hittin' it friday style

- Memo to TV network executives: a two-month lapse right in the middle of the season, with no new episodes all that time, is a terrible idea. Really. You’d think I wouldn’t have to spell that out, but apparently someone needs to. Nearly every show, except for the crappy ones that no one wants to see or the plethora of FOX shows that started late due to the baseball playoffs, are taking a two-month hiatus from airing new episodes from about mid-to-late November to the middle or end of January. You can use whatever explanation you want; holiday programming, people having a lot to do during the holidays and less time for TV, blah, blah, blah. Fact is, the humongously stupid people who decide to set things up this way have now created, in effect, two mini-seasons, meaning all the normal beefs you have with a season of a given show are doubled. First and foremost, you’ve forgotten a lot of the details about what’s going on in the storylines because it’s been so long since you watched a new episode. Over the summer, you have about 3-4 months to forget that stuff, and now a break nearly that long in the middle of the season? Idiotic. Second, whatever momentum the show has built over the first half of the season is effectively killed, so you’re starting from scratch again. And thirdly, you have fans of the show confused as to when new episodes will begin and since the new shows begin at a slightly different time (scattered throughout January and even into February), it’s even more confusing. The new “winter break” is starting to ruin the TV watching experience, creating more confusion and antagonizing more viewers than it is actually benefiting anyone.

- For the first time anyone, anywhere can remember, Barry Bonds is apologizing, kinda. Bar-roid, or more likely his agent or publicist, has issued an apology statement that offers a mea culpa to fans, teammates and the Giants organization. Also, Bonds/his mouthpiece apologized to teammate Mark Sweeney, whom Bonds fingered to a federal investigator as his source for the amphetamines that caused Bar-roid’s positive drug test. Now, he claims he brought Sweeney’s name up but didn’t try to push blame on him. So either he’s lying and covering his own arse, or he reflexively threw someone else’s name out there and cast aspersions on an innocent guy with no reason. Oh, and the sincerity is simply oozing from Bonds on this one. How convenient that after Mark McGwire, who is the #1 steroid suspect outside of Bonds, was resoundingly rejected for Hall of Fame induction, that Bonds is trying to repair damage to his rep and to appear contrite about that egregious error he made here. Well, the egregious error in point the finger at Sweeney. The other error, the one where he took a banned substance and tested positive, he can't really undo that one.

- Maybe you hadn’t heard, but the new season of American Karaoke is starting up. Oh, you’ve seen one of the thousands of commercials FOX has run for the show the past week? Can’t get away from them, you say? At some point, isn't America going to get tired of this crap? Set aside the gawd-awful pop music and bad covers of bad songs, no-talent hacks and a show that takes glee in humiliating the losers who clearly have no ability and try anyhow, and answer this question: how the hell can you really get into a show where the judges are three B-list (at best) celebs who are trying to build their own careers on the backs of this show? It’s not even about the people supposedly trying to make it in the music business, it’s about Simon crafting his bitter, surly image, of Paula Abdul being a washed up pop princess and being so perky and smiling in such a demented fashion that she has to be on no less than four different medications at a given time. Oh, and that man-blouse-wearing, teeth bleaching, tan-in-a-bottle wearing metrosexual freak, Ryan Suck-crest, trying to be clever and funny and to get an upgrade from hosting a second-rate New Year’s Eve show every year. See, now I’m getting pissed and I won't even watch a second of this show. Someone needs to get rid of this crap before I set fire to the studios where they tape the show and use all of the notes, production material and paperwork from the show as fuel for the fire.

- Congress is resisting the president’s new plan for Iraq, and I for one couldn’t be more pleased. Normally Congress resists things like common sense, logic, progress, fiscal responsibility, integrity and honor, but for once they have it right. Well done, Congress, well done. Even some Republicans voiced opposition when W. lackey, Secretary of State and aspiring NFL commissioner (sorry, Condi, that job got filled) Condoleeza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, 21 members of the committee voiced dissent, with only two exceptions among the members. The best quote for the day comes from my nomination for Senator of the Week, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who accurately labeled the new plan as “a dangerous foreign policy blunder,” and vowed to oppose Bush should he try to implement it. You know a plan is bad when it doesn’t even make it past the first Senate committee before it gets torn to shreds. W. is looking worse by the day, and after the way he handled the first portion of the Iraq war, that didn’t seem possible. Worst quote of the day came courtesy of Rice, who used the world’s most convoluted, nonsensical logic to explain that adding 22,000 troops, as our Idiot in Chief proposes, is not an escalation of the conflict. Increasing troops isn't an escalation? Escalation means a rise or increase, no? I suppose it is comforting to know that W.’s sycophantic henchmen (and henchwomen) will mimic and imitate him to the bitter end, even when doing so requires double talk, stupidity and blatantly ignoring the facts in a futile attempt to ignore a massive failure.