The emptyness of my DVR can only suggest one thing, the summer lull in programming  has hit.  My favorite sitcoms, dramas and reality shows (The Girls Next Door, Pushing Daisies, SNL, 30 Rock, Scrubs, Reaper, ANTM, Heroes, Nip/Tuck, The Riches---to name a few) are in rerun mode until the fall.  How I long for the days where i had to decide which show to cancel when it conflicted with two other 'must-see's' for the day.  How i miss attempting to stay up past midnight in order to cram in all those unwatched shows from the day. 

Instead, i am left with only a bitter taste in my mouth, a dis-satisfication from this weeks' American Gladiators.   Oh yeah, i'm going there.  First of all, nice job on plugging the Incredible Hulk.  I'm just a wee bit excited about Edward Norton playing the big guy, giving us a chance to forgive Ang Lee for that travesty.  But ku-DOS to A.G for promoting the new movie by giving audience members Hulk Hands and green muscle t-shirts...making the increasingly frequent shots of the audience about as annoying as those JG Wentworth commercials.  They even traded in the classic red/blue lighting for green to cast over the audience when a contender loses an event.  Great, now everyone looks like they just ate bad seafood while chanting "Another One Bites the Dust".  We get it, the Incredible Hulk is coming out this weekend.  I'm not even going to touch on the fact that Titan (pretty boy and attention **** extrordinaire) was painted green and had some awesome synthesizer voice over work done, great job guys, thats super classy...

 The ultimate act of betrayal came in the form of EDITING.  Let me take you back two weeks ago, to the last new AG that was shown on NBC.  I'm sure the world is somewhat  aware of the storms that are ravaging the midwest, my region not excluded.  Our broadcast two weeks ago was rudely interrrupted by our local weatherman, informing us that a tornado was potentially heading our way.  HOW DARE HE!  Expecting that the madness might switch back to our regularly scheduled program, we sat through a solid hour of storm coverage. Okay, we didnt sit through it, we hit the fast forward button on our DVR, but still...that was a lost hour of AG.  Then they announced that there wouldnt be another new episode for two weeks.  TWO WEEKS???  How on earth would we last that long?!?

 The two weeks came and went, my DVR becoming more and more empty by the minute.  It was finally monday, i could hardly contain my excitement as the hours drew near.  The time had come, and with all the Hulk promotions aside, I was happy to see the events.  As usual, the contenders were overly talkative, with prompting by the Hulk and Leila, but there was really nothing special about them.  One of the girls 4'11", but that was about the only interesting trait out of the four competitors.  No amputees, no deaf competitors, neither group were BFFs. 

Assault was sloppy, the contenders dont seem to be even trying this season.  Come on guys, you know you want to send she-male Hellga into the water!  Rings were interesting as usual, but I typically find my self announcing out loud that I would never want to be in the position of the competitors.  Not because of the strength that the event takes and that I lack, but the fact that probably at one point some busty female gladiator is going to wrap her massive thighs around my head and do some sort of shimmy with her **** in my face in an attempt to make me drop.  Yep, that wont be happening any time soon...

 Back to my original point...after watching the male and female contenders perform 3 gladiator- filled events, AG came back from the commercial break only to announce that it was time for the Eliminator, the ultimate obstacle course.  WTF was the loud exclamation from our living room.  Its supposed to be five events for both sexes and THEN the eliminator!   The annoucner came on and decided to fill us in, due to time constraints, the producers of the show decided to edit out two events in order to make their 1 hour time slot, usually a 1.5 hour time slot.  So, they did recaps of the two events that they needed to cut. 

 Thanks guys, i guess it didnt matter that the two events had the newest gladiators, or that they were even two new events...sure, just make us sit through Assault...where nobody got any points and nobody got beaned by a fast moving nerf ball in the forehead...thats the only reason anybody watches Assault anyway...

LETS TRY HARDER NEXT WEEK!

Oh well, this has been my first blog, hope it was somewhat enjoyable...