Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. Most people would agree that the Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year in the U.S. It’s probably the most highly rated TV program all year, as a result. Because of this, commercials are more expensive during the Super Bowl than during any other time slot all year. So if this is such a big game, why is it that so few people care about the game?

Let’s use myself as an example: I could care less about the game. I don’t like either team; my favorite team has already been eliminated in a similar way to the way they were eliminated for three years in a row now – close but no cigar. I also think it will be a boring game, as neither team is particularly flashy or even has any playmakers. So why would I watch? For the commercials.

I’ll watch for the same reason that everyone else who doesn’t care about the game (which is most people) will watch. Because they have such an enormous captive audience, the advertising firms go all out for the Super Bowl, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this – everybody knows that the Super Bowl is all about the commercials. On a recent poll I saw the other day on the elevator, over 50% of those who responded said that the best part of the game wasn’t the game at all, but the commercials.

If you think about it, that’s kinda strange for a couple of reasons. First, people generally hate commercials. Commercials are those annoying windows that pop up when you go to some websites. Commercials are what make 1 hour of football last 3 ½ hours. Commercials are probably one of the major inspirations of the remote control – an easy way to change the channel to find something better. Commercials are the filler, not the entertainment.

In fact, the entertainment is the TV shows or movies. The TV shows are the main attraction, not the commercials. No one watching a TV show looks forward to when it goes to commercial. If people loved commercials, then they would also have them every so often during a movie you’d see in the theater. But, as we all know, one of the nice things about seeing a movie in the theater (or on a DVD for that matter) is that there aren’t any commercials. Indeed, one of the attractions to TIVO is that you can get rid of the commercials!

With all of this in mind, why the heck is it that during the Super Bowl people look forward to the commercials? Because they’re more entertaining than the average commercials. As it turns out, there are some non-Super Bowl commercials that are, indeed, entertaining, but they’re sporadic at best. During the Super Bowl, however, the majority of commercials are intended to be entertaining. This probably has to do with the fact that I mentioned before – that the audience is so large and captivated. As a result, firms don’t mind spending a little extra money developing more entertaining commercials since they know that these commercials will have great exposure.

So we’ve made some progress. We’ve figured out why people enjoy the commercials during the Super Bowl: they’re more entertaining than usual. Somehow, I doubt that this is a particularly surprising find. But this find is interesting because it begs a question. If commercials can, in fact, be entertaining, then why are they just filler? Why don’t they have commercials being the feature? Why not just have two-hour long commercials with occasional 2-3 minute segments from some TV show? Why not reverse the common relationship between shows and commercials?

I think it’s because commercials are entertaining, but not on a deep enough level to make them entertaining enough to be the main event. The reason for this is twofold. First, the end of a commercial is not to entertain; it is to sell a product. As a result, the function of a commercial would not be well served if it was entertaining foremost, and its effectiveness at selling a product was an afterthought. As a result, a commercial cannot possibly have the kind of entertainment value a movie or even a sitcom might have. Its very nature prevents it.

The second part of this is the time constraint. There’s only so much you can do in 90 seconds, which is probably considered a very long commercial. Sure, if you did the whole 2-hour long commercial idea, then that might avoid this problem. But who is going to sit and watch a 2-hour program trying to sell a product. Okay, I know, I just explained what an infomercial is. I guess there are, in fact, people that watch these. God help them. But these infomercials are hardly in Nielsen’s Top 10.

At any rate, that’s my analysis. I think that commercials can be entertaining, but they can’t be the feature because they’re very nature prevents it. So why are things different for the Super Bowl? I don’t think they are. I think it’s just that it happens to be the one time per year that commercials tend to be above average. Since they’re above average, people think that they might find a few that are quite entertaining. And since it’s a Sunday night anyway, when there isn’t much else to do, and there will be big time football fans who they are friends with that will be throwing parties for the Super Bowl anyway, they might as well hang out and enjoy the above average commercials. At least, that’s all I can figure, and exactly what I plan on doing.

Ever wonder how many people have you on their Instant Messenger buddy list and you don’t know about it?

In a philosophy class of mine some years ago, one of the topics that we discussed at length was desire-dependent pleasure. This was for an upper-level course called “Ethical Theory”. Specifically, we were talking about consequentialism, which is the kind of umbrella that utilitarianism falls under, since utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism. But I don’t want to talk about any of that tonight; however, I do want to talk about something related to desire-dependent pleasures.

Desire-dependent pleasure is a fairly easy idea to understand. In order to illustrate this concept in the paper, I used an example containing Britney Spears. That’s right: I used Britney Spears in an example within a serious philosophy paper in an upper-level course at an Ivy League university. And I got an “A”. But that’s beside the point. Let me explain what a desire-dependent pleasure is.

Let’s say you’re a big Britney Spears fan. You have all her albums, you tape her TV performances, and you buy magazines when she’s on the cover. Your friend, let’s call him Matt, does not like Britney so much or her music. The two of you are riding in a car one day, listening to the top 40 radio station when her new song “Toxic” comes on. What results?

Well, obviously, you find listening to the song pleasurable, since you like Britney and her music. Matt, however, finds no pleasure in this whatsoever. In fact, if he actually has a hatred for Britney, then it may even be painful (in some sense) for him to have to listen to the song. Thus, the potential pleasure derived by listening to Britney’s song is a desire-dependent pleasure. It depends on having the desire to listen to her music. Without that desire, the pleasure won’t exist for you.

Hopefully that’s clear; I think it should be. So where am I going with this? Well, the other day I found out that one of my favorite TV shows might be going off the air. What was my reaction? I was quite happy. Huh? I didn’t understand my reaction at first either. As it turns out, however, it occurred to me that, while I enjoy watching the TV show, I find it to be a waste of my time to have to sit in front of the TV for 30 minutes to watch it. But let me back up for a minute.

It should be clear that any pleasure derived by viewing this (or any for that matter) TV show is a desire-dependent pleasure. Is that to say that if you didn’t have any desire to watch it that you couldn’t enjoy it? Not necessarily. But as you become a fan of the TV show, it becomes a desire-dependent pleasure, because you derive a greater pleasure from it, since you actually look forward to watching it to satisfy this desire.

So what’s going on in the situation that I’m talking about? Obviously, I’ve developed a desire-dependent pleasure for watching this TV show. Yet, I have another desire-dependent pleasure, which is to not watch TV. These desire necessarily conflict. On one hand, it would make me happy if I had more time to do things when I’m not at work and not watching any TV would help in this desire. Of course, on the other hand, I like watching the TV show, so I lose a bit of my free time in doing so.

I’m not sure it’s obvious why I might find this fabulously interesting, because the idea of desires conflicting is not a particularly novel one. If you’re lying in bed and you’re hungry, but you don’t want to get up, then obviously your desire for food and your desire to be lazy conflict. It’s moreso the effect that desire conflict has in conjunction with pleasure that I find slightly novel (to me anyway).

Through the idea of desire-dependent pleasure you can, quite literally, dislike something you like. Could there be anything more obviously contradictory and irrational? This is almost as absurd as saying: “a does not equal a.”

This is bizarre. The fact that we have desires, as humans, can leads to utterly irrational and absurd preferences. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying this is the first time I’ve ever realized that people can be irrational, or even the first time I’ve ever realized that people can have contradicting preferences. Indeed, the fact that girls tend to like guys who are assholes that they somehow will be nice guys and not cheat on them is a good case in point.

What I find interesting about this is that, statistically, it is nearly impossible that someone would happen to be lucky enough to never have preferences that contradict one another. I mean, let’s say that everyone has 100 preferences (which is such a low estimate that it’s almost ridiculous). And each preference would result in two things having to be a certain way (another absurdly low estimate); thus, each preference could potentially contradict two other preferences. Do you see what I’m getting at? There would be 200 opportunities for preferences to be contradicted and 100 preferences that they could contradict. And these were ultra-conservative estimates.

The result of this line of reasoning is that the fact that we have complex preferences as humans necessarily leads to us contradicting ourselves at times: it makes us necessarily irrational. Put more succinctly in regard to desire: Human desire necessitates irrationality. Fascinating, right?

So what’s a person to do? Should we shun all of our desires? Hardly. Without desiring anything, there would be little pleasure in our lives. I think instead we must (and this will sound ironic coming from me) accept our irrationality. After all, we are human and necessarily not fully rational anyway. But at least now we can be aware that desire is almost certainly a major cause of any irrationality that we experience.

I guess this leaves me with a fitting understanding of what’s going on inside my head. While I realize that I’m relieved that football season is over, because I no longer have to have my Sundays wasted away by watching football games, that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy watching football. However, I might just think about watching fewer games next year and having a rational preference about football. Or I could just accept the fact that I’m human.

Honestly, what did we do before the internet?

Before getting into today’s entry I want to mention a slight change that will take place with my journal. In case you’ve never noticed, it gives a time for when I post a journal entry. Up until now, the time that a journal entry was posted was in Pacific Standard Time. This might seem odd, considering that I live on the East Coast. Thus, when I posted an entry at 8pm Eastern (my) time, it would show up as being posted at 5:00pm because it was in Pacific Time. The reason I used to do this was because I often post late-night entries, but I don’t believe a day begins until I wake up or ends until I go to bed. Thus, I wanted those late night entries to be listed under the previous calendar day, which probably only ended an hour or two ago. But because there has been some confusion by some of my colleagues as to whether or not I have ever posted from work (which I never, ever, have, by the way), I will now use Eastern Standard Time, in order to eliminate any confusion. Now onto today’s entry.

I tend not to be so concerned about spending money on certain things. That is to say that I understand my preferences well, so it usually isn’t hard for me to figure out whether or not something is worth buying. But don’t get me wrong: I’m also not one to spend an outrageous amount of money on something that isn’t worth it. At least, not usually.

Some people, however, are much more frugal then I am. There are some people who are, in fact, downright cheap. These people try to save as much money as possible on anything they need. They rarely buy things that they merely want. Even a sum as low as 30 cents is a big deal for them to save.

And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being conscious of one’s spending. And I am certainly one who enjoys saving money, when possible. But there are a few things that I think that people should not scrimp on, at all. Let me explain what nine of these things are:

Bathroom Tissue
- When I say bathroom tissue I mean both toilet paper and facial tissue. I, personally, can think of few things more horrible than bad toilet paper. What could be worse than wiping your tender posterior with something that feels like a cross between sand paper and wax paper? This is what they’ve got at work, which is one of the reasons I try to avoid using the can while at work. Just get some nice soft stuff, your rear will thank you. And there’s a similar issue where your nose is concerned, but even moreso. After all, few people see your bare anus, while everyone sees your bare nose. Good facial tissues will prevent irritation and redness in the event that you have an allergy outbreak or cold/flu-like symptoms. And the price difference between high quality and low quality bathroom tissue is probably less than $1 per week. That’s a lot more comfort for not much more price.

Orange or Grapefruit Juice
- I’m from Florida, and down in Florida we know our oranges. Bad orange or grapefruit juice is just gross, while good orange or grapefruit juice is like the nectar of the Gods. Don’t get that crap from concentrate. Not only does it taste bad, but it is less healthy as well. Go for the good stuff. This really only applies to citrus-based juices, however, as other fruit juice tend to all be the same, in general.

A Watch (especially for guys)
- If you’re a straight man, and want to continue to appear to be a straight man, then you can’t get away with very much jewelry. Basically two rings, a necklace, and a watch are about it. While some can pull of a bracelet and/or earrings, those accessories can sometimes raise questions that you probably don’t want raised. When it comes to a necklace, it is usually hidden by a shirt; rings are rings – they’re either gold or silver with maybe some minimal jewel pattern. This means that the only way that a straight man can have any sort of fashion sense conveyed through his jewelry is through his watch. So go all out. I own about three watches, the cheapest of which was nearly $400 the most expensive of which was over $1000. So splurge on your watch – it’s one of the few fashion accessories you have to splurge on.

Restaurant Entrees
- So you’ve decided to go out to a restaurant. Do you get the cheapest thing on the menu? I sure hope not. If you’re going to a restaurant, you pay for a lot more than just the food when you place an order: Every order also incorporates their overhead costs as well. As a result, there is usually a baseline price, like for the cheapest thing on the menu, then a rather small spread to the most expensive thing on the menu. As a result, the difference in price between the 2nd cheapest thing on the menu and the 2nd most expensive thing on the menu probably isn’t more than $5 or so. And if you’re already spending the money to eat out, you might as well get a higher quality meal. The increase in quality received for a couple more bucks is almost certainly worth the cost.

Bedding
- You use your bed for two of the most important activities in your life: sleep and sex. You want to be comfortable for both, so get good bedding. It’s as simple as that.

Alcohol (exception, beer)
- When I say you shouldn’t be cheap when it comes to alcohol, I explicitly leave out beer, because it’s perfectly fine to go cheap on that, because a good beer versus a bad beer isn’t all that much different. But a good bottle of scotch versus a bad bottle of scotch or a good bottle of wine versus a bad bottle of wine is worlds apart. First, the taste is enormously different. Good alcohol goes down easy and has a crisp taste. Bad alcohol you have to choke down because it tastes like gasoline. Moreover, for some reason unknown to me, good alcohol is also better on your body. Have you ever drank too much bad alcohol and been hung over the next morning? It can be a nightmare. But if you were drinking high quality alcohol, it’s not so bad. This might be, partially, because if you’re drinking good stuff, you’re less likely to drink as much, since it’s more expensive. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Dental Hygiene
- The British demonstrate this point better than any argumentation than I could provide.

Technology
- This may seem like it’s coming out of left field, since most people will tell you to go fairly cheap when it comes to technology, since what you buy depreciates so quickly. But I’m not saying to get the absolute top-of-the-line thing when it comes out: that is probably a bad idea. What I am saying is to get something moderately good, and not total crap. This is important for two reasons. First, crappy electronics break. Second, while a moderately good piece of electronics will already be out of date in a year, a piece of crap was already out of date a year ago when you buy it, so it will be a total dinosaur in a year. You don’t have to break your bank account, but don’t scrimp.

Your girlfriend
- Finally, and most importantly, gentlemen: don’t be cheap when it comes to your girlfriend. She’s probably too good to be with you in the first place, so you’d better treat her right or she might just realize the truth. That includes buying her nice flowers when you buy her flowers, buying her good chocolates if you buy her chocolates, and most importantly, buying her fabulous jewelry if you buy her jewelry. This is especially true when it comes to an engagement ring. You should buy the most expensive engagement ring that you can afford. You should do this for two reasons: First, she’s more likely to say “yes” when confronted with a giant diamond than with a tiny one. Second, if you ever think about doing something stupid like cheating on her, you can remember how much money you spent on her ring, which is now hers, and would continue to be hers if she caught you and divorced your dumb ass. You don’t want to lose that investment, so you will be less likely to do anything stupid. (Of course, this logic is actually flawed (see “Sunk Cost”), but it still works on our psychology, since people aren’t all that rational to begin with).

So there you have it. Feel free to be a cheap son-of-a-gun whenever you please except for when it comes to these nine exceptions. You’ll be better off forking over a little bit of extra change for all of the things above, for the reasons described. When it comes to anything else, however, you should just feel free to clip those coupons and search that sofa for change, because all bets are off.

Have you ever thought that it might be fun to have voices in your head that tell you to do insane things?

When I started my new job last July, I was given a shiny new, black laptop. It was a pretty nice Dell Latitude, and I was excited to have a laptop to use, since I already had a brand new state-of-the-art desktop at home. Shortly thereafter, however, I learned that there was a computer upgrade that some people were getting to a silver-colored, smaller, lighter, and faster laptop. If I had started a few months later, I would have gotten issued one of these new laptops instead, but now I would have to wait until mine came up for upgrade, which is probably over a year from now. Suddenly, I hated my laptop.

I tell this story not to complain about having bad timing or bad luck, or so that you can hear about the laptop I use at work. I tell it to illustrate a very interesting feature of the way we judge things as humans. Surely, you have experienced a situation similar to the one I describe where, at first you really like something, but then you find out that something else is superior to that thing, which lessens your enjoyment of the item you previously liked very much. Thus, the utility, or happiness, that this object brings you has changed, even though the object itself has not changed at all.

This is a fascinating assertion, and rather undeniable I think. There are many times when our thoughts, opinions, and feelings can change without the object that they refer to changing. This means that these thoughts, opinions, and feelings are not entirely based on the object itself, but instead about how other external things change our perception of that object.

I find this important for a number of reasons, and the first of these has to do with proving that human nature forces us to judge everything comparatively. This is a rather easy corollary to draw from the original claim, but interesting nonetheless. Let me tell another story related to this.

During the Spring semester of my Freshman year of college, I took a really cool class in the Near Eastern Studies department called: “Intro to Biblical History and Archeology”. At first, everything about the class was great. It was fabulously interesting, as we were basically talking about archeological finds and how they confirm or deny certain texts found in the bible. The professor was engaging, and the work, while demanding, seemed to be going quite well. But then something went awry.

For our final projects, being progressive, our professor told us to turn our term paper into a website. He then set out a number of requirements that this website should adhere to. Luckily, I was rather competent when it came to computers, so I did not have much trouble with this assignment. I actually ended up going well above and beyond what the requirements asked for. My website was great. The result? I got a “C+”, which was my lowest grade on anything in probably 5 years. It dropped my final grade in the class from an “A” to an “A-“.

I was completely beside myself. My website was great! I probably could not have created anything much better without spending scores of hours learning about website design. Sure, other students in class had nice websites too, and some of them were even Computer Science majors who had very intricate websites, but mine was well above and beyond what was required – how could I have done so poorly? I immediately e-mailed the professor to try to understand how this could have happened. I quickly learned that the grade had nothing to do with the requirements he set forth, but purely through comparison.

Apparently, the fact that there were half a dozen computer science majors in the class who had professional quality websites led to mine only seeming average. For some bizarre reason, however, when questioned about it, the professor swore that the grade was not based on comparison. He then made some totally lame excuse that my grade was poor due to two or three typos in the text of my paper. And yet, I received an “A” on the paper, but a “C+” on the website?

Again, I do not tell this story to vent, but to explain that we are, by nature, comparative judges. What I didn’t understand then, but what I do understand now, is that, even if unintentional, we will always judge things in accordance to those things with which we can compare them to. Otherwise, what way would have to judge quality? Within an object, the inherent qualities tend to be arbitrary in terms of goodness or badness, but if you compare those qualities with the same kind of qualities of a similar thing, suddenly the quality of each item becomes clear. In some sense, “goodness” and “badness” only become meaningful if comparison is used.

There are so many implications for this. The first is an enormous implication that looks poorly upon any hopes for objectivity. What we’re saying is that, for any given object, that object alone cannot allow us to accurately determine the level of quality that we will absolutely perceive within that object. What actually determines quality is comparing that object to other objects. So let’s say we have two people: Joe and Bob. Using my original example, each has the older version, black laptop. Bob is aware that there are better laptops, but Joe is not. Joe will find his laptop to be of higher quality than Bob, who knows better. Yet, they are the same laptop and each judges their laptop to the best of his ability.

What this boils down to is the fact that, even when it comes to non-aesthetic objects, there will virtually always be disagreement about the level of quality – that is, the goodness or badness – that this object conveys. The reason for this is that no two people have exactly the same level of knowledge; and thus, no two people will judge things exactly the same way, as they will have different conceptions of what to compare things to. And if something as basic and seemingly easy to identify as objective as non-aesthetic objects has this problem, then I think it’s safe to say that there’s little or no hope that aesthetic objects could be judged objectively.

Of course, there are a few ways to avoid this problem. The first would be for people to somehow all have the same level of knowledge. If this was the case, and one assumes that they all judge rationally, then they would, indeed, come up with the same conclusions. While this is a rather implausible scenario to ever happen in real life, it does shed light onto another possible solution: relative quality.

By relative quality I mean that, if Bob and Joe are both aware of the new silver laptop, then they will both agree that the new silver laptop is of higher quality than the old, black one. Now, they may differ on exactly what level of quality they assign to each laptop, but they will agree on the relative levels of quality assigned to each laptop. Thus, there might be some kind of objectivity available on a relative scale, which is to say that you might be able to objectively say that one thing is better than another. But to assign a specific, or nominal, grade of quality to any object seems like a hopeless endeavor.

Finally, this has a very interesting implication for decision-making: it makes it very difficult. Let’s say you want to decide what kind of a computer to buy. In order to make the best decision, you would, in a very literal sense, need to have all of the information that is available at the time about computers, electronics, and any other related fields. This might seem extreme, but it really isn’t: In order to properly assess the utility that this object would bring you, you would need to consider everything that could influence your utility in the present and future. Thus, in order to make a correct decision, you would need to have complete knowledge of the present and the future!

This paints a pretty grim picture for making correct decisions. As a result, all we can probably hope to do is to make fairly good decisions. And obviously, the more information and foresight that we have concerning a decision, the better that decision will have turned out to be.

Isn’t it interesting the deep conclusions one can draw by considering a silly example of human behavior? We just concluded things about objectivity, personal utility assignment, and decision-making all through noticing that sometimes your judgment of the quality of something fades when you learn that there is something better than that thing available. I suppose, as a result, it’s kind of lucky that I didn’t get the new silver laptop in the first place, right? I mean, then I might not have made this connection and never have thought of any of this. Of course, surely there would be an upgrade eventually for that as well, leading to my disliking that laptop instead and wanting the better one. Kind of makes life seem like a no-win situation, doesn’t it? Or maybe everyone, deep down, is just like Prince’s mother: she’s never satisfied.

Don’t you hate it when you are in the shower and you forget if you’ve conditioned, so you start putting conditioner in your hair (just in case you didn’t) when you suddenly have deja vu like you just finished conditioning a few minutes ago?

Remember back when you were younger and there were all those totally goofy TV shows that you used to watch? Okay, okay, so maybe you still do watch lots of goofy TV shows. But I kinda miss some of them from back in the day. As a result, I’d like to talk about a few shows that I think were truly priceless back from my days of adolescence.

When I say “adolescence”, I might not mean that in a technical sense. In fact, I basically mean between the ages of 11 and 15, since during the time span from 16-21 I really did not watch any TV at all. So this would be all of middle school and the first half of high school. And while these TV shows were not necessarily all widely popular shows, they were shows that I really liked. Let the fun begin!

The A-Team (1983-1987)
- What could be better than a show about a group of special forces solders who toured in Vietnam only to be framed for a crime that they didn’t commit to come back to the states and work as kind of mercenaries for hire while they avoided getting caught by federal authorities for the crime that they were framed for? The A-Team was television at it’s finest. The A-Team was the perfect kind of group for a TV show – you had “Faceman” the slick guy that got all the girls; you had Murdock the rather insane and hilarious one; you had “B.A” played by Mr. T who was the tough bad-ass one; and you had Hannibal their fearless leader who was a man of many disguises and always ended the show with a cigar and the words “I love it when a plan comes together”. Although this is technically an older TV show, and might not seem like it fits into the time period I described, I am certain that I watched re-runs well into the 1990s, and probably never watched the show any way other than through re-runs.

MacGyver (1985-1992)
- How cool was MacGyver? First of all, he could make a bomb out of a bubble gum wrapper and a paperclip. Second, he was a crazy CIA agent that would go on outrageous missions, and he refused to use a gun. Finally, he was always smarter than his enemies. I remember that MacGyver made me want to become an engineer, because I thought then I’d get to do cool stuff like him. Of course, when I learned that engineering wasn’t about learning how to make bombs from ordinary household items, my interest faded fairly quickly.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1996)
- This is the only cartoon on my list, but it may have been my favorite cartoon of all time. Imagine a couple of TV writers sitting in a room. One says: “Let’s think up the most outlandish TV show that we possibly can, and the kids will love it.” One replied: “Okay, let’s have one where there are turtles that are superheros.” Another followed: “Yeah turtles that were playing in chemical waste and mutated to be like humans and are able to talk.” Another continued: “Yeah, and we’ll have them be ninjas too, who were trained from another animal mutant – a mutant rat who named them all after renaissance artists!” Finally, one of them said: “And we’ll make them teenagers, so they’ll love pizza and live in the sewer!” I don’t think you could imagine a much more ridiculous plotline if you actually tried. And yet, it was brilliant. It was a great show; so great that they’re brining it back I’ve heard. The movies were all decent as well. And the videogames were great.

Family Matters (1989-1998)
- This was a spin-off from another classic show “Perfect Strangers”, which misses the cut due to time period, but was definitely an 80s hit. But you’ll surely remember “Family Matters” as “TGIF” show that starred a number of people who we haven’t seen since, and of course, Jaleel White as the irrepressible nerd that lived next-door “Urkel”. But then one day, they had him become “cool” so that he could finally get with the love of his life Laura Winslow. For some reason, however, this was the beginning of the end of the show, as it just wasn’t the same once Urkel was no longer a nerd.

Saved By the Bell (1989-1993)
- This was, quite simply, the most popular show around when I was in middle school. Every guy wanted to be Zack Morris or AC Slater and feared that he was actually Screech, while every girl dreamed of being Kelly Kapowski, Jessie Spano, or Lisa Turtle, and of course, hoped to date a guy like Zack or Slater. I remember always relating more to the “Slater” type, being the gym-rat that I eventually became. They tried to carry things on with “college years” and even a “new class”, but none of it would really take. But in it’s prime, there was no better show.

In Living Color (1990-1994)
- This was the second best sketchy comedy show of this time. It was the show that made Jim Carrey famous. He was always the highlight of the show, and I would argue that, while some of it was good, none of his subsequent work had the same magic of the sketches that he was in from this show. Of course, it also starred all of the Wayans brothers, the only one of which whom I think is particularly talented is Damon. Finally, it was J. Lo’s first big break – don’t you remember her? She was one of their fly girls! I bet you can sing the chorus from the show’s theme song.

The State (1993-1995)
- The state was the best sketchy comedy show of this time. It was, quite simply, the funniest show that I think has ever graced the television airwaves during my lifetime. It was also, I believe, the best show to ever be on MTV, by far. It had such memorable sketches as “Doug” – the rebel without a clue, “Louie” – the guy who wanted to dip his balls in everything, “Barry and Levon” – the pimp-like guys who liked to rub their butts in pudding, and too many more to mention. I would pay hundreds of dollars for DVDs of their complete episodes, but alas, all MTV did was produce one measly videotape. Hopefully one day they’ll release the archives. The crew from “The State” has done a number of things since the show, but none of these features the majority of the original members. Some of these projects have included quite a few, such as the TV show “Reno 911”, the movie “Wet Hot American Summer”, those “I Love the 80s” shows on VH1, and some other stuff. None of these subsequent projects, however, are even in the same ballpark in terms of hilarity as the original TV show.

Malibu Shores (Spring 1996, only 10 episodes)
- Few people remember Malibu Shores, but those who do are probably still bitter that it did not get picked up for at least one full season. This was a great show with so much potential. It was Keri Russell’s first show, before Felicity. It was similar in feel to some aspects of 90210, probably since it was another Aaron Spelling production, but stronger in the spots that 90210 was weak. If only we could have seen how it would have done for a full season!

So there’s the list. So much great TV. It almost begs the question: Is TV better now, or was it better then? Honestly, it’s probably mostly the same drivel in both cases. I suppose that at least we didn’t have all of the reality TV crap back them. But I think it’s mostly that, back then, TV just better conveyed my general point of view at the time, if that makes any sense. Although, I can’t really complain about TV these days, because the fact that there are even 2 or 3 shows on TV now that I can stand is more than I can say for the late 1990s!

If you had to have one, would you rather have narcolepsy or insomnia?