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I just got Early Edition:  The Second Season today, it had been on my Wish List for while now, and  finally decided to get it.  If you are not familiar with this show, you can read about it HERE.

This show ran on CBS from 1996-2000.  The main character is Gary (Kyle Chandler).  His wife kicked him out of the house, so he moved into a hotel room.   Shortly thereafter, he starts receiving the Chicago Sun-Times every day, a subscription he n ever ordered always comes with the same orange cat.  Turns out that it’s TOMORROW’S paper, delivered a day early.

Gary’s pal, Chuck (Fisher Stevens) wants to use the information in the paper for personal gain (buying stocks, playing the horses, the lottery, etc).  But Gary wants to use the paper for good, so every week’s show was about Gary going around saving people from fires, accidents, and other bad things.  And after he does his good deeds, he sees the story in the paper change right before his eyes -  a headline that says 10 PEOPLE DIE IN FIRE, changes to 10 PEOPLE SAVED FROM FIRE.  Although there were one or two occasions when Gary needed money, and he did use the paper for his own personal gain, it was not something he wanted to make a practice of.

Gary is joined in his adventures by another good friend, Marissa (Shanésia Davis-Williams). Later in the series, he buys McGinty’s Bar, where he and his friends like to hang out, and gets a love interest in the person of Erica (Kristy Swanson), a bar employee.

This was one of those shows that the whole family could watch, there’s no swearing, sex, or violence.  It’s a truly enjoyable show, the sort we seldom see anymore.

I seriously hope they will follow through and release the final two seasons on DVD.  It’s always a source of annoyance when I’m collecting a TV series, and they either take forever to release later seasons, or just never bother to release them at all.

So, what would YOU do if you got tomorrow’s paper today?  Would you become a do-gooder like Gary, or would you be more like Chuck and want to use it for personal gain?  Or maybe a little of both?  If you work, say, as a low-paid clinislim review writer, maybe arranging to win the Powerball jackpot would be okay.  I’d probably do that.  But I’d feel better about it if I used some of the money to help others, donate to charity, etc.

If you’ve ever watched soap operas, you know that they often “age” younger characters for storyline purposes.  It’s known as “soap opera rapid aging syndrome”, or “SORAS” for short.  It’s also fairly common for characters from one soap to cross over to another, most notably in the case of “The Young & the Restless” and its sister soap, “The Bold & the Beautiful”.

Years ago on B&B, a character named Amber gave birth to a stillborn baby.  Amber had a cousin named Becky who had just given birth, as well, but Becky was planning to give the child up for adoption.  Amber decided to take Becky’s baby and pass it off to her husband, Rick, as theirs.  She was afraid that her marriage would fall apart without the baby.  That baby was named Eric Forrester, Jr.

A few years later, a guy named Deacon came to town.  He was little Eric’s biological father, and was bad news.  He wanted his son, who he called “Little D” back, and he resented the Forresters for keeping him from his son.  To get revenge on the family, he married naive young Bridget, Rick’s younger sister.  They eloped to Las Vegas.  Unknown to Bridget, he called her father from their hotel room, and left the phone off the hook, as her horrified father heard him taking his daughter’s virginity.

Not long after that, Deacon began an affair with Bridget’s mother, Brooke.  Brooke became pregnant, and although she tried to protect her daughter by lying about the baby’s paternity (even going so far as marrying some guy named Whip), the truth eventually came out.  Bridget divorced her cheating husband, ands was angry with her mother for a long time.  They reconciled when the baby, a girl called Hope, was born.

Deacon got custody of Little D, Amber & Rick divorced, and Amber left town.  Deacon married a woman named Macy, who later died.  Deacon had become an alcoholic and went to rehab, and Little D went to live with Becky’s parents.  Becky herself had long since died of cancer.

Years later, Amber re-surfaced, but this time on Y&R.  Deacon returned not too long after that.  He’d always had the hots for Amber, and blackmailed her into sleeping with him, even though she was in love with Daniel.  Daniel, an artist, had gotten embroiled in a rather convoluted art forgery storyline that involved a murder, and Daniel was being framed for said murder.  Deacon could keep Daniel from doing serious time for murder, but only if Amber married him.  The wedding never took place, and Daniel was able to prove his innocence.  He and Amber got married in a small ceremony at their apartment, under the Seagull lighting, with family and close friends in attendance.

It came out that Little D was living with Amber’s mother, Tawny.  Right now, Deacon isn’t in the picture…not sure if he left town, or went to jail for his participation in the art thing.  Amber, who still considered herself to be Little D’s mother, wants the boy to come and live with her and Daniel.  Daniel, however, does not agree, he doesn’t want kids now, and he says he’s not sure if he ever will.  This, of course, is causing problems in their marriage.

Meanwhile, over at B&B, Hope was SORASed to a teenager.  She’s dating a guy named Oliver, and is also the spokesmodel for a line in her family’s fashion design house, called “Hope for the Future”.

Here’s where the stupid comes in.  Today, on the preview for tomorrow’s episode of Y&R, they briefly showed Little D.  I only got a glimpse, but the kid playing Little D looked to be maybe 10-11 years old!  B&B comes on right after Y&R, and on today’s episode, Hope was making out with Oliver.  What is wrong with this picture?

Little D is supposed to be OLDER than Hope.  Do these writers think we are stupid?  Do they not realize that many people watch both shows, and are aware of the fact that Little D and Hope share the same father, and that the boy was born first?  If they are going to have both characters on the canvas at the same time, on two shows that are on one right after the other, at least be consistent with the SORASing!  They have Hope as age 16-17, so that would make Little D in his early 20′s.

Something else that I think is dumb – normally, when they SORAS a character, the character has been off the canvas for a while, before they bring on the older actor.  But on Y&R, the character of Abby, who was supposed to 14, is being aged to her early 20′s.  So, one day, she’s flirting with some older guy and sneaking booze from the family liquor cabinet, and the next, she’s legally old enough to have sex with said guy (which I heard was part of the reason for the SORASing), as well as drink in a bar.  WTF?

Sigh.  What can you do?  They’re just TV shows, anyway!

So I’m not much into talking about food at the moment, being that I was sick all of last week, and haven’t cooked or eaten any.  I’m telling you, who needs a weight loss supplement after a week of being sick like this?  Anyhoo, I’m finally feeling alive again, and was able to go to that beer dinner up in Portsmouth on Sunday night.  But still, no cooking news for a while.

So what do some people do when sick?  Read trashy novels, like this one, called Butterfly, by Kathryn Harvey.  As you can probably figure out from the photo on the book’s cover, this is NOT a nice wholesome G-rated book.  It’s loaded with sex, so if you don’t like this sort of book, then don’t read it.  Srsly.

I first read this book back in the 80′s.  I was working at a bookstore at the time, and one of the other women there had picked it up, and was raving about how good it was.  So I bought myself a copy (we got a 40% discount), and agreed, it was quite delightfully trashy.  I re-read it yet again when I was sick.

Beverly Highland is a self-made wealthy woman who is the mysterious owner of a high-priced women’s “club” called “Butterfly”, located upstairs from a ritzy Rodeo Drive men’s shop.  Membership is restricted to only the most beautiful, wealthy, and powerful women.  At Butterfly, women can experience any fantasies they wish, and yes, they mean sexual.

The storylines alternate between three of Butterfly’s members, Trudie, Linda, and Jessica, each of who has her own reasons for seeking what Butterfly has to offer.  But the main storyline focuses on the life of the mysterious Beverly.

Born Rachel Dywer to impoverished parents, with a twin sister who was given away at birth, the then-homely young girl runs away from home at age 14, after being brutally raped by her own father.  On the roads, she meets a guy named Danny Mackay, who she quickly falls in love with and starts sleeping with.  But Danny is not a nice guy, first, he forces Rachel to live and work at some sleazy whorehouse, while he keeps most of her pay.  He also gets Rachel pregnant, and he cruelly forces her to get an abortion, even though she desperately didn’t want one.  She vows that one day, somehow, some way, she WILL get her revenge on Danny Mackay.

Rachel transforms herself into Beverly by getting plastic surgery, as she begins her climb to the top as a successful businesswoman.  As time passes, she surrounds herself with people who were either screwed over by Danny somehow, or by men like him.  Meanwhile, Danny is on his own ascent to greatness, first by becoming a very successful televangelist, and later, as a Presidential hopeful.  Of course, he’s running as a conservative Republican, speaking out against stuff like prostitution and abortion (two things that he forced upon poor Rachel, what a hypocrite!).

Beverly and her close circle of friends and associates keep a very close eye on the comings and goings of Danny Mackay.  Beverly actually supports his campaign, financially and otherwise; Danny, of course, does not recognize her as homely little Rachel Dwyer.  Beverly is simply setting him up so that he takes his fall from grace from the highest point possible.  As you can imagine, she is seriously pissed at this sleazebag, and it’s well deserved.

You will have to read the book to see how it all goes down…why did she open Butterfly?  Does she succeed in her lifelong mission to destroy Danny?  How did things turn out for Trudie, Linda, and Jessica?  And what about the twin sister?

If you enjoy this book, then you must read the sequel, called Stars.  This book not only continues the war between Beverly and Danny, but the twin sister gets into the picture, as well.  The twin has a rather interesting history of her own, so it’s well worth reading.

If you have kids who can read, do NOT leave these books laying around on the coffee table!  Graphic sexual content, and some violence mean that you should save this for when the kids are in bed.  Enjoy!

Tonight, after the Super Bowl, there will be the debut of a new show on CBS called Undercover Boss.  You can click on that link to learn more about the show, and watch some preview videos.

The basic gist of the thing is this dude who’s the CEO of Waste Management goes to work as a regular employee; he does things like riding the garbage truck and picking up trash, cleaning nasty old porta-potties, stuff like that.  He learns a lot about what it is like to be a regular worker, and comes away from the experience with a new appreciation for his employees.

If I ruled the world, I would create a similar TV show called “Applebee’s Slaves”.  My show would not only feature top-level executives at the Applebee’s restaurant chain working as cooks and servers in their own restaurants…but they would also  be forced to live on their pay.  For six months.

The fact is that these higher-ups, who do nothing but sit in their ivory offices all day, pressure their store managers to cut costs in any way they can.  This includes forcing employees on the closing shift to work for free.  I am NOT making this up.  I worked as a cook for that hellhole years ago, and they did it to me.  The restaurant closed at midnight, and that’s what time the managers were told to clock us out.  But we were not allowed to go home until the kitchen was cleaned to the manager’s satisfaction.  This could often take as long as two hours, depending on how busy the place was close to closing time.

I was paid ten bucks an hour.  So if I had to close every night, as was usually the case, and worked five nights a week, I was basically cheated out of $100 per week.  Money that we desperately needed.  At the time, Mike was still going to school at MIT, and the only money we had to live on were from my pay and his student loans.  It wasn’t much, that was for sure.  We couldn’t even afford a car at the time…after Mike’s old Ford Bronco II died its final death, we sold it to a junkyard for $75, canceled the insurance, and took the bus.

$100 a week may seem like peanuts to these hoity-toity higher-ups, but for us, it was a lot of money.  These people make millions in salary and bonuses for doing very little hard work; they can afford to buy diamonds, fancy cars, and other expensive toys whenever they want to.  They never have to worry about how they are going to pay their rent and buy food.  They think nothing about taking food out of people’s mouths, in order to be able to afford to pay themselves high salaries.  It is truly sickening.

What they did to me and my co-workers is illegal, but Applebee’s covered it up well enough so that none of us would have any way to prove that we worked until 2AM, while only being paid for no later than 12AM.  I have no idea if they still engage in this practice or not; even if they stopped doing this, I will still never patronize another Applebee’s restaurant ever again.  They stole thousands of dollars in pay from me and my co-workers during the time I was there, they will never get another penny from me.  Ever.

If the people who made these financial decisions were forced to live our lives, on what they paid us, for six months…no dipping into bank accounts or anything…maybe, just MAYBE, they’d understand and change their ways.

I finally had enough, and walked out on my shift one night, after the manager, in his usual cost-cutting ways, cut the entire kitchen staff for the night except me and some new guy who was on his second day, and wasn’t fully trained yet.  They even sent the dishwasher home.

Then it got busy.  Very busy.  The new guy behind the line was almost useless, so I pretty much had to work all three stations.  I was getting yelled at by the manager and servers for not getting all the tickets out within the 15 minute time allotment.  Yes, they had a rule that all food had to be out within 15 minutes of the ticket coming in.  They didn’t care if the kitchen was understaffed or not..dammit, MAKE that food magically appear on the plate!

I was getting very tired of being yelled at over circumstances I had no control over.  It was the manager’s fault for cutting most of the kitchen staff, but did he offer to come behind the line and help me?  Nope, he’s too good for that!

But as I saw more and more dishes piling up at the dishwashing station, I snapped.  I realized that I’d be working until 3, maybe 4AM, doing not just the regular cleaning behind the line, but dishes as well.  For not pay once the clock hit midnight.  I said, screw this, I’m not going to take it any more.  I’m not a slave; I expect to be paid for all of the work I do, especially if I’m doing the jobs of two or three other people in addition to my own.  As the tickets kept coming in, I walked off the line, went into the back room and got my bag and my jacket, and walked right through the crowded dining room toward the door.

The manager chased after me, begged me not to go, promised he would help me if I’d stay.  Where was this offer when I needed it, when I was literally begging for help?  Screw him. let him work the line by himself and see what it’s like!  I turned around, flipped him the bird in front of all of those customers, and walked out the door.

And it felt SO GOOD!

I found another job about a week later.  I simply told the truth as to why I left Crapplebee’s, that I was being overworked and not being paid for some of my time.

This is why I have so much resentment toward overpaid executives who do little work, while they allow the ones who do most of the work to suffer.  This is why I hate companies like AIG, who take OUR tax dollars to get bailed out of a mess that THEY caused, and still hand out hefty bonuses to people who already make plenty.  For once, I want to see these people walk a few miles in our shoes, and see how they like it!

Good news for Emeril Lagasse fans!  Come March, he will be hosting a brand new prime-time show, to be called The Emeril Lagasse Show.

It won’t just be a cooking show; it sounds like it will be a combination cooking and variety show, as it will feature celebrity guests and musical acts.  As with his former Food Network cooking show, Emeril Live, there will be a house band.

Hopefully, it will be entertaining, and not have too many lame segments on stuff such as maxoderm reviews.  It’s being put out by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which of course puts out Martha’s own excellent show, so I’m expecting a lot from this!

And yes…cable-less me is going to be able to watch this!  It won’t be on Food Network or any other cable channel.  It will be on ION Television, which is available as a digital TV channel in most markets.  This is one of the great advantages of last year’s switchover to digital TV…more channels available!  Kudos to Emeril and MSLO for realizing that not all have or want cable, and putting this show on a channel where nearly everyone can see it for free!

Emeril’s new show will air on Sunday nights from 8-9PM Eastern time.  It will make its debut on March 28.  Can’t wait!