TV's Summer Season is Cooking -- Plus There Are A Couple of Really Funny New Shows

Where does all of the time go?  It’s hard to believe that we’re already half-way through 2010 and in a matter of days it will be July 4th and before you know it – Jerry Lewis is going to be hosting another telethon – is this year is going fast or what??!!!  Before you know it – we’re all going to be bitching about the cold temperatures and how we’re being pounded by cold fronts and snow storms.

Well. It’s been awhile since I have written anything of interest on this blog – and I wouldn’t want to blow that winning streak – so, I might as well talk about something I know nothing about – but love to talk about any way – television.

The Summer TV season has arrived and it’s time that we all took a break away from all of the news on the mess in the Gulf and escape with some mindless television entertainment.  If you’re a foodie – the people who gave you the Food Network have blessed us with another channel – “The Cooking Channel”…a channel filled with a lot of old Food Network programming like “Emeril Live” and some new food shows from their Food Network operations in Canada.  The people who own these two networks are positioning the Cooking Channel for those who love to cook and the Food Network as a reality based food network with cooking competition shows mixed in with the regular programming.  Either way you look at it – it’s a lot of food programs!

If you want to find out how important you are to the Food Network or Cooking Channel – if the program you’re doing has you preparing food with cheap production music that you would normally hear play in the background in porn movie – you’re not that important to these channels.  If they have porn music playing behind your cooking demonstrations – the odds are pretty good that you won’t be asked to compete on “Iron Chef America” or be a featured chef on one of their Food documentaries.        

There is a lot of food competition programming on TV these days.  For over the top dramatics – there’s Gordon Ramsey’s “Hell’s Kitchen” on Fox with a bunch of chefs competing to be a chef in one of his restaurants.  The Food Network is back with another season of “The Next Food Network Star” on Food Network, and the classiest food competition show of the bunch “Top Chef” is back on Bravo with this season’s competition taking place in our nation’s capital – Washington, D.C.

Gordon Ramsey is adding another show to his Fox TV workload.  Unlike “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Kitchen Nightmares” – it looks like we’re going to see a much softer and caring Chef Ramsey with the premiere of his new show in July on Fox called “”Master Chef”.  On this show – a slew of chefs will be competing to become a master chef – what they’ll receive once they obtain that title remains to be seen – but there’s one thing that is guaranteed – the show will be entertaining as all hell.

Imagine being a geeky kid in eighth grade – who’s in love with the most beautiful girl in school – but he can only get the attention of a geeky eighth grade girl and you have MTV’s newest comedy “The Hard Times of RJ Berger”.  Now you have got to remember that all of RJ’s friends are complete geeks and nerds….that is until in the middle of a basketball game – in front of the whole school – his basketball shorts are pulled down and his jock strap falls to the floor exposing what is perhaps the largest, you know what, to everyone in the bleacher stands.  All of a sudden – RJ’s popularity takes a turn to something more than just nerds and geeks.  This is one funny show….Monday nights at 10pm on MTV.

Following RJ at 10:30 on MTV is a new show “Warren the Ape” is a spin-off of another live action puppet comedy “Greg the Bunny” that has aired on several cable networks.  “Warren the Ape” is a puppet who’s career has taken a bit of a turn….he’s gone from being an “A” list celebrity to a “D” list and below.  He’s also in “Celebrity Rehab” – complete with appearances by Dr. Drew Pinsky himself – hoping that it might revitalize his career.  If you want to laugh and laugh out loud – check out “Warren the Ape” Monday nights at 10:30pm on MTV.

Betty White continues to be hot hot hot…with the premiere of her new sitcom “Hot in Cleveland” attracting some five million people to TV Land.  The show, which also stars Jane Leeves (“Fraiser”) and Valerie Bertinelli “One Day At A Time”) is about three women from Los Angeles who land in Cleveland and discover that unlike the west coast – men are actually attracted to them and don’t think of them as “old”.  They decide to rent a home in Cleveland and Betty White is the person who maintains the house.  The premise is a bit lame – but Betty White could read tea leaves and make it funny and she does it on this show.  Its premiere episode on TV Land attracted some five million viewers – which is more viewers than NBC had when they tried to unload Jay Leno in the 10pm slot. (“Hot in Cleveland” airs at 9pm Wednesday Nights on TV Land and on CMT later in the week.)

The afternoon TV landscapes is going to look at lot different come September – when Oprah leaves daytime TV to begin a new career on a new cable network – the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).  TV stations that carry Oprah now are looking for programming to put in Oprah’s time slot that will hopefully bring in the same size audience every day that Oprah has been delivering.  One of the shows that is profiting from Oprah leaving daytime TV is another Oprah Winfrey produced program – Dr. Oz.  Beginning in September – Dr. Oz’s show will move from its 3pm time slot on Channel 4 in Detroit to Oprah’s 4pm time slot on Channel 7 – and the show is getting similar upgrades at other stations around the country.

In other TV news:  It was nice seeing Bryant Gumble hosting “The View” last week.  It’s been a long time since we have seen Bryant on commercial television (he still does a show for HBO) and I forgot how good he was and how comfortable his on-the-air style is – especially against some of the screaming and yelling that goes on during that show.

And – one last thing before I leave.  I started out this blog entry by mentioning how quickly this year is going by – well…here’s another shocker for you.  Believe it or not – Beatle drummer Ringo Starr is going to be 70 years old this July.  You heard me – 70 years old!  If Ringo’s 70 – how old does it makes all of us who remember him as one of the mop top Beatles?

Frost Bites #2 -- From Ringo To Doritos and More

Grandpa Rich's new coffee cup

Ringo Star…Yoko Ono….Doritos and Sliders….and Grandpa’s birthday cup that’s filled with love….In the dot-dot-dot tradition of late Detroit Free Press columnist Bob Talbert and Larry King’s old USA Today column – I bring you another edition of things rattling around in my head with “Frost Bites”.

I’m not biting Ringo and more importantly – I’m not going to buy it! The legendary Beatles drummer, Ringo Starr, has just released a new CD and he’s popping up on TV shows from “The Daily Show” to “The Jay Leno Show” to whet your appetite enough to go out and purchase it. It’s filled with stars galore – including fellow Beatle Paul McCartney who shares a cut on the CD with the ring’ed one…but even with star power like that…it doesn’t make this turd smell any sweeter. Critics have panned this CD and I can understand why if the rest of the album is anything like the song that he’s singing on these television appearances. The song is bad and Ringo, whose vocal abilities have always been somewhat limited, are being stretched to the point of making it uncomfortable for people listening to it to enjoy it. Ringo – do the world a huge favor to and live out the rest of your years on the residuals from the Beatles records and your cut from the Rock Band Beatles game and let kids from American Idol and elsewhere handle the music these days.

It should be noted that a few months back – I watched Yoko Ono and her son Sean do a guest appearance on the ABC morning show “The View”. Just seeing Yoko on the show is somewhat surreal – especially when you have folks like Barbara Walters and Sherry Sheppard asking her questions that don’t make her sound like a total whack job and then she and Sean performed a song for their new album. Needless to say, Yoko’s singing abilities haven’t changed over the years and my two dogs were literally nipping at my feet urging me to turn the channel over to Rachel Ray so that their ears could quick bleeding.

It looks like I’m going to have to replace my favorite coffee cup now. Being a creature of habit – for the last few years if I have had a cup of coffee or hot chocolate I had to drink it from my white WPHM coffee cup or I wouldn’t drink it all. On January 15^th, I was surprised when my girlfriend’s son came over with our two grandchildren to present me with a birthday gift – a brand new coffee mug. Instead of a coffee mug with a radio station’s logo – I’ll be enjoying my coffee out of a mug that has a picture of the two cutest grandchildren on the planet today (or at least in the St. Clair County area).

A friend that I use to work with at WTAC in Flint now works for Frito-Lay as one of their sales/delivery persons and during a recent conversation about some of the products that he delivers – he told me that a new flavor of Doritos was about to come out – Late Night Cheeseburger. It took about three weeks or so after our conversation for this new flavor to hit grocery store chip racks shelves in the St. Clair County area. Naturally, I had to grab a bag as soon as I seen them and to be truthfully honest with you, I wasn’t all of that impressed with it. They don’t taste bad – but the aroma of the chips is somewhat off-putting. In my opinion, when it comes to Doritos newest flavors – Sweet Spicy Chili is the best.

Another guilty pleasure – the all you can eat slider hamburgers at Golden Coral. There’s just something about these tasty little burgers that when I see them at Golden Coral I will load up my plate with four or five of them – they are that damn good. So, imagine my disappointment when I went there on the night of my birthday and found out that they only serve them during the day.

And for my money – when it comes to pure fast food junk food that I can’t get enough of -- it's the Baja Fish Tacos at Long John Silvers. The people at LJS could add a bit more lettuce – but what really grabs you about these 99¢ tacos is the spicy sauce and the crunchy fish bits. The next time you drive by a Long John Silver’s – reel in two or three of these fish tacos and enjoy them for yourself – you’ll thank me later.

What’s more frustrating – A) You call a business or government office and instead of the phone being answered by a human – it’s answered by one of those robo-operators that supposedly directs your call to the person that you need to speak with. It’s nice when the robo-operator works – but nine times out of ten it directs you to someone who can’t help you and doesn’t have the time or patience to even give a shit. Or there’s B) You call a business – let’s say Verizon, for example – and their robo operator asks about the problem that you may be having with your phone or phone line before it directs you to a live representative – only to have you waiting on line for over an hour and fifteen minutes and being forced to listen to the on-hold music, which sounds like the theme to “St. Elsewhere”, repeat itself endlessly. I’ll choose B and maybe just maybe they can do something to clear up my phone line so that my dial-up internet service can stay online longer than five minute bursts. It’s moments like these that you just want to throw in the towel and shout out “what the hell!”