The All Underrated Team
Some things get hyped. Some things don't. For every person who wants to tell you Citizen Kane is the only great film Orson Welles was ever in, there is a person who has not seen The Third Man. We exalt Coke and Pepsi, but never give Dr. Pepper his full due. And so on.
These things are underrated.
It's the hair
WKRP In Cincinnati
I still believe this was the funniest show on network TV in the late '70's, early '80's period. The talent on the cast was outstanding, the characters all vivid, and the writing consistently smart and current. Venus Flytrap taught us everything we needed to know about the atom, but who remembers the hilarious end to that scene? The show covered a wide range, from their sad and appropriate tribute to the 13 deaths at the local Who show and Venus telling us about seeing a friend jump out of a helicopter in Vietnam, to the hilarious "Guess The Songs" debacle. This show had it all. Unfortunately, it died amid rumors of infighting among cast and crew. Too bad. I would take this sitcom over almost any other ever made. And Bailey Quarters gets her own underrated award-We know why everybody went gaga for Jennifer Marlowe, but couldn't the nice and cute Bailey even get a look? That Three's Company lives on while WKRP fades away is a crime of culture.
The Pride Of Donora, PA
Stan Musial
It's hard to say a guy in the inner ring of the Hall of Fame who is worshipped by an entire city is underrated, but Stan the Man doesn't get his due. He played on some fantastic St. Louis Cardinal teams, and was just a badass all the way across the board. But Musial gets lost in the shuffle of great left-fielders, overshadowed by Ted Williams for years, and now by Barry Bonds. To paraphrase Bill James, who said it best while comparing Musial to Williams: "I would take Musial in the field, on the basepaths, in the community, in the dugout, and in the clubhouse over Williams. Oh, and Stan Musial could hit a little, too."
Fudgecicles
Oh, yeah, fudgecicles are WAY underrated. First, they are frozen (quiescently frozen, whatever that means). Frozen is good. Second, they are chocolatey, even fudgey. That's great. And they have no fat! I'm sick of the way you people have been badmouthing fudgecicles, and it's going to stop now.
Jimmy Carter
I was a young lad during the Carter Administration, just getting to that age where I knew what the President was, and every so often caught the news reports about some such thing (the Panama Canal, or his brother Billy). It seems to me Carter gets a bad rap. He brokered peace between Egypt and Israel, no small feat. He also, for better or worse, established the Carter Doctrine of the Expeditionary Force, which was the beginning of our large-scale military deployment in the Mid-East. OK, so the hostage thing in Iran didn't go so well. He got them out eventually, though Reagan got the perceptual credit for it. And I always had a kind of strange appreciation for Rosalyn Carter. What a nice lady. Jimmy had no scandals, he didn't screw anything up real bad, and he was a down home kind of guy. And, he continues to be a force of reason in today's world. Underrated.
After watching The Thing, you'll never want to go to Antarctica again...
The Thing
I'm talking about John Carpenter's The Thing, a remake of a '50s horror film about an Antarctic research team that discovers a spaceship buried deep beneath the ice, and later on, a part of it's crew. This movie has several fantastic and scary moments. The Thing is scary. You don't want any part of the Thing. Of course, the beauty of the Thing is that you never know who or what the Thing really is. Maybe you are tied up to a couch next to the Thing. Don't let Kurt Russell's presence in this movie scare you off; next to his speechless guest appearance on Gilligan's Island, this is his best role. As a bonus, The Thing features Wilford Brimley going insane and trying to feed The Thing Quaker Oats.
The Kinks
You've heard me stump for the Kinks here before. I'm doing it again. Classic Rock enthusiasts talk about the Big Four: The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, and Zeppelin. I grew up a huge fan of all of those bands. Why did the Kinks not make that cut? Turns out they had some legal issues that prevented them from entering the U.S. in the late '60s, the time when those other bands were building their massive listening base here. During the period of years when the Kinks were not allowed to come here, they focused on making some very unique and terrific records like "Something Else", "Village Green Preservation Society", and "Arthur..." Those records never found a wide audience or airplay here in the U.S., and they remain largely under-appreciated examples of some of the best of the British Invasion that was never allowed to actually invade.
The Fruited Plains of Kansas' Flint Hills
Kansas
I'm talking about Kansas, the state. I'm from there, and yet I feel strangely objective about Kansas, because I've been very happy to leave that state for Minnesota. But Kansas is underrated, if not culturally, then scenically. Kansas isn't flat. It's beautiful. There are the Flint Hills, the Kaw River Valley, and tallgrass prairies that stretch as far as the eye can see. There are very few places you can go in this country to see it as it was even 100 years ago, much less 500. Kansas has many of those places. And with those high plains come spectacular storms, with thunder that you can feel in your stomach and lightning that makes the sky come alive. I wouldn't live in Kansas again, but it's not just a flyover state. It's a drive through, get out of the car and roll around on the grass and dirt kind of state. It's a state that shows us a little bit of where we came from, and what we ought to try to keep just the way it is.
12:03:02 PM 
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