wearing such a contemptible timepiece.

Enter the world of bargain shoppers who have mastered the art of saving! In Extreme Couponing, meet the everyday people who save hundreds of dollars in a single trip to the store.

Some of these people spend up to 60 hours each week researching, collecting and collating coupons obtained from a variety of sources (newspapers, internet, direct mail and even dumpster diving). Fully armed with coupons they head for the grocery store where they’ll purchase cart after cart of products, often times owing just a fraction of the true cost of the items after checkout.

This is all well and good, but I’m trying to put this into real life perspective here. What I’m seeing when watching this show are junkies out of control. Some people like smack, some like horse, some hit the bottle, and still others spend every waking moment compulsively collecting coupons.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for using coupons to save on the weekly shopping bill, but it’s not as if these people are finding great deals on weekly staples such as dairy, meat, grains, fruits and vegetables. No. They’re buying 24 packages of cream cheese, cases of laundry detergent, fifty bottles of carbonated water, 100 bottles of multi-vitamins, dozens of bars of soap, cases of tabasco sauce, and any other product that they really don’t require.  They even convert rooms in their homes into storage lockers where they keep their vast collection of shampoo, toilet paper and body wash.

I think these people are simply feeding their monkey, getting high off of buying a gross of Q-Tips for fifty cents in their weekly quest for the holy grail of “$1000 worth of groceries for free”, then looking forward to next week when they can get their next couponing fix.

Now, I understand that some of these people give to needy causes, but I’m of the belief that they use the “I’m donating to charity” bit as an excuse to justify their obsessive behavior.  This is nothing more than an addiction where victims are always looking forward to their next high, and will stop at nothing in their hunt for the ultimate bargain.

Now, I’m not a doctor (but I do play one on this blog). It seems to me as if the behavior of these individuals rivals those of those poor bastards on the television show Hoarders. Their aberrant passion for coupons is akin to uncle Joe who can’t bear to part with his used underwear collection. I think Dr. Drew needs to call an intervention, gather up each one of these ailing individuals, and get them the help that they need.