{"id":120,"date":"2005-05-03T20:59:57","date_gmt":"2005-05-04T04:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=120"},"modified":"2008-06-22T11:33:18","modified_gmt":"2008-06-22T18:33:18","slug":"random-cathode-ray-poisoning-induced-tv-musing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Random Cathode-Ray-Poisoning-Induced TV Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firstly, I’d just like to give a shout out to whomever it may be at Microsoft<\/a> who so enjoys Birdie Cam<\/a> that they’re streaming it 24\/7. Seriously, I’m honored! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Anywho, on with the brain farts. Margaret and I were watching the Food Network program Unwrapped<\/a> this evening. For those who have children\/lives\/taste and don’t spend their evenings suckling the Glass Teat, Unwrapped is a show that goes “behind the scenes” of various food products to give you some information on their history, methods of production, etc. It’s hosted by a goofily cheerful dude named Marc Summers<\/a>. Off-topic, I’ve been looking at this guy’s face for a couple of years now, trying to figure out what’s wrong with it. A few months back it hit me: I think Summers has the classic physiognomy of someone with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome<\/a>: the sort of flattened face, the wide separation between the eyes, the underformed frenulum. This is apropos of nothing, and certainly not meant to be a joke, just an observation.<\/p>\n

Ooookay, one brain fart down, one to go….<\/p>\n

So anyway, Unwrapped is a decent show\u2014where else are you going to see an industrial macaroni-making machine at work?\u2014but it sometimes degrades into plain old advertising puff pieces. Not that I expect hard-hitting, muckraking journalism from Food Network, but the product-placement can get pretty thick at times. A sure-fire warning sign is when they cut to a shot of someone speaking knowingly about some or another commercial foodstuff\u2014say, chocolate-dipped roofing nails\u2014and the description displayed at the bottom of the screen identifies the person as, “John Winklebean\u2014Chocolate-Dipped Roofing Nail Authority”. This means that the person is an employee of the Spike-Tastic Chocolate-Dipped Roofing Nail Company of Marietta, Georgia, and that the next stop on our televisual journey is their production floor. This pattern is repeated time and time again.<\/p>\n

Really, I don’t have my knickers in a twist over this. I just find it amusing. But I do wish that, just once, some rogoue technician would sneak a different caption onto the character generator, labeling the so-called “Authority” as “John Winklebean\u2014Vat-Grown Corporate Talking Head”, or something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstly, I’d just like to give a shout out to whomever it may be at Microsoft who so enjoys Birdie Cam that they’re streaming it 24\/7. Seriously, I’m honored! \ud83d\ude42 Anywho, on with the brain farts. Margaret and I were watching the Food Network program Unwrapped this evening. For those who have children\/lives\/taste and don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roominations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}