THE 100 WORST THINGS OF ALL TIME By Barry Dutter

1) 1977: A fat, bloated Elvis dies on the toilet, while trying to pass one of his famous fried peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches. A sad ending for a  king.

2) The 25th anniversary remake of “We Are The World.” The original had such superstars as Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. The remake had Robin Thicke, Vince Vaughn, Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber. ‘Nuff said.

3) Any movie where SYLVESTER STALLONE tried his hand at comedy, such as RHINESTONE or STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT!

4) Charlie Sheen stands to pocket $200 million from doing 100 episodes of his crappy TV show, ANGER MANAGEMENT, in one of the biggest TV payouts of all time. (This comes after his $100 million payout when he got fired from TWO AND A HALF MEN.) Great. More money for him to spend on booze, coke and whores.

5) Any TV reunion movie that comes 20 or 30 years after the original show went off the air and the actors all look so old and sad -- like that Mary Tyler Moore TV movie where she reunites with Rhoda and you find out that neither of them was able to sustain a successful relationship; or that ODD COUPLE reunion with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman where you find out that Oscar is suffering from throat cancer. What a laugh riot that one was!

6) In 1977, Disney released an album called MICKEY MOUSE DISCO, in an attempt to cash in on the disco craze. It was a horrible idea. You really don’t know suffering until you’ve heard the disco version of “It’s a Small World.”

7) All of the CAP’N CRUNCH spin-off cereals were disappointing. PEANUT BUTTER CRUNCH was god-awful. But when they came out with CRUNCH BERRIES, I wanted to puke! That Crunch berry Beast should be shot, stuffed and mounted for forcing his crappy cereal on us.

8) Eve Plumb, the original Jan, chose not to return for the BRADY BUNCH COMEDY VARIETY HOUR, proving herself not to be a team player!

9) Tina Louise passed on RESCUE FROM GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, thus denying fans the closure of seeing the real Ginger rescued.

10) Any TV series that started out as a character on TV commercials, like CAVEMEN or BABY BOB.

11) When NBC tried to continue CHICO AND THE MAN after Freddie Prinze had died by replacing him with a  little kid, also named Chico. Likewise, the same network’s attempt to revive SANFORD AND SON in the 80s by replacing the son -- Lamont -- with a big, fat redneck white guy. Sometimes it seems like networks just don’t understand why we watch the shows we watch.

12) I can’t decide which was worse -- Chevy Chase collecting a $3 million paycheck after his late night Fox talk show was canceled after 5 weeks, or Conan O’Brien collecting a check for $45 million after his ill-fated attempt to take over THE TONIGHT SHOW (which lasted seven months).

13) Tom and Jerry, the most overrated cat and mouse team in the business. Can you believe they actually awarded Oscars to these two stiffs? For that matter, Heckle and Jekyll, the original Mighty Mouse and Magilla Gorilla all sucked, too!

14) 1978: The movie SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEART’S CLUB BAND was released, starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. They took one of the best albums of all time and turned it into one of the worst movies of all time.

15) That period on WELCOME BACK, KOTTER when Gabe Kaplan quit the show, and John Travolta had left, as well -- and Kotter's wife, who had up to then been a peripheral character, suddenly became the Vice-Principal of the school. Here's a suggestion -- when the star of your show quits, maybe you should just cancel the show.

16) THE MATRIX sequels. They may not be the worst sequels ever made but they certainly squashed any promise shown by the innovative original.

17) Michael Jackson’s transformation from a normal black kid to an ugly white woman with no nose was surely one of the sadder celebrity transformations. And that time Michael kissed Lisa Marie Presley at the MTV Awards -- gross!

18) NBC’s so-called “Must -See TV” Thursday night line-up has always included a few stinkers like NIGHT COURT, VERONICA’S CLOSET, CAROLINE IN THE CITY and THE SINGLE GUY.

19) Dennis Miller as a co-host on Monday Night Football was surely one of the biggest gaffs in broadcasting history. Could it be that NFL fans really don’t care what Kierkegaard would have said?

20) That scene in the 1979 Superman movie where the Man of Steel turns back time by spinning the Earth backwards? That went down in history  as one of the all-time worst movie endings. It was so ridiculous that for many people, it ruined what was otherwise a great movie.

21) Daytime TV overall is pretty retched. Most of the shows consist of angry people yelling at each other over who’s the father, and then pretending to fight. (Did you ever notice that none of the punches on THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW ever actually connect?) And then to add insult to injury, most of the commercials on daytime TV tell you what you what a loser you are for being home in the daytime and that you should go back to school. Hey, some of us actually work at home!

22) In the 1988 TV movie THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK, the Hulk, the most powerful being on Earth, gets killed by falling out of a  plane. Apparently, Hulk can survive bullets, missiles and bombs, but not a 500-foot fall. Ugh! And they even had Bill Bixby sing a sappy song as the Hulk was falling to his death!

23) The movie JAWS 4: THE REVENGE had the worst tagline in movie history: "This time, it's personal." What the f*ck was it the first 3 times when the same family of sharks shark kept attacking members of the same human family? 

24) Justin Beiber started out as an annoying pop star, and quickly went on to become the biggest douche bag of the new millennium.

25) The films of Kevin Smith. I'll admit I liked CHASING AMY, and I know CLERKS has a rabid following, but the rest of his filmography is pure crap. From MALLRATS to JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK to DOGMA to ZACH & MIRI make a porno, it's all pure crap!

26) The fact that David Goyer writes just about every superhero movie ever made, and he's juts not that good. The BLADE trilogy, the DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY, MAN OF STEEL -- enough is enough! Give another writer a chance!

27) The way that TV writers bring in a new kid after a sitcom has been on the air for a  few years, based on the assumption that the original  kids are not “cute” enough any more. (Examples: Cousin Oliver on THE BRADY BUNCH, Ralph Macchio on EIGHT IS ENOUGH, and Leonardo DiCaprio on GROWING PAINS. As if there weren’t enough Brady’s, Bradfords, and Seavers already.)

28) The period where Bo and Luke left THE DUKES OF HAZZARD to be replaced by two lame cousins named Coy and Vance. It made people appreciate the greatness of Bo and Luke!

29) At the peak of his popularity, Andrew Dice Clay made the unwatchable movie, THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE. Then he went on national TV and broke down and cried while apologizing for telling jokes that may have  hurt people’s feelings. Rarely has the fall of a comic been so sad.

30) The cinematic output of Bob Clark. Although people often cite Ed Wood as the worst director of all time, no one can beat Clark. Just check out his credits. RHINESTONE, PORKY’s, PORKY’S 2: THE NEXT DAY, BABY GENIUSES, SUPERBABIES, TURK 182, LOOSE CANNONS,

KARATE DOG, SHE-MAN, and others too numerous to mention. Thankfully his output has slowed down over the past few years.

31) The death of Captain Kirk in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS was handled in a clumsy and inept manner that was a sad ending for a  legendary hero. For that matter, the trend of giving Vulcan females the same haircuts as Vulcan males really sucked, too. They started doing it in STAR TREK V and kept it up on the TV

show STAR TREK ENTERPRISE. But if you look back at the original TV series from the 1960s and the earlier movies, Vulcan females -- like Spock’s mom and Savik -- often had long, flowing hair.

32) The fact that most people never realized that Disney’s movie THE LION KING was a blatant rip-off of a Japanese cartoon called KIMBA THE WHITE LION, which as one of the greatest cartoons ever.

33) The fact that almost every leading man role on TV and the movies now seems to go to British and Australian actors doing bad American accents. Even Superman and Spider-Man are now played by Brits. It’s a miracle that Captain America is actually played by an American!

34) In 2004, Stan Lee sued Marvel Comics for a share of the profits from  the movies based on characters he co-created. It’s really sad when a living legend like Stan the man has to sue to get what he feels is coming to him.

35) The practice of sports arenas being named after the company that owns them is an old one --look at Wrigley Field -- but in recent years, the trend has gotten out of hand, resulting in boring, forgettable names like National Car Rental Center, 3Com Stadium, and the TWA Dome.

36) The episode of LOST IN SPACE with the space hippies has to be one of the worst things ever. I mean, really, why would there be hippies in space?

37) Certain singers are so starved for creativity that when it came time to record one new song for their “Greatest Hits” album, they just took their most popular song and redid it. This resulted in lame remakes like Robert Palmer’s  “Addicted to Love ‘97,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer ‘94.” and Cyndi Lauper’s “(Hey Now) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun ‘94.”

38) The fact that most celebrities don’t appear in Playboy until their careers have faded and they’re well past their prime. (Examples: Belinda Carlyle, Farrah Fawcett, Suzanne Somers, Tia Carrere.)

39) The way a network will clone its own hit TV shows to fill up their schedule to the point where NBC once had 10 hours of LAW & ORDER on their 22-hour weekly schedule. CBS is just as bad with their CSI clones. Back in my day, a network would fill its schedule with 22 hours of shows that were all unique. They may not have all been good, but at least they all weren’t the same show!

40) Any TV show that tries to continue after one of the main stars has quit the show -- Richie Cunningham leaving HAPPY DAYS, Mike and Gloria leaving ALL IN THE FAMILY. But perhaps the worst example is THE OFFICE, which limped along for 2 shockingly unfunny seasons after star Steve Carell left to do movies.

41) The practice of giving woefully unfunny stand-up comics their own TV shows in an attempt to recreate the success of Cosby, Seineld and Roseanne. Comics who I have never laughed at include Tim Allen, Ray Romano and Ellen Degeneres.

42) In THE FLINTSTONES movie, they picked big, fat Rosie O’Donnell to play Betty, when, in fact, Betty has always been better-looking than Wilma. That may have been the worst casting of all time.

43) When Bruce Springsteen stopped being a rocker and switched to being more of a folk singer, it was a sad day for rock music. And when he came out with that generic song, “57 Channels And Nothing on,” it nearly killed his career.

44) Three words: Jar-Jar Binks! (And don’t get me started on people who wait in line for days or even weeks until a new movie comes out! News flash -- it‘s just a movie, and you will have plenty of chances to see it.)

45) Michael Crichton’s novel, JURASSIC PARK, about an amusement park where something goes wrong and the attractions start killing people -- was a direct rip-off of his earlier novel, WESTWORLD. I know great writers often return to the same themes, but… come on!

46) Martin Scorsese, our greatest living director, did not win the Academy Award for any of his brilliant films like TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL or GOODFELLAS. Instead, he won for THE DEPARTED, one of his worst movies.

47)  In 1983, just before the release of RETURN OF THE JEDI, USA Today came out with a story that gave away the ending of the movie. The headline read, "Surprise! Darth's a Good Guy!" In those per-Internet days, it was shocking to have a a major spoiler in a national newspaper. That ruined my enjoyment of a movie I had waited 3 years for. I have never really forgiven USA Today for that one!

48) The 1977 STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, which had the revolutionary idea of combining the STAR WARS mythos with a typical 1970s comedy-variety hour. With guest stars including ART CARNEY and BEA ARTHUR, it was like THE LOVE BOAT in space!

49) Overweight comedians dying way before their time. John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley… all gone too soon.

50) The TV series MY TWO DADS, starring MAD ABOUT YOU’s Paul Reiser and BJ AND THE BEAR’S Greg Evigan, had one of the worst premises ever. I would have loved to have heard the pitch meeting for that one. “It’s about this woman, see, and she’s got two lovers that are completely opposite of each other. The woman gets pregnant, has a baby, and dies! Ten years later, her daughter grows up and moves in with both guys, cuz they can’t figure out which of them is her real father!” The only way that show could have been worse is if the little girl had been a robot!

51) Back in my day, girls who modeled hair and cosmetics were high fashion models. These days, they will just try to take any actress or singer and try to convince us they are beautiful models. Sorry, Tina Fey and Queen Latifah, but you are not models.

52) Geraldo Rivera’s 1986 TV special where he opened Al Capone’s vault. Millions waited 2 hours to watch Geraldo find an empty liquor bottle!

53) Just about any movie ever made that was based on a video game. (SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, anyone?)

54) Any movie sequel that featured none of the stars that made the first movie such a big hit. Such as GREASE 2, THE STING 2, CADDYSHACK 2, etc.

55) Movies based on TV shows that nobody liked in the first place, like MCHALE’S NAVY and THE MOD SQUAD.

56) The number of rock stars who are members of the Dead at 27 Club: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and of course, Kurt Cobain.

57) Whenever a long-running character leaves a TV series, he is invariably replaced by a less entertaining character. Examples: Coach replaced by Woody on CHEERS. Trapper John replaced by BJ on M*A*S*H. And Chrissy replaced with Cindy on THREE’S COMPANY.

58) The trend of doing PG-rated sequels to R-rated movies is an annoying one. (Examples: All the BAD NEWS BEARS, ROBOCOP, and TERMINATOR sequels.) As one Hollywood exec once put it, “The first one, we do for the grown-ups. The next ones, we do for the kids.” All this does is take away the edge from something that had been really cool.

59) Two words: Vanilla Ice.

60) Two more words: Milli Vanilli.

61) Almost all of the Grammy winners for “Best New Artist” have been pretty lame. Jody Watley, Culture Club, Sheena Easton, Christopher Cross, Rikki Lee Jones, A Taste of Honey (apparently the Academy predicted big things for the band that brought us “Boogie Oogie Ooogie!), Debby Boone and the Starland Vocal Band. (Sure, they gave us the immortal “Afternoon Delight,” but what have they done for us lately?)

62) People who post on face book what time they are going to sleep. Who the f* ck needs to know this?

63) In the 1970s, Burt Reynolds was the king of the box office. He then released a string of films so horrendous, so offensive to the American public that his career never fully recovered. (A partial list: SMOKEY & THE BANDIT 2, CANNONBALL RUN 2, STICK, HEAT, MALONE, THE END, RENT-A-COP, STROKER ACE, SWITCHING CHANNELS…I  could go on all day. Has any major star ever squandered the good will of his fans so completely?

64) Madonna’s SEX book was a great idea, in theory -- a whole book full of nude pictures of the Material Girl, engaging in all sorts of sexual shenanigans. But the photos were often uninspired and the book’s metal covers and spiral binding made it extremely difficult to, shall we say, utilize it to its fullest potential.

65) MTV stopped showing music videos years ago, but that was only the beginning of a trend where channels stopped showing the types of programming that they were created to show. The president of the Cartoon Network announced that he didn’t want to show cartoons. CNN Headline News stopped showing Headline News. Court TV stopped showing Court Shows. The History Channel started showing made-up stories. The guy running the Game Show network said he wanted to get away from game shows. And perhaps most egregiously, American Movie Classics stopped showing classic movies from the 1930s and 40s ands started showing modern crap from the 80s and 90s! What’s next -- BET airing shows about white people?

66) The 1998 big-budget GODZILLA movie actually managed to be much worse than the cheesy, low- budget Japanese flicks we used to make fun of. (As soon as I heard that the hero of the movie was Matthew Broderick, playing a worm expert, I knew it was going to suck!)

67) I still say it’s not fair that the Ropers were not allowed to return to THREE’S COMPANY after the failure of their own show. But Enos was allowed to return to THE DUKES OF HAZZARD after his spin-off tanked!

68) Ok, so just about every movie ever made with the word “Mars” in the title has either bombed or sucked  -- everything from MARS NEEDS WOMEN to MARS ATTACKS to MISSION TO MARS to the all-time classic bad movie, SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. So when Disney was ready

to launch their big-screen version of JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS, they figured they’d better not put the word “Mars” in the title because it might jinx the movie. So they timidly took the phrase “WARLORD OF MARS” out, leaving them with just “JOHN CARTER” -- surely the most boring movie title of all time. They took out the one thing that makes the guy interesting -- you know, the fact that he is a WARLORD OF MARS!!!

69) The fact that just about every major movie and every show on TV stars an English or Australian actor doing a bad American accent. I mean, even SUPERMAN, BATMAN and SPIDER-MAN are now played by English actors. It’s a miracle that CAPTAIN AMERICA is played by an actual American!

70) The Macarena, the Electric Slide, and any other song  that involves any type of line-dancing, especially the Electric Slide.

71) Just about any album released by a TV star, especially those released by William Shatner, Joe Pesci, Bruce Willis and Don Johnson.

72) The way that EDDIE MURPHY went from being the funniest, raunchiest, most fowl-mouthed comic alive -- to being a bland, boring actor who only makes sappy kids films. Truly, having children is the worst thing that can ever happen to any comedian!

 73) Hollywood’s annoying practice of taking classic TV shows and remaking them with all-black casts. (THE ODD COUPLE, THE HONEYMOONERS…)

74) NBC’s entire line-up under Fred Silverman circa 1983. The former programming wunderkind who previously led NBC and CBS to first place, tried for the Triple Crown when he came to NBC. He hoped to take NBC all the way to the top with such shows as SUPERTRAIN, MANIMAL, MISFITS OF SCIENCE, PINK LADY & JEFF, and McLean Stevenson’s HELLO LARRY! You know your network is in trouble when your three strongest shows are DIFF’RENT STROKES, CHiPS, and BJ & THE BEAR!

75) The way that James Bond started shilling licensed products in all his movies is pathetic. Sometimes it seems like the movies are just excuses to have Bond plug products. In one movie, they had him drinking Smirnoff vodka, which James Bond would never ask for. In another one, they had him plugging beer. Beer?!

76) The obsession TV producers have of giving every character on Saturday morning TV a slapstick sidekick who is really nothing more than a pint-sized rip-off of the main character. Examples: Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo. Godzilla and Gadzooky. And Plastic Man and (gag!) Baby Plas!

77) Any movie sequel that features the off-screen deaths of major characters, thus rendering the previous movies utterly pointless. Examples: In TERMINATOR 3, we find out that Sarah Conner, the ultimate survivor from the first 2 films, died of cancer. And in the miserable ALIEN 3, we learn that Newt and Hicks died in their sleep because their space pods leaked. What a cop-out!

78) The way they gradually took the word “Sugar” out of the names of all cereals. As a kid, I used to eat SUGAR SMACKS, SUGAR POPS and SUGAR-FROSTED FLAKES! Cereal companies used to promote how much sugar they had in all their cereals, like it was a good thing. Now they try to make everything sound healthier, when it really isn’t. Just because you changed the name, doesn’t make it any healthier!

79) The way that dumb chacracters on TV get increasingly dumber as the show goes on because it’s easy for lazy writers to write “dumb: jokes. Examples: Homer Simpson, Potsie from HAPPY DAYS, Chrissy from THREE’S COMPANY. The characters start off a little slow, then wind up functionally retarded about halfway through the third season.

80) The song “Convoy,” released at the peak of the CB radio craze in the 1970s. It would be like releasing a song called “Internet” in 1999. The song was so bad, you wished everyone involved with it would get run over by a  truck!

81) Producer Drew Barrymore cast herself as an Angel in the big-screen version of CHARLIE’S ANGELS. She’s semi-attractive but she is no one’s idea of what a Charlie’s Angel looks like.

82) Bad movies based on SNL skits. Among them: IT’S PAT; CONEHEADS; STUART SAVES HIS FAMILY; BLUES BROTHERS 2000, WAYNE’S WORLD 2, etc etc. For that matter the last half hour of any episode of SNL has always sucked, regardless of which season it was or who was in the cast.

83) Vanessa Williams had her Miss America crown taken away because PENTHOUSE published nude lesbian photos of her. It seems to me that a great injustice was committed here. This type of behavior should be rewarded, not punished. We should be encouraging more Miss Americas to do this sort of stuff.

84) Lightning struck twice for Van Halen when they replaced David Lee Roth with Sammy Hagar and went on to even greater success. But the third time was definitely not the charm. The band struck out when they replaced Hagar with Gary Cirrone, the former lead singer of Extreme, which inspired extreme apathy on the part of all Van Halen fans.

85) Ever since short, chinless Michael Keaton was cast in BATMAN in 1989, every actor who has played the character since then has tried to do that same dumb scratchy voice.

86) The DIFF’RENT STROKES curse, which has affected all the young stars of that show. Dano Plato committed suicide. Todd Bridges has been to prison. And Gary Coleman had all kinds of health and personal problems before his death at the age of 40.

87) The characters from THAT 70’S SHOW never used any slang from the 70s. In fact, they often used phrases from the 80s like “awesome” or  words that weren‘t even invented until the 90s, like “skank.” Basically, they got the “look” of the show right, and everything else wrong. As a guy who grew up in the 70s, this bothers me a lot!

88) Steve Guttengerg -- how the hell did this guy get a career? And did we really need 6 POLICE ACADEMY movies?

89) Tom Cruise jumping on the couch on THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW, in an attempt to show America how much he loved his then-girlfriend, Katie Holmes. He acted the way a gay guy would act if he were trying to prove to everyone that he was straight.

90) The fact that the Academy Award usually does not go to the “Best Picture.” It often goes to the movie that the Academy members think is the most “important” -- regardless of whether they have seen it or not.

91) The way that Marvel and DC copy all the popular male super-heroes to make female super-heroes.

Supergirl, Batgirl, Spider-Woman, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel… Give me a break! Other than Wonder Woman, the list of super-heroines who have successfully starred in their own series is very short.

92) THE NEW MONKEES, an attempt to duplicate the success of the original show, was a dismal failure in 1988.

93) The death of rock and roll, which occurred some time around the turn of the century. We never saw it coming. Somehow, every rock band in America just faded away, leaving only the Foo Fighters, who are good, but they are not anyone’s favorite band...

94) The years 2000 to 2009 are considered the worst decade ever for music, movies, TV, and just about everything else. You won’t get any argument from me about that!

95) When the movie studios told us that our DVD’s were out of date and we had to upgrade to Blu-Ray. I have never bought a Blu-Ray and I never will. My DVD’s are fine, thank you! You know it’s just a matter of time before they come out with a new format and they’ll tell you your Blu-Rays are now obsolete.

96) Fashion models used to be beautiful and glamorous. But sometime around the turn of the century, someone got the idea of using actresses instead of models as spokeswomen for cosmetic and hair products. Now they keep trying to convince us that semi-attractive girls like Sarah Jessica Parker, Tina Fey and Queen Latifah are “Cover Girls.” These girls are fives at best, and they do not represent anyone’s standard of beauty.

97)  The DISCO DAZZLER, the worst super-hero ever created. Originally intended to be part of a cross-promotional effort with Casablanca Records. Dazzler was also supposed to be featured in a movie starring Bo Derek. When all the promotional partners dropped

out, Marvel decided to go ahead and launch the character anyway. They shoved her down readers’ throats, putting her in issues of X-MEN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. But good taste prevailed, and the character never really caught on.

98) This obsession that Hollywood has with reviving every old pulp hero from the 1930s. The fact is, there are only one or two pulp heroes that the public continues to enjoy -- Tarzan, for one. But all the rest -- the Phantom, Doc Savage, the Green Hornet, the Shadow -- and yes, even the Lone Ranger -- no one gives a crap about any more. Let those old heroes rest in peace. They’ve all been replaced by newer heroes who are much cooler.

99) The Judd Apatow school of film-making, wherein actors are encouraged to do numerous different takes on the same scene, and the “funniest” ones are used in the movie. Then when you watch the deleted scenes, you realize that the scenes they used were no better or worse than the scenes they passed on. It’s just random “ad lib” filmmaking with no reliance at all on an actual quality script.

100) Out of all the great talents that have come and gone from SNL over the years, somehow ADAM SANDLER gets a free pass to keep making bad movies for the rest of his life. There have been so many people who were so much funnier than Sandler on SNL over the years -- but somehow, this hack gets to keep churning out two turkeys every year. Just look at the list of stinkers -- LITTLE NICKY, GROWN-UPS, GROWN-UPS 2, BEDTIME STORIES, CLICK, JACK & JILL, THAT’S MY BOY -- when will it all end? Has any other comic in history been allowed to make so many bad movies and to continue to have a career? I just don’t get it!

CUTTING THE CORD ON CABLE

By Barry Dutter

It finally happened. After more than 30 years, I cut the cord on cable.
It was not an easy decision to make. I am strongly resistant to new technology. Yet when Time Warner made their latest rate hike (from $95 a month to a whopping $126 a month -- with no movie channels and no additional services, I might add), I knew it was time to explore other options.
My decision was made easier when I stepped out on to my balcony one day and noticed that every single one of my neighbors had a satellite dish. My neighbors are not wealthy people. They are regular working stiffs, struggling to pay their bills. The fact that they all had satellite told me one thing: it had to be cheaper than cable.
I made two phone calls. The first was to Time Warner, to complain about their skyrocketing prices and to see if they were willing to offer me a better deal. The customer service rep on the phone offered to lower my monthly rate to $110. Still too high. I told him I would call Direct TV and see if they had a  better offer.
Sure enough, Direct TV had a much better offer -- 50 bucks a month, for essentially the exact same service offered by Time Warner. I was sold. I instantly made the appointment for them to come hook up my satellite. They came three days later. And just like that, my TV was no longer wired for cable.
After that, I made one more phone call, to let Time Warmer know my business with them was done. At this point, they made a last, desperate attempt to keep my business -- they offered to knock my monthly rate down to $92 for both cable and Internet -- which was actually a great deal. It would have been my lowest cable rate in years -- but it was too late.
I had already signed a contract with DirecTV. And now, for the first time in about 30 years, I do not have a cable box attached to my TV.
I still remember the first time I ever watched cable. It was at my Aunt Mary’s house. My Aunt Mary and Uncle Jimmy were pretty well off. They were the first people I ever knew to have one of those large-screen projection TVs --you know, those early, primitive ones, where the picture only looked good from head-on. And they were the first people I ever knew to have cable TV.
This was in the mid-1970s. I remember every time we went over Aunt Mary’s house that summer, we would sit and watch cable -- mostly HBO. They kept showing the same THREE MUSKETEERS movie over and over again -- the one with Charlton Heston and Raquel Welch.
My cousin, Maria, used to refer to HBO as “Home Box,” seemingly not aware of the fact that the appeal of the channel was that is was like having a “Box Office” in your home, not just a “Box” in your home.
Back then, there were many places that did not have cable yet. You had to wait till it came to your town. I don’t remember exactly when we first got cable at my house -- it must have been in the late 1970s or the early 1980s.
But I do remember watching every new movie that came on HBO every week. Back in those days, HBO was only on 12 hours a day, not 24. It was a big deal when they first went to 24 hours.
And I remember when MTV first came out, to much fanfare. When it first debuted in 1981, MTV was not available on my cable system. When  it finally came, it became something of an obsession for my siblings and I. I remember watching the new Bruce Springsteen of Michael Jackson videos, while my Dad just stared at the TV uncomprehendingly and asking, “Can’t we just watch Magnum PI?”
And I remember the Showtime Wednesday Night movie. It was my brother, Brian, who first pointed out to me that Showtime would show a soft-core porn movie every Wednesday night. We were horny high school kids at the time, and those movies, with titles such as Sex on the Run, She’s 19 and Ready, and The Sensuous Nurse -- provided hours of entertainment.
When you consider that for most of the 1970s, the closest thing you got to a naked woman on TV was when Charlie’s Angels would jump up and down in a bikini, the Showtime Wednesday night movie was a breath of fresh air. The movies were fairly tame by today’s standards -- mostly you saw some boobs and butts, and they had strict rules about never showing any penetration  -- but for a couple of curious teens growing up in the pre-Internet Age, they were more than enough.
When I think back on my formative years, major credit must go to Linda Blair’s movies about women in prison for helping me get through puberty!
In the 1970s and 80s, when you subscribed to cable, you didn’t use a traditional remote control like you do today. They would give a you a box -- connected to your TV by a cable -- that you would set in your lap or in your chair as you flipped around the channels. Sometimes when you were bored, you would sit there pressing button after button on the cable box, desperate to find something to watch. We used to call this “playing piano.”
These days, there are so many other options besides cable -- Netflix, Hulu, Xbox, etc. -- many of which do the same things cable does, only better. You would think cable providers would do everything possible to keep costs down for their customers. The fact that they just raised their rates -- and this is before their merger with Comcast -- and that  they only offer you a great deal when you threaten to cancel their service -- tells me they need to rethink their business model -- and fast. 
We live in a time now where people are growing increasingly accustomed to getting free entertainment. It’s possible to download music and movies for free… you can even download most of the shows that air on pay channels like HBO…
The cable companies had a good run of 20 or 30 years where they had no real competition. But now there are just so many other options.
I am still willing to pay for monthly TV service at this time. I just signed a two-year contract with DirecTV. But after that time is up, I may even cut the cord on satellite.
Back in the 1980s, cable TV was almost a necessity. It provided  real alternative to network TV. If you wanted to watch channels other than the big 3, you pretty much had to subscribe to cable. You had no other option. It gave you access to dozens of other channels. But now there are others providing that same service, and most of them seem to do it cheaper.
In  time, I wouldn’t be surprised to see cable TV going the way of newspapers, magazines, DVDs and CDs. It was a product of its time, and for many years, it was the primary source of entertainment for millions of  people. But those days may be numbered.
Satellite is not perfect -- there are some apartment buildings that do not allow satellites, and others where the service won’t work at all. But it is only one of the many alternatives to cable that are available.
A few years back, I canceled my home phone account, as I no longer needed it with the rise of cell phones. I later canceled my newspaper subscriptions, as I can now read them online for free. And now, I have walked away from cable TV, something that has been part of my life since at least 1975. (That’s about 40 years, for those of you scoring at home!)
I never thought I would give up cable, but if I can do it, anyone can. And if I still want to see Linda Blair in prison, those movies are easier than  ever to find online -- and I don't have to wait till Wednesday night at 10:00 P.M.!

"THE WOLF OF WALL STREET"  REVIEW

By Barry Dutter

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is about as close as we’re ever going to get to a sequel to GOODFELLAS.  It is no accident that WOLF OF WALL STREET tries as hard as it can to recreate the look, feel and tone of that 1991 gangster film. GOODFELLAS was Scorcese’s last truly great movie. It was easily the best movie of the 90s.
And its story of a cocky bad boy who is willing to do whatever it takes to get rich, and doesn’t care who he hurts along the way, is strongly echoed in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO seems to be doing his  best impression of RAY LIOTTA, the star of GOODFELLAS, even down to the way he talks directly to the camera. (Even his hairstyle is the same!) Both films involve an unrepentant womanizer who starts out with a  cute, supportive wife but then moves on to a younger, hotter bad girl who seems to never really love him.
Both films have the lead character partying hard and doing copious amounts of drugs on their road to taking advantage of innocent people and making as much money as humanly possible. I guess the main difference is that the characters in GOODFELLAS are somehow more charming, more likable. They may be hoodlums who will slit your throat if you don’t pay them on time, but they will do it with style.

GOODFELLAS was all about living “the life” and not being a regular working-class schmuck. The "life" involved going to the nicest restaurants, having front show seats to the hottest shows in town, drinking and drugging all night, etc. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET  takes “the life” to the next level, with 175-foot yachts, huge mansions, and vacation homes in spots so exotic, they can only be described by Robin Leach.
The characters in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are not murderers or robbers. Somehow, they are even worse, because they  steal your money while pretending to help you make money. At least the guys in GODFELLAS hold a gun to your face when they rob you!
In both films, the main character gets off easy. In GOODFELLAS, Henry Hill rats out his fellow gangsters so he doesn’t have to serve any time in jail. In THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, Jordan Belfort ends up serving 22 months of a three-year sentence. A quick search of Wikipedia reveals that he never paid back the $160 million in restitution he was ordered to pay his victims. He still works as a highly-paid motivational speaker.
I have to admit, I was really disappointed to learn that Belfort never really paid for his crimes. I spent three hours watching a guy commit some of the worst sins imaginable, living this decadent life, feeling secure that his downfall was inevitable, and that he would surely get what was coming to him in the end.
Instead, he gets off with a slap on the wrist. Okay, so he can never work as a stockbroker again. Big deal. He writes two best-selling novels about his crimes, and makes a ton of money as a motivational speaker today. (He even has a cameo in the friggin’ movie, for God's sake!)

The lack of punishment left me with mixed feelings about the film. In GOODFELLAS, when Henry Hill gave up his life of crime and left that world behind (seemingly) forever, it was a huge deal. Spending the rest of his life living like a schmuck in witness protection meant he could never live the high life again. That was a devastating blow to him, even worse than a long prison sentence.
But Jordan Belfort is still making tons of money, and he is still free to live how he chooses. It’s almost like the message of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is, “Do whatever it takes to make money. Rob, steal, cheat people. It doesn’t matter, because you will never have to face any real consequences.”
Setting aside those qualms, the movie is a fun ride. It’s three hours long, and unlike that other recent period “reality-based” crime drama, AMERICAN HUSTLE, it actually has enough story to sustain its length. Did THE WOLF OF WALL STREET need to be three hours? No. You could have cut an hour out of it and still kept all the important story points. Some scenes go on too long. There is a “comedy” sequence when Leonardo DiCaprio first tries explaining his new penny-stock business to his idiot friends, when they all get distracted and keep trying to change the topic. This scene could easily have been cut.
Another comedy scene where Leo and the boys discuss the finer points of dwarf-tossing, is mildly amusing,  but also would have been an easy cut. The most famous scene in GOODFELLAS, the "Do I amuse you?" scene, perhaps the single greatest movie scene of the 90s, was largely improvised by Joe Pesci. Some of these comedy scenes in TWOWS have the same "improvisatory" feel to them, but the difference is, none of the actors in the new movie has the same sense of danger that Pesci brought to his role.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET has many scenes of Leo standing with a microphone in front of his employees, trying to rouse them with an inspirational speech. We kind of get the point the first time that that his speeches are great at rallying the troops. I can definitely see why this role would appeal to any actor -- DiCario seems to spend half the movie giving speeches to his underlings. (None of my bosses ever had a microphone in the office. Maybe I would have been more motivated if they had!)
DiCaprio brings a lot of enthusiasm to his role, (It should be noted that his role involves sniffing coke off of his wife's boobs and random hookers' butts!) and his performance carries the film. You may not like the character he plays, but you definitely want to know what he's going to do next.
As a filmmaker, Scorcese remains as vital as ever, but he seems to be repeating himself more, sometimes even within the same movie. (Look at THE AVIATOR, where the story seemed to consist of: Invent a plane, bed a starlet, invent another plane, bed another starlet.)
It’s interesting to note how many movies have a hot blonde as the object of unattainable perfection, just as Hitchcock did in his best movies so long ago. Scorcese went down that road before with a never-better Sharon Stone in CASINO, and WOLF OF WALL STREET continues that tradition with the stunning Margot Robbie, an actress who I had never seen before but she has apparently been busy for years working for film and TV both here and in her native Australia.
She is quite the knock-out. She looks great in her clothes, and let’s face it, out them. This film has more nudity in it than you would expect from a 71-year-old director.
And the language! 506 F-bombs, the new record for a major Hollywood movie! (It wasn’t until I got home later and checked that I realized that someone had actually counted.)
I, for one, can’t wait till THE WOLF OF WALL STREET comes to network TV. They will either have to cut out 2 hours of cursing, or find fun, new ways of dubbing over the F-word with less offensive words. It will be the greatest editing challenge of all time, and it will be a blast to see what they come up with!
The acting in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is strong, for the most part. But I thought Jonah Hill laid it in a little thick. He was effective in a quieter role in MONEYBALL. Here, he might as well wear a sign that says, “I am a gay Jew!”
I am getting sick of Leonardo DiCaprio starring in every Scorcese movie. This Bromance needs to end. This is probably their best movie together, so it would be a great time to end their collaboration. (Maybe it’s time for Scorcese to make one last movie with Robert DiNero and Joe Pesci!)
Out of all the most acclaimed directors who came up in the 70s -- Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian Depalma -- Scorcese is the only one who still makes movies that matter.
It looks like WOLF OF WALL STREET will not be a huge hit for him, because a  lot of people are turned off by the subject matter. I can’t say I blame them. The film does glorify a contemptuous asshole who has no regard for all the people he hurts.
This movie takes place in the late 80s and early 90s, decades after the glamorous 60s and 70s era of GOODFELLAS.
The new movie makes you miss the days when if you didn’t like someone, you just whacked them. Everybody understood it was nothing personal. It was just business.
The characters in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are engaged in different kind of business, it just feels a lot dirtier. 

MY BREAKING BAD REVIEW (MAJOR SPOILERS!)

By Barry Dutter

Over the past five years, I kept hearing that BREAKING BAD was the best show in the history of television. I figured that had to be an exaggeration. There was no way it could be that good -- could it?
Finally, after much badgering from the guys at work, I decided to give BREAKING BAD a try, aided by my new best friend, Netflix!

The show got off to a great start -- I watched the first 4 episodes in one night, which, for a guy with no attention span like myself, is a testament to the show‘s quality. Right from the start, BREAKING BAD had me hooked with gripping storytelling and intriguing characters.
The pace slowed down a bit in season two, as the show seemed to lose that sense of  “Oh my God, I can’t wait to see what happens next!”
But things picked up again with season three, when Gus Fring became a regular character on the show. Gus is one of TV’s all-time greatest villains and the tension between Walt and Gus made for powerful drama.
Gus Fring never lost his temper, never raised his voice, and seemed all the more dangerous because of it.
As soon as Gus arrived on the scene, you knew that he and Walt would have to have some kind of showdown. It ended the only way it could, with Gus dead and Walt looking for new business partners.
I found the demise of Gus Fring to be a bit of a letdown, for two reasons. 1) You never got to see Walt and Gus have one last face-off, and 2) This was where Walt took on the role of Master Planner, the guy who knows what everyone is going to do before they do it,  and can create whatever complicated weapons he needs to exact his revenge.
It’s great that Walt can rig an exploding wheelchair, but wasn’t this guy just an ordinary schoolteacher just a few months prior? I know he taught chemistry, but it just seemed a bit of a stretch.
(Likewise, in the finale, when Walt rigged the remote-control machine gun, again, credibility was pushed a bit far. In order for Walt’s plans to work, so many things had to go exactly his way: the bad guys had to all be standing in the right spot, Walt’s car had to be parked in the perfect spot, oh yeah, and the jerry-rigged gun had to actually work.)
Those were the moments when I thought BREAKING BAD was going a little too over the top.
For that matter, I’m still not clear how Walt ended up getting shot by one of his own bullets in the finale. I mean, he was the one holding the remote control, and he knew exactly when the gun was going off.
I know Walt had to die at the end, but it seems strange that writer/creator Vince Gilligan had Walt gunned down by his own weapon. I guess the best way to look at it is to say that it’s hard to write a great finale for a beloved show, and the ending of BREAKING BAD was a lot more satisfying than most.
All in all, the finale touched all the bases, wrapped up all the loose ends, and left viewers feeling pretty good, as opposed to the endings of shows like the THE SOPRANOS, which left viewers feeling unfulfilled, and LOST, which left them feeling like they had just wasted the last six years of their lives.
BREAKING BAD was the story of one man’s descent into pure evil, and the corruption of another man along the way. When the series begins, Jessie is a low-level drug dealer. But by the time the show has ended, Jessie has been tortured, beaten, enslaved, forced to kill on more than one occasion -- basically, ever since Walt met Jessie, Jessie’s life was one series of horrible events after another.
Yes, Jessie made a lot of money, but by the end of the fifth season, he was willing to give away all his money just to be free of Walt. When we see Jessie driving off into the night in the finale, we are led to believe that Jessie has been redeemed. Jessie refuses to kill Walt at the end when he has a chance; this seems to indicate that yes, Jessie was once willing to stoop to Walt’s level, but never again.
We don’t know where he will go when the show is over or what he will do to make money, but one thing is certain: Jessie will never cook meth again. The show’s 62 episodes really put Jessie through the ringer.
On the last episode of BREAKING BAD, Walter White summed up his criminal career by saying, “I did it for me. And I was good at it.”
But was he really good at it? Seems to me that the only part that he was good at was cooking meth. He was almost a total failure in every other aspect of the business. He made one bad decision after another, continually forming alliances with people who were either too unpredictable or too dangerous to get involved with, and the only reason he survived as long as he did was mostly through sheer dumb luck.
(Examples: The evil drug lord Tuco was killed by Hank, not by anything that Walt did. Walt was nearly executed by the twin hitmen, but was saved from a last-minute text by Gus Fring. Pure luck.)
For a smart guy, Walt could be pretty dumb, at times. When his RV died out in the desert, it was Jessie who had the idea of creating a make-shift battery. When Walt and his cronies needed to erase a video tape that was in police custody, it was Jessie who had the idea of using a giant magnet to erase the tape. Yes, it was Walt who would have to figure out ways to make these things work, but sometimes Walt indeed to be reminded by people dumber than him just how smart he was.
Was BREAKING BAD the best TV show of all time? I would say no, because it did drag a bit in season two, and the resolution was not perfect. The one episode about the housefly was by far one of the worst episodes of any TV show I have ever seen. I would call that one a bit of self-indulgence on the part of the writers. Also, there were some subplots that worked better than others. The bit about Marie being a kleptomaniac really went nowhere and didn‘t add anything to the show.
I still question whether or not the actor who played Walt’s brother-in-law was well-cast. He seemed to me he would be more at home in a sitcom than with the heavy-hitters on BREAKING BAD.
But BB did keep you on the edge of your seat, perhaps more than any TV show in history. I’ve never really been a fan of any TV drama. I’ve always enjoyed comedies more. At one point, I might have said that M*A*S*H was the best TV show ever. At another point, I might have said THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW or ALL IN THE FAMILY.
But BREAKING BAD did get me to watch an entire drama from beginning to end, and that was something I had never done before (and probably will never do again, because, let's face it, after BREAKING BAD, any other TV drama would be a letfdown.) In terms of the way it was structured, BB was really more like a novel than a TV show.
So I have to give the makers of the show kudos for that. Thanks, Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston, for making me care about a  TV drama and for keeping me guessing all the way to the end.
Much of the credit for the show’s success has to go to Cranston, who proved on MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE that he could he funny, but he really showed his depth here. After seeing him play a goofy sitcom dad for years, who would have suspected that he could go on to play one of TV’s all-time great dramatic roles?
No one ever knew that Malcolm’s dad could be so scary. To me, the only false moment bin the entire run of the show came when Walt confronted the bully who was picking on his son. I just didn't buy ity it. Otherwise, Cranston's performance was flawless.
Aaron Paul deserves equal credit for his raw portrayal of Jessie, whose character went through quite a gauntlet as well. Right from the start, Jessie never took any crap from anyone. He started out full of youthful anger -- no one on TV will ever say “Yo bitch!” with as much venom as Jessie could spit. But by the end of the show, Jessie was a hollow shell of his old self. He had lost his spark, but still, he was happy to be alive.
Equal praise must go to Bob Odenkirk, who brought much-needed humor to the show. His fast-talking character, Saul Goodman, really injected a shot in the arm to BREAKING BAD. I’ve been a fan of Odenkirk’s ever since the late, lamented BEN STILLER SHOW, and it was fun to see him show off his semi-dramatic chops here.
Really, most of the characters on BB were memorable, even supporting players like Mike the hatchet man. Badger. Jessie’s junkie girlfriend, Jane. The only one I really didn’t like on the show was Lydia, both because of the way she was written and the way the actress played her. She came across as indecisive, desperate and weak, where all the other criminals on the show were portrayed as strong and cunning.  Something about Lydia just annoyed me from the start. I get that she was a businesswoman who was out of her element, and understandably nervous, but the weak portrayal of her character fell flat. Maybe if a different actress had played her I might have liked the her more. (Penelope Cruz, maybe?)
As for Walt’s wife -- I was not as annoyed  by Skyler as most BB fans seemed to be. I thought actress Anna Gunn did a fine job, and in many ways, her character went through as many incarnations as Walt: loving wife, betrayed spouse, faithful co-conspirator, terrified victim.
Gunn expertly conveyed all of these incarnations and more. It’s got to be tough for a woman to see her husband turn into a criminal genius. But Skyler’s journey was every bit as fascinating s Walt’s.
The only misstep in the Skyler story was the resolution to the Skyler’s tax-cheating boss storyline. For several episodes, he is a major character. Then he accidentally trips and falls, bumps his head and becomes paralyzed. That’s it?
Seems like Walt should have had more of a hand in dealing with the end of that character.
When watching BB, sometimes you got the impression that even the writers didn’t know what was going to happen next. Most of the time, this worked to the show’s benefit. But occasionally, it resulted in storylines that just didn’t seem to resolve themselves in a satisfactory way.
Like I said, when you have a show this compelling, it’s hard to come up with an ending that will satisfy everyone. In the end, Walt made sure that all the money would be passed on to his son and he killed all his enemies before he died. He even freed Jessie, which was not his primary reason for entering Jack’s lair, but once he saw the opportunity, he jumped on it. And he left behind a family that would never be the same.
Walt’s wife will forever have to live with the horror of what she did as an accomplice to a master criminal. (Not to mention that she is stuck running a car wash that I’m sure she would rather not be in charge of.) Marie is left to mourn her late husband, Hank, whose death was surely the most shocking one on the show. (After all those years of brilliant detective work, to be gunned down so ignobly…surely Hank deserved a better fate. But then, BB never promised that everyone would have a happy ending.)
Walt Jr. will forever have to live with the fact that his father was a lying, murdering drug dealer. And Jessie will have to live with all the hell that he went through as he struggles to rebuild his life.
Walt’s final year on Earth was certainly an eventful one. In the end, it was not the cancer that killed Walt. It was his own ambition and his own regret at having missed out a big business opportunity the first time around.
Who among us can’t relate to Walter White? We’ve all had opportunities in our lives that we may have passed up on. We’ve all had regrets. The difference is, most of us don’t pursue a life of crime as a way to make up for past slights. That’s why it was so much fun to watch Walt on his journey. Through him, we got to live vicariously, as we watched him make moves we would never attempt in real life. We got to see him try to recapture all the things that had eluded him in life: Wealth. Power. Success.
On the last episode of BB, the show climaxed with a song by  Badfinger called “Baby Blue.”
I’ve always loved Badfinger but I was never a big fan of that song. Now, of course, I’ve developed  new appreciation for it, and I will never listen to it the same way again. The song, about  guy who didn’t treat his woman right, and paid the price -- does not completely sum up the show, but it sure as hell worked in the context of that episode.
As Walt lay there dying in a puddle of his own blood, and the we heard the opening line of the song, “I guess I got what I deserved…” it created an indelible image that ranks as one of TV’s all-time most memorable moments.
The song had a double meaning because BB was all about Walt’s own creation -- his “baby blue” -- the crystal blue meth.
It was the thing that saved him from an unbearably boring and unsatisfying life, and in the end, it was the thing that he ended up dying over.
The writers could have had Walt simply due from cancer. But that would not have pleased anyone. That would have been a cop-out ending for the show. That’s not how we wanted to see our Walter White go out.
In the end, he went out the only way he could -- he went out fighting. He was defiant to the end, and he died as the smartest guy in the room. (Even if he was dumb enough to get hit by his own bullet!)