Among my guilty pleasures is watching reality shows about people buying crap and reselling it. Storage Wars is an A&E show that works on the premise that it’s fun to watch a bunch of people fight over abandoned junk left in storage units. The show has proved so successful that it now has several clones-Storage Wars Texas, Storage Wars New York, and I recently found Storage Wars Canada. They all have a small group of people-usually four or five-who hate each other for no clear reason and always try to run up the price on the storage units. I find…
Tag: reality show
The Cactus Eaters by Dan White
I like to think of myself as a writer, like to pretend that I can string together the odd sentence here and there and make it sing. But I have to admit that I was constantly humbled by the word play of Dan White in The Cactus Eaters. It’s the story of an idiot and his one true love walking the Pacific Crest Trail, a little hiking path that runs from Mexico to Canada through some of America’s last great wilderness. Here’s a couple of the sentences: His joylessness made him stand out like the shy one at an orgy.…
Battle Royale
Following the recent obsession with The Hunger Games and the talk that it’s just a ripoff of Battle Royale, I thought I’d take a look at it. There are a few similarities in the story and feel of the Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Both have an evil government putting kids in a battle to the death through random selection. Both follow the Survivor model of a running tally as the little group gets smaller and smaller. Both reward the sole survivor of the contest. And both have too many characters that are, for all intents and purposes, identical and…
The 10X Rule
So, what’s the difference between success and failure? Action, of course. The successful people of the world do things, while the less successful sit around watching tv and playing video games. Hmm. The 10X Rule, like most self help books, is a great read that left me feeling as if I have finally found the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. The 10X Rule is simple, to get more, do more. It’s also a bit scary. Do more? You mean, like now? Yes, now The 10X Rule tells us. The 10X Rule also has a list of the 32…
Breakfast at Burger King
I had one of those Undercover Boss moments at the Burger King in Lindale, Texas. Lindale is right off of I-20 about five miles north of Tyler. The Burger King I went to is just north of the freeway. Undercover Boss is a reality show where the owners of businesses drop by and watch their employees without their knowledge. It’s a great show. Working fast food is right at the bottom of the food chain. These are jobs even Mike Rowe won’t take on. The job sucks and the people who run these places don’t seem to care that the…