Eric Lauritzen Info

I’ve watched the Antique Road Show on PBS a few times and always liked it. I used to enjoy Orange County Choppers back when it was new – not so much these days. Can’t put my finger on why exactly.

Right now I have my Tivo set to catch Pawn Stars. I can’t put my finger on why I like this show either, but I do. My time spent watching television is very limited. (I choose to waste my time here on the internet where I get to push more buttons.) Many days I watch no network television at all outside of a little news. So, when I devote my attention to something, it is because I like it, not because I’m filling time.

Pawn Stars is about this guy who runs a pawn shop in Las Vegas with his father and young 20-something son. The old man is crusty around the edges, the kid is…well, he’s a twenty-something male and that says enough, and the owner is sort of a no nonsense everyman type of guy. Who knows a lot about antiques, art, and other stuff, and when he doesn’t he seems to know who does and can summon them to his shop within a day. The miracle of television.

The entire show usually consists of people bringing interesting items in to sell. Antique war weapons and memorabilia, a mysterious jet fighter ejection chair, works of art, pleasure boats, Pac Man machines – you name it. A few minutes is given to each item. You see them wheel and deal on the price. As often as not, some expert comes in and reveals whether the item is a fake or genuine and suggests its worth.

Of course, there’s always some sort of internal drama. One show it was the kid buying the boat which apparently violates some golden rule of pawn shop-running. He got himself in deep kim chee for that one. But it worked out and the boat ended up being a bargain. Another time the old man got fed up with the cussing and instituted the cuss jar. Then there was the bet between the young guy and his grandfather over whether he could sell a watch at a certain price. If the kid lost, he had to wear a suit – if the old man lost, he had to wear baggy jeans. Gramps lost and looked ridiculous in the baggy jeans.

So, if you liked Antique Road Show, but don’t like how slow people talk on PBS, give Pawn Stars on the History Channel a try. Let me know what you think of the program in the comments.

Some of these HBO series are better than most new movies these days. True Blood is a vampire story with the twist that the vampires are living among us – they have come out of the closet so to speak. The storyline flows really well against this backdrop because the whole vampire aspect is made so much more believable that the typical on screen vamp tale.

There is sort of a new age explanation for what animates vampires, many of the traditional powers and weaknesses of vampires are handled as myth, and there is sort of a political and cultural tension that is analogous to the way homosexuals and other minorities are and were treated both by law and society.

So, I’ll put this up with the other good HBO series that paved the way – The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and Rome.

I’m one episode into “Big Love.” If that first episode is an indicator of the rest of the season, I doubt I’ll be as enthusiastic should I ever blog about it.