Monthly Archives: October 2015

AROUND THE DIAL

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Zachary Klein

zachIt’s slipping into November and even with the complexity of television’s indecipherable series/season release schedule, it’s time to smile and write about one of my favorite mediums.

While it’s true that my affinity for the box is due to long-standing childhood traumas (what else would an ex-psychoanalytic analysand believe?), I’m not bashful about my affection. I’ve used this space enough times for readers to know many of my television likes and dislikes. Still, there’s always new ground to cover and that’s especially true this time of year for sports fans. Baseball is rapidly moving into the World Series (the play-offs have been top shelf), football is concussing its way toward its midway point, and basketball and hockey are lighting up their arenas. We’re talking the last vestiges of live television here and that’s something to be treasured. Trust me, Ernie Kovacs is not walking through the door any time soon.

But there is another genre that while not done live, does purport to be real.

Okay, I’m gonna come out. Yes, I am a closet “reality show” freak. No doubt this admission will draw disapproving, baleful looks from Kelly, my writing partner, given her rants about House Hunters. But a guy’s gotta to watch what he’s gotta watch and, when it hits post-midnight, that usually means Law & Order reruns, Sportscenter, or SOMETHING ELSE. I usually scour for the ELSE.

I’ve been told the late night talk shows are dramatically better than ever. While I admire Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon, et al, I’ve never been a big fan of the format. At least not since Steve Allen so, more often than not (unless I’m really deep into insomnia and turn to C-Span for warm milk), I bang the clicker until I stumble upon “real.”

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about good reality shows like Anthony Bourdain’s. I save him for prime time. In fact, while I’ve always enjoyed all Bourdain’s different programs, I am truly digging Parts Unknown above and beyond. It’s allowed him to spread his wings and cover much more than dinner and drinks. Who’da thunk I’d really, really want to visit Vietnam?

I’m not a carpet sniffing junkie. I do have my bad show standards—albeit, set at a low bar. I don’t watch Duck Dynasty or The Kardashians (though again, in obedience to my personal 12-step, I did spend an entire flight from Fort Lauderdale to Boston watching back-to-back episodes on JetBlue).

Pawnstars may never get me to Vegas, I’ll never have the money to bring a classic to Counting Cars, and the thought of actually being in a semi barreling across the frozen tundra with Ice Road Truckers is beyond all belief. Still, when we’re talking deep in the night, awake but too tired to read…sure I’ll ride shotgun! Especially from under the covers.

But none of these shows are actually real, you say? Duh. Does anyone believe that Rick Harrison is a historical expert? Or that Chumlee knows anything about anything at all? In fact, there’s a whole industry out there debunking these shows. According to one skeptic Russel Scott, as of 2012, his myth busting articles have been read by hundreds of thousands of viewers. (Near as I can tell he’s shredded the reality of Pawnstars, American Pickers, Storage Wars, and Auction Hunters). What surprises me, though, is the possibility that there might be people who actually need these exposés.

Do you know anyone who makes a living bidding on vacated storage lockers?

Look, truth is not television’s strongest suit. Just watch the news.

In fact, although staged, today’s reality shows have a long and storied history. This Is Your Life ran on radio, then TV, from 1948-1961. Sometimes it was real, sometimes not so much. Didn’t matter. The show was a hit.

This is your life

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, there was the king of them all: Queen for a Day, which ran on the Mutual Radio Network from 1945 until 1957, on NBC Television from 1956 to 1960, then on ABC Television from 1960 to 1964. Queen for a Day became so successful that NBC lengthened its running time from 30 to 45 minutes in order to sell more commercials.

Queen-For-A-Day-March-1958

 

 

 

 

 

 

You all know the premise: Four women tell heart-wrenching tales about their tragedies and the one who ranked highest on the applause-o-meter won a ton of free shit. It was often difficult to understand how a washing machine would help with a child’s disease, but what the hell. “Sure ‘Queen’ was vulgar and sleazy and filled with bathos and bad taste,” wrote producer Howard Blake in an article for Fact magazine. “That was why it was so successful. It was exactly what the general public wanted….We got what we were after. Five thousand Queens got what they were after. And the TV audience cried their eyes out, morbidly delighted to find there were people worse off than they were.”

So what exactly is it that I’m after during those sleepless hours? First, the ability to turn the fucking set off without a second thought when I’m finally ready to sleep. But almost as important, I enjoy looking at unusual “stuff” (How many years has Antiques Roadshow been on, highbrows?), or watching even a fake depiction of a lifestyle to which I’ve never been exposed. Yep. I binged on Amish Mafia. Sue me.

As far as I’m concerned television has nothing to do with truth (or consequences). Like I said, watch the news.

Note to Susan. You didn’t go far enough with House Hunters. It’s rigged.

Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. ~ Clive Barker

Trump-o-mania Quiz: Did He Really Say That? You Decide!

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Susan Kelly

Susan KellyBelow are some real, actual, bona fide Donald Trump quotes, interspersed with some I’ve invented for the occasion. See if you can guess which are real and which are fake.

Quiz rules:

  • You may NOT cheat by Googling the quotes. (Humpf.)
  • Commenters may invent their own Trump quotes, but these fakes should be clearly  labeled as such. The individual who  devises the most outrageous yet plausible.
  • Trump quote will receive ten bonus points.
  • The winner will be declared on Friday.

All right? Ready, set…go for it!!!!

1. “The gays love me. I’ve hired a lot of gays.”

2. “My wife Melania will be the hottest First Lady in the history of this country.”

3. “Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife.”

4. “What’s really bugging the other Republican candidates is that they know I’m much richer and much smarter than they are, and it makes them crazy.”

5. “The women have told me that once they’ve had sex with me, they can’t be satisfied by any other man.”

6. “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”

7. “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very, very rich.”

8. “Writers and artists and musicians are good, but basically they’re losers. Most of them don’t make much money. I can respect a guy like Stephen King. He’s made a lot of money.

9. “I will be the greatest representative of the Christians they’ve had in a long time.”

10. “When I get to the White House, there will be an upgrade, I can tell you. We’ll be putting in a world-class spa, a gourmet kitchen, and penthouse accommodations. And Donald Trump is telling you it won’t cost the American people one cent.” [Note: Donald Trump, like very small children, often refers to himself in the third person.]

11. “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

12. “If I decide to run, you’ll have the great pleasure of voting for the man that will easily go down as the greatest president in the history of the United States: Me.”

13. “I’m much taller than Vladimir Putin. That’s important in making a deal.”

14. “Susan Kelly is a bimbo.”

15. “Arianna Huffington is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her husband left her for a man—he made the right choice.”

16. “I love associating with losers, because it makes me feel better about myself.”

17. “Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.” [Again, third person.]

18. “I don’t want [ISIS] to know what I’m doing. Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to tell at some point, but there is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory.”

19. “It’s a proven fact that my I.Q. is pretty much the same as Einstein’s.”

20. “They kiss my ass in Palm Beach.”

Author’s note: It was fun writing this quiz, but a lot harder than you might think to invent the fake quotes. By the time this piece is published, Trump will probably have said a few more things even more grotesque than I could ever imagine.

Trump: Stumped

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Susan Kelly

Susan KellyI don’t usually write about politics, but the whole Trump phenomenon totally confounds me.

He’s said to appeal to “the base,” a group that regards all the other Republican candidates as progressive liberals. Seriously. Take a look at some of the online forums where “the base” gathers. I’m not going to list them. They’re easy to find. They’re composed of people who claim they refused to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012 because Romney’s a socialist.

Well, okay. Mitt’s a soft-shell Commie. I can dig it. But Trump, on the other hand, is supposed to be a real conservative. I’m not digging it.

Let’s look at his record.

Trump supports—100%, he says—Kelo, the Supreme Court decision that allowed a corporation to take over private property. This isn’t eminent domain; it’s theft. And it’s anathema to most conservatives. And to a lot of liberals, for that matter.

He has donated more money to Democratic politicians and their causes than he has to Republican politicians. And the Democrats better not forget it, either. If they do, he’ll remind them, plus issue marching orders. “Hillary Clinton, I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding,” Trump stated on August 7, 2015. “She had no choice, because I gave to a foundation.”

Back in the day, he loved Hillary. He said so. Now he despises her.

In 2008, he thought Barack Obama was great. “I was his biggest cheerleader,” Trump claims. (Well, of course he was. According to Trump—who has recently acquired the lamentable habit of referring to himself in the third person—Trump and anything Trump-related is the biggest of whatever it may be.) In 2011, he offered to donate one million dollars to charity if someone would produce Obama’s real birth certificate. He said he sent a fleet of private eyes (the legendary Matt Jacob not amongst them, alas) to dig up the truth. In July of this year, Anderson Cooper raised the birth certificate issue. “I really don’t want to get into it,” Trump replied. Gee, I wonder why not?

He’s been all over the place on guns, abortion, and universal health care. His supporters say he’s “evolved.” They don’t cut the same slack for any other candidate who’s failed to toe the line without any deviation whatsoever, which is why, I assume, they decided that former candidate for the Republican nomination Scott Walker is a flaming liberal. Same for Marco Rubio. And Rick Perry. And Carly Fiorina. And John Kasich. The jury’s out on Ben Carson, because he once said something to the effect that he’d prefer not to see Uzis in the hands of homicidal lunatics.

At one point, Trump himself supported a ban on automatic weapons—but that was before he evolved, I guess.

So what’s Trump’s appeal to the people to whom he appeals?

Is it his braggadocio? “I’m really, really smart,” he’s said on numerous occasions, although probably not as often as he’s said “I’m really, really rich.” He’s told us that he’s “slept with the top women in the world,” though “the top women in the world,” whoever they are, seem to have unanimously declined to verify the claim. He’s informed us that his current wife Melania looks incredibly hot in a “very small thong.” (Amusing factoid: If Trump becomes president, his wife will be the second foreign-born first lady and the first to pose nude for a men’s magazine.)

The next time he tells us about whatever he has that’s the biggest, I hope it’s not what I’m afraid it will be.

Is it his general oafishness? He’s referred to various women—notably Rosie O’Donnell and Arianna Huffington–as slobs, dogs, and pigs. When Megyn Kelly of Fox asked him if he thought this practice might damage him with women voters, he responded by Tweeting that Kelly was a bimbo. Which would appear to prove Kelly’s point, but, hey…

Is it that he claims not to care what the press says about him? As he told Esquire magazine in 1991, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

Or does it just come down to the fact that he said he’d build a 1575-mile-long wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it? If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Even about whatever’s biggest.

YET AGAIN

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By

Zachary Klein

zach

(Substituting for Susan Kelly)

Okay, we have another month mugged with another mass shooting, this time at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. How many times can we as a society feign shock or surprise? Since the 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, there have been 142 school shootings in the United States. That’s an average of almost one school shooting per week. To be fair, there is some disagreement about the specific number, but there is absolutely no argument about the FBI’s conclusion that there’s been a “sharp rise” in mass shootings since 2000 through 2013.13Yrs

Let’s be honest. The numbers just confirm what we already knew and the tired old gun control arguments once again have hit the fan.

On one side stand those who argue that “guns don’t kill, people do.” Many “anti-gun control” advocates add that the real issue is the mental health of the person(s) who pull the trigger. Problem is, our political representatives have been unwilling to adequately fund mental health programs. In fact, though most Americans believe mental and physical health are equally important, about one-third of those surveyed see mental health care as inaccessible, and 40 percent see cost as a barrier to treatment—according to a new survey released in September.

Worse, many states have been slashing funds. Between 2009 and 2012, states cut a total of $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending from their budgets. So, if those who truly believe it’s all about mental health really want to reduce the slaughter, put your fucking money where your mouth is. How about instead of signs and politicians screaming, “No New Taxes,” we increase our social service spending? I’m sure there is a Republican candidate for president who’ll support significant funding for mental health, right?

Because they sure won’t support any rational regulations regarding gun control. Again, to be fair and balanced, George Pataki not only supports it but, as governor of New York, also passed what was, according to the New York Times, the strictest gun control legislation in the country at that time.

All those who believe Governor Pataki has a legitimate chance at winning the Republican nomination, please raise your hand.

But there’s no reason to stop with Republicans. Before the Brady bill was finally signed into law in November 1993, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders voted against it. Moreover, in both 2003 and 2005, when he was in the House, Sanders voted in favor of a measure to prohibit lawsuits against firearm makers, though after last week’s shooting in Oregon, he did call for “sensible” gun control laws. (Whatever he meant by that.)

But in all honesty: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% of Likely U.S. Voters believe laws regarding the ownership of guns should be the responsibility of the federal government.” Says something about the nature of the American beast. Especially in the face of:Terror

We have little or no qualms about passing laws that have evolved into frontal assaults on the rest of our liberties in the name of the “War on Terror.” Is it my eyesight or is something is wrong with this picture?

And how about this picture? America has 4.4% of the world’s population, but almost 50% of the civilian-owned guns around the world.Guns

Of course the gun didn’t pull its own trigger in Oregon. The fucker that did, however, allegedly owned a large number of firearms. Now, I happen to believe in people’s right to bear arms, but I also believe in laws that are as least as reasonable as the ones that regulate car ownership:

  1. Point of sale background checks in real time for each and every purchase and those checks include sales at gun shows, mail orders, and the elimination of any “secondary” market that cannot or will not adhere to all these reforms. That is, individuals who sell guns to another person without that person’s compliance with licensing laws.
  2. A seven day wait for each and every purchase to receive a firearm for all purchasers regardless of a clean background check.
  3. Passing a gun safety test before the purchase of any firearm.
  4. Passing a marksmanship test before the purchase of any firearm.
  5. Passing a psychological exam before the purchase of any firearm.
  6. Serious prison time for “straws.”  (Those who are qualified to purchase guns and do so for another who may or not be qualified.)
  7. Strict regulation of firearm production. Production not to exceed legal licensees plus some small percentage above, along with lifting the prohibition of lawsuits against manufacturers who, in fact, overproduce.
  8. Mandatory liability insurance to cover all accidental and purposeful shooting incidents. No insurance, no permit. Period.

Ahhh, but here’s the rub. I’ll be dead and buried before any of the above come to pass—if ever. And by any, I’m talking about the increase needed in mental health funding and accessibility along with reasonable gun regulations. Our society is sliding into social psychosis and fast approaching the point of no return–but Americans just don’t seem to care.

Yes, there are some voices howling against the madness, but sadly, they are few and far between.

To mourn those who have fallen victim to our collective insanity and inaction, the following is a list of just the school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre.