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That’s a Stretch

June 3, 2009

Just when you thought it was impossible for Hollywood to scrape another layer of muck off the bottom of the creative barrel…

Universal Pictures announces that it’s going to make a movie based on the 1970s toy action figure Stretch Armstrong.

I kid (no pun intended) you not.

For the benefit of those of you born during the last quarter-century, Stretch Armstrong was a doll that resembled a blond wrestler wearing black swim trunks. Stretch’s soft plastic body could be stretched (hence the name) and contorted, thanks to the semi-liquid silicone gel encapsulated inside.

Think of the many elastic-powered comic book superheroes — Plastic Man, Mister Fantastic, the Elongated Man — and you’ll get the inspiration.

Stretch’s mortal enemy was the Stretch Monster, a similarly constructed green being that vaguely resembled the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

As most kids who owned a Stretch Armstrong soon discovered, a fair amount of overextension or indelicate handling would rupture Stretch’s skin, spilling the gel and ruining the toy. (I’ll wager that this unfortunate feature won’t play a role in the upcoming film.)

I know that nostalgia is big business. Doubtless, some executive at Universal saw the box office figures for Michael Bay’s Transformers movie and sent a flotilla of flunkies scampering for the archives to ferret out another long-ago toy hit to exploit.

But seriously… Stretch Armstrong? A toy that was pretty much a joke in its heyday… which was more than 30 years ago? Most of the people old enough to be nostalgic for Stretch Armstrong — assuming that anyone is — have aged out of the demographic for the potential film.

I’m sure that the special effects will be amazing, though. (Snicker.)

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Cinemania, Reminiscing, Wonderful World of Advertising

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Late night ramblings

June 2, 2009

Although I’m generally up and about late at night, I don’t watch a lot of late-night talk shows.

The first half of any given Monday’s Tonight Show — Jay Leno’s monologue covering the previous weekend’s events, plus the funniest ten minutes in television, the “Headlines” segment — has usually been plenty for me. I got bored with David Letterman’s show years ago — almost as bored as Dave himself seems to be when I tune him in on occasion — and most of the other offerings in the genre simply don’t interest me.

(Side note: Who in tarnation thought it would be a good idea to give Jimmy Kimmel his own show? That’s gotta be the most painful hour of boob tube this side of Jon & Kate Plus Dates… I mean… Plus Eight.)

I did, however, make it a point to catch Conan O’Brien’s first outing as the new host of Tonight.

Fourteen years ago, I was among the hordes who switched on the first broadcast starring The Guy Who Replaced Letterman. He was awkward, nervous, goofy, and aggressively unfunny.

Guess what? The Guy Who Replaced Leno isn’t much better.

He no longer seems as nervous — although I’m convinced, as someone who studies public speaking and presentation skills, that there’s a part of Conan’s psyche that will never enjoy being on camera — but he’s still awkward, goofy, and unfunny in a way that I find irritating.

Humor, of course, is an entirely subjective affair. I know that tons of folks don’t “get” the films of Mel Brooks or Christopher Guest, which I find hysterical, just as I’m baffled by the people who laugh at Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler.

But I have to admit that the appeal of Conan O’Brien eludes me completely. I don’t understand what the NBC executives who first gave Conan the Late Night job saw in him nearly a decade and a half ago. Nor do I understand why anyone in those same executive offices — I presume, given the nature of the business — that it’s different people by now — thought he would be a better (or more profitable) draw at 11:35 p.m. than Leno.

Which is yet another reason why I’m not a network executive.

To continue the thought, I think putting Leno on in primetime five nights a week, doing essentially the same show he’s done after the local news for the past 14 years, is a ludicrous idea. If the other nets have any programming savvy at all, they’ll bury that show within two seasons. (I’m guessing that NBC will stick with the experiment at least that long.) There’s a reason why no one is already doing a nightly talk-variety show in the core broadcast hours: The audience you need to sell in those hours is not the audience that watches Leno, Letterman, Conan, or Kimmel. (Then again, does anyone really watch Kimmel?)

I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, of course, because Leno seems like a decent guy. I hope his new show succeeds.

If for no other reason, so that I can keep getting my weekly dose of “Headlines” every Monday night.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Teleholics Anonymous, The Swan Tunes In

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What’s Up With That? #77: Teaching a pig to sing

May 27, 2009

Here’s an example of why the word “landlord” is synonymous in the minds of most people with “used car salesman” and “politician.”

We’ve lived as renters in the same house for the past 15 years. We love the place — obviously, since we’ve never felt compelled to move — but the management company that oversees the property doesn’t have a clue. Whenever we’ve needed something repaired around the property, it frequently takes repeated contact before we get any action, and when the management company finally does decide to send someone out, they’ve usually hired the least expensive (and thus, least competent) help.

A few weeks ago, the property managers hired a company to conduct a termite inspection. When the pest report was filed, the inspector identified about $10,000 in repairs — including several items we’ve reported to the management outfit previously, without response. So the management company sent three people — two of their own staffers, plus a general contractor — to assess the items in the report.

The guy who runs the management company still wasn’t satisfied after his people did their review. (Translated: They told him he actually needed to spend money.) He decided to come take a look for himself. He called to let me know that he would drop around at noon one day last week.

The noon hour came and went. So did the next couple of hours. Finally, the guy shows up at 3:30 — three and a half hours after his scheduled appointment. No call to let me know that he was running late, or to reschedule, or to verify that he was even still planning to show up.

For me, that’s a problem. I work from a home office, I’m here most of the time. However, due to the creative nature of my work, especially when I’m writing marketing copy or recording audio projects, interruptions are a challenge. If I’m expecting someone, I don’t get deeply into a project. For this reason, I lost three and a half hours of production time waiting for this guy to appear.

But, as I’ve indicated, this kind of ineptitude is par for the course with this outfit, so I let it go.

As the property manager was leaving, he told me that he would be bringing the owner of the house around to take a look on Tuesday of this week. He agreed to call and confirm a time, and on Monday, he phoned to say that they’d arrive sometime between 11:30 and 1:30.

On Tuesday, the specified time window came and went. As did the three hours following, right up until the moment that I needed to depart for chorus rehearsal. Again, no call from the property manager. Since he had come three and a half hours late the time before, I had every reason to expect that he would show up eventually.

But he didn’t.

This time, I didn’t let it go.

After a couple of exchanged messages over the next two days, I finally got the guy on the phone to express my displeasure. Not only did he not apologize for wasting my time, but he accused me of being “too sensitive” about the issue. As he put it, what difference did it make if he didn’t show up — late or simply not at all — if I was at home anyway? “You weren’t inconvenienced,” he said.

Never mind the fact that I put work on hold for two entire afternoons due to his lack of consideration. Never mind the fact that I might have had other things to do rather than hang out waiting for his incompetent self.

As the old saying goes: Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.

We’ll see how the pig feels on the first of the month, when my rent check is attached to an invoice for the eight and a half hours of my time he wasted over the past week.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, My Home Town, SwanStuff, Taking Umbrage, What's Up With That?

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National Sorry Day

May 26, 2009

In Australia, today is National Sorry Day.

This incredibly thoughtful observance is the opportunity for Aussies of European extraction to say to their Aboriginal neighbors, “Hey, mates, we’re sorry that we stole your continent… and hacked down a boatload of your eucalyptus trees… and raped your local culture… and built that ridiculous-looking opera house… and foisted Paul Hogan on you.”

I’m thinking that we could use a National Sorry Day right here in the U.S. of A.

Oh, sure, we could start with apologies to the indigenous people of North America for 400 years of murder, disease, reservations, alcoholism, and abject poverty, and to the folk of African heritage for that whole slavery / Jim Crow / back-of-the-bus debacle.

But why stop there? I have a whole list of suggestions for America to be sorry about on National Sorry Day.

To wit…

We’re sorry for boy bands.

We’re sorry for professional wrestling and NASCAR (which, if you think about it, are kind of the same thing).

We’re sorry that The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. got canceled.

We’re sorry for Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter. Dr. Laura, too.

We’re sorry for fake fingernails, and weirdly colored nail polish.

We’re sorry for PETA, except for the fact that their existence means more meat for the rest of us.

We’re sorry for Jerry Springer and David Hasselhoff.

We’re sorry for “grim and gritty” comic books.

We’re sorry for Chicken McNuggets.

We’re sorry for cell phones whose owners are too self-absorbed and inconsiderate to turn their ringers off in theaters and restaurants.

We’re sorry for mullets. (The haircut. Not the fish.)

We’re sorry for people who saddle their children with ludicrous names.

We’re sorry for breast implants for anyone who isn’t a mastectomy patient, and cosmetic surgery for anyone who isn’t a burn victim, or born with a disfiguring birthmark or cleft palate. (Basically, we’re sorry for Joan Rivers, Michael Jackson, Kenny Rogers, Pamela Anderson, Bruce Jenner, and everyone who’s mutilated themselves in their likeness.)

We’re sorry for Scientology, although if you bought into pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo invented by a money-grubbing hack science fiction writer, you have no one to blame but yourself.

We’re sorry for Michael Bolton.

We’re sorry for paisley and polyester.

We’re sorry for the Oakland Raiders, the Golden State Warriors, and the postseason San Jose Sharks.

We’re sorry for all those American Pie movies.

We’re sorry for anabolic steroids.

We’re sorry for the Olsen twins.

We’re sorry for instant coffee.

And we’re really, really sorry for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But we’re trying to undo all that stuff.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Getting Racial Up In This Piece, Listology, Random Acts of Patriotism, Taking Umbrage

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When the ivy walls are far behind

May 23, 2009

My daughter KM graduated from the local community college this morning.

To me, it seems a bit peculiar to refer to the end of KM’s two-year stint as “graduating,” given that she’s already been accepted to a four-year state university and will continue there as a junior in the fall. Still, the event marks a considerable achievement and a bargeload of hard work on her part. Even if it’s more a new beginning than a conclusion, I’m delighted for her to graduate — if only from one collegiate experience to another.

Certainly, for many — perhaps most — of KM’s fellow commencees (um, sure, that’s a word), an associate’s degree from the JC will be the end of their educational journey. For those folks, I’m glad that they received all of the pomp and circumstance (the song of that same name included) that their accomplishment merited. They each seemed just as thrilled to receive the purple folder that will eventually house their junior college diploma as if they had earned a four-year degree. And I’m certain that quite a few of them had invested far more than just the two calendar years that an AA or AS implies.

KM glowed in her black gown and mortarboard, draped with a gold satin stole representing her status as an honor student. I could not have been more proud when she stepped across the lawn to accept her diploma cover from the college president, as a faculty member read off her remarkable academic record:

  • University transfer.
  • Doyle Scholar.
  • Candidate for highest honors — an indication of a cumulative grade point average in excess of 3.6.

Those of you who know me know that I’m not sentimental about all that much. My daughter is the universe’s loftiest exception to that rule. As I tried to keep my hands steady to snap KM’s photograph, tears streamed down my face.

I don’t know whether she heard me shout, “Way to go!” as she shook the president’s hand.

But I meant it, with all my soul.

I have an amazing daughter. She may not always believe I think so, but I do. She’s going to accomplish great things in this world someday, if life, breath, and grace allow, and I pray that they will. The world needs more young people like her.

Then again… she’s one of a kind.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, My Home Town, Soundtrack of My Life, SwanStuff

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What’s Up With That? #76: Reward Zone? More like Twilight Zone

May 21, 2009

The following is an example of how NOT to provide an incentive for your business’s customers.

Earlier this year, I bought a new HD plasma TV at Best Buy. This purchase garnered me a membership in Best Buy’s bonus program, Reward Zone, and $35 in free merchandise of my choosing. (Say it with me: If it’s free, it’s for me.) The company mailed me a bright blue Reward Zone card a few weeks after the TV arrived… a card which I tossed into a stack of paperwork and largely forgot about.

Forgot, that is, until a Best Buy representative called me the other day to remind me that my $35 reward expires on June 13, and encouraged me to redeem it promptly.

Online shopping being as efficient as it is, I rarely make a trip to Best Buy these days. But hey, for $35, I could use a little fresh air and sunshine. I’d been looking at desktop microphone stands on eBay — just the ticket for lengthy narrative and audiobook reads — and I knew that Best Buy sold such an animal. So, off to the Big Blue Box I travel.

A quick cruise around the musical instruments and audio department turned up the mic stand. I picked one up and proceeded to the register. I handed the box and my Reward Zone card to the young man behind the counter.

“I’d like to get this with my Reward Zone bonus,” I said, just in case the combination of merchandise and reward card wasn’t self-explanatory.

“Do you have a certificate?” the clerk asked.

“Certificate?”

“Yeah. A certificate that says how much your Reward Zone bonus is.”

“I don’t have a certificate. They mailed me this card.”

“You have to go online and print a certificate.”

“Umm… I went online and registered the card like the instructions said. Can’t you just scan the card and see how much reward money I have coming?”

“No, you have to have a certificate.”

Clearly, this conversation was going nowhere.

My next stop was the customer service desk. The young woman there was, at least, more enthusiastic than her counterpart in the audio room.

“Yes, you do have to print out your Reward Zone certificate in order to redeem it. But let me scan your card, and I’ll print your certificate right here.”

She brought up the information and directed me to key in my password. In moments, she handed me a certificate for $35 in Reward Zone funds. Oh, frabjous day!

“Did you want to use this to buy that?” the clerk asked, pointing to the mic stand in my hand.

“Yes, please.”

She scanned the bar code on the box.

“Oh, this is only $12.99 before tax.”

“I understand that. But that’s less than $35.”

“Yes, but the way the program works, you have to get a combination of merchandise that’s a minimum of $35 before tax. The system won’t break up the amount. You have to use it all at once.”

“Okay. How about if I just take this one item, and you guys keep the $22 balance?”

“The system won’t let me do that. You have to get $35 worth of merchandise.”

“Even if I only want one $13 item?”

“I don’t know why they set up the program that way,” she said empathetically. “But that’s how it works.”

Thus, having already wasted an incredible amount of time on what seemed at the beginning like a simple project, I now found myself trolling the aisles of Best Buy, trying to find something worth at least $22 that I might actually use.

Twenty minutes later, laden with a 2 gigabyte flash drive and a six-outlet surge protector strip in addition to my mic stand, I approached the checkout counter. With dispatch, the clerk processed my merchandise, collected my $35 certificate — plus $7.61 from my debit card — and sent me on my way with a bright blue bagful of Best Buy gear.

So, here’s the bottom line.

In order for me to get the one $13 item I wanted in exchange for my Best Buy Reward Zone bonus, Best Buy…

  • Gave up a total of $42 in merchandise.
  • Wasted a half-hour of my Thursday.
  • Involved three members of its customer service team.
  • Raised my already hypertensive blood pressure with pointless exercise.
  • Got seven bucks of my money in the bargain.
  • Frustrated me to the point that it’ll be a snowy August in Fresno before my shadow falls across the threshold of another Best Buy store.

Is that any way to run a rewards program?

While I’m on the subject: Why is the name of the store Best Buy, if your best buys are always at Fry’s, guaranteed?

For that matter, why can’t you get fries at Fry’s?

Categories: Aimless Riffing, My Home Town, Taking Umbrage, What's Up With That?, Wonderful World of Advertising

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My dream poker table

May 20, 2009

This week, NBC’s late-night series Poker After Dark (yes, I am often up and about at 2 a.m., and yes, occasionally I’m watching poker on TV) is rerunning one of its “Dream Table” episodes. The basic concept is that the gaming site Full Tilt Poker runs a tournament online, and the amateur player who wins the tourney gets to play against his or her five favorite poker pros on the TV show.

Poker After Dark has held three of these Dream Table events, if I recall correctly. None of the amateurs has ever won the table, but I’m sure they’ve all enjoyed pitting their poker skills against some of the legends of the game.

Not that I’d ever get on enough of a roll to merit my own Dream Table, but if I did, I know the five pros I’d invite. My table probably wouldn’t provide as much ratings fodder as those that have appeared on the show thus far, because I’d bypass obnoxious but telegenic players like Phil “PokerBrat” Hellmuth (he’ll win this week’s rerun, in case you don’t want to stay up late Friday night) and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow in favor of talents I admire even though they aren’t as flashy.

Look at it this way: If I were granted a once-in-a-millennium opportunity, why would I want to waste it with people whose company I probably wouldn’t enjoy? I’d rather choose people I might actually like. Life’s too short to play poker with jerks.

So here’s my Dream Table, in no particular order.

Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu. I read Daniel’s newsletter every week. He’s smart and funny, knows everything there is to know about the game, and seems like a genuinely nice guy. Daniel is the man I’d hire to upgrade my game if I won the Lotto. Which is unlikely, since I haven’t bought a Lotto ticket in maybe 20 years.

Jennifer Harman. Considered by many to be the world’s best female player, frail blonde Jen (she’s had some fairly serious health problems in recent years) looks like a homeless urchin whom someone cleaned up and dropped off at the casino. She’s quiet and thoughtful — almost sullen at times — while playing. But I like her focused approach.

Phil Ivey. Often called “the Tiger Woods of poker,” Phil doesn’t turn up on TV as often as some of the other big-name pros, but when he does, he’s usually right in the mix. (He’s made a record eight final tables on the World Poker Tour.) I can’t make heads or tails of Phil’s hyper-aggressive style — there doesn’t seem to be any visible logic to the starting hands he plays — but I dig watching him.

Howard “The Professor” Lederer. Howard might be the smartest guy at any table he plays, except when Chris “Jesus” Ferguson (a math prodigy who holds a Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA) sits in. Howard’s father is the linguistics maven Richard Lederer, whose books on wordplay — including Anguished English and The Cunning Linguist — are among my favorites. I’d mostly invite Howard in the hope that he’d introduce me to his dad after the show. (Howard’s sister is poker star and Celebrity Apprentice runner-up Annie Duke. I like Annie, but I wouldn’t want anyone at my Dream Table who’d been that close to Joan Rivers.)

Jennifer Tilly. And no, not for the two most obvious reasons. Jennifer was nominated for an Academy Award in 1994 (for Best Supporting Actress in Bullets Over Broadway; she lost to her costar Dianne Wiest). I’d want another actor at the table so that I’d have someone I could talk with about a subject other than poker. You know… a subject I might actually know something about.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Listology, Teleholics Anonymous, Vegas, Baby

Comments: 1 Comment

Fresno in my rear-view mirror

May 18, 2009

I just flew in from Fresno… and boy, is that joke tired.

The chorus and I performed in the city I like to call “Gateway to Bakersfield” this past weekend. As it usually is whenever I’m in Fresno — which, thank heaven, is not all that often — it was blazing hot and muggy. Of course, we decided to go with a solid black stage ensemble which accentuated the heat and mugginess. The things we do for love.

Still, we had fun, and received some useful feedback from the judging panel. All in all, a worthwhile tuneup for International competition in Anaheim the first week in July.

Temperature aside, Fresno treated me rather nicely during the 24 hours I spent there.

I found inexpensive overnight lodging at a chain-affiliated establishment that caters to business travelers, which meant that the place was nearly deserted on a pre-summer weekend. (One exception: the honeymooning couple in the room next door. Congratulations, Mike and Diana. I hope you enjoy a long and happy life together.)

A helpful young woman named Patricia checked me in upon arrival. I presume that her name was Patricia, as that was the word she had tattooed across her chest. It’s possible, of course, that “Patricia” was a child, partner, or loved one of some other variety. I’m just applying Occam’s razor here.

Although the hotel had seen better days — if indeed Fresno ever had better days — my room was efficiently appointed and reasonably comfortable. Comfortable, that is, with the exception of the bed, which was hard enough to rank somewhere between corundum and diamond on the Mohs scale, and to qualify as a torture device under the Geneva Conventions. Seriously, Indian fakirs would lie on this monstrosity and plead for nails instead. I was grateful that I only needed to endure the pain for a single night.

Because we wrapped our evening of singing after usual restaurant hours, I feasted on a midnight repast at a nearby location of America’s favorite 24-hour eatery. I ordered breakfast fare — tougher for the short-order cook to screw up — which arrived quickly and quite palatably prepared. The waitress, a pleasant woman of Samoan heritage, kept my lemonade glass filled and whisked away my emptied dishes with aplomb while I pored over Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek on my Kindle and observed the night manager’s smooth pickup technique as he attempted to score some play from a pair of local talents occupying a corner booth.

As I pulled out of town on Sunday, it occurred to me that, while Fresno might not be my cup of Earl Grey, it seemed to be working just fine for most of the people I encountered during my brief stay. The staff and patrons at the hotel, at the performance venue, at the restaurants, and at the Arco station where I filled my gas tank before departing… all appeared cheerful and satisfied. Endless 100-degree heat in the bucolic middle of nowhere doesn’t shmear my bagel, but for them what likes it — or perhaps, have no experience with any other existence — it’s a life.

And there’s not a darned thing wrong with that.

Fun Fresno factoid: Until January of this year when term limits kicked in, Fresno’s mayor was former NFL player Alan Autry, who co-starred as Carroll O’Connor’s sidekick Bubba Skinner on In the Heat of the Night back in the 1980s and ’90s. It is my firm conviction that every actor who’s ever played a supporting role on a TV series will eventually be elected to public office. Just ask Fred Thompson, Sheila Kuehl, Fred Grandy, Ben Jones, the late Sonny Bono, and yes, Clint Eastwood. (Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, for those of you too young to know or too old to remember.)

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Soundtrack of My Life, Teleholics Anonymous

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