Last week I decided it was time to rededicate myself to the advice section of this website. The world is in shambles, I thought. No time like the present to share more of my wisdom, the kind of knowledge one can only gather while watching TV shows about people with actual problems. I’ve been looking forward to this column all week – the grand re-opening, as it were!
And then I saw this, and there went all my enthusiasm.
This was a promo for the short-lived TV show “Mr. Smith” – that’s apparently the orangutan’s name.Side note: the show co-starred Tim Dunigan, who briefly starred on another TV show I wrote about.
But this Dial-a-monkey thing is shaking me up. Frankly, I just don’t know that I want to help a world in which people willingly pay 50 cents (in 1983 cents, mind you) to hear a recording of a fictional orangutan.
Then again, the show bombed and was yanked after two months because of low ratings, so maybe the world isn’t that bad after all. Nonetheless, it’s Friday and advice must be given. Let’s hit it:
What are some tips for inter-dimensional travel on a budget?
– Blake in New Hampshire
Well, you start by making sure you’re not going to a dimension that is not only of sight and sound but of mind, cause that’s gonna cost you extra, and – ok, why fifty cents? Two quarters? I grant you, it’s not the most expensive thing in the world, but a half-dollar to hear the monkey you just heard on the TV? What next? “Oh, yes, I’ll gladly spend a buck twenty-five to hear Doug Llewellyn cough in between cases on ‘The People’s Court’?” And Mr. Smith? Was that Brad Pitt movie just a thinly-veiled rehash of the TV series?
Blake, clearly we are not in the most ideal of dimensions. I’m afraid I don’t have any idea how to get out. Call the orangutan, maybe? He might know.
