Category: Television

  • I Try Not to Forget

  • ODDS and ENDS: Playlists, Sports with the Kid, and Playing Pretend

    (When you stop believing…)

    I used to take making mix tapes, mix cd’s and playlists, very seriously. And on the flip side of that, I really treasured receiving mix tapes from friends. There is a shoe box of mine, packed away in our storage space, that contains a mix tape from my high school girlfriend, which is still the most eclectic collection of music I have ever been gifted. Having made mixes for close to thirty years, I admit that there are a handful of songs that appear on nearly every iteration I create. I have landed in a playlist rut, one of my own making, as you can only mix songs you’ve listened to, and if you aren’t adding material to the source to draw from, variety becomes stagnant. I should go back to listening to albums all the way through again.

    The kid wants to watch sports with me this weekend. College basketball would be the obvious choice, but you’d be wrong. She wants to watch soccer. She recently join a team and now wants to submerge herself in as much soccer as possible. The truth is I’ll take any extra time with the kid. I just need to find out if a women’s league is playing Saturday.

    I’m 47 and sometimes I still pretend that I’m in a rock band.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Anyone Remember This, Super Bowl, and Sketchbooks

    (Guidelines are for losers)

    Does anyone remember Faces of Death? I’ve never seen it, nor do I want to. But the other day the movie popped in my head. I had a flashback of a memory from high school of finding out that it would be playing at a local dollar theatre at midnight, and how we all had to go. Through a combination of curfews and chickening-out, most of us didn’t go and see it. The handful of guys who did go just ended up arguing about how much of the movie was real or faked. (Turns out most of it was faked.) It’s funny thinking back on how controversial Faces of Death was back in the early 90’s, but also it’s not surprising how we couldn’t keep away from it. And don’t get me started on Banned from TV.

    I pick KC. I will also buy frozen hot wings from Trader Joe’s along with those frozen Mac ‘n Cheese balls this weekend for the game. Don’t give two craps about Usher; not that I have anything against him, he’s a talented man, just never been a fan. So… yeah; super bowl, yeah…

    I haven’t been drawing in my sketchbook lately. I have in my bio that I am a “sketchbook enthusiast,” but with my lack of production lately, I’m not sure if I can call myself that anymore. (It also begs the question; does anyone read bio’s let alone mine?) My daughter got a couple of sketchbooks for Christmas after having been inspired by her art teacher. She tries to draw something every day, and most of what she draws are cartoon characters, which is great. I hope that she establishes this as a habit that she keeps up with. Not that I am expecting her to become some “artist.” I just would like for her to have a creative outlet – a way to express herself and her feelings. Nothing bad comes from that.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Christmas Has to Go, Can You Believe It, Must Win, and Serious

    (It’s a trip… it’s got a FUNKY beat. And I can bug out to it!)

    This is the weekend that we are taking the Christmas decorations down. Normally, we do this on January 1st, as a sort of cleaning the house for the New Year. And I think you can read between the lines there and see that the wife and I have passed the days of staying up late and waking with a hangover. But this year, we didn’t get around to it. We put it off. Not that we had a good reason to do that, other than we wanted to lay around and not doing anything on New Year’s Day. The end result was that we got an extra week of Christmas, which has left me feeling like the holiday has over stayed its welcome. I like Christmas, but I really like it when it lives tightly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

     Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we live in a world where the movies Cocktail and Road House exist.

    And I need the Cowboys and Tottenham to win this weekend. Simple as that. If it doesn’t happen I will be heartbroken and disconnected from the universe.

    Some evenings, late at night, when I am alone on the couch while my family sleeps, I start to believe that the core of me is a very serious person. Alone and in the dark, I am confident in this pronouncement. And I say these things to myself when I am normally watching a terrible ninja movie, or something awful by Bert I. Gordon. That is when I know that I am a contradiction at all times. A silly one at that. I like walking funny and talking in goofy voices. I make up songs about doing mundane tasks. And I’d rather laugh than cry. I’d rather make you laugh; Try to make you happy through humor. I still attempt to rob an honest melancholy tear from people… but… I have never felt sure that’s what I’m best at. Yet, honestly, I have never felt sure about anything. And if I think too hard about that, I might start to wonder, worry, and then cry. Which is why I’d rather laugh. Hold it off, at bay, for a little while longer.

  • Getting Ready for Tomorrow…

    Just a reminder that some of us might need a Leslie Jones at our house…