WEATHER CHANNEL MOVIE CONTEST

Get your weekly Boner Award!

Apparently the ratings for the Weather Channel (TWC) have not been so good. So in a radical move, they have decided to start showing weather-related movies on Friday nights to try and improve the numbers. Yea, that’s what I’m going to do with my Friday evenings, tune in for movies including rain, wind or snow with frequent breaks for updates on the latest ice storm conditions in Bismarck.

Just another example of how companies and brands blur the field when it comes to what they do. Has anyone ever tuned into TWC for anything besides their local weather forecast? Perhaps if you’re traveling or if you have a loved one living elsewhere in the path of a hurricane you’ve taken more than a momentary interest in where barometric pressure may be rising. Bad enough your local news spends so much airtime on leading up to the weather – now we have an entire network that thinks we really give a crap about anything more than whether it’s going to rain tomorrow or not. Is it cold? Is it hot? Will I need galoshes? Tell me the facts and move onto something else. If I feel like watching Helen Hunt overact in Twister, I’ll rent the damn movie. (Truth be told – I’m too cheap to rent it – I’d probably swipe my kids DVD).

I remember in days of yore when MTV showed music videos. So did VH1. Now it’s all screwed up reality TV. They used to do music, and do it well. If the Weather Channel moves away from what it has always done well, what’s going to keep them from simply blending into the background with the rest of the sludge? Isn’t anyone interested any longer into developing a niche, securing a following and keeping it?

A similar problem plagues another popular industry, fast food. For years, you’d go to McDonald’s or a Burger King and know exactly what you wanted. It was easy, as the menu was relatively limited to burgers, fries and shakes. These days, every company believes that the only way to compete is to bombard the consumer with so many choices, that they’ll buy whatever you put in front of them because they’ve grown hungrier from the effort they had to undertake to make a decision.

My first real job was at a Taco Bell (this after my days as a popular child star came to a sudden crash and burn). We didn’t have any fancy computer registers up on the front line to just hit a button with a customers order choice. They were the old manual ones with numbers – we had to remember the price of every item on the menu and punch it in. This was not a problem because there were like eight or nine different items on the menu. Taco? 59 cents. Burrito? 79 cents. Make it a supreme (a squirt of sour cream and about 16 little chunks of tomato) for only another 20 cents? Oh you big spender you!

I don’t eat too much fast food any more, but I can tell you the last time I was in a Taco Bell my fucking head was spinning. There were black tacos, white tacos, native American tacos, challuppas, churos, charos, 831 different value meals over 41 of which included a drink that looked like Chernobyl grade anti-freeze served in an industrial drum, salads, soups, desserts and not a single Bell-Beefer on the menu. There were so many choices, when it came my turn in line all I could blurt out was burrito. They handed me a book as thick as my head with all of the different types of burritos available. I ordered a taco supreme and ran for the door, without even selecting my complimentary packet of taco sauce, no doubt available in hot, hotter, not quite as hot as hottest, hottest, even hotter than hottest, mild, wimpy, sort of medium, chunky, smells like Jose….you get my point. Taco Bell has blurred the actuality of what they always did so well – quick, cheap beef and beans served between something either hard or soft and occasionally including salad items. Oh, and served with a Pepsi.

I’ve said this before, but perhaps it’s a good thing that might ultimately come out of this Great Recession – in that if it’s a company or a product that does not offer quality or good value, the consumer simply will no longer buy it. Tighter wallets do make for more thoughtful purchases, and perhaps some of this extraneous shit that tries to make an impression on us will simply fade away. Sort of like my youth.

Ok – enough serious shit. Let’s have a contest! I’m looking for the most creative “weather-related” movie that should be shown on TWC’s Friday night movies. Their first movies include “The Perfect Storm” "March of the Penguins," "Deep Blue Sea" and "Misery," which have something to do with weather (Misery – because James Caan crashed in a snowstorm?) I’ve already mentioned “Twister” so that’s off limits.


Leave me a comment and your suggestion for a Weather Channel movie. Our esteemed panel of judges (OK - me and the dog) will select the most creative movie suggestion our first winner of the highly desirable Boner. Winner gets the trophy as well as a highlighted link and 125 x 125 banner (you supply) on the sidebar somewhere over here............................






I’ll announce the winner on Wednesday October 28th. Probably sometime in the afternoon as I’m going out next Tuesday night.

Winning banner remains on the sidebar until I come up with the next contest, which could be sort of weekly unless of course I do something creative myself, like get a job. But remember, your thoughts and comments will remain here, forever.

That’s a whole lot longer than the Bell Beefer remained on the Taco Bell menu.

Van Halen - Humans Being
Uploaded by Houser. - Explore more music videos.