Technical Virgin

Not sure how I feel about all of this. Seems the host of PBS’s “The Good Night Show” on the affiliate “Sprout” was fired for making a fake public service announcement (PSA) before ever joining PBS. Seven years before joining PBS. The PSA’s are rather racy, but nothing you wouldn’t find on Comedy Network or SNL. The liberal part of me is screaming, “Stupid PBS!!!” The conservative parent side of me is saying, “Bad choices have bad consequences.” And so again I’m stuck with the dilemma of humor vs. good parenting.

In my opinion, I think this jerks kids around. They grow used to these characters on TV and almost become attached to them. Heck, I cried when Friends went off the air and was mouthing with Ross, “Did she get off the plane?” at the end of the series. Or take into account Steve leaving Blues Clues to go to college and letting his cousin Joe take care of Blue. Kids old enough can become attached to these characters and can suffer minor anxiety over the departure.

It also reminds me of Pee Wee’s playhouse, when Paul Ruebens got caught, mmmm, finding some “self-pleasure” in a “movie theater”. Of course his Playhouse had long since been cancelled, but kids had no clue Pee Wee was, well, choking little “pee wee” in public. We chuckled as adults and went on and enjoyed him in “Mystery Men” with Ben Stiller.

I’m having trouble seeing how this is wrong. We have no problem letting stars appear on Sesame Street that have seedy pasts. Judging from the press releases and captions, Ms. Martinez alerted her superiors to the short films. Under the “whistle-blower” law doesn’t she have the right to keep her job?

When I sniff around this a little more I wonder if there is, in some way, a double standard. If Ms. Martine had been “Mr. Martinez” would we have had the same reaction?

I think what would have been more appropriate would have been for Ms. Martinez to issue a public statement ( apology or otherwise to parents on the Sprout site ), receive a fine from PBS and then do 5 PSA’s for PBS on STD’s or teen pregnancy.

If you’re interested now in the videos I’ve posted them below as well as PBS’s public statement on their Sprout site. I posted the text in case the link changes. They are rather funny, especially the first one! But let me know your opinion.

And PBS’s Sprout Response
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Notice To Parents Regarding
The Good Night Show

Late last week, Melanie Martinez, host of The Good Night Show, alerted us to the internet posting of an independent short film that she appeared in seven years ago. PBS KIDS Sprout has determined that the dialogue in this video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host and may undermine her character’s credibility with our audience. As a result, PBS KIDS Sprout has decided that she will no longer appear as host of The Good Night Show. Melanie has been an important part of our network and we are disappointed that we had to make this difficult decision.

PBS KIDS Sprout’s foremost priority is to do what is best for our young viewers and their families. We remain committed to The Good Night Show, which debuted last year, as a valuable tool for parents to help children wind down after a busy day. Regularly scheduled programs within The Good Night Show (e.g. Dragon Tales™, Bob The Builder™, Thomas & Friends™) will continue to air in their designated time slots with new short-form content replacing Melanie’s segments. We are developing plans to launch a new season of The Good Night Show with a new host in late 2006.

Posted Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 6:02 p.m. ET
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here are the videos in question. ( YouTube has already pulled them.)

Quick Post – give your opinions as always

Briefly in the news

Rome talks yield no plan to end

Lebanon fighting

Opinion – MMmm let ’em dual it out and force them to come to

terms on their own and no one else needs to step in and

help. No UN troops either. We’re not letting countries

resolve conflict anymore. We need to learn to be good

loosers and winners.

************ New Stuff **********

“Forty, forty, forty dollars for the AK47 behind me! I see forty do I have forty-five?!?!”

“Friends come on down to Apu’s Quickie Mart, we got slushi’s, we got ice cream, we got nan, we got incindiary fuses, we got roadside bombs, PLEASE COME SEE US STEADY CUSTOMER!!!”

********************************

Lance Bass of ‘N Sync reveals he’s gay

Opinion – Uhhh, people didn’t expect this? Gives a whole new

meaning to some ‘N Syn songs. And let’s check on Jessica

Simpson’s ex as well. Dude, you don’t leave that.

New Computer Broke at home – Bummer. Chatted with Indian/Sri

Lankan/ Pakistani this morning in English/broken-English.

I’m getting new disks in the mail. And BTW, you don’t get

software disks anymore when you buy a computer. There is a

“setup area” that holds all that when you want to wipe it

clean and start from scratch. I keep forgetting why I build

a computer myself. This incident seems to rimind me to build

my own. Oh well, I’ll get it back. I’ve gotten back from

worse.

Circus Tonight!

Little a gets to go to the B&B Circus tonight for the

first time. We’ll take the commuter train there and back.

Loads of fun. Ok must go to get home to catch train.

Closing Ranks

I expected this, I guess, in a sense. Perusing Yahoo! I found this story regarding the backlash against illegal immigrants, more specifically as the article title states, the “Latino culture”. I do take the source tongue-in-cheek, The Christian Science Monitor, I have to say that this is not new and in some ways surprising, but in the grand cycle of history and life, this was coming.

We have never been on good terms with “Latin culture” or more specifically, countries influenced by Spain. All you really need to do is turn the dial on the way-back machine and see that relations have really been tenuous for years. In the mid-1800’s the colonization of Texas was established by Spain through it’s own colony Mexico. Through a series of revolts and governmental collapses – something quite common in Mexico at the time – Mexico became a sovereign nation counter to it’s own citizens. Spanish aristocracy looked down on the native Mexican and usually tried to get rid of them. From this, the seeds of illegal immigration began.

As early as the 1830’s, Mexico was “encouraging” it’s non-pure blooded Spanish citizens to immigrate north to then Tejas ( Texas ) and the young United States of America. What eventually happened was a caste system in Mexico proper, after a series of political unrest was quieted. But that still didn’t calm the tension between Mexico, Spain and the United States nor did it stem the flow of immigration.

Two conflicts followed in and around 1900, The Spanish American War, fueled by yellow journalism, and the Mexican American Way in which the great World War I general John J. Pershing made his claim to fame by marching on Mexico City. Or can we forget Teddy Roosevelt’s ride up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War. That hill lead him straight to the White House through a series of odd events. The U.S flexed it’s muscles and said, “mess with us and you mess with our big battleships.” It started the era of “what you do in Europe, Asia and Africa is your business, but cross out interests in the west and you’ll hear about it.”

All this occurred when the U.S. had a “closed” policy to foreign affairs. On the precipice of World War I in and around 1914, the United States struggled with the idea of being involved with foreign politics. Foreign involvement meant a choice between two things, guns or butter. We wanted butter and knew if we didn’t choose guns in 1914 Europe would fall and if Europe fell so would England. And if England fell, the world would have lost it’s only world power. the Atlantic and the Pacific gave us time and a good reason not to get involved.

So the Latin culture is receiving the brunt of the blow now. I have to agree that illegal immigration hurts us and we should do a better job of keeping our “fences” secure as we all know “good fences make good neighbors”. Well, we all know our Mexican neighbors don’t really respect our fences and thus the backlash. What you are seeing as backlash has been going on for years in Texas regarding Mexico.

My racist, but sometimes misguided grandmother, prophetically said it in the mid 1980’s, “The ‘Meskun’ are going to ruin it all for us.” Although I have no facts to prove this, you can see an increase in unchecked Hispanic immigration has warranted a backlash all over the country. A holdover of Spanish colonialism in Mexico. See, history can teach you something. I found this quote interesting.

“This is not our country, we don’t have the power,” [Juan] Martinez says. “[Americans] are going to do what they’re going to do.”

Yes, we are. Even though we immigrated from the four corners of the planet, we are legal American citizens and we will do what we must to restrict our borders.

When a guys says …

When a guy says, “You fight like a girl,” this is what he means. Click to image to see what I mean.

Observations From The Weekend

I’ll start with Kate Hudson. My wife actually brought this up, not me. We saw “You, Me and Dupree”. Matt Dillon is the old Keanu Reeves: 2 hours of movie, one page of monotone dialog, but lots of eye candy for the estrogen. Pre-movie, A brings me her latest gossip rag, I think “Star” or “People” ( Star has a new editor from People or someplace and it’s almost acceptable.), and shows me a pic of Kate Hudson on the beach. There is nothing in the bikini so A says, “Wow, she doesn’t have any boobs.” How long do you really have to look at the picture to see that she’s right? Then we follow up our reading with YM&D and verify that, in fact, Kate has no boobs.

My deep thought of the weekend is that most people get upset that bad things happen to good people. I submit this, it makes me angrier that good things happen to bad people. I have a “bad people” in my life right now and it’s about to drive me nuts.

My last observation of the weekend is that batteries are sized the same as bras. Did you ever notice that? AAA is the smallest and D is the biggest. Of course there is no “B” or “DD” and of course there is no equivelent to a 9 Volt. Maybe those are for transvestites.

And by the way here is a cool song with a funny video. Oh the wonders of YouTube!

In my other blogging life

Ya, it’s been a long time. Little a is just fine. I had a couple of days off and I haven’t been to interested in posting. I got a new computer and I have been busy building the network at home up to meet my standards. My old computer is now a media server so I can store my digital pics and songs and home movies!

But did you know I started blogging WAY before there was a Blogger? Yep in 2000 you could buy a website and with the help of Microsoft FrontPage you could make your own blog. It was obviously quite easy.

These were my first two posts. Enjoy.

The Current Rant:
Thoughts For The End Of The Year
A-Rod joins the Texas Rangers and makes $252 million. The Minnesota Twins are worth less than A-Rod. Tom Hicks theoretically could have bought another team for that much. Maybe he should have. He could have had a whole pitching staff. My girlfriend’s daughter makes $2 a week in allowance and an extra $0.10 for each Bible verse she memorizes. Her world consists of Barbie, 98?, and flare jeans and I’m sure she is much happier. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “I could be the walrus, I’d still have to bum rides.”

A new president, finally. It’s about time. I’m just weighing in because I was probably expected to. Al Gore – Oh, Lord! I have invoked that name – is being considered for the presidency of Harvard University. I quote this from the AP News Wire,

“BOSTON (AP) — Vice President Al Gore is one of about 500 people nominated for the presidency of Harvard University, according to the chairman of the university’s presidential search committee.

“He’ll go into our pool and be considered seriously,” Robert G. Stone Jr., a senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, which will make the final choice, told The Boston Globe.

Stone, however, said Gore, who graduated from Harvard in 1969, is unlikely to be selected.

“He doesn’t have the academic and intellectual standing,” Stone said in Tuesday’s newspaper. (emphasis added)”

Rest assured, Gore will be able to answer what a “chad” is on the written exam. Click here for the whole story.

The Non-Holiday season begins. Yes, Three long months until a real national holiday. And, no, I’m not forgetting Martin Luther King Jr. Day of which I don’t have off. This is the worst stint of time I believe. Santa is gone, we forget Jesus and all there is to watch most of the time is basketball. I’m so beat down with Vital, “Yea Baby!!!” The only thing that saves us is hockey. I keep looking forward to when my girlfriend can have tan legs again and I can take the top off my Jeep. Some of you will have babies due soon. That’s something to look forward to.

The High Point. Survivor II will start. I’m ready to see Rudy. All the spin-offs are out there. One that I found so distasteful contained the following plot line: Six couples travel to an island paradise to be tempted – on purpose – by beautiful models. Ok, just shoot me. It ends this way, everyone leaves pi$$@d off at each other. But if you need your mindless fill of adulterous and fornicatious television, this is the show for you! Expect to see some shockers. Maybe a little homosexuality. Rudy wouldn’t put up with it, but I bet he does a lot more wild game hunting this time around.

Brain teaser. Name as many Seinfeld-isms as you can, i.e. “Re-gifting” is a Seinfeld-ism. Any Seinfeld-ism is a word or phrase that originated on Seinfeld, the show about nothing. Make your entries here. Best one gets a assortment of skittles from me. Results will be posted on the next Rant.

=====================

The Current Rant and Contest Below
News
I recently heard of a poll ( I can’t recall where or when I saw it – and this violates my own rule of documenting ) stating that most Americans don’t trust George Bush. Good for them! I don’t either! “What,” you ask, “I thought you were a strong Bush supporter?” Yes, I am, but I never trust a politician and neither do my Gen X counter-parts. And why should they? Politicians are career politicians and no longer public servants.

I was encouraged to read a brief snippet on John Ashcroft yesterday – and saddened at the same time. Encouraged to hear him state what he believes in. (See Ashcroft Invites God On Decisions, 1-11-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20010815185201/http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010111/01/news-ashcroft-book ) I was encouraged that a politician would state his beliefs, saddened that the media would choose to pick not on Ashcroft’s commitment to public service and his faith in God – but to belittle his beliefs. The media is the evil, not Ashcroft’s beliefs.

But on another note. No, Gen Xer’s don’t tend to trust politician’s. Why? Because of politician’s track record. Many grew up with Iran-Contra, Watergate and the slew of calamities in the Slick Willy Show. Why should we trust politicians? We haven’t had a good clean one in a while, but let me leave you with this thought. When you put your trust in something fallible, you will get something that fails. My 2? is this, what do you truly believe in? I mean what is it you trust like gravity? And what you place your trust in, will it at any point go bad? I have something I placed my trust in and I know it will last forever.

Sports
College Bowls are exciting. I just don’t like all the Dot Com dilution of bowl games nor do I like the BCS. I really miss the “Granddaddy of them All” – as narrated by Keith Jackson – the Rose Bowl. Even the Orange Bowl wasn’t that big a deal. Well, the past had some good stuff, but it wasn’t always that good. Watch ESPN Classic and see how styles, offensive systems and those little characters they put on the screen have changed.

This is the lonely time of year. Football is almost gone, but not forgotten. The XFL is in town in February. After viewing “Gladiator”, my girlfriend commented that it was sick how people behaved back then and questioned me if that really happened. I’m the history buff between us. “Yes, it did,” I replied. and you know what, we are getting closer and closer to Gladiator games now. Sports are becoming increasingly violent and people pay to see it. Serial killers start off with soft core pornography and gradually escalate to murder. Why? Because it’s an addiction no different than our own thirst for more and more violence in sports. Even those even tempered Canadians and their hockey are not immune. It’s rougher, bloodier and more violent in every sport than ever before. I estimate that by our grandchildren’s generation, we will see sports where serious injury and violence are common place.

Just as in “Gladiator” it is up to us, the populous to stop ourselves before we go to far.

Other
Brain teaser.

Name at least 5 Kaptain Kangaroo characters.

Uhhhh Ohhhhh ….

Looks like little a is kind of pukey. She had to delay her trip to her great-grandparents house until Thursday. Too bad. She’s upset she’s not going. I’m cleaning up yak! Oh well. It’s fun to spend time at home with A and little a.

A New Thunderhead

Hope of Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam is probably one of the better reads you will ever find. A few months ago I started reading and now I’m like a crack junkie. Her wit and witicisms and topical insight keep me coming back for me as cliched as that sounds.

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Hope, she flew down to see the Thunderfish, ok I made that part up, she was really stalking me like a wild leopard, ok I made that up too. How about I just asked her some good questions to get her insight?

Now this is my favorite part … the interview

So let me introduce to you, the one and only Hope of Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam

(click here for interview)