Everyone’s A Critic.

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.

Last night I posted a picture of myself standing on our balcony, basking in the light of an impending thunderstorm and the ambient lighting of the area, shirtless. I am reminded of a conversation with my Big Brother Season 4 handler, Katie, before I told her I was dropping out of the Top 32 running for the casting of that season. I had to check in with Katie every 12 hours and talk about the most intimate of details of my thought processes. Katie didn’t know what to think, perhaps she reverted to a script when this happened.

Katie: “Can you please send me a photo of you shirtless? A webcam photo will do.”

J.P., within an hour, sends a photo to the designated email address. This involved connecting to an Internet Service Provider via dialup.

Katie: “Well, do you mind always wearing a shirt while you’re on camera?”

It was ultimately my choice to drop out of Big Brother 4’s casting call because my husband said he wasn’t going to be waiting for me if I got kicked out of the house early because he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. But he was very supportive of me for getting to the top 32 of the casting call, despite the 75 page contract that had been faxed over in the middle of the night. So, while wearing a shirt at home, I left a message on handler Katie’s voicemail that I was dropping out of the running.

It’s a good thing I dropped out because I could have ended up with the guy who went crazy during the first week. He started throwing chairs and got kicked out because he was screaming about having anal warts.

Good times.

I am so confused. I thought the pandemic was planned so we’d all be with our families when NASA got the maths wrong and the asteroid slammed into the planet, reigniting fossil fuels into living dinosaurs, which would then cause Shell Oil to appear on all calculators held upside down before women went boobless.

Truman was absolutely mystified by my Resistance Band Workout this morning. For the first 20 minutes he simply sat in the doorway, head cocked, watching me strike various poses as I worked my way through a free video on YouTube.

When I decided to do some planks is when he became a comedian. As I struggled to maintain a plank he walked under me, rubbed his butt on my arms, and waved his tail in my face. On the bright side, he didn’t jump up on my back.

I’m not sure my plank could have handled an additional 15 pound cat coming along for the ride.

You don’t know how much it pained me to abuse the apostrophe in the title of this blog post. If you’re unaware of what I’m talking about, this blog post is for you.

First of all, in common parlance the title should read “the horror”. Because I was trying to make a point, I pluralized “horror” to “horror’s” which should have been “horrors”. The horror doesn’t own anything. In this instance the apostrophe is trying to show possession. The horror doesn’t possess anything.

Apostrophes are used to show what the word has (possessive use) or what the word is missing (a contraction). Apostrophes are _never_ used to denote plural. Ever.

I recently read something at work where a distant co-worker basically referred to “The Jone’s”. Luckily, I work remotely, hundreds of miles from my closest co-worker, but there’s a chance they could still hear my screams.

First of all, we never use an apostrophe for the plural. Secondly, the last name in question was not “Jone”, it was “Jones”. If a house belonged to the Jones, it would be “the Jones’ house”, or possibly, “the Jones’s house” (though that makes me cringe a bit). If we are talking about the folks in the family, we’d be talking about the Joneses. Because when we want to use the plural form of a word ending in “s”, we add an “es”. Not an apostrophe, and we certainly don’t change the spelling of a name to something it’s not just to wedge an apostrophe into inappropriate places.

While I’m on a rant, use the loops of your pants to keep your trousers up because you’re losing weight and subsequently your pants have a looser fit. That’s because you didn’t eat two desserts in the desert after you deserted the rest of the group. And honestly, I couldN’T care less how much weight you’ve gained or lost. If I could care less I probably would.

Please take notes.

I mention all of this because today I read a story about “The Apostrophe Protection Society” closing up shop, basically because the efforts of the society have become a lost cause. The founder of “The Apostrophe Protection Society”, John Richards, age 96, has decided to abandon the effort, citing society has become too stupid and lazy to use apostrophes properly.

I feel his pain.

We signed up for Apple TV+ this past weekend. We actually upgraded the Apple TV to get a year’s worth of Apple TV+ as part of the purchase and get more punch from our Apple TV service. The upgrade was worth it.

I’ve been interested in the Apple Original Series “For All Mankind” since it was announced earlier this year. We are into the first two of three episodes and I’m really enjoyed the series. I know some of the reviews have been a solid “meh” for the series, but I consider those reviews to be similar to the reviews of Epcot from people who were expecting more rides.

It’s not about the thrill, it’s about the thought.

“For All Mankind” is gorgeous and feels very accurate to the late 1960s, at least what I remember of the era. The production team is paying attention to even the small details and the only thing that feels slightly out of place is Joel Kinnaman’s haircut.

I’m enjoying the series more than my husband. I’d give it an A-, he’d give it a B.

I’m looking forward to the next episode.