Category: television

Truth, or a Variation on the Same

This is one of those breakfast blogs Dan VanRiper said I write.

The New York Times recently ran a story about how Rosa Parks WASN’T =the first black person to protest treatment on the bus. How did these others get ignored by history? Because history is arbitrary and not generally 100% accurate. And as a friend of mine put it, “Food for thought about figureheads…Teenagers don’t get respect!”

Jackie Robinson was not the first black to play major league baseball, only the first one in several decades, which does not at all diminish his breakthrough. Meanwhile, the black players who reintegrated the NFL, friends of Robinson, BTW, are all but forgotten, or were until this recent Sports Illustrated story. Even if you’re not a sports fan, read it, if you haven’t. One writer has suggested these players ought to be in the football hall of fame.

My wife, who teaches English as a Second Language, tells me that sometimes only the primary teacher in a classroom is considered the “real” teacher by some students, whereas the specialists (ESL, speech) are though of more like teachers’ aides. This is particularly true when the primary teacher is a male and the specialist is a female, and all of the specialty teachers in her schools are women. Stereotypical gender roles, even in our “enlightened” 21st century, come creeping back.

I’ve mentioned that when I was my daughter’s age and in the hospital for an uncontrollable bloody nose, I was slackjawed to discover a male nurse and a female doctor; even at five and a half, I could be surprised that the world wasn’t as I expected it to be.

I was listening to the podcast KunstlerCast #90: The Demise of Happy Motoring this week. The host, Duncan Crary, didn’t know that “Happy Motoring” was a catchphrase of Esso gasoline (later Exxon). Duncan told Jim Kunsler said he’d Google the phrase, and I ended up doing the same. Apparently, Esso tried to be culturally diverse in its ads. Here are the Esso logo morphing into folks from the British Isles, and, showing some real stereotypes, these American folks.

Here’s 18-and a half minutes of sharp political commentary. Eighteen-and-a-half minutes? Shades of Rose Mary Woods!

There seems to be no clear consensus on the meaning of Boxing Day.
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Actors Stalking My TV Set

Ever get that feeling that some actors show up every season on some show or other that you’re watching? Sort of like that movie season where Jude Law was in every third movie. Or that period of time when Gene Hackman really WAS in every third movie. Or how Tom Bergeron hosts every third reality show.

Ken Levine cited Sonya Walger and Kim Raver; I don’t happen to be in Ms. Walger’s sphere of influence, but yeah, I think of Ms. Raver as that person on 24, yet here she is doing a stint on Grey’s Anatomy. I could have sworn that there are other working actors in Hollywood, most of them not working at all in their chosen profession; I speak of “Hollywood” generically, not geographically.

It’s not quite as pervasive, but I think that way about Jessalyn Gilsig. She plays Terri Schuester, the glee club teacher’s wife, on Glee, but wasn’t she doing Heroes and Nip/Tuck at the same time? I know her best as a teacher in the early seasons of Boston Public, and a cop in the later seasons of NYPD Blue.

Then there’s Julie Bowen, who is now on Modern Family, and I first noticed on Ed, but seemed to show up on Boston Legal, Weeds and Lost interchangeably. And I just saw her on JEOPARDY! to boot.

I was watching Glee recently, and noticed that on that particular episode, there were two NYPD Blue alums, though they did not share a scene. Charlotte Ross, who was bad seed Eve on Days of Our Lives when I was actually watching DOOL, is now old enough to play the mom of the pregnant cheerleader on Glee. This somehow makes me feel old.

Any actors showing up a lot on the shows you watch?
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Abortion on Television

I was watching – don’t ask me why, it’s unexplainable – the ABC drama Private Practice the other day. Here’s a piece of the recap

{My comments in brackets.]
Violet [the therapist] has trouble bonding with her baby boy when feelings from her [brutal, gratuitously shown] attack [removing her baby from her womb] resurface at a rape counseling session [for a couple]. She [Violet] cannot even look at him [her baby]. She is reminder of her attack every time she looks at him. The rape victim wants to keep her child [from her rape] but her husband does not. Violet tells her how she feels about her baby every time she looks at him. The patient decides to abort the baby.

Ah…after she realizes she’s inflicted her own values onto her patient, Violet calls the couple in again, real discussion takes place, as the husband asks his wife what she really wants to do. While it’s not spelled out, it seems pretty clear that the abortion will not happen.

After I watched this, I was reminded of a blogpost a few months ago by Greg Burgas about the now-canceled ABC soapy drama Dirty Sexy Money, where the heiress, Karen Darling, finally hooks up with her childhood sweetheart, but finds herself pregnant by her former finance. She goes to the abortion clinic with her mother, but ends deciding to keep the baby.

It seems that others besides Greg have been asking this question for a while: does anyone actually HAVE an abortion on television anymore? Between this 2004 New York Times piece and this 2005 Village Voice piece, it seems nobody actually gets an abortion on American TV, even if initially think they will. The only exceptions I could find since Maude in the early 1970s were Everwood and Six feet Under, though there may have been some on the daytime or nighttime soap operas.

More likely is what happened on Sex in the City where Carrie plans to accompany Miranda to her abortion, but Miranda ultimately bails. Now some TV characters may have had abortions in the past (Carrie on SITC, Violet on Private Practice), but it was a long time ago. No wonder that New York Times article is titled “Television’s Most Persistent Taboo.”

Please note I’m making an observation about a medium’s treatment of a legal procedure. It’s not that I thought any of the specific characters SHOULD have had abortions – I’m not the TV writer – only that the collective lack of them doesn’t ring true.
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The Concert Suit

As much as as I hate buying clothes generally, I REALLY hate buying suits. All that measuring, especially when the body trends poorly compared with the previous time I bought a suit, which it did. The harsh lights and the three-sided, full-length mirrors don’t help.

The other bad thing about buying a suit is that I end up spending too much. I’ve gotten myself to the place, and I’m buying one (expensive) suit; why not two, especially when the second is free, except for the alterations? And while I’m at it, how about some new shirts, which are buy one, get one at 50% off? Oh, and new ties to go along with them? And I DO need a better coat for winter. At the end of the excursion, I experience massive sticker shock and don’t buy any suits, or much of anything else clothing-wise for the next two or three years.

The initiation of this shopping spree is this event:

We received information about the dress code for the performance a week ago Sunday. And I own ZERO black suits, and only one white shirt that’s probably too tight. So this past Saturday evening, the wife, the daughter and I went shopping.

And I’ve felt lousy ever since.

Initially, I thought it was just exhaustion that sent me to bed at 8:30 Saturday night, but now I’m thinking it’s some sort of sinusitis and/or allergies flaring up. But what caused the truly horrific insomnia I got Sunday night, so much so that my eyes burned on Monday morning? Probably consuming the cheese and crackers I ate after the Sunday night rehearsal.

But more basically, I think it was a week without riding the bicycle or playing racquetball. When I got to do both on Monday, I got surges of energy that I’d been lacking lately, though I was more stuffed up yesterday.

So no, I can’t blame any of it on shopping for suits, unfortunately.
***
Monday night, I did go to the marriage equality rally. The State Senate was supposed to take up the legislation the next day. So the chant was, “What do we want?” “Marriage equality!” “When do we want it?” “Tomorrow!” Tomorrow? I mean, yes, literally, the next day when the vote was due, but “tomorrow” has such lousy scansion; having been to lots of rallies, I’m a big fan of “NOW!”

In any case, the state legislature didn’t vote on much of anything Tuesday, and they won’t be meeting again until next week. I DO think that the position of at least Republican state senator I saw on TV Tuesday night – that the government can’t deal with ANYTHING else until it deals with the budget deficit – is totally bogus. Truth is, balancing the budget will be a long, arduous process that may take weeks; gay marriage can be achieved with one vote in one house, as the State Assembly has already passed a bill. Twice.

Speaking of which: Via Mark Evanier – Shelly Goldstein on stupid, callous, homophobic hateful legislation. Julie Andrews couldn’t do any better.
***
I found out in Hispanic Business, of all places, that Glenn Beck Lost His Lawsuit Over A Controversial Domain Name
Fox TV host Glenn Beck has lost a suit he filed against the creator of a satirical Web site spreading a rumor that even the site itself admitted was false: Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Although he lost the case, Beck still received the domain name he sought, but not because the arbitrator awarded it to him. Rather, the man who established the site gave it to Beck himself — but not without getting in a good parting shot. And the REAL kicker is that the guy has kept the CONTENT of the site up at http://gb1990.com/. That’s GB, as in Glenn Beck, 1990 (dot) com.

It’s a nasty little site, but then again, Glenn Beck is a nasty little man. It is also one of those First Amendment issues people love to hate. My reactions is a mix of mild discomfort with a whole lot of schadenfreude.
***
Chances Are Profanity Was Intentionally Encoded in Text of Schwarzenegger’s Veto. As though you had any doubt.

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ROG

Sunny Day, Chasing the Clouds Away


If you’ve gone to Google the past week or so, you could not help but to have noticed the visual tributes to Sesame Street. The program hits its 40th anniversary tomorrow, November 10. For someone past the targeted demographic – I was almost 17 when it first aired – there was a period in which I watched it a great deal, especially in college.

The recollection is now fuzzy, but the Muppets of Jim Henson would show up on a number of variety shows in the 1960s. Possibly the first character to make the transition from the Henson act to Sesame Street was Kermit the Frog. Kermit was green, as I am (of sorts) and early on sang a tune about the difficulty of that fact, something about blending in with so many other ordinary things, and people passing you “over ’cause you’re not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water or stars in the sky.” Boy, could I relate. Kermit was also often a bit exasperated, as I was.

Here’s part of the first episode, before a slew of guest stars discovered that it was cool to appear on Sesame Street.

But it wasn’t just the Muppets that appealed to me. Bob McGrath, who plays Bob, looked very familiar; perhaps I recognized him from Sing Along with Mitch (Miller)? I also liked Susan, played forever by Loretta Long. Don’t know how long I was watching, but it was enough time that I remember both the old Gordon (Matt Robinson) and the “new” (1973) Gordon, Roscoe Orman, switched in a very Darrin Stephens way. I even went out and bought a soundtrack album in those first years, which unfortunately got lost or stolen. So when the 10th anniversary album came out in 1979, although I wasn’t actively watching the show anymore, I purchased it. More than that, I played it quite often for a good decade.

Jaquandor has a bunch of Sesame Street YouTube links, including an early version of “Bein’ Green” and the one the one about explaining death that manages to make me tear up every damn time.
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