...MTV

Someone has a birthday... I wonder who? It is MTV's 30th birthday and my oh my has it changed. There are rarely any music videos played on the channel, unless you are up from 3AM-7AM. They launched and created something amazing, all music, all of the time, but eventually that went away. Why? It is expensive to run a channel without ads or sponsorship with just a single mindset, ask Speed.

(The moon-landing promo ran roughly 75,000 times on MTV, including 17,000 plays in MTV's inaugural year.)


I remember watching shows like Beavis & Butt-head and Daria and watching their Spring Breaks when they were way better than they are today, but they also used to be in Florida when Florida was okay with that. Even when they moved to Mexico it was not so bad for the 1st couple of years. At midnight August 1st, on the exact 30th anniversary of MTV's first broadcast, VH1 Classic will replay MTV's entire first hour of footage from 1981. The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first video MTV ever played, but can anyone name the second? Maybe int he next 10, 20, 30 or so years MTV will add music back into their programming. I doubt it, but it could be a nostalgic thing, like TV Land or Nick at Nite. Still I am impressed with the longevity and revenue MTV pulls in and for that alone I am going to give MTV 2 Digits Up.

...Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor turns 79 today, amazing. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Taylor is a legend who has had some recent medical issues but just lie Zsa Zsa she has bounced back well. Miss Taylor has been acting pretty much from birth, she is a true movie legend. She is also known for her 7 marriages, 12 best selling fragrances, jewelry and her decades of work with AIDS research. If we are looking she will attend the Academy Awards today, which would be special for us and possibly for her on her birthday. I am giving Elizabeth Taylor a Digit Up for sure.

...Zsa Zsa Gabor

I would like to wish Zsa Zsa Gabor a Happy 94TH Birthday. It has been a rough year for her, a year no one should have to go through. She has pretty much lived at the hospital, she had her hip replaced and she had her leg amputated as well. Before that the previous decade was rough. She suffered multiple strokes, was in a car accident that left her in a wheel chair, and she was one of the many victims of Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme. Still she managed to pull through and make it another year. I do not know what this year will be like for her, but I do hope life gets easier for her, who knows how much longer she will be with us. I am giving Zsa Zsa Gabor a Digit Up :-)

...Aging

As my birthday came and went as usual I was not so excited. I am not afraid of death at all, but I am not looking forward to it as well. Why? Failure. Failure to achieve any any of my goals no matter how real or unreal they might have been. Failure is like the death of my soul. It is bad enough that my inner artist is slowly dying daily, but to die and have everything go undone is horrible. Beyond that aging period is not so great. You are older, but how much older do you want to be? You have your 1st birthday, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st, 25th (if you care about renting a car), 30th, 35th (if you want to run for president), 40th, 50th, 65th and everything after that is just inching closer to death. I mean half of those birthdays are not even that major and in my case a lot of them will not be that major. I would not mind getting older if I could see the results of whatever it is that I am doing, but I cannot so I mind. I this pointless stress over something silly? Probably, but it is not my fault. We are pushed from the time we are babies to excel and grow and become the best at whatever we do at an early age. If you can read, you had better be reading at least 2 grade levels ahead of your actual grade or else you may have a learning disorder. If you can talk, you must be able to speak properly and spell properly or else you may have to get speech lessons. By the time you start high school you should already know what you want to be int he future and if you do not then you might as well get ready to serve burgers to your friends because you are almost an adult and the fun and games are over. What are these fun and games? The games that are education based? The fun that is centered around school? In the future will babies be expected to feed and change themselves? Will children ever be allowed to have true fun and have no 0 worries? I doubt it. We are trying to compete against countries that are trying to compete against us. Countries that excel in certain areas and fail miserably in almost every other category that matters. So aging for me is nothing new. It started as soon as I could walk and talk, that is when the world said you are a big boy, a little man. That is when I was expected to learn and if I was not learning then I was wasting time. You cannot stop aging, but you can hold it off for a little, that is something I wish I could have done then, but now I am on the slippery slope and it is happening fast. I must give aging a Digit Down.

...Madonna

Happy 52nd Birthday to the Queen of Pop! I love her and always will, til death! 2 Digits Up!