Stuff We Should Bring Back: " __ will not be seen tonight..."

Maybe they still make announcements when a network TV program is pre-empted--I seldom watch TV live these days--but I suspect the powers that be are wary of anything that would rob the parent company of 10 seconds of ad time it could sell. I mean, we don't even get full theme songs anymore.

Still, I miss the old days when after a commercial, you'd see a telop slide with a publicity still from the show that was about to be pre-empted. A network announcer would boom something like, "The Love Boat will not be seen tonight so that we may bring you the following special presentation." Maybe sometimes you'd get a reassurance that it would return next week at its regular time.

The best ones looked about 10 years older than they really were and maybe even seemed a little blurry at first glance. Often they wouldn't use an actual show photo, but a piece of artwork akin to something off the cover of an "Official Novelization" paperback.

This is the kind of simple yet charming little extra that made television fun back in olden times. I think we ought to bring it back.

Stuff We Should Bring Back: The Statue of Liberty Play

Remember the Statue of Liberty play in football? Oh, we see variations of it sometimes, but the offenses are always trying to be genuinely deceptive about it, running some other kind of simultaneous trickeration to distract everyone from the beauty of the play. Far too often, some generic end around or misdirection is run when a good Statue of Liberty could otherwise be executed.

Here is what I consider the true Statue of Liberty play, the one that we ran playing neighborhood football (and there is no truer form of the sport than neighborhood tackle football, preferably with a Nerf ball): The quarterback drops back to throw--OR DOES HE? In fact, he (or she, though my neighborhood didn't have a lot of Helen Hunt types) backpedals a few steps then suddenly freezes with his arm cocked back as if to throw. Only he does NOT throw. He stands there like a moron so that a running back/wide receiver (there's really no difference in neighborhood football) can dart behind him, snatch the ball out of his hand, and run to daylight!

Any misdirection element of this play is negated by 1) the ridiculous amount of time it takes to pull it off, 2) the goofy stance of the quarterback trying to look normal if the timing isn't perfect (and it never is in neighborhood football), and perhaps most significantly, 3) the inability of the players on the offensive team to resist shouting, "STATUE OF LIBERTY!" as soon as the play happens. The "trick" part of the trick play isn't the critical element. It's the coolness of it. You don't even run the play because it might work; you run it because it's fun. So declaring what you were doing was part of the deal. What's the point in doing such a silly-looking maneuver if everyone isn't aware of it?

Shouldn't the big, fancy pro teams of the NFL, in particular, run more plays just because they're fun? Yes. Yes, they should. There are a lot of players who would get a big thrill out of taking that ball and yelling, "STATUE OF LIBERTY!" as they race to get past the line of scrimmage and maybe bust the edge. Of course, there are a lot of quarterbacks who would hate getting creamed as a direct result of this call, but, well, that's fun, too, isn't it?

Stuff We Should Bring Back: How to refer to a year

I think anytime we refer to a calendar year of the 20th century, we should say it as, say, "19 and 45," instead of just "1945." It would be even better, of course, if we did so in a slightly world-weary but not unfriendly manner, with the clear implication that we've seen many other years besides that one and if you've got a few minutes, we'll just as likely tell you about those ones, too.

Why bring it back? It would give us all a bit more dignity and make us seem wiser or at least more thoughtful.

Stuff We Should Bring Back #1

Here's something we oughta revive: The practice of calling someone "Jack" when assuming a macho stance against him in some kind of conflict.

This was especially cool in professional wrestling, as in:

"If you want a shot at this title, just step up on, Jack, because I'm ready 24/7 to defend it."

What can I say? I just like it. Nobody seems to be using this anymore. Maybe it's because we don't have real men heroes anymore, or even posers trying to pass themselves off as such, but I'll bet even Orlando Bloom could seem a wee bit tougher if he tried addressing someone as "Jack" if things got tense.