The Grouchy Editor

Dear Fox News anchors:

Yes, of course I’d like to be respectful of your religion. And I understand it was Ash Wednesday. But for crying out loud, those black smudges on your foreheads make you look like clueless buffoons.

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Coronavirus

Is anyone else beginning to feel a bit like Will Smith in I Am Legend, or Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, hunkered down in your house and watching news reports about the end of the world (above)?

You go ahead and stock up on bottled water and canned beans. I’m going to run out and get a dog and a bust of Napoleon – or whoever that dude is with whom Heston plays chess.

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Perhaps it’s just another reminder that I’m getting old, and if ever there was a “first-world problem,” this might be it, but the age of streaming TV shows with long story arcs is playing hell with my brain cells. For example: Better Call Saul (above), a great series, last week premiered its fifth season. I love the show, but it definitely places demands on a viewer’s recall.

Not only does Saul employ a complicated time-frame structure – lots of flashbacks and flash-forwards – but you must remember: 1) how the plot (and Saul) progressed during the show’s first four seasons; 2) the entire five-season run of Breaking Bad, a show of which Saul is heavily intertwined and acts as a sort of prequel … although it might eventually become a sequel – who knows? Characters who died in Breaking Bad are alive and well in Better Call Saul. At least I think so.

Like I said, this is a first-world problem; nothing to lose sleep about.

Tomorrow, another show I’ve been watching and like a lot, Babylon Berlin (above), premieres its third season on Netflix. I fully expect to have the same kind of recall issues with Babylon that I have with Saul, but with the added burden of subtitles.

Poor me.

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It was not a great week for legendary director Steven Spielberg.

First, the news broke that his adopted daughter Mikaela is embarking on a career path no doubt made possible by her father’s fame and fortune: She’s going to be an Internet porn queen.

Then, the Web site Crazy Days & Nights ran a blind item linking Mr. Hollywood to sordid behavior regarding child actors. You can read about it here.

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Donald Trump’s unhappy about Parasite (above) winning the Best Picture Oscar. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on its quality, but I do have a question about the nomination categories.

If a foreign-made film is eligible to win both the international and the regular best-picture awards, then shouldn’t American-made films also be eligible in both categories?

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There is much fuss about the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s triumph over the Russians. I recall my college roommates’ excitement while they watched the game on our dorm-room television. I, however, left the room to do something else.

Sorry, but hockey bored me then, and it bores me now – and I live in Minnesota, the so-called “state of hockey.”

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The item above is from a satire site. Sadly, it sounds like something she might actually say.

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Michael Bloomberg took my cigarettes away and he wants to take your soda-pop away. That’s all you need to know.

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Legal marijuana vs. illegal marijuana, sanctuary cities vs. ICE, etc. I blame all of these problems on Nevada.

After all, wasn’t it Nevada that started all this trouble between states and the feds when it legalized prostitution and gambling? I mean, once you have something and I don’t, I’m probably going to want that something.

Unless it’s coronavirus.

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Commercial Hell

What good is running a Web site if you can’t, from time to time, abuse that awesome power by using the site to vent about your pet peeves?

Answer: no good at all.

And so I am going to bitch about TV commercials that are driving me insane. If I have to watch them, then you have to read my complaints.

I cannot stand the chick pictured above, allegedly the “fittest woman on Earth.”  She is so fit that she no longer resembles an actual woman. In fact, were it not for her high-pitched, nasal voice, I would suspect that she is actually a man. And the music in this commercial is weird. Also, what the hell is goli.com?

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GEICO makes funny commercials. Liberty Mutual does not. Liberty Mutual foists aggressively unfunny ads on the public, like the obscenities featuring the young actor pictured below, who garbles his lines and sends viewers into paroxysms of laughter.

Not.

Continuing its relentless assault on all things actually humorous, Liberty Mutual decided that the blooming idiots pictured below are our new Abbott and Costello, or Laurel and Hardy for the 21st century. They are decidedly not. They make me want to vomit.

Last but not least, there is “Randy A.” in a My Pillow commercial. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but he makes my skin crawl when I hear him whine about getting a good night’s sleep “so I can do my job in the morning.” I desperately want to ram several My Pillows up Randy A.’s ass.

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Are we all required to refer to this guy by the nickname, “Mayor Pete”? That’s way too cutesy and familiar and I refuse to do it. He is not my buddy. I suspect everyone calls him that because no one is quite sure how to pronounce his last name.

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I am ranting about TV ads this week because some self-loathing Swedish airline made a commercial trashing Scandinavian culture by proclaiming it doesn’t exist. The culture, that is, not Scandinavia.

I am of Scandinavian descent. Everyone is just jealous because Scandinavia has the hottest chicks. 

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