Category Archives: Entertainment

An Excellent Story for Earth Day, Mrs. Maisel

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It’s about time, backyard croci.

Today was warm, cloudy and windy, until the clouds let go a lot of water, and then another -y adjective came into play, rainy. Tomorrow will be rainy, windy and chilly, and it won’t get warm again till after Easter, I hear.

Got an email pitch the other day, one of very many. There was a fair amount of verbiage to it, but the heart of the matter was this line: Are you interested in speaking to XY, a holistic health expert, about the sharp rise in the use of anti-anxiety drugs and why taking hemp extract is better for your health?

The short answer is, no. A longer answer would also be no. And I feel not a jot of anxiety about my decision.

And another pitch, at about the same time:

We think this is an excellent story for Earth Day that your audiences will love. The nationally acclaimed eco-feminist artist XX is celebrated as the real-life Marvelous Mrs. Maisel of the art world.

Is she now? Got into art one drunken night when she was on the outs with her husband? I know that show has won some Emmys, and I’m enjoying episodes of the recently dropped fourth season (once a week), but it’s still interesting that the publicist believed it would be a widely enough known reference to make such a statement, silly as it is.

Thursday Grab Bag

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Sluggish progress toward spring here. But some progress. Plants in a nearby park.the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la

The croci in my own yard have been very slow this year — no blooms even now. I don’t keep an exact track every year, but that seems a couple of weeks late. Some years, I remember seeing their very first green sprouts at the end of February. And of course, croci don’t mind a little snow.

On a bench in the same park. What is that thing?Soofa

A Soofa sign. The company web site says it makes electronics for advertising or as part of “smart city” communications. This doesn’t look like that, and it also looks inactive. Since I’d never noticed it before, it could be that it isn’t operational yet.

Or is it? According to a park district web site I couldn’t access fully — but could see a bit of, from my Google search — you can charge devices there. Solar-powered, and the top does resemble a solar panel. Wonder how much juice it has these many cloudy days.

The latest snack food to enter the house: Calbee brand Takoyaki Ball-flavored corn snacks. Though Calbee is Japanese, not a product of Japan, but rather Thailand, where ingredients and labor are no doubt cheaper.

No octopus, which is the main ingredient of actual takoyaki, is listed among the ingredients. Still, it’s flavored to taste like takoyaki, which it does, though the simulation isn’t quite spot-on. A little too sweet, Yuriko said, and I agree. Sweetened for North American tastes? Just how many North Americans are going to buy takoyaki-flavored snacks? But not bad.

Calbee, incidentally, began as a candy company in postwar Japan (1949) and acquired its name in the mid-50s, a portmanteau of “Calcium” and “Vitamin B1.” Soon the company found its way into crispy snack foods, especially wheat crackers. I suppose that was something of a novelty in Japan at the time, compared with rice crackers, which go way back. Calbee’s early confections caught on, and so the food technologists there have been working hard to make new varieties of snacks since then.

I see that the fifth season of Better Call Saul has appeared on Netflix. That’s good. I’ll watch it. Once a week or so, that is. That’s how new TV should be, according to Leviticus, I think, though it doesn’t apply to shows that might have been watched every day after school.

Proto-Spring Break

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Time for a spring break, even though it isn’t quite spring yet here. Proto-spring is more like it. That winter-spring tug o’ war has started, with winter still having the upper hand, and the most visible result being mud puddles. Anyway, back to posting around March 13.

Mostly I remember metal showman Dee Snider for sparring with what-about-the-children Tipper Gore in the mid-80s over naughty words in popular songs, and for testifying before the U.S. Senate (along with interesting bedfellow John Denver) in favor of free expression. By all accounts, the Twisted Sister frontman acquitted himself well in those spats.

Also, I like that he goes by “Dee.” Still, metal has never really been my cup of meat. Even so, I took the occasion this week to listen to “We Aren’t Going to Take It,” Twisted Sister’s best-known song (released 1984) and something I haven’t heard in years. Apparently a number of groups have taken inspiration from it over the decades, and I can see why. Though the Twisted Sister video frames the song in terms of teenaged rebellion, most of the lyrics are broad enough to apply to most any resistance to authority or oppression.

We’re right
We’re free
We’ll fight
You’ll see

They’re also simple enough to be easily understood, even if English isn’t your first language. No wonder some Ukrainians have taken up the song. Snider reportedly has approved. But he doesn’t approve of every group who wants to use the song.

“People are asking me why I endorsed the use of ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ for the Ukrainian people and did not for the anti-maskers,” Snider said recently in a tweet. “Well, one use is for a righteous battle against oppression; the other is a[n] infantile feet stomping against an inconvenience.”

Snider continues to acquit himself well.

Pre-Chekov

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The other day I watched an episode of mid-60s sitcom I had heard of, but never had seen before. It was playing on a nostalgia channel I have access to. A show that only lasted a season, which makes it unusual as a rerun (and why no Camp Runamuck, which was on precisely the same season?).

I decided to watch the whole thing because in the first minute or so, Chekov showed up. That’s what came to mind instantly when I saw him. It took me a few minutes to remember the actor’s name. About two years before he started on Star Trek; just a young-ish character actor at the time (29).

In that episode, he played a Swedish character. His dialect wasn’t so different than the faux Russian he would later do, though you could tell he was trying to add a bit of Swedish to the sound. I’m not an expert on Swedish, but I suspect that the sound wasn’t particularly authentic. But why would it have to be?

As for the show itself, it wasn’t that bad. Or that good. Mildly amusing, occasionally, and decidedly dated. Being only a little older than the show itself, I completely understand how that happens.

Snowy Thursday

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As expected, snow followed rain today. But at least yesterday’s rain didn’t leave an ice glaze everywhere. Especially underfoot. I salted a few patches of driveway this morning, but on the whole the surfaces were dry till the snow started around 1 p.m.

Views of the snowy scene this afternoon from the front door.

Wish I could say I wrote this, but no. By a random soul online: It’s only a comorbidity if it comes from the Comorbois region of France. Otherwise it’s just a sparkling pre-existing condition.

I heard a song by a band called Modest Mouse the other day on the radio in the car. Apparently they’ve been around for 30 years, but I miss a lot my not paying attention to much.

Interesting song, though I don’t remember what it was. Maybe that’s because I was busy imagining that Modest Mouse is Mighty Mouse’s lesser-known brother. He didn’t care for the spotlight, and never went into the Mouse family business of saving the day.

Text message from Ann not long ago (edited for caps and punctuation): Seeing Princess Bride at the Normal Theatre.

With this pic attached:
Normal Theatre 2022

Message continued: The sword fight was really great on the big screen.

My answer: Oh yes.

Noises Off ’99 & ’20

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It’s been two years since I’ve been to the theater. In February 2020, just before I went to California late that month, I took Ann to see Noises Off at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights, where we go periodically. Logistically, it’s more convenient than theaters in Chicago, though of course that didn’t stop us from going into the city in ’19 a number of times.

Noises Off is a British farce first staged in London in 1982. It was at the Savoy until 1987, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to see it during my ’83 visit. Rather, my friends and I went to see The Real Thing at the Strand, a Tom Stoppard play also from 1982, which I remember being amusing.

Noises Off is really amusing. I didn’t see it until ca. 1999 in Chicago, and it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen on stage. Actually, it still is. Laugh out loud funny, along with the rest of the audience.

The 2020 staging was also funny, but not quite as much as the first time around. Maybe because I was older; or the cast wasn’t quite as good (though they were good); or that I knew what to expect. Still, Ann seemed to enjoy it, and I certainly did, even if it didn’t quite have the same punch as my memory of it.

It occurs to me now that I need to start going to the theater again. Health concerns haven’t been stopping me for a while now. It’s just that I got out of the habit. So I’ll soon do my bit to support regional theater, as part of that pent-up demand.

Things in the Mail

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Got a circular in the mail recently — another bit of paper, in this supposed digital age — advertising live shows at a metro Chicago theater I’ve been to exactly once, maybe five or six years ago. The theater has never forgotten that, on the off chance that I’d be willing to put in the miles (and it’s quite a few) to see another show there.

Topmost act on the ad? Grand Funk Railroad. It’s a nostalgia-oriented theater, and that name does take me back to adolescent days, or rather nights, of listening to my cheap bedside radio.

The band itself doesn’t have a lot of nostalgia value for me, though. They were fine. Had a few hits. Such as a decent version of “The Loco-Motion,” of all things. They were part of the astonishing variety that was commercial radio in the 1970s, which wasn’t that astonishing until the radio business decided to silo itself in unimaginative ways in later decades.

I was curious enough to look at the band web site, learning the following (all caps sic):

“Grand Funk Railroad is extremely excited to be touring in 2022 marking a 53 year milestone. After playing to millions of fans on the band’s tours from 1996 to 2021, Grand Funk’s 2022 SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL TOUR will continue to reach both new and long-time fans.”

I didn’t know they were originally from Flint, Michigan. Learn something every day. Forget just as much every day as well, probably.

I checked the ticket prices at the theater web site. For seats far away from the stage, $60. Most seats are north of $100, and if you want a seat in the loge right or left, that will run you at least $248. This doesn’t encourage me to see Grand Funk Railroad.

Also in the mail lately.

My name, unusual as it is, is gender ambiguous. I’ve been getting things addressed to Miss and Ms (and maybe Mrs, not sure) for as long as I’ve been getting circulars and other solicitations. That and, of course, a variety of misspellings, including of my last name, which is perfectly phonetic.

Our gas bills, which come all too regularly in the mail, offer up data on the price of natural gas. This isn’t good.

December 2020: 29 cents/therm. December 2021: 68 cents/therm. Good thing the most recent December was warmer than a year earlier, but I’m afraid January isn’t turning out that way.

I had to refresh my memory that a therm = 100,000 Btu. I’ve always liked that name, the British thermal unit. A Btu is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by 1 degree Fahrenheit at the temperature that water has its greatest density (at about 39 degrees Fahrenheit). If that’s not a legacy of Victorian scientists, I don’t know what is. Sure enough, it is.

I’d read that natural prices were on the rise, and sure enough, there it is in my bill. “What’s Up with Natural Gas Prices?” this American Petroleum Institute article asks, as if Andy Rooney were asking. The short answer: the market fluctuates, and be glad you aren’t in Europe, where prices are astronomical, rather than merely steep.

50 Riel, Cambodia

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Text from a recent fortune cookie: What does the future hodl?

I can overlook the typo. We’ve all done those. But is it right for fortune cookies to ask questions, rather than offer fortune-cookie wisdom?

Besides, the answer to that particular question is simple enough: death. Sooner or later, probably one at a time for all of us humans, but possibly all going together when we go, every Hottentot and every Eskimo, though I suppose that should be revised to Khoikhoi and Inuit and Yupik.

I heard about Dwayne Hickman this morning, and my reaction was, he was still alive? The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis had its charms, and the episodes that I’ve seen tended to be funny. As for Bob Saget, my reaction was, sorry to hear about a 65-year-old passing suddenly, but the episodes I’ve seen of Full House were not funny. What happened to sitcoms in the ’80s anyway?

The other day, I hauled out my envelope of cheap banknotes for a look, as I sometimes do. We might be on the way to excising banknotes from our lives in this country — a great mistake, if so — but I take some comfort in thinking that they will linger quite a while longer in parts of the world not so hep on digital infrastructure.

A nice-looking note, if a little orange.50 riel, Cambodia

50 riel, Cambodia

Cambodia, 2002. 50 riel. Still valid currency, with this note worth about 1.25 U.S. cents these days.

Here’s info from wiki to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck: “There have been two distinct riel, the first issued between 1953 and May 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, the country had no monetary system.”

On the note’s obverse is Banteay Srei, a 10th-century Cambodian temple and relic of the Khmer Empire. The reverse has a dam on it, likely supposed to be a symbol of modern progress.

Looking into the history of the temple, I came across an oddity.

“It was 1923 when [Andre] Malraux, then 22, arrived in Cambodia with his wife Clara,” journalist Poppy McPherson writes in a publication called The Diplomat. “Newly broke Parisian intellectuals, they had a scheme to steal statues from the Angkor temples to sell in the West. It failed, and they were both arrested in December of that year. The legal wrangle that ensued, ending in a one-year suspended sentence for Malraux and nothing for his wife, meant he spent more than a year stuck in Phnom Penh and, later, Saigon.”

First Thursday of the Year Musings

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Little wind today, which made the outdoors marginally better to experience. But not much. Tonight will be really cold, an illustration of the superiority of the Fahrenheit scale for everyday use, with 0 degrees being really cold and 100 degrees really hot.

I can’t remember exactly when I read it, but years ago there was an item in Mad magazine lampooning the midcentury notion — the quaint notion, as it turned out — that Americans were going to have a surfeit of leisure time in the future, including a vast expansion of the number of holidays. Millard Fillmore’s birthday was a suggested holiday.

Well, that’s tomorrow, and I have to work. That idea about leisure time didn’t pan out anyway. But I will acknowledge the 13th president’s birthday, because why not. Besides, I paid my respects to President Fillmore in person recently.

Today’s also a good day to acknowledge the expansion, ever so slow, of the public domain, eking out growth despite the rapacious efforts of certain media oligopolists whose mascot is a rodent. Works published in 1926 are now in the public domain.

I’m happy to report that The Sun Also Rises is one of those works, to cite one of the better-known novels of 1926. I could have quoted it previously, and in fact I have, relying on notions of fair use. Now all the words are freely available, no questions asked.

“Here’s a taxidermist’s,” Bill said. “Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?”

“Come on,” I said. “You’re pie-eyed.”

“Pretty nice stuffed dogs,” Bill said. “Certainly brighten up your flat.”

“Come on.”

“Just one stuffed dog. I can take ’em or leave ’em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.”

“Come on.”

“Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.”

“We’ll get one on the way back.”

“All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

Speaking of life between the wars…

If that song doesn’t make you smile, what will?

In the Dustbin of Entertainment History

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A few weeks ago, I oversaw the Great VHS Purge. Tapes unused for years were either donated to a resale shop — I still see them for sale there, so someone must buy and use them — or thrown away, in the case of those I was sure no one would want. Home recorded stuff, mainly.

A few tapes survived the purge, mainly because they were not in the main stash, formerly in a cabinet in the laundry room. I found one today, tucked away elsewhere: Bugs Bunny’s Greatest Hits, a 38-minute tape with a copyright date of 1990.

Stuck on the body of the cassette is a yellow sticker that says:

Please rewind or pay rewind fee of $2.00. Blockbuster Video.

That tells me that I bought the tape used at a Blockbuster at some forgotten moment in the very late 20th century or very early 21st. It also reminds me why exactly no one, except maybe stockholders, mourned the passing of Blockbuster Video and its ilk.