When you’re raised by Stooges

If either of my brothers had died violently back when we were kids, it would have been the fault of television.

It’s true that in those dark ages there were only three channels (two of which you could watch without developing a squiggly line exposure headache). We weren’t inundated with a thousand channels, YouTube videos, and whatever other new media monstrosity is developed between the time I write this and the moment it appears in print.

But at the same time, we were considerably less world-wise than the youth of today. We were gullible, innocent (mostly), susceptible to suggestion. And I, at least, was the poster boy for the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” movement.

Which begs the question: why did my parents let me watch “The Three Stooges?”

Every Saturday, there I was, my skinny, blank face mere inches from our 16-inch, black-and-white Philco, the sound cranked up, a bowl of Cheerios growing soggy in my lap. My mother’s warnings that I would go blind from sitting so close fell on deaf ears, as did her concerns that I was exposing myself to all sorts of unknown TV radiation.

Radiation, according to my mother in 1964, leaked from most appliances like whiskey from a termite-infested aging keg. I wasn’t worried. At nine, I thought it would be cool to either glow in the dark or be transformed into one of those flesh-dripping aliens like I’d seen on “The Outer Limits.”

Or better yet, the radiation exposure might impart to me my fondest wish: X-ray vision. I had questions regarding Patty Tineman, who lived next door, questions that could not be answered through the course of normal, fourth-grade conversation.

But I digress.

My point is (I’m sure there was one here somewhere) Larry, Moe and Curly were instrumental in helping me develop relationships with my younger siblings. These guys, after all, were hilarious!

Maybe they weren’t so great at plumbing, or conducting orchestras, or fighting bulls or flying into outer space, or … well, a lot of things. But they provided a template for my familial affiliations.

As the oldest brother, I naturally assumed the role of Moe. My middle brother, William, took on the Larry part. Bobby, the youngest, seemed born to walk in Curly’s shoes.

In our family, eye pokes, noogies, hair pulling and n’yuk-n’yuk-accompanied face slaps were so common my mother finally gave up and stopped yelling about it. It wasn’t until the day I applied a hot iron to William’s backside (resulting in a scar I believe he carries to this day) that the parental contingent banned the Stooges from our suburban home.

I got to spend a week alone in my bedroom with no TV, comic books or fun of any kind. This was to help me “think about what I had done.” Instead, I used the time to plan the calamities I would visit upon my tattle-faced brother upon the moment of my release.

It was probably a year or more before the Stooges were again allowed on the Taylor Family television. Meanwhile, there were other shows that provided almost as much inspiration for destruction as did Larry, Moe and Curly.

Ed Sullivan, for instance. Yup, good old family-friendly Ed, with Señor Wences, watered-down rock acts and the guy who spun plates on the ends of poles; even Ed could provide a wealth of terrible ideas for our fertile yet un-discerning minds.

The spinning plate thing, for instance. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it looks. William and I made this discovery one summer’s afternoon, using a mop handle and my mother’s best china. We figured if we swept up the shards, she’d never notice a few missing plates. We were wrong.

At least that time I had William to keep me company in lockup. We spent the week’s incarceration building pillow “forts” and then throwing toys across the room at each other, pretending they were hand grenades, like we’d seen on “Combat!” As our battles progressed, the toys became increasingly heavy, metallic and pointy.

Our brotherly wars might have been imaginary, but the after-battle medical triage was all too real. I don’t recall anyone ever needing stitches, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Yet somehow, we all lived to adulthood. I became a writer, William a nurse. And Bobby? Well, he’s still Curly and I still give him noogies at every available opportunity. N’yuk n’yuck.

And the question remains, ‘How low can you go?’

Calvin told me about a new TV show the other night and at first I thought he was putting me on. Calvin’s a great guy, but his taste in television? Um, let’s just say if he had lived in ancient Rome, Calvin would have been first in line for tickets to watch Christians being thrown to Lions.

Calvin’s also one of my best friends and I love him like a brother, but he definitely represents that lowest common denominator network TV supposedly appeals to. I’ve told him this on numerous occasions and he seems utterly unfazed by my assessment. 

Cal loves “reality” TV; any show in which inbred hillbillies attack each other with a steady barrage of bleeped-out F-bombs is all he needs to achieve viewing Nirvana. He shares details of these shows with me all the time because he knows even hearing about them makes my teeth hurt.

If I actually tried to sit through one of these video travesties, I’m sure my head would explode.

I sound like an intellectual snob here, but I’m not. I watch all sorts of idiot TV; old episodes of “Star Trek” and “Law & Order,” Three Stooges shorts … that’s about it, I guess. Unless you count 300 viewings of the movie “Caddyshack,” which I never get tired of, assuming there’s beer in the house.

My point is, my own tastes aren’t all that high falutin’ and I probably shouldn’t be so quick to judge the viewing habits of others. But when Cal told me about this new TV show he’s watching, I couldn’t help it.

The show is called “The Briefcase” and if it’s not the work of either the Devil or Donald Trump, I don’t know what is.

As I understand it, the show revolves around two desperately poor families, each of which is given $101,000. They can use this money to pay for junior’s college education, buy a better brand of Ramen noodles, or settle accounts with the loan shark who’s been threatening to kill their children.

Or — and here’s where things supposedly get interesting — they can give some or all of the money to another family that’s in as bad, or even worse, shape than they are.

What fun, right? Let’s watch the poor people feel guilty about their one chance for a decent future! They’re so cute when they grovel! Oh, look! They’re watering down the baby’s formula to make it go further!

I’m sure the seven-figure network execs who came up with the idea for this abomination think its a real hoot, not to mention too, too droll, dahling. This is television for the 1 percent and those too stupid to know they’re in the other 99.

OK. I’m ranting. Old guys do that. 

But how long will it be before we’re watching “The Hunger Games” and it’s not a SF movie? How long before we tune in to see to two terminally ill patients cage fight over a vial containing the single available cure?

Society seems caught in an unending game of limbo and the question repeats, over and over: “How low can you go?”

With “The Briefcase,” the answer is, pretty low. And the scary thing is, I don’t think we’ve hit bottom yet.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273

My domesticity could cost us the next Sistine Chapel

I was stuffing my face with Japanese chicken at the Chinese buffet when the lady walked past my table and told me she likes my column. 

“Mmmph, fmmll rwroolf,” I said. (Loosely translated: thanks.)

I’m insecure, so I’m always happy to hear from someone other than my girlfriend who reads this thing.

“Sounds like you’re getting pretty domesticated,” she said.

My face must have been saying, “Huh?” because she continued: “You and Lori and the cats and the new TV.”

I understood. During the past few years I’ve mentioned a few times in this column that I own no television. I’m not one of those people that demand every media outlet be as edifying as reading Plato’s “The Republic” in the original Greek, say, but I didn’t see the point in cramming a TV into my tiny apartment just so Maury Povich could parade “Single Teenage Mothers and the Fathers/Boyfriends/First Cousins Who Got Them That Way” through my living room.

When shows like that come on TV, I always start getting nervous my brain will crawl out through my ear and try to make it on its own. A strictly defensive move on the part of my brain.

I figured not having a television was the safest way to avoid accidental exposure to this Jerry Springer-ish regurgitative spew that nowadays masquerades as entertainment. (Can you tell I have strong opinions on this topic?)

But somehow, when Lori and I decided to cohabitate, buying a new TV seemed like the most natural thing in the world, just the next brick in the road to domesticity. And that’s a good thing, right?

I thought so at first, but now I’m beginning to wonder. 

For the past five years, I’ve been more or less on my own, without female supervision. I would eat when I felt like it, sleep when I felt like it, fish when I felt like it … it was very much a “when I felt like it” existence.

I was so busy doing all the things I felt like doing that I didn’t really have time for TV. 

So how come I do now?

Honestly, I don’t know. 

Lori is a fiercely independent woman with more interests than she has time for. I’m sure if I felt like fishing, or taking my bicycle on a four-day cross-country jaunt, or doing any of the million other things that used to occupy my days, she’d be totally cool with it.  In fact, she’d probably be happy to get me the heck out of the house so she could take care of her own projects.

But I haven’t been doing any of those things, not as often as I used to, at least. I’ve been just sort of hanging around the house … “puttering,” in the patois of the middle-aged. (I assume I’m middle aged because I plan to live to 120.)

And I’ve been watching too much TV; a couple hours a night. At this rate, by the time I’m 120, I’ll have watched — hold on, lemme grab a calculator — 43,800 hours of television! That’s 1,825 days, or FIVE YEARS!

Five years, man! That’s a year longer than it took Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel! 

It’s unlikely I could accomplish anything so grand as the Sistine Chapel no matter how little TV I watch. But I’m sure I can do better than “Lesbian Nazis Who’ve Been Abducted by Space Aliens and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs” on Springer.

So. For sale: one gently used large-screen HDTV. It’ll be available on Craigslist. 

Right after this one last rerun of “Law & Order.”

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273

Television is to blame for the way I smell

To my co-workers who sit near me at the office, my sincerest apologies. I know, I’m starting to smell … well … bad.

It’s not my fault. I’m bathing regularly. My teeth are brushed, may hair is washed (and combed to perfection, if false modesty, for a moment, may be set aside).

Yet I stink.

It’s not my fault, but the fault of the laundry where until a couple weeks ago, I washed my clothes. It’s a nice enough laundry; most of the machines work, the dryers are hot, the attendant keeps things clean.

The problem is the televisions. There are two of them, and they are ALWAYS tuned to the most vile garbage imaginable; the most vile garbage I can imagine anyway. Maybe you can imagine worse, but I doubt it.

Before I go on, let me state emphatically that I am NOT one of those literary elitists who watch only PBS while nibbling Brie and sipping Chateau Lafleur from a crystal goblet. In fact, I had to Google “expensive wines” to obtain that Chateau Lafleur reference; I drink the stuff that comes in a box.

I enjoy the Three Stooges (at least the episodes with Curly), the “Planet of the Apes” movies, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Sure, I’ll occasionally watch “Masterpiece Theatre” or listen to “World News Tonight,” but mostly because I dig the British accents.

So what does all this have to do with the way I smell? I just can’t go back in that laundry, that’s what. I can’t. I can’t bear to fold sheets and socks for 45 minutes while some TV judge tries to shout down the two morons in his (or her) courtroom; while a TV host with hair even more perfect than my own gives his (or her) second-grade-level opinions on what’s wrong (or right) with teenage motherhood while a studio audience of what can only be described as the Stupidest People on Planet Earth shout and moan their collective approval or dissent.

I have only a handful of working brain cells left and they are being rapidly depleted by talk shows covering topics like “Lesbian space aliens who have been kidnapped by Amish farmers and forced to do the work of plough horses!!!” or “When weight loss turns deadly! Why the California Banana Cream Pie diet may kill you!!!”

Enquiring minds may want to know, but mine does not.

My wardrobe is beginning to show evidence of this fact; my socks in particular. They used to be white, but no longer. My pants all have bicycle chain grease on the inside right cuff. The pits of most of my office shirts carry an odor that can only be described as tragically reminiscent of my ninth grade gym locker.

I suppose I could bag up all my filthy clothes and drag them along some weekend when I go to visit Sweet Annie. She has her own laundry facilities and would be more than happy to share. But we see each other too seldom and when together, prefer to do fun stuff rather than ironing.

As a last resort, I could take my laundry in later in the evening, after the cultural and moral wasteland that is daytime TV has ended for the day, but who wants to spend Saturday night watching a spin cycle?

So for now, at least, I’ll continue to smell funky. I figure, eventually the stench will grow bad enough that when I enter the laundry, everyone else will leave. At this point, I’ll be free to change the channel to PBS. Or maybe find a “classic” channel airing the Three Stooges.

Mike Taylor’s paperback book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is now available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in eBook format from Amazon.com. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Memories, may seem beautiful…if they’re not televised

Saw myself on television the other night. Or rather; saw the me that existed 25 years ago. In grey leather pants and a shirt that had been lifted (apparently) from Michael Jackson’s back, I looked like a reject from the “Thriller” video auditions.

My carefully-feathered haircut, reminiscent of a CHiPs-era Erik Astrada, only made matters worse. Watching my younger self onscreen I thanked the gods of video that the camera never panned down; I’m almost sure I was wearing white snakeskin platform shoes.

I was lying in a hotel room following a recent live performance with my weekend band when my historically accurate but altogether ridiculous self came on TV. I couldn’t believe they were airing the footage, a half-hour musical “special” that ran for the first time on Christmas Eve, 1985.

It was filmed back in the days when public television was so frantic for original programming they’d let anyone with the ability to point a camera produce a show. My buddy Bob was one such camera-pointer, and he talked me into bringing my band down to the TV studio to “star” in two live performances.

Bob was a better camera-pointer than most of them and the production values for the show were actually pretty good. My band, sadly, was not. Oh, I’ve been in worse, but I’ve been in better, too. The point is, Bob did his best, but there’s only so much you can do to make a coyote caught in barbed wire sound like Freddie Mercury.

And there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make me—even a young me—look good in leather pants and a Michael Jackson shirt.

It was surreal, old me watching young me singing on TV.

Why the public TV station was airing a lame-o half-hour music show from 25 years earlier is anyone’s guess. I’m sure it had nothing to do with “popular demand.” I can only assume they’re still desperate for programming; a test pattern would have been more entertaining, aside from the possible (no, make that probable) comedic value.

At any rate, watching that old footage served as a harsh reminder of just how much time has passed. I sing better these days. But I look older. And if anything, my guitar playing has actually gotten worse, which is difficult to understand, but I can’t deny the evidence of my own eyes and ears. On the plus side, I now have enough sense to not try to cover my expansive rear-end in gray leather.

Not that it matters much; I have as much in common with that skinny kid on the television as I have with Michael Jackson (which, other than the shirt, is nothing).

But I’m not embarrassed by the tape; I’ve lived long enough to know that everybody was a nerd once upon a time. We all have memories best left unexamined. I just wish mine weren’t captured on a piece of videotape sitting in a TV studio storage locker somewhere.

I’d like to get my hands on that tape, to save for, um, posterity. And by “save for posterity” I mean “bury in the back yard.”

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Live at Five: Answers from Jake

I don’t know how many folks watch those afternoon talk shows—those programs which feature first-name hosts like Phil, Geraldo and Jerry. I suppose they must generate a fair-sized audience, though. They’re on year after year after year.

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand it. At what point in our sociological evolution did Former U.S. Ambassadors Who’ve Been Abducted by UFOs and Forced to Watch Reruns of “The Waltons” become news? But I’m not writing here today to criticize the fluff these programs attempt to pass off as “critical issues.” I’m not even here to gripe about the simplistic answers these hosts dispense in response to complex questions.

I’m here to deliver a warning—a warning to Phil, Geraldo and Ophra. And Sally, too, I suppose: There’s an usurper in your midst.

It’s true. I met him recently at a tavern not far from my house.

He was standing at the bar ordering a shot and Coke when he first spoke to me. I was watching football on the bar’s big screen TV at the time.

“Got any money on the game?” he asked.

It took a moment before I realized he was talking to me. “What?” I asked.

“Any money,” he replied. “on the game?”

“No,” I said. He was a big guy, sporting a Carhart jacket and John Deere seed cap. He seemed friendly enough, but I had the distinct impression he could crush my little skull like an aluminum Bud can in one of his calloused, working-man’s hands. I’ve discovered through years of painful experience it’s best not to share too many of my condescending, city-bred opinions on sports, politics or religion with gentlemen of this particular genus, and size.

And I sure wasn’t going to make the unmanly admission that the only reason I was watching the game was that the bartender wouldn’t change the channel to Star Trek.

“I got ten bucks on Buffalo myself,” he said.

“Um.”

“You think they’re going to go all the way?”

If John Deere here had ten bucks riding on them, you can bet I thought so. “Seems like they could,” I said, even though I had no idea if “going all the way” meant Buffalo would play in the Superbowl or lose their collective virginity.

“Darn right,” he said. “Hey! I’m Jake. Lemme buy you a beer.”

Now, I’ve never been adverse to free beer and I had some time to kill, so I accepted. During the next few hours, the conversation between Jake and me rolled freely between sports, women, religion, gays in the military and Washington politics. And on every topic, Jake had an opinion—a strong opinion. More than that, he had the same thing all talk show hosts seem to have: answers.

Sure, they were for the most part answers that made little real sense, but when you’re 6’4” and weigh in at about 330 pounds, you don’t have to be a talk show host to share your opinions with whomever you please. Little folk—like me—tend to nod and smile a lot, which is—for the most part—exactly what I did.

By the time I left the bar, however, I had gained a genuine respect for Jake and his simple answers. Here in my hometown was a man who—with but the addition of an expensive haircut and wire-rimmed glasses—could easily be hosting a talk show of his very own. After all, Jake seemed to have every bit as good a grasp on the world and its problems as do Phil, Geraldo, Jerry and Sally.

Let me give you some examples of our dialogue:



• ISSUE: OIL SHORTAGE

JAKE: Shoot! Now that we’re not fighting with the commies anymore, we should just get together with the Ruskies and take the oil we want.

ME: But wouldn’t that go against many of the basic philosophical doctrines upon which America was founded?

JAKE: (A glowering stare.)

ME: No, I suppose it wouldn’t at that. Good idea Jake.



• ISSUE: GAYS IN THE MILITARY

JAKE: They’d be okay if somebody just bought ’em a subscription to Playboy or something.

ME: (laughing) Do you honestly believe that reading a girly magazine is going to change an individual’s sexual orientation?

JAKE: (Slams beer down on table, looks into it menacingly.)

ME: Um, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s certainly how I feel.



• ISSUE: NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

JAKE: If people wouldn’t get sick in the first place, we wouldn’t need national health care.

ME: Are you implying people wind up in the hospital because they want to be there?

JAKE: Do you want to be there?


Once again, I was forced to admit Jake had a valid point, forced being the operative word. Anyway, you get the idea.

Although I spent several tense moments during our conversation fearing for my life, I came away from the encounter liking Jake, and I still maintain he would make a great talk show host. I bet he would get better ratings than Phil, Geraldo and Jerry, too. I, for one, would definitely tune in just for the chance to see a Danahue-esque triple-axe-murderer parolee bemoan the fact that the “system” has failed to rehabilitate him. Like all talk show hosts, Jake would have a solution. Sometimes the simplest answers are the best.