Tagged: diet patch

Knieval’s final jump

At age 69, daredevil Eval Knieval, the trendy 70s icon who is perhaps best known for his daring failure to jump over the Snake River Canyon, made his final jump this week, into the afterlife; he passed away after years of failing health, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition. In 1999, he had a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, contracted through a blood transfusion. He also suffered two strokes in recent years. Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

The passing of the 70s icon marks a later exit than his early exploits might have promised him; he lived fast at the height of his popularity, and many expected him to accordingly die young. He nearly did, several times, following such daring stunts as jumping the fountains in front of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, the aftermath of which kept him comatose for a month.

Knieval was a throwback star, known for his actual stunts rather than celebrity endorsements for products unrelated to what made him famous, unlike make stars today who are better known as advocates for a diet patch or a brand of jeans than for their actual work.

He is survived by four children, 10 grandchildren and one great grandchild, as well as two ex-wives. Only son Robbie has attempted to mirror his father’s daredevil stunt career. Eval – born Robert Craig Knieval – suffered nearly 40 broken bones and countless other injuries before officially retiring in 1980.

Caveman sitcom NOT a racial metaphor?

Sometimes I wonder if TV producers today have their brains on a diet patch regimen. That’s about the only way producers of ABC’s forthcoming sitcom, “Cavemen,” could be interpreted as not being a metaphor for racial integration.

Yet that’s the claim producers Mike Schiff, Will Speck, Josh Gordon, and Joe Lawson were making to the press this week as the media reacted to a first-blush take on the pilot episode; the episode has been ordered to be re-shot based on the network’s feeling that the series starts too late in the cultural integration process of the cavemen into modern society.

Based on the popular Geico commercials, the racial metaphor has been present ever since Speck, Gordon and Lawson came up with the campaign; yet they seem willfully unaware of the obvious.

The series of commercials have always featured militant, offended cavemen, put off by Geico’s Cro-Magnon-insensitive slogan, “Geico. So simple, even a caveman could do it.” If that’s not a stereotype of race relations over the past 40 years in the US, nothing is.

Of course, the tricky part would be admitting it. If the producers were caught admitting the forthcoming show is a metaphor for, say, the African-American experience, then every time they wanted to have one of their characters do something silly and caveman-like, like bop a spouse over the head with a club, the network would be flooded with calls from offended racial leaders like Jesse Jackson, claiming them show negatively portrays black men and the black American experience through the show.

Newsflash, guys: Jackson, Sharpton and company are probably already lining up to Imus you anyway. At least show you’re intelligent enough to recognize the metaphor potential of your show, since you’re bound to be under fire anyway.

Idiocy on parade…