Month: August 2006

Similarly, Scott at Scooter Chronicles noted how he ONLY spent a couple hundred bucks on his car. Since I suppose there will always be car repairs, getting off cheaply feels like good news. But let’s take a more recent example in his blog: the bad news of his son Nigel’s inability to sleep through the night. When he (actually, they – Nigel, Scott and Marcia) finally go back to sleeping through the night, it will surely seem like good news.

Someone has some sort of growth, but it turns out to be benign. Someone’s in a car accident, but he or she suffers only minor cuts and bruises. Good news, yes?

I went to the Good News Network this week, and what do I find?
On this day in History, August 8:
John McCarthy, the British journalist held hostage in Lebanon for more than five years by Islamic Jihad was freed after more than five years in captivity (1991)
A cease-fire between Iran and Iraq was announced by The United Nations (1988) Good news following five years as a hostage and eight years of war, respectively.

A couple nights later, on an extremely muggy Monday night/Tuesday morning, I was lying down in the guest bedroom, directly under the ceiling fan, but was not sleeping. Carol came in and thought there might be a bat in our bedroom. I got Carol my spare racquetball racquet from the office. Suddenly, the flying mammal was in the hallway, circling Carol, with her using the racquet to keep it at bay, AND to close the other bedroom doors. I found a shoebox in the office, which I used to change the bat’s pattern. It flew towards the now-closed bedroom, flew back towards Carol, who (there’s no better word) batted it down, and put the racquet on top of the bat. I took the shoebox and kept the bat on the floor while removing the racquet, slipped the shoebox top under the bat, and we sealed up the box, poking some holes in it. In the morning, Carol took it to the Health Department lab, where it was verified it was not rabid.

Those of you keeping score at home will note that this is now the FIFTH live bat in our house in five summers. You’d think we’d actually do something like this. We actually did the standing outside looking for the bats to return thing one night last year after that incident, but never saw them. Maybe we’re just too impatient to wait around looking towards the roof for two or three hours for several nights at dusk or later trying to see a fast-flying creature.

We DID get our then-contractor to agree to bat-proof the attic last fall, but he never followed through (thanks a lot, guy). Carol talked to our new contractor about it. He thinks it’s all a bit silly. After all, the chances of contact are minimal, and the chances of rabies are even more remote, he correctly noted. Carol replied that the chances of an untreated contact from a rabid bat being fatal is about 100%.

The first commentary was Jane Fonda talking about her father Henry, and how their relationship in On Golden Pond (a film I’ve never seen, though I’ve watched stage productions of it) between their characters paralleled their real-life relationship, how he got his only Oscar for that role, how he was unable to receive it himself, so she had to receive it in his stead, how she was so pleased to present the award to him personally, and how he died five months later. I knew these facts before, yet I found it surprisingly poignant in the retelling.

The second commentary was Sidney Poitier talking about Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and how he became cognizant of channeling the relationship with his real father in playing against the man who played his cinematic dad. Talking about this made him a bit emotional.

I’ve long been a sucker for the scene in Field of Dreams when the Kevin Costner figure asks his dad to play catch. But I was surprised how moved I was of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when the black folks in the balcony direct Scout to stand up: “Your father’s passing.”

I think we all have felt the seismic cultural shift has occurred with online dating that has created a lot of over 40 singles who have never married and many who say, “That didn’t work. Oh well. Next!” We all have noticed the phenomenal shift in how men and women treat each other . What do you think? What is happening? Why is there such an increase in never-married single people? Because they think another someone is just a click away? Is it because we all think we can live to 100 so there is no hurry to settle down? Or is it because there’s just so much fun to be had with so many? What needs to change?

My most recent cellphone gripe was somebody being way too loud in the cafeteria, not about their personal stuff, which is annoying enough, but about someone else’s personnel issues. “Please make them stop,” he said to no one in particular.

“Yesterday at the annual SpeechTEK conference in New York, Paul English announced in his keynote address the creation of a new “GetHuman Standard” for customer service phone systems. Microsoft and Nuance are working with Paul, and other companies are expected to join. Learn more about the Gethuman Earcon.“

Here’s hoping the loser of the Democratic primary for the US Senate race in Connecticut supports the winner. The Democrats’ chance of being the national party in 2008 will not be helped by a third party run in 2006.

I got in the mail yesterday the Billboard Albums, which includes every album that made the Billboard charts through 2005. This makes my Top Pop Album book of a decade ago pretty redundant. I also have that Complete Directory to Prime Time Network Shows 1947-1992 by Brooks & Marsh gathering dust since I posted that list of shows on more than one network. So I will send these two older, but still useful, reference books to the first person who can e-mail me the correct answer to these two questions:
1. Angelina Jolie’s uncle wrote a #1 hit that came out in 1966. What was it? And who performed it?
2. Based on the number of seasons it was broadcast and its audience size, 60 Minutes is the #1-rated program of all time, according to Brooks and Marsh. What’s #2?