December 13, 2006

It now appears that the green onions may have been falsely accused! That’s right; scallions are now the Richard Jewell of the vegetable world. When will the media act responsibly?*

I think the only reason they didn’t focus on the lettuce earlier was the investigators were afraid of being accused of Produce Profiling. But face it, when something is wrong with the food, what’s most likely to cause it? The lettuce.

And you readers know I used to be very tolerant of lettuce… even when it looked like it was all shredded from the white core of the head, the lettuce was an integral part of the Big Mac, the Taco, the BLT. Well, not for me, not anymore. From now on, it’s gonna be “hold the lettuce please, and hold it in your other hand, not the one you’re touching my food with!” Am I going to extremes? Is it extreme to want to protect your way of life?

Frankly, I’ve long felt that cabbage was being treated unfairly in the realm of leafy vegetables. Cabbage isn’t just for cole slaw, and I think its successful use in Fish Tacos shows that the cabbage head should no longer be an object of scorn.

Come on people! Join with me! Lettuce alone! Liberty Cabbage for all!

*that was obviously a rhetorical question

“We are looking into producing a full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad for the DVD release.” – “Futurama” Half-Executive Producer David X. Cohen in an interview in which he hints about “hitherto unknown facts about Nibbler, dark matter and Seymour the dog. By the way, that was my first use of the word ‘hitherto’ in an interview. I think it went well.”

This Futurama Fanboy thinks you did just fine.

Somebody wrote:

“I blame Al-Queda”

So I responded…

or Al-Jazeera

or Al-Maliki (the Michael Brown of Iraq)

or Al-Anon

or Al-uminum (it causes Alzheimer’s, right?)

or Al-abama (or is this what causes Alzheimer’s? I don’t remember.)

or Al Capone

or Al Pacino (Hoo-ah!)

or Al Gore (If he didn’t invent the Internet, why are the Republicans trying to break it?)

or Al Jolson

or Al Sharpton

or Al (Weird) Yankovic

or Al (Grandpa) Lewis

or Al Hirschfeld (but don’t blame Nina)

or Al Green

or Al Jarreau

or Al Franken

or Al Roker

or Al (“Do you believe in miracles?”) Michaels

or Al Kaline and the ’68 Detroit Tigers

et al.

So which Al do you blame?

Trivia time: You already knew that Steven Spielberg was once a Director for “Columbo”, didn’t you?

But so was Jonathan Demme…

and so was Norman Lloyd…*

and Patrick McGoohan… (usually but not always when he was playing the murderer)

and Sean Penn’s father…

and Coach on “Cheers”…

and the Director of “Hang ‘Em High” and “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” (both before he did Columbo)…

and Columbo himself. (no surprise there) But can you imagine him giving directions to actors? “Just one more thing…”

But do you know what’s also interesting? Two of the directors who did Columbos in the ’70s are still directing TV today: James Frawley (from “The Monkees” to “Ghost Whisperer”) and Jeannot Szwarc (from “The Virginian” to “Without a Trace”).

* You know, Dr. Auschlander on “St. Elsewhere”, who was also one of the founding members of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, produced “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and played the title role in Hitchcock’s “The Saboteur”. And he’s done voice-overs on amillion commercials. Yeah, him.