Amatuer Hour – Live!

“Hey guys, turn that off a second and come over here,” Charley said. “You’re not going to believe what’s in today’s paper.”

Charley was standing out on the sidewalk with his back to the firehouse garage bay. Inside, the guys tried to peel themselves away from the television set, though their efforts were mostly half-assed and incomplete. A few of them shifted themselves from a seated position into a crouch, or twisted their torsos to face in Charley’s general direction while their heads remained fixed on the game. None of them, however, were able to muster the willpower to miss this key third down play.

“Seriously, fellas, you need to come take a look at this,” Charley said.

But Charley hadn’t moved either. The guys suggested that if he wanted them to look at something that bad, he could just as easily come in there where they were, but Charley didn’t hear them. He was still rooted there on the sidewalk, his head and shoulders cocked toward the garage bay while his eyes stayed glued on the newspaper, mirroring the half-in, half-out postures of the guys inside.

A breeze skimmed the pages’ corners. The guys’ voices and the game’s announcers livened the normally quiet street their fire station stood on. During lulls in the action, Charley could hear a lawnmower buzzing somewhere. He scanned over the headline story again, still unsure of how something like this could have happened. Inside, pairs of hands clapped sporadically. To Charley they sounded like popcorn popping. It was halftime now, so the guys could finally get up and see what was holding Charley’s interest so keenly.

“Whatcha got Cap?” Wesley asked as he squeezed Charley’s shoulder.

Continue reading…

Let’s talk about something fresh and relevant: network television.

Let’s also do something that nobody on blogs ever does, let’s write an article that ranks things on an all-time basis. Let’s rank the three major American television networks on an all-time basis, their whole body of work, top to bottom – has anyone ever done that? (I just looked. Doesn’t seem like it, so we’re good to proceed.) Let’s consider each network’s full catalog, from day one until the present, from early morning cartoons to daytime soaps and game shows to news programming to prime time comedies and dramas to late night shows, let’s look at all of it and determine who’s been the best network from start to finish since network TV is soon to be dead. Let’s use “let’s” at the beginning of every sentence, too.

Continue Reading…