Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

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.