The history channel used to be my favorite channel. But I never watch the History unhistory channel anymore.
Consider for a moment where its programming has gone. For me it all started with “Pawn Stars”, which has obviously been very successful. Pawn Stars features the day to day activities of a Las Vegas Pawnshop that is run by a trio of men spanning three generations. The characters are likable and much of what is presented on the show is quite interesting.
Then came a rash of imitators suddenly appeared. Which proved, at least for me, that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. For example “Pickers” follows the travels of two men who are looking for salable items that has been tucked away in homes and barns throughout Americana. “Kings of Restoration” followed with a focus restoring antiques. And now there’s “Counting Cars. Which is, you guessed it, all about the acquisition and restoration of cars. But at least these shows projected a sliver from the past into the present.
Unfortunately an infection of new shows that have nothing to do with History followed the success of these shows. Take the The World’s most dangerous Roads. What on earth does this have to do with History? Well I’ll tell you what this one’s all about. It’s all about the History Channel’s fixation upon the profit motive at the expense of what this channel’s supposed to be about. Or how about “Swamp People”. Which dramatizes the shooting of alligators and the home lives of the families who slaughter them.
Stupid people like stupid programs. Whereas very few Americans care a tinkers damn about History. In fact most Americans are uncomfortable with politicians who are truly intelligent. Or with men and women who are more articulate and knowledgeable than Mr. Average. And if you don’t believe me, look at who we just elected president. Trump the Rump.
A few years ago programming at the History channel focused almost entire on a target audience of History buffs. Unfortunately this no longer holds true. The HIstory channel has caved in to the whims of the masses. With the average American watching over 5 hours of television per day, the History channel has aligned itself with this mass of dullards who have nothing better to do than to sedate themselves with such baby pablum as the Duck Dynasty, Pawn Stars, PIckers, Swamp People, Counting cars, and Kings of Restoration. What do all these shows have in common? All of them have practically nothing to do with the kind of programming one would expect from a television station that calls itself the History Channel. That’s why I’m now calling it the History unhistory channel.
“Duck Dynasty” followed “Swamp People by dramatizing the antics of a modern Beverly Hillbillies family.
So there are now two shows glorifying red necks from Louisiana on a History unhistory channel that not too long ago was proud of its coverage of History.
And if all of the History unhistory channel is not bad enough already one can add “Ancient Aliens.” Which expounds on the hypothesis that the early Egyptians just had to have help from ancient aliens to build the pyramids. While aliens from outer space designed the Mayan temples in Central America. And that even the designers of Nazi Germany’s V-2 rocket were to stupid to manage such a feat. Unless extraterrestrials intervened.
The History Channel is currently far more concerned with ratings and how much profit each show can produce than it is with History.
It is also true that the educational standards for most Americans have plummeted from a plateau that was unworthy of much pride to start with.
Very few people read anymore while video Games, text messaging, and Facebook, have become the national pastimes. Cowboy western role models of the past such as “Have Gun Will Travel’s” Paladin and Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon have given way to either anti heroes who make a living from crime or unworldly super heroes who bear no semblance whatsoever to real life.
There was a connection between a Matt Dillon or Paladin with the past as well as an enduring set of virtues and values that have stood the test of time.
All of this reflects the sad fact that America’s place in the sun is drawing to a much more rapid end than most of us realize. The History unhistory channel is a startling symptom of where the United States is going.
Prudish YouTube censors gunned down two of my Jack Corbett Productions videos four years ago.
Prudish YouTube censors would disallow this picture because Gee and Nikky are too beautiful for YouTube
So my videos at YouTube were obviously getting too dangerous for general public consumption at nearly 1,300,000 views. According to the Mothers for A More Boring Nation prudish YouTube censors both videos committed the same heinous crime. By showing groups of slender attractive Thai women dancing and having a good time in both of these Pattaya beer bars.
This video was getting over 7000 views a day. Until the YouTube chapter of the Mothers for a more Boring nation censored it.
How Prudish YouTube censors can destroy anyone’s video audience in four days.
Now let me show you what Prudish YouTube censors can accomplish. The graph below shows my popular video’s daily views plummeting from over 6000 per day to 500 in four days and to less than 100 over the next several months.
I shot this video at the Skytop Guest House and Internet cafe five years ago. An Australian, owned the place. After Pete died, his widow, Wan, took Skytop over. And Wan turned a bar just outside Skytop into a successful beer bar. Then the greedy landlords put the whole section of buildings up for sale. Five years later the entire section is still boarded off, and unsold. Everyone had to move, including Dr. Belen who had her medical office in this complex.
Most of the women in this video will never work together again while my tailor had to move his shop. The video was generating 6000 hits a day until the Prudish YouTube censors struck.
A Mothers for a boring Nation prude must have complained to YouTube which immediately classified it as an adult movie. I have no idea of who complained or why.
Perhaps it was the underage gal in the video. Which would be Wan’s daughter who is not working in the bar or drinking. Years later Wan’s daughter earned a four year university degree. And now she’s teaching school. My Thai girlfriend is in this video and she’s not working at a bar either. One of my favorite waitresses who used to work at the Girl Beer Bar in Naklua is also in this video. This video shows a lot of friends having a great time. There’s no nudity whatsoever. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the cute girl shaking her butt to the music that caused someone to complain to YouTube. Which drove the Prudish YouTube censors to classify this video as an adult movie.
If only Hitler and his Nazi minions had YouTube censorship eighty years ago. They could have purged all voices of dissent to extinction in one month.
There would be no need for concentration camps or gas chambers, firing squads or torturing the opposition. The mechanism is simple.
Most people are unthinking, lazy automatons who believe what they hear from any seemingly well meaning organization whether it’s the Nazis, the Republicans, Facebook, You Tube or Google. Which owns You Tube. So if I am able to control Google I am able to control what the entire world sees, hears and believes by restricting my content.
The fact is that when you age restrict a YouTube video most people will not want to have to sign in with their email address to attest they are over 21. And if you don’t believe that, you had better look at that graph again.
Which now bring up how the Prudish YouTube censors destroyed my audience in the second YouTube video
Two of the girls, Pai and Tri are friends of ours. My girlfriend and I had called Pai to invite her to a party at the Pen Bar and Pai brought Tri along with her. It’s Tri and Pai who are doing the most dancing in this video. I had known both Pai and Tri for years, and my girlfriend and I were plying them with alcohol at this party. Neither was working for the Pen bar so I really don’t understand how You Tube could possibly claim this content was adult or improper.
Nevertheless the Mothers for a More Boring Nation misfits flagged the video which brought it to the attention of Prudish YouTube censors. Who decided to age restrict the video by requiring potential viewers to sign in with their email addresses that they were over 21 .
The bottom line for their doing this is that certain people were jealous of the attractive sexy Thai women dancing in the video.
Some of these might have been women. On the other hand they might be men who are upset because they will never be able to be with some of the women in the video or other women who look a lot like them due to their having a wife and kids at home or not having enough money to travel to such places as Thailand where sexy attractive women still exist.
One thing’s for sure, though, and that is there’s nothing pornographic about this video. In fact it’s about as far from deserving an R rating as a Mickey Mouse cartoon,
and if you don’t believe me, just check out this video for yourselves and make up your own mind. As for me, I’m thinking of changing this video’s meta tags over at YouTube to include such key words as adult rated, ultra sensuous, too wild for You Tube and so forth. After all, if YouTube says this video is adult and requires people to attest to their not being children by signing in with their email addresses. Then obviously this video has to be adult.
Here’s the exact email I just got from You Tube. Pay attention though to the bold test which will tell you all you need to know about You Tube’s censorship policies.
Regarding your account:Jack Corbett
The YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined that the following video(s) contain content that may not be suitable for all viewers: As a result, we have age-restricted this content.
What the email says is that whatever Prudish YouTube censors don’t agree with will be age restricted.
Let me emphasize the key words here, “contain certain content that may not be suitable for all viewers.” Well here’s what I got to say about that.
Returning to my home here in Thailand yesterday afternoon from a two week trip to the U.S., I was appalled. And horrified to find that Americans had gotten to be fatter than ever.
On one flight alone, from Phoenix to Seattle there was only one woman on the plane who wasn’t fat. Most were what I’d call obese. It is a fact, and you can check this out on the internet if you don’t believe me. The average weight of Americans has risen twenty-five pounds over what Americans used to weight twenty-five years ago. And on that flight, most of the women were human sausages.
Now I think all YouTube videos depicting women and men as human sausages should be age restricted.
I would like to appoint a group of my Pattaya based friends to a YouTube panel of judges. I will empower my judges to age restrict any videos they don’t agree with. That way I can be a paragon of virtue. And to be able to accomplish what is really best for my fellow Americans. I can then get my judges flag all YouTube videos that I dislike. And have my panel of friends age restrict these videos.
So where shall we start? Well….first of all I think it is a matter of public interest that all YouTube videos that show fat people should be flagged.
We don’t need to have fat people in the movies posing as role models for young people today. After all too many of our young men are obese as it is. And we certainly don’t want to have any more fat kids who are unable to pass our military services’ physical fitness tests. Now don’t laugh. This is a matter of our nation’s national security.
These YouTube judges must certify only those videos that show physically fit, slender young men and women. And age restrict all videos that show the unfit, and overweight sad sacks that are poor examples of American might.
The reason for doing this is that we will achieve a real measuring stick for what men and women need to look like. The way they appeared for thousands of years before television, the internet, three cars in every garage and fast food transformed them into a bunch of couch potatoes who are barely able to walk across the street.
Only then can we produce the same kind of physically fit cannon fodder that the United States was able to field during World War I and II.
As it is, Americans are the laughing stock of the world. Just remember that I live in Thailand. And even though the Thais and practically everyone else in this world are getting fat, the U.S. still leads the pack.
When Thais and other Asians think of Americans they see them as grossly overweight creatures who need golf karts to get them from one end of the supermarket to the other.
As for me, it’s really starting to get embarrassing. That’s because whenever someone asks me where I come from, I keep telling him I’m from Canada. Or from somewhere else where people believe in still getting a little exercise to keep their weight down.
I really dislike Chinese. I find that most Chinese are rude, unscrupulous, arrogant pricks who are among the most uncreative people on earth. When they produce anything it’s usually of such cheap quality that it falls apart in one tenth the time that American and German products disintegrate into worthless junk. They are good at copying and selling products that other countries originated and that’s about it. They are dirty and their morals are truly in the basement. And the Chinese sell children’s toys laden with poison. Their cars, trucks and coal burning furnaces pollute the earth. And their waterways and beaches are choked with polluted garbage.
So in my videos that I allow on YouTube with no age restriction will not have any Chinese in them. Why by the time I get done you will think that Chinese food is inedible.
We won’t show any fat people either. And no fast food restaurants. And while my chosen group of Prudish YouTube censors are at it, we will purge all videos of anyone drinking beer or overeating. Meanwhile we will allow without restriction any videos that show people exercising and eating wholesome and healthy foods can accomplish.
So when me and my friends put ourselves on the You Tube Board of censors
We will be able to restrict the number of viewers that will be able to view fat people or Chinese to less than 2 percent of what they would otherwise be.
Don’t believe me? Just remember, most of you are sheep. Therefore you are hopeless non thinking automatons who are too lazy to actually think for yourselves.
In the meantime Jack Corbett Productions no longer has to put up with Prudish YouTube censors. Fortunately I did not cut any corners with my Alpha Productions web site. Which has the power to stream video the same way YouTube does. Here’s too examples the Prudish YouTube censors banned which you can now view from Alpha Productions whether you have a smart phone or computer.
And my non cruelty cockfighting video YouTube purged because of complaints from Non thinking human rights activists.
I’m in Seattle now thinking about how Shangrila Pattaya brings the fountain of youth to old men. As I look out from the Days Inn parking lot at the nearby hotels all of them close to the airport and onto the street. It’s night time and I see all around me an emptiness in sterile surroundings compared to where I’ve just come from, and thankfully where I’ve been living for the past eight years.
Pattaya is in Thailand. But the guys who are fortunate enough to live here should be calling it Shangrila Pattaya
Pullman Hotel is just 400 meters from my condo. But only 200 meters away is the Long Beach Surf and Turf Restaurant where I can have dinner and drinks just 15 meters from the water’s edge.
In contrast, the streets in Shangrila Pattaya are alive. Being full of people from all over the world. Here in Shangrila Pattaya there are restaurants everywhere. Thai restaurants, German restaurants, Russian restaurants, Swiss, French. You name it and Pattaya’s got it. And so many so closely packed together, and this is not to even mention as the bars, and all the street vendors peddling their goods up and down the street and into the bars, from women’s clothing, shoes, watches, street food, friend grasshoppers and other insects, street food, and gadgets of all kinds.
Some of the vendors carry their goods on foot while others carry their small shops side car style mounted on small motorbikes. There’s Atms everywhere, and Family Marts and Seven Elevens, sometimes up to half a dozen of them all within two blocks of each other. I will enjoy renting a car here in Seattle and being able to drive in Washington and Oregon’s beautiful mountains, but I can’t wait to get back, and I’ve only been away for twenty-four hours. Who wouldn’t want to get back if they were already living in Shangrila?
The 1937 movie “Lost Horizon” compels me to call my new home Shangrila Pattaya
Frank Capra filmed “Lost Horizon” in 1937. The movie went so far over budget that it took over 5 years to recoup its production costs.
Two nights ago I watched the movie “Lost Horizon” for the first time. Shot in 1937 this classic was about a small group of Westerners who are barely able to escape from a mob of Chinese bandits in Shanghai. Luckily the group is able to barely escape with their lives by getting on the only available passenger plane at the airport.
Unknown to the small group of passengers, the plane’s new pilot overpowers the pilot. Who then hijacks the plane and kidnaps its passengers who he flies to a mysterious valley in the Himalayas. But he doesn’t quite make it. The plane crash lands in the mountains and the kidnapper is killed during the crash landing. Facing starvation with no hope of escaping the small group of passengers are rescued by an expedition of Tibetan porters who escort them through the hazardous narrow mountain passes to a beautiful city where the sun always seems to shine called Shangrila.
At Shangrila the passengers find there’s more than enough gold for everyone living there.
In the movie, Shangrila has a mild climate, there’s no war, crime or envy there. There’s more than enough of everything because its inhabitants can trade an endless supply of gold trade for whatever they need to the outside world.
The passengers soon learn that the residents of Shangrila live to be hundreds of years old, so long as they remain in Shangrila. One of the group is a terminally ill prostitute who’s been given less than a year to live. She will recover, however due to the miraculous life extending capacity of Shangrila.
Meanwhile, two brothers fall in love with two of Shangrila’s female residents. Unfortunately, the younger brother falls for a woman who is possibly Shangrila’s only disgruntled resident, a beautiful Russian woman who appears to be still in her twenties but who is actually well up in her sixties. The Russian woman is able to convince first the younger brother, and then the older brother, that the leaders of the Shangrila community have lied to everyone, and that Shangrila’s ability to extend the human lifetime is a complete sham.
But the other passengers become so content with Shangrila that the two brothers are unable to convince them to leave.
The Russian woman and the two brothers set out through the hazardous passes in the mountains with a group of sherpas they’ve hired to take them back to civilization. But the sherpas are all killed in an avalanche, and the Russian woman reverts to her true age. Without the strength to climb the high passes of the Himilayans she dies of exposure, and the younger brother commits suicide now that he’s learned the real truth about Shangrila.
The older brother is barely able to get out of the mountains alive after being rescued by a group of Chinese, and eventually he is repatriated in England. For weeks he is unable to remember anything about what has happened. Eventually when his memory returns he disappears. At the end of the movie there’s a lot of speculation that he went on a quest to once again find his Shangrila, and that eventually after a couple of years he finally found his way back again through the mountains.
The men discussing his disappearance ask the man who’s just returned from a two year search looking for him, “Do you really believe in such a place as Shangrila?” to which the storyteller replies, “I believe it because I really want such a place to really exist. And for all of us, we must all forever hope that for each of us that such a place really exists.”
So what does this movie have to do with Shangrila Pattaya and my having lived there for eight years?
At 7:00 a.m I’m sitting at a hotel near the Seattle airport about ready to get on my next flight. And I’m thinking how much I’d rather be living in Pattaya than anywhere else.
I also cannot think of many Westerners who’s lived in Shangrila Pattaya for very long who would trade it for anything. All those American, English, German, and other European expats dread the thought of ever having to move back to their home countries. I will admit, however to having one American friend who’d much rather be in the Philippines rather than in Thailand where he owns a condo. And I know of one Swiss, one Spaniard, and one Englishman who have either moved to Malaysia or who are hoping to go there in search of greener pastures. All of them, I think, are deluded.
The fountain of youth really exists in Shangrila Pattaya. Although in a different way than most of us think of the fountain of youth. Or the way it exists in the Shangila movie, “Lost Horizon”.
Last week while swimming in our condo swimming pool I encountered a 29 year old Russian man who married a Russian woman last month. Who then brought his wife to Thailand for their honeymoon. The man told me, “We Russians have thought it so strange to be seeing all these old European and other Western men all walking down the street holding hands with these very young Thai women and how the Thai woman oftentimes wind up living with all those old men.
And then the more I thought about it, I thought, “Those old men back in their own countries are only just old men. They sit there doing practically nothing only being old men.
Is it foolish to be an old man who surrounds himself with beautiful young women? Think about it.
And then they come here and suddenly all these young beautiful Thai women keep telling them they are attractive. So what happens is all those old men actually start behaving a lot younger than they are. And they have fun, and enjoy themselves.”
And of course, I’ve had many men in their fifties, sixties and even seventies tell me, “Look, back home you can’t get such women to even look at you, and if you try to have anything to do with them, they see you only as being dirty old men.”
But what happens is all of those incurably old men come to Shangrila Pattaya and suddenly they start to feel as if they are twenty again.
Have sex with twenty year olds? No problem. Have a twenty or thirty year old girlfriend stay with you for years, again, no problem. Want to have another child only this time with a woman who’s twenty, thirty or even forty years younger than you? No problem at all. The woman’s all for it.
What happens is the young Thai women make the older man feel attractive and virile again. His mind tells him he’s a young man again. And then he becomes what his mind is telling him.
His mind operates a lot quicker. He regains his sex drive. His step becomes more youthful. While his confidence jumps from rock bottom to what he had when he was just 18. Before other men snatched up the best looking women.
If I were to say that for every attractive Western woman there’s a hundred good looking Thai women, I’d be lying. I’d be lying because the ratio is more like 200 or even 500 to one.
And it’s not only that. Most of them, or at least the ones we are likely to meet in such places as Pattaya are available to all of those “Old Men”. There’s massage places everywhere, and it only costs six bucks for a one hour full body massage. And trust me, there’s nothing like a one hour or two hour Thai massage or oil massage where one gets a woman’s full 100 percent attention.
About one hour from Pattaya close to Rayong, I rented this motorbike in order to perform one of my motorcycle road tests.
One can drive a motorbike everyday of the year here. Even if it rains and one gets wet on a motorbike one usually dries out in a hurry. And if a man wants to stay dry he can always carry along a light weight rain suit. Although many of us have cars as well, nearly all of us expats drive small motorbikes, and believe me, there’s nothing like driving small motorbikes to make a man feel like a little kid again.
Pattaya’s got great infrastructure. There’s an eight line highway all the way to the main Bangkok airport, a drive which usually take just an hour and fifteen minutes or so. There’s a lot of great shopping here and the place even has some excellent bookstores. It’s got great hospitals and in general health are that’s just a fraction of what it costs in the U.S. and it’s so much more efficient.
In the U.S. and in most of Europe if you go to a bar about all you have to look forward to is getting a DWI which involves spending a lot of money and probably having to spend at least one night in jail.
Who needs that? Last week I put away god knows how many beers, and when I looked at my watch it was three minutes until 2 which his my curfew. After all, I do have a girlfriend and she expects me back at 2, so believe it or not I got home on my motorbike in just two minutes driving perhaps 4 kilometers. At that late hour the traffic was nearly non existent.
The last thing I worry about is cops because I have never seen a Thai policeman ever pull anyone over because he was drinking and driving. Now don’t get me wrong, I never drink and drive my car here because I feel it’s too risky. I drive my motorbike instead. So the only person I think I’m going to kill is myself. And with the late hours traffic so non-existent, I can drive that bike of mine with both of my eyes closed.
I’ve got a beach 150 yards from me and a great health club to exercise in.
The infrastructure here in Pattaya Shangrila is terrific. This is the Fitness Center at the five star Centara Grand Mirage Hotel. I go here five days a week.
If the climate ever seemed too hot for me, I think I’ve pretty well acclimized myself by now. I’m flying to St. Louis in a few hours and I can practically guarantee you that St. Louis on August 1st is going to be hot and a lot more uncomfortable than it is for me in Pattaya. I’d say that if the year round climate where I live averaged just 3 degrees cooler that it would be just about perfect.
As it was for the people of Shangrila money really is no real object for me here. It simply goes a lot further than it does in the United States which enables me to have an even more comfortable lifestyle with access to infinitely more women, with far more night life and bars around me, and I’m still able to save a lot more money than I ever was before.
Is Shangrila Pattaya perfect? No way. There’s hardly any sidewalks here. The place is awfully corrupt, and the ocean is a bit too polluted. But the corruption hardly ever affects me, and it’s still a beautiful ocean. If I want to swim in it all I have to do is take a 40 minute ferry ride to Koh Larn. As for the lack of sidewalks and all those amenities. Well…one could say it just makes life more interesting.
Living it up in Pattaya Thailand World's Most Exciting City
The History Channel is currently far more concerned with ratings and how much profit each show can produce than it is with History.
