Over the Sledge

Update: I'm told that the message board post I was responding to was not by the real Alan Spencer, but a cyber-impersonator.

An old and not-particularly-good post of mine, on why I wasn't fond of the show Sledge Hammer, has inspired a message board discussion in which I got to participate, yay!

The creator of the show, Alan Spencer, who apparently makes P.O.'d posts about bad customer reviews at Amazon, corrected a mistake in my post (a correction I have added) and then settled my hash with such brilliant gems as:

Anyhow, Jaimie... you of the rather un-masculine name: Put a condom on your tiny member, stick it in the appropriate hole and move it slowly in and out.

That's called f**king.

Now... do it to yourself.

The fact that Wee Willy Weinman is content to criticize and not create, not even professing an aspiration to show us pros a thing or two, says that he's basically a coward. He actually isn't worth the amount of time spent discussing his prattle, but it's fun to work out one's demons on an insignificant blogger than unjustly targeting a friend, family member or small cur.

He even threw in a reference to the fact that he makes better money than I do. If he had only broken Godwin's law, he'd be batting 1.000.

Spencer on message boards, in other words, is very much like the Spencer who turns up on the Sledge Hammer! commentaries: not exactly unfunny, but the type of guy who considers himself hipper and edgier than he actually is, while mouthing dull cliches (is there any older, sillier cliche than the cliche that to "criticize and not create" makes criticism invalid). I'm not picking on him particularly; I've known this type elsewhere, and I think we all have. But it seems to be a particularly prevalent type in the TV writing business, where you'll often find people who will talk about escaping the tyranny of the network execs and challenging the audience with their dream project, only it turns out that their dream project is a collection of cliches (see Ball, Alan, or alternatively Beauty, American). Chuck Lorre, with his endless stream-of-consciousness protestations of genius contrasting with the by-the-numbers shows he actually creates (Two and a Half Men, Dharma and Greg) is perhaps the best-known example of the type.