PBR me, "Glee"

I stayed an hour late at work today to try and catch up on some work that will never get caught up. It was raining and pretty crummy outside so all I wanted to do was get home and watch "Glee". When I got off the train I picked up a sub and headed home. At my back door I tried to find my keys. They were nowhere to be found. It was just perfect.

My friend, Kathryn, has a spare set but to get to her place would take a good hour and a half round trip. The situation seemed hopeless.

Luckily, I heard my neighbors two stories up talking on the fire escape. I had never formally met them (and I wasn't even sure if we had informally met) all they were were voices without faces. A little self-consciously I made my way upstairs. One girl (not a neighbor) was sitting outside and when I explained the situation she yelled "Nicole!" and my actual neighbor appeared. It turned out that Nicole and her husband, Timothy (I think) had the number of the apartment management company so I could call.

They were really very nice to me. They offered me a PBR tallboy and we sat around waiting for the Super to show up. A little before 8, another neighbor made his way upstairs insisting that we watch Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" video (which we did) then we all bonded over our mutual love of men in fishnets and high heels and "Glee".

To my delight, they invited me in to watch the season finale. We shouted at the TV and at 8:30 the Super unlocked my door. I watched the last half hour alone, almost wishing I were still imposing on my entertaining upstairs neighbors.

Joy

My mother sent me this lovely picture of the Mississippi River from their back yard. While it is very pretty, all it did was remind me of "The Joy of Painting" with Bob Ross.

When we lived in Wesleyville, we didn't have cable. On weekend mornings when I didn't have an activity to do, I would sometimes sit on the couch and tune into PBS for a little Bob Ross fix. I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad never understood this, but I know I'm not alone. The painter's voice was so soothing and his paintings so tranquil, it was like a dream to watch. He'd make "happy clouds" and "give a lonely tree a friend" using colors that didn't make any sense until he was done.

I ran into Bob Ross fans when I lived in Greece. My friends and I had one particular bar we really liked, Yasoo, and when we would stay late and be the only ones left, the owners would turn on "The Joy of Painting". The first time it happened, I couldn't believe it! I hadn't seen the show in years. They were just as surprised that I knew who he was. We sat in awe watching him paint a wooded lake, shouted our protests when he painted a large black line right through the middle of it all, then nodded in approval when that line turned into an evergreen tree to complete the work.

This is how I picture that photo with Bob Ross

But wait! what's he doing? Noooooo!

I guess we will just have to trust that it comes out all right in the end!

HOCKEY HOCKEY HOCKEY!

First, a question: Why on earth does professional hockey, clearly a winter sport, not complete its season until JUNE? If the Stanley Cup series goes until the last game, it won't be over until June 11! From the NHL.com website, it looks like the season begins in September. With the possible exception of NASCAR (depending on whether or not that can really be considered a sport) hockey has the longest season of any American professional sport. This year, the Chicago Blackhawks will be playing the Philadelphia Flyers for the championship. Chicago is already 1 up in the series.

It is a strange thing to leave your apartment in the middle of the day and have Cubs fans stumbling around your neighborhood and Blackhawks fans screaming in your ears. I say: One or the other, please! There should be a rule against this type of doubling up of sports.

I feel I must explain this tirade: My cable isn't working properly (when I hit "Guide" the screen goes blank, when it should really be showing me the programs across channels) so when I turned it on this morning to HBO and a documentary about the Philadelphia Flyers came on, I didn't bother changing the channel. The film nearly had me crying when it went on about downtrodden Philly, those losers of the 70's and how a hard-scrabble bunch of fighters brought them pride. The team wins the Stanley Cup twice in '74 and '75 then goes on in '76 to defeat the Russian team, single-handedly saving the U.S.A. from the terror of Communism.



This made me stop and think. What do Philadelphia, punching, underdogs, and beaten Commies have in common? ROCKY! and Rocky rhymes with Hockey! If you leave out the original Rocky, wherein the southpaw is just edged out by Apollo Creed (and completely disregard Rocky V, which should go without saying), Rocky II, III, and IV very closely parallel the story of the Broad Street Brawlers. Coincidence? I think not.

Sylvester Stallone should really explain himself.

These guys are for real

Apparently 123Party! Is a renegade dance group assaulting the streets of New York City. One of them tried out for "So You Think You Can Dance" and he was absolutely delightful. Needless to say, he didn't make it to the Holy Land of Dance (which is apparently Las Vegas if the show is to be believed). But, my God, if this isn't what dance is really all about, I don't know what is!

This post is not about "LOST"

It was an exciting night of television for "Lost" fans like me. I had trouble sleeping last night for thinking about the finale and how I felt about it.

That's not what this is about. This is about the Target ads that aired during the finale.



They were absolutely brilliant. Target really tapped into the over 13 million viewers and rabid fans of the series. The ads did what so many Super Bowl ads seem to be failing at recently. They were memorable, timely, and created plenty of buzz.

It's Greek T.V.!

When I lived in Greece, English Language television was sometimes hard to come by. That's completely understandable since I was in a foreign country. What was not understandable was the available Greek programming. Most nights, I could only find shows involving nothing more than a bunch of middle-aged to elderly people sitting around a table listening to music and occasionally dancing or smashing a plate! Who was watching this? All you had to do was leave your apartment and walk to the nearest restaurant or bar and you could be there! Since I speak virtually no Greek and am almost completely ignorant about who those people at the table were, this whole thing was a mystery to me.



I later understood that many of them were singers or TV personalities, but that still doesn't explain it. Try to imagine a 4 hour show on network television that consisted only of a table of b-list stars listening to folk music, eating and throwing around place settings. Actually, that COULD provide some entertainment just not 4 hours a night.

Let's see, who should we put at the table and who should we have singing? Here's my lineup:

Scott Baio & wife, Donnie & Marie, Dave Coulier, Kirk Cameron, and Sherri Shepherd would probably be a good time.

Now I'm wavering again. I don't think I would want any of those people (except maybe Dave, he did crack me up as a child) on my television screen any more than they have to be. I guess I'm back to square one: this type of program is inexplicable!

Outraged about the Outrage

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Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
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I really enjoy Lewis Black.

How is it possible for Glen Beck to make these leaps? There must be some serious breaks in the synapses in his "brain"

I do think that the Nazi name-calling is overused to the point where it has virtually lost any impact. I think there should be a moratorium on calling anyone a Nazi or Hitler unless they ARE a Nazi or Hitler. I'm sure with a little thought, Glen could make some more accurate comparisons.

Examples:

Instead of Hitler's Enemy: The Jews; Al Gore's Enemy: Global Warming let's try Glen Beck's Enemy: Rational Thought, or Glen Beck's Enemy: Measured Response.