I am a little pissed

I like watching Americas Funniest Home Videos, it is a nice way to spent an hour with the family. There is no permanent damage and Tom Bergeron makes everybody feel good. What makes the show pleasant to me is that the host is not making fun of the people in the videos, he is empathizing with them.

The other night I took advantage of my gazillion channels and found a show called Smoking Gun Presents: The worlds Dumbest. At first it was like AFV, but not so much. Mostly the videos were professionally (poorly) edited news clips of competitions and sporting events from other cultures. Mostly these events were totally taken out of context, and the audio was replaced with a laugh track. If these events were presented differently I would have found them interesting, not "dumb" The commentators were a collection of Has-Beens and Wannabees. They were clearly scripted and may not have even seen the videos. All they did was make fun and belittle the people participating in the various events.

One of the "dumb" competitions they featured was the Empire State Building Run Up. I participated in this event in 1999. This is a real athletic event. Everybody took it seriously. Getting to the top of the Empire State Building on that cold February morning was special.
Click this to see the dump pretension of the ESBRU. Tonya Harding said "It is one thing to do marathons, but to actually run up these stairs..." COME ON, GET OF YOUR ASS AND FIND OUT HOW IT FEELS TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING!!!

OK, I know this show is not for me but a little piece of it was about me. I cant tell what year the video was taken so it could be my arm or leg on their TV show. I gotta get involved. I am going to make sure the New York Road Runners Club and the sponsors of the race are aware of the use of their images.