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I Say It’s Funny!

20 Sep

September 20, 2018

There’s an old saying that I firmly believe: If you have to explain a joke, it isn’t funny.

But the heck with it, I say. This post below from almost exactly one year ago is funny no matter what anyone thinks.

Back in October 2017, I took aim at the pumpkin spice craze, in which everything from your morning coffee to your evening laxative suddenly gets a pumpkin spice infusion every autumn. “So,” I thought, “why not give the ol’ Tepid Timewaster a shot of pumpkin spice? What could possibly go wrong?”

The joke fell flat, that’s what went wrong. And I blame you. Each and every one of you. All three of my readers, you are to blame. Because this is funny on so many levels that I shouldn’t have to spell it all out for you but I am going to spell it all out for you.

  1. I started with a ridiculous premise, ranking people on a Pumpkin Spice Scale. What does that even mean? How can you judge people based on pumpkin spice? It makes no sense.
  2. I wrote it in an over the top, US Weekly/Entertainment Weekly/People Magazine Weekly style and used silly graphics.
  3. I stressed that I am going to put together a list of “TV’s most beloved and iconic characters,” from “your favorite sitcoms and dramas,” and asked if “your favorite hero or the small screen’s greatest villain” made the list and started it off with Wolf Blitzer. Wolf freakin’ Blitzer, the boring old man who reads cue cards during thunderstorms on CNN. Didn’t any of you get where this is going at that point???
  4. The list then went to the incredibly boring (and not spicy in any way) Phyllis Vance from The Office, but at least she’s a legit TV character. At number three was Barney Rubble, a cartoon character, and he was followed by The Snorks. Is there any sense at all to this list? None that I can see. But it gets better. Funnier!
  5. Next up was Taylor Swift. Now T-Swiss may be my secret crush (if my wife is reading  this, perhaps you should stop reading this) but she is in no way a TV star, and I went out of my way to stress these are TV stars. OH HO! Mr. Blog has gone off the rails!
  6. Captain Kirk comes in next, but I choose the most ridiculous picture of him I could find.
  7. Olivia Benson, from Law & Order: SVU is only half a pumpkin spice ahead of Kirk. Why? How? I don’t know.
  8. President Nixon. ‘Nuff said.
  9. Fred Mertz comes in near the top because, I’ll admit, he cracks me up. He’s the only reason to watch I Love Lucy. The show should have been about Ricky and Fred. Period. But again, I picked the least funny, least spicy picture I could. He’s asleep.
  10. I ended the list of greatest TV characters with Edgar Allan Poe. A man who in real life died about 600 years before TV was invented (give or take a few hundred) and crowned him Television’s Pumpkin Spiciest Character.

I ended the whole shebang with a blatant plea for comments, for people to write in and give me their take on who the most pumpkin spicy characters on TV are. For the first time in years I actually solicited comments, expected the conversation to continue in the comment section, with people who, you know, actually got the joke. And did I get any? No. Not a single one. (I’m looking at you, Aunt Edwina. So now I’m off the Christmas card and blog comments lists? What did I do to you, except sleep in your garage for fourteen years?)

Now excuse me, I’m going to yell at some kids to stay off my lawn. And after that I hear some loud birds I need to shoo out of my tree. And is it me or is the sky too blue today? Dagnabit!

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October  8, 2017

It is autumn and that means that it is Pumpkin Spice Season. Everything comes in pumpkin spice flavor. Coffee, bread, steak, arsenic, it’s all pumpkin spice! So in the spirit of the season, the Editors and Staff of Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride (Home of the Almost OK Blog) have gotten together a list of TV’s most beloved and iconic characters and rated them on our patented Pumpkin Spice Scale.

We’ve scoured your favorite sitcoms and dramas and picked out your all-time favorite and beloved TV stars. We then took the best of the best and ranked them from least to most pumpkin spiciness. Did your favorite hero make the list? Is the small screen’s greatest villain in the top ten? Let’s find out!

 

WOLF BLITZER: 1/2 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

PHYLLIS VANCE: 1 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

BARNEY RUBBLE: 1 1/2 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

THE SNORKS: 2 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

TAYLOR SWIFT: 3 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

CAPTAIN KIRK: 3 1/2 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

OLIVIA BENSON: 4 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

PRESIDENT NIXON: 4 1/2 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

FRED MERTZ: 5 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

EDGAR ALLAN POE: 6 PUMPKIN SPICE

 

Did we leave out any of your favorite TV stars? We hope we listed all of your favorite television characters. If we missed any, please leave a comment below and tell us who you think are the most pumpkin spicy TV stars!

 

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Hello Caller. How Can You Help Me?

11 Aug

August 10, 2018

Radio is intimate and personal. There’s a live voice on the other end of the speaker. You close your eyes and you see him or her, not as they want you to see them, but as your imagination wants you to see them. Radio fosters a sense of community that television is simply unable to.

Art Bell, founder and former host of Coast To Coast AM had a fantastic rapport with his listeners. Five nights a week, from 1am to 5am Eastern Time, he took callers on a journey of the weird. UFO’s Big Foot, time travel, all of it was on the table, and none of it was laughed off and no callers were insulted. Listeners came to know Art Bell. He spoke to them about his life, his family, his daily chores. And he listened to callers when they spoke to him, really listened and cared. To millions of people he was a friend, or even an extended family member.

So when Art’s wife died in 2006 it hit hard.

Art’s wife Ramona was not a presence on the show. She was rarely on the air, even though she was often in the studio. Art broadcast out of a studio he built on his own property in Nevada. One year on New Year’s Eve Art posted a photo of the two of them celebrating in the little homemade broadcast center, both wearing party hats, she sitting on his lap as the ball dropped. Listeners knew her through Art, and when she died, swiftly and unexpectedly at the age of 47, Art took it hard, badly, and the listeners took it hard too.

Art had taken a step back in the previous years, becoming the weekend host of Coast To Coast AM while letting someone else take the bulk of the week’s shows. Anyone would be forgiven for taking some time off the air to grieve, to work out what comes next. Anyone else.

Art had been a broadcaster his whole life. And if he suddenly left the air now, it would be a double loss for him; first his wife, then the thing he loved almost as much. He needed to be on the air, to talk to the audience, to share his grief, and theirs. Those shows in the days and weeks after his wife’s death were therapy for him. But as entertainment they were awful. Painful to listen to at times.

Art would have guests but he was woefully distracted. He talk to them and listeners could hear that Art was not really committed. His mind would wander and he’d ramble off topic. Each show began with a monologue, but during this time Art would not talk about the events of the day. Instead he’d wonder aloud how he could go on. He decided that he no longer needed two cars and tried to sell one over the air. He asked listeners if anyone was interested in an old blender or other things around the house he figured he no longer needed. He asked callers who were in the area to come over and take things off his hands. He debated the best way to dispose of his wife’s clothes. He considered selling his house and asked callers to send him offers. He was talking into the microphone, but he was really talking to himself. He was working things out. He was mourning.

During this time he had a guest who was blind since birth. She began to describe a car accident she was in during college. Art was clearly somewhere else. He truly tried to give his attention to his guests, and when he was on top of his game he was one of the best interviewers on the air. But on this night there would be long pauses when Art didn’t realize the guest had stopped talking. He asked questions he’d already asked. And when the blind guest talked about the car accident, after a long pause, Art asked “were you driving the car?”

There was another pause, an uncomfortable one. The guest finally said “no, I’m blind.” And then another pause, followed by Art murmuring an apology. The whole exchange, the whole show, in fact the whole month or so following his wife’s death were all cringe-worthy listening. The producers of the show never should have let Art on the air. The shows were terrible. But in a larger sense, it was the right thing to do.

It was therapy. Live on the air, real self-help. Over the course of each five-hour show, the listeners would be witnesses, and through their calls and offers of love, support, and advice, be part of, the therapeutic journey of one man coming to grips with the loss of his true love.

It eventually worked out. Art gradually came to terms with his loss, and he even found new love with a new wife. And the listeners haeard every bit of that journey too.

But as radio goes, and as entertainment goes, those shows were both powerful and awful.

 

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