Larry Brody Surfs the Interwebs

 Most people these days haven’t seen much (any?) of my old TV writing or producing oeuvre, but even though TVWriter™’s readers may have missed my old HAWAII FIVE-O or FALL GUY or SILVER SURFER et al episodes, I still get much more eMail than I ever thought I would asking about various aspects of my life.

A common question is, “What on the internet interests you?” I have no idea why that’s such a big question, but there it is. So what better place to reply than here, on the very selfsame internet we all know and love.

Most of my internet time is professional, looking for TV writing related news and events and working on the various aspects of TVWriter™. But the web also works well as a substitute for my morning newspaper, and do a fair share of surfing around on it the same way I used to spend time flipping through pages of newsprint, to which, by the way, I’ve always been highly allergic.

My allergy free online mornings usually start with comic strips I’ve been reading for what seems like centuries. These include Boffo, Dilbert, Zits, Dick Tracy, Non Sequitur, Luann, Drabble, Doonesbury (Sunday only; the other days are re-treads), and the strip that seems to uncannily parallel events in my own life, Ballard Street.

I’m also a huge fan of Berkeley Breathed’s new version of Bloom County, AKA Bloom County 2015, which seems to be available only on – sigh – Facebook, and an amazing web strip called Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques.

I read most of the above via Go Comics or the Houston Chronical, which, believe it or don’t, has the best collection of daily and Sunday strips I’ve been able to find anywhere. Boffo, Dilbert, and Zits, however, are a little more difficult to locate, so I go directly to their web pages.

After digesting the comics I usually spend another hour or so clicking away on headlines that call out to me. Today, for example, I found myself attracted to the following:

Melissa Mathison, ‘E.T.’ Screenwriter, Dies at 65

Senate Investigating Drug Companies Behind Huge Overnight Price Hikes

Not Just Academics Fed Up With Elsevier: Entire Editorial Staff Resigns En Masse To Start Open Access Journal

Cable CEO Is Really Pissed That HBO Hasn’t Cracked Down On Streaming Password Sharing

Groupon – $70 Vistaprint Voucher for $27.00

You Can Raise Your Testosterone Levels Just By Acting Aggressive

Finally some answers on dark energy, the mysterious master of the Universe

“I’m dying from boredom”—juror’s Facebook musings lead to $1,000 fine

The Vision Is One Of The Most Unsettling Comics I’ve Read This Year

Workers Discover 19th-Century Burial Vault With a Dozen Human Skeletons Under Manhattan

Unbreakable Looks Even Better After 15 Years of Superhero Movies

I’m pretty sure that you can find all of those just by selecting and searching for each selection, although I don’t know why you’d want to. All you’d find out, if you didn’t know it already, is that being me isn’t all that interesting and, for that matter, neither are all the things that interest me in a typical day.

Before I go, here’s today’s one bit of clickbait headline that I absolutely refuse to fall for:

Horrified Doctors Find “Crazy” Tapeworm Cancer in Patient’s Brain

Okay, I just lied. I did click on it. Just now. One more mistake I’ve made that I hope everyone who visits TVWriter™ never, ever, ever makes.