“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I’m an easy target. Yeah, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you…but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. You can say what you like about me; I’m not changing. Me…I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ‘Cause with me, I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.”
Del, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”
Welcome to my world.
From May 1 – 7, my household was selected to be a Nielsen TV family. Initually when I received the phone call on a Sunday afternoon…before I left for El Salvador…I thought “Cool, now’s my chance to get some quality TV on the air.” Yet it wasn’t as it seemed. No Nielsen TV boxes to record what we were watching. Instead they sent me 4 TV diaries….one for each TV in the house. I was supposed to keep up with what TV show I watched. The whole thing was very tedieous. Watching TV is supposed to be relaxing. I’m not supposed to have to write down each TV show I watched…how long I watched it….and what channel it was on. Yet, the Nielsen people wanted me to do just that. After the first day it got old. Hmmmm…how long have I been watching MSNBC? Wait a minute…the TV is on, but no one is watching it. Yep, there was a place in the TV diary for marking just that. Soon after 7 days I didn’t seem to care what the Nielsen people got out of this. The whole thing was just too tedieous to bother with.
And all I wanted to know was why they had to cancel “Freaks and Geeks.” And why crappy shows like “American Idol” continue to receive stellar ratings, even though I don’t watch it at all.
Notice I waited until after the survey was over before mentioning it here. As if the fact that I watch “The Wonder Years,” everyday when they decide to revise programming schedules…or develop new shows.
I guess this is what it has come to. Applying for jobs I’m neither qualified for, nor have an interest in having. Welcome to the new normal. Welcome to the 21st Century. Welcome to being told you’re either underqualified or over qualified for a job.
I saw One Hour Photo tonight. What a very weird movie. Makes me wonder I have any stalkers out there hanging on every word I type. Nah. I’m not that interesting. Just another idiot with a webpage, you know.
So today is April Fools Day. Some of the webpages I visit quite regularly had a facelift on account of the day. Fake news stories abounded on the net. Probably fooled alot of people.
I caught “Disney’s The Kid” last night. Its a good movie. If you can get past the usual Disney sappiness. The general premise of the movie is Russ, a 40 year old high powered consultant meets his 8 year old self. It’s got that Wonder Years/Freaky Friday-esque type of feeling for it.
The 8 year old Rusty is played by Spencer Breslin who is sure to win any cute kid award they give out. Spencer does a really good job in this movie making it fun and watchable. Reminds me of Chunk in The Goonies.
One of the better part of the movie is when both the old and young Russ’s go back to 1968 to change history. In a Back to the Future type style scene, the young Rusty beats up his bully nemesis. Makes you wonder. If we could go back in time to our childhoods and watch ourselves from a distance, would we have a different impression of our childhood? Probably.
During much of the movie, the older Russ dislikes how the younger Rusty looks and acts. “Too fat” or “talks like he has marbles in his mouth.” I’d probably hate my younger self too. When we are young our inferiorities tend to be magnified, at least in our own minds….even though realistically it may not be the case.
I’ve been watching “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.” It’s kinda like a cross between Big Brother and Survivor. Ten celebrities are left to fend for themselves in the “Australian” jungle. I didn’t know Australia had any jungles. Anyways they film over the course of 15 days. Each night they show what happened the previous day. The first week, America votes on which celebrity tries to win food for the group. They have to do weird stunts in order to get food.
First of all, the title “I’m a Celebrity…” implies that it actually has some celebrities. Instead we get pseudo celebrities. Some that I sorta kinda have heard of.
So that’s the list. D-list celebrities. Only a handful which you might recognize. So the name “I’m a Celebrity..” is actually misleading.
Still it’s kinda interesting type show. Watching the celebrities moan about how they are living without the modern conveniences is sorta funny. E! Online has a story on them.
The TGI Fridays on Ellison Place is closing. So it’s sorta sad to see it go. My friend Mark and I ate there a few times for lunch. I don’t think it was originally meant to be a TGI’s.
So I’m watching ABC Family’s My Life as a Sitcom. Real life families across America sent in video tapes to the network. Out of the hundreds of tapes sent in, 8 families were selected to compete against each other. The funniest family will be selected to portray themselves in a network sitcom.
So this week’s family is the Sampson family from Johnson, City, TN. I’m watching it hoping the rest of America doesn’t think we’re all hicks like this. I have a feeling the ABC executives think everyone in the South is like this. That we all grew up on farms. That we all wear overalls and have manure fights on the farm. That we all used to play characters in the WWF.
These type of people confound Southern redneck stereotypes that the New South has tried to get rid of for years. The cancellation of HeeHaw did more for the South than any marketing company could do. It is interesting that the only Southern family ABC picked is this one.
For once, I hope the home team doesn’t win.
“There’s a southern accent, where I come from
The young’uns call it country
The yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin’
But everything is done, with a southern accent
Where I come from”
–Tom Petty, “Southern Accents”
And don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of my southern heritage. I’m not ashamed of it in the least bit. I just don’t like the Hollywood executives making fun of it.
Meanwhile, another southern country, Nauru, looses contact with the outside world. I wonder what will happen to all the *.nu domains?
One of my friends/aquiantances, Zack Bennett, will be on Wheel of Fortune this Friday (6:30PM WKRN Channel 2). Apparently the Wheel has been doing a Nashville edition for a while now.
In case you’re wondering, the space station crew is doing fine thankyouverymuch. But thanks for asking.
We were visited by the Jehovah’s Witnesses this morning. While I disagree with their doctrine, I admire their persistence in evangelism. JW’s are known worldwide for their doorknocking. Sometimes I wish everyday Christians could be more like them, yet without the annoyance factor.
So I’m going to Scottsville tomorrow to help a friend out with his Ebay auctions and webpage setup. I doubt that I’ll be able to get to both topics during my short time there. In fact I don’t have any experience with selling things on Ebay. I know it requires a credit card or something…and a place to host photos. Would Geocities work as a photo host?
I’ll be leaving early in the morning for worship services in Scottsville. I really wish I could stay around MJ for David Shannon’s first sermon of the new year. He usually has a good one to get us all motivated. A few years ago he preached a Lego sermon…showing us we all play a particular role in the whole. We all got Lego bricks to remind us of the role we play. I got a weird type of brick…a black one with no interlocking grids on top. I don’t know if this is symbolic of my role at church or what.
In any case I’ll miss David’s sermons. But duty…or in this case, friendship calls. So I’m up for it.
There’s a new entry in the Ask Jeff section of my weblog. I guess I forgot to mention the new section. It’s for readers to ask me questions for me to answer publically on this website.
So I rented “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and “Cast Away” today when I returned the videos from the lock-in. (I felt so dirty watching “Remember The Titans” without the cuss box. HA! The kids watched it at the lock in with the cuss box).
Anyways I wanted to watch Planes… due to the fact that none of the major cable stations (TBS, TNT, TNN, USA Network) played it over the Christmas or Thanksgiving breaks. It’s a good holiday movie. Alot of good lines on it. And it was good to see John Candy in true form. Then again, it wasn’t that good and I soon saw why the cable stations passed it over this year.
I’ve seen Cast Away before. Good movie. Sorta surprising they haven’t broadcast it on the cable stations yet. Somehow the cable stations seem to broadcast the same movies over and over again. I used to Like “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” until I saw it for the hundredeth time on Comedy Central.
I am still stratching my head thinking what was Rep. Charles Rangel thinking proposing we reinstate the draft. He says he is wanting the administration to play it cool and collective. If it were to pass, he’d be the most unpopular congressman out there. I don’t know what’s worse…Rangel’s politics or his northern accent.
We definitely don’t need a draft. This isn’t World War III. We aren’t under direct attack where we’d need many more troops.
Thanksgiving makes me want to rent Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Steve Martin. John Candy. By some odd twist of fate, this movie is nowhere to be found on the tv schedule during the next 4 days. In fact, I haven’t seen it on tv for quite a while. I’m surprised Comedy Central hasn’t gotten a hold of it and rerun it a billion times just like National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles has that Thanksgiving flavor to it. An odd couple find themselves together trying to get home for Thankgiving. Classic.
Many of us are wondering will UT get to a bowl game this year? Probably. UT has enough of a fan base willing and desiring to travel for a bowl game. It might be one of those bowl games you’ve never heard of…like the Outback Bowl or something stupid. But it will be something. Rest assured that UT will be at some bowl game over the Christmas Break.
I can remember those awkward moments when I was watching certain TV shows in mixed company. One time our church group went skiing in Indiana. Afterwards we stayed up watching SNL. They had sketch featuring feminine products. It wouldn’t have been as bad if they didn’t drag it out and make the main part of the sketch about it.
Another time at a youth devotional, we watched In Living Color’s “Men on Film” sketch during the Super Bowl halftime. This was at a church elder’s house. From experience, Men on Film was just one sexual innuendo after another. Somebody really should have changed the channel or just turned it off completely.
In both cases we sat, afraid to laugh, afraid to change the channel, feeling pretty awkward the entire time. In any case I do think there has been a gradual degrading of the quality of television. I could just be growing up and watching more adult oriented situations. Or maybe society has been softened toward what would have been outrageous in the 1980s. For example, I was watching “Saving Private Ryan” the other night. It the uncut version….swearing and all…on ABC. They did show a disclaimer in between each commerical break. Still, it seemed a little much for primetime Saturday night television, even if the story was patriotic.