Orson, come in

Is there a reason why doing the right thing, eating the right food, or drinking the right beverage is inherently less cool, less pleasant or less exciting than a choice that's less good for you?

I love lemon meringue pie, diabetes and all, and knowing that I really shouldn't have it, I enjoy it that much more. In my world, dessert is its own food group and for those at home still working with the 'USDA Pyramid', think of dessert as the Great Cheops. I eat a lot of vegetables (not a big fan of okra or Brussels sprouts), but cannot ever pretend to have exclaimed, 'oh boy, broccoli!'

There's cod liver oil and there's Zinfandel. There's cream of wheat and french onion soup. How much extra engineering would it have taken to make the stuff that's good for us taste more like the stuff that's not so good for us?

Ditto for behaviors.
The happiness at seeing a twenty dollar bill at your feet, picking it up and putting it in your wallet should NOT be greater than seeing it, picking it up and having a frazzled person run towards you to thank you for finding the money they lost, intended for the rent, for heating oil, for food (lemon meringue pie, perhaps?). I know the reward for doing a good deed should be the knowledge you have done a good deed. How come it can't feel more like winning the lottery?

I saw an advert the other night for Ken Burns' "The War", his documentary on World War II, airing on PBS stations Wednesdays at 9 P. M and concluded 'I really should watch that. What do I watch on Wednesdays now?'
It took me a moment to wrap my head around that one, which should make TV programmers happy that I find their choices so memorable. Turns out, I watch 'Private Practice'. I really like that show-certainly doesn't have any of the intellectual fiber of an offering on PBS (and doesn't pretend to), more like empty calories, and yet....I already know what I'll be watching Wednesday night.
Hello, Kate Walsh, Drew Carey, we hardly knew ye.

This morning, riding the exercise bike like one of those loonies in greasepaint on the outer ring at the circus, I had forgotten my mp3, so I had to enjoy the big screens suspended overhead without sound but with the captioning popping up in the middle of image.

Infomercials pain me, because most of them now 'star' people I sort of know from 'real' TV, back when they had careers. I don't just mean Valerie Bertinelli for that weight-loss program, though I guess she did lose about 220 pounds when she and Eddie Van Halen went their separate ways.
I'm talking about people like that guy from ChIPS who sells real estate where ever it is that he sells it and the original Bionic Woman who now hawks mattresses of some kind. I don't really lock on to the product because I'm tripping over my memories of these people as 'real stars' earlier in their lives.

If someone had told Lindsey Wagner she'd be selling adjustable mattresses to make the condo payment, would she have believed such a thing could happen? How often do I have to see Glen Campbell, who looks just awful by the way (and makes me feel a lot better for my 55 years on earth) , selling some Time-Life music collection before I pay any attention to what is in the collection.

This morning, making like Lance Armstrong (without Sheryl Crow or whichever Olsen twin he's supposedly seeing), squinting up at the big screen, I'm watching a woman pitch what looks like a variant of the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course back from when I was a wee slip of a lad. She looked sort of familiar and seemed to be very earnest about whatever this better reading system is all about.
And then I flashed on her: Pam Dawber! Nanu, Nanu, Mindy!

Thirty plus years on, Mork has completed rehab from the years he shovelled the mountain peaks of Peru up his nose and you're on one of those TV stations just above the police calls hawking a reading system for how much money?
Orson, is this fair? Come in....
-bill kenny