The Shallow End of the Pool

I'm sorry, but I just can't do this anymore. I feel like a fucking idiot every day moaning about movies and TV and other assorted crap that just isn't important in the great scheme of things.

All of this pop culture is just expendable. It doesn't mean anything. Yet I've paid so much attention to it that it's come at the expense of the person that matters most to me in my life. While I've been sitting on my ass watching countless hours of drivel on the idiot box, I've been neglecting my wife. I love her so much but I haven't said it enough. She's gone to bed alone so I can stay up late and play video games. It's not fair and it's not right and now I honestly don't know whether or not I can save my marriage. She hates me so much right now for being so distant to her for too long and I can't blame her.

I've learned from my mistakes and now that I've realized it it may be too late. What fucking irony. I watch so many movies, but they all lie. Love isn't easy and there isn't always a happy ending.

So I'm done. Don't bother checking this spot for any more updates because I just don't give a shit anymore. Life's too short and some things are too important to waste my time on this.

I love the movies. And I'd love to go to the movies more often. Fahrenheit 9/11 opened this past weekend, and I'd love to see it. There's one problem, however...

I live in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, I don't really. I live in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country. Yup, they're packed in like sardines here. And they've got tons of movie theatres here to accommodate all those people.

Except I live in SOUTH Jersey, in tourist country. For a couple of months out of the year, there's millions of people here. The rest of the year...Nothing. And we've got the movie theatres to prove it.

Ask me how far I have to drive to get to the nearest theatre. Go ahead, ask.

I'm glad you asked me that. The answer is about 7 minutes. Now, ask me how far I have to drive to get to the nearest theatre that I'm willing to give my money to, the one that's actually operating in the 21st century. 50 minutes. That's right, whenever I want to go the movies I have to drive almost an hour.

OK, technically I don't HAVE to. Like I said, there is a theatre 7 minutes from me. But I care too much about the movie-going experience to go there. Call me crazy, but if I'm paying cash money to go to the theatre, don't I deserve to both see and hear the entire film, as well as being treated like a human being by the automatons that are working there?

I'll tell you tomorrow about the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back: why I no longer support my local theatre, which will leave me with a 50-minute drive to see Spider-Man 2 this Wednesday.

Once again, wrestling non-fans can skip today as I bring you my predictions for this Sunday's Great American Bash Pay-Per-View.

First things first, though...if the WWE is going to insist on running so many damned PPVs every year (they're up to 14 now, with the addition of this Sunday's Bash and Halloween Havoc coming in October), they simply MUST do a better job building up the cards. There are only 5 matches announced so far, and they have no more TV shows coming up to hype more. So any other matches that do get added to the show will be complete throwaways. Would you spend $34.95 for something as poorly thought out as this? I'm not. On to the matches...

WWE CHAMPIONSHIP (TEXAS BULLROPE MATCH) Eddie Guerrero vs. John Bradshaw Layfield- YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! The long-awaited rematch between Eddie and JBL!!! Oh no wait, I was thinking of something else. This just sucks. Eddie will win and hopefully get a better opponent next time, because he surely deserves more.

UNITED STATES CHAMPIONSHIP (FATAL FOUR WAY) John Cena vs. Rob Van Dam vs. Booker T vs. Rene Dupree- This looks really promising, as all 4 guys are really solid in the ring and should put on a hell of a match. Cena will probably keep his title for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of the other 3 guys walks away with it, either.

THE UNDERTAKER vs. THE DUDLEY BOYZ (CONCRETE CRYPT MATCH)- I'm still not clear on the point of this whole storyline, but I can't see the Undertaker losing. The Dudleys work great as heels, especially with Heyman managing them, so why are they not defending their Tag Team Titles?

CRUISERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero- It's hard not to like a match involving these two, but we've seen it a thousand times before. This was hastily thrown together when senior citizen Chavo Classic was fired, so I'm hoping that with more time they'll give some of the other cruisers a chance. In the meantime, Rey keeps his belt.

TORRIE WILSON vs. SABLE- Nothing wrong with a little T & A, but I'm just not a fan of it here. Why do they think guys are willing to pay $34.95 to see 2 chicks in bikinis for 6 or 7 minutes, when they can get a LOT more for free on the internet? I'm not even giving this a prediction. Oh, OK, I'll pick Torrie just to keep my brother happy.

Rumor has it that Mordecai vs. Hardcore Holly and Billy Gunn vs. Kenzo Suzuki will be added to the final card. If this is the case, Mordecai and Suzuki will win their matches, and nobody will care.

See you Monday.

I just watched The Cooler, with William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, and Maria Bello. I thought it was a pretty good film, although (without spoiling anything for those who haven't seen it) the ending was a bit weak.

I'm not here to review the film, though. No, I just wanted to point out a little thing that screenwriters do sometimes that really pisses me off. And they did it in The Cooler.

Again, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll keep this brief: Macy's character, Bernie, at one point reveals to his new girlfriend that his limp is the result of a guy shattering his kneecap years ago because of a gambling debt. Incredulous, she replies "I thought that kind of thing only happened in the movies."

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I can't think of any other examples of this lazy trick off the top of my head, probably because I've tried to suppress the horrible memories. But I have seen it a bunch of times, and I still hate it every single time I'm watching a movie and one of the characters echoes a moronic statement like the one above. If everybody involved is doing a good job, I should be so wrapped up in the story and the characters that I'm not thinking about the fact that I'm watching a work of fiction. The Cooler was doing just that: I was engrossed by the film, and really enjoying things. Then they had to go and spoil it. I just don't need some character reminding me in the middle of a film that I am, in fact, watching a film.

I can't be the only person that's bothered by this, can I?

So I left off yesterday's post with a serious cliffhanger. Scroll down and read that first if you haven't already. I'll wait.

Ready? Not yet? Jesus, hurry up, I don't have all day.

OK, so it wasn't on the par of a "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger; maybe more of a "Is Murphy Brown pregnant?" cliffhanger.

So I went over to the next Radio Shack, and as soon as I walked in the door a retarded clone of the guy from the first store asked if I needed any help. "No thanks," I quickly said, and 30 seconds later I found the adaptor I needed.

More Radio Shack stupidity: When I went there the other day, I couldn't get the guy to ring up my sale. I swear, I bought what I needed up to the counter and he asks me if I needed anything else. "That's it," I said. And then...
He.
Just.
Keeps.
Standing.
There.

And he's not even BEHIND the counter, he's standing NEXT to me! It was a seriously freaky moment. After some awkward silence, he tries to sell me on a Vonage phone system. Apparently, this is some new broadband phone service where you make phone calls through your high speed internet connection instead of through the phone company. I honestly wish I could tell you more about this exciting new technological breakthrough, but the guy really didn't know ANYTHING about it. That's right, this complete ASS-CLOWN was trying to sell me something that he knew absolutely NOTHING about!

Somebody out there please tell me I'm not the only one who has experienced this kind of ineptitude at the Shack.

I had to go into Radio Shack today. You've seen the commercials. Their slogan is "You've Got Questions? We've Got Answers." They should change it to "You've Got Questions? Shit, so do we. Now what?" I swear, every time I go into this place I pray that I can get in, grab what I need, pay, and get out, before the salesman tries to "help." I'm not sure what qualifications you need to get a job at this place, but clearly a knowledge of how electronics work is not a pre-requisite. Gee whiz, why would you need to know anything about electronics to work in a store that sells NOTHING BUT ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT??!!

True story: Last year, my wife bought home an old TV set from her Dad's house. Being an old set, it didn't have a cable ready (coaxial) connection in the back where you stick in the cable wire. "No problem," I thought. "I know that they make a neat little adaptor that you can attach to the back of old TVs that has the connection I need." So off I went to the Shack. I walked into the store and immediately made the cardinal mistake of telling the clown behind the counter what I was looking for. The conversation went something like this:
Jackass: "Can I help you?"
Me: "I just picked up an old TV, but it's not cable ready. I need to get the adaptor to put on the back so I can hook my cable box to the TV."
Jackass: "What do you mean it's not cable ready?"
Me (already disturbed, because I can see where this is headed): "It's not cable ready. It doesn't have the coaxial connection in the back to put the cable wire into. I need an adaptor."
Jackass: "What?"

At this point I grabbed the nearest stereo speaker from the display shelf and pummelled the stupid bastard into oblivion. Actually, what I did was leave the store and drive to the Radio Shack in the next town. You see, where I live, we don't have a single decent movie theatre, but we are blessed with THREE Radio Shacks within 10 minutes of each other.

Tune in tomorrow to see if I ever got the adaptor, plus EVEN MORE stupidity!

Looks like I'll just barely get this post in on time to qualify it as still being Monday (it's currently 11:23 PM), thanks to my latest computer crash.

I've been without my computer since Friday when it mysteriously decided to stop working. The damn thing just wouldn't start, and it's not the first time this has happened to me. I turned the thing on, and was greeted by a blue screen that said something to the effect of "Wow...this thing is so messed up, it's been shut down automatically for your protection." What it should say is "We're not going to let Windows start up because of some minor glitch, so that you have to call up our tech support line and pay them $9,000 to wait on hold for three days while they look into the problem." Well, I'm too smart for them. I decided to let my fingers do the walking and hit The Yellow Book. I called a company called "Saved By The Geek" because they had the best ad, and also because we all know geeks are the best at this kind of thing. The Geek told me that worst case it would take 4 hours to completely do something to my hard drive, at a cost of $217.

Long story short....don't ever pay ANYBODY to fix your computer. I ended up going to the library, went on the computer there, and typed in "Unmountable Boot Volume" into Yahoo (that was the error message my computer was giving me). 20 seconds later I had the answer, and now here I am again.

The point of all this? I don't know...I guess I'm just pissed off that computers are designed to frustrate you at every turn. That just shouldn't be.

There's commercials running now for KFC where the people keep calling it "Kitchen Fresh Chicken." I'm pretty damn tired of the whole Atkins-south beach-low fat-no fat-low carb-no carb-no taste crap that's taken over society. Do they think we're morons? I know KFC stands for "Kentucky Fried Chicken," but apparently there's enough stupid people around that I can see this happening:
Fat Person #1: "What should we have for dinner tonight?"
Fat Person #2: "Let's go try some of that Kitchen Fresh Chicken!"
Fat Person #1: "That sounds perfect! Mr. Atkins says chicken is good!"

They will then proceed to wolf down 3 buckets of Original Recipe, not realizing that they've been eating FRIED chicken the whole time.

On a humorous side note, Jason Alexander (George Costanza of "Seinfeld") no longer does KFC commercials. He did a whole bunch for the last few years, but stopped because he had a problem with the living conditions of the chickens. Let me get this straight....it's OK to slaughter MILLIONS of chickens a day, chop their heads off, roll them around in flour, stick them in a huge vat of boiling oil, and then rip their flesh off the bones with your teeth, but if you have 10 of them sharing a bed, it's inhumane? In his defense, he probably didn't realize they were fried because they told him it was Kitchen Fresh.

So if pro wrestling is so damn fake, how do you explain the following:

March 17, 1994, Munich, Germany: Professional wrestler Mick Foley (at the time, known as "Cactus Jack") became entangled in the ropes during a match with Big Van Vader, and, in the process of trying to free himself, lost his right ear. Let me repeat that: HIS RIGHT EAR WAS TORN FROM HIS HEAD. He would continue to wrestle the entire remainder of the match. Backstage, before getting in an ambulance, he tracked down a photographer to take pictures of the aftermath in the event they could use the photos in his feud against Vader.

Sunday, May 5, 2002: The Los Angeles Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal cut his index finger in the third quarter of a playoff game and had to leave the game to get 3 stitches.

Monday, May 21, 2001: Live on Monday Night Raw, a World Tag Team Championship match took place between the defending champs "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Triple H, and the challengers Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. Midway through the match, Triple H jumped into the ring and planted his foot awkwardly, completely tearing his quadricep muscle in half. He proceeded to wrestle the rest of the match, which included getting back out of the ring, climbing up unto the announcers' table and allowing himself (while still on the table) to be placed in a move called "The Walls of Jericho." Without going into too much detail, that particular move involves having your legs grabbed and wrenched violently around. If you can remember all the way back to 2 sentences ago, he had just torn his quad. I'm no doctor (I just play one on TV), but I'm pretty sure the man should have been in a hospital, not allowing himself to be turned into a human pretzel. Oh yeah, after that, he climbed back up into the ring for the conclusion of the match.

I don't think you need a road map to see the point I'm trying to make here. And these guys do what they do night after night, year after year, for a tiny fraction of what Shaq makes. Of course, they shouldn't get paid Shaq money because everything they do is fake, right?

Since I started this blog, I've been meaning to do a bit on pro wrestling. Yesterday, my brother posted a wrestling piece here. That rotten bastard. I am going to go ahead and do one anyway. Feel free to go ahead and click that link and read his first, I won't mind. In fact, I wish you would, because it will save me having to type a lot of back story about how I started watching wrestling.

So I watch pro wrestling a lot. What I don't understand is why, when people find out I'm a wrestling fan, the first thing they ALWAYS say is, "You know it's fake, right?" No fooling? It's fake? Do people REALLY think I'm retarded? My favorite thing to do is ask them later on what their favorite TV show is, and then inform them that show is also fake. They look at me like I'm an even bigger idiot then before. Please, have you ever heard people talking about "Friends," or "The Sopranos," or "Sex and the City?" They talk about the characters like they're REAL PEOPLE instead of a work of fiction. Sure, Rachel got off the plane to Paris (which was just a set) and ran to Ross' apartment (also a set) to declare her undying love for him. 47 million people watched this story unfold for 10 freaking years, and then what happened? Jennifer Aniston went home and had sex with her husband Brad Pitt. You see, Ross and Rachel don't really exist. But I'M the moron because wrestling is fake.

The biggest problem I have with the whole argument is that wrestling really ISN'T fake, so to speak. Sure, the matches have pre-determined outcomes and a whole slew of writers working on the storylines, but the notion that most people have about two fat guys pretending to punch each other is just not correct. These guys are real athletes. They do, obviously, try their hardest not to really hurt the other guy...except that most of what they do just plain hurts no matter what. It's just not possible to have a 300 pound man land on top of you with decent velocity and not be hurt. And I'm willing to bet that when a man of above-average strength swings a steel chair at you and connects with your forehead, it's going to sting a little (and no, there is no such thing as a fake chair. I've heard this argument before, and I still don't get it. What the hell is a FAKE CHAIR, exactly? But I digress...).

More wrestling malarkey tomorrow....

Random stuff:

Courtney Cox-Arquette and David Arquette have named their newborn daughter Cocoa, instantly tying them for First Place in the "Worst Celebrity Baby Name" contest (the co-holders of the title are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, for Apple). Rumors that the baby was delivered by cereal mascot Sonny the Bird have been unconfirmed.


Music legend Ray Charles passed away last week. He had liver disease, so I guess he saw it coming (rimshot, followed by the studio audience groaning).

I don't listen to much new music nowadays, with CD purchases becoming more and more rare for me. So I have to plug my favorite band right now, The Darkness. Since I picked this CD up a few months ago, I've been playing it non-stop. Just good, fun, rock and roll, clearly influenced heavily by one of my all-time favorites, Queen.

Spike TV took 10 minutes out of Monday Night Raw last night to plug the upcoming faux-reality series Joe Schmo 2. Well, their unwelcome, self-gratifying infomercial did what it was intended to do. Unless it was intended to entice me to watch the show. In that case, it failed, because all it did was piss me off.

I love comic books. So why, after a near 20-year collecting habit, do I not miss them?

I started collecting comic books sometime in 1984 when I was 12. I started off small, reading "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Uncanny X-Men." After all, I was only 12 and didn't have a lot of money. But that was okay, because they didn't cost a lot. Back in the summer of '84, comics cost 60 cents. Over time, my obsession grew, and by my peak in the mid-90's I was spending an average of $60 A WEEK on my hobby. But then something happened. Comics became ultra-popular and it became a "collector's market." Translation: the companies realized sales were at an all-time high, but not because of people like me who actually READ the damn things, but rather because of the people who were buying multiple copies of the same book as an investment, like baseball cards. So they started catering to THAT crowd, and printing multiple variations of the same comic with different covers so people would buy more copies. Meanwhile, important things like STORY and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT fell by the wayside in favor of CHEAP GIMMICKS. Even the artwork suffered. Instead of telling a story, every page looked like a pin-up, designed to boost the re-sale of the original artwork. After all, who wants to buy the original pencil drawings of two guys talking for 9 small panels, when you can buy 1 huge panel of two muscleheads pounding the crap out of each other? Also, if you wanted to follow the adventures of the X-Men, you couldn't just buy "The Uncanny X-Men," you also had to buy "The New X-Men," "X-Factor," "X-Force," "X-Man," "Wolverine," "The New Mutants," and it kept going and going and going. If you didn't buy them all, you were basically screwed.

Eventually the collector's stopped buying comics, because they realized that all the books they bought in the mid-90's were worthless. How can something be valuable if a company prints over a million copies of it, and every single person who wanted one already owns 5 copies? But it was too late. Comics were already ruined for me, and I quit cold turkey last year. Sure, the rationale was that I was trying to buy a house and needed to save money wherever I could (comics by this point had gone from the 60 cents I paid in '84 to an average of 3 dollars and change), but the truth is I just didn't enjoy it anymore.

I'll put a disclaimer right up front: if you don't give a crap about pro wrestling, you can skip today's post.

If you're still reading, you no doubt know that this Sunday is WWE Bad Blood on Pay-Per-View. I've decided that I'll be running my predictions for each PPV right here, mostly because I'm lazy and it's an easy way to post an update. So here it is:

HELL IN A CELL- Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H. This has been going on for a while now, so I think HBK will get the win to blow off the feud. Plus, rumor has it that HHH is taking some time off to film a movie so he'll probably take the fall.

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP- Chris Benoit vs. Kane. I'm still scratching my head as to why Kane has a title shot, or better yet, why the world championship is not the main event. It's like they booked a title match that nobody would care about so that HBK and HHH could headline again. Kane isn't championship material, so Benoit will keep his belt. Hopefully after this fiasco is over, they'll get Kane started in his feud with Matt Hardy and find Benoit a real challenger.

INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP- Randy Orton vs. Shelton Benjamin. Benjamin has a bright future in the business, but it's not his time yet. Orton, meanwhile, has had most of the best matches on RAW for the past few months, and has been a great IC champ: cocky, arrogant, and entertaining. Orton wins.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. TYSON TOMKO- Jericho is one of the all-time greats. Tomko hasn't wrestled in a match yet, but looks like a musclehead with lots of size but not much talent. I could be wrong, though, so we'll see. Working with Jericho at least means the match won't be bad. Look for Trish to get involved but cost Tomko the match by accident.

WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP- Victoria vs. Gail Kim vs. Trish Stratus vs. Lita. Umm, I guess Victoria will keep the belt. To tell you the truth, I had to check the WWE website to see who the champ even was.

TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP- La Resistance vs. Chris Benoit & Edge. Benoit does double duty, mostly just so they could get Edge a match on the card. The fake Frenchmen will win, just because Benoit and Edge as champs doesn't make sense, with Benoit already holding another belt.

EUGENE vs. JONATHAN COACHMAN- Here's a list of WWE superstars who won't be wrestling Sunday night so we can see a retard fight an announcer: Matt Hardy, Tajiri, Rhyno, The Hurricane, Rosey, Garrison Cade, Val Venis, A-Train, Maven, Tommy Dreamer, and Chuck Palumbo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Eugene is hugely popular right now, but I'm still not convinced of the long-term viability of his character. Look for Eugene to be jobbing on Sunday Night Heat within 3 months. In the meantime, Eugene wins.

See you on Sunday.

This whole Jennifer Lopez/Mark Anthony wedding has got me in a tizzy. And not because I think she really belongs with Ben Affleck (you can read my brother's take on Bennifer here. And certainly not because I'm a fan of either one of them (his music isn't exactly my cup of tea, and J-Lo has managed the rare feat of being really bad at both acting and singing, an amazing accomplishment not seen since the days of Rick Springfield).

No, what's got me all worked up is that celebrity weddings have become such a joke that it doesn't even seem to bother anyone that Lopez was just engaged to someone else 5 months ago, and Anthony was still married last week! Seriously, although it has been mentioned in the media, it really seems like nobody cares. Now, Lord knows I'm no prude, but, at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, doesn't marriage mean anything anymore?

Case in point: Mario Lopez (of "Saved By The Bell" fame) and his wife Ali Landry (of virtually no fame except some Doritos commercials) split after 2 weeks of marriage, when Landry allegedly found out that Lopez had been cheating on her for their entire relationship, including at his bachelor party (and it turns out that Jessie Spano was right, Slater is a pig).

I've come to the (perhaps obvious) conclusion that it's all because of money. Think about it: these people have MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of dollars. They're used to being able to get whatever they want whenever they want it. O.K., I'm sure Mario Lopez doesn't have as much cash in the bank as J-Lo, but you get the picture. Most normal working stiffs live paycheck-to-paycheck just trying to get by. What happens when they have marital troubles? Do they just kick their wife to the curb like Mark Anthony did? Hell, no! Not unless they want to give away half their worldly possessions. No, the Average Joes and Janes try to work out their differences and keep the marriage going. I'm not saying people should never get divorced, nor am I saying that couples should stay together just for financial reasons; some relationships just aren't meant to be. But an attempt should at least be made. The rich and famous, though, can afford to lose half their money. If a celeb has 50 million in the bank, half of that is still 25 mil. So they really don't have any incentive to try and save a relationship. Marriage has become disposable to them, and I think it's really sad. And even sadder that society as a whole seems to accept this.

Certainly harder than I thought it would be. Not that I have a shortage of topics to write about; au contraire, I have months worth already percolating in the deep dark recesses of my brain.

No, the hard part is that I decided to start this damn blog the very same week that we are undertaking a massive (massive for a non-handyman like me, anyway) renovation project in my new house, and there's just not enough time in the day.

I promised daily-except-Saturday updates, though, and I am nothing if not a man of my word. So here's today's update: it's 11:52 PM. I'm tired and going to bed.

I promise tomorrow's update will be a bit more thought provoking (not much more, though, because then I would have to think, and I'm having none of that around here).

Today marks the release of the second solo album from Gene Simmons (The first was way back in '78, at the peak of KISS-mania). He's decided to call it "Asshole."

This got me to thinking. IS Gene really an asshole?

Certainly anybody who has ever seen or read an interview with him knows he is full of himself, but does that make him an asshole? No, it just makes him a rock star. You have to have a certain amount (read: LOTS) of ego to be a musical icon, and Gene certainly qualifies. What separates him from other of his ilk, though, is that he doesn't try to pretend to be something he's not. He freely admits he cares about two things in life: money and women, and his chosen occupation allows him to have copious amounts of both. No facade of being an "artist" and all the pretentiousness that comes with it, just lots and lots of selling himself. Just about anything you can think of buying at the store, from condoms to caskets, has been marketing with Gene's leering face on it. He's made millions upon millions of dollars doing what he does, and you know what? God bless him for it. Here's a guy who was not born in this country; came here at a very young age not knowing a word of English; is certainly not a terribly handsome man; and yet...is living the American Dream (insert Dusty Rhodes joke here).

In short, Gene Simmons is a brilliant businessman and a master of self-hyperbole. So I've determined that he really shouldn't have called his new album "Asshole." With the way he's perfected the art of making money by selling himself, he should have called it "Gene Simmons: Whore." And I'll be the first in line to buy whatever he's selling.

What the hell has happened to television? I used to live and breathe TV, scheduling my life around prime time's brightest stars. 7 nights a week, from 8-11 PM, I knew in advance what I would be watching. Nowadays, with more channels than ever, I find myself more and more searching for things to watch. This past season, the only network program I made it a point to never miss was "24". I even missed quite a few of "The Simpsons" episodes this year because of work, and I just didn't bother taping them.

With cable TV more of a threat to network television than ever, you'd think that the nets would be striving to put better and, dare I say it, more original programming on the air. Instead, they trot out more and more sitcom cliches, a fourth variation on "Law & Order", a third re-tread of "C.S.I.," and more lowest-common-denominator reality crap ("The Swan," anyone?). Anytime something daring and new DOES show up, it sinks like a stone and is yanked umercifully ("My So-called Life," "Freaks and Geeks," "Action!").

Unfortunately, I think the problem lies more with 'The General Public' than anything else. Apparently they WANT to be spoon-fed drek by the bucketful. Let's face it, "Coach" was on the air for about 27 years, despite the fact that I never met a living soul who actually watched the damn thing. There's another show on the air right now called "Yes, Dear" that's going into it's 4th season. I defy someone to tell me they've even heard of it. But someone must be watching them. Just not me.

So my brother has turned me on to this whole blogging thing and I've decided to take the plunge. So in this very spot on a (hopefully) daily-except-for-Saturdays basis I will be posting whatever the hell I feel like talking about at that moment. Not sure yet how it's all going to work out, or what I'm going to talk about every day, but here goes.

To start with, why call my blog "The Shallow End of the Pool?" Well, because, quite frankly, I'm not expecting to be handling any particularly deep subjects here. I'll write about what I know. No meaningful political or sociological statements here (except for this one right now: George W. Bush is a big weenie. Vote for Kerry in November). I watch wrestling, play video games, eat, and sleep, with liberal doses of ass-scratching thrown in for good measure. I imagine I'll be discussing pop culture in some form on a daily basis, so check back starting tomorrow for a peek at what is swirling around in the demented place I call my head.