Everyone’s A Critic.

Found on Twitter. Tinka-tinka-tee.

I won’t go to into depth about “Wandavision”. I can tell you were watching it every week. I’ve enjoyed a good share of the kitsch. I know it’s set solidly in the Marvel Universe and I am familiar with most of the characters.

The show feels like it’s moving at a glacial pace, is mixing universes together, and is a little uneven to follow. Admittedly, I enjoyed the practical magic effects in the first few episodes. It was fun to find the nods to classic TV series. But as far as tying it all together, I have little in the way of a clue of what’s going on.

What I have noticed in the past couple of episodes is that neighbor Agnes lives in Darrin and Samantha’s house from “Bewitched”. Good ol’ 1164 Morning Glory Circle is still standing, has been updated a bit for contemporary times, and is still quite familiar to the class TV aficionado.

Now that is magic.

When it was announced that “WW84” or “Wonder Woman 1984” or “the second Wonder Woman” movie was going to be released in both theatres and on HBO Max on Christmas Day I was genuinely excited. Wonder Woman is my favorite superhero and while I haven’t kept up with her adventures in comic books at all in the 21st century, I’ve always been a fan of both the Lynda Carter and Cathy Lee Crosby adventures and I enjoyed the first Wonder Woman movie. I like Gal Gadot in the part. The costume is a bit more “Xena” than I’m used to, but I can deal.

I’m going to try very hard to not reveal any spoilers here, but consider yourself warned that I may refer to a couple of scenarios here and there that could be spoilerish. Plus, I’m going to give you my feelings on the film, and if you don’t want your upcoming viewing adventure impacted by my opinion, you’ve been warned.

One of the things that drives me crazy about the world today is the altering of history because folks don’t know what really happened. For example, when a person watches “Bewitched” through a streaming service or Me TV, they’re seeing the version someone edited down for 21st century commercial loads.

The theme music on the current viewings (or the official “archives”) of seasons three through five is completely wrong. Back in the mid 1990s Columbia Pictures took the theme music from the first season of “Bewitched” and matched it up with the animated opening from seasons three through five and called it history. It’s not. The first three color seasons of “Bewitched” (seasons 3 through 5) had a completely different arrangement of the familiar theme song. There were musical flourishes, vibrating vibraphones, and bings and bongs reminiscent of the vibe of the show. These were scrapped with the editing for DVD and streaming and someone just plopped season one’s intro music in place. It was easier. It didn’t require much effort.

So millennial.

On DJ and other music boards, I often read of millennials talking about the use of auto tune in the 1980s on the likes of music by Pet Shop Boys and The Human League. While I’m sure The Human League could have benefitted greatly with the use of auto-tune, the horrible, robotic, gentrification mechanism for music wasn’t invented until the late 1990s and didn’t come into widespread use until Cher’s “Believe”, which thrust this atrocity into the mainstream until no musical artist would be caught dead without the digital fakery this hideous invention affords us. I still consider auto tune to be one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind. Any “artist” that uses it is no “artist”, they’re a corporate sellout.

I’m digressing.

I guess my point is, I’m tired of people rewriting history based on loosely associated facts that have absolutely no merit being belched out on the Internet with some air of authority. I told my husband earlier today that one of the worst things about 2020 is that computers have become way too easy to use. You no longer need smarts to operate a computer. Send your social security number to an unknown author of an email and hope you get your millions. Idiots.

With all of this ranting going on, I will end this with two thoughts:

1. “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” were NEVER in the same league when it came to quality or ratings. “Bewitched” put ABC on the map and was in the Top 10 for years. “I Dream of Jeannie” never cracked the Top 30. It ranked somewhere around “The Mothers-In-Law” for NBC. Stop comparing the two series; they were never in the same league.
2. The episodes of “Bewitched” you see today are nowhere near complete. They’ve had at least four minutes per episode yanked to make room for 21st century commercial needs. The versions you get on the DVD are the closest thing you’re going to get to complete, but they’re still not completely accurate and quite frankly, I’m sad the original versions are lost to history.

I like it when people laugh. There’s so much angst in the world, especially over the past several years, and I truly believe “laughter is the best medicine”.

Some folks really take themselves seriously, especially on social media. Like many folks, I’ve done too much complaining on the social media outlets about mundane and trivial things, but I’ve been trying to curb this tendency over the past couple of months.

One thing I like to do is “hit and run” a topic with a witty chestnut as a comment or response to someone. I was recently told by a friend that I should have been a writer for “The Golden Girls” or something, because these little chestnuts are reminiscent of something Bea Arthur’s Dorothy or Estelle Geddy’s Sophia would say on the show. My tendency to hit a “block” when I’m speaking has helped me expand my vocabulary over the years; if I find I’m “blocked” in a stream of speech by a certain word, I can usually circumvent my pause by substituting a different word or using a more colorful adjective. This coping mechanism is very useful when also used on purpose.

An old high school friend on Facebook shared a post about the number of people complaining to the host or hostess of a restaurant because they had a party larger than four people and apparently due to COVID restriction, in New York State you can still eat in a restaurant but only in a party with a maximum of four people. The old friend went on to describe the hysterics of folks; apparently people are standing in the lobby of a Denny’s engaging in wild theatrics about being the parents of three kids and the collapsing of their very existence because they can’t sit together in a booth. Anyone with any sense would know there’s all sorts of guidelines and the like regarding public outings. I’m surprised they still have the opportunity to eat in a restaurant in New York State; here in Illinois there’s no indoor dining right now.

Anxious to bring levity to the post, I was about to write a witty one liner and move onto the next topic of conversation. Now, in my constant quest for perfection, the wording has to be just right. I can’t just write, “tell them to stay home and cook!”. Too hostile. “Tell them to hit a drive-thru” was a little funnier, but then I thought about amping it up to “Tell them get in the car and yell in the clown’s mouth”. This is even funnier but you have to be of a certain age and live in a certain part of the country to know what that even means. I then settled on going the “cook at home” route and typed in, “tell them to go home and boil up some Rice-A-Roni”.

Now, the specificity of this suggestion adds humor to the line, plus the words “Rice-A-Roni” carry a certain amount of humor in their sound. I was about to hit “submit” and move on when I realized this line in 2020 could be construed as very inappropriate.

The old high school friend is Asian. His mother is Korean. Mentioning for him to tell someone to go home and boil up some “Rice-A-Roni” could have been insulting to him and anyone involved.

I quickly hit delete and removed the post before hitting submit. I decided to go with “tell them to go fry up some ‘Hamburger Helper’”. It doesn’t quite have the same punch in my ears but hopefully it made someone smile.

I know it made me giggle a little bit. As my husband can attest, I often amuse myself.

Folks in the neighborhood have begun decorating for Christmas and surrounding holidays. Initially this struck me as odd, because honestly my head is still stuck in March when the whole pandemic kicked into high gear. I find it very weird when I hear Christmas Sale ads on television; it just doesn’t feel anywhere near the season to me.

Normally I’m all about enjoying Thanksgiving first and then decorating for the holidays. However, with the pandemic and all, and people desperately seeking joy wherever they can safely find it, I’m all about decorating any way you want to decorate. If you want to put up Memorial Day flags in November, go for it.

I’ve seen a lot of Christmas trees going up in front room windows all over the place. These far outnumber the number of outdoor decorations thus far. I’m certain this will change after this weekend.

Find the season to be merry. No judgement from me in this fun year of 2020.

I’m told by Democrat friends that “everything will be fine”, even though Amy Coney Barrett is now on the Supreme Court and probably has the deciding vote as to whether our marriage will continue to be legally recognized or not. Barrett was a member of the school board of a private school that not only rejected gay teachers, but also rejected any potential students from gay parents, so I’m pretty sure we know in which direction she would base her decision should and when this type of case comes up for a ruling.

This is the thing I can’t get beyond. Republican family members profess how supportive they are of our legal marriage and then they support the folks in Washington, D.C. that want to make sure that, among other things, the gays don’t get married. I have a hard time reconciling this fact and as I have said before, I won’t be going to some family gatherings any time soon.

But, the Democrats say everything will be “fine”. Our rights will continue to get stripped away. Healthcare? No more pre-existing conditions. I’ll be surprised if the ACA makes it into November. Roe v Wade? I’m sorry ladies, Amy Coney Barrett can’t trust herself to make decisions about her own body and neither should you. She wants old white men to make those decision for her and therefore, you will abide by their rulings as well. Women will no longer have the right to choose what to do with their own body.

But don’t worry, everything will be “fine”.

I’m writing this blog entry at 3 in the morning because I can’t sleep. I’m still so angry I can’t get my brain to settle down. I have to be up for work in a few hours. Thank god that will distract me enough from enjoying all of this frivolity everyone says is “fine”.

If someone asks me how I feel about something and I say it’s “fine”, one should never take that as a sign of happiness or contentment. To me, “fine” is a word of resignation and surrender.

It’s one of the worst four letter words in the English language.

Earl and I finally finished season one of “The Politician”. We started it way back in October and kind of lost interest, but with this whole pandemic thing going on, and the two of us really trying not to mingle with the masses to avoid contracting COVID-19, we’re cleaning out the streaming lists on our streaming services.

By the way, can I just say right here and now we have too many streaming services to choose from. We have the standard fare: Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, and Disney+, but now there’s CBS All Access, Peacock! (I don’t know if it’s suppose to have an exclamation point or not but it seems appropriate), a Comcast exclusive channel that we can’t get, something called Bufu, and probably a whole bunch of others I know nothing about. Oh! And Amazon Prime. Without Amazon Prime we wouldn’t be able to watch “The Mothers-In-Law”. Who would be left to chew the scenery? Anyway, too many streaming services; it turns out cable will probably be cheaper.

So we finished season one of “The Politician”. It was quirky. There were a couple of twists and turns that I did not anticipate but overall it wasn’t a waste of time. Speaking of Kaye Ballard chewing scenery, I see Bette Midler is coming along for season two of “The Politician”. Apparently the leader character is now going to run for something bigger than student body president.

Did I give something away? I hope not. After all, it is called “The Politician”.

The thing about programs that Ryan Murphy creates or co-creates or whatever is that he starts to get weird with them. And this feels like it’s getting weird. Will we enjoy Season Two? Only time will tell and for some reason there’s only seven episodes instead of eight.

But Ryan Murphy’s story direction always seems to go in wild directions and there will undoubtedly be a variety of sexual orientations and couplings because that’s what Ryan Murphy does. There’s nothing wrong with it; it makes me wonder if there are more people out there enjoying something other than the standard flavors of coupling and sexuality than what we see portrayed in real life.

With Earl and I watching more television these days, we’ll probably finish up season two of “The Politician” within a week. I don’t think it’ll be a waste of time.

Back in 1986, when I was a college freshman at SUNY Fredonia, studying Music Education, a bunch of us in the music school on a Friday night and just started playing around with our instruments and voices. I will never forget the utter joy I felt as we figured out “Life In A Northern Town” by Dream Academy. Even though I had been told my voice would never be worthy of public performance (and was subsequently an ‘instrument’ student after a second audition), I still can not express the emotion I felt harmonizing with my classmates as I sang backups on this track, in a practice room in the Music School building.