To celebrate Father's Day, I bring you my list of the five WORST TV Dads of all-time. It's infinately more interesting than a list of "BEST" TV Dads !
*Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith) from "That 70's Show". Snarky. His charachter was right out of central casting.
Navy combat veteran, beer drinking, tv watching, power tool using, hunting and fishing guy. He always treated his kids as if they were idiots unless proven otherwise. He rode son Eric like a mule...calling him "pathetic".
*Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) "Married with Children". Has two unmanageable kids and Peggy his wife who spends whatever little money he has. Al only cared about the fact that he was a prep football star and how his life was ruined by his family. His kids are a train wreck. His son Bud was named after the beer.
*Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) "All in the Family". A fine example to his only daughter about the fine art of racism and prejudice. He was every child's worst nightmare as a Dad. I knew a few guys like this growing up in the shadow of New York City.
*Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller). "Seinfeld". No wonder why son George turned out that way. Frank was always pissed off at something and turned George into a neurotic wreck.
*Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) "Entourage". Are all talent agents like this?? Isn't it a 24/7 job if you want the big $? Ari Gold can only be true to himself and his profession. Rarely home for his two kids, he eventually cheats on wife Melissa. His character is neurotic and well played by Piven.
How about your list?! -Walt
Honorable Mention; Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont) "Leave it to Beaver". Did you see the deleted episode where Ward came home from the office after a pay cut and whipped ass on The Beave and Wally? I missed it too. Just kidding. I'd also love to have seen his reaction if he ever came home and found wife June with Eddie Haskell. Now that's good Nick at Nite TV.
My DeMarcus Cousins-inspired list of greatest Kings head cases of all-time. With D-Cousins getting his 439th chance to prove himself an adult, i reflect on Kings players who were a huge pain in the ass at different points in their careers. They're all big men! The criteria is to have been difficult to coach/not live up to potential/just acting stupid.
*DeMarcus Cousins. (2010-Present). The old term "million dollar talent and ten cent head" applies. He ran Paul Westphal. a decent man, out of town. Keith Smart did not get the backing to discipline him. New coach Mike Malone has to hammer him right away. If Demarcus doesn't finish his vegeatbles, that's a $5,000 fine. If he misses layups in practice, it's $1,000 per miss. If he so much as looks at somebody funny, that's $5,000. Whether DeMarcus knows it or not, it's his nature it to see what he can get away with. He should get no latitude.
*Olden Polynice. ('94-'98) The legendary O.P.! He once grabbed a BEE sportswriter by the shirt on the team bus. Olden has also been arrested twice for impersonating a police officer..not that there are many seven foot cops. He also got busted for waving a gun at his girlfriend. He reminds me lots of Jawann Oldham, who's also on this list.
*Ben Gillery. ('88-'89) I was told by another player that Gillery spent a lot of time sitting on the toilet and eating hotdogs. At practice. I don't know if Ben was hiding in there, but i'm pretty sure nobody else eats hotdogs while going #2. Gillery was on the team because Bill Russell was friends with Georgetown coach John Thompson where Gillery (barely) played. How do you sit the bench in college but land in the NBA? Only on the Kings.
*Jawann Oldham ('87-'88) Unpredicatable and moody. Once sucker-punched the lovable 7'7" 210lb Manute Bol because Manute dunked on him. When later asked if he was afraid of Oldham, Manute said "I once had to kill a lion when i was younger. Do u think anyone scares me?"
*Duane Causwell ('90-'97) Causie was pretty lazy and had no offensive game. There were long stretches when he missed dunks on a regular basis which is hard for somebody seven feet tall to do. He could block shots and finished his career in Miami. Cops once found a bag of pot under the seat of his car. Causie then produced a cousin who said it was his. That was original.
"Big Wake Weekend" is basically Indy Cars on water. Folsom Lake water. 200 mph.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday....on the Granite Bay side of Folsom Lake.. the best of Hydroplane racing the country has to offer will start at 7am daily. It's the tour's first stop at Folsom Lake since 1967!
The American Power Boat Association (APBA) event has something for everyone. Beer Gardens, Bands, Wakeboarding and exhibits.
30,000 people are predicted to watch from the shore and by boat...which means a lot of sunburned drunk people.
It's going to be in the upper 90's.
Where to watch this whole thing roll out? My years of covering events on that side of the lake reveals these prime spots to watch;
*Get on a friends boat in Granite Bay. Those tickets are about gone though. www.bigwakeweekend.com
*grandstand area
*cold pits
*VIP area (just sold out)
*arrive early at Granite Bay State Park. Set up your chairs. Umbrella, cooler, sunblock. You get the idea.
Tickets are $19 for Friday and $39 per day for the weekend. 3-day packages available. Wristbands needed to get to event.
Best bet for parking? Go park at Sierra College and take a shuttle to the race site. All the reserved parking spots near the event are $25/day and will be gone by Friday.
Time to clean that grill to start the Summer BBQ season. Memorial Day weekend!!
Here are my best BBQ enhancements!
*Pappy's Seasoning. Find it at Smart&Final and Save Mart. Some Food Maxx's too. www.Pappyschoice.com. It's a great sub for salt. Use on fish, chicken, steak. It has a cult following. It's deelish.
*Meat marinade packets from McCormick's. I marinade all my steaks in a packet of McCormick's and people always ask for my "secret". It turns your steak into a food tasting vacation! I can't eat steak anymore without it. Safeway has a decent generic meat marinade packet that works too.
*Burgers? Add good, sharp blue cheese into the meat before you grill. Not the cheap crumbly kind. You'll see!
*Cheese? Don't skimp. Use real cheese not the nonfat or 2% stuff. Go for extra sharp cheddar or a strong cheese that adds distinction. Holiday weekends are not a time to worry about calories. It's about flavor. You're the grillmaster. It's your ass and reputation on the line! Go deep.
*Beer. Good beer... show off your selection of properly iced IPA's and Craft beers. Don't do the predictable domestic light beers and the stuff on sale at Safeway. Go for it. Get a funny label like "Arrogant Bastard". I suggest "Brother Thelonius". It's a holiday weekend... don't get a cheap beer buzz.
You got some secret tips to pass along???
p.s. go with sturdy paper plates and recycle. i hate washing dishes on holidays. or any days.
*Beans and Cornbread. Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five. A battle at the dinner table in the deep south featuring Beans vs. Cornbread. Old school at it's best. If you like this 1949 "jump swing" hit, you'll love "Saturday night fish fry!"
*Carolina in my mind; James Taylor. I've had some great times at my buddy Tom's place in Laurel Springs, NC. So much so that i bought a small piece of ground there. North Carolina is strikingly beautiful....much like California only more lush. Thinking of Carolina is always a cure.
* Good Riddance; Green Day. We play this a fair amount on the Eagle. I've heard it many times and it doesn't get old. "I hope you had the time of your life". This song was matched to video as a going away for the original owners of KCRA when they sold in 2000. It floods me with wonderful emotion about that time in my career.
Is there one song that gets you back on track? What is it?
1. Kate Gosselin; "Jon and Kate Plus 8". I have to admit, i think she's hot until she starts talking. She has a one-track mind...it's all about her. What are these kids going to end up being like with cameras following them around is all they know? Kate complains all the time. It's grating...but we watch.
2. Betty Draper; "Mad Men". She takes her cue from Joan Crawford. She may be the worst Mom ever. Threatening to cut off her daughter's finger? Throwing her son in the closet after he was caught smoking? (she chain smokes).
3. Wilma Flintstone and Jane Jetson (tie). Wilma was always leaving Pebbles and Bam Bam alone in the rock house. Dino was the babysitter! Jane Jetson had a robot for a maid! She wasn't in the show much...my suspicion is that she was trying to pleasure Mr. Spacely to give George a raise!
4.Peg Bundy; "Married...with Children". She didn't cook or clean and was a bad wife and didn't care. She had no ambition and no job. She raised two brats by her fine example. She was created to be one of the worst TV Moms ever, and was.
5. Mrs. Estelle Costanza; "Seinfeld". My God, she was awful...she just badgered her son George to death. She delivered one of the best lines I've ever heard when she caught George "pleasuring" himself. She told her husband that George "was treating his body like an amusement park!" Awesome.
Those are my top five worst TV Moms of all time. Yours?
*Paint it Black. 1968. "Aftermath" album. The first #1 single to feature a sitar. I was living in India at the time and music there is all about the sitar. Still brings back great memories of that time for me when i hear it.
*Rocks Off. 1972. "Exile on Main Street" album. Pure rock song with a great horn section. It's like listening to a tailgate party on a '45 single.
*Wild Horses. 1971. "Sticky Fingers" album. Only reached #28 on Billboard that year, but Mick's ex-wife Jerry Hall says it's her fave Stones hit.
*Sympathy for the Devil. 1968. "Beggars Banquet" album. The history of mainkind from Lucifer's point of view. It was written right after Robert F Kennedy was shot..which was right after Dr King was shot and four years after JFK was shot. I was wondering myself if the USA was turning into target practice for anyone willing to say anything.
*Time waits for no one. 1974. "It's only rock and roll" album. This song has never been done live, nor should it without Mick Taylor. This was the final album with Taylor as his lack of credit for writing the song was one of the last straws to him leaving.
All football fans are talking about the NFL Draft, which leads us to bust out our draft day steals from years past by the 49ers and Raiders. These are later-round picks that turned out to be gems! Let us know which names YOU would include on these lists (feedback@eagle969.com).
San Francisco 49ers
1968- Skip Vanderbundt, LB Oregon State (third round)
1979- Joe Montana, QB Notre Dame (third round)
Dwight Clark, WR, Clemson (tenth round)
1986- John Taylor, WR, Delaware State (third round)
Charles Haley, DE, James Madison (fourth round)
1988-Bill Romanowski, LB, Boston College (third round)
2009-Ricky-Jean Francois, DE, LSU (seventh round)
*1988. My first week in Sacramento, and covering the team at the first Arco Arena.. I went into the Kings lockerroom and up to Reggie Theus. He said "hey, it's the new face in town". I always remembered that act of kindness. He's always been my favorite Kings for his exploits on...and off the court! Great tennis player too.
*1988. Gregg Lukenbill takes me on a sky walking tour of the new Arco arena being built. We end up on a catwalk about 100' up over all the beams and just a shell of the place. I am not good with heights, but Gregg figured i had a hard hat on so what could go wrong? I got to see places of Arco i didn't care too.
*1996 Playoffs. Game three vs. Seattle. The Kings had won game two in Seattle to even the series at one each. It was the first home playoff game at Arco in ten years. When the Kings came out of the lockerroom for warmups with "the boys are back in town" playing.... the place went crazy. Like crazy crazy. Fans stood and completely screamed their lungs out during pregame. I was in the stands as a fan, and we all looked at each other with "we need to save something for when the game actually starts". Kings lost the game and the series, but that night was my #1 moment.
*1998. Jerry Reynolds jumps up to beef a refs call and passes out right in front of me at the scorers table. Blaine Reichelt whistles him for a technical foul for his histrionics, then recinds the call when he realizes Jerry might be dead. Medics ran out and Jerry wakes up. Turns out Jerry had been on a new diet and hadn't eaten...and that was all it was.
*2002 playoffs vs Lakers. Peja airball. I felt Peja was a better regular season performer than in the hot lights of the playoffs. The biggest shot of his life turned out to be an airball. It came with 11 seconds left to go in game seven against the Lakers with the Kings down 99-98. It's a shot Peja hits in his sleep...in the regular season. The Kings went on to lose game seven in overtime, and their best chance to win an NBA title.
*Elliott Troshinsky, General Manager, KCRA-TV A salesman by trade, Troshinsky runs the most watched television station in the region and has the responsibility to keep a dominant station evolving while not blowing up too much of what's working. It's not as easy guiding a highly watched station as one might think. The Kelly family of Sacramento owned and grew KCRA from the 1950's until the sale to Hearst Company in 2000. Troshinsky has the final say in selecting news management and is ultimately responsible for what we viewers watch on KCRA's local newscasts. KCRA has not lost a 5pm/6pm newscast during ratings since 1998. You must change with the times...but if you're dominant, how much DO you change?
*Cheryl Dell, Publisher, The Sacramento Bee. If you think "nobody reads the papers anymore" just do something wrong and it ends up in the BEE.....your neighbor will find it. The BEE still has a circulation of 280,000 people, and 325,000 on Sunday. All local TV and radio stations peruse the morning BEE to see what they'll be covering that day. All major newspapers have less readership, but then again, erosion has affected TV News in an alarming way too. The BEE is still the ledger of record in this town...and the fifth largest newspaper in California.
*Marcos Breton, Columnist, The Sacramento Bee. The wordsmith of the city. Every paper has a go-to guy who speaks either to...or for the city. Breton has evolved into this role as the Bee's soul. He usually speaks up for the downtrodden and those affected by immigration issues. He also doubles as a crisp sports columnist.
If he doesn't like you, you're toast. See Fargo, Heather or the Maloof family for details.
*Jeff VonKaenel, Publisher, Sacramento News&Review. The anti-Bee weekly paper, the N&R is free and with a weekly circulation of 74,000. Every coffee shop and midtown eatery has copies laying about. The N&R does a nice job with layout and going underground to investigate stories. Block out at least an hour to get through it.... if you don't mind the seemingly endless adds for massage parlors and tattoo houses. They are, in many ways preaching to a liberal choir but it seems their readers wants to read it anyway.
*Doug Elmets, Elmets Communications. KCRA-TV uses Elmets frequently as a commentator to dissect political situations and elections. All that while Elmets holds down his day job as a communications whiz AND being the advisor to area Indian Casinos. He's got his hands in a lot of pies. You could see him on TV one night defending something done at Thunder Valley casino, and the next morning appearing in the KCRA newsroom talking about Reaganomics or "why Iowa went heavy for Hillary". Are the lines blurred here? It's nice to be that glib and in demand.
He's smart and a great sense of humor.
Weekday Mornings
