A couple weeks ago, I wrote a piece about my friends' new diet-type product, Lifesize Portions, and how it had been named as "The Good" by About.com's health expert in her 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' report on new products. (I say "diet-type" because it's not really about dieting, but changing the way you eat.) I thought it worth mentioning that KABC in Los Angeles just did a story on Lifesize Portions. I like mentioning these sort of things because it helps prove that sometimes there's actually substance to my yammerings. If you missed the broadcast or don't live in L.A., here's the report. And you get to see my pal Myles Berkowitz in action, from a safe distance. (The report notes that you can do much of what Lifesize Portions does with simple items around the house. And that's very true. But I just don't think most people want to "size" their food with a golf ball. And while people can do this, obviously most don't, which is why there is an obesity problem. That's why sometimes a really well-designed product can prompt you to do what you want to do, but haven't been.)
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My brother John passed away earlier this morning. I'll have more on it later, but he had a good, too short run. When he was diagnosed with his illness, he was given one month with no medication, and four months with medication. But the disease had a rare genetic which responded well to the treatment, and he lived another three years, which is remarkable. That's a lot of time to get your life in order, when you'd been given a month. I'd been sending him various humorous and upbeat videos and articles the last few years. He loved the Muppets, and this was one he particularly enjoyed. For reasons that will be clear, it seems like a particularly good and lunatic send-off... I can’t believe I found this. The other day you'll recall I wrote about The Greatest Musical You've Never Heard of, Fiorello!, which starred a then-unknown Tom Bosley as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. This is from a very old Kraft Music Hall, starring Perry Como, who makes a brief appearance at the start. What follows is a comic sketch with Tom Bosley playing...‘Mayor Laguardia” (!), along with Paul Lynde and Kaye Ballard. And the sketch ends with them singing one of the classic songs from the show, "Politics & Poker." It’s a treasure. And a bit of lost theater history. I'm not quite sure why Hotel Impossible on the Travel Channel is one of my favorite shows. After all, it's similar to several other programs, where some expert is called in to fix a failing business in two or three days. And most people probably haven't even heard of it. But for me it's not only the best but a show I look forward to. There are probably a few reasons, but two are at the top. The first is that unlike other programs (like Kitchen Nightmares, Restaurant Impossible, Mary Queen of Shops -- which is my favorite title, by far -- and others), a hotel is a particular entertaining venue. It's not just One Thing that has to get fixed, but there are the rooms, the front desk area, the grounds, housekeeping, maintenance and more. So, there's a lot of variety that has to be deal with, and it's all different from episode to episode. And second, there's the host, Anthony Melchiorri. The hosts of most of these shows tend to be prima donnas who like to get in the face of their failing subjects, be confrontational and perhaps belittle them if that's what it takes to open their eyes. Melchiorri is a bulleted-headed New Yorker who definitely has the outspoken East Coast spirit in him, but...that's only a small part of who he is. He's definitely tough (and served for five years as a protocol officer for the Air Force), but then he really knows his stuff as a hotel fixer and long-time expert in the hospitality industry. And when a business is failing, it does often need tough love. But while most of these similar hosts focus on the tough part, he balances it with the other. He can be New York Blunt, but he never yells or goes intentionally out of his way to insult people. It's clear that he loves hotels, which comes shining through, and really likes people -- and knows how to deal with them. After all, his business, hospitality, requires at its core that you know how to deal with human beings and treat them well, as respected guests. Mr. Melchiorri treats the subject with respect and even has been known to actually apologize (!) to them if he recognizes that he went too far in his directness. There have been times when someone breaks down crying, where he's wiped away a tear. And as befits someone trying to fix something as unwieldy as a hotel, he's often hugely creative in his efforts. One recent show, for example, featured a dying historic hotel in the tiny, out-of the-way town of Mokelumne Hill, California (located in Calaveras County, by the way, for all your literary types who recall Mark Twain's famous story about the jumping frog -- something oddly not mentioned on the program), and Melchiorri was able to get almost the entire town to help in his renovation, using all their individual expertise, because if the hotel failed, the town might, as well. It's almost out of Tom Sawyer.
Mr. Melchiorri uses a few different designers for his renovation work, but mostly Blanche Garcia, another reason I like the show. On most of these programs that have designers, they're a tad too frou-frou pretentious for my taste, and she's funny and down-to-earth. Plus, the designs she comes up with usually seriously impress me -- and I don't know from design. So, when I can look at something and go "Wow," it's generally awfully good. There are other reasons I like it -- for one thing, most of his fixes seem to be working, at least for the time being. That's not always the case with these kinds of series. But, in the end, at the heart of the reasons is Anthony Melchiorri. Hotel Impossible airs on the Travel Channel on Monday nights -- which is tonight, if you're reading this when it was posted. On the West Coast, it comes on at 7 PM and is repeated at 10 PM, but like most-things cable, it repeats through the week. I don't tend to watch reality shows much -- most of them, after all, are really just part-scripted game shows with the "reality" name slapped on them. But while Hotel Impossible has a "created for TV" forced-nature to its premise, what follows is as much documentary as anything. And the result is fascinating, funny, dramatic and, ultimately, endearing. In an interview with "Breitbart News," her first after parting ways with "Fox News," Sarah Palin commented about defending America that "We haven't begun to fight!" That was going to be today's quote, since my immediate thought was, "Gee, you ran for Vice President of the United States. If you hadn't begun to fight then, when were thinking of doing so?"
But after reading another quote from the interview, that took a back seat. Because additionally she said -- "I was raised to never retreat." So, I guess she decided to hope that if she was pompous enough, people would forget that whole "quitting as governor" thing A lot of horses were raised to run in the Kentucky Derby, but the worst ones end up pulling the clown cart at the circus. So, it seems that home movies have been discovered of Adolf Hitler. I think there are few things I'd like to see less than home movies of Adolf Hitler. I have this image of Hitler eating a piece of birthday cake, looking up and seeing a camera, and then waving it away with a shy, embarrassed laugh, "Oh, no, no, shut it off, ha, ha!"
I'm reminded of listening to KUSC during a pledge drive about three years ago, when their announcer Jim Svedja was about to play a piece by Schubert. He noted that the music had been used in the HBO film, Conspiracy, about the high-level Nazis meeting to plan the Final Solution. In his always overly-dramatic way, he then said something along the lines of, "They had a recording of this gorgeous piece of music playing, and the leader of this group of Nazis, played by Kenneth Branagh, goes over and can't understand the beauty of the music and turns the record off. And it's at that moment, the moment when you see that they cannot understand something so overwhelmingly beautiful as Schubert, that you...finally...see...how evil...Naziism was." All I could think was, "No, you see how evil Naziism was when they decide to kill 6 million Jews." |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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