Bull Run

Here's one of those weird "Connections"-style posts, where one event leads to another to another and so forth.

I was looking for idea fodder to write about tonight, so I googled the word "explosions" into the news search bar. I rarely do that, because most of the hits are about Iraq or other depressing stuff (I'm hoping to find stuff about less depressing explosions like say the now defunct Divine Strake project or Hawaiian volcanoes)

Anyway, among all the Algerian, Pakistani, and Slovakian carnage, there was a link to an article by Steven Cole Smith in the Orlando Sentinel panning an upcoming Spike TV show called "BullRun." An excerpt from Mr. Smith's article:

“Where reality meets the road,” says the promo for “Bullrun,” a television series that premieres March 13 of Spike, the cable network. And “4,000 miles, 12 teams, 1 winner.”

You know what this is about: A dozen teams on a banzai run across the country -- with one difference: the run is north to south, instead of the typical east to west. The winner gets $200,000. But it isn’t a race per se, because that would be wrong. Wrong, as in illegal, and the lawyers insist that a race, sponsored by a big TV network, would be a lawsuit waiting to happen when one of the bleary-eyed competitors T-bones a school bus full of nuns.

So in “Bullrun,” there are competitions. Such, as in the first episode, where you strap a big stick with spikes on either end, and drive fast through a parking lot, and try to use the spikes to break lit light bulbs. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds, especially when, at the end or every run, there’s an explosion! Well, it’s off in a field, but it’s an explosion nonetheless.

It's easy to imagine the production meeting. "This scene lacks something," one producer says.

"How about lots of explosions?" another one says.

"You can't go wrong with explosions," says a third producer, "because ovbiously, we are marketing this to idiots."

All this is under the supervision of Bill Goldberg, the professional wrestler, so you know what to expect there, too.

Okay, so thanks to a somewhat cranky Florida newspaper columnist, I now have a post about explosions. But hey, it also mentions Bill Goldberg, the professional wrestler. So what?

So this: I bought my house 22 years ago from Goldberg's sister. Yes, it's true. And my next door neighbors, Frank and Bev, who have lived in their house for far longer, tell me that they often saw her beefy younger brother in the house the family came to visit.

So, in the room in which I now type this blog, no doubt once slept the young, pre pro wrestling, pre Bullrun producing Bill Goldberg. So, that's my connection story.

No more posts this week, I'm off on vacation with the family.