New Year, New View?

I more or less quit making New Year's resolutions a long time ago.* Mostly because I like to spend the week from Christmas to New Year's sleeping as much as humanly possible, and the task of formulating actual goals and objectives for the new year just seems like another big suck on time that should be reserved for napping. Plus, I consider myself a pretty pragmatic person; I'm not one to aim for something that's not likely to come to pass. You don't really feel that wooosh of success when the goal you've achieved is getting your hair cut more than twice a year.


Nevertheless, at some point right before or after a nap over the past week, I considered a New Year's resolution involving my intake of television. But there is, of course, a problem: I can't decide if I should resolve to watch more television or less television this year.

If you're one of the five or six readers of WBB, you've either come here for an update on the whereabouts of Joe Torres of Hey Dude! fame or you know me well enough to know that I work 40+ hours a week and I’m a part-time law student. Strangely, that schedule wouldn't seem to leave much time for television. But I still manage to watch probably 12-15 hours of original programming each week. This is made possible by waking up at 6 a.m. every morning (including most weekends) and the strategic use of lunch breaks. My current TV intake is actually less television than I was watching a year ago…as my responsibilities at school and work ramped up, the volume of television I could consume weekly scaled back. A formerly devout fan of The Hills, I no longer watch any reality TV. (Although I'm hearing pretty great things about this Tool Academy show). I really enjoyed watching Fringe during the first half of the first season, but once I missed a couple of episodes, I felt I was too lost to catch up again. I've heard Curb Your Enthusiasm is amazing, but I've just never made time to watch.

But, if I shaved back a couple of hours of television I'm currently watching, imagine the time I could be using for other things--reading, napping, watching movies. Unfortunately, I can't even begin to think of what I would cut, and I discovered two new shows--The Good Wife and Better off Ted--to love over the break.

Suggestions, folks? What are your must-watch shows? And should I cut back my TV intake in favor of having a more well-rounded life?**

*Yep, I'm pretty much just going to skip acknowledging that this is my first post in well over a year.
** The only right answer to this question is "no."

Joe Torres: The Update

Last week, an elusive comment popped up on the original Joe Torres post,which was written in the old-timey days of March 2007.

Some background: Our pal Shannan (who, perhaps even before we met face-to-face, was already sensing the depths of my laziness) did some legwork and found two listings for Joe Torres and left them in a comment soon after the original post.

Flash forward to now. Someone, inevitably searching the web for info on the Joe Torres rumor landed on that post last week. Comment below:

I called Joe, the one on S Bilbray Ave and it was him, sound just like him when he was on TV. He is alive and well. He didnt really want to talk and I dont blame him because I could tell he was wierded out. Seems like a nice guy. Hope this answers your questions.

Now, we can analyze this a few ways. One, we could take it at face value, and assume that some enterprising person rang Joe up to see what's up. Imagined conversation: "So, no kidney failure, eh? Been to the Golden Nugget lately?" In which case, very cool, and thank you for taking the final step to sussing out Joe's whereabouts.

OR! We could look a little further. I wanted to see if we could source exactly where the anonymous comment came from. WBB's chief of research and blog analytics said that such a thing did not appear to be possible through our analytics program; however, she did note that we had four visits from Arizona in the last month--including one from Tucson and one from nearby Cartoro.

So, here's my question. Joe, is that you? Are you out there? WBB would love to have the exclusive interview.

Hang Tight, Cowboys. And Cowgirls. Cow People?

An exciting Joe Torres-related update to come. Hopefully tomorrow, when I have the time and energy to string a couple of sentences together in a pleasing sort of way.

Grab your horse and come along...

I emailed Snopes to see if they would be interested in getting to the bottom of the Great Joe Torres mystery. Let's see what happens.

It's a little wild and a little strange...when you make your home out on the range

Folks, a year and four months ago, I was living (or more accurately, just kinda, sorta existing) in Texas, shoveling fast food down my gullet and spending an obscene amount of time on the Internet. (Hey, one big change a year ain’t so bad.)

But, most importantly, a year and four months ago, I authored The Most Important Blog Entry Of Our Time, one that my co-blogger Laura tells me is responsible for much of the random traffic our fledgling site gets. The entry, ladies and gents, was about the whereabouts of “Hey Dude’s” Joe Torres (aka Danny Lightfoot). The gist: I tried to get to the bottom of (or, um, searched the web for about 15 minutes in an effort to confirm or dispel) a pervasive Internet rumor that Torres had died in the last few years of kidney failure.

After receiving a random comment on that entry this weekend (said commenter basically asked if I had gotten off my ass and made any effort toward finding Torres…and the short answer is, uh, no), we decided it was time for an update.


As usual, my investigative work is best done from the couch, in my pajamas.

-In 2007, I “reported” that Joe Torres’ Wikipedia entry stated that he was last spotted in a Tucson bar called The Golden Nugget. In the past year and four months, that entry has been edited, and The Golden Nugget sighting is gone. Mysterious.

-Apparently I wasn’t thorough enough in my web research last year to discover that a web effort had formed and was already on the hunt for Torres. In 2006, this dude launched an “official” Where Is Joe Torres? Campaign. I have not seen any updates to the effort since the original post; however, t-shirts are available.

-Another guy posted about the controversy in Nov. 2007 on Yelp. In his post, he notes that Torres' IMDB profile has been edited—a credit for the role of “Drunken Indian” in the film “Hindustani” has been deleted, as well as a note about the rumor of his demise due to kidney failure. Hmm.

-This bizarre, random and totally unsourced page hosted on eBay states that “despite rumors to the contrary, Jose (Joe’s real name) is still alive and well and living in Tucson, Arizona.” And yes, I realized that it points to the Wikipedia page, but that page neither confirms or denies the kidney failure rumor. Ummm…I prefer my unsubstantiated news from Perez Hilton, thanks.

-TV.com still reports that Joe died of kidney failure after living for years on a reservation. BUT! Other reports say that Joe was Mexican-American, not Native American, so that doesn’t really fly for me.

-The Golden Nugget was voted “Best Low Brow Ambience” by Tucson Weekly in 2001. So you know.

Joe Torres: Where Is He Now?

Some friends and I have recently spent some time reminiscing about our favorite Nickelodeon shows of yore, including classics like Hey Dude! And Salute Your Shorts. Anyway, I was saddened—OK, kind of fascinated—to learn that there’s an Internet rumor that Joe Torres, the actor who played wise Native American Danny Lightfoot on Hey Dude!, died a couple of years ago due to kidney failure.

Like most internet rumors, this one doesn’t seem to have been verified one way or the other. A wikipedia entry devoted to Torres says that he was last spotted in a Tucson bar called The Golden Nugget, but how to know for sure that it’s true?

Anyway, I need answers. Also, I’m bored and I have an obsession with TV procedurals where everything is wrapped up all nice and pretty in an hour. I’m betting that this mystery could be solved quickly enough with some deft Internet sleuthing and a couple of well-placed phone calls, but I think Danny deserves a more grand gesture. So, I’m more or less envisioning hopping on a plane to Tucson, where he was allegedly last seen, armed with a fake FBI badge. Then, I’ll interview friends and family who may have seen him last to get their take on the situation. And, if he’s not dead, we still need to find him, so I think I’ll need someone to come along with me to canvass for evidence and take DNA samples. Who’s with me?