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Andy Rooney: Original Blogger

28 Sep

September 28, 2010

The Urban Dictionary defines “blogger” as a term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives.

It does not, however, speculate on who the first blogger was. For that honor, I nominate CBS 60 Minutes contributor Andy Rooney.

Since 1978, every week near the end of the show, they give Andy a few minutes to talk about whatever is on his mind. Typically, there doesn’t seem to be much going on up there. One week he blathered on about all the plastic bags he has laying around. He didn’t talk about recycling them, he didn’t suggest uses for them, he merely pulled them out of his desk drawers and from various places around his office and showed them to the camera.

“This one is from Waldbaum’s.”
“This bag says ‘I Love New York’ on it. Good thing I do.”
“I seem to have gotten this bag at a Waldenbooks, but I can’t seem to recall when I ever shopped there.”

It went on and on like that.

Here is a typical example of his segments.

ANDY ROONEY ON CARRYING THINGS:

I hope you caught this bit of insight: “When they left the house that morning they planned to drink water, I guess…”

I think that Andy Rooney clearly inspired a whole generation of observational comedians. Listen to Andy Rooney and you can plainly hear the genesis of Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the deal with carrying things? What’s the deal with plastic bags?”

And “What’s the deal with modern music”?

ANDY ROONEY LOSSES TOUCH WITH MODERN MUSIC:

I suspect that the real reason he has lost touch with modern music is that he is 91 years old!

According to CBS News’s biography of him, “Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, ‘An Essay on Doors.’ From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner – Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating -on such notable CBS News specials as ‘An Essay on Bridges’ (1965), ‘An Essay on Hotels’ (1966), ‘An Essay on Women’ (1967), and ‘The Strange Case of the English Language’ (1968).

Give the man credit for consistency- he hasn’t changed a bit in over 40 years. As the man himself wrote in a letter, “Let’s face it, even on the nights when I’m good, I’m not that good.”

I’ll end now with a question I’m sure we all want answered:

WHAT’S IN ANDY’S DRAWERS?

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My Review of the All-New, Non-Celebrity Apprentice September 2010. Spoiler: It Sucked.

16 Sep

September 16, 2010

Donald Trump returned to TV tonight in the original format of The Apprentice. Last time around the contestants were all celebrities, but this time all around the only celeb is the one who has always been the biggest celebrity on the show, Donald Trump himself.

The premise this time around is that The Donald has gathered a group of smart and hardworking people who were hit hard by the recession and deserve a shot. Unfortunately, Donnie really blew it this time. (And no, I don’t mean his hair.)

I expected out of work construction workers, laid-off teachers, farmers, people who were pushing hot dog carts, even guys who hand out flyers on street corners. Those are the people the economy has hit hardest. Problem is, those are the people Trump never sees. Think Trump has ever eaten a dirt water hot dog from a guy who looks like he bathed in the hot dog cart? Probably not. So who are the new contestants?

A materials testing technician
A real estate investor
A corporate attorney/cupcake baker
A real estate developer
An account manager/standup comic
A financial advisor
A lawyer
A public relations flak
An educational technology developer
An assistant DA/web show host
An attorney/beauty pageant contestant
A sociology major/Olympic swimmer
A commercial banker/non-profit foundation fundraiser
An entrepreneur/Olympic swimmer
A real estate agent/”Miss Cougar California”
A “self-taught real estate mogul”/big game hunter

I wonder how hard the economy has hit the big game hunter? Can he no longer afford to hunt lions? Does he now hunt only meerkats? And a web show host? Seriously? There’s no money in that to begin with! That’s almost as bad as being a blogger. There are two beauty contestants, a pair of Olympic swimmers, (unemployed Olympic swimmers- but wait until the next Summer Olympics comes around) a standup comic, a cupcake baker who is also a corporate attorney, and of course the big game hunter. Is this really a cross-section of the country? Are these the most in need of help? And do I feel morally right rooting for the big game hunter?

Miss Cougar California? She is not, how should I say it? Attractive. As Winston Churchill once said (in a Dave Barry column) “Madame, I may be drunk, but you are still blearrrgh! ”

I think it is also more than fair to point out that the assistant District Attorney is still working, and therefore NOT UNEMPLOYED, and that one of the others quit her job, and therefore NOT A VICTIM OF THE ECONOMY.

Well, eloquent as I may or may not be, no one could say it better than Douglas Adams. In the second book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy” (which now reaches six or seven books) heroes Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent suddenly find themselves teleported to a strange spaceship. I now quote from somebody else’s summary:

The spaceship to which Ford and Arthur have teleported, marked as “Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B” is filled with bodies, such as frozen telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, and advertising account executives. Whilst inspecting the bodies, they are captured by Number Two, the third-in-command of the ship, who takes them to the bridge.

Conversing with the Captain, they discover that the bodies are not, as they believed, dead, but frozen. They are intending to colonize another planet, because their original planet was “doomed”. The “A Ark” was supposed to contain leaders, the “C Ark” to contain workers, and the “B Ark” to contain middle-men. It becomes apparent that the stories of impending doom were nonsense, and the A Ark and C Ark were never launched.

In other words, the “B” Ark is full of:

A materials testing technician
A real estate investor
A corporate attorney/cupcake baker
A real estate developer
An account manager/standup comic
A financial advisor
A lawyer
A public relations flak
An educational technology developer
An assistant DA/web show host
An attorney/beauty pageant contestant
A sociology major/Olympic swimmer
A commercial banker/non-profit foundation fundraiser
An entrepreneur/Olympic swimmer
A real estate agent/”Miss Cougar California”
A “self-taught real estate mogul”/big game hunter

It quickly became obvious to Ford and Arthur that there was never any danger to their planet at all, and they just made up the danger to get rid of a useless third of their society. Shot them right into space.

So this season, The Apprentice is a contest between the passengers of the Golgafrincham “B” Ark. I have no sympathy for any of them. These are the middle men in crowded fields who don’t really do or produce anything. No one who builds houses, nobody who can show a product at the end of the day. Want to know who should be on the show?

These guys: 

These trapped Chilean miners have no idea how lucky they are they missed The Apprentice.

Oh sure, there was a task this week, and both teams failed miserably in- get this- designing office space. These tools spent all their careers in offices and the best they could come up with was a lot of plants and a painting of an old man no one knew. Trump disliked both team’s efforts and, watching at home, I wanted them all fired. I was hoping Trumo wold launch them all into space, in his own Trump “B” Ark.

However, it should be noted, that all the inhabitants of the planet Golgafrinch died of an infection picked up from an unsantised telephone.

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