I want to be your friend!

I have now seen footage of the "Tickle Me Elmo" tenth anniversary doll. The Chucky the Good Guy doll from the Child's Play movies is less scary...

Shows and tells

MSNBC: Imus, Scarboring, and the two saving (not Nancy) graces Alison Stewart and Keith Olbermann.

CNN: Anderson Cooper, Larry King, and Christiane Amanpour. (Meh at this point.)

Fox News Channel: The coach who snapped you with towels, the cheerleaders he watched through a peephole, and the closeted gay men who want careers.

You know who really deserve to run cable channels? Three men: Bill Maher, Morgan Spurlock and Penn Jilette.

A half hour to an hour of HBO's "Real Time," FX's "30 Days," or Showtime's Bulls, hit!" contain more truth and urban legend debunking than an entire year of Dateline, a decade of Fox News, and most any commercial network broadcast that bills itself as news. I've just started watching the (seemingly short) 6 episode first season DVD of "30 Days" (which considering the hundreds of hours of footage for every show that Spurlock and R.J. Cutler's editors have to hack down to fill 44 minutes is reasonable.)

Already, I have two people who need to see two of these shows. One a political biggie I know and the other a younger family relation.

Maher, Jilette, and Spurlock will willingly admit their biases but they are truly fair (if not more than necessary) with their subjects and are willing to let both sides of any matter actually speak. (As opposed to giving your side and pretending to explain what the other side allegedly believes. And while they are all comedians, as another monologist Rick Reynolds notes, "only the truth is funny."

Peripheral vision man ...

tv guy
NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is amazing. Simply amazing. A show about why tv sucks on a network that for the most part sucks. Matt Perry and Brad Whitford play ... Matt Perry and Aaron Sorkin in a thinly veiled SNL. Take all the frustration that Sorkin has had with the networks over Sportsnight and West Wing, the increasing annoyance of morals groups putting the fear of ... higher powers into creatives who then put out things like ... "Joey."

Im only about 10 minutes into the pilot of "Kidnapped." Unlike Fox's similar in theme "Vanished," or "Prison Break," It's nice to watch a show unfold. Delroy Lindo is great, it's nice to get to know the family dynamic, nice to know that there is a purpose, however mysterious behind the "Kidnapping." "Vanished," by comparison is a complete mess, going after 10 theories at a time, assuming there could be dozens of conspiracies at work, and DaVinci code tattoos and political theories and is she dead or alive ... Kidnapped has substance and meat, while Vanished has style and a spirograph of circles to run in.

Memo to the big drug company ...

if your product's major side effect is INTENSE BURNING SENSTION, your commercial with a woman relaxing on a nice green lawn ... might be a little inaccurate.

Not a drop to drink

Coca-Cola bought Dannon Natural Spring Water from Nestle. They used to have a blue and green leafy logo emphasising that it was natural ...they have changed that logo now ... to emphasise its association with metal coils ...

We've given up as a society. Dennis Miller (back when he was funny) used to joke of Softsoap being for children too dumb to figure out how bars of soap work... In addition to making complicated meals like "Macaroni and Cheese" even "Easier," one can now buy boxes of JELL-O brand 'Smores kits. three incredients, instructions : heat them up. Sigh.

dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot

hugh mcleod's gapingvoid.com rocks. cartoons as business card art and wine bottle labels. cynical and doodlish, yet more insightful than anything in "Cathy."

Like M*A*S*H: the reality series.

In a SD internet chatroom about 1:30 A.M., theres someone with a screen name i recognize begging to get someone to talk to / listen to him. a suicidal Iraq / Kosovo vet in Chadron NE, about 150 miles from me, is having flashbacks of his house being bombed.

Am I catholic? Please call the Bishop Cupich via the cathedral. I get a recording natch, if its an emergency (and Rusty says he's friends with the bishop, he'll know who I am) Call this other number. The groggy priest says the bishop is out of town and the only number I have for him would be the office number down the hall. Okay, Rusty typed, any priest will do. Can i have him call this number, Father, Can you call him?

Quote: "I dont know what good it would do."

[Internal screaming : UH YOU'RE A PRIEST, it's your ****ING JOB. Bless him, calm him down. Spritz the phone with holy water.]

I give Rusty that number, he calls it, the priest, I think says "there's nothing he can do" and HANGS UP.

Vet Center, an underfunded support group, recording says if it's an emergency, call Ft. Meade VA (Sturgis, SD, about 20 miles away) hospital. I suggest that. Why would he call them, he goes to Hot Springs, SD hospital (about 90 miles away) when he needs help?

Sigh.

I finally call Behavior Management, formerly West River (SD) Mental Health get an operator, explain the whole thing (again) and he takes Rusty's phone number then my number and says he'll have Candy deal with it. Naturally, a few minutes later, Candy calls ME instead.

So I have to explain things time #3, (as Rusty keeps desperately typing have you got help for me yet. Can you call him? Legally, I probably can't. He has to call in and ask for me.

The last I hear/read from him, I call him to tell him to look at the computer screen for the number to call, he tells me to phone his mother at 8 AM to tell her he's had "an episode," since often doesn't remember having these freakouts.

I finally fall asleep after tossing and turning about 6 AM.

His mother answers at the convenience store, asks what time, and was he drinking? He has these more when he drinks (I would certainly drink after I had them) ... the last time he had one of these, he either threw himself out of a or through a PLATE GLASS WINDOW and wound up in the hospital.

So that was 8 AM. I woke at 10 AM, to meet someone and I don't know since what's happened. She said she'd go check on her son.

And thats how the I dislike the catholic church even more than I might have already, a plate glass window, and Kosovo story works.

Let's have The Groundings or Second City improv on it:

Okay audience, we need a place ... a chatroom .
whats going on there ... Kosovo bombing flashback.
name an unusual thing to through yourself at: plate glass window.
and a hated group of people: catholic priests. And GO!

FORMER TRUMP AIDE CAROLYN KEPCHER TAPPED AS CONSULTANT/BOARDROOM JUDGE FOR SECOND SEASON OF NBC's "THE APPRENTICE: MARTHA STEWART"

No, not really.

Poll question of the day

If you believe that the Bush administration is making progress in Iraq, would you be willing to move your entire family there to live for the rest of your natural lives to prove your support?

CBS EVENING NEWS PET OF THE DAY

Tu 9/5 Arnie, the three legged cocker spaniel
We 9/6 Banjo, the beagle
Th 9/7 Spike, a loveable Rottweiller mix
Fr 9/8 Binky, the Lhasa Apso

What podcasts do you regularly subscribe to?

In no particular order
Project Runway: Tim Gunn's Take
The Penn Jillette Show
Ebert and Roeper
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Two Minutes Maher : Real Time with Bill Maher
NPR's "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me"
Harry Shearer's "Le Show"
The Village Voice's "La Dolce Musto"
TWIT's The Daily Giz Wiz
The TV Geek's