Every night, my wife and I watch what she refers to as way too much TV. I'm home first, so if I'm downstairs, the first thing on is usually
Seinfeld, which is still a classic show despite the fact that the earlier seasons featured some really AWFUL fashion. Not that I'm a fashion guy - I could care less. Give me a T-shirt and a pair of loose fitting pants, and life is good, but I get all of these memories of the early nineties watching that show, and I just think back to how bad the late eighties through the early nineties (until grunge hit big) really were - even if Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld were one of the greatest duos in comedy ever. Personally, I found some of Michael Richards to be amusing, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was a good fit, it's not like they ran the show the way that Jerry and Jason did. Call it the show of the time, and the TV stations do since it lives on in syndication forever and ever and ever.
This is a period that I often refer to as the dead era of American pop culture. For my last years of high school and the time afterward when I was in the Air Force in Europe, I missed a lot of popular shows like
Quantum Leap and
the Wonder Years. I've seen the latter, but never the former, and for some reason, the stations don't syndicate Fred Savage the way that they do other shows that have been on for WAY too long.
Somehow, that period of time still seems to leave a lot of things in our lives in 2011. Most of them aren't as good as the original
Die Hard, which was truly a classic movie of our lives, or even the grand daddy baseball movie of them all (
Bull Durham) and its twin (
Field of Dreams), but at least we're not constantly bombarded with
Steel Magnolias, Sister Act or
Ghost. Sure, we get
Roadhouse, but that's different since who doesn't want to watch Patrick Swayze kicking ass (dancing, not so much, but beating the crap out of thugs - oh, hell yeah).
From the completely opposite end of the spectrum,
The Cosby Show is even better in reruns than it was when it first came out. That's the thing about great reruns... you can watch them over and over and over from the start and just flow with it. I've gone through periods of time in the last 15 years where I saw every episode of
The Simpsons, Home Improvement,
Everybody Loves Raymond, and
Scrubs. Reruns seem to work better as comedic half hour shows. Most of these shows weren't hits FOR ME right away in prime time, or at least I wasn't watching them in prime time slots. That's the joy of reruns... you can get addicted to something and watch it over and over again every night of the week. Good shows survive and we get to see them and enjoy them for all times sake.
In the eighties, there was
Different Strokes, Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, and classic fare like
Gilligan's Island, What's Happening, Leave it to Beaver, and
The Brady Bunch. They all served a purpose in making the time go by and connecting us to different times throughout history. Besides, who can forget Rerun asking, "Which Doobie do you be?" However, now it's a world different. Now, we're stuck with hours and hours a day of Two and a Half Men because television has been reduced to a world of crappy reality TV that doesn't play well in syndication. Things aren't going to get better, so we just get more crap like TMZ or multiple episodes of bad comedies (to include the last 12 years of
the Simpsons, which can be funny, but mostly is just a special guest or a "Treehouse of Horror" episode). Thus, I get
Two and a Half Men, and every time it comes on, I can't help but think the same thing...
I HATE CHARLIE SHEEN.
He's just a piece of crap. Let's be honest. Somewhere in all of the repeated life problems and porn star obsession, he makes the same mistake over and over, and with it, he just inspires serious amounts of loathing and hatred. It's gotten to the point where I can't even watch Major League because he's in it, and that's a shame because some of the other actors make the movie as enjoyable as it is.
For example, Dennis Haysbert is a great actor. Whether it's as Pedro Cerrano or as President Palmer or even the All State guy, he's just charismatic and entertaining. Even middle aged dead wood like Corbin Bernson work well. Tom Berenger plays a good lead role, which works well as he always plays solid in stuff like
Betrayed and
Born on the Fourth of July. I've never been a Rene Russo fan, but she's ok. Wesley Snipes may be a tax cheat, but he's not keeping me from watching that movie. Hell, if he gets annoying, I can imagine Ice-T saying that he wants to kick the tar out of him so badly that his "dick is getting hard." If you haven't seen that, you really need to re-watch that other classic early nineties movie
New Jack City.
And throughout it all, there's Bob Uecker... how can you go wrong with Bob Uecker?
But all the same, there's Charlie Sheen, and I hate Charlie Sheen. I really do. I wish he would just vanish and take his stupid show with Duckie and vanish into the Bermuda Triangle, I really do.
And I haven't even started to get into how much they ruined the little kid from the Rookie, which may be the ultimate crime in all of that show's many transgressions against humanity.
Charlie Sheen... I hate you. Phillies fans should hate you. Your nickname became the name of Mitch Williams who imploded in 1993. Defense attorneys hate you.
Only prostitutes, high class drug dealers, and porn stars like you.
That's not good company.
Just take your sorry ass and leave.
Yeah... Charlie... I'm hating on you.
And so I sit here and wonder why both of my favorite teams have such cruddy managers. Tony Larussa has the Cardinals 1-2 with not much life in them against the Padres (more injuries and Albert Pujols batting .154 with no home runs - at least he doesn't have his fingers on the batting order pen, but who knows... this is a guy who used to bat his pitchers eighth). But yeah... these are some lame and cruddy dinosaurs of managers who need to go. And when I say cruddy, I mean, I want the Ancient Aliens to come back and abduct them - if for nothing better than to get more likable new managers or so Giorgio Tsoukalos and his hair can have something to say about being right about the Ancient (and modern) Aliens truly existing. Well, that and so that they can see if there has been any change in their legendary cruddiness (because these are - "legendary CRUDDY times"). But yes... management... it all comes down to management, and what makes a good manager? What makes a bad manager? John McGraw was a talented, but angry manager who managed to win 10 pennants and 3 World Series champions with the Orioles and New York Giants in the early part of the century. For a career, he won 2763 games over 33 years and he played for a good deal of that time too, getting just over 1300 hits in limited appearances due to being a player manager. He was ejected 13 times in 1905 and 131 for his career - the most until Bobby Cox came along. That's saying something. He campaigned silently for African American integration, compiling a list of players he would have recruited if times were different. While he did nothing actively, he still knew the system was wrong, and if for nothing else other than knowing the difference between wrong and right, that says something. 
But alas, today we need focus on the other McGraw - Moffet, my mom's cousin (third from the left) and the current Women's Basketball coach at Notre Dame who just kicked Connecticut's butts last night. After taking out Tennessee last week for her first win ever, Notre Dame took out Connecticut for their 2nd loss in 3 years. That's it. Prior to this, the Huskies were 3-0 against Notre Dame this season - but not when it counted, and with this, Notre Dame gets a trip to the finals against the other final 4 underdog - Texas A+M. We wish her the best and hope that she brings herself - and the extended family - a second national title and makes Touchdown Jesus smile a little, too. Girls can play... and sometimes, they can step up and kick some serious ass.
