Tuesday, 11/26

I wonder if I’ve stumbled onto something here?

I‘m doing kind of a jokey thing on “Pop Culture” this week, in which I’m talking about “TV Turkeys”--TV shows so bad they were canceled after a week or two on the air. I give the names of three shows (and their basic plot concepts), and the listener has to decide which one was an actual TV show. I started it off yesterday with these three--

-“Super Train”, which was “Love Boat” but set on a train with a swimming pool,

-“Monster Truck”, which was about a truck that turned into a werewolf, and

-“Meals on Wheels”, which was about crime-fighting chefs who drove around in a food truck.

Well, when I first asked the question, I had nine people call, and all nine of them said the actual TV show, the show that made it on the air, was “Monster Truck”, a show about a truck that turned into a werewolf. They were all wrong (the actual answer was “Super Train”), but it made me think that I was on to something.

Maybe I should copyright the concept of “Monster Truck”.

Actually, I probably couldn’t copyright the concept of “Monster Truck”; after all, it bears an amazing similarity to “The Transformers” (except for the whole werewolf part) and I’m sure there have been other series ideas with the same title. But if nine people thought it was a valid TV show, a TV show they might actually watch, then who am I to argue, right?

One of the callers, when informed that he had picked out the wrong show, wondered where I got an idea like “Monster Truck”, about a truck that turned into a werewolf. I joked it was a disease, but in all honesty, I have no idea where the concept came from. I had a minute to go before I asked the question on the air, and I just picked a couple of fake titles and concepts out of the air. I wanted to make them as absurd as possible, to give everyone a fighting chance, but apparently the concept of a truck that turns into a werewolf wasn’t absurd enough.

And if that doesn’t say something about the state of entertainment these days, I don’t know what does.

What will I come up with today? I have no idea, but I’m sure I’ll know by 4:35 pm. Listen if you wanna find out what it’ll be!

(jim@wmqt.com)