Column: Thanks for Listening

And now, the Turkey Awards.

(Awards are based on being a complete turkey or a negative event during the past year, as determined by a committee of me.)

1. Penn State scandal. Sick, sick, sick.

2. The Kardashian-Humphries 72-day sham marriage. Really, I sure am hoping that this is reality TV jumping the shark.

3. Washington politics. I blame both parties, and they should share this award for letting our credit rating falter and for not putting the United States ahead of politics. Grow up, turkeys!

4. Charlie Sheen. “Winning” is not what that this turkey did this year!

5. NBA lockout. Millionaires fighting billionaires. Morons.

 

Remember when?

Let me go back to a simpler time. We can take the way back machine — when only mint toothpaste and eight colors of crayons were offered. We in 2011 have too many choices. You go to the store, and there is toothpaste that comes in vanilla, orange, cinnamon and nine different kinds of mint.

Please do not even get me started on the whitening choices to go along with the flavor choices, and, finally, the 2,000 different toothbrushes.

Can someone tell me the difference between clean mint and luminous crystal clean mint?

It doesn’t stop there, oh no. You can have tartar control, whitening and baking soda with or without peroxide, fresh mint, cool mint, sensitive teeth mint and the list slowly ends up turning into three aisles at the supermarket or superstore.

I thought it was confusing enough when one could buy paste or gel, but now the selection options have just gone crazy. When I go to the store it takes me 20 minutes to find and then pick out plain mint toothpaste.

I am trying to stay calm, but the number of choices does not stop there. We have 100-plus TV channels, and there’s still nothing worth watching. When I was younger, we had three TV channels, but somehow shows like “My Three Sons,” “The Waltons,” “Happy Days” and “The Andy Griffith Show” all were on.

Today if you turn on the TV, you get sex combined with smut on one channel and smut combined with sex on the other. The only channel good for kids to watch is Nickelodeon, and that is because it reruns all the shows that were popular when I was a kid.

I think some choices are fine; many great Americans have fought for our right to have choices, but some things are getting out of hand. Did you know there are 120 different colors of crayons (there were 13 more, but Crayola retired them), and that includes 23 different kinds of red? Do we really need 23 different kinds of red?

Burnt sienna? Really?

 

Black Friday

Tomorrow is Black Friday. It is the busiest shopping day of the year.

Please do me a favor tomorrow and be kind to everyone. One gift everyone can give each other this holiday season is the gift of understanding.

All that it will take is to count to 10 before saying an unkind word or to make a begrudging smirk. Everyone is carrying some kind of a burden, and no one knows what each other person’s burden is, so take the time to be nice and hopefully that same respect will be paid back to you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.