As The Wrench Does Not Turn

One of my cherished childhood books (still one I regard with great affection) is a copy of Babar and His Castle. Did I mention that it's entirely in French? When it comes to foreign languages in general, not just French, I do reasonably well with learning nouns and adjectives and the verb bases, but I fall to pieces when matters get more complicated. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I never learned to diagram sentences, but no matter.

I have read and reread this book I don't know how many times. I know enough French that I get the jist of the story (the pictures help) but as to specifics I'm a bit vague. I just look through it, enjoy the ambiance and smile.

This is how I feel about the NPR show Car Talk. (Sorry, no link, I'm lazy.) I know just enough about cars to get a general notion of what's going on, I enjoy the banter and silliness and when I don't understand a term, I can just blip on by. I'm a fairly faithful listener, even when the topic under discussion is hopelessly over my head... kind of like the plu-perfect tense.

Thus I was very excited about watching the first episode of the PBS series "As the Wrench Turns", a cartoon supposedly about the wacky adventures of the Car Talk hosts. I ended a truly wonderfully funny phone chat so that I could watch it. I poured myself a glass of perfectly good wine, called the dog over, and prepared....

My time would have been better spent digging out my old verb flashcards from grad school.

The concept of spoofing PBS fund drives was sound enough, and the guys' voices as as amusing as ever... but the execution was dull, the supporting cast extraneous and in my humble opinion, the show is a dismal failure. There wasn't even enough promise to it that I would be willing to give it a second chance. (sigh) This is too bad.

Now I must return to the moral qualms about whether or not I can watch the new episodes of "Dog the Bounty Hunter" in good conscience.