Category: default || By jt3y

Letters! We get letters! We get stacks and stacks of letters!

Somewhere, I wish I could find an original copy of Perry Como's letters theme, which apparently is on an obscure RCA Victor LP. And despite the fact that I can't stand when webpages force me to listen to music or an advertisement, I'd love for that theme to start playing whenever we get letters! We get letters! We get stacks and stacks of ...

Never mind.

An anonymous reader from the South Hills of Picksberg writes regarding the K-Y Jelly commercials running on network TV:

And I thought I was the only one who noticed.

Actually, I think I saw mine later, and it may have been during the Peter Jennings tribute on Nightline, which makes it worse.

There have been some K-Y spots before, and let's not forget "Trojan Man," who annoyed me for years on end, not just on TV, but on radio as well.

One of my frustrating experiences is trying to watch "Star Trek: The Next Generation" --- a very intelligent and literate program --- on Spike TV, where every spot break is full of GIRLS GONE WILD, VOLUME 213!, or SNOOP DOGGY DOGG HANGS WITH DA PLAYAS!, or whatever they can sell to all the Beavis and Buttheads who apparently comprise their usual audience.

Uh-huh-huh-huh. He said "spike."

I'm still not sure who the target audience is for Spike TV ... you've got your "Star Trek," but you've also got your WWE rasslin', "Ultimate Fight Night," "CSI" and "Real TV," right?

So, Spike TV is aimed at introspective science-fiction fans who like watching autopsies and people pound the ever-loving krep out of one another. That makes sense. Lots of those around. Like mullet-wearing NASCAR fans who live in Fox Chapel.

I wasn't aware that K-Y had advertised on TV before, but some how I'm not surprised that they had spots during the Peter Jennings tribute. In fact, I look forward to seeing edible panties and Hustler being pitched during "World News Tonight" any minute now.

Speaking of TV tastefulness: I made the mistake of watching part of "CSI: Miami" again. I still don't understand what people see in this show. The episode I caught featured an investigation into a judge who was fooling around with a woman who wasn't his wife. At one point, the investigators opened a cabinet to reveal a row of brightly-colored ... um ... artificial male genitalia.

We've come a long way from when "Leave it to Beaver" couldn't show a toilet in the Cleavers' bathroom, or when Rob and Laurie Petrie had to have one foot on the floor at all times.

On a somewhat related subject, I was filling up the sleek, gray Mercury with gas at the Marathon station on West Fifth Avenue the other day as workers installed a new sign on the dirty book store --- excuse me, the newsstand --- across the street.

That store's been there as long as I can remember, but it's somewhat encouraging to see that in this age of rising fuel prices and other inflationary pressure, after all of these years, "adult movies" are still only 25 cents.

Another anonymous reader, this one from the Irwin area, writes in regard to Monday's Almanac on contemporary music in church:

Amen, brother. Signed, a Lutheran choir member who once was a Catholic lector.

See? This should be a warning to the Catholic Church. They're chasing away their customers to the competition! I can hear Tom Lehrer now: "I believe that if they really want to sell the product ..."

Come to think of it, that's from "The Vatican Rag," which is a parody of using popular music in Catholic liturgy ... from 1965, about 20 years before such practices became commonplace. Lehrer was ahead of his time once again. And now that I think about it some more, I'd rather hear "The Vatican Rag" in church than about 99 percent of the contemporary music churches use.

Finally, comes this letter from Michael in New York City, who writes:

I'm not sure whether this is a valid e-mail address (I love your humor, but I can't discern when you are serious), so I am sending this as a test. I am from McKeesport, but I now am relegated to slumming it in New York City. I was looking into the history of the Mon Valley steel industry when I found your blog. (A McKeesport Blog !!??) I have a few observations if you are interested. Please e-mail me back before I make a complete fool of myself by writing a longer letter to an invalid e-mail address.

Poor Mike, reduced to walking the streets of Manhattan, where I have it on good authority that you can't get a decent chipped ham sandwich or a carton of Turner's iced tea. (Although they do have a much wider selection of dirty books.)

Why is he so surprised that there's a website about Our Fair City? It's not like it's a blog about, say, Glassport. (Kidding! But anything we can do to perpetuate the traditional Glassport-McKeesport rivalry is OK in our book.) Or Caketown.

But Tube City Online is more than just the Almanac. Not much more, admittedly. For instance, I'm only about four years behind on a webpage about the Mon Valley steel industry. That's coming any day now. Just you wait.

Michael is apparently questioning our location here on the Dementia server. We like the name, and we're grateful to have the webspace, generously donated by a globetrotting man-about-Trafford.

Besides, doesn't this entire site seem a bit ... well, demented?

...

To Do Today: It's the last day of International Village, and there will be fireworks after sundown. Disappointingly, WEDO (810) doesn't seem to be broadcasting from the Village this year, and their website is down as well. So you'll just have to go in person.

Make sure to pick up a copy of the program, and notice that nearly every page seems to include an ad for a retirement community (talk about targeting your demographic!). But the crowds have seemed as healthy as ever, with a lot of young people milling around, and that's good news.