YES, I TAKE REQUESTS

I've had a couple of Smokin' Joe followers ask my take on a couple of things lately. Specifically, one wanted to know what I think of Glenn Beck, and the other wanted my predictions on the upcoming NASCAR season.
I'll start with NASCAR.
I think there's about to be a NASCAR revival. I love the sport and I've even thought the last couple of campaigns were lacking. But lo and behold NASCAR's dictator Brian France--NASCZAR if you'll allow me the indulgence--has decided to do something I've been screaming for for two years, and that's a return to the sport's roots. He won't go as far as ditching the Chase format points system and taking races back to North Wilkesboro, but he is moving the starting times back to 1 EST like they should be, and the wing that nobody but me seems to like is going to be replaced by an actual spoiler. NASCAR is also ditching their crackdown on dangerous driving, i.e. bumpdrafting. I guess they figured out that driving 180 in a family car is dangerous enough. They've also decided to open up the restrictor plates that they put on the cars at Daytona and Talladega to slow the cars down. Now their way of thinking is to let them go a bit faster and spread out.
Bottom line is that things should be a little less cut and dried, and that there should be more emphasis on putting on a good show for fans this season, so I think NASCAR might be a nice Sunday afternoon distraction in 2010.
Now to Glenn Beck.
I have about as much use for Glenn Beck as I do for serpents, self-ordained ministers, or foul air. It's appropriate that he falls in with this group because you could make the argument that Beck can be considered any of the other three.
Glenn Beck is Rush Limbaugh on steroids. In fact this is what Rush Limbaugh would have been if he had festered into being in front of a camera instead of behind a mic. Beck has his bully pulpit on the FOX News Channel and never misses the chance to spread a little more panic and hate when the opportunity arises. The scary part is that his program draws more viewers in his time slot than all his competitors on the other news networks combined.
I think Glenn Beck was born about 100 years too late, and in the wrong country. If some lass of fine German stock had squeezed little Glenn into being in the early part of the 20th century I have no doubt that he would have pledged his oath to the swastika and would have went to work in Hitler's propaganda machine. He just looks like he would make such a good Nazi. But don't take my word for it, just look at the jacket for his book, ARGUING WITH IDIOTS. If that's not almost a Nazi getup I don't know what is. I guess he had his wife snap some photos when he got home from his last party meeting.

The Smokin' Joe Book Review: UNDER THE DOME

If you know me much at all then you know I'm a great fan of writer Stephen King. Even though he's one of my favorite authors I'm the first to admit that his last few novels haven't been as good as I'd come to expect. I figured his best works were behind him, and I was OK with that because even his sub-par stuff still makes a good read.
Now I'm changing my tune because I've just finished reading his latest tome, UNDER THE DOME.
UNDER THE DOME is classic King. It's set in a small town with a rich population of characters, and like all of King's best work some of the central characters are children. I've said for years that Stephen King puts a voice to children and young people better than any scribe in the game and this book proves that. It also proves that King is a small town guy at heart, and gets what goes on in real America. This time the town is Chester's Mill, Maine, and it has all the sorts of folks you find in real small towns: the town drunk, bullies, crooked politicians, and people you can identify with.
Like any good King book this one is long and involved. Covering a short span of time in Chester's Mill the book still manages to encompass almost 1,100 pages, but you'd actually wish for a couple of hundred more. It's really that good.
I still consider King's 'five star' novels to be THE STAND, IT, and the GUNSLINGER series, but I'm going to have to expand that roll by one. UNDER THE DOME is not only King's best book in recent memory, it's probably one of the five best he's ever written.
Read this book! You won't be disappointed.

TECHNOLOGY AIN'T WORTH A DAMN

This is 2010, we're a tenth of the way through the 21st century, and we still can't get the really important things right.
We've put a man on the moon, we can send space probes half-a-billion miles to some other planet and land them more or less where we want, we have the World Wide Web, cars that monitor the driver, TVs with 200 HD channels, and a host of other technological marvels. Why is it then that I can't find a freakin' can-opener that's worth having?
I've tried them all. I think I'm obsessed with finding the perfect can-opener. I've ordered them from TV that only nip the sides of the top of the can. It was a piece of crap. You had to turn it backward and it seemed to be designed for lefties. I had a nice electric model that I bought at K-Mart that lasted about 6 months and then just quit working. I used to have a crank model mounted on the wall over the sink that worked for about 20 years, but I can't find another one. My latest model was a nice black and silver hand held model from Walmart. It's junk. It quit working after about 50 cans.
Now I'm reduced to using my $6.97 Walmart model to snip the lids off the cans a bit at at time.
Why won't somebody fix this problem? Can-openers are just the tip of the iceberg where ill-operating conveniences are concerned, but it's one that glares at me because I encounter it every day.
Instead of issuing a grant to some egghead to figure out why stars twinkle or why dogs sniff their butts maybe the government will fund a design contest to fix this can-opener crap.
And btw, why don't all cans just have pull tops? This is 2010 after all.