Day 47 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

Tell About A TV Show That Is No Longer On But I Wish Was

If you've followed this blog for any amount of time then you have probably picked up on the fact that I'm not a big TV guy. There are a couple of talking heads I tune in to once in a while to get my 'frustration with government' level topped off. I have the news on at five a.m. but it's mostly just background noise while I'm dragging my ass around the kitchen getting ready for my day job and to make sure we haven't blown up the entire frigging planet while I've been sleeping. I'm un-American enough to admit that I don't even watch televised sports (No, not even NASCAR or the Super Bowl)!

 

I'M A WRITER. This means I spend an inordinately unhealthy amount of time doing...Well, this. Writing! It's cheaper than psychotherapy although it doesn't have the pharmaceutical privileges associated with that hobby. However, there have been those periods when something caught my attention and, like someone with ADD, my attention was snagged and I was a prisoner of the glowing cube!

 

One of these times was during the run of a program simply titled, TAXI . The show originally ran from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and starred Judd Hirsch, Danny Devito, Marilu Henner, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd and Andy Kaufman to name just a few of the cast members. The sets were simple, usually the interior of the fleet garage they worked out of and the characters were quirky to the point of neurotically deranged and at any given moment could be so easily related to a number of wayward mentalities that inhabited my own real world life.

 

Despite being written as a comedy there were several episodes with very serious topics handled and varying levels of tragedy represented. The saving grace was a writing staff that knew when to pull out of that emotional nose dive and send the characters arcing back into the deep reaches of space where you sometimes swore they originated. Yes it was minimalist but not in the nothing happened humor of SEINFELD or FRIENDS. Taxi always took you somewhere and made you a very real part of the journey and, at the risk of sounding nostalgic...is the kind of writing and acting that we could probably use a hell of a lot more of (So! Have me taken out in the morning and beaten with a soggy TV Guide - Oh yeah, that's another bygone bit of memorabilia). On that note...

 

I'm accepting short fiction to 1200 words, poetry to 25 lines, and carefully crafted essays (Come on I know there's a closet case Ed Murrow out there) for the Your Work/Your Love page. You can send them to me via email at dbaylis805@gmail.com. No pay involved, just the glory of exposure (Someone told me they could arrest you for that too). Authors retain all rights. You can follow or subscribe to this Blog. There are gadgets for that on the right side of this page. Love the company and it helps with the search engine ranking. Yup, that was kind of a plug. Comments, critiques, and questions are always welcome. Use the form at the bottom of the page, please. I respond as fast as I can.

 

As always... live, love, write.

 

 

Dane F. Baylis