Terrible Analogies

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

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…

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

Here’s hoping that you had a nice, relaxing Valentine’s Day.  

It appears that the weatherman couldn’t have been more wrong about the forecast.  The weather was actually quite comfortable in southern California.  In between celebrating the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day I managed to squeeze in two trail runs in as many days.   When the rain does finally arrive I plan to spend my days in the gym, so it’s all good.

Not to get all non-sequitur on you, but for no apparent reason reason I’m been thinking about The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air recently, and something’s been bothering me about the show’s premise for the past three days.  If the Fresh Prince and his mother lived in the projects, and the Fresh Prince had an extraordinarily rich aunt who lived in a wealthy and prominent neighborhood of Los Angeles, why would his aunt let her sister live in such a squalid, dangerous location?  

It seemed that his mother and her sister were on good enough terms to let the Fresh Prince live with the aunt apparently with no conditions attached.  If they were on such good terms, why couldn’t his aunt kick a few bucks his way, helping he and his mother escape from a strangling life of targeted, criminal, gang-related violence?

I mean, here’s the aunt who’s dripping with jewelry, three self-centered kids, a powerfully-connected husband who happens to be a well-respected high-ranking judge, a smarmy butler, gardener, and an unknown number of servants lurking in the background performing a variety of tedious tasks all in an effort to keep her comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed.  Floating in a pretentious sea of haute culture and callous celebrity, his aunt couldn’t lift the three fingers it takes to write a check that could change the life of an extremely intelligent, grounded, good-natured child that deserves the opportunity to excel beyond his wildest dreams, breaking the cycle of turbulence and strife that his family has no doubt experienced for generations?

This is, after all, family.  No?

Have you seen this suspect?  If so, contact the authorities immediately!  Rodney Stanger is to be considered armed and…dangerous?

…and before I forget, congrats go out to the Steelers on winning Super Bowl 43.  It’s lucky that the final sack of Warner wasn’t reviewed.  To me it looked like his arm was going forward.  Why this play didn’t warrant a second look from the officials I couldn’t say.  Seemed a bit odd, that’s all.  But when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, eh?