As an intro to my article about The New York Reality TV School, I've asked Red from The Shawshank Redemption to narrate my opening paragraph:

I wish I could tell you that the New York Reality TV School fought the good fight, and that the students in attendance were not a collection of mostly desperate people whose desire for fame burned more strongly than their sense of dignity. I wish I could tell you that, but the entertainment industry is no fairy-tale world.

Thanks Red. Now, if you, the reader, would be so kind as to click through to the article, it would mean a lot to me. Not because I get paid more for click-throughs (I don't; AOL pays me a flat rate of 60 cents plus a pound of corn husks for every post I make, regardless of the number of clicks), but because I spent three hours attending the inaugural class of the NYRTV school last Saturday. I just couldn't take it if the end result of that is an article no one reads...

Sometimes, when I'm bored and my WiFi router is broken, I like to play "guess the celebrity commercial voice over." Most of the time, I usually get things right, as advertisers are using more familiar voices than ever before. But sometimes I wonder if a company uses a particular voice for more reasons than they're available, recognizable, and like cashing large checks for very little work.

Case in point is a recent set of Hyundai ads starring the voice of Kelsey Grammer. In the ads, Grammer compares the attributes of the Korean car company's Santa Fe SUV with a much more expensive Land Rover. Of course, this being a Hyundai ad, the Santa Fe comes out favorably, matching the Land Rover in every category except cup holders.

Technically, this show may not have been short-lived enough. Small Wonder ran for four seasons - from '85 to '89 - in syndication. Whenever I am baffled by the popularity of tween vehicles like The Disney Channel's Hannah Montana, I just think of the inexplicably high ratings little robot Vicki got in her first year and the solid following that held on until the show's demise.

The show's conceit involved a robotics firm engineer designing an AI cast-off from Annie to come live with his family. The robot was a "Voice Input Child Indenticant." VICI. Vicki. You get it. The Lawson family had quite a time trying to keep the monotoned Vicki's origins a secret from those pesky Brindles next door. They couldn't possibly destroy the adorable bundle of bolts that Dad had so lovingly (and sorta creepily if you think about it) put together and kept at home long past her beta-testing date.