I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 34-A: While directors of automobile commercials will continue to be permitted to cast the ubiquitous “slightly-graying-youngish-but-not-old man” in order to send a message of a certain level of maturity which doesn’t preclude the ability to woo and subsequently satisfy multiple women several times each in one evening, said directors may no longer instruct these actors to drive the car whilst wearing a self-satisfied and slanted “knowing smile.” The Emperor has found that every car commercial made in the past twenty years has contained an exact duplicate of this smile and he has had quite enough. (Worse, such a smile implies that the character in the car knows everything about everything and, as anyone who is likely to avoid the Imperial Dungeon of Eternal Woe knows well, only the Emperor himself has this quality.) Further, that smile is downright nauseating. Directors shall find another way to induce the impotent sheep in the purchasing world into buying a car–some method other inspiring them to say: “I will be like that handsome and no-doubt sexually successful guy who knows everything, if I drive that car.”

The Punishment: Violating directors (and, what the heck, the actors, too) will be forced to have dinner with Rush Limbaugh. Twice.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning

One look at me, and it’s obvious that food is a big – perhaps TOO big – part of my enjoyment of life. That includes my time on the move, traveling, which I’m preparing to do later this month. Looking at our itinerary, I’m already looking forward to making a couple of stops at places I’ve seen on the Travel Channel.

TC has three shows on their prime time lineup devoted largely to food at various locations around the country and around the world. Two of them – Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” – are really, REALLY good, and encourage me to set my feet and my palate along the paths they have followed. Then there’s then there’s Adam Richman’s “Man vs. Food” … oh, well – two outta three ain’t bad.

In some ways, all three are alike .. each has a camera-friendly host inviting the audience to join them on their personal journey of culinary discovery. None of them forget us here, on the other end of the camera lens, and there are more than a few asides to us – winks and nods, arched eyebrows and sotto voce comments.

But there are other, significant ways that Bourdain’s and Zimmern’s shows differ from Richman’s. And that’s where I part company with fans of “Man vs. Food.” Bourdain and Zimmern, for all their personality and all their camera time, manage to keep the focus on the food, while Richman manages to keep the focus on himself. For Bourdain and Zimmern, food – and what they can learn from its preparation and service – is the real star of their show, while for Richman, the real star is him and how much food he can cram down. For Bourdain and Zimmern, food is celebration, while for Richman it is a competitive event. For Bourdain and Zimmern, food is a practice in discovery and hospitality, while for Zimmern it is a practice in gluttony.

I enjoy the cutaways on Bourdain’s and Zimmern’s shows, with quick shots of some interested locals watching the proceedings. I find the pre-arranged crowds on Richman’s show with their forced (cued?) yee-HAW’ing and woo-HOO’ing less than appetizing.

When all is said and done, I find myself wanting to visit the locations Bourdain and Zimmern visited … so far, I have found their recommendation and observations to have been spot-on. Not so with Richman … at least not yet. During one episode of his show, he visited a place that had been a campus hangout of mine during my college years, where I had spent many, MANY hours drinking coffee, eating one of their famous sweet rolls, catching up on reading assignments and cramming for exams – I hardly recognized the place from its portrayal on television as a Mecca for enthusiasts of huge, belly-busting entrees.

But you know what the neat thing is? Television viewing is a matter of personal choice. I an turn it off, I can turn it on, I can change the channel, I can read a book, and I can get the heck off the couch and get out of the house. For now, at least, I still look forward to my next serving of “No Reservations” and “Bizarre Foods.” “Man vs. Food?” I’ll pass, thanks.

10. So You Think You Can Wassail

9. I Saw Uncle Charlie Kissing Santa Claus

8. The Littlest Angel: You’re Gonna Do What With That Christmas Tree?!

7. When Elves Attack

6. How the Grinch Got Green Genital Warts

5. Sheep in Heavenly Fleece

4. America’s Funniest Home Videos Nutcracker

3. Frosty the Hypothermia Victim

2. It’s a Wonderful Life for the One Percent

1. The Black Friday Special: Assault & Pepper Spray
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

10. Law & Order 2: Electric Boogaloo

9. How I Met Your Accountant

8. Mad Cows

7. The Quantum Field Theory

6. So You Think You Can Play the Accordion

5. Grey’s Biochemistry

4. America’s Funniest Voicemails

3. CSI: Bayonne

2. Extreme Makeover: Prison Edition

1. Dancing with the Has-Beens
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

I realize that the very nature of writing this post is contrary to my big plan but I’m going to write it anyway; because I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “Enough is enough times infinity.”

Over the weekend, the story broke that Kim Kardashian was getting divorced from Kris Humphries. That “news” is so widespread by now that I didn’t even have to look up how long her marriage lasted to confirm that the union lasted 72 days. It is a number that is burned in my brain thanks to all the Twitter jokes and snide Facebook remarks, the links shared and re-shared, the pithy quotes about how much was made per day in this “marriage for money”, and the countless headlines that abound when you dare to search her name in Google. What makes me pause, though, are the comments written beside many of those shared links: “I am so tired of hearing about these Kardashians.”

Source: People Magazine

I want to believe that there is a back room somewhere filled with media’s most brilliant minds and that these great purveyors of news  are sitting in clouds of cigar smoke, deciding what is and is not news. I want one of them to wave her pork pie hat in the air and say something to the effect of, “See here, kids. This Kardashian brood has got to go, see? They’re just not worthy of reporting, see? Let’s vote here and now to end these stories before they start.” (Fact: this room may or may not exist in the 1930s.)

Even barring intervention from the bigger news outlets and blog conglomerates, there is hope that this will all pass on its own– what we call The Kidney Stone treatment of gossip mongering.  After all, Paris Hilton dissolved into a non-story before our eyes. But do we really have to sit passively and wait for evolution to take its course with the Kardashian brood? No. No, we do not.

Here now is my battle cry: Let’s stop the Kardashians now. Let’s take a page from Occupy Wall Street and, instead, let’s “Occupy Gossip.”  Let’s say “No” to the endless barrage of stories about whether or not the wedding guests will get their gifts back or what went wrong or what Khloe and Kourtney have to say in response. Let’s fight back.

Here’s how you can help:

• See a link to a Kardashian story? Don’t click on it.
• In the supermarket and itching to pick up the latest Kardashian-centered issue of People? RESIST. Back away. Buy a candy bar instead. A Milky Way is way better for your mental and emotional health, trust me.
• Peruse the other sections of sites like Gawker (if you can navigate it, that is). I’m sure there are other gossip-related bits that can sate your appetite for other people’s private lives. Hey, I hear Scarlett Johansson talks about those scandalous pictures! Go and read that instead! Trust me, even Scarlett would back this play.
• Don’t share any Kardashian-related links on Facebook and Twitter. Keep your conspiracy theories, your jokes, your puns, your cutting hashtags to yourself. Write about puppies instead. (One exception: Do send this to your local government representative if they are of the more conservative persuasion because it is a valid statement on our society.)
• Give up E! for the duration of the holiday season. Just because the executives at E! fall to the knees of this trifling family, doesn’t mean we, as a nation, have to– let’s fight back with our viewer numbers.

When a marriage fails, it’s a sad affair. Most of the time, famous people release a statement about their relationship status and respectfully request a little privacy through “this difficult time.” I know Kim didn’t exactly ask for that but, hey, let’s give it to her anyway. Think of it like the wedding gift that just keeps on giving. It will be a gift for us too.

Is Erica Kane dead? It seems her show is, at least on network television. Yesterday was the last episode of All My Children on ABC, and it ended with a gunshot headed in Erica’s direction, followed by a fade to black. Much like its soap opera protagonists, All My Children will be resurrected from the dead, but online. Now two questions remain: who will be in the new version, and who will watch it?

That bullet may very well have hit Erica square between the eyes, because Susan Lucci is saying now that she will not do the new format. Prospect Park, an online production company, bought the rights from ABC to keep All My Children going on the internet, but it is still unclear just which principal actors from the current show will enlist in the new production. I am sure they can just assign new talent to the old names. They do it all the time to keep continuity, but not in droves like this shift might entail.

Even if All My Children retains its actors, continuity, and most importantly its identity, can they really trust that its loyal following will watch online? My 60 year-old mother is your average AMC loyalist, and even though she is a doctor in mathematics and as smart as they come, you will not catch her anytime soon pairing her smart phone with her laptop and entertainment system. The All My Children generation is an older generation, maybe reluctant or even unable to access their favorite episodes from a high speed connection.

Watching a bit of the final episode today made me feel old. Tad had grey hair. Brook looked ancient. The only person
who didn’t look old was Susan Lucci, who obviously made a landmark deal with Satan himself a long time ago. I remember when I was 5 years old, and my babysitter used to watch All My Children. I had a huge crush on Kim Delaney, who played Jenny, (and who oddly enough was just in the news).

In 1980 there were 12 soap operas on network television, with CBS, ABC, and NBC having 4 each. The highest rated show was General Hospital, with a 9.9 rating for the season. In January 2012, after One Life to Live leaves ABC, there will only be 4 soap operas left on all of network TV. The highest rated show today is the Young and the Restless, with measly ratings in the 3 to 4 range.

Soaps have been on decline for years, but the free-fall really began with the success of talk shows. It costs so much less to produce a cooking show or talk show than a soap. This phenomenon is not just a daytime one. The top 5 primetime shows today, according to Nielsen, are all reality shows. There were even signs of this trend before reality TV. In the mid-90′s soap operas all but disappeared for almost 2 years because of the appetite for OJ coverage. It was obvious then, as it is now, that no writer and actor could simulate the allure of surreality better than real people in real situations.

A couple weeks ago, during the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I watched hours of footage of the World Trade Center collapse. I remembered once again that no horror movie or armageddon movie I had ever seen could surpass that image of terror. That is the power of reality. The Chew, which debuts in AMC‘s spot on Monday, is no 9/11, but it would seem to satisfy our hypnosis to the more benign rhetorical side of reality found in talk shows. Either way, there is something to be said for soap operas, which take you away from reality, rather than subject you to distorted versions of it.

So, if you want to see someone stand over a fake stove and tell corny jokes, then watch The Chew. But if you want to see someone come out of coma only to find that his brother married his lesbian wife, then join the new All My Children generation…online.

The recent landscape of American television has been dominated by shows about motorcycle dudes, tattoo shops, vampires, pawn shops, and swamps. It’s like America is suddenly obsessed with the state of Florida (zing!) I am not really into any of those shows, but the Soap Opera Network has afforded me the opportunity to take a not always pleasant trip down memory lane by showing reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s always refreshing to revisit my pimply high school years via a show about good looking rich kids who looked, acted, and lived like they were ten years older than they really were.

This summer has been full of bad news. But I have been blissfully ignorant to all this debt ceiling nonsense – I don’t read or watch the news. I am too busy catching up with Breaking Bad, creating playlists on Spotify, and playing trains with Jack to pay attention to the news. And to be honest, I’m broke anyway, so if the country collapses the United States government will be walking in my shoes. Right now, I would certainly welcome the mo’ problems that the Notorious B.I.G warned came with having mo’ money. And the fact that I don’t participate in fantasy sports is starting to shine through as well, since I had no idea who any of these great players the Philadelphia Eagles have signed lately.

It certainly has been an eventful summer. One event from this summer I am still reeling from is a sight I saw last weekend at a Wawa when I was coming home from the Shore. I witnessed a very attractive woman snap into a Slim Jim. Well, she didn’t snap into it – it was more like a chomp. Regardless, it was a very disturbing and puzzling scene. She was fit, and very pretty, and I just felt bad for her boyfriend or husband. Because when she kissed him, he was going to be tasting spicy machine processed dried meat that she just gobbled down.

During some of these hazy, lazy summer afternoons, as Jack is piloting Thomas the Train around endless tracks through my living room and kitchen, I channel surf in an attempt to find something decent to watch. I painfully admit that a very guilty pleasure of mine is to watch old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 when they are on. I only like the ones from the very early 90’s – the first two seasons. Before the blond kid killed himself goofing around with a loaded revolver in a scene that was more after school special than teen drama. Later in the series, the show really jumped the shark. I don’t know exactly what was going on, but it’s my understanding that Brenda was studying on the moon, the parents moved to Middle Earth, the guy who owned Peach Pit moved into the Walsh’s home, and Screech made a bunch of cameos.

The first two seasons were the best. Back in 1991, the C+C Music Factory wanted to make America sweat, Colour Me Badd wanted to sex you up, and I just wanted a girl to talk to me. For reasons that I could only attest to raging hormones and simple teenage stupidity, I was a fairly faithful watcher of 90210. I can’t explain why I watched it. I guess I felt a necessity to watch, foolishly thinking that maybe it would shed some light on how to navigate through high school. As if the goings on at a fictional high school in lavish Beverly Hills would mirror those at a middle class parochial high school in Southern New Jersey. What a joke. The show dealt with such heavy hitting topics like date rape, alcoholism, gay rights, anti-Semitism, drug abuse, abortion, teen suicide, AIDS, teen pregnancy, and bulimia. Yikes. My freshman year, my biggest problems were pimples, getting someone’s parents to pick us up from the mall, and resisting the urge to tune in to the hilarious antics of Steve Urkel on Friday nights. Maybe I was the lucky one, while these Beverly Hills teenagers were dealing with a different crisis on a weekly basis, I was living an innocent adolescence of playing Nintendo, throwing water balloons at unsuspecting passerby, and making crank phone calls to Chinese restaurants.     

Make no bones about it, I really hated the show. It drove me nuts. I know that my scorn stems from the fact that I was jealous of these sharply dressed, finely styled, teenagers who seemed to have it so easy. After every episode I would ask – why isn’t my life like this? Why can’t my dad (an elementary school principal) get a promotion out to Beverly Hills? And why can’t I grow my sideburns like Dylan and Brandon? I couldn’t stand that Steve and his smug, self-assured, shit-eating grin. And Brendan, who was so good-hearted and chivalrous, was bedding a different girl every episode- how did he get away with that? Ugh, and that Dylan, that brooding, furrowed brow, ersatz James Dean. These guys were supposed to be in high school? I’m 35 now, and still have a way better hairline than any of those dudes did back then.     

 I don’t ever remember thinking that any of the girls on the show were attractive. In all honesty, the harsh truth is that Jason Priestly was technically “prettier” than the girls on that show. Watching now, Tori Spelling looked like a horse and was the worst nepotism case in history. Jennie Garth (Kelly) looked like a ghastly mouse, Andrea looked like a mom, and Brenda just looked like a total bitch. However, Tiffani Amber Thiessen (aka Kelly Kapowski) eventually became a cast member – next to Belinda Carlisle, she is one of my lifetime celebrity crushes.      

They had everything – Dylan drove some classic convertible that was on par with Cameron’s dad’s car in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. My car choices were my parent’s 1985 Pontiac station wagon with wood grain siding, or a 1971 Ford Maverick that looked like it belonged on the set of the Mad Max movie series. For Spring Break, they would vacation in Palm Springs at luxurious hotels throwing raging parties and living it up. We would rent some flea bitten motel in Wildwood, New Jersey with a pool that was empty except for a few dead rodents at the bottom. And ”parties” where there would be 3 girls (who had boyfriends) and 20 guys in jean shorts vigilantly hovering over their 12 packs of warm Busch Light.    

The episode that addressed racism was always a favorite of mine. When Brendan befriends a black student, he nobly defends the kid from racial slurs and discrimination. While I always applauded the show for tackling that topic, the ironic thing was that it was the first time the show ever featured any African American actors! You can taste the hypocrisy! If I was black, I think I would be more insulted by that concept than any of the racial content of the show.

For the nostalgic value alone of seeing the outfits, hearing the music, and looking at the hairdo’s – it has been funny to watch some of these old 90210’s. Regardless of the bad sentiment they can drum up. It would have been nice if I could have visited my 14 year old self in the DeLorean and assured 14 year old Marty that yes, eventually you would date some very attractive girls, the acne would clear up, and the kids you envied who wore Z Cavarricci’s would eventually be teased for wearing Z Cavarrici’s. And now they have a 90210 remake – I don’t know why I didn’t try out. At 35, I am still a way more convincing high schooler than Ian Ziering or Luke Perry!

If, say, Descartes were to come back from the grave and host a talk show, I would watch it, daily. I would also occasionally watch an episode of Jerry Springer, but I would never watch Oprah, may her show rest in peace.

I have nothing against Oprah as a person. I have plenty against Jerry Springer as a person and, aside from the annoyingly mathematical miseries he caused for me in my younger days, I have no opinion whatever about Descartes as a dude.  But here’s my problem: If I watch TV, I want either brilliance or absolute melt-into-the-couch drivel — Cops, or World’s Dumbest, for instance. I can’t be bothered with middle-of-the-road quality in a TV show. Oprah is arguably a genius, in a lot of ways, but her show is pretty run-of-the-mill, on the intellectual scale. Not delightfully bad, not intellectually stimulating . . . just . . . there.

Many shows that people see as top-quality, I would argue fall into the Oprah range. And why not? Demographics, right? Most people fall into the “average” intelligence range; hence, the label. But what bothers me is that some of these average shows prance around pretending to be really smart. The rub, here, is that slicker isn’t necessarily smarter. I would argue that some of the old, corny shows are just as well-written or, sometimes, even better written than the new, slick ones; they just come up short on bling and hipness.

I’m not going to get into many examples of shows I think are guilty of posing as “smart,” in the interest of keeping readers — except for one show: Grey’s Anatomy. I’m not saying it’s not a decent show. It’s fine. But it has those little monologues over montages that purport to delve into the trials and tribulations of young doctorhood; these monologues are the perfect examples of what I’m talking about. To me, they are are empty and prosaic — consequently, they become filler and not elaboration or even real commentary on the plot or on the characters. The show is the perfect example of style as a smokescreen for a lack of substance.

If you look back at the old shows — the ones that are so corny now — I think you might find that there is just as much merit behind the bubblegum exteriors. Is The Brady Bunch really any less well-written than Grey’s Anatomy? The difference is that there is no pretense of coolness or brilliance in The Brady Bunch — because it simply contains neither element. It is a show written by industry pros who were interested in keeping viewers for thirty minutes, through the commercials, not in shining a light upon the dark caves in the human soul. (Well, except maybe for the football in the nose episode. That was deep.)

Shows like this — or better ones, like The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie or Cheers — are not inferior, from a craft standpoint, to Grey’s Anatomy, which walks around in its professor’s robes, elongating its vow-ehls and trying to pass off scenes of juvenile sexuality as intense human collisions in the demolition derby world of medicine.

What’s the difference? I think it is the writers’ mindset. The TV writers of the past strike me more as people who considered themselves craftsmen: weave a good story; make ‘em laugh; make ‘em cry. With many current shows, there is a pathetic kind of plea in much of the writing. This plea amounts to the writers metaphorically begging that we all notice that they have degrees in English; that they understand subtext so well that they are going to provide Sparknotes in voice-overs and musical montages and turn theme into in-your-face text. It’s like they are writing a blue book exam with their English 322 professor looking over their shoulder and breathing Captiain Black breath down their necks.

With all of this said, I’ll be darned if during episodes of classic television, I wasn’t, from time to time, hit with a life-changing idea, right before the first commercial break.

Well, all I know is that, one of the best-written comedies of all time, The Dick Van Dyke Show, never had a minute of pretense in it. And, for all its TaoTe Ching-ness, Kung Fu, as a show, remained as humble and as brilliant and as balanced as its peacefully pugilistic protagonist, Kwai Chang Caine.

And not one monologue/voice-over to be found.*

At the end of a really good show, there is something left for the smart reader to dig out, but if he never digs anything out of it, he can, at least, walk away entertained.

(*The Waltons was, of course, famous for its voice-over opening and closing narrations by John Boy, but they always seemed more for exposition and conclusion than for forced revelation, to me.)

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday.

10. Your play about General Schwarzkopf is called The Book of Norman

9. At least twice a week, another Spidey stuntman is maimed or killed

8. Trying to cash in on jukebox musicals like Mamma Mia and Movin’ Out, your new musical is called Ice Ice Baby

7. The marquee reads “Pauly Shore Is Jean Valjean”

6. Your Feydeau farce features Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn chasing the French maid

5. No matter how good it is, your fifth-grade production of Death of a Salesman is not eligible

4. Instead of “Author! Author!” audience shouts “Boo! Kill!”

3. All the dialogue has been translated into Portuguese, because it loses something in the original

2. Your choreographer is straight

1. Your one-man show dealt mainly with your tiger’s blood, Adonis DNA, and fire-breathing fists

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

I’ve mentioned a time or two that my cousin Ben Schwartz is on the verge of Hollywood fame and fortune. His most well-known role so far is Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation. I’ve told Ben that what I really want to see on TV is Jean-Ralphio with his own spinoff sitcom. Maybe a wealthy relative leaves him a hotel to manage in Pawnee. But, since Ben is in a new show House of Lies on Showtime, I guess Jean-Ralphio won’t be managing a hotel any time soon. Fortunately, someone recently posted a Jean-Ralphio compilation on YouTube: