Why All the Rage?

I sometimes wonder if we all become L Ron Bumquist as we get older.  Or maybe I'm just wondering if I'm becoming Dr. Bumquist.
A news teaser blurbed that a Kendall Jenner commercial for Pepsi was generating controversy.  Apparently, handing a cold refreshing beverage to a police officer in an advertisement is an act which necessitates social outrage with enough people for it to make the news.  Social media is the liquor store next door; it is the enabler of a rampant addiction to rage.  And when did nearly everything become worthy of anger?  Contempt maybe, ambivalence clearly, but anger?  Pepsi is just trying to sell more empty calories - junk food as my mom used to say.  Thank a Capitalist as without them we'd have nothing to fret about today.  Can anything happen that doesn't require someone to bitch, moan and create banal memes about.
Luckily this rage is very short lived.  Cecil the lion is still quite dead, but nobody really cares any more about Minnesota dentists or hunting big cats in Africa anymore.

I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed about this, but after hearing the news story on TV while getting ready for work, I really wan't sure who Kendall Jenner was.  I looked her up on Wikipedia and saw she is Bruce Jenner's daughter and something about the Kardashians - at which point I quickly lost interest.  Although I seem to vaguely recall that one of the Kardashians was married to Kanye West.  So Caitlyn Jenner and Kanye West could end up at the same family reunion.  Do people like that have family reunions?  I think not.
And if Kendall Jenner is Bruce Jenner's biological daughter, does that make him still her dad?  Or is she now her mom.  Maybe Family guy can sort this all out.
Again, I lose interest...

I have no interest in Pepsi as a surrogate for someone's social anxiety, the Kardashians, or pretending I'm interested in things that people who are half my age should probably not even be interested in.  How is it so easy to spot the old person uncomfortably attempting to act young?  The wedding a few years ago where they played The Macarena and the dance floor was filled with only young girls and middle-aged men.  It was terrifying.  Maybe that was another phenomenon altogether.  A former coworker recently resigned;  he's been convicted of some crimes and it apparently wasn't dancing The Macarena.  Even the limited information I heard on that one is too much.  Every time I think about it, it is quite disturbing.  Yet some kind of voyeuristic stupidity compelled me to look it up on the county court web site.

Maybe Dr. Bumquist can help afterall.

Who died?

I turned on the TV as I was getting ready for work on Tuesday and heard a theme song I instantly recognized.  I didn't think I had left the channel on one of the many broadcast rerun channels, so I instantly said, "Wonder who died?"
I probably only watched a couple seasons of Growing Pains.  I was certainly done watching by the time they put the show on life support by bringing in Chrissy (Ashley Johnson) and Luke (Leonardo DiCaprio) as Kirk Cameron and Tracey Gold got too old to be relevant to the show anymore.  About the only episode I actually remember is the one where Mike and dad go to a Bruce Springsteen concert and get caught on TV after - resulting in some teasing by Mike's friends; I was quite surprised this was a very early episode in the series.

This started me thinking about all the other people who died in 2016.  There seems to be an acceleration in the notable people of some level of celebrity who have played a role in my past who are now dying.  Presumably, this will only continue to increase...

David Bowie, January 8:  I can't say I was a huge fan; I sort of saw him as this weird, androgynous performer.  But I recognized his unique contribution to music.  I probably appreciated Ziggy Stardust more later in my life...

Phil Fish, January 26:  I probably only watched Barney Miller in reruns, late at night - and I'm not sure when, since we weren't really allowed to watch that much TV, but I do remember watching Abe Vigoda on the show.  Hard to say now if those memories are good or bad, but there they are.

Antonin Scalia, February 12:  My Criminal Justice professor in college said that listing the names of the 12 Supreme Court justices would be on the final exam.  With the internet in its infancy at that point, I was trying to find current information and it was not terribly easy.  My boss at the time called directory assistance, got the number for the Supreme Court in Washington DC and got the information from the person who answered the phone.  Seriously!  The list wasn't on the final exam - which I shouldn't be surprised about since the professor had some major problems.  I'm quite sure he at least had an alcohol problem, if not issues with something much more troublesome.  I liked Scalia's matter-of-fact, no apologies style; reportedly when Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) ran into him in an airport and she asked him if he was Antonin Scalia, he responded, "Well, somebody has to be..."  The fact that he remained friends with the diametrically opposed Ruth Bader-Ginsburg is something everyone with strong political beliefs should emulate.

Henry Warnimont, February 15:  Punky Brewster was one of several kid-themed Annie-esque TV shows (think Different Strokes and Webster).  I guess we all at some level wanted fabulously rich pseudo-parents to appear out of nowhere - 'cause this happens all the time.  George Gaynes as Punky's "dad" is slightly unmemorable, or maybe I didn't actually (and embarrassingly) watch the show enough to remember it that well.

Harper Lee, February 19:  Too Kill a Mockingbird is a great book, an American classic that is actually worth reading.  I've read enough reviews to know I should probably proceed cautiously with Go Set a Watchman, and it is sad that there was so much controversy surrounding the release of that book.  At a minimum, it was updated from its original form to be more in line with modern political philosophy in a way.

@, March 5:  He may not be a household name, but Ray Tomlinson "invented" email and pioneered the use of the "@" symbol.  One man, one symbol, forever a part of modern technical history.

Nancy Reagan, March 6:  "Just Say No!"  First Lady, Mrs. Reagan, played her own role in the Ronald Reagan White House.  Lots of criticism over astrology or spending of money on household furnishings, but it is without a doubt that President Reagan would not have been who and what he was without her.

Benny, March 17:  I'm not sure if Larry Drake's character on LA Law had a last name, but his portrayal as a functionally slow person was really good.  LA Law had a good run as one of the better of the many 1980's lawyer shows.

Gary Shandling, March 24:  Not my favorite comedian, but I did watch The Gary Shandling Show quite a bit.  I don't recall finding it particularly enjoyable, but his awkward comedic style was done in a such a non-television way that the show was actually quite revolutionary.

Eugene Gatling, March 28:  The premise of  Benson wasn't very strong, but James Noble's character as governor allowed Robert Guillaume to have the self-named show.  Despite the show, the story lines were often surprisingly funny.

Merle Haggard, April 6:  I'm sort of neutral on country music, but broadly speaking, there is a sliding scale from the music's origins to the music now.  Merle lived country music in a way that Garth Brooks is a best a very weak copy of (and his new beard is really, really awful).  When we lose Chris Kristofferson, who is about the same age, it will be a very sad day indeed.

Mildred Krebs, April 17:  Remington Steele was a great show, and paved the way for other flirtatious detective shows (i.e. Moonlighting).  Doris Roberts was a great part of Remington Steele, even if a little over-the-top.  Not as much over-the-top as Everybody Loves Raymond, which was not loved by everyone (and even got a little bit dark for a sitcom).

Prince, April 21:  Probably the death that bugged me the most.  Like David Bowie, I really wasn't a big fan in the 1980s, and also like Bowie, I saw Prince as this weird, androgynous singer.  I may or may not have ever seen the movie Purple Rain, but I listened to the music from it a lot.  "Is the water warm enough?"  He definitely had a very unique role in popular music that will continue to influence for some time.

Morely Safer, May 19:  60 Minutes is no longer the show that it once was.  Now more pop-political than anything else and while I like Scott Pelley as CBS News anchor, I think this has weakened both the CBS News and 60 Minutes.  Morely Safer's interview with Salvador Dali has to be one of the best people interviews ever, and the Homer Simpson/The Shining/60 Minutes blurb from TreeHouse of Horrors V is a great brief tribute.

Mohamed Ali, June 3:  An arrogant man if there ever was one, yet oddly humble at the same time.  His place in American culture goes beyond boxing.  Somewhere I have a book of jokes - oddly 1980's jokes that are ethnic without being racial - one of which references him.  "How can I preach against violence when I just plunked down $200 to watch Ali and Frazier pummel each other for a few hours?"

Mr. Lebowski, August 2:  David Huddleston was the other Mr. Lebowski from The Big Lebowski - yet another cult Cohen Brother's movie.  "I'm just going to go find a cash machine..."

The Waco Kid, August 29:  Blazing Saddles could not be made today - and both Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little (1992) made that movie what it still is today.  I also sort of remember watching Young Frankenstein after it was accidentally grabbed at a VHS video rental store instead of Young Einstein.  Einstein may have been more topical at the time, but in retrospect, Frankenstein was probably the better choice.  See No Evil, Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor (2005) would have been the better topical choice...

Janet Reno, November 7:  Quite glad the Clinton (Bill) Administration has ended and no fan of Janet Reno as Attorney General.  But she played a major role in politics during a formative time in college.  I guess I'll probably remember her Dance Party from Saturday Night Live as much as anything else, and her willingness to play along after she left office.  Hopefully she got a chance to see much of the country in her red pickup truck too.

Gwen Ifill, November 14:  I wasn't a fan of the News Hour and I saw her as unnecessarily partisan, but she was also very smart.  She seemed so very young, cancer is a bitch...

Mrs. Brady, November 24:  The mom nobody had, which was probably a good thing.  Why a stay-at-home mom needed a live-in house keeper still baffles me.  The Brady Bunch was seemingly always on in the afternoon, so I watched a lot of it in reruns at friend's houses.  It is nearly unwatchable now - and it may have been then as well.  Perhaps Florence Henderson's demise seems somehow tied to the slow, painful death of Crisco.

Fidel Castro, November 25:  Revolutionary, Dictator, Celebrity Ruler, Tyrant, the list goes on.  Those of us who grew up in the Reagan era still miss the cold war.  In a world where Russia could no longer be the bad guy, Cubans were still able to play that role in the movie Red Dawn.

John Glenn, December 8:  An American hero, but I just didn't like the guy.  I wrote him a letter when he was our Senator (also when I was less realistically cynical about politics) and the letter I got in return was quite condescending.  I still have it somewhere, although I'm not sure where it is.  In retrospect, the return letter was almost certainly written by some flunky staffer and not something he ever even saw.

Which brings us to Jason Seaver, December 13:  Dad from the formerly mentioned Growing Pains, Alan Thicke - a show when sitcoms still allowed the dad's to more than just the buffoon of every joke.

It is transitionally sad to see all these deaths of "notables" from 2016.  Still, the year isn't over yet!
And it makes me start to think ... how many people who were actually important in my life, but who I've lost touch with over the years are continuing to pass?  Maybe that is the real lesson from a list of celebrity deaths.

Belated Edit:  The death of the very influential Princess Leia occurred after this was published.  Starpuff hairdo, "Into the garbage chute, Flyboy" and "It's not funny anymore James" (Big Bang Theory cameo).  'nuff said...

The Comfort of Free TV

Several years ago, I donated to my local NPR station.  I do listen to NPR often and the local affiliate was at risk of disappearing, so I thought this was the right thing to do.  There were two outcomes to this.  One, the station was taken over by another NPR affiliate - while this did keep the station with similar programming, the truly local segments were no longer.  Two, that donation created voluminous junk mail asking for donations - I know this is the source since my name was misspelled and that misspelling now shows up on the resultant instant-recycling.
I once looked online to see what some of the NPR voices looked like as people - they look absolutely nothing like their on-air personalities and it has greatly affected my listening.  You just can't unsee that.

I don't currently pay for TV.  The cost is really hard to justify with the fact that, even when I did have satellite, I only watched a small number of the channels that I paid for.
I live in an area without any good options for unlimited internet access; streaming TV is also out of the question.  This leaves me with over-the-air television which means I am somewhat destined to know of many cultural phenomena only second hand.  I'll live with that.
Over-the-air television means I watch a lot of PBS.  Interesting shows will often show up while flipping, but there are only a few shows I target to watch.  My normal TV routine is currently being disrupted by the pledge week.
What I find most curious about the PBS pledge weeks - I think they happen about four times a year - is that PBS seems to get rid of their usual good and predictable programming, replacing it with a redundant clutter of rehash.  The strategy seems to be one of, "If you don't donate, we'll put more of this crap on..."
I don't know how many times I've flipped past Suze Orman oversimplifying personal finances during pledge week, or shuddered at the horror of The Big Band Years.
There is another possibility - I may not really be in PBS's market.  They want money from someone other than me.
PBS claims to be commercial free.  This is disingenuous.  You can call Subaru an underwriter of Globe Trekker, but Subaru is not handing out cash out of the goodness of their corporate soul - they want to sell more Foresters.

I still believe digital TV was a ploy by Michael Powell to kill free TV by limiting who has access to over-the-air channels.  It was possible to watch a fuzzy analog The Simpsons episode; it is impossible to watch a massively pixelated episode.  Mr. Powell's evil ploy was thwarted, largely because he did not envision what would happen in streaming media.
For those of us who can get a decent antenna TV signal, the result is more digital channels than we had analog ... sort of.

Many of these digital channels are quite redundant.  But they are often playing reruns from the late 70's to the 90's.  I'm surprised how some of these shows hold up after so many years.  Early Hunter (a show I loved in the mid-80's) is fun to watch when I'm in the right mood, but gosh did that show get bad in the later years.

Miami Vice is still good, but only in the context that, it in many ways, defined TV for several years.  The dialog is as over-the-top as the pastels are.  I was quite depressed that after watching a recent episode start-to-finish, the Ferrari never made an appearance once.  It is sad when the true star of a show is absent.

It is refreshing to see long lost episodes of Night Court.  Bull Shannon (Richard Moll) makes that show as much as Harry Anderson does.  I can only hope we'll get to see reruns of It's Your Move, but I won't hold my breath.

A few of the shows demonstrate absolute genius.  Newhart is as good as anything on TV now and I can't help but find the opening theme be unquestionably comforting.

I guess I should probably donate to PBS, but I really don't want the increased mail to recycle.  Maybe I'll just by a Subaru instead.  Do they still make the Baja?

Food From Trays

Full disclosure upfront:  I am going to be both unfair and hypocritical today...

Kroger has "Free Friday Downloads" which are online coupons that can be downloaded to get one specific free item.  The free items cover the range of groceries available at Kroger, being anything from candy bars on up.  I used to think these were designed to get shoppers to hunt for them, thereby forcing shoppers to walk through and look in more aisles of the store, but the Free Friday items are now always located near the front of the store, so the intent must be to drive web traffic towards Kroger.
One of my Rules for Life is:  Just because something is free, doesn't mean you want it.  Following this, some Free Friday items (gum), I don't bother with, while others are a risk free way to try something I wouldn't otherwise buy.

A few weeks ago, Stouffer's FitKitchen was the free item.  It promised, "Hearty Satisfying Meals."  Sadly, it wasn't, but at least the cost to me was about commensurate with the product.

The beans were rubbery.  The chicken was even more rubbery, and the sauce can best be described as odd.  The sweat potatoes were tolerably good.  Here is the part where I'm being hypocritical.  Some of my other weekday meals could be considered on par with Stouffer's FitKitchen.  I actually like frozen chicken wings.  Frozen pizza (with toppings added) are nearly a staple.  But the FitKitchen, frankly, reminded me of the 1970's TV dinners we occasionally ate as a child.
I would hope that either my memory of TV dinners is clouded and that 1970's culinary adventure was actually worse than I remember it, or by 2016 ready to eat meals could have advanced.  I suppose the one thing that the 1970's TV dinners had going from them was the lack of microwave ovens.  Coming in a plastic tray, Stouffer's FitKitchen has only the microwave as a cooking option.  Thinking back, I can't imagine how bad the 1970's TV dinners would have been if microwaves had been nearly universally available then.  To this day, I think I dislike peas just due to the memory of TV dinners.

There must exist a world, somewhere, between Chris Kimball's fantasy land and the TV dinner where most of us live.  Yes, some of America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country foods are touted as simple.  But having both time and energy to go the Kimball route on a daily basis is a delusion.  Staying in the PBS world, I once saw Caprial admit going to McDon... on occasion with the kids - this was refreshing, but that show has become unwatchable now that they have some truly bizarre onscreen husband-and-wife dynamics.
America's Test Kitchen plays its watchers disingenuously.  When not wearing a costume, Chris Kimball likes to start the show with the absolute worst example of a dish, and then improve on it - thus setting the bar impossibly low for success.  He also claims to have a "very small kitchen," and yet Cook's Country is reportedly filmed at his farm in Vermont.  By that standard, my kitchen is a thimble.  

Walking through Kroger yesterday, I paused by the frozen dinner section.  "TV Dinners" designed for oven cooking still exist.  Many of these are now in paper or plastic trays which is a little frightening, but I guess it works OK.  So maybe the unhappiness with the Stouffer's FitKitchen should be against the cooking method, not the cuisine?  Either way, the frozen meals were left in the freezer - available for the next shopper who wants to eat over 1 pound of food.

I actually think much of the food I grew up on would be pretty unpalatable by today's standards, or by my standards today.  But TV dinners, something special when I was young, don't seem to have improved much since then.  Perhaps the real issue lies in the fact I've been eating them wrong all along.  After all, TV dinners were created to be eaten off of steel TV trays, sitting on the sofa, while in front of the TV, with shag carpeting underfoot.  Shudder.