Big Brother House on Pennsylvania Ave.

I didn't watch Apprentice, or Celebrity Apprentice. I don't really watch any of those shows. It is not that I think there is anything wrong with them, they just don't appeal to me.

I can imagine, though, how a typical episode worked. You create friction, infuse it with tension, heighten it with competition and finally resolution. It probably had some hints of subterfuge and espionage, mostly for ornamentation rather than any really substance.

It is the same thing I learned from Ms. Stoltman in Creative Writing so many years ago. You can have as many dogs as you want, but only one bone. It has worked for years, for so many writers. Since I never saw the show I will not pretend to know if they were effective.

President Trump has seemed to take this practice to a nightmarish level. Everything has become a national crisis. We are surrounded by dangers that only he could expose, only he can solve.

North Korea has been a problem for years, and years to everybody in the world. Including, most tragically North Koreans. There is nothing new in the belligerence of Kim Jong 3.2. It is an isolated kingdom wrapped up in paranoia and mistrust. The thing they fear most is losing power, so they bluster and they posture, and they parade, and they threaten. And, they always have.

But, they are not a problem you can solve. You can manage it, like the last dozen or so presidents have. Or you can blow it up, and cause a tragedy of terrible proportions for uncountable people. It is not something you can bully away. Or tweet out of existence.

Most immigrants are just looking for a dream. A dream we have been selling for years, the American Dream, come make a life for yourself, be rewarded for the fruits of your labor. Refugees are normally just the opposite, they are running from a nightmare. Leave home or die, horribly is the choice so many of them face.

But, we package them as a scourge, a blight on our society, and we can manufacture a solution. It is so much simpler than facing the problem. Inequity, and destruction do not sell on prime time.

Now, we have reality television in the oval office. And it works a lot better if you take the complexity out of the equation, and package it as an easy solution. It works for television, but it hasn't translated very well to coherent national policy. I hope season two is better.

A gentle change of the season.

Christmas has come and gone. Our Christmases are pretty tame, our kids are older, and we don't do much. As a family we don't stand too awfully convicted to tradition, we had lasagna for Christmas dinner.

But, we watched some basketball on television, a little football, but mostly hoops, baby, hoops. Which is important, it is a season of transition.

Screaming at basketball refs requires a shift in vocabulary. Sure, there are phrases that will work for either sport. "Hey, stripes you're missing a good game." "This is taking the Americans With Disabilities Act too far." But, far and large it requires a retooling of insults.

Christmas signals the changing of the seasons. A melding of two televised sports. An ideal time to
refine and hone the needed instructions for a different set of novice, oddly dressed, children.

So, stop fuming about the thugs committing pass interference on your poor, hardworking, abused receiver, and start being indignant about the muggers climbing right up the back of your honest, put upon rebounder.  And the corrupt, dastardly officials turning a well paid, blind eye to the crazed, cheating convicts that inhabit the bench of the other team.

Don't put away your indignation, just shift the focus of your rage. Remember the world of televised sports fans everywhere need your help.

Commercials, the television of the future.

We here, at Life Explained, Ohio Office, love commercials, at least some of us. Some of us want to rush past them while watching recorded programs. Why, we wonder, these are one minute masterpieces, life in sixty seconds. No big time commitment, no serial requirements, just a brief foray into a world of wonder, and miracles.

Chester Cheetah kills us, at least some of us. With his dry humor, and his distinguished, intelligent accent. For sixty seconds he orchestrates chaos, and lunacy. With a delightful conclusion that brings harmony, and a quick escape. It is television at its finest. But, some of us want to scream past Chester's exploits so we can get back to some show that lasts forever and is part of an infinite series. And we do love Cheetos, all of us.

We even love political commercials. Where else can you find out all of the horrid things about people running for office, or the potential stupidity, and possible constitutional violation of state bills. In the city where our top secret laboratory is located we are trying to elect a new mayor. Long ago both candidates gave up any pretense of getting elected on their merits or their stance on the issues. It has become a slog of convincing voters that no matter how despicable they seem their opponent would be a worse choice. "I am an awful person, but that guy wishes he was me."  Educating voters is a waste, entertain them, manipulate their fears, and hope for the best. And we love it!

One exception to our unbridled passion for television's greatest entertainment, local car companies. OMG, WTF! Who comes up with some of these things? Sitting around discussing sales goals, and buyer incentives does one guy say, "you know what would be funny? If we dress up like cavemen, and have big clubs, and pretend to sell cars to people from the future, that would be funny."* What is really amazing is nobody says, "no, that wouldn't be funny, that would be kind of dumb." So, if you work for a car dealership, and you are hoping for our vote for a peoples choice award, it is going to cost you, a lot.

*If you see somebody using this ploy in a commercial don't tell anybody you read it here, please, I beg of you.

Marketing, For The Television Generation.

As one of the leading Explainers of Life we, here at Life Explained, feel it is very important to keep our fingers on the pulse of the world, keep up with the ebb and flow of the universe, (at least this small part of the universe, most of it is too far away).  We have found it vital to immerse ourselves in popular culture, and absorb all of the nuance, and subtlety of the vast, expanding world of modern humanity.

One obvious place to start is television in general, reality television in particular.  So, we looked, up and down the immeasurable, unending selection of channels.  We watched hours and hours of programming, shows about everything from places where people drink, to the tense, neurotic world of child pageants, shows about sales, and auctions, and building and selling, improving and selling, and buying and selling.  But, we could find nothing that remotely resembled reality.  It is a riddle, and one we intend to explain, sometime, soon.

What we did find, though, was commercials, hours and hours of advertisements, wonderful little programs, focused and fixed, often with humor, sometimes with brutally factual, terrifyingly explicit information.  It was the gamut of human experience wrapped up in thirty to sixty shows, often with a soundtrack, and it was great.  We loved it.

Of course, they were a little too narrow in scope, and sometimes the information presented was rushed, and pressed until it held little meaning.  Sometimes, these little programs ended long before the climax, and with little regard for the feelings of the viewers.

There is a series of commercials for a medicine taken by people with a higher risk of stroke due to a certain type of irregular heart beat not caused by a heart valve problem, (which is very specific, you see what we mean), and these people, after switching medicine are, for the most part, off to fascinating lives, and interesting vacations.  One couple goes camping, traveling to beautiful, scenic locations, but that is all we ever find out.  Another couple flies to New Zealand (where they filmed the Lord of the Rings movies) and frolics in the surf, and has, we can only assume, the vacation of a lifetime.

But, here it stops, and we are left yearning for more.  What became of our new friends in wild, untamed New Zealand?  Did they make it back OK?  We need more, there are stories untold.  And in these stories are marketing gold mines.

"This campground is getting a bad review!"

Imagine the excitement if the campers were besieged by armed bandits.  Think of the drama provided by these desperate men, recently escaped from a prison that, as an added security precaution, travels through time, and had been created to hold the most bloodthirsty criminals from the past, present and future, surrounding this small, frail shell in the vast, lonely desert.  Now, picture this man, slightly aging and retired but invigorated by the freedom provided by this miracle of modern pharmaceutical wizardry battling his way through enemy lines using barbecue tools that were designed to fold neatly and store conveniently in the small spaces afforded by a travel trailer.

Guys would be lining up to get their hands on those pills!  And the beauty of it is on some weeks adventures we could have the drama caused by the potential side effects.  Poor, Pete, barely retired, just starting to enjoy the liberty of alarm clock free living, cut down, laid low by (fill in your favorite distasteful side effect here).  Oh, the tragedy, and sadness, so young, and gone.  It would be prime time, and advertisers would be lining up to by time.  Not to mention the educational value of seeing the medicine in action, good and bad, first hand.

Marketing, and commercials could provide so much, but they fall so short.  We would be willing to help fix this, for a nominal fee.

The further misadventures of genius.

Sometimes it is very difficult to work with geniuses.  Two weeks ago, on Thursday, Doctor Dawg took an old Laser Jet 4200 XLT printer, added a hot glue gun, with a banana clip full of crayons, to the toner cartridge, a microwave oven to the fuser panel, and a 60 cc chainsaw motor to the duplexer.  He used a Commodore 64 liberated from the local thrift store for $1.99, as the control module and voila we had our very own three dimensional printer.   

It was a lot of fun, people were emailing pictures, and bam Dr. Dawg would have a three dimensional version in seconds.  The Eiffel Tower, an elephant, a cute little mouse using a four leaf clover to hide from a menacing, snarling cat, it was amazing what he could produce.  Soon, we had a few beers and were throwing around all sorts of crazy ideas.

Bob, from engineering, ran over and got his new scanner, a monstrous, data crunching, digitizing machine, and we hardwired it into the Commodore, and scanned a picture of a meatball sub, in less than a minute we had a meatball sub, with marinara.  It was cold, but we began brainstorming about the best way to use the microwave during, and after the printing process.  Nobody was too keen on carrying the stove in there and trying to run 220 volts through the whole machine, we had learned our lesson when we tried to speed up the rotation of the earth to make the weekend arrive earlier.  Man, was that a bad idea.

It was then that things started going bad.  Bob, from customer service, (Bob is always kind of a trouble maker, ask anyone) decided to scan his hand, and before you could say, “unplug that stupid thing” a disembodied replica of Bob’s hand was scurrying across Doctor Dawg’s work table.  Not only was it knocking over plates of chili cheese fries, spilling beers, and just being kind of creepy in general, but it was fuzzy looking and not the right color at all.

Doctor Dawg said he could fix the tone and image sharpness with a simple adjustment of the contrast and saturation settings in the printer drivers.  It would have made it more accurate in complexion, but not any less weird.

Friday went by without incident, but over the weekend the hand had managed to hook the entire contraption up to the DVR in the break room.  On Monday the whole building was overrun with characters from movies and television, which wasn’t nearly as fun as you might hope, or nearly as awful as you might fear.

Pirates were swinging from the ceiling joists using ropes produced from ingeniously twined computer cables and extension cords, space men, in space suits, rolling around on the floor pretending they were in zero gravity, soldiers, crouching behind the overturned table in the kitchen, shouting things like “cover me while I make a break for the cappuccino machine.  Would anybody like a French vanilla?”  And then sprinting across the room, rolling to a stop and springing to their feet right in front of the coffee dispenser.

At first it was a real nuisance, but it didn't take long to become attached to all of those "people," acting out their little dramas.  Lunch time was so much more enjoyable, watching the cast of "Jesus Christ, Superstar," sing their way through the visit to Caiaphas, or the crew from "Glengarry Glen Ross" listen to Alec Baldwin lecture them on the value of persistence.  He really cleaned it up when the ladies were eating, and it still sounded good.

However, when payday came around and we realized how much it was going to cost to keep all of these additional people we had to let them go.  Guess who pulled that gig.   It was kind of sad, too, because I was really starting to enjoy having all those cavemen around, they were so funny.

Daytime TV another troubling development.

Monday was President's Day, and I took the day off. Which meant I had a chance to partake in the ultimate television, daytime television, and daytime television commercials.

We were watching a game show, something to do with prices or bargains, or something that had a lot of name brand products and services involved.  "Hey, Billy, how would you like to take home this Sony brand AM FM radio with headphones and three distinctly separate but equal knobs?  All you have to do is guess how Much Kraft brand Macaroni and Cheese, with fun shaped dinosaur pasta, it takes to fill the trunk of this Dodge Hedgehog."  Dang, that one was tough, did they mean cooked, or boxed?

But, before we heard Billy's answer, they cut to a commercial for laundry detergent.  There was a couple sitting in a bedroom with heaps of laundry surrounding them.   The man would take a small shirt from one basket and fold it carelessly before handing it to the woman, who would refold the shirt and put it in a different basket.

While they were folding the laundry, they were speaking right into the camera.  The woman talked about the blessing of having triplets, and the man countered with the financial burden it brought.   Which led, quickly, to the relative value of laundry detergents, ultimately leading to the anecdotal proof that the bargain detergents were of less value than the name brand, due to the enormous amount needed to clean clothes.

But, as any parent can tell you, having a new baby around is exhausting, having three must be hellish, and a person can get a little cranky.  Finally, right before the end of the commercial, they woman had had enough, (she lasted longer than my wife would have, maybe it was being on camera that provided the additional composure) and threw one of the shirts back in the man's face, saying, "you call that folded, you might as well wad it up and throw it back in the laundry, you bastard!"

Which he did.  Actually, it was more of a fastball pitch, with a windup and instead of the laundry it was at his wife's head, rather than in the laundry. He screamed "they are babies, nobody gives a bucket of poo about a few wrinkles."

At this point, maternal instinct kicked in and the woman, fearing that her babies were going out in public, wrinkled and messy, swung a full diaper bag around her head several times, finally bringing it to bear on the back of the man's head, knocking him into the changing table and opening a three inch gash on his forehead.

To his credit he got up quickly and grabbed a baby bottle, smashing it on the bassinet, and brandished the jagged edge menacingly toward the woman who had grabbed a wastebasket lid for a shield and still looped the diaper bag in long, terrifying circles around her head, each pass making an ominous, electrifying whoosh sound.

Before they could move in for the last match, they both collapsed in a heap, exhausted and wanting nothing more than a nap.

I looked at my wife, and asked, "did you see that?"

"It is all part of the "Reality Programming" trend that is so popular these days.  Things, sometimes, get a little strange."  She explained.

"Oh, I see."

Ah, the good old days.

Sometime today I will be 54 years old.  It used to seem like 54 was old, and anybody who actually lived that long was probably very lucky, took very good care of themselves and was either on a transplant list for something, or in cryogenic storage, waiting for some fortunate soul to discover the Fountain of Youth. Now, it seems pretty young (heck, most days I still feel like a child, no more than 48).  Everything is relative.  Our view of the world depends on where we are.

I am old enough to "remember" when everything was better, athletes, music, television, movies, all of it, a golden age of life too powerful for any of today's generation to endure, let alone understand.  Of course, on the few occasions I run across someone even older than me they tell me how good things were in their youth.  Maybe, they are right, maybe "progress" is not helping.  Maybe we need to look into stagnation for a while.

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, "technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."  Well, that does not sound like a very good idea, and considering how much the man helped with the progress of technology lends a little weight to his words.  So, what can we do?

I am glad you asked, because I have a plan, 54 years in the making.  One day every week we turn off all of electronic devices.  Cell phones, tablets, lap tops, televisions.  Everything needs to be shut off.  Don't use the microwave, or oven, grill all of your food, or better yet, eat it raw?

Timing is critical, nobody wants this to happen on a really good television day, last night was game 5 of the NBA finals, (never mind that sports used to be infinitely better when I was young, like everything else) and nobody should have to miss something like that.  And, if you need to check scores you can switch on one internet connected device up to twice a day.  These are important things.

If you are checking the scores on your cell phone, you might as well check your text messages, and voice mails, oh well take a quick peek at emails as well.  Since you have gone this far it would probably be all right to make a few quick phone calls.

Hey, don't forget to post that picture of yourself wearing the beer vendor racing uniform, complete with flashing police light helmet, driving that golf cart down the drag strip, that one is great.  Nobody will top that!  Here, let me start my phone, so I can be the first one to like it.

While you were posting that picture I saw that the original Godzilla vs. Mothra is on TV in 20 minutes.  What do you say we fire up the blender, whip up some margaritas, make some nachos, and microwave popcorn and call it a party?  I love that movie.

Well, that is all we have time for today, don't forget to tune in tomorrow when we discuss how to decrease your carbon foot print by starting a bicycle delivery service, and how to get home after delivering the bike.  Spoiler alert, have your friend pick you up in his huge SUV.