for 4 JUN 07: PICK ME, PICK ME

CBS Television

Television City

Hollywood, CA 91123

cc: WRBL-TV, Columbus, GA

Dear Mr./Ms. Network President:

I'm well aware of the job opening you currently have on your day shift, and believe I am the proper person to meet your needs for decades to come. Thus, I am formally applying to become the next host of "The Price is Right."

I'm been dreaming of this job opportunity not for years, but for decades - patiently waiting the retirement of the legendary Bob Barker. The reason no glossy photograph is attached is because my teeth are not sufficiently shiny yet. That matter is in development.

You can be assured, however, that there would be no "dyeing" controversy should I be selected as Mr. Barker's replacement. I have very little gray hair at all -- and the ones I have would be strategically enhanced by your television lights.

Please allow me to explain in further detail why I am your best candidate to host "The Price is Right":

1. I am old enough to remember the show's premiere date: Labor Day, 1972. The college students who fill your stage as contestants today cannot possibly remember that.

2. I have never even applied for free tickets to appear on the program. Thus I carry no outstanding bias against any contestant, pricing game or model.

3. I know the prices of items well enough that I can play with the emotions of nervous contestants -- pretending to reveal prices four or five times, as Mr. Barker sometimes does.

4. During the years when I had pets, I often had them spayed or neutered.

5. I have been developing snappy one-liners for almost every state from which a contestant could come. You may review my four-and-a-half years of blog writing to find examples of this.

6. I am not afraid to have wide-eyed female college students jump all over me, when they win a new car or sailboat. I am also not afraid to have 60-year-old grandmothers do this.

7. My voice range is wide enough that I could also fill in as the show's announcer -- making sure the words "Come On Down!" are said in at least five syllables.

8. I have practiced being host of "The Price is Right" from time to time, in front of the TV set. It's either that, or practice being Joy Behar on "The View."

9. I am willing to personally go into the front row of the audience, and hand the "contestants not appearing on stage" their consolation boxes of Rice-a-Roni.

10. I will ask the program's models for dates in a proper way, instead of flirting with them through suggestive language.

In short, I am ready to move "The Price is Right" into the next generation - the generation when contestants might be guessing the actual retail price of a pickup truck-sized tank of gasoline.

I am well aware that I probably will not be the first person from my city to apply to host "The Price is Right." But to help you make a proper comparison: I know more about television than WGSY-FM's Ed Bostic. And I have an age advantage of close to 30 years on Bob Poydasheff

Please let me know when I can be flown to Hollywood for an audition - and whether I will have to guess the price of such a trip.

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity. And as Mr. Barker used to say: may all your consequences be happy ones.

Regards....

THE BIG BLOG QUESTION is not a pricing game. It's a quick poll which closed Sunday afternoon - and a majority of the voters say the "Hurtsboro Mondays" which we've had since January should end. If you think I agree with this vote, think about this. Do you know how hard it can be to come up with blog topics on a Sunday night?

The final score was seven votes to end Hurtsboro Mondays, three votes to continue them -- and two votes to have even more Hurtsboro news. Constable R.J. Schweiger admitted in a poll comment that he was one of the voters for more news. But if as many Hurtsboro businesses are dying as he says, no one would be left in town to support this blog with advertising.

Constable Schweiger declared in his comment that the e-mail complaint which sparked our poll came from Hurtsboro. All I have to go on is an anonymous AOL e-mail writer, who told me at our deadline he/she was "born and raised in Columbus." But then, he also predicted he'd be the only one to vote for more Hurtsboro coverage - and he wasn't.

If there's a way to track the votes on a Sparklit poll beyond "IP addresses," no one's taught me what it is. And for the Hurtsboro area, it doesn't help that IP addresses don't have rural route numbers.

So perhaps all the voters in our poll were from Hurtsboro. Perhaps some were from Columbus. Perhaps our occasional visitors from Canada weighed in on this topic - with nothing else to do between Stanley Cup Finals hockey games.

The Constable seems to realize this is the "last call" for Hurtsboro Mondays - because over the weekend he sent another e-mail:

Richard:

As promised - I've refrained from writing until the virtual close of your poll. I'm not easily discouraged - but perhaps it's time to throw in the towel. When a BLOG that lists its hits in the thousands can only pique the interest of less than a dozen - the cause becomes less than impressive!!

Couple this with my experience at the hands of a local editor who seems to prefer drivel to breaking news; and who opts to use a personal column to complain about family matters and enviormental conditions. If this individual thinks smoke is choking - she should comingle it with the aroma of rotting garbage.

Your latest BLOG deals at length with the CTVEA issue. This fiasco just amplifies what I've been talking about, for some time! There IS NO PLACE TO TURN in east Alabama to expose wrongdoing. The media in Georgia has plenty of items to disseminate without wading across the river, and Russell County politicos aren't going on safari either. There's a "saying" in "Hurt'sboro; "Its always been this way - and nuthin's goin to change!"

Perhaps it is time to throw in the towel - only a fool would continue - but I'm not quite ready to wave a white flag yet! And now that I know that there's only a handful of dissidents, it makes the odds more to my liking!

Seeya next week!!

Constable R.J. Schweiger

I'm sorry the voter turnout didn't impress the Constable - but he should wait until Alabama has that statewide referendum Tuesday on those two amendments.

I can't force people to vote in our polls, you know. And I don't have the budget of the election office in Selma, to hold a raffle among the voters for a color TV set.

It seems to me the Georgia news media examine East Alabama "fiascos" all the time. Perhaps this is the wrong time to bring it up -- but did you notice while the late Vivian Carter was Superintendent, not one Russell County teacher was arrested?

We also heard late last week from the mysterious "Russell C. Ounti." His latest "snail mail" claimed there was fistfight last Tuesday involving someone who was praised on The Blog of Hurtsboro, and an arrest was made. Trouble is, The Blog of Hurtsboro hasn't been resurrected in weeks. So was the fight at one of the restaurants? Did the hardware store manager pick up a hammer, along with a gun?

E-MAIL UPDATE: Besides the Constable, we also have e-mail from another recent blog subject:

Richard,

I enjoyed reading your post on the going away party at the Olive Garden [29 May]. I did not get a chance to read it until Thursday evening. My German woman and I were in Savannah and Tybee Island all week and I did not have high speed internet access in my room. She wanted me to let you know that her name is Heike, (pronounced High-ka). I think in the blog you indicated her name was Ilka.

By the way, Heike and I enjoyed our week in Savannah. The sun is so much brighter on Tybee Island than on Wynnton Road ! We are going to see Mickey and Goofy in Orlando next.

Roszell Gadson

Thanks for setting the name straight, and our blog picture page has been updated accordingly. What does it say when someone of German heritage such as I can't get a German immigrant's name right? Not to mention the fact that I can't stand sauerkraut....

In the last few days, there's been a very clear reason why the sun was shining brighter at Tybee Island. The wind was blowing smoke from the wildfires in the opposite direction.

We also have a leftover from Sunday's blog - where we wondered about the background of Coach B.R. Johnson:

He was a Coach forever at CVCC.

From the voice I heard on WSHE the other day, he sounds like he still has a whistle around his neck....

Speaking of e-mail, our spam-counting "Burkard Bulk Mail Index" dropped to a new low this weekend - below 2,000! Maybe the arrest of that so-called "King of Spam" made a difference. Or perhaps word finally got around about me to those Nigerian bankers....

Now let's check news headlines from a pleasant June Sunday:

+ Which local fire station is playing raunchy comedy albums - and turning them up so loud, they can be heard across the street? If the alarm goes off, will the crew wait for a joke to finish?

+ The Bayonet reported Fort Benning is receiving a new telephone prefix, because of base realignment. The paper quoted an Army sergeant as saying "DOIM took possession of the new telephone numbers with the 626 prefix in April." This is SO Fort Benning - making it sound like Rangers had to invade the AT&T office to get them.

+ Port Columbus completed a weekend-long history program called "The Battle of Memphis." I'm sorry - but if an Elvis Presley imitator wasn't at this event, how authentic WAS it?

+ WEAM-AM was off the air all weekend. That meant no Columbus Lions broadcast, no updates on the basketball or hockey playoffs - why, it was almost like "The Zone" had been told to go to a man-to-man.

+ The Pastor of Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Auburn was locked out of the building, as was most of the congregation. The deacons changed the locks, because they say they've fired Pastor Tyrone Edwards. The Pastor should have responded by preaching from that verse in Revelation - "Behold, I stand at the door and knock."

This blog has thousands of visitors each month, from people in Columbus and around the world. To advertise to them, offer a story tip or comment on this blog, write me - but be warned, I may post your e-mail comment and offer a reply.

BURKARD BULK MAIL INDEX: 1960 (- 112, 5.4%, blog record low)

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