Imagine my shock last night when watching the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert upon realizing Bea Arthur is not dead, but rather alive and well as Graham Nash.

Also last night, Paul McCartney called David Crosby and finally relinquished his title as the Walrus to its rightful owner.  All hail the Walrus.

The last time I blogged about a mid-season replacement reality show it was the resplendent Dating in the Dark.  Tonight James 3.0 and Nate beDazzle subjected me to the turd that is Find My Family.  Here’s the skinny on the worst show I’ve seen since I tried to go back to watching All My Children when I had mono in college.  Long lost adoptees are reached out to by their birth parents/sisters/brothers/turtles/dogs/families they never knew… on national television.  Tonight’s episode featured parents who desperately needed to feel absolved for giving up the child they had when they were too young to raise her.  

I am not anti-adoption.  That’s your choice.  I can’t imagine having to make a decision with that kind of gravity.  My largest daily decision is if I want to eat peanut M&Ms out of the communal office H1N1 cesspool and if I eat said-M&Ms (which I usually do - take that Swine!) how many extra minutes I’ll have to spend on an aerobic torture device that night.  I hold near and dear friends who have adopted, who are adopted and who have given up children for adoption.  The difference is, there is, usually, put in place an agreement beforehand as to what will/should happen as to the child knowing their birth parents.  I assure you, nowhere in those agreements are written the words “at 9 PM following Dancing with the Stars.” 

There is so much fundamentally morally wrong with this show.  So.  Much.  But I think the worst part is that the geniuses at network are perpetuating the mindset that adoptive parents are not real parents.  I have news for you kids,  those adoptive parents of yours ARE your parents and they are infinitely more worthy of you than the boners that want to take you on national television to meet you under the FAMILY TREE (read: a tree that has been planted on a hill somewhere behind the Hollywood sign).  Hey ABC, before you make these people sign away their rights to profiteer off one of the most profound and what should be touching moments of their lives to play in syndication if you so choose, are you going to show those kids the tapes from the cutting room floor of you tracking down some deadbeat parents who slam the door on your cameras when you show up?  Yeah, I didn’t think so. 

What is happening, friend-os?  This is not something that people should be watching, and not something off of which broadcasters should be making sweet greenbacks.  Am I wrong here - is this not complete voyeurism?  Is there another side I don’t see?

Shocker of the day - Ronnie Wood is getting divorced and his wife is citing adultery.  Now, when marrying one of the largest rock stars in the world, don’t you pretty much sign-up for adultery?  I’m just saying even the name of his band - THE ROLLING STONES - implies that he can’t be tied down. 

The Rolling Stones are my all-time favorite rock band.  Yes, over the Beatles.  I am not saying I don’t like the Beatles and they weren’t genius (because, I do and, clearly, they were), but I was raised on the Rolling Stones.  Plus, for my money I like a little Chicago Blues-infused dirty rock from corpses.  They also have the added benefit of being, hands down, the best example of “sexy-ugly” ever. 

Ronnie Wood jumped from my 4th favorite Rolling Stone to my 3rd favorite (yes I rate them) after I read of his ideas for his daughter’s eccentric wedding.  For the record the VERY TIGHT order as of today is:

1) Keith Richards for many reasons - for reports that he snorted his Dad’s ashes, for being the oldest looking man on the planet, and for one of my favorite quotes: “It’s not the first brush with death I’ve had. I guess what I learned is, don’t sit in trees anymore.” after falling out of a tree and injuring himself in 2006.

2) Charlie Watts for drumming with the same expression since 1963, for being the only Roller faithful to his wife, and for landing a spot on Vanity Fair’s Best Dressed International Hall of Fame list.

3) Ronnie Wood, well, for the dwarves thing and for looking like he could be one of my grandma’s friends from her English Ladies Club of war brides in Minnesota.

4) Mick Jagger: the list is really tight, and on any given day after listening to Exile on Main Street or watching any concert footage and realizing he’s one of the most charismatic performers who ever lived…be jumps to #1.

Moral of the story: don’t marry rockstars.  If you do, enter in with a sharing attitude and be prepared to get tested for STDs at least once a month.

I break my silence of a few months, which was mostly due to the utter lack of any interesting news stories to inspire my rants. Yes, there were countless “celebrity” deaths and the whole Balloon Boy thing (which I didn’t even know about until way after it happened because I watched a ‘Roseanne’ marathon instead of the news that day) but those were so overdone that anything I’d have to say on those topics would be lost in a sea of snark and pathetic fan tears. I was slightly tempted to write about Amy Winehouse getting breast implants, but the only comment I could come up with is that she’s well on her way to achieving what I can only assume is her goal of looking like Ramona Rickettes from Cry-Baby. On Halloween, I was close to posting my take on the Saw franchise making its way up to the number of Police Academy films and how I pray it doesn’t surpass Land Before Time sequels.

But today, the obvious hit me. Literally, someone threw a baseball with a Yankees logo on it at me because they know I’m Philly born and raised (though on the playground I did not spend most of my days). The tension of the World Series is all around and I quite frankly just want it to end, whether the Phillies win or lose. Technically, I’m a Phillies fan in that I’ll cheer for them at a game, but right now I seem to be one of a few sane people in the tri-state area. Philly and New York are supposed to be bros! Of all the major cities, we’re the most similar, what with our high populations of hipsters, citizens with a larger tolerance of tourists and crazies than the average person, obese people who don’t question buying pretzels from a homeless guy at a crosswalk, and outrageous accents in common (which makes Chicago our midwest cousin). Unfortunately, we also share an obnoxious obsession with sports that would be considered psychotic anywhere else.

I can’t log on to Facebook without seeing hundreds of status’ eloquently stating “Yo, NY, YANK DEEZ!” accompanied by photos of rude gestures. Yet, these are the same people I seem to recall constantly going on about their weekend trips to NYC and how they wish they could live there. In the same vein, most Yankees fans I know are from New Jersey and in the sports off-season, love NYC and Philly as places equally. So what makes sports suddenly turn our asshole-iness up to 11 and cause fights to break out? I’m sure we’ll cure cancer before that answer is discovered. But on last night’s Daily show, they sure did a great job of capturing it in a hilarious, bipartisan manner.

I’m not sure if the game is on now or not, but I honestly wish the Yankees good luck no matter the outcome. Either way, there’ll be riots in the streets of Philly. Stay classy, everyone.

My Boston correspondent and insanely fashionable college roommate, Carolyn*, alerted me to this distressing trend-in-the-making.