Tarzan

I wonder how Tarzan would get by on The Planet of the Apes. On the one hand, the apes all think of humans as savages and Tarzan was kind of a savage. I mean there wouldn't have been the big revelation of "Hey a human can talk!", or at least it wouldn't have had the impact when he's hung up in a net and says "Get paw off Tarzan, damn dirty ape!" On the other hand, the whole movie was about how apes and humans didn't trust one another, and Tarzan wouldn't have had that problem. Although on second thought that would probably just have gotten him killed quicker. He would have walked up to General Urko and pointed at something and said "OONGOWA!" and then got shot.

Talk Shows

In the old days people used to go to freak shows to gawk at dog-faced boys and five-legged cows and fat ladies. I think people liked it because no matter how ugly or poor or unhappy they were, they could always take comfort in the fact that they didn't have an unformed twin growing out of their chest.

Now, freak shows are out of style.

You might that this is because people are generally happier with their lives now than they were 50 or 100 years ago, but this is not true. They're miserable as ever.

You might think its because in this enlightened age, people realize how cruel it is to gawk at other people's physical deformities and ailments. Not true either--at least not the way you may think. I mean, people may consciously realize how cruel it is, but they still gawk: The only difference is that now people make movies and call them "tales of courage" about how "one girl overcame adversity and learned to paint with her toes". They have banquets honoring Christopher Reeve and say how much they admire a man "who won't be defined by his disablity", which is crap because that's the whole reason they're having the banquet.

But the real point is that there still are freak shows. There are still places people can look at other's deformities and perversions and thank God that they're normal. Only now they're called TALK SHOWS and instead of extra arms or legs they have a step-brother for a spouse or they're transvestites in the KKK.

Sure, every so often people go on the shows who are the old-timey kind of freaks. I saw one recently with those twins from Argentina whose entire bodies are covered with thick, full hair. They say their father was the same way, and his father, and his father. The most amazing thing about that, to me, is that for four generations (at least) these guys are finding women to marry them. Not that I think that there's anything wrong with them--in fact after hearing them talk they seemed more normal than most of the talk show guests I've ever seen. But there is something to be said for physical attraction. I think it says something about women in Argentina, though, because here in the U.S. there are people who go their whole lives looking for the right person to marry and dieting and exercising and plastic surgery, and all they do is complain that there are "no good men/women" left out there. It has to be discouraging for them to see this and know that even a dog-faced trapeze artist from Argentina can make a marriage work.

Anyway, the vast majority of talk show guests are

1. 1) teens gone wild, who are then sent to boot camp, and
2. 2) sexual deviants, who are either booed or given paternity tests or both.

I'm surprised they don't put them in display booths.

Talk shows themselves have changed over the years. They started out doing shows on racially-mixed marriages or homosexuals or skinheads. But when those were done to death they had to start putting different spins on the subjects, and you couldn't just have Nazis anymore, you had to have Teenage Nazis or Nazis and their pets. This was easier than thinking up new or original ideas, and it even worked for about two or three years. Unfortunately for us, the trend lasted for 10 or 15 years.

Another popular subject is "real life" things. Like, say there was a movie about a man who went around giving away a million dollars at a time called Bingo Jimmy or something. If it was real poplar you'd hear on all the talk shows "We'll meet a Real Life Bingo Jimmy, Monday on Dinah". They especially like to do this with dramas, like Rain Man. And especially with anything that has a sexual element to it, like Fatal Attraction or that one where Woody Harrelson whored his wife out to Robert Redford for a million dollars. The one really popular feel-good movie they never did was Real Life Forrest Gumps because there was no real life Forrest Gumps; in real life Forrest Gump would have been homeless. And I havent ever seen them bring homeless people on talk shows.

It used to be that the TV People wanted to have a Talk Show for everybody. Black women, black men, white men, Puerto Ricans. Some of them, like Jerry Springer and Oprah, are still around. But the only people getting new talk shows are b washed-up stars with no talent, usually former child stars like Danny Bonaduce, Tempesst Bledsoe, Donny and Marie, etc., and c fat people who can't find any other work, like Carnie Wilson, Roseanne, Rosie O'Donnell, Queen Latifah. So I guess these people either go to jail or get a talk show or, in some cases, both.

The parole board hearing probably goes "...and will you be able to find gainful employment, Mr. Bonaduce?" "Yes, I have a talk show all lined up" Or maybe he doesn't want to tell them that.

<<Note: This is a far cry from what they all say when former stars are actually guests on Talk Shows. They always either cry about how they overcame addiction, or they say "O, I have a LOT going on right now, I'm producing, directing...." Yea-huh.>>

Talk show guests are always looking for that One Perfect Thing to say that no one will be able to disagree with, the One Flawless Argument that will shut everyone else up. You know, someone will stand up and say "Hey, yo, dog, if you'se cared about you'se kids so much then why you trippin' with the babysitter?" Like the person on stage will be dumbstruck and go, "You know, I never thought of it that way before......."

So enough about talk shows. I don't watch them anyway.

England

I don't know what's the big deal about England. Everyone always acts like its such a great country, so civilized, blah blah blah. They live in these little row houses all jammed up together, they have bad teeth and can't say words like "schedule".

And what about the food they eat? Head cheese, kidney pie, blood pudding? Its disgusting. We give that stuff to the dogs. They boil everything. They boil bacon over there. That's why over here you never see an English restaurant and no one says "What do you feel like eating? Italian or English tonight?" We even have Indian restaurants. We eat food cooked by people who are starving to death.

And every time you turn around they're rioting at a soccer game. Over here, say the Braves have a bad year, well then maybe the Falcons go to the Super Bowl; or if the Hawks lose, then maybe the Brave win the pennant. In England, they play soccer and cricket and that's it, and no one cares about cricket because its more like "tag". So in England, everyone is a soccer fan. And if your team loses YOU SUCK! And there's nothing you can do about it.

Cricket is apparently much bigger in India, though. Of course, they starve in India, too because

• all the grain that they could be eating goes to the sacred cows, and
• they don't eat their sacred cows.

I'm just saying.