I think I just decided to swear off of TBS, at least for a while. There really are only a select few programs I enjoy on TBS, and 90% of it is Family Guy. And then they mainly cater to the low-brow, missing-link type of individual who still enjoys a good Tyler Perry Comedy. Today I call on all of you, young and old, male and female, black or white, right or left handed, to boycott TBS.

Since I am unintentionally resistant to technologies that would revolutionize my life because I’m cheap, I have yet to have a TIVO type DVR device in my home. During the last several seconds of Family Guy last night before cutting to a commercial, Bill Engvall, Crusading Knight of the culturally destructive (and unnecessary to mention ‘retarded’) Blue Collar Comedy Tour, pops up from the bottom of the screen. Needless to say, the executives at TBS, with razor sharp exactitude have again nailed their proposed demographic, even Peking Man would stir a little in the dust with interest.

Generally TBS and other networks will do this kind of promotion to expose their advertising to the commercial-skipping TIVO population: a little annoying animated snippet at the bottom of your screen during a television program. This time, however Bill paused the show mid-joke and basically said, ‘Sorry for the interruption, please, please watch my show. If you don’t, I’ll probably have to go back to turning tricks out of my North Hollywood trailer.’ There was a little reading between the lines on my part.

Shortly after his 15 second pitch, he unpauses Family Guy with his faux remote, and another several seconds later, Family Guy ends, and a full-length Bill Engvall Show commercial starts. How desperate and shitty can your programming be to pull such a boner? Join me in boycotting TBS.

There are very few promotional emails I actually enjoy getting, although I get about a dozen a day (these are subscription emails, not spam. I get nearly 1000 spam emails a day to my work email). The one from Geeks is one of my favorites. I don’t think I’ve actually bought anything from them yet but I love seeing what deals I could have. Their latest email finally had me pulling plastic out of my wallet until I was almost done checking out.

According to the subject of the email, I would expect to be “Seeing Double for Half the Price @ Geeks.com.” Doesn’t this speak to the bargain hunting region of your brain, the one connected directly to that nerve center also known as the magnetic strip of your credit card? It makes me think that there’s a promo where I get double for half the price of one.

In the email, the following promotion follows:

This ad confirms my prior inclination that I will in fact be receiving two of something for the price of one-half, saying “Buy one get one free just 34.99 each.”

A new-customer-registration sub plot thickens

Of course in order to purchase from Geeks you have to create a user account. I attempted to use my email address but that one was already taken, obviously, because that’s how I got the email promo in the first place. I try to log in using that email but I’ve never bought from Geeks, so the taken email address doesn’t work. So I give them one of my gmail addresses. When I’m getting ready to check out, it appears that there are too many units of the product in my shopping cart and no way to edit that on that page. So I have to start all over, but of course, now my gmail email is already registered but I haven’t registered an actual account to buy anything because I guess it creates your purchasing account after you’re done with the purchase because I try logging in with the gmail address and still nothing.

So now I have Geeks emails going to two of my addresses but still no account is created. So far so awesome.

So anyway, I finally get to where I’m about to pay and notice that I’m paying twice as much as I thought. I go back to the email promotion and sure enough in small print in between promos on the email it says that the deal is really just two for one:

Even the star next to the price in the email isn’t directly next to the bad news, it’s just next to the promo code. The bad news is in the fine print below: that you’re really paying 69.99 for two units, not 34.99. It does read ‘price with code: 34.99 each’ under the price, but that to me sounded like one unit was 34.99 and then you get a second one free. Wouldn’t any logically thinking person think this after all the things that had been previously read?

I work for an internet retailer and we’d never put that kind of price trickery knowingly into an email. I can’t really chalk it up as an honest mistake on their part because when we send out promo emails half a dozen pairs of eye balls goes through the email carefully before it gets sent out, and I’m sure we’re much smaller than Geeks.

Obviously there is no truth to the title simply because Utah already has a lot of deer and only Chris Cohen, former member of Deerhoof, is coming with Nedelle and their band ‘Cryptacize.’  I am pretty excited about the show this coming Saturday and hopefully I’ll finally have something interesting to talk about happening in this particular place.

The above  picture was snapped on my crappy camera phone while Jenna and I were cruising by a clearing right on Center St. in Provo near Seven Peaks.  They all looked like less than a year old.  I guess I’m glad that Provo has at least evolved passed the collective civility stage of driving around with the posse in the back of a big loud diesel pick up shooting anything alive and furry.  It is telling, however, that of all the things happening on Center Street these days, a bunch of deer in a clearing wins the blog entry.

Coming up: A review of the other Amenities Provo Center St. has to offer.

We are going to Kilby Court to see Cryptacize on May 31st. Deerhoof’s incredible ex-bass-ex-guitar player Chris Cohen backs up Nedelle, who’s also toured with Jens Lekman. Jessica (who’s played with Nedelle back in the day) says that Nedelle is the real star of Cryptacize and that Chris keeps a steady back ground role. I’ve never been to Kilby, of course Jenna is much more hip than I ever was and she has been. Ghetto would be where she rates it.

Lakers and San Antonio — now tied at 81s. Incredible.

Any warm blooded creature who has spent an hour or more under a Southern Californian Palm tree has felt the essences of Styrofoam and plastic emanating through the pores of his/her skin, contaminating him/her immediately. Yet still, I’d rather deal with that than Utah Valley. Yet I do feel embarrassed to appear so hateful towards the place I am forced to call home. In fact I just moved into my own place right in short walking distance to the corner of Center and University where there are some diversions and restaurants there that are pleasant Salad Day material establishments.

Jazz Funeral

To the astonishment of all my imaginary readers I was sad for the Jazz downfall early in the playoffs. Salt Lake still ranks pretty high in my list of highly inhabitable cities. But being from South Pasadena, I must furl my brow at the television in some pro Lakers pretense, which has so far duped even Jenna, my closest observer. She of course is an individual of independent perspective and wishes the Lakers to lose asap no matter how.

We did just barely watch LA come from 20 points behind to 71 to 77.

Utah Valley is pretty much the only place I can think of where something this stupid could actually happen and be quasi controversial. Apparently there’s some magoo named Nathan Langford from River Falls, Wisconsin who gets a kick out of standing around in the rain in some creepy cloak and singing aloud to himself around BYU campus. This in itself is about as annoying as hell and typical of the Brian Regan/Jack Johnson worshiping BYU crowd, but it gets even better. Some other kid apparently told the police on this kid. Cloak Boy was told to stop or he would be cited for “disturbing the peace.”

It’s amusing how these two traits (being as annoying as hell and also being a bureaucracy/authority loving tattle taler) accurately describe a lot of people that attend BYU. Its kind of like seeing a dog chase its own tail. But wait, it gets better.

There are now a couple of support groups on facebook defending this guy. I’m guessing these people are also probably die-hard Kirby Heyborne fans, secretly wish EFY was for college students too, and have gone on at least one group date where they raced lawn mowers.

Seriously, choose a cause with some meaning, like maybe the organization to sew Madonna’s lips together. They seriously are trying to organize protests and make t-shirts. It reminds me several years back when a bunch of kids were outside the Museum of Art protesting the arrival of some Rodin sculptures, including the famous “The Kiss,” perhaps Rodin’s most important work, because of how titillating they found it. Many BYU students will do anything in their power to chase culture away from Provo, one of the most culturally deprived college towns I know of.

Anyway, my views always side with the Libertarians, and so jerk boy or whatever his name is should have the liberty to stand out there and sing, and whoever went to the police should be drug out into a parking lot and beat, and the BYU Clown Patrol (aka Police) should grow a backbone and not let tattle talers push them around.