Day 21: One of my Favorite TV Shows...

I love Breaking Bad.  I love The Wire.  I love SNL.  I love Mad Men.  Out of all of those, I think The Wire and Breaking Bad are just transcendent.  They are so much better than the rest of TV that it's not even funny.  Breaking Bad is just incredible.

Back during the writer's strike, TV was pretty much on it's knees begging for ways to get more money to it's writers.  I don't think there was a single show on TV that wasn't rerunning.  Mad Men had just debuted.  It was the only show on TV that was pumping out new episodes of quality TV, while TBS and TNT were churning out reruns of Family Guy, Law & Order, and House of Payne.

Now during those wretched days of rerun TV, I said "Screw it!" and went on to AMC since they were making something new and were also replaying my favorite Patrick Swayze movie like it was going out of style.  I figured it couldn't be that much worse since it was known as "the show that the guy from the Sopranos made".  I was blown away by Mad Men.  I didn't see Breaking Bad until after Mad Men Season 1 was completed.  All I knew was everything you would see in this trailer:

"Oh Great!  The Dad from Malcolm in the Middle is on a new show.  I'm never watching that!" was probably my first thought.  Then I had to wait for my friend Bill to confirm that it was awesome.  He saw a couple episodes and said it was so cool and that I would be missing out if I missed it.  So, I waited for which ever episode was on TV at the time and thought I could just jump in and see an episode.  Holy Shit, was I wrong.  The episode I saw, I stopped what I was doing and ran to the computer to see if anything I was seeing was possible.  The scene I first saw was the one below:

I ran to my laptop and found out that this shit was real!  This could be happening!  This was so mind-blowing, that it changed my TV watching schedule instantly.  I went to the library and got season 1 on disc and finished it in a day.  I went back for season 2 and finished that in another day.  I found out that Season 3 was just coming up and that I could catch up on every episode via Amazon Instant.  I did that and it's been the best medicine for bad TV since God knows when.  Everything about this show is terrific.  One of the first things on screen in the beginning of season 1 is this image:

Look at this image and tell me you aren't interested in what the hell is going on.

Aaron Paul, who plays Jesse Pinkman, has transformed from a simple know-nothing character actor to a multi-Emmy winning actor with amazing talent.  He was originally supposed to die in an earlier season, but because the way the producer's ran the show, he stayed on and it's made him a career.

Anna Gunn, who plays Skyler White, has gone from being a pregnant housewife who does laundry and makes eggs for her family, has put out a stellar performance as the housewife to a cancer patient who makes drugs.  Every turn and twist that this group of character's goes through makes you empathize with their decision making and gives you that feeling that rooting for the bad guy is the new thing to do.

It took a while for fans to pick up on this show being some of the best TV out there, but when people starting to wonder why Bryan Cranston was raking at the Emmy's, they tuned it and were hooked, just as I was.  I can't wait for the continuation of this season, since it seems like the final chapter, but it will be one of the greatest moments in television history, and the most watched.

Day 20: How Important Education Is...

Education.  How important is it to me?

Well, to be honest, not that important.  Why?  Well let me explain.

There are too many successful people who have made boatloads of money without going to college.  Lebron James, Alex Rodriguez, Kobe Bryant, Josh Hamilton, Leo Messi, Kevin Garnett, Sidney Crosby, Maria Sharapova, Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer, Cal Ripken Jr., Derek Jeter, Pete Rose, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, and Muhammad Ali all didn't attend college.  Think about that.  I didn't even mention the other tennis players and golf players who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars NOT sitting in a college lecture hall for 4 years.  Those names are also only Athletes.

Want more proof?  Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Lilliane Bettencourt of L'Oreal, Ingvar Kamprad of  IKEA, and Christy Walton of Wal-Mart.  You can't look at this list and tell me that higher education will amount to vast wealth and success in the real world.

Now, what will amount to success in the real world is the aspect of hard work.  Every single one of those people figured out that they were good at something that didn't require an education and went out and got wealthy doing that one thing they were good at.

I certainly feel that educating oneself on certain things is a necessity.  But I don't know to what point we should stop educating people and teaching them certain skills that are no longer taught in a classroom.  Sewing, cooking, wood shop, metal shop, car maintenance, electro-tech and other very useful classes that are taught in classrooms are still done today.  It's just that we can't use test scores to validate the success of the students that take those courses.

In season 4 of the Wire, one of the police officers becomes a teacher and picks up on the fact that school districts can boost the test scores if they "juke the stats" :

It's this kind of politics in the education system that I do not like.  The warping of test scores so that districts can get more money.  This above all else is the worst part of the education system.  It's no longer about the finished product anymore.