Robert Cray 'Strong Persuader'

This weekend, the 19th Annual Carolina Blues Festival is happening in downtown Greensboro at the Center City Park. It’s an all day event and if it’s anything like last year’s Blues Fest, the grass is going to suffer from the dancing that will be taking place.

The weather looks like it’s going to cooperate with every one, mostly sunny with the high temperature right around 70.

Last year, the weather was awesome! Sitting there sipping on some suds, enjoying some mighty fine music of the blues variety, and you’re surrounded by the buildings that make-up the Greensboro skyline. It was quite cool.

On to other things… ‘The Shield’ on FX.

Even before ‘The Shield’ was introduced on the FX network, they totally saturated all of the FOX networks with ads for the show. You will usually see this type of thing with shows made of high budgets and standards. So, it’s not all that unusual.

The thing that bothered me was that every time that I would watch a NASCAR race on FOX 8 or FX, every single commercial break had an ad for ‘The Shield’. It was simply too much and the tiny rubber band that keeps the motor skills in my brain going was about to snap. The commercials for ‘The Shield’ started to make everyone groan.

And just for that, I made a point of NOT watching the show. I didn’t care about what the critics said about it. I didn’t care that the show was being pumped as something that was going to redefine cable television. I didn’t care about its gingivitis curing properties… No wait, that was another commercial.

The point is, I WAS NOT GOING TO WATCH IT! It was the principal of the thing. I’m not about to let some network tell me what I’m going to watch by assaulting me with it every 15 minutes.

A few weeks after the premiere of ‘The Shield’, Christine gave me a call on a Tuesday night. Her first question… “Eugene, did you watch ‘The Shield’?”

“Hell no.”

Christine went on and on about this show. She talked about how good it was.

Yeah, yeah… Ain’t buying it.

She told me about the salty language being used on the show.

Uh-huh… Don’t care.

Then she told me about how there’s partial nudity running rampant on ‘The Shield’.

REALLY???

Maybe I’ve been wrong about this show.

The following week, I gave ‘The Shield’ a try and I loved it. The critics were right. It is a good show. Christine was right. There’s partial nudity.

I made an effort of taping ‘The Shield’ every Tuesday night. The exploits of Vic and the Strike Team kept me glued to my VCR with every morsel of adult dramatic goodness. All the things that I love are in one show. There’s plenty of violence. There are oodles of adult language and situations. And “situations” mean nudity. Tell me, what’s there not to love?

Now this season, things have changed. Vic and the boys have been busted up. The old Captain has moved on to City Council where he can be even more of a prick and his replacement is Glenn Close.

When I first heard about Close joining the cast, I only had one question in mind. Are we going to get Glenn Close from ‘Fatal Attraction’ (hot) or ‘Sara, Plain And Tall’ (not hot)?

The jury is still out on that one.

This season of ‘The Shield’ has been kind of weak. I make sure to tape it and watch it later. But, the watching it later part has become later and later. I don’t know if it’s a new direction that needs a LONG set-up for the show or if it’s just not happening.

Christine isn’t pleased. Tim Beeman isn’t pleased. I don’t know if anyone is pleased.

I’ll stick with the show until ‘Nip/Tuck’ gets fired up over this summer. Now THERE’S a show with some partial nudity.

Oh… And it’s a good show too.