Hill Climbing

King of the Hill: 
Bobby Slam, Season 2, Episode 10
Dia-BILL-ic Shock, Season 13, Episode 1

Mike writes:
I'm doing some writing with KOH on in the background.  The episode with Bobby wrestling Kahn Jr. was just on, not so good. But now the episode with Bill in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with diabetes is on.  A classic.

Andy responds:
That's a great episode. Lot's going on and I'Ll need to re-watch it to comment. I will offer an overall observation on the structure of KOH.  In the early seasons, Judge made a decision that the characters would age. Hence we have Bobby, Kahn-jr, and starting off pre-pubcent and winding up as teenagers, Bobby/Connie good friends -> boyfriend/girlfriend -> breaking-up.  Then after Judge left the series for a while the decision was made to freeze the characters, a la Peanuts/Simpson, most-likely for commercial reasons, I.E., to give syndicators more of an option on the order in which they can run the episodes (ironically, they same to run them in chronological order).  This was an unfortunate decision and the classic KOH episodes come before this period, which is 1997-1998/9 and those are the ones we are watching now.  So taken in that context, the Bobby/Kahn Jr episode is actually more interesting that you might think, if you focus on their relationship which is a pretty good model of friendship.  Of course this gets all screwed up when they "grow up" !  The Bill character, who I love, is an example of KOH's Seinfeld-like, "no-hugging, no-learning" mentality. The KOH post-Mike Judge era characters never really change for episode to episode. They do something stupid, learn from it, and then do it again in another form. I guess it has to be this way or the series would eventually extinguish itself and it is probably the secret to most successful sitcoms.  However, Judge, actually was breaking this formula in the early years as you can see the Hank character mature in his relationship with Bobby, Luanne, Peggy.  However, it would be fair to say that in real life the adults tend to be stagnant as well!

song lyrics, The Doors

This afternoon, I got frustrated with HMOs, voice menus and computer forms. Then I jumped to cosmic pessimism!

To simplify the bombast, eerie verses of Jim Morrison come to mind. Old Jim sang so dramatically !

“What have we done to the Earth? What have we done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her, stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, and tied her with fences and dragged her down.”

In 1968, this HS junior was coolly fascinated by Jim Morrison. The risks he took as a performer were breathtaking and raised goosebumps. 

Dolly Parton sings Christmas

One Holiday Season, I was forced to listen to Dolly Parton and think analytically at same time, because the office receptionist decided to fiafia the whole office with her fiafia-boom-box. 

Eventually I stopped resisting.

Dolly sounds good this time of year!

Christmas Times A Comin’

Hard Candy Christmas

PMS Blues 

9 to 5

Essay on language, race and poetry

Writing Like a White Guy by Jaswinder Bolina
This kind of writing gives me a mental workout; I liked it! 


"I'll come back and read it slowly," I told myself.


-- TZ

dance photos c)

3rd set of dance photos