Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Here comes summer!

Being a BBQ, lay around the pool reading Paul Rudnick compilations kind of guy, I love the summer. It’s my favorite time of the year.

Summer marks the return of warm weather and COVERT AFFAIRS. (How does Piper run in heels and still shoot a gun?)  Beaches, baseball, and crappy new reality shows that usually involve idiots doing ridiculous stunts. I think WIPE OUT is proof of Darwinism.

I get to see all my favorite comic book heroes come to life on the big screen. Hey, why doesn’t somebody do a reboot of SPIDERMAN where you don’t leave the theater incredibly depressed? Just a thought.

Summer is the time when you can kick back and mull over the existential questions of the universe -- like how come Adam Sandler keeps starring in movies and what's the big deal about Pinkberry?

The summer of course means – The NBA. After 82 exhibition games to eliminate four teams and Donald Sterling, the playoffs began in the spring, and now we’re finally getting down to the nitty gritty. Don’t you find it odd that the NBA Finals are played in 90 degree weather and the baseball World Series is played in 35 degree conditions?

For TV writers, the day after Memorial Day means going back to work. My heartiest congratulations to all the writers who got jobs on staff this year. Staffing season is Hollywood’s answer to musical chairs on speed.

Meanwhile, there are concerts, events, and movie sequels at night so I never have to watch UNDER THE DOME. Watermelons are cheap. Ice cream tastes better. The Turtles are going on tour. Jon Stewart isn’t taking this summer off. It’s light in Alaska till September. Thongs. The Tony Awards (with Hugh Jackman this year!). Vacation packages to Phoenix are super cheap. Fireworks.  Home fireworks accidents.  EW releases its Holiday Preview issue.  And finally, the All-Star Game without Tim McCarver for once!

Have a great summer. Most of you have had a brutal winter. You deserve the sunshine and warmth. Hopefully Global Warming will subside and a month from now we’re not all saying, “Jesus! When is this summer going to end?”

9 comments :

Anonymous said...

After 8 months of ice storms, sub-zero temperatures and lake effect snow storms measured by the foot.....I am luxuriating today in the beautiful tingle of the sunburn I acquired yesterday.

Chris said...

Friday question: do you think the increasing number of original tv shows could be the new radio?

Every song on YouTube has hundreds of comments saying:

"The Americans brought me here"

"Entourage brought me here"

"Thumbs up if you're here because of Mad Men."

RockGolf said...

@Chris: To an even bigger extent, commercials are the new radio. The app Shazam can tell what songs will eventually be hits months before they make the top ten. It can identify songs by "audio fingerprinting" and ads are often where songs now get their first exposure.

Radio stations these days add perhaps 2 songs per week to the playlist and keep them on for six months. Can you imagine a TV station where there's only 6 minutes of original content per week?

blinky said...

The deal with Pinkberry is that the experience exceeds the product. You have your very own yogurt concierge to guide you through the adventure of choosing your flavor and then administering the exact perfect toppings. Your guide lovingly places a teaspoon of toasted almonds next to a teaspoonful of mango bits and then asks you what other topping your please you. An $8 cup of yogurt has made you feel as special as Derek Jeter at Donald Trumps private island.

Victor Velasco said...

Hi Ken,

Thanks for writing about my favorite time of year; it's just before fall, and it's called summer.

Sincerely,
Tim Mc Carver

SharoneRosen said...

and High Holy Days are late this year, which means the hottest part of the summer should be over before Yom Kippur... Oh Lord we pray!

(did you ever notice Jewish holidays are early or late, but never on time?)

Nixon said...

I agree with you about Wipeout. But I thought Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (Takeshi's Castle), the show they've attempted to copy, was outstanding! I think that Japanese game shows are just too weird to be recreated in our country. But it's that weirdness that makes them such great shows to make fun of. And that's what MXC was so good at. The 2 or 3 guys who re-did the voices into English were really funny and the reason MXC was a show you couldn't help but laugh out loud at. I wish those guys would find more Japanese game shows and put together a fresh new batch.

Cory said...

I will, respectfully, of course, disagree with you on Spider-Man. The character has ALWAYS been one of tragedy and teenage angst. How many times has he quit because the cost of being Spider-Man was too high? How many issues ended with Peter saying, "And I can't enjoy this moment, because I carry the burden of being...Spider-Man!"

Spider-Man is powered by guilt, and Stan Lee poured ALL of the melodrama of romance comics into the book, even hiring away DC's top romance artist (John Romita) to hammer it home.

No one wants a happy Spidey, a skinny Norm or an unembarrassed Fraiser.

Dan Ball said...

I feel like we didn't get a spring this year. It went from being extremely cold to being extremely hot. To make matters worse, I work at an art center that's in a century-old former meat-packing factory and we had thieves steal $20K of copper wiring from our A/C system. The humidity's up already here in KY and it's not even June, and it's bordering on 90. I now consider shorts to be business casual.

After seeing X-Men, it's finally got me wanting to read comic books. Sure, I've seen all the movies and even saw a couple in the theater, but never really read the comics. SUPERMAN '78 is probably my favorite movie of all time, but I've read very few Superman comics. There always seemed to be something very wrong about that, I felt. Now, I'm trying to change it.