Toledo Nights 1: Glee, The Funny Bone & Deposed King
Last night was an interesting night to be performing in Ohio. The pending “decision” of LeBron James at 9 pm was perfectly preceded by a show at the Toledo Funny Bone. But the day was just full of perplexing and disappointing news.
Glee was nominated for 19 Emmys. That number of Emmy nominations is usually reserved for shows like Six Feet Under (what I believe is the best show ever made) or, in an alternate universe where white people are not afraid to nominate shows full of nuanced black characters, The Wire. But Glee? Between Twilight and Glee I am starting to think that perhaps teenage girls and gay men should not be having quite the influence on our pop culture as once seemed desirable. The show had a couple of promising episodes to start the show, but veered so far off into a cheap and campy format (I am not including the outstanding Jane Lynch in this analysis) that it became unbearable. I feel Glee is sort of like sushi – plenty of people genuinely like it, but many people just like being the type of people who say they like sushi. The show is not good. I hope Modern Family (Arrested Development Jr.) wins.
In the drama category Breaking Bad must win or I will be forced to dedicate an entire blog to its greatness.
(My top shows of all time, in no certain order are Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The West Wing, Arrested Development and Breaking Bad).
So with bad news already beginning with Glee’s dominance of the Emmy nominations and the clouds ominously gathering in Ohio (literally and metaphorically) I headed to the Toledo Funny Bone.
I noticed that the audience was about 93% white and suburban, which sometimes (almost always) is a bad omen. But things started turning around immediately as I was brought on stage to Rick Astley’s “Never gonna give you up.” The crowd turned out to be excellent. So with Glee scoring an early win for crap entertainment and me scoring a win for mediocre entertainment it was up to the main event – where would LeBron go?
And LeBron announced that he was taking his talents to South Beach. Here are the repercussions of this decision:
1) Mass suicide in Cleveland – seriously Cleveland is a nice city with good people that gets dumped on all the time. Now their own son has spit on them. It is very sad.
2) Making Me a Kobe Bryant fan versus the Heat. I never thought I could root for Kobe in any situation, but like a pro wrestling move there has been an instant realignment.
3) A lot of unjustified hatred from Knick and Bulls fans. You would have been villains lite if he had gone to your team and you had no other claim to him other than an unjustified feeling of entitlement. Cleveland is the only town with a legitimate gripe here.
4) Pat Riley is now the Suge Knight of the NBA and will be played by Gordon Gecko in a biopic (Michael Douglas is not good enough). I expect to see Dwyane Wade and LeBron to throw cash at a video camera with Chris Bosh dancing in the background while Pat Riley, a la Suge Knight, calls out Dan Gilbert.
5) Led to a Twitter explosion of creativity by me on possible names for the new Miami trio. I came up with Miami Pound Machine because a) it is a clever pun; b) this team will crush the competition and c) it captures the homoerotic undertones of this bizarre reality show episode.
6) Miami fans are about to become the worst people on Earth. LeBron reminds me of private school girls from NYC , though this type exist in lots of places (and I even dated one once). You take a hot shallow chick (the Miami scene) and add to it a talented, wealthy career driven person that is ugly (LeBron) and they have kids that are not as smart or talented as the Dad because he married a shallow hot chick, but not as attractive as the Mom because she married a wealthy ogre. Their offspring is demanding, insecure and shallow all at the same time. And now they will populate the stands of the Miami Heat. Good luck the rest of the NBA. 49 other states are rooting for you.