In the 1970s TV series “The Bionic Woman,” Jaime Sommers was upgraded after a skydiving accident. In NBC’s current revival of the series, Jaime (played by Michelle Ryan, pictured) gets upgraded after – you guessed it – being hit by an 18-wheeler. Did parachute manufacturers complain, or what? In the storyline, the big rig is driven not by a professional but by Sommers’ murderous, Terminator-like predecessor, Sarah, but a cliché is a cliché no matter who’s at the wheel.
The Love Sponge is a lifesaver
Those “Bubba Army” mudflaps you’ve been seeing are not a military campaign but a marketing campaign for the raunchy “Bubba the Love Sponge” afternoon show on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Howard 101 (the Howard Stern channel). The show’s obscene theme song is “Full Trucker Effect” by the band Johnny Socko, and truckers who call in identify themselves by saying, “FTE, Bubba!” Todd “Bubba” Clem (second from left), who broadcasts from Tampa, Fla., may have won new fans in October, when the shock jocks kept a suicidal caller on the line for 40 minutes until police were able to locate the man. The flaps are $69.95 at www.btls.com.
The spindle of your dreams
Sculptor Dustin Shuler’s 50-foot-tall Spindle, a trucker’s wish-fulfillment fantasy and a landmark at the Cermak Plaza Shopping Center in Berwyn, Ill., since 1989, soon will come down to make way for a Walgreens. Whether the “car-kabob” goes up again depends on whether the Berwyn Arts Council can raise the $300,000 needed to restore and move the thing. Visit the “Save the Spindle” campaign at http://berwynartscouncil.org/STS.
“Truck stops in their mid-century heyday were considered oases of respectable, if meat-heavy, cookery for respectable, if meat-heavy, truckers.
