The Gospel of Paul

Sometimes, fate drops in our laps a lesson about the facts of life of veritably “Thickean”:http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/televisiontvthemelyrics-80s90s/thefactsoflife.htm proportions. Yesterday brought us news of the bad, by which I mean NBC’s bold new fall “lineup”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/arts/television/17nbc.html. And what do these budding young Sammy Glicks think constitutes entertainment? The return of trollish fraud Donald Trump, the expansion of _Biggest Loser_ to 90 minutes (it may not be ironic, but it’s close), and the addition of a new show featuring “Uri Geller”:http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-04-26.html and Criss Angel on the lookout for the world’s next great paranormalist. (We at Jewdar predict a great sucking sound will be heard when the show airs. That will be the sound of the show sucking).

Just when we’re ready to swear off TV and join the ranks of the kind of losers who listen to “NPR”:http://shop.npr.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10051&catalogId=10051&top=Y&categoryId=10301, along comes that “good” that the maestro wrote about, that reminds us that sometimes, the world does seem to live up to our dreams. We speak, of course, of the release on DVD of the “_Paul Lynde Halloween Special_”:http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=7667(and, quite frankly, you had us at “Paul Lynde”:http://home.columbus.rr.com/paullynde/). In a time where network programmers think that regular people engaging in humiliating spectacle constitutes entertainment, it’s nice to be reminded of a time when they understood that _real_ entertainment consists of celebrities engaging in humiliating spectacle. And talk about spectacle! “Flo-He”:http://www.flohome.com/flofaq.html, KISS (apparently, the Kiss Army didn’t ask, or tell), and “Billy Barty,”:http://www.billybarty.com/ (and if you don’t know who that is, we’re not sure we want to know who you are). This is what people want! Are you listening, Bens Silverman of the world?