Bellbottom Blog

Scratching A Writing Itch From Time To Time

Archive for the category “Uncategorized”

26 Aug 2012
7 Comments

Shots Fired

The other day, in New York City, police responded to those words in front of the Empire State Building.

A disgruntled former employee shot to death his former co-worker on the sidewalk in broad daylight.

Police came running and in a confrontation that lasted mere seconds killed the gunman and wounded nine passersby.

I am not going to criticize the police in this matter.  They did what they are trained to do.  The bad guy was killed before he could harm anyone else.

My observation leads me in a slightly different direction.

Gun advocates, after any shooting, always say,”If someone had a gun, the shooter would have been stopped.”

Well, look at what happened with well trained police officers.  They weren’t able to limit their spray of bullets to just one person.  Adrenaline is a tricky thing.  We have seen too many movies where the bullets land in exactly the right spots.  Those officers went from a normal patrol to the deadliest situation they would ever face.  Most police officers go their entire careers without pulling their weapon during their shift.

More civilians with guns is not the answer to shootings like this one or the movie theater one, or the temple one, or ….on and on.

Peace

Posted in Uncategorized
23 Aug 2012
6 Comments

A Story (Not A Funny One)

With all the debate going on about Congressman Akin’s unbelievably stupid comments, I find it depressing to see that after an initial bi-partisan agreement that he should go away, people are defending him.

Even tonight on Letterman, Dave said something along the lines of this:  Should we run off anyone who says something dumb?

I think:  Yes.  Hell yes.  People in political office should be held to a certain standard or face the consequences.  And this wasn’t not knowing how a grocery store scanner works or not being able to spell potato. He was talking about, to use his words, “legitimate rape”.

First of all, there is no such thing.  As the president said, and as any thinking human knows, “rape is rape”.

So, here is a story that I had not thought of in years.  If you are looking for something funny, today is not the day here.

When I was a young bachelor, I was sharing a town house with another bachelor in the mistaken notion that we could live cheaper that way.  It was an experiment that didn’t last long.

Anyway, one of our neighbors across the parking lot was a family of three my roommate knew.  They were young.  I think they had only been married for a couple of years and they had a one year old son.

They were great with us. Always asking how we were doing.  Inviting us over when they had a party.  Wonderful folks.

Then this happened:

It was a warm night.

The wife was resting on the couch in their living room with her son on her chest.

Her husband was upstairs sleeping.

She had left the patio door open to let the night breeze come through the screen.

Suddenly, a man with a knife came through the patio door.

He told her of his intentions as she clutched the baby tight.

Somehow, her husband woke up, sensing something was wrong, and then hearing a strange voice downstairs.

He jumped out of bed and ran down to see a living nightmare.  His wife and baby threatened by an intruder.

Everyone in the house was screaming as the two men fought in the room.

Across the parking lot, I heard the commotion and ran to the door to see where it was coming from.

By this time, the fight had spilled out into the lot.  I could see two shadowy figures running across the parking area. The second one yelled to me that this man had attacked his wife.

So, I took off running after the two of them.  As I got to the end of the building, the husband was coming back holding his arm.  He had been cut in the struggle.  He went back to the house and I proceeded to look a little more for the man but he had disappeared back into the night.

The guy was never found.  The family moved out that night.  He said she just couldn’t go back.

Around a year or so later, I ran into them.

He was his usual joking self.  But she was quite different.

She looked dazed, reticent, shattered.

The assault had taken something away from her.  We all live with a  hope that we will be safe in our lives, especially in our own homes.  To lose that feeling was devastating for her.

As I said, this is a story that I hadn’t thought about in years.  But when I hear the almost casual use of the word rape and watch as one guy after another tries to bail out the Congressman, it just makes me sick.

Thanks to the husband’s intervention, the incident was an assault not a rape.  And I am sure a right winger would be quick to point that out to me.

I just think the ease in which some public figures gloss over things like rape, assault, womens’  rights, needs to be addressed from time to time.

And men need to call out their own.

So I wrote this.

Peace.

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged
10 Aug 2012
4 Comments

Friday Potpourri Vol. 16

I am starting this a half an hour before Friday officially starts.

I have managed to get into a couple of Twitter arguments this week about the Olympics.  You know I try to avoid that sort of thing on Twitter.  140 characters isn’t usually enough to make a point without just going to some sort of snarky slapdown.

The problem started with a runner named Lolo.  She was predicted to win gold in her event.  Magazine covers and the usual fawning bio by NBC were done to a fare-thee-well.  Problem is she came in fourth.  Fourth is not something to be ashamed of, but you don’t get a medal for it either.

The hype machine is then faced with a dilemma.  Drop her, which is an admission that they backed the wrong person, or, keep promoting her and hope that no one notices the difference after a while.

I couldn’t resist sticking my nose into a thread that was arguing just these points.

My thought was,”I didn’t get a medal either.  Will I get a limo to the Today show or a Wheaties box first?”

I was told that I had no idea how hard she had worked.  And aspersions were cast about my own physical fitness. Ouch.

My point was and still is, if you want to keep supporting her, fine, just don’t forget about the three medalists that came in before her.

Actually I have a bigger problem with the whole thing.

We tell kids to work hard and maybe they can be in the Olympics or professional athletes.  Bela Karolyi was screaming at the screen, telling little girls to “Run to the gym.  Be like this kiddo.” after the Gabby Douglas gold medal performance.

I have coached young kids and watched them slowly come to the realization that the dream they have isn’t going to work out.  It can be heartbreaking to see.

But let’s say you have beaten the odds.  You have just won a Olympic medal in an event you have worked very hard for.  Certainly you expect the cameras and adulation to follow. You look around and everyone is with the fourth place finisher.  You wake up the next day and the fourth place girl is on the Today show whining about how unfair her life is.  You look at the medal that you slept with, such was your excitement.  But things feel strange.  That feeling is what happens when you get in the way of the hype machine.  It will run you over to continue on its way.

In music news, Ken (@lahikmajoe) is trying to turn Hank Williams songs into polka numbers.  I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry was the song in question. I haven’t been able to get the potential sound of that out of my head, so I decided to pass it along here.  You are welcome.

In the weather news, we finally got some rain last weekend.  Unfortunately we got a lot of wind with it.  Did you know that two months of no rain can turn the inside of a tree into toothpicks?  When the big wind comes, the trees snap.  We lost the middle section of the tree in our front yard.  It took two trips to the dump to get rid of all the debris.  Some neighbors thought the garbage men would this stuff up.  But whoever worked out the contract for garbage pickup did a wonderful job of easing the burden for the guys.  Two cans per household and that is it.  No extra. Not a bag and certainly no tree debris.

Thing is, I like going to the dump.  When we were in Fort Wayne, I had occasion to go quite a bit, mostly landscaping.  Sometimes just clearing the garage of crap we no longer needed.  My son and I liked the challenge of filling the back of the pickup so that nothing would fall out.  Some people would just strap the load down.  Not us.  That was the easy way.  We approached it like a reverse form of Jenga.

Well, let’s leave it here for now.

Be good.

Peace.

 

Posted in Uncategorized
02 Aug 2012
4 Comments

School Days

We have just entered August and school is starting up all over the country.

I was talking with @francoisome, who has a blog called Muse-ings (it is on the Blogroll to the right), about school starting so early.

She is a teacher and we started talking about how school used to be.  It would start after Labor Day and end by Memorial Day.  Three glorious months for kids to play, explore, maybe even read.  Vacation with the family. Time to be a kid.

I really think that time is important for children, but I am not in charge.  So school starts earlier and runs later.  Scores don’t show any noticeable improvement. And let’s be clear, teachers these days are increasingly stuck with teaching to the test in some parts of the country.

Let’s go back a few years.  Okay almost 50 years.

I went to Catholic grade school.  Sacred Heart, to be exact. Mostly nuns for teachers.  Just a few lay teachers.

Remember what the first day of school was like.

You were loaded down with new school supplies.  Wearing your best school clothes. The girls had uniforms. White shirts and plaid skirts.  Nervous and anxious at the same time.

What was the teacher going to be like?  Who am I sitting in front of ? The room seems so big.  I miss home.

We were usually put in alphabetical order.  Which meant you could stare at the back of the same head for eight years.

Everything had that first day of school smell to it.

It would take a few days to settle into a routine.

After we got to the room and attendance was taken, we lined up at the door and walked to church.  Prayer and education go hand in hand.  There are no atheists in foxholes or at test time. The mass in the first few years was still done in Latin.

Remember learning how to print and then write?  Going from those big red pencils to real No. 2 pencils.

Learning addition and subtraction. Flash cards.

Nuns were , let’s say, focused when it came to teaching.  There wasn’t a lot of extra time for goofing around.  And punishment was swift and sure.

If you were called on, you had to stand. If you didn’t know the answer, you could be standing for a while just to let it sink in that attention must be paid.  It was an effective method.

Not to say that we didn’t learn other things too.  Every swear word I know today was taught by my classmates.  How to take the ink liner out of a Bic pen and turn it into a spitball weapon.

Sacred Heart used to have a carnival once a year during school.  Half the school would spend the morning out with the rides, games and they eben brought ponies for us to ride.  The other half would gather in the school basement and watch a movie.  The only one I remember was Knute Rockne: All-American.  The nuns cried and cried during the “Win one for the Gipper” speech.

Late in my fifth grade year, we moved to a new house in a different parish.  We finished the school year out at Sacred Heart. Said goodbye to friends.  Very sad times.

St. Henry’s was the next stop.  It was within walking distance.  About a quarter of a mile.  Unless my kids read this some day, then it was 5 miles uphill both ways as Bill Cosby says.

It was pretty much the same at the new school.  Except that we were moving into the late ’60’s.

A guitar was used at mass.

One of the music teachers,Sister Bonaventure  allowed us to listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Sounds of Silence.  Trust me, that was a VERY big deal back then.

I was never an altar boy, but in eight grade I was a crossing guard.   We wore bright orange belts with a strap  that went over one shoulder. Oh, the power.  It was the first time that I realized how much I enjoyed being in charge, now that I think of it.

For our eight grade graduation, they had a breakfast for us after we got our diplomas.

I am not one for going back necessarily. I would, however, make an exception here.

If someone could wave a magic wand and put all of us back in that room for one last reunion, I would be in.  The friends I made in grade school were special to me.  Maybe it was the Catholic training we all survived.  Foxhole buddies.

Sacred Heart and St. Henry are closed these days.  Parochial school education costs too much for the neighborhoods those schools were in. The buildings are still there.  And bouncing around those walls are the faint echoes  of children saying the Pledge , getting their 1st period books out and starting another day.

Thanks @francoisome for giving me the inspiration for this post and thanks for being a teacher.

Peace

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged
01 Aug 2012
4 Comments

Olympics and a Book Review

Really I could write anything now, the title is enough to get people here.

On the 18th I wrote about the Olympics and as things have turned out, everything I said came true.

Except for the vitriol that has been aimed at NBC for their boneheaded decision to not play the event in real time.  They have saved all the best of the day and made nightly specials.  The problem is everyone knows the results.  It is everywhere.  Even NBC’s own Nightly News has, under the guise of journalism, given spoilers about events that are going to be shown in primetime.  In one particularly egregious moment, they ran a commercial congratulating an Olympian for their Gold just BEFORE they showed the segment in which she won the medal.

NBC has responded by telling people they (NBC) knows what is best and people should just shut up.  They even got one Twitter account temporarily suspended.

This from a company who is going to lose a large amount of money.  They already admitted this months ago.  The losses are going to be in the millions.

Let me say this:  If they showed the games on the main channel in real time, EVERY coffee shop, bar, restaurant, waiting room, and office would be  tuned to the Games.  They would be the talk of the day and the package that NBC would show in primetime would be enhanced by families getting together to watch what they had seen earlier in the day.

As the late great John Belushi would say on SNL, “But nooooooooooooooo” they won’t do it.

Well, the hell with it.  We have bigger fish to fry here on the Bellbottom Blog.

Amy’s book is out.  OUT OF TRUE is available on Amazon and Goodreads just to name a couple of places.

I bought it for Kindle and I have to tell you it is an amazing piece of work.

I don’t read much poetry, but I can spot great writing when I see it.  I haven’t read all of this book yet.  The reason is her work is so complex and wonderful it would be like eating a five pound box of the finest chocolate all at once.

My favorite poem so far is One Honest Man.

Her work in this book should be savored.  I wish I could write well enough to tell you how special this book is.  You are going to have to trust me on this.  Buy a copy.  You won’t be sorry.

I mentioned that I have it for Kindle but I am going to buy the actual book so I can place it on the bookcase along side my other favorite books.

Her blog is LucysFootball.  A link is in the blogroll.

You can read her book while you are avoiding Olympic spoilers!

Everybody wins!

And isn’t that what the Olympics are all about.

Peace.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged ,
30 Jul 2012
10 Comments

The Mall

Lisa, whose blog The Best Self  T-Shirt Catalog Ever!,  is recommended reading by the Bellbottom Blog, hence its appearance on the Blogroll to the right of this page, inspired this post.

She wrote a post called How To Go To The Mall: A Photo Guide.  You can click on her blog and read it.  As always, it is chock full of helpful hints to successfully navigate your way around the mall experience.

I was thinking about my own experiences at the mall.

See, the mall is a phenomenon that came to be in my lifetime.  There was a time when all the stores were outside.  Yes they were! I swear!

Somewhere along the line, a person decided to buy a large patch of land and build a structure that would house a lot of stores.  Of course, this idea came with a price.  As businesses moved to the mall, the areas they left behind were faced with empty storefronts.

Not exactly a win for all, but people liked the idea of shopping inside.

The big draw, before food courts came to be, was the popcorn stand.  Let’s face it, no one can resist the smell of fresh popped popcorn.  Especially, a 11 year old kid riding his bike where he shouldn’t be with a friend of his.  For example.

The mall closest to our house was the second mall built in Fort Wayne.  This is about 1967.

In addition to the popcorn, it also had an arcade called Aladdin’s Castle.  All pinball machines.  Google it, if you don’t know what a pinball machine is. 3 balls for a quarter.

It had a Sears, J.C. Penney, and L.S. Ayers (an Indiana department store).  ChessKing.  Musicland. A cafeteria. A six screen theater.

Busy, busy place for a number of years.  But as the years went by and the new houses were being built on the other side of town, It started to deteriorate.  Stores left . The theater went to dollar movies and then closed.  The arcade. Even the popcorn stand closed.

Years went by as the carcass of this once fine mall sat unused.  Finally, the politicians in town bought it and tore it down.  Today, there is a Wal-Mart in its place.  And a Menards.

When I drive past that piece of my youth,  I can still remember the thrill of riding my bike through that parking lot.

But that isn’t what I started to write about.

Shopping.

I asked this question on Twitter a while back. “Why doesn’t the men’s section have an area for the guys who wear black socks and sandals. They should be sold in a set. Help the old folks out.”

But really, my question is why do we stop  putting ages on clothing  sections with teens?  Shouldn’t there be an area for 35-50 year olds?  A senior section?

One of the complaints I read about are people who don’t dress their age.  Let’s help them out.

Until next time…

Peace.

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , ,
27 Jul 2012
2 Comments

Friday Potpourri Vol. 15

Welcome to the rain that is falling as I type this.  We have been without rain for over a month now and the lawn is getting very crunchy.

The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are going on right now.  But I am not missing anything because they are being shown tonight on tape-delay.  It is 4 p.m. They could be shown now.  But as I predicted in a recent post, NBC doesn’t want us to see them live. I guess it makes it easier for them to slip in commercials. Of course, other countries are seeing them live and Tweeting about it so there will be no surprises when they are shown here.  And if they suck I imagine the viewer numbers would be affected.  Smooth move, NBC!

Has anyone noticed how difficult it is to comment on Blogger?  They require those hieroglyphic sign- ins to prove you aren’t a spam bot.  I was talking to someone this week that just avoids any blog that makes it so difficult to comment.  The spam filter here on WordPress has caught all of the spam before it makes it to the comment area.

In grandson news, we found something that he likes almost as much as Yo Gabba Gabba. We were channel surfing and my wife came across Xanadu.  Made in 1980, the musical stars Olivia Newton-John and , sadly, Gene Kelly.  It is a horrible mess of a picture with music by Electric Light Orchestra.  There is a big roller skating dance number in it.  The little one was fascinated by it.  He rarely watches anything on TV but he couldn’t get enough of this mess.  The combination of bright disco era clothes along with the music was all he needed.

I remember that time as a battle between Disco and Urban Cowboy music. Bars in my hometown had one or the other.

Disco balls.  Guys dressed like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever complete with open shirts filled with gold necklaces.

Or in the other bars. Mechanical bulls. Guys dressed like Travolta in tight jeans and new cowboy hats.

If they still want to dress like Travolta, they would need a fat suit and a toupee.

I made it onto a mechanical bull once.  It was in the afternoon and the owner, a wonderful slightly crazed Hungarian, decided to take the controls.  He thought it would be fun to learn how to run the bull by practicing on a few of the customers before the evening crowd came in.  I lasted about 3 seconds.

But the music for the western clubs was great.  Live bands from the area getting a chance to chase a musical dream.

(I should tell you that I am trying to write this and follow the BBC’s LIVE blog of the Opening Ceremonies.  That’s right!  Multi-tasking! Belgium just entered the arena. )

(Jamaica just came in)

Oops, sorry, you are still here.

Ahh, Dane Cook made an Aurora shooting victims joke and has apologized for it.  Which makes him an even more heinous person than I thought he was.  He was at the comedy club the night of the Daniel Tosh incident.  He knows how much publicity that received. So, he comes up with his own look-at-me moment.  Scumbag. Lowlife.

(Malta just entered.  This live blog is really great.)

Let’s wrap this up with a gentle reminder that Amy of LucysFootball fame has a book of poetry coming out on Aug. 1st.  Click on her name in my fancy new blogroll and find out all about it.  I can’t wait to get a copy.

Peace.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , ,
26 Jul 2012
4 Comments

The Lake

When I was a young child, there were a few years that my family would take a vacation for two weeks and go to the lake.

We rented a place on a small lake in northeastern Indiana.  There are several lakes in that region.  The one we picked wasn’t very big.  Not a lot of skiers and speedboats.  So the noise was at a minimum.

It was a two story cottage.  Green, if I remember right.   Very steep steps from the front led to the small yard and the dock.

My mom and dad always invited mom’s dad and mom along with two of our cousins.  This was before my youngest brother came along so there were six of us.

Dad was a mailman and in the early sixties he didn’t make a lot of money.  Still they found a way to get us up there every summer.

I  remember piling into our Plymouth station wagon (the car of choice for Catholics back then) and taking what I thought was a very long trip.  Until I became old enough to drive on my own, these were the longest trips I would be on.  It seemed like forever to get there.  The actual trip only took a little over 2 hours on two lane roads.

That car was stuffed with fishing gear, clothes, a cooler, and other assorted things.

When we would get there, every one went to the water’s edge first, before unpacking.  There was and is  something about the smell of lake water that was almost magical to a city boy like me. I am convinced that food tastes better near the water.

The days were filled with wading around and exploring the area with my cousin.

My grandparents provided most of the entertainment.

By this time they had been married over forty years.  They loved each other very much.  They could also push each others buttons pretty well.

Grandpa liked to fish with two poles.  A rod and reel which he always kept in his hand and a fly rod which he put at the opposite end of the boat.  We are not talking about a large boat here.  Picture a rowboat.  Just a regular size rowboat.  That was what we were in.  Dad, Grandpa and me.  To check on his flyrod line, Grandpa would have to get up and try to walk around the boat.  Dad was always shifting himself around so we wouldn’t tip over.

Grandma would yell from the shore, “Sit down, Harry!”

“Awww, be quiet. You’re scaring the fish,” Grandpa would shout back.

In all the years we fished like that, he never tipped the boat over or lost the pole.  I am sure Grandma would take all the credit for it.  Thanks to her vigilance, we stayed afloat.

The middle weekend of the vacation, we would invite Mom’s side of the family one day and Dad’s the next.  Every inch of that property was full of  kids.  It was great.  Looking back, I am impressed that they would do that.  It was quite a mob scene.

Dad would also invite some of his friends from work.  Mailmen, then and now, have rotating days off. One week, they are off on a Monday, so the next week, Tuesday..when Friday would come up in the rotation, they got Friday and Saturday both.  The following week, they would work the whole week and then the rotation would start over again.

So, people would drop in here and there during the week.

I should mention that even though we went up there  every year, I never learned to swim.  I didn’t care for it.  Still don’t.

One day though, I was walking on the edge of the dock doing a little fishing when I took an extra step.  Next thing I know I am on my back under a lot of water and having a tough time finding my way back up. That water I was so fond of was filling me up fast.

A hand appeared and grabbed mine, pulling me up to the surface.  One of my Dad’s friends from work had brought his son and daughter with him. She was the one who saw me and saved my life.

Thanks, Sue.

I only saw her once after that.  I thanked her again.  She just brushed it off, but the look on her face showed how proud she was to have that on her resume.

You would think that might get me to learn how to swim.  Nope. The lake had its chance and missed.

With the exception of that incident, I remember those trips fondly.

Lots of laughter.  Lots of fishing.  Lots of memories.

Peace.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , ,
24 Jul 2012
2 Comments

Tragedy on TV

A few days ago, there was an awful shooting spree in a theater during the latest Batman movie.

Aurora, Co. joined a list that includes Columbine, Virginia Tech , Edmund, OK among others as places that would be linked by unspeakable tragedy.

I bet some of you are wondering, Edmund?  What happened there?  Back in the early ’80’s, a disgruntled postal worker entered the Edmund Post Office and killed 14 people, wounding several others.  I bring it up just to emphasize how little progress we have made when it comes to figuring out how to stop these horrific events,

Ban assault weapons.

Toughen the standards for acquiring weapons.

Let everybody have a gun.

Better mental health screening.

Prayer.

Voting Republican.

Voting Democrat.

Reducing violence in movies and television.

Have a bi-partisan commission to study violence in the workplace.

Did I miss any?  Oh, and can we fill hour after hour with “expert” opinion about the shooter?  How he looks.  What music he listened to.

The same crap with the same experts.  All looking very somber.  Spewing their nonsense.

Bad things happen in this world.  There are no easy answers.  Actually, I don’t think there are any answers except some people are just flat-out evil.

My heart goes out to the families who have to find their way through the grieving process with the barrage of cameras wanting an interview.  Maybe the networks looking for a story in between psychiatrists and profilers.

After Edmond and a subsequent shooting in a Royal Oak, Mi post office, all Postal Service employees had mandatory group counseling.  We spent 3 or 4 hours talking with experts who would ask a question, listen to our responses, repeat back what we had just said, on and on, until at the end when they had to admit there were no answers to preventing a future shooting.  By providing the sessions, they could say something had been done for the employees.

No answers.

Just broken families.

I am going  finish this by mentioning the people in that theater who had just a split second to throw themselves on the person next to them, sacrificing their own  lives.

Those people showed what a hero does when it counts the most.

When I happen across any of the endless coverage of the gunman and his long slog to justice, as I change the channel, I am going to remember the heroes.

Peace.

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , ,
20 Jul 2012
10 Comments

Friday Potpourri Vol. 14

Here we go!

I want you kind readers to notice the Blogs I Follow section on the right of the page.———–>>>>>>

See?  Follow those blogs if you don’t already.  They are Bellbottom Blog approved.

Well…this week on Twitter I had a run-in with a vegan.  I really wasn’t expecting it.  An innocent comment to a guy who said the Vegans were after him started the exchange.

I suggested maybe the vegan community could use a cheeseburger.  Might calm them down.

A vegan said he would follow my advice if he wanted “cancer/heart disease/obesity”.

I pointed out that I have none of those and I am 56 years old.

He said, “Not yet. These things tend to sneak up on you. Either way, all that will be left will be vegans.”

I didn’t pursue it after that last bit.  A couple of days later, a writer named @SaraJBenincasa  was putting off doing any writing and asked her followers for questions.  The  best part was that she would answer in haiku.

So, I asked the following question: “A vegan told me I would die unless I stopped eating meat:prediction or should I get a restraining order?”

Sara answered with this:

silly!vegan farts/

Could kill a man dear God no/

we all die, Hooray!

How cool is that?

By the way, I don’t care if you are a vegan or not.  Just don’t wish me dead to make your point about the hazards of eating meat.

In other news, I have been trying to find a show that will counterbalance my viewing of Duck Dynasty and Ice Road Truckers.

I had two possibilities:  The Newsroom and Political Animals.

I find the news and politics interesting so I went into these with high hopes.

Let’s dispense with Political Animals first.  This was just train-wreck bad.  Every lame twist possible was used.  So it will probably run forever.

The Newsroom just fired all their writers.  I don’t know for sure how that will affect the quality of the show.  I am amazed that they lifted the Jim-Pam-Roy storyline from The Office.  Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight on the show,  just called them on it a few minutes ago on Twitter.  Lots of speeches.  But Sam Waterston is great. And as Amy pointed out the newscast part of the show is pretty strong.

For fans of the original Saturday Night Live, there was some sad news. Tom Davis, one of the first writers hired for the show, died at the age of 59.  He was hired along with Al Franken, the current Senator from Minnesota. They were a comedy team, Franken and Davis.

I may have mentioned it in another post, but the first four years of Saturday Night Live, really meant a lot to me as a fan of comedy.

This was my generation making an impact.

Until I read his obit in the New York Times, I didn’t realize how close in age we are.  Mr. Davis is just 3 years older than me.

I purchased my first VCR just to record the show when I was at work.  A big, heavy monster of a VCR.  The remote had a cord.  You read that right,  a cord.  It loaded from the top and had knobs to dial in the channels with on the front.

I have those seasons on DVD.  When I look at them now, the lighting is not the best.  It is a little rough around the edges, but it is still funny.  AND, the original group wasn’t as dependent on cue cards as more recent incarnations have been.

Tom Davis wrote a memoir a few years ago, called Thirty-Nine Years Of Short-Term Memory Loss.  Very funny and honest book.

One last thing, Twitter had an update last week which resulted in me having to re-follow all the people I had been following.

I don’t know why that happens.  It stinks.

So I wrote this tweet, “Twitter’s unfollows have caused more trouble than Andy Cohen at a Real Housewives reunion.”

Until next time,

Peace.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →