Category Archives: entertainment

Passing

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There are some people you just think will be around forever. Betty White was one of them. I cannot claim to have watched her first television program, the self-produced “Life with Elizabeth.” I was only one year old when it premiered in 1952. And coming in the days before television programming could be recorded, or prerecorded, there is no record for me to review, or add to my insanely enormous collection of television programming.

But as to the rest of it, the game shows including Password, Match Game, Tattletales, To Tell the Truth, The Hollywood Squares, and the $25,000 Pyramid. Or the soaps and dramas, The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, and the comedies/variety programs including The Carol Burnett Show. Her biggest roles include Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015). She gained renewed popularity after her appearance in the 2009 romantic comedy film The Proposal (2009) and was subsequently the subject of a successful Facebook-based campaign to host Saturday Night Live in 2010, garnering her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

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Remakes. Why?

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Have you ever seen a remake that was better than the original? Or at least as good as the original? Neither have I. So why do they continue to go down this road? Has Hollywood run out of new ideas?

The entertainment business is a land of superlatives. So, let’s get this out of the way. Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest film directors of all time. Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest composers/lyricists of all time. West Side Story, in its various incarnations, the book of the 1957 Broadway musical the work of Arthur Laurents, is a modern implementation of the outline drawn by William Shakespeare in his drama Romeo and Juliet and as such, one of the greatest romance stories of all time. Leonard Bernstein wrote the music. Jerome Robbins was the choreographer along with Peter Cennaro. More of the greatest.

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Tough Turkey

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There is probably no more unfortunate creature on earth than Meleagris gallopavo, the wild and domestic turkey of North America. Forty-six million, according to the National Turkey Federation, were eaten on Thanksgiving Day and I did my share. Despite its name, the web address of the NTF is “eatturkey.org” so I do not believe the foundation is on the side of the bird.

In today’s climate some of us delude ourselves about facts and history while others find it necessary to question everything and be suspicious to a fault. I tend to split the difference.

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If He Builds It, We Will Come

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August 13, 2021 Update

I don’t mean to brag but, well, yes I do. My hometown Chicago White Sox beat the New York Yankees 9-8 in the Field of Dreams game with a dramatic bottom of the ninth inning walk off home run by Tim Anderson. The lead had changed hands several times. There is no hiding the fact that baseball faces some big challenges in the years a ahead. Perhaps this event will help. It was a great game.

August 12, 2021

Tonight the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees will play the first major league baseball game ever in the state of Iowa. There will be eight thousand people in the stands. They will have paid from $1,500 to $5,000 for the privilege. The town of Dyersville, Iowa, the game’s location, has a total population of about four thousand. The game will be telecast on Fox at 7:15 Eastern Time.

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No Bill. Just No.

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This tweet was posted by Bill Cosby shortly after he left prison and returned to his home. IMHO, never has a bigger piece of BS been posted on the Internet. For those in the audience who are even older than I am, IMHO means, In My Humble Opinion. These acronyms abound in the world of social media but it is becoming more and more important that I remind readers that this blog represents my opinion. This is because now that Chief Justice John Roberts has achieve his lifelong goal of nullifying the Voting Rights Act and eviscerating the Fifteenth Amendment along with it, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are taking aim at the First and the Sullivan exemption for critics of public figures may not be long for this world. That’s a subject for another day.

Today we have Bill Cosby. I have managed to avoid writing about Cosby for years. But this tweet, posted just hours after the comedian who was put on trial for sexual assault, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to spend 3-10 years in jail was released from prison, was the last straw.

No, William Henry Cosby, Jr., your release has nothing to do with innocence. It does not make you innocent. And your victory dance is both unseemly and unsightly for a man who remains, in my opinion, both a disgrace and a profound disappointment.

A disappointment, because I still remember my first serious date. The year was 1968. I had my new driver’s license. I had convinced my mother to let me borrow her car. I had convinced a very nice high school classmate to join me on this expedition. And she had convinced her father to trust me with his daughter on a Saturday night trip to downtown Chicago for a grownup dinner and then a show.

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Bernie’s Memes

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There appears to be hope for the Internet. Perhaps that means there is hope for us all.

Coming off the challenging year 2020, and considering the crisis of January 6, 2021, it is often hard to find hope anywhere. But take a look at this. The picture above is a picture of Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who runs as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats, ran for president as a Democrat and is one of the leaders of that party’s progressive wing.

Sanders is pictured at the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. He is alone in his folding chair, socially distanced due to the Covid pandemic, dressed in a heavy coat and oversized mittens due to the cold of the January day in Washington D.C.

Funny as the picture is by itself, what is amazing is what has been derived from it. For the few readers who might not know, a “meme,” pronounced “MEEM,” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”

Many memes rocket around the world on the Internet in the form of a composite photograph, taking the image of a person or thing and dropping it into another photograph where it is clearly out of place.

And so we arrive at the Bernie meme. Proof that there is hope that our sense of humor has survived the trying times. Even Senator Sanders has noted his approval and plans to make use of the phenomenon to raise funds for charitable causes.

Update– CNBC is reporting that “Sen. Bernie Sanders said sales of merchandise featuring a viral image of the Vermont independent wearing mittens at the inauguration of President Biden raised a whopping $1.8 million for charities in just five days.”

And so, without further ado, a gallery of Bernie Memes, with thanks to the unknown creators.

Have a nice day.

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alex trebek

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It is interesting how some things get to you. In the midst of all the election news, not be mention a bunch of other items going on in my life, I am deeply saddened to hear the news that Alex Trebek, who has been the host of the syndicated television game show “Jeopardy” since 1984, has died at the age of 80. He had been fighting advanced pancreatic cancer, which he revealed to his audience in March of 2019.

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