I have found the worst, tackiest, most horrible “game” show ever.

Repo Games.

Here’s the gist: Your car is being repossessed. It’s on the damned truck. The Host gives you a choice of answering 5 trivia questions (3 out of 5 wins) and if you win they pay off your loan and you keep the car. If you miss three questions, they take the car. They even raise and lower the lift on the truck as you answer.

Who thought this shit was cool? I’ve had a car repossessed. You kinda know it’s coming but suddenly there they are and you have no say. In my case, Buck had the car at work and they just sat there staring at me until he came home. I wasn’t allowed to call him and was forced to sit outside with my two kids in the heat until he came home and handed the car over. This was 20-some years ago, but I still remember how embarrassed and helpless I felt. I was calm and compliant but if those fuckers had turned it into a game show I would have lost my shit and turned into one of those screaming shrews.

Way to prey on people in a tight spot just for fun. Assholes.

I haven’t thought about this show in years. I remember a discussion with my boys when they were younger about blanks in a gun and another conversation with someone about the hottest male actor EVER!

Then my friend Tee Morris posted this picture today and I recognized the Omni immediately! I don’t know where he got it, that’s his story. But I loved that show. Early 80′s show, Jon Erik Hexum (Yum) was an inept time traveler assigned to “fix” wrongs in history so he grabs some history professor’s kid (Meeno Peluce, remember him?) and drags him along as a little human fact-checker.

I put it in my Netflix queue, but I’m pretty sure it won’t hold up to my memories of it. Maybe I loved it because JEH was the prettiest man I’d ever seen, or maybe it was a halfway decent show. I’ll find out soon enough, but I wanted to share this today. Go look at all those pics, you have to agree he was yummy. Too bad he wasn’t real bright. I’m going to need to stock up on popcorn before these start showing up.

I watch a lot of childrens TV with Kira. There’s not much else to do at Grammi’s house. Actually, she does a lot of stuff, coloring and cutting paper and playing with puzzles or play-doh but the TV’s always on something for her. Sometimes it’s movies (like right this minute we’re watching Ella Enchanted) but usually Nick Jr.

I’ve noticed some weird family issues on some programs.

• Kai-Lan is always outside with her friends and parents are never shown. She visits her grandfather, but no other adult figure is around.
• Dora has a family (both parents, twin younger siblings and her grandmother) yet she’s allowed encouraged to roam the countryside in sometimes dangerous situations alone… with a monkey.
• Diego seems to be part of an animal preservationist family along with his slightly older sister and both parents, and yet he wanders the countryside alone rescuing animals and getting into dangerous situations.
• The Backyardigans are actively shown to be pretending in their own backyards. Parents are in the house making snacks for when they’re done.
• Miss Spider (but she’s married so shouldn’t that be Mrs.?) has adopted a few orphan bug-children and it’s talked about quite freely.
• Little Bear, Little Bill, Olivia and Franklin are all about families.
• As far as I can tell, Max and Ruby – both children – live alone and Grandma lives nearby and visits.

Most are good shows, teaching problem solving and courtesy, using your imagination and stuff. But that Max and Ruby thing bugs me. I know they’re based on the books and I haven’t read them all to know if parental figures ever show up. Should all kids TV programs show some sort of adult supervision?

Dora scares me. It’s encouraging children to wander off and get into adventures. How is that a good thing?

And now she’s dancing to Ella singing Somebody to Love. It’s adorable.

The show itself isn’t really the subject of this post. For some reason it hasn’t been recording on my DVR and with intermittent reports of it being canceled I thought there was only one final episode I didn’t see… last week’s.

So I went to FOX.com and found there were actually four episodes I’ve missed. What I really want to complain about – because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t complain – is the little 15 second commercial that runs before/during/after. The same 15 second commercial, starting with “Love Hurts” so it’s even more annoying.  I hate Nisson right now.

There is only one commercial so it is better than real TV. But come ONNNNNN! One commercial over and over again, especially when I’m watching multiple episodes? That’s not fair!

Yes, I know I could watch it on Hulu, but there’s even more commercials and repetition over there. Just sayin’

Bitch bitch moan moan

This comment slid past my twitter stream and caught my attention:

Journalism schools should not be teaching students how to get a job. They should be teaching them to tell stories.

Wha-what?

Now I don’t want to get into a pissing match with this particular dude. He gets particularly touchy about his newspaper background. So I respond politely with:

I think stories means made-up. Maybe they should teach them to state the facts in an interesting way.

To which he replies:

That’s your bias. Stories can also be truthful and accurate. A good journalist is a storyteller.

So I look it up.

sto⋅ry

–noun
1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.
2. a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel.

Fine, technically a story can be truth or fiction. I still think the word story implies fiction and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

But after the steady declining of journalistic integrity and the news being taken over by businessmen, where are the real journalists? Should so-called journalists be telling stories?

I want real news back. I want straight facts, very little educated guessing and no fireworks and glitter. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite making shit up? Huntley or Brinkley taking sides on an issue? Or any of them spending hours gossiping about the private lives of reality show attention whores? I DON’T THINK SO!

And I don’t want to know if they ever did. I want to remember trusting the guy in the box. We need more guys in the box to trust. We need more men and women with integrity to go out and find the important news and give it to us straight with no frills, no filling and no corporate agenda.

Not tell stories.

I can get stories everywhere else.

—————

And I say guys in the box, because I think newspapers are dead. Yesterday’s paper can’t compete with 24 hour news channels and the Internet. I realize newspapers can go more in-depth with a subject than the local news can, but they don’t stand a chance. We’re so disenchanted with ALL journalists that we’re leery of more than the quick facts. The more I read, the more I wonder how much is fudged. I have friends in the news business and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you’re owned by the stockholders. I don’t trust you anymore.

I watched three episodes of Cake Boss last night. Ugh! That show is about cake decorating about as much as American Chopper is about motorcycle design. Why are there so many shows about dysfunctional families?

Forget I asked. I want to talk about cake.

I love watching Ultimate Cake Off. How three professional cake creators can come up with three completely different designs for the same concept is amazing. And then the mechanical and technical gyrations they have to go through to get the whole thing to work. IN 9 HOURS! And honestly, even the worst decorator I’ve seen on UCO beats CB hands down.

One of my favorite websites is Cake Wrecks. Though she/they post screwed up cakes by so-called professionals (usually grocery stores) my favorite are the good cakes they post on Sundays.

I’ve never seen or tried one of those fancy cakes. Does fondant taste good or is it just an acceptable substitute to make the cake better looking? I can’t imagine how much one of those designer cakes must cost. If a Costco regular birthday cake is $40…

Maybe I’ll add this to my bucket list. Someday I want a really nice designer cake.

I’m getting excited about my trip to Minnesota. I got the laundry done and most of my stuff packed. I may have to use the bigger suitcase.

I talked to the people at the new apartment and apparently my credit sucks so I have to come up with a bit more security deposit. The date is still on, August 8th. And I’ve decided there’s no way this carpet will ever get clean so I’m sure these guys will take replacement costs out of whatever deposit I may have had coming here. Oh well. EVENTUALLY money will loosen up.

I finished a couple of books last week. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler was first. My friend CJ suggest it. It’s just a slightly amusing play-by-play of this woman’s one night stands. But about halfway through it just got boring and stupid. I mean, one amusing story at a time is cool, but this just goes on and on. I finished it.  The other book was Seth Harwood’s Jack Wakes Up. I met Seth a couple of times (and we twitter) and he was in town Thursday for his book signing so I figured I’d get his book. I went and we all hung out after. He’s another podiobooks.com author. I’ve completely given up on listening to podiobooks. I can barely keep up with the regular podcasts I like, much less get involved with an ongoing story.

I cleaned the nail polish off my toes last night and freaked at how long my nails had gotten. Don’t have a man around to bitch about getting poked.

I have a bit of a dilemma regarding ThatGirl. You know she skipped town with her twins and ended at a homeless shelter in Indiana. She’d ran after the wrong man online. I heard she dumped her year old twins with his Aunt and now has signed them over. The aunt is adopting one of the girls and her cousin is adopting the other, so at least they will still have a connection. My dilemma is, I feel I should contact this family and give them Kira’s basic information so if in the future those girls want to find their sister they have something to start with. I’m not sure if I should leave well enough alone… or stick my nose in. There’s no telling what the future holds and how often Casey will move and change addresses and phones so if there’s to be an information exchange it should be now. For the kids’ sake. Then again, at the rate ThatGirl pumps out babies and then abandons them, there might be a whole litter out there in a few years so why bother.

Speaking of not having a man around. I don’t know why. I get out. I socialize. People seem to like me. I have (married or too young) men friends but I can’t seem to find or interest an available guy for me. Geeze, I don’t want to get married I just want companionship or even an occasional date.  I wish someone could just tell me what I’m doing wrong.

I’ve had three different bites on my Dragon*Con tickets, yet no follow through. How hard is it to paypal $70 and your address to my email?  Today if not sooner. Really, stop saying you want my ticket if you aren’t prepared to do it right now.

I think my ex-husband got married last week.

Has-been celebs have been dropping like flies in the last few weeks. I think Americans give their celebrities way too much attention and it climaxes with their deaths. Hours and hours of TV retrospectives and gossip mongering. Okay, David Carradine died jacking off, that’s all we need to know and maybe a quick replay of his credits before winning the Most Bizarre Finale Award. We don’t need 1,867 headlines of piecemealed out “information” repeated so often that the actual facts (if you ever find them) get lost in the noise. But that was just a warm-up for the whole Michael Jackson drama. Seriously, doesn’t anyone remember the child molesting? When he bought and paid for his children and dangled one over a balcony other weird shit we’ll never know about?  Until the kids get old enough to write their own stories, that is. Although the man was one of the most talented pop songwriter/dancers in our history, he was FUCKING CRAZY. Yeah, I cut him the eccentric artist slack for a long time, but the scales were too unbalanced at the end. Maybe now the rest of his family will find some other tit to suck on. Probably Janet’s, she sure likes to put it out there.

Okay, I’m done for now. I really need to get stuff organized. Later…

As usual, I had my twhirl going last night and @feliciaday was attending an event with Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion. She posted a couple of comments about Nathan stealing her phone and posting to twitter, then Joss posted under @drhorrible‘s twitter account and pretty soon…

@nathanfillion/ is on twitter.  And he already has more than 13,00o followers! I really hope he follows through and actually uses it. I love his sense of humor and I think he could have some fun with it.  We’ll see.

It was fun semi-observing the process and being just a little bit of an insider.

Home alone.  Sweet!

Slept in, got my podcast editing done (finally) and now I’m catching up on my DVR stuff.

Ginnie went camping Thursday night with her gang and should be back late this afternoon.  Maybe before, because it’s been snowing up where they are.  I’m not looking forward to the whining and bitching when she gets back but I’ll admit to a bit of amusement at their discomfort now.

Casey took the kid to his friend’s so they could all do the Easter Bunny/eggs/candy thing together.  Doesn’t bother me a bit to miss any of it.

I’m watching Krod Mandoon and it’s pretty bad. Awful. Stupid. Okay the guy playing Krod is cute, and looks damned fine without a shirt but maybe this would be better on mute. I won’t be recording any more episodes.

And as soon as I get this latest Evo@11 episode uploaded, I’m going back to bed BECAUSE I CAN!

MUCH BETTER!

Second episode was way better then the pilot I talked about last week.  In fact, you don’t even have to bother with the first episode as all the important points are covered in this one.

Everyone is much calmer and although there still is absolutely no chemistry between Castle and Beckett, she may eventually grow a personality.

I’m beginning to have real hope for this show.  And that’s not just because I’m a huge Nathan Fillion fan.  I don’t even consider myself a huge fan.  I really like him both as a person and as an actor.  I want him to move in next door and hang out.  He’s not the Firefly actor I want to attack.

Really!