Sorry, sorry, sorry. Please refrain from actually reading the TV Guide™ yourself. I'm late because of the holidays, because of pressing business, because I'm dogsitting Neighbor Dog, and I'm a very conscientious dogsitter. Much more so than blogger.
But the big reason TV Guide™ Roundup is late is...TV Guide™, which last year changed its format from Saturday-Friday to Sunday-Saturday. This was done, per TV Guide™ to better serve YOU! its readership. Because YOU! had written in so many times demanding just that change. Funny thing, though, from MY! perspective is that neither YOU! nor TV Guide™ saw fit to explain that what was once available the previous Tuesday for a week starting Saturday will now be generally unavailable until Saturday afternoon sometime. So now I've got to make a special trip. Well, Mr. Know-it-All Public, Mr. Big Time Media Publishing Conglomerate, I'm rarely sober enough on Saturday or Sunday to make the trip. Nobody thinks about the little guy in all of this.
The other thing that delayed me is, it's a really good issue. Letters:
Pro vs Con returns, this week: Chris Rock. Some like him (Kate Jones, Oak Park, IL where I roamed as a lad). Others don't: Cherry and Mike Okragly actually changed channels long before the show was over.
Sean Kelly wants people to quick overanalyzing Alias and just enjoy the ride! Tom M. Wallace offers a final salute to NYPD Blue's Steven Bochco and Dennis Franz. Catherine Smith, of the Latham, New York, Smiths, sees no more reason to watch JAG without David James Elliot than Colombo without Peter Faulk.
This week brought us two notable letters, one which got an editor's reply. Katrina Gross, of the charmingly named Loveland, CO, chided The Magazine of TV Record for the heavily airbrushed pic of CSI's Marg Helgenberger. Ms Gross says when she first picked up the issue she thought it was Pamela Anderson. Ms Gross thereby wins the First BLTR Free Speech Award for Lack of Treacle in a Letter to TV Guide™. The Editors reply that they did no more than some minor retouching. Marge, they tell us, looks great! So, we all go home happy.
Barbara Gagnon though, gets a award I had to make up on the spot, the Shapiroesque Reviews Award for Achievement in Conceptual Art. Hailing from Bakersfield, CA, which reminds us not only of Buck Owens and Buck Owens' Personal Branson MO, but also Bakersfield PD, one of the funniest programs on teevee, ever. Ms Gagnon opens with a standard paean to Matt LeBlanc and Joey, then grabs the near-sonambulent reader by the jugular: "Producers should call in Tony Danza to play Joey's uncle, who's still trying to make it in Hollywood." Ms Gagnon, on that glorious Day when you are called before St. Peter, Jorge Luis Borges himself in gonna be heading the welcoming committee.
Cheers and Jeers: 3 Cheers, 4 Jeers. Is this possibly a stock market indicator? Could that be why they changed the distribution, hmmm? Anyway, it's all boring, except the Jeer to Tyra Banks for not picking plus-size women models is illustrated by a photo of the, I'm guessing here, petite Ms Banks in full cantilever. I'm assuming this is supposed to be ameliorated by the photo at top of Fat Actress's Kirstie Alley in some decolletage ensemble.
And, joy of joys in this season of rebirth, it's Another One of Those Top Twenty-Five of Somethings. Sadly only ten in this week's listing of "TV's Biggest Brats". Bart Simpson, #1. That'll have 'em talking over the watercooler tomorrow. Oops, sorry, yesterday.
4 comments:
I just want to say that Marg Helgenberger has had so much cosmetic surgery done that airbrushing probably is redundant at this point. Seriously, she doesn't look "great," she looks like an alien. Wrinkles would be a big improvement, IMHO.
The exceptionally perceptive Catherine Smith has cleverly put her finger on the big issue that has so long gone unobserved by the rest of the world, that "Mrs Colombo" was an appalling, revisionist pile of self-defamatory witlessness.
That said, I really wanted to make an "Incredible Frogboy" joke about the Katrina Gross letter, but then I remembered that was Loveland, Ohio, and it all fell through.
Don't mind me. I'm only using your comments section to practice before moving up to the big leagues in hopes of having TeeVee Guide print my letter.
I'm guessing the TV Guide's Top 25 TV Guide Lists List joke has either been made, or doesn't really need to be made, so I'm just going to pretend I never brought it up.
Ah, the long-lost and beloved Bakersfield P.D. ... it was a sad day when they canceled that one, still #1 on my List of Great Failed Sitcoms. But now that Ron Eldard is the star of Blind Justice, at least I can watch him every week again.
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