April 2006

Tonight at the gym I tried to watch a little television as I was chugging away on the spazzmaster, the stationary bike and the treadmill. I watched a little bit of Jeopardy. It became abundantly clear that there was not a single gay micron among the three contestants as they all had dumb looks in their face when presented with the category “Broadway Musicals”. I mean, is it really difficult to say “What is South Pacific?” when presented with the clue “Bloody Mary lived on an island in this musical.”

After I rolled my eyes at Jeopardy I tuned into the mind numbing “Television’s Most Outrageous Moments”. Now there was a waste of electrons, but it did keep my attention for the entire half hour. I was considering flipping around the dial a little bit but that chance of crossing paths with American Idol made it too risky.

After “Outrageous”, I decided to throw caution to the wind and tune into “American Idol”. Instantly I had the feeling that the audience, the contestants and the three judges were saying “Isn’t this thing over yet?”. Ryan Seacrest was saying “Look at me, look at me, look at me” but with nary a trace of his vocal high register lest we think he’s anything less than Village People butch.

I started flipping around the dial again when I stumbled upon Paula Abdul sobbing into her drink about how wonderful the mediocre puppet of the moment on stage was. That sent me over to “Hope and Faith”. Commercial break, let’s AI again. It took approximately 10 seconds of Kellie Pickler’s amazingly out-of-tune performance of “Unchained Melody” to make me decide to flip back to “Hope and Faith” and to keep it there.

Luckily, I then heard “Love Come Down” by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King come on the gym stereo system and well, the earbuds came off because after all, “Love Come Down” trumps all.

As long as it’s not sung by an AI puppet.

Adjusting back to a regular schedule is always a little difficult for me, especially on Mondays like today, when it’s a little gloomy outside and I’m working the 7 a.m. shift. But this morning I circumvented my morning crankiness by doing something a little different.

I took a 15 minute nap.

Ten minutes after getting out of bed.

I did quite a bit of web work last night until 11:30 or so before deciding I should get to sleep. I’m wired for nighttime and last night was no exception. I could have easily stayed up another three or four hours but I would have been nothing short of a mess today at work, so I decided I better get some sleep so I can at least feign productivity.

I really don’t like going to sleep when I’m not tired.

Nevertheless, I slept straight through the night, save for an incoherent discussion with Earl regarding the current time (this was around 3:30) and jolted away when the alarm rang at 5:30. When Tom hears that alarm ring, it becomes a no holds barred free-for-all, because as far as he’s concerned, I can hold it just a little longer and I don’t need to put any clothes on, he wants his kibble NOW. He barks more orders than an Army drill sergeant. So I went and blindly poured some cat food into his bowl, checked my e-mail and then decided I’d take a nap on the futon until 6:00.

I felt wonderful afterwards and the contentedness has carried with me throughout the day.

I think I’m going to start each sluggish day with a power nap. I highly recommend it.

One of my favorite television shows of all time is “Bewitched”. I’ve seen every episode of the classic series at least 20 times and can tell the difference between a complete episode, an early syndicated version, an 80s syndicated version or a TV Land edited version just by the flow of the scenes and the presence of key scripted lines. (Syndicated copies have lines and sometimes complete scenes edited out to make room for more commercials.)

As a Bewitched fanatic, I’ve done a lot of reading and collecting over the years of various Bewitched memorabilia. I hope to have the opportunity to visit the famous Stephens house on a Hollywood backlot in Burbank someday. I wish I had the opportunity to shake hands with Elizabeth Montgomery and the other players to thank them for their contribution to mainstream America.

It’s a fun show to watch.

While I’ve always been enchanted with the beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery, over the years I’ve come to appreciate the work ethic displayed by and later documented about the mysterious Agnes Moorehead. A character actor if there ever was one, Ms. Moorehead found no role too tough to tackle and she always put every ounce of her ability into the task, even if it was just a small part on “Love American Style”.

Her take on her craft was simple. “I love the illusion”, she would say with a big flamboyant wave of her arms. She believed that one should always work; be it good or bad, do it to the best of your ability and learn something from it and be a better person because of it.

I like to think that I’ve learned that myself over the years.

Tonight I watched a couple of episodes of Bewitched from the third season, “It’s Wishcraft” and “The Crone of Cawdor”, both stand-out episodes from a particularly strong time for the series. (Even at it’s worst, “Bewitched”, and most comedies of it’s time, far surpassed anything we see on television today). I couldn’t help but notice that Ms. Moorehead was always attentive and always playing Endora, even if she was in the background of a particular scene, far from the focus of the camera. She took her job seriously, she played it to the max and she did it well.

I think that’s a nice approach to have about work come tomorrow morning.

Rest in peace Elizabeth, Dick, Dick and Agnes. We miss you.

The productivity continued today, but thankfully nothing in the house exploded, leaked or gave off an odd odor. Today’s fun was limited to catching up on laundry, doing some needed household shopping and basically getting things around the house in order.

We did get to the gym yesterday after taking the past couple of days off. I relied on the iPod instead of the television for distraction from the workout – for some reason I was totally inspired by Dolly Parton’s version of “Peace Train.” I had to rememeber not to sing out loud.

For lunch today I had a small helping of pasta rigatoni. As I’m catching up on my daily blog reading and absent-mindedly eating my lunch, I suddenly realized that I was scraping the plastic bowl with my fork and toying with the idea of setting the fork down and licking the bowl.

Oh my goodness lunch was tasty today.

Earl and I are meeting my sister for supper tonight. I hope I remember not to lick the plates.