By Jeanne Spreier,The Dallas Morning News

A good day’s work for honest pay is the goal of most adults, and “Dirty Jobs,” a new series on Discovery Channel, honors that commitment – with a twist. It looks at the hard days of people who earn their living doing less-than-luxurious jobs, sprinkles in quite a few factoids and then makes these jobs look, well almost, fun.

“Dirty Jobs” has had several specials on Discovery Channel in the past, but now has moved to series status. In last week’s premiere episode, host Mike Rowe spent time collecting, hauling and sorting garbage in San Francisco and then getting on-the-job training at an auto salvage site.

The interesting thing about these two jobs is that once you peel back the banal nature of each, there’s some curious stuff going on. For grade school kids and tweens, this series is a grown-up version of the fondly recalled “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” segment on how things happen (crayons get made, traffic lights work). Next week, Rowe joins a San Francisco sewer inspector, helps out when a Brooklyn toilet explodes, and possibly most enticing to youngsters, works with a demolition crew.

Kid viewers (hey, maybe adults too) will be stunned to learn San Francisco’s city trash collectors must navigate narrow passageways between buildings or climb stairs to even reach the garbage and then must dump the trash cans into a huge burlap sack to carry to the garbage truck. (A new truck, by the by, costs about $185,000.) In one day, Rowe carries two tons of trash on his back and climbs 2,500 stairs.

Then there’s a separate garbage route for food waste – basically leftover food scraped from the plates of San Francisco’s restaurants. This California city is the mother of all urban recyclers in the U.S., reclaiming 63 percent of its waste stream. Viewers get to see it all, including the garbage cans filled with rotting food. Chicken bones, fish heads, bread crusts and limp salad are dumped in huge piles, then ground up and stored in gargantuan plastic bags, awaiting Mother Nature’s composting miracle to begin.

Rowe calls it the smorgasbord from hell, but for the city’s coffers and nearby Napa Valley farmers, it’s a slice of heaven. The city sells the rich soil to vineyards, which use it to nurture grapes.

And who would imagine that a salvage yard could be so interesting. Never mind that each auto part in each car in the dusty row upon row of abandoned vehicles has been inventoried in a master list; and never mind the joys of stripping a car of its engine block (worth $3,000) or rearview mirror. If you have a little free time on your hands and a few spare parts – like an unused air bag, a long length of speaker wire and a jumper cable and battery, you too could rig up a contraption that would launch a 55-gallon drum sky high with the exploding air bag.

Rowe asks his salvage yard host what the most unusual items are he’s found in an old car – a .45-caliber pistol and a plastic bag with green leafy stuff. “Oregano, probably,” Rowe decides. If this doesn’t bother you, along with the assorted references to “crap,” then “Dirty Jobs” is good, clean fun.

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This is not the cartoon series for every family. But “The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy” is golden for families and their older kids who appreciate a twisted sense of humor (where the skeleton Grim tells a visitor, “Technically, I’m dead.”) and can deal with the high level of sassiness and frequent comments on topics such as flatulence.

As this new season starts, Billy, Mandy and Grim take a pass at the Harry Potter phenomenon with the “One Crazy Summoner” episode (two episodes make up each half-hour show). Nigel Planter, a nerdy, glasses-wearing kid who summons the three buddies through their toilet, wants help with a bathing beauty he loves from afar. In the end, Nigel eats the love-potion-laced chocolate that Grim’s granny prepares for the girl and Billy’s parents end up in an anaconda’s belly.

In the next episode, Billy’s parents are gone when Rollington Academy’s Principal Goodvibes comes to interview Billy, who wants to attend the exclusive school. Mandy asks Billy to tie his shoelaces as a simple intelligence test. In typical Billy fashion, he ties everyone’s shoelaces together. Oops. And Principal Goodvibes, despite being called all sorts of names including Good-poop and Good-you’re-an-idiot, gets cowed into accepting Billy – sort of.

With these new shows, “The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy” continues to be weird, wacky and not for everyone.

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DIRTY JOBS

Grade: B-minus

9 p.m. EDT Tuesdays, Discovery Channel. 1 hr.

THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY

Grade: B

“One Crazy Summoner” and “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner,” 8:30 p.m. EDT Friday, Cartoon Network. 30 mins.

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Jeanne Spreier: jspreierdallasnews.com

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(c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News.

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AP-NY-07-27-05 1149EDT

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