August 13, 2002

Well you can tell it’s the middle of August. I’m b…

Well you can tell it’s the middle of August. I’m beginning to make television resolutions – I’m not going to watch new sitcoms this fall. On Thursday I really wanted to see “The Rerun Show”, since it was featuring a Bewitched segment, and I am a die-hard Bewitched fan. So I caught the tail end of “Will and Grace”. First of all, some feel that as a gay man I should automatically be in love with the show. I’m not. I think it’s a waste of time and actually a vehicle for more humor to be derived from the so-called “gay life”. Then I got to thinking about a lot of the sitcoms lately, and they’re all the same and can all be termed under a three word phrase. “Blah blah blah”. The dramas aren’t much better, but at least their watchable. I can tolerate “Judging Amy”, but even that’s bordering on idiotic.

I don’t know why I’m feeling so hostile towards television today. Maybe because I watch some of the shows from the 1950s and 60s and they were just of higher quality. It really irritates me that the actors and actresses feel that 19-22 episodes a season is bordering on too much work. The first season of Bewitched was *39* episodes long, and that was including Elizabeth Montgomery’s pregnancy AND all the special effects that they had to do “the hard way” (without computers) for each episode. And it was for like a tenth of the money. At least the reality shows are somewhat enjoyable in that it’s allegedly normal people making asses of themselves for a somewhat normal amount of money. The folks on Big Brother 3 make $750 a week for only the weeks they’re on the show. I think that’s cool. It’s not an outrageous amount of money.

It’s been so hot and muggy that I haven’t ridden my bike the past couple of days. On Saturday, I left at 5:30 a.m. and rode to Homer (near Cortland) … just shy of 80 miles, in 7 hours. It was very hot, and very, very hilly. I’m quite sunburned, despite the sunscreen I had on. Earl met up with me and we went to Robert Treman State Park just south of Ithaca. A great state park for swimming! I’ll have pictures on the site by the end of the week.

I’m writing this at work, I better get doing something productive!