Oddly Enough Blog

Seinfeld, a show about bupkis…

Blog Guy, you have the most authoritative entertainment news anywhere, so I’m coming to you first about something I heard.

There’s a rumor that my all-time favorite sitcom, “Seinfeld,” is coming back to TV next season. Any chance it’s true?

Basically, yes. They’re shooting it now, with Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus reprising their original roles.

That’s GREAT! I can’t wait to see what they…. Hey, wait a minute. What about Kramer?

Well, that’s the new twist. Kramer is out. Instead of New York City, the other three live in Israel, and their wacky neighbor across the hall is President Shimon Peres. I’m telling you, the stuff those guys get up to…

I have to say, Blog Guy, that sounds to me like a VERY different show.

Okay, so maybe it’s a strange hobby…

Blog Guy, I hate to bother you, but I need your help with something.

Sure, that’s what I’m here for.

See, I maintain an extensive world map with color-coded pins showing everywhere Paris Hilton has been in the last 10 years, you know, day by day.

Really? Then I don’t think I can give you the kind of help it sounds like you need.

So anyway, due to some unfortunate binge drinking-related blackouts, I seem to be missing a few key dates. For instance, August 8, 2004.

Let’s have a look in my photo archive. Bingo! Here she is, driving a pickup truck in Los Angeles.

Keeping away from the Kardashians

Blog Guy, I’m a fed-up, angry American. Enough is enough!

What can we do to protect our country from those tawdry, horrid people? I see them everywhere now. I think you know who I’m talking about.

You must mean the Kardashians?

Of course! They’re everywhere! Now the mother has written her “memoirs,” and that daughter that got married like a week ago has already filed for divorce. How many of them are there, anyway?

Wikipedia says there are 652, but I agree it seems like a lot more. Kardashians breed rapidly and have a short gestation period.

You can buy software to filter them out of your Internet feed, but in a few years, when we have U.S. President Kardashian, that will become problematic.

The folks you love to hate?

Blog Guy, you haven’t written about any new signs of that onrushing Apocalypse recently. Is it safe to come out of the panic room?

No, you just stay put in there. An actual opinion poll informs us that Casey Anthony is now “the most hated person in America.”

She’s that Florida woman who was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter?

Yep, it turns out, 94 percent of the Americans who have heard of her dislike her. Oh, and 57 percent consider her “creepy.”

Ah, I get it. So you think it’s a sign of the Apocalypse that anybody scored so high?

No, the sign of the Apocalypse is that the public seems alarmingly incapable of separating fantasy from fact.

Oh, the humanity!

Blog Guy, can you settle a bet I have with my investment manager’s astrologer?

Wait. Doesn’t it bother you that your investment manager HAS an astrologer?

Nah, it beats the hell out of his damned Magic 8-Ball. “Should I get out of the stock market?” “Ask again later…” Sheesh.

Anyway, he says the Pope gets a summer vacation, but I think the Pope works all the time.

You’re both right. The Pope does spend time at a fairly nice summer residence, at Castelgandolfo, Italy.

Just “fairly nice?” What’s wrong with it?

That’s why they call it Killing time…

What’s up, Blog Guy? You look annoyed.

Yeah, I hate being suckered. I see the programming chief for AMC now says the murder that was the central crime in his network’s Emmy-nominated series, “The Killing,” will be wrapped up in the SECOND season.

Wait. Didn’t that show just finish its first season? You mean they didn’t solve the crime?

Nope. Oh, they toyed with us and invited us to their Website to discuss who would be revealed, but then they hit us in the face with a big cream pie in the last two minutes of the season closer.

Even the AMC exec admits his network “should have managed expectations better.”

Much as I love watching morose and sullen characters set against a backdrop of rainy, rainy, rainy, rainy Seattle, I won’t be back next season.

Rewriting Jane, an Austen-tatious move

Blog Guy, I read that a handwritten draft of a Jane Austen book that was never published just sold for $1.6 million at auction. The story said it was an unfinished work. She’s my very favorite author!

Yeah, I know all about that. I was the anonymous telephone bidder who bought the draft. I’m eating barbecue ribs and reading her manuscript right now. It’s not bad.

Be careful with that! What are you going to do with it?

Well, I’ve never read any of her stuff, but I did like “The Six Million Dollar Man” when it was on TV.

Are you stupid? That was Steve Austin. This is JANE AUSTEN.

Oh. Crap. Anyway, I’ve been doing some research, and I figure I can just finish writing her book myself, and then get $400 million or whatever.

I have a beef with your roast…

Sometimes I wish I had just arrived in America from Estonia or Honduras or someplace, which would at least give me a better excuse for not understanding the things that go on here.

For instance. Comedy Central has just announced that the subject of their next TV roast is Charlie Sheen.

I am not making this up.

Presumably Sheen was a last-minute choice after Anthony Weiner, Bernie Madoff and Osama bin Laden were unavailable. But who on earth would watch something like this?

It’s probably just my own ignorance, but I always got the impression that these roasts were supposed to be good-natured ribbing of lovable people.

I can’t begin to imagine what kind of jokes you make about somebody who actually said, “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

So you’re ALL named Jaydon?

Sometimes I despair for us all. And it turns out those are actually my giddy moments.

An item in the “New York Times” informs us that among the names that have gained the most in popularity in America over the last six years are Jayden, Landon, Addison, Khloe and several others.

What they all have in common is that I don’t know a single person with those names. Not one.

Perhaps I’m just hanging with the wrong people. That happens.

Another explanation is that these folks are from a parallel universe, where instead of naming children after a beloved relative or great statesman or writer, names come from fields I know nothing about, such as reality television or home dentistry.

O brothel, where art thou?

This is kind of a delicate subject, but we’re all adults here, so we’re cool.

The caption on these photos says these are prostitutes protesting against a police crackdown on brothels.

We are told the prostitutes and their pimps want to abolish anti-prostitution laws, which they say threaten their livelihood.

Let’s just put a pin in that aspect of it, the tragedy that pimps might have problems with their livelihood. Let’s move on to my main point here, which is that it looks to me like these women have bigger problems than that with earning a living.

The thing is, I’ve never been to a brothel. Go ahead and laugh if you want. But if I ever DID go to one and THIS was the scene that greeted me, I think I’d forget all thoughts of what brought me there in the first place.

I mean, how desperate does a guy have to be to say, “Oh, I’ll take the one in the whiteface with the grotesque lips. Yeah, that one that looks just like Mr. Bill!”