The familiar Check Out Hunger tickets

CHECK-OUT HUNGER RETURNS FOR 20th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

HILLSIDE, N.J. – Check-Out Hunger, an annual front-end awareness and fund raiser for the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, will be marking its 20th year milestone this fall. This campaign, which began in New Jersey, is run at supermarket chains across the northeast.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey reports that need for nutritious food is up 30-40 percent at its partner agencies (soup kitchens, pantries, shelters, etc) this year.

In 2009 Check-Out Hunger crossed the $2 Million plateau for the first time. The campaign raised $2,093,086 for food banks across the state. Since 1992, millions of people have supported the program at food markets and online at www.checkouthungernj.org.

Participating food markets include A&P, Food Basics, Foodtown, Kings, Pathmark, Shop Rite, Super Fresh, Wawa, and Wegmans.

This campaign was developed by the Community FoodBank in conjunction with the New Jersey Food Council and supermarket chains with headquarters in New Jersey. Currently the Community FoodBank of New Jersey administers the regional campaign with 14 chains for 32 food banks and affiliates in 9 states and the District of Columbia.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey, a member of Feeding America, distributed 35 million pounds of food in the last year to people in need in 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties. Its staff and volunteers fight hunger and poverty not only through the distribution of food and grocery products, but by education and training, and by creating new programs to meet the needs of low-income people. The Community FoodBank of New Jersey has earned Charity Navigator’s highest honor, a four-star rating.

Here’s how people can help:

• Right in their own neighborhood. Shoppers will find a display of Check-Out Hunger donation slips at the checkout aisles in their local food stores.
• Right in their own home. People can donate through the Check-Out Hunger in New Jersey website at www.checkouthungernj.org.
  Also, just a reminder that the retail partners run the campaign at varying times from late September through the end of January, with the bulk of the food stores running it in November and December. There are a list of participating stores on the website.

So, folks, if you’re at the checkout counter and you see the different colored tickets like in the image above, consider donating a few bucks to help the Community FoodBank of New Jersey out this holiday season. Thanks.

What bothers me the most about the cancellation of Kings is that it appears NBC is taking the easy way out of a show that could have really had some legs to it. NBC owns the USA Network, Bravo, SyFy, some Spanish channels, and any other number of channels that could have successfully aired this show. If any of you are Kings fans out there, would you have had a problem watching this show on SyFy or USA Network or Bravo? I think not.

In any event, when the DVD set is released on September 29, 2009, you can bet that I’ll be purchasing it. Although I was a little freaked out by the fact that there were too many “perfect” people on the show (not enough “regular” folks), I really did enjoy watching Kings and I believe that NBC could have found another platform on which to display this asset. If you’ve already clicked over and read the note from the creator of the show, then you can skip ahead. However, if you haven’t yet read that note, let me share a portion of it that I found very interesting:

— Some have speculated that the cost of the show was prohibitive. While it is true that the episode budget was high for a first season show, that number was reduced by the outstanding aggregate 30% tax benefit New York provided (which we all hope will remain in effect), thus bringing the cost down to rates comparable to other prime time dramas. And, of course, plans were already made to bring the costs down to whatever number the studio required of us in the future.

Isn’t that something? Kings was allowed to film in New York City and they even were given a 30% tax benefit for doing so. Sounds like some pretty good economic conditions if you ask me! Another piece of the note that I found interesting:

Your interest in show here is, to me, evidence enough of this. (As an interesting aside, Kings was #1 on iTunes on the day we were cancelled.)

How about that? On the day that NBC tossed this show, Kings was the top downloaded show on iTunes. That’s great! And yet…NBC cancels the show.

It would be great if Kings achieved the type of post-cancellation success that Family Guy or Futurama have both achieved (did you hear that Futurama was uncanceled a week or so ago?). That’s what I’m hoping for at least.

I can’t stand watching shows on NBC. In fact, most of the NBC shows that I do enjoy watching (Biggest Loser, for example) I only watch on DVR now. The biggest problem that I have with NBC – which I bitch about all of the time, by the way – is that they interrupt the flow of their shows way too much. Sure, the highly paid executives all “know” that you have to enter each commercial break with a cliffhanger because that’ll make the viewers stick around, but there is a time when enough is enough. If you’re wondering when that time has come – watch any of the four episodes of Kings.

Horrible, horrible usage of commercial breaks. In fact, the usage of commercial breaks was so bad that watching the show on DVR was even tough to do because the flow of the story is interrupted too much. So that’s my first comment about Kings – NBC sucks with commercial breaks and almost forces their viewers to use DVRs instead.

The next comment is that the Kings story never really got enough air time. How many people out there really knew that the television show was based on a Biblical story and, in fact, it was the story of King David? Right. I thought not.

The other problem, that I’ve had with this show is that the characters are all too pristine. In other words, the society doesn’t look like it is made of real people. Instead, the people who put this show together focused too much on getting model-esque characters. For me, that made the show somewhat hard to watch.

The final problem that I had with NBC and this show is that it was moved in the schedule. The show was promoted as a Sunday night show and then it was almost immediately shuffled to Saturday night. Alright, I get it that the show wasn’t doing well in the ratings and that the suits wanted to move it, but give it a chance!

I heard that there was a chance that there will be more Kings episodes coming out in June. Let’s hope that NBC can fix some of the problems listed above and give this series a chance!

First, there is only one fat person on the entire show and he plays a bit part as a security guard. I can’t imagine that in this fictional society there are no overweight people besides a security guard. Very awkward. In the real world, more than half of Americans are overweight and a large number of the population is considered obese. Of course, I guess that this is one of the reasons that the show takes place in a fictional land!

Second, the show is a bit eerie in that everyone sort of looks alike. Not that they all have the same hair color and eye color, but I think the casting folks went a bit overboard on the “model” look. Everyone from the King all the way down to rank and file soldiers in the Gilboa army all could double as models for Calvin Klein, Old Navy, Gap, etc. It’s weird. The characters don’t have any blemishes, no scars, no deviations from the “perfect” look that models are always trying to achieve. Frankly, it creeps me out.

And finally, this isn’t really a criticism of Kings, but rather one of my continued criticisms of NBC in general. Someone over at the network needs to learn that the few seconds before each commercial break does not need to be overly dramatic! In other words, at this point in the show’s short history those people who are watching the show are probably going to stick with it for the duration. There is no need to make every pre-commercial portion of the show seem as though the world will end if you don’t tune back in. It’s tiresome and awkward and it makes those portions of the show tedious to watch.

And for someone like me, it forces me to record the show and watch it at a later point in time when I’m not going to be bothered with such stupid mid-episode arcs.

All in all, I like Kings, though I don’t know if it’ll be around for the long haul. NBC’s Crusoe was also a good show that didn’t get renewed and if Kings doesn’t bring in big numbers, then I don’t think NBC will give it a chance to make an impact. That’s a shame because the show definitely has potential.

The other channels – especially those morons at NBC – could learn a thing or two from FOX about how to put on a good show and (more importantly) how to reduce the amount of commercials during their broadcasts. For example, I find it extremely hard to get into NBC’s new show, Kings, when there are so many awful commercials scattered throughout the broadcast (incidentally, I think that this is what did in NBC’s Crusoe earlier this year, too).