The razor's edge

I realize there are a lot of important things going on in the world. The shithole president is dismantling our democracy piece by piece. There are shootings virtually every day in the news. Hurricane Florence just wreaked havoc on the Carolinas. The deficit has swelled to an unheard of $898 billion. It's a stressful time, and sometimes it feels like all it's going to take is one more thing to break us.

Well, I hate for you to find out this way, but we as a nation have reached a tipping point—a pivotal moment in time where history will judge our actions on yet one more decision that will effect all of us in one way or another.

Should Alex Trebek keep his newly grown beard, or shave it off? I know. No one said it was going to be easy.

About a week ago, Trebek bounded out onto the Jeopardy stage with a newly grown, white beard. Contrasted against his expertly tailored and extremely pricey suit, it lent him a more rugged, worldly look that was not so much that of a well-known, long-running game show host as the third runner-up in the Kern County regional Ernest Hemingway lookalike competition.

Rugged in the way he could look in the mirror now, and grip the one true thought that he was truly alone. Not wanting to, but knowing that despite the stillness of the dark, he could do nothing to prevent morning from making its appointed rounds. And it was a fine morning.

So anyway, you can go online to the Jeopardy website and cast your vote. I don't feel strongly one way or the other, but I am going to let my opinion be known.

Because if we've learned anything over the last year and a half, it's that very bad things can happen when you don't vote. This I can tell you.

Two for the roses

It's a colorful tradition that's been going on for 126 years. The first day of the new year, people gather in Pasadena, as well as millions more in their living rooms around the country to watch the spectacle, gasp in disbelief and appreciate the artistry of it all.

Of course I'm speaking of Bob Eubanks' and Stephanie Edwards' plastic surgery.

For all 126 years, Bob and Stephanie have been hosting the annual Tournament of the Roses Parade on KTLA in Los Angeles. They look great don't they?

Bob Eubanks was the first host of the Chuck Barris produced Newlywed Game. He was 28-years old when the show debuted in 1966. You do the math. Never mind, I'll do it for you. He's 77-years old.

Of course, that's just chronologically. In parade host/plastic surgeon years, he's still 28.

Stephanie Edwards has been television fixture since I was a kid. And by fixture, I mean an inanimate object that doesn't do much, but looks good sitting there. She began on a morning talk show in L.A., got moved to the predecessor of Good Morning America for awhile, and then became a Rose Parade, um, fixture in 1978.

There were a couple years (2006-2008) where KTLA tied the can to her and brought in a younger model to sit with Eubanks and read cliché-filled copy about the Oklahoma University Marching band, its storied history and the Wells Fargo float celebrating the theme "Let's Make Money." But the apparently the viewing audience put down their Metamucil for a second and noticed. Then they called their grandchildren and had them write letters to KTLA, in their nice handwriting. Anyway, the outcry was so overwhelming that the network brought her back in 2009.

My question is, are we supposed to not notice? When you have a parade where the flowers wilt after a couple days, but the hosts don't after forty years, it's hard to ignore.

Well, God bless 'em. Nice to see the older folks working. Even if they don't look like older folks are supposed to look.

All of this also begs another couple questions.

Why am I watching the Rose Parade? And where the hell did I put my Metamucil?

Wheel Of B-O-R-E-D-O-M

I once told my son I couldn’t imagine a more boring television host than Nick Lachey on The Sing-Off. He took a beat, then said, “Carson Daly.”

He was right of course. But if he said that today, I’d come back with “Pat Sajak.”

A few of you may remember from this post that my mother-in-law, Grandma to the kids, fell at our house, broke her arm and had to have surgery. That was back around October 19th. Since she got out of the hospital she’s been staying with us.

Seems one of the routines we’ve fallen (see what I did there?) into has been following up Jeopardy, which we always watch, with WOF, which we never watched until Grandma was invited to use our couch for a bed for a few weeks. It always reminds me of the old joke that Vanna White is so stupid they have to light the letters so she knows which ones to turn.

But just a few viewings tell you that's the least of this show’s problems.

Let’s start here – apparently the contestants are coached to ar-tic-u-late every word in the answers clearly, distinctly and loudly.

You know, the way people talk in the real world.

Sajak always saunters over to them in his neutral color suit that totally clashes with his spray tan, makes some lame joke in a voice that has no modulation or energy, and then has some excruciatingly awful jokey exchange with the announcer before prizes that the contestants are playing for are announced.

It should replace waterboarding at Gitmo.

Here’s the thing that probably makes it even more unbearable: Grandma is a little hard of hearing, so the volume has to be up. Way up. Hear it from down the block up.

I’m trying to stay social given the circumstances, but I’m finding it too much to take. I wind up doing exactly what I tell my kids not to do: going in my room, closing the door and shutting out the world.

Or at least lowering the volume on it.