Stop Pretending It’s News

December 19, 2021 ThirstyDaddy 5 Comments

It used to be that a person my age could easily show that age by shaking their fist and talking about when MTV actually played music and not the ridiculous reality shows that are about all that you can find there nowadays. In retrospect it’s a bit unfair and actually a tribute to the heads of programming to realize that You-Tube and the Internet would make them obsolete without a change in direction. Even if they did play music, I see no reason other than nostalgia that I would ever tune in.

I also remember when ESPN actually showed sports. I know that they have Monday Night Football and at night there are live games but back in my day you could tune in pretty much anytime and find some sort of contest being televised. People under forty might not understand this but there was a time when a true sports fan didn’t just pay attention to the four major sports, we also had favorite beach volleyball players, billiards players and even poker and dart players. Some people even knew the names of bowlers. It was just what was on TV.

Now all that is on is people talking about sports, giving their opinions and analysis and saying whatever nonsense they think will enable them to be noticed in a time when there are a half dozen other dedicated sports channels all doing the same. Instead of names like Sinjin Smith and Jeannette Lee ( google them, kids ) we know who Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd are. People who talk about sports might not be as rich but they can be just as famous as those that actually play them.

At some point in an increasingly crowded cable television landscape it was decided that there simply wasn’t enough music videos or sporting events to fill a twenty four hour viewing window and that other programming was going to be necessary to keep people’s eyeballs focused on their advertisers.

Where we ran into trouble was when this philosophy also was adapted by the “news.” CNN was also launched in the early 1980’s days of cable television as the first of the twenty four hours a day news channels. After embedding several of it’s reporters in the Al-Rashad Hotel in Baghdad and becoming the primary source of on the ground reporting during the first Gulf War the mid to late nineties brought competition from Fox News and MSNBC, two stations that took advantage of the abolishment of the FCC Fairness Doctrine to begin the partisan bias in commentary that now seems to make up the majority of all “news” programming.

All of these stations came to the same conclusion that the music and sports stations did : not only is there not enough content to fill all of our time, people really aren’t all that interested in it. People want drama, arguments, sides to take. They want good guys and bad guys. Tucker Carlson is the most watched person in “news” right now, with the highest rated program on the most watched network but that network also won a lawsuit in September of last year by arguing that no reasonable person would believe anything that he says so they aren’t liable for his lies. He actually got his start by co-hosting the debate show Crossfire on CNN from 2001-2005 before moving to MSNBC for three years for a show where he debated the news with Max Kellerman. If that name sounds familiar it’s because he hosted Around the Horn for a while before joining First Take on ESPN, shows that exist not to tell you about what happened in sports, but to argue about them.

The single most influential person in America right now has spent the past twenty years jumping from station to station and making a living by making crap up and arguing about stuff. He’s completely full of shit and barely bothers to hide it. Over the years there have always been people like Morton Downey JR and Howard Stern and Jerry Springer who made a living peddling trash but they always did it with a wink and an acknowledgment of what they were. It was entertainment. At some point people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann and Al Sharpton, were all given platforms where they could pretend like they were legitimate news.

They aren’t, and it’s way past time we stop pretending they are.

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Kids, Movies/Television

Bonding Over TV

December 9, 2021 ThirstyDaddy 12 Comments

Humans are social creatures, meant to be amongst others of their kind. We spend out lives searching for others whose company we enjoy and then after we find them we struggle to stay connected. We have children and try to find ways to stay in their lives as they get older and less dependent on us. We need things in common, share interests and experiences. We need sports, arts, music, books and movies. How much easier was it to make small talk when we were all watching the same shows on television?

Music and food are great but I think that a shared television program is a simple but effective way to establish a connection with somebody. New episodes DVR’d of Robin Hood or Sleepy Holly back in the day meant that the oldest needed to stay downstairs with us for an hour at least once a week. Her mom and I used to have stacks of VHS tapes with sticky notes identifying which were Nip/Tuck or The Shield. My biggest fear about Daylight Savings Time was never about messing up the morning school run or being late for work but about being able to keep the VCR on schedule. If you’ve never felt the pain of accidently taping over something before you had a chance to watch it you probably don’t remember music on MTV either.

Nowadays we stream. I was one of the last people I know to sign up for Netflix but we’re all in now. Hulu, Tubi, Disney +, HBOMAX. As long as the Interwebs are working appropriately the amount of content to choose from is almost overwhelming.

This volume of available television and my inherent stupidity has led to a few poor choices in what I’ve forced the youngest to get off of You-Tube and watch with me. If anybody remembers The Winx Club animated series on Nickelodeon about a magical school for faeries I will tell you that the live action series on Netflix, Fate: The Winx Saga is intended for the teenagers that might have watched the show as kids ten years ago, not really for ten year olds that are new to the series. Likewise Titans, now on HBOMAX, may share some of the same characters as Teen Titans Go but is even more inappropriate. For those that aren’t familiar with Batman’s sidekick Robin, his real name is Dick Grayson and this version of the character spends as much time wielding his first name as he does his fists.

I tell myself that most of the innuendo goes over her head and there was really only one scene that I had to fast forward through. We spent most of it turned around trying to see what was on another screen but when we were right around my daughter’s age my parents brought us to see 9 1/2 Weeks at the drive in. I’m not going to say that we turned out fine but I don’t think a comically bad choice on family movie night is the culprit.

Since it was first announced we have been waiting for the introduction of Kate Bishop to the Marvel Cinematic Universe so we’re currently really enjoying Hawkeye on Disney + and I’m pretty confident it will remain appropriate. It’s not what they mean but I guess for our next show I’ll have to follow the advice of the people on the Internet telling me that I need to “do my research” and maybe watch a few episodes on my own first. I find the ratings systems that most of these platforms use to be only marginally helpful.

My daughter is rapidly getting to the age where she’s perfectly content without my company. If I have to bribe her with hot chocolate, popcorn and questionably appropriate television content to get a snuggle on the couch than that’s what I’m going to do.

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Family, Younglings

A Different Feel To This Season

November 27, 2021 ThirstyDaddy 20 Comments

Not everybody that usually would be was there but Thanksgiving was about as close to past years as any of us might have hoped. Covid is still a very real concern but we are vaxxed, we wear masks in public and the family is all blessed with good health at the moment. Massive amounts of turkey was consumed, football was watched. The youngest got to spend time with both her grammies and two of her cousins.

In 1621 fifty-three Pilgrims and ninety Native-Americans threw a three day feast to celebrate their first harvest in the New World and to thank the Wampanoag tribe for helping them survive the previous winter. There is no associated fairy tale or mythical gift giver. Just a bunch of people happy to be alive and appreciative of those that helped them stay that way. Our past year wasn’t as tough as that but the idea of being thankful to all be together and healthy feels pretty timely.

Now that that’s over I am willing to take down the last few remaining Halloween decorations and start thinking about Christmas. I’ll confess that I already have most of my shopping done but refuse to do anything else to acknowledge it’s approach until I’m done with all the leftovers.

Christmas will also be different this year, different from any of the others. This is our first year post Santa Claus.

She claims to have known for several years but I don’t think I believe that. Not only because I refuse to believe that I was moving that damn elf every night for two straight years for no reason but because she’s just the kind of kid that wants to believe in magic and faeries and silly stuff like that. She’s got a whimsical side to her that I hope she never grows out of.

I’ve got nobody besides myself to blame, something that I hate but that is often the case. Last year I wrote a post about how I wasn’t sure how much she still believes and it turns out that the ten year old is actually a big fan of the blog and reads all of my nonsense. She’s mainly a big fan because sometimes we get free stuff or get to go to things that we might not otherwise go to and because she has an unrealistic idea of how many other people are reading and how famous she is, but she’s a big fan nonetheless. I appreciate the support and always try to keep in mind that one day she might be reading these but have to admit that I didn’t see that coming.

She’s old enough that I would probably start to worry a bit if she didn’t start to have doubts, but it’s still sad. It’s another part of childhood, of innocence and naivete lost. It’s another reminder that she’s not a little girl anymore and if you are one of the other people besides my father and apparently my kid that reads these you know that I hate that. It makes me sappy.

One thing they don’t tell you about raising children is that after all of the first times come all of the last times. The latter would be as melancholy as the first are exciting except that you don’t know that they are happening until after the fact.

Last year there was no sitting on stranger’s laps, something that when typed out seems pretty reasonable but has been a tradition of many families for a long time. Two years ago my daughter told a Santa Claus facsimile what she wanted for Christmas with the expectation that this would facilitate her getting these things. It was the last time that would happen and I had no idea. This year is going to have a little less magic to it and that bums me out.

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soap box

This Is Why Voting Matters

November 21, 2021 ThirstyDaddy 2 Comments

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the vaccine. I agree that those of us that work with the sick and immunocompromised should have been mandated to get it, disagree that OSHA and the government has the right to tell private companies that they need to. I think that those companies have the right to make their own mandates if they fear mass sickness is hurting productivity and feel that eventually the insurance companies would have raised negotiated rates on those that didn’t have them and think that’s reasonable. Decisions about schools should be made at the local level but should be based on science and community positivity numbers.

I get that a lot of people won’t agree with parts of that and can’t say that my opinions on some of it may or may not change. I’m glad that I’m not in a position where I have to make those types of decisions because no matter what happens there will be second guessing, angry people, and a chance that good intentions might lead to bad decisions. One thing that I’m guessing we can all agree on is that the libs definitely should not be going through the lunch room jabbing our children without parental consent.

If that last line threw you off a bit because nobody in their right mind would ever think such a thing, know that not only are there plenty that do and that there are also plenty who would exploit that fear for their own political gain. It’s basically all that politics is anymore.

I edited out her name but this was a social media post by a recently elected member of our local board of education on her political page, not her personal one. I’m not sure that would make it any less irresponsible but at least she wouldn’t so blatantly be representing the town. When reminded of this and asked where she had received this information about the implied consent she admitted to me that it wasn’t our town that she was talking about but that she heard it was happening other places and was worried about our kids. She’s either a liar or an idiot and even though I don’t think I’ve ever met the woman if I was going to guess I would say both.

Listen, I’ll admit that I don’t know all the details about the local hospital’s plan to hold a vaccination clinic at our high school now that there has been approval for children five years old and older. I know that it was planned for after school hours and that not only was a signed paper required but that a parent had to be actually present to verbally consent before any child was given anything. I know that the list of required vaccinations for any child to attend public school is several pages long and that other than some fringe loonies this was never an issue before recently because most of civilized society has understood that this is an accepted way to promote public health since George Washington first ordered all of his troop to be vaccinated against smallpox in 1777.

The truth is that the scheduled clinic was put on hold as soon as the new board of education was sworn in and that the new board is again stacked with people who seem to believe that they are the last line of defense against nefarious liberals who want to place experimental drugs into our children and teach the white ones that they should be ashamed of their skin color.

It’s complete nonsense but I don’t think enough people understand how many there are that think that way and understand the damage that they can do. I think that by now most people have already made up their minds about whether of not they want to be vaccinated or want their children to be able to but if there were any on the fence this attempt to scare them and to limit the accessibility of those that would choose to in order to garner the support of those in opposition is deplorable. If you don’t want to vaccinate your child, that is your decision. To inhibit the ability of others to do so is exactly the type of overreach that you claim to be fighting against. I won’t judge your decision but I will judge the fuck out of your hypocrisy and I’m tired of it.

This week there was the first Board of Education meeting since the last set of elections and it was worse than I could have imagined. Besides some of the most absurd anti vaccine disinformation that I’ve heard yet there were also threats to sue about the child abuse that is mask mandates, the board chair made sure to mention that we would not be handing out birth control at the high school and the chair of the town council told a story about how much he’s been discriminated against in his life because he’s white. My choice to watch online and not attend in person seems a wise one as my ability to keep my mouth shut is pretty questionable.

The clinic was cancelled, something that really isn’t that big of a deal. It was a convenience being offered but there is no shortage of other places that parents can take their children if that is what they choose.

What’s important is the reasons that it was cancelled, the things that people who play a large part in shaping the education of my child believe. Things that not only are very easily proven to be factually inaccurate but don’t even make any sense.

This is why voting matters, not only when there is a presidential race or in next year’s mid terms but every time you get the opportunity. There are over 17,000 people in town but only 500 voted on a referendum to spend 28 million dollars on renovations and relocation of our community center. Whether you support the project or not, this is a lot of money and will affect every tax payer in town. Five hundred cared enough to show up.

Get out and vote guys. You might not think that it effects your life all that much but it does. Especially nowadays.

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Movies/Television, sponsored, Superheroes

Return Of The Con

October 28, 2021 ThirstyDaddy 2 Comments

It’s not over and we were fooled once before by a window of normalcy but with new Covid cases down 57% since their peak on September first I’m cautiously optimistic that getting out and doing things again is actually realistic. Places are open, restrictions are being lifted. Rhode Island Comic Con is a week away.

We’re pretty excited. It’s been over three years since the last time we went to anything like this. That one was at a different venue but was also run by Altered Reality and I’m expecting the same level of awesomeness. As much as I’m all in on the comic book stuff that lends the convention it’s name, it was the science fiction and pop culture emphasis that made up most of the highlights for me. I got to spend a few minutes talking with some of the cast of The Walking Dead and Brian O’Halloran from the Clerks movies. I listened to Hollywood legend Lance Henriksen tell stories and Robert Englund and Kane Hodder talk about their time spent playing Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. It was pretty neat.

We’ll be at the Rhode Island Convention Center and the ballrooms of the Omni Hotel instead of Foxwoods Resort and Casino but the variety of guests and panels will be the same. Besides too many comic book artists and writers to mention celebrities available for autographs and photo ops range everywhere from Tom Arnold to Jerry “The King” Lawler to Joey Fatone to Chuckles the Clown and most of the cast of Cobra Kai. Cast members of the Clerks and Scream movies as well as the television shows Titans, The Boys and Leave it to Beaver will be holding panels. Chandler Riggs will be talking about what it was like growing up on the set of The Walking Dead and my daughter is very excited to listen to the cast of My Hero Academia talk about voice acting. On Saturday there is a 90th birthday party for the one and only William Shatner.

If none of that sounds interesting you could very easily just spend several hours wandering around looking at movie props, shopping for stuff you’re not going to find anywhere else and people watching. The Cos Players both professional and amateur are worth the admission just on their own.