Terrible Analogies

Adam Richman and the crew over at Man v. Food held a live televised event the day before the Super Bowl.  The challenge: To consume a 48oz steak in under 20 minutes.

Now, for those of you familiar with this show, it came as a bit of a shock that this was the challenge. A mere 48 ounce steak? No side dishes or any other gastrointestinal requirements? Heck…even I, with the stomach of a bird and the willpower of a post-op Rosemary Kennedy could scarf down this slab of meat within the given time limit.

This amateurishly staged live “event” was painful to watch.  Fans held up “homemade” signs offering encouragement and proclaiming their unquestionable love for Man v. Food. Television announcers were scattered amongst the crowd giving play-by-play calls on the various shenanigans taking place within the unruly mob. All the while a live camera was keeping a vigilant eye on Adam as he paced a nearby hallway, psyching himself up for this momentous “challenge”.

Finally, the big moment arrived. Adam sat down and the steak was placed in front of his gapping maw. The clock began the countdown. Adam attacked the girth of his meat, manhandling the flaccid flesh, slicing healthy-sized cuts off of this sacrificial muscle and shoving them into his moist, quivering, expectant orifice.

The talking heads began offering ever more increasingly bizarre commentaries such as, “That’s a big bite!”, and, “His table manners are impeccable!”, and even “I envy the cow that gave her life for this!”.

At the 15 minute mark Adam asked for a ruling. The observing judge proclaimed Adam the victor, and Adam raised his arms above his head and let out a squeal of excitement.  The TV announcer stated (in a warbling voice well on the road to tears) that, “This is the triumph of the human spirit!”

If by “triumph” you mean “making a mockery of a once cool idea”, then yes, it was indeed a “triumph”.

Guys dressed up as a slice of pizza and a hotdog? Check! Cheerleaders? Check. Gold draperies nicked from your grandmother's house? Check! Let's get it on!

Come on, Adam. Beat that meat!

No, this not a joke. That's the "steak cam". *rolls eyes*

"They may take our lives, but they'll never take...our steak!!"

And so, I must ask this simple question…has Man v. Food jumped the shark?

Adam Richman is the man who tackled the 12 pound hamburger challenge, downed 180 oysters, grappled with the “biggest burrito in the west” (7 potatos, 1lb of ham, 12 eggs, a whole onion, cheese & chili), and consumed some of the hottest food on the face of the planet. Do you honestly believe that a 48oz steak is going present any sort of challenge to him, or be entertaining for the viewers to watch?

If the folks over at the Travel Channel are reading this, can I offer you a small bit of advice? If you’re going to do this again, get rid of the over-exuberant crowds, the idiotic commentary, and circus-like atmosphere. Take a cue from the television show and sit Adam down in a restaurant with a small group of people and give him a real challenge. I’m not here to watch the hype. I’m here to root for Adam in the hopes he’ll be able to throw down a vanquishing “M”.

And hey, if he loses, then I’m cool with that too. Just let the man to his thing.

Television, food food, Television

While channel surfing the other day I happened upon a nature show that I thought was about the majestic and often misunderstood piranha.  There they were, a glittering school of piranha gently hovering in their sepia-stained world, minding their own business when *bam*!  Ambushing from above with the speed of a hungry Haitian (too soon?) were two alien-looking appendages, quickly followed by two eyes the size of which I’ve only seen in my nightmares.

This, my friends, was the classic attack pattern of the noble Giant Water Bug:

This is the reason why I didn’t go wading into those slow, trickling streams during those Boy Scout Jamborees.  I knew, in the back of my young mind where the Boogie Man, the monsters under my bed, and WHAM! lived, that an abominable terror such as this was lurking in the shadows just below the surface, waiting for my innocent little pink toes to come within striking range of its sharpened beak and gripping exoskeleton.

Damn nature, you scary.

Animals, Television Animals, Television

“Food blamed for teen obesity”?  Gee, thanks for that breaking news, CNN.  Would have never figured that one out all on my own…

Strange Facts, Television Strange Facts, Television

There are quite a few topics I’d like to address, but as I sit down to write this post I’m not sure which one to focus on:

1- Air Force One doing a low-level flyover of Manhattan and ground zero.  What moron thought that was a good idea?  Whatever happened to “the buck stops here“?

2- Swine Flu:  What’s the real story?  Why is Mexico taking extreme measures to combat this illness while America sits back and does nothing?  Is this a case of hype over facts?  Did you know that 36,000 Americans die every year because of the flu?  The victims are typically the very young and the very old.  This Swine Flu (no, I’m not going to call it H1N1) seems to be killing people of all ages.  I’m not quite sure what to believe about this illness, but I’m not about to panic.

3 - Arlen Spector: The man who created the “single bullet theory” switches political parties, jumping ship to the Democratic ticket.  This is the same Arlen Spector whose key vote helped pass Obama’s pork-filled stimulus bill.  Face it, he switched sides because he had no chance in hell of being re-elected in the upcoming Republican race.  This is yet another example why nobody should be forced to vote along party lines.

4- The University of Central Florida has developed a new technology which could allow for a single disc to store over 4 terabytes of information.  Call me jaded, but I won’t get excited until I can hold a data crystal in my hands.

But above all of this dire news and political flack one thing really had me questioning my faith in humanity and all that I hold most dear in this world.  I thought I knew everything, that nothing of this magnitude could have possibly escaped my finely honed observational senses for all of these years.

Did you ever notice who the supervising producer of Who’s The Boss was?

You doubt me?  See for yourself:

Sometimes I shock myself at what I find newsworthy…

Politics, Television, Unusual Sightings Politics, Television, Unusual Sightings

As a child of the 80’s, I grew up on television.  Most days I sat on the floor, legs crossed, slack-jawed and unresponsive as a cavalcade of classic television seeped into my cortex and numbed the part of my brain responsible for intellect and reasoning.  This was the era of CHiPs, Three’s Company, The A-Team, and MTV when MTV played honest-to-God music videos that were hosted by people called “VJs” (shout out to Martha Quinn and Remote Control).  And it was in the 80’s when MTV first began to experiment with the non-musical format.  During this transitional era MTV aired what was one of the most original and unhinged television shows ever to hit the small screen.  

This show was called The Young Ones, and I instantly fell in love with it.  

The Young Ones centered on four college students (in reality, only three were in school, but I digress) who shared a dilapidated flat on the wrong side of town.  Rick (the anarchist), Vyvyan (the punk), Mike (the cool one), and Neil (the hippie), did whatever they could to get under each other’s skin, spark neighborhood riots, attempt to take over Britain with a nuclear weapon, sham their way on to game shows, and generally scheme their way through life.  

During most episodes there would be extended non sequiturs into abstract sketches, and visits by a comedian who played a variety of characters (a bank robber, mobster, landlord, fascist sympathizer, mentally challenged bicycle taxi driver, etc…).  Surrealistic scenes were spattered throughout the show (ex: house flies filming a documentary, talking vegetables, stuffed animals humping, subliminal messages, medieval dungeon scenes, Russian poet soothsayer) that kept the viewers on their toes.  And, if you paid attention to what was happening in the background, you might catch some strange goings-on.  

But what really put this show over the top was the inclusion of musical acts that would seemingly appear out of nowhere.  Bands such as Madness, Dexys Midnight Runners, Motorhead, and The Damned would jam as, more often than not, bedlam broke out around them.  

This show was sheer genius.  It’s an example of giving the cast complete control to produce a uniquely wonderful product, and to this day it remains my favorite television show of all time.  I’d like to think that this show could somehow be revived, but that would be difficult to pull off because, after all, the four mates all died in a flaming double-decker bus as it careened uncontrolled down a narrow country road before plunging several hundred feet off a cliff (Richard?), exploding in an inescapable fiery fireball of deathly doom as it slammed headlong into the canyon floor below.  

Now….that’s how you make an exit!

Brian "Damage" Balowski takes over the flat during a street riot

"We interrupt tonight's scheduled program, "The Bastard Squad", to bring you up-to-the-minute coverage of a siege which is now underway in North London"

"What I need is the drill, the hedge trimmers, and some ordinary household bleach..."

Accidents are bound to happen whenever you dig for oil in your basement

Funny, Television Funny, Television