By Scott Buckner

My evening started off with ABC’s World News showing President Bush dancing and banging a drum onstage with a highly colorful African drum troupe. What followed for me was the exact same thought a bazillion other people worldwide with access to television sets had at the exact same moment:
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Back in the day, the most embarrassing thing an American president would be caught doing in public was trying on a silly hat. President Reagan was good for this. How in the world could the president and his advisers – and the First Lady – not see this disaster coming? Perhaps President Bush was observing the death of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin by paying homage to Yeltsin’s dance chops.
At least Yeltsin had the decency to be drunk at the time.

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Posted on April 26, 2007

By Scott Buckner

When it comes to boxing, I can take it or leave it. Not because it’s violent and has an underbelly with all sorts of unsavory characters, but because for me, it’s not as exciting as, say, Ultimate Fighting. But last night’s The Best Damn Sports Show Period turned into the best damn boxing show period with a 10-round women’s bout between Holly Holm and the extremely scary-looking Ann Marie Saccurato.
Before last night, the only exposure I’d had to women’s boxing was seeing Muhammad Ali’s professional-boxer daughter Laila once and thinking she was pretty damn sharp. I came in halfway through the Holm-Saccurato bout, and these two were brutal – but not in that sort of aimless, drunken brawling way you normally see during boxing exhibitions featuring washed-up child stars. No, these two knew how to administer a professional Grade A ass-kicking, and the only thing missing was the slaughterhouse freezer with sides of beef hanging from huge hooks and Saccurato glaring at the camera and snarling, “I predict . . . pain.”

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Posted on April 21, 2007

I’ll buy one today, just in case I look like that.
What it Is: An ab workout machine and instructional DVD, guidebook, Web guide, etc.
Cost: The spot claims a full, free trial, complete with free shipping.
Quote: “Commit to becoming a ‘doer!”

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Posted on April 20, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I’ve long believed that cats were the most vile creatures on the planet. Not any more, thanks to an early Wednesday-morning viewing of Rogue Nature: Chimp on The Discovery Channel. Sure, chimpanzees are outrageously smart and can be trained to do just about anything – act, smoke cigarettes, maybe even win a national election (or two) – and, unlike cats, they’ll come when you call. But there’s one pretty significant drawback to our closest relative in the evolutionary chain: They’ll chew off your face and hands, and rip off your balls too.

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Posted on April 12, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I’ve always wondered what transpires in the moments before certain people end up winning a Darwin Award, the official “salute to the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.”
After watching an early Tuesday morning episode of Stunt Junkies: Go Big Or Go Home, I now know.

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Posted on April 11, 2007

By Scott Buckner

When you have satellite TV, you get all sorts of programming surprises popping up regularly. These are mostly in the form of channels you’ve never noticed before, and new blocks of free preview channels. Seriously, I have something like 700 channels (with probably half devoted to things I never bother with, like sports, Jesus, and home shopping), so it’s impossible to keep track of all the comings and goings.
Tonight, I noticed a block of 17 new channels. Most are HBO derivatives, but one is Cartoon Network’s “Boomerang” channel. For someone like me, this is the TV equivalent of Christmas morning because I remember when Cartoon Network became not-your-dad’s-Cartoon-Network by dumping its cable TV lineup of 1950s/1960s-era toons to shift to the whole Transformers and Ren & Stimpy-sorta school. This was great if you smoked a lot of dope, but overall it was a shame because a lot genius disappeared – particularly that of legendary voice Daws Butler in the toons generated by Walter Lantz Studio before the mid-1960s. Since they were originally movie-theater shorts, the Lantz stuff had plenty of adult humor.

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Posted on April 10, 2007

Real-estate secrets around the pool. Yeah, just one pool.
What It Is: A book-and-CD set about making money in real estate “without a lot of hard work or financial risk.”
Cost: $39.95.
Quote: “Now is the time to discover an easier and more financially secure way of life . . . an opportunity for true financial freedom for the rest of your life, working only a few hours a month. And friends, that’s incredible!”

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Posted on April 9, 2007

By Scott Buckner

While it’s not busy covering Gene Simmons’ facelift (which apparently has had some dire consequences, judging from the previews for this Sunday’s installment of Family Jewels), A&E joins the new cable season with Sons of Hollywood. This program covers the daily lives of housemates Sean Stewart (son of singer Rod), Randy Spelling (son of TV producer Aaron), and David Weintraub (son of, uh, nobody famous).
Summarizing Wednesday’s episode, which featured Sean Stewart, was easy – hence why this column will be the shortest I’ll probably ever do. “Hi. I’m Sean Stewart. I have no job to speak of and I don’t even look like my dad or anything. But I have plenty of tattoos and long hair and friends who look worse than me in the morning after a night of drinking. Oh yeah, I have a boatload of money; wanna fuck me?”

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Posted on April 5, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Scott Buckner, our regular writer of this feature, hasn’t watched TV (at least not any worth mentioning) in about a week. But he’ll watch again soon.
In the meantime, I’d like to comment on something I saw last night – an episode of M*A*S*H that perfectly illustrates my distaste of what happened to this most beloved series after it lost a good chunk of its original cast.

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Posted on April 3, 2007