Tag: Cheers

Pon de Replay

Monday and back to the office with me this morning.

I slept very well last night and woke up quite easily. The weather took a turn for the colder over the weekend (yay)–the high today is a bitter 54–which makes it harder to get out of bed in the morning, but at least the heat is working properly; it really has made a significant difference getting that new system two or three years ago. I got some work done yesterday–good work, at that–and also managed to finish reading Bobby Mathews’ Living the Gimmick, which was quite fun; a nasty little hard-boiled tale of murder and vengeance behind the scenes of professional wrestling. More on that later, but it was a fun, tightly written little story. Now I’m trying to decide what to read next–either Christopher Bollen’s The Lost Americans, or Margot Douahy’s Scorched Grace, or Ellen Byron’s Wined and Died in New Orleans. A virtual plethora of excellent options. The Festivals are of course this weekend and I have to get my weekend planned, including reaching out to my panelists (I’m moderating a panel on Sunday) and of course, there’s always editing I need to get done. I’ll be commuting, so we don’t have to board Scooter, which will be a bit of a pain, especially if it’s cold (note to self: check weather forecasts for the weekend). Scooter is being a needy kitty this morning, he’s up on my desk and purring, but every time I put him into my lap he climbs back up on the desk and then of course gets between me and the screen wanting to give me headbutts while he continues to be an out of control purring machine. (Why he doesn’t want to be cuddled up with Paul in our incredibly comfortable and warm bed remains a mystery for the ages.)

The revision isn’t going as quickly as I would like, frankly–but it’s going and it’s going well; I am starting to pick up momentum with the revision and would love to have it finished before the weekend, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, unless I really stay rested and motivated and don’t get worn out during the day at work, which happens–especially when you’re getting up at six every morning during the week. My big fear here is that I’ll be very tired when the weekend rolls around, which isn’t good. Maybe I’ll take Friday off, so I can sleep late and not have to worry about being tired? That’s the day I’ll have to take a Lyft to the hotel with my little bag so I am there. I’ll probably stay down there Friday night, come home Saturday night, and then head back down there for Sunday afternoon and then back home yet again.

We started watching the new season of Ted Lasso last night, which is marvelous (I’d already seen the first episode–impatience, of course– but was more than happy to rewatch it with Paul); it really might be one of my favorite comedy series of all time, if not the absolute favorite (Schitt’s Creek is still up there), and it’s just as charming as ever. I’m curious to see how the season goes, especially since it’s going to be the last season–but I hope the talk of spin-off series for some of the characters comes to fruition; although whether the strong characters can tentpole a show of their own remains to be seen. I am confident that both Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple could spin off into their own quite easily; the others I’m not as confident about, to be honest….although a Sam and Rebecca (how Cheers of them!) spin-off could be quite lovely.

And we still have the whacked out, over the top joy of Outer Banks still to watch, too. Huzzah! Now if we can only live through this coming weekend and survive…

Its a bit hard to believe the first quarter of the year is coming to a close, and DAMN IT, I have to get my taxes organized and done, don’t I? Put that at the top of the to-do list for post-Festival. Heavy heaving sigh. I really should keep track every month, update a spreadsheet with the expenses for the previous month, and then at the end of the year it would all be ready to go, wouldn’t it? But why on earth would I ever do anything that would make my life easier in any way? Self-defeating, as always; I shall probably go to my grave wondering why I sabotage or undermine my abilities to succeed and/or get ahead and/or act like an adult. Ah, well, today and tonight I am going to try to get myself better organized and make a game plan for moving on with the rest of the year.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Sorry to be such a crashing bore on a Monday morning, but that does seem about par for the course, does it not? See you tomorrow!

Only Girl in the World

I saw that John Jakes died yesterday–or they announced he had passed yesterday–which was kind of jolting; primarily because he’d come across my radar again lately. I don’t remember who or how, but I was looking at something or looking up something and a quote from him about reviews and critics and his place in American literature, or he was asked about the literary stars of the day or something (these memory lapses are so aggravating) but I loved what his response was: I don’t remember exactly the comparison, but he compared books to wine: his were an inexpensive wine you could pick up at a grocery store, satisfying but nothing special, while others were the really rare and fine vintages you went down into the cellar to retrieve and had to blow dust off the bottle. (It may have been meats; I can’t remember exactly but the wine analogy seemed more correct and apt, frankly.) I appreciated that, because I spent a lot of my teens and early twenties reading Jakes’ American history novels. They were fun to read but not great, and I wound up reading the entire eight volume Kent Family Chronicles as well as the North and South trilogy (and I think in some weird way the train of thought that led me to the Jakes quote was remembering Kirstie Alley and Patrick Swayze in the mini-series of North and South, because I was also thinking about the Civil War because I was watching Civil War documentaries on Youtube, which led me to abolitionists and a meme I saw reading I don’t argue with people John Brown would have shot and you see how that all goes; the weird and twisted slipperiness of my mind. I hadn’t thought about Jakes in years; and now he’s popped up twice within a couple of weeks. (He was ninety, so had a long and full and vastly successful life. Those books were all bestsellers and the first three of the Kent books were filmed for television; I think the original plan was to film them all but that ended after the third made for television movie.)

I think there were eight books in the Kent Family series; the original plan was to follow the family through American history, but the book series ended in the 1880’s, I think; it ended before the twentieth century–which was smart. How would you cover the world wars and Vietnam? Civil rights? These were very pro-Americana books, too; they were all part of the big Bicentennial Celebration of 1976–which was a very big deal at the time, if you weren’t born yet, and the years leading up to 7/4/76 were a lot of patriotic overkill, frankly. Every business and company had some sort of Bicentennial celebration tie-in, starting in about 1974, I think, so by the time the actual Bicentennial rolled around many of us were already sick and tired of hearing about it. We had just moved to Kansas that summer, and we still only could get one channel–CBS out of Kansas City. (Hard to believe there was a time when you could live somewhere and only get one channel, but it used to be very commonplace, and there were only three networks anyway.) The primary problem, for me, with the Kent series was how plausible is it that every member of this family is a friend or acquaintance of every famous person in our history?

I slept well again last night, which is marvelous. I did laundry and put the dishes away after work, and made a grocery run, picked up a prescription, and got the mail. I was a busy Gregalicious yesterday, and I worked some more on the book as well. I feel a lot better about the book–it’s not nearly as terrible as I had feared; I really do need to work on not hating my work or at least going overboard as far as their condition, frankly. I am looking forward to making some more good progress this weekend as well; now that I am feeling more myself again (I feel good this morning, too) I think I am going to be able to get all of this finished and revised and reworked and handled and improved. This is the part of writing a book that I enjoy; the drudgery is the first draft, and the polishing and improving is the most satisfying, because you see and can feel it taking shape.

I did break down and watch the first episode of the new season of Ted Lasso without Paul last night; it was marvelous, as expected, and just such a delightful show and characters. I decided it was okay to go ahead and watch because I figured I wouldn’t mind a second watch when the Festivals are over. It just might well be my favorite comedy series of all time; definitely up there with Schitt’s Creek and Cheers for sure. Today I also am heading in to see the doctor this afternoon about my toe, which still hurts to bend and twinges when I walk, but I am not limping. Maybe it’s a waste of the doctor’s time, but you never know, and once you’re past sixty you kind of have to take any of these sorts of things that happen seriously. (I have a tendency to ignore it and hope it goes away on its own.) It’s been nearly a month since it all started; I think it was exactly four weeks ago today that it started hurting and initially swelled, but between Carnival and Mom, I didn’t really have a chance to get in, and as soon as I was able to know for sure I could make an appointment and keep it, I did–and this was the first one available. Fingers crossed it isn’t anything more serious than arthritis or (sigh) gout.

It’s amazing what a difference to my overall mood getting back on the writing horse makes, seriously. Now that I am working on the manuscript again, I’m sleeping better and feel more settled and like myself again, which is lovely–I was beginning to wonder. I wasn’t quite as tired yesterday when I left the office, and I have to say, it’s been marvelous feeling rested and being able to work again. Much as I whine and complain about writing–usually, it’s not the writing itself I complain about, but rather deadline stress more than anything else–I do love it, I do love doing it, and it really makes me happy. I recently realized that while my primary identity is author, another identity (and one I’ve held much longer than author) is reader. I have always been, first and foremost, a reader. I love to read, and wish I had more time to do so; hence the not worrying about ever being bored if and when I do get to the point of retirement–there will always be books to read, stories to write, and something to clean around the house. I am only bored if and when I choose to be; and there’s also always some movie I haven’t seen I can stream, too. I’m a homebody, and the older I get the more true that becomes. I am putting off a Costco run until after the Festivals, even though we’re getting low on things and out of others; there’s no point in doing much restocking of the kitchen since Paul will be moving down to the hotel on Wednesday and not coming home until either Sunday or Monday. I need to figure out what I am doing over the weekend myself. I think I have something Saturday morning, a reading that afternoon, and then a panel on Sunday? I don’t know, I’d have to check I suppose, and at some point I should get that all put into my phone calendar.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

All The Way

And now it’s Thursday, and the work-at-home before the weekend part of the weekly cycle begins. It’s beautiful outside my widows this morning; all bright and sunny and clear blue sky as far as the eye can see. It might be cold out there–I’ve not checked–and I am liking the idea that the temperature inside is not an indication any more of what it might be outside. Huzzah for new HVAC system!

I was very tired when I got home from work last evening–I also had to run a few errands on my way home–and I watched the second episode of Superman and Lois (more on that later) before falling into another wormhole on Youtube. There’s a very interesting series of videos on a channel called “Dave Knows Wrestling” (I think) about the history of professional wrestling as well as critiques of current trends and so forth present currently in that world. I don’t know how accurate any of this is–I’ve spotted errors in numerous history videos, and it’s the Internet, so take everything with a grain of salt–and then I found a wonderful Youtube channel which looks at queer representation in the culture back in the day; Matt Baume is the guy who does them, and they are quite lovely, looking at the evolution of how queer people were represented on television back in the day. I watched his videos about gay characters appearing on shows like Cheers, Phyllis, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, The Golden Girls, and of course Frasier, as well as episodes centering same-sex attractions, kind of like a television version of Vito Russo’s definitive The Celluloid Closet. (I’ve actually been hoping someone would either update Russo’s book or do a sequel. Someone probably has an I just don’t know it; I am hardly the font of all knowledge, no matter how much I would like to consider myself to be exactly that.)

I did wonder, though, while I watching one of his videos about drag artist Charles Ludlam appearing on one of the final episodes of a one-season sitcom starring Madeline Kahn called Oh, Madeline, if he knows about a very short-lived Norman Lear sitcom based on the play The Hot L Baltimore, which was about a seedy residential hotel and the people who lived there–Conchita Farrell played a hooker–and it also had a gay couple. It didn’t last very long and I would imagine it would be difficult to find archival footage of the show; but it was also a great idea for a sitcom or a modern dramedy; it would be interesting to see what someone like Shonda Rimes or even Ryan Murphy could do with an adaptation of the play into a series. (I really should be running a television network.)

As Constant Reader will remember, I enjoyed the premier episode of Superman and Lois and really loved this new take on the Superman mythos. Clark and Lois as parents, moving back to Smallville to become a closer family unit with their twin sons, is pretty terrific, and the casting is absolutely perfect. I worried the quality and likability of the show might begin to siphon off in future episodes, but the storytelling is quite excellent and I love the nuanced look at what is happening in small towns like Smallville–or what has happened to them. I also like they didn’t go with the usual “Lex Luthor is our big bad guy and enemy of Superman” trope; rather there’s a threat from an off-worlder (referred to by his computer as “Captain Luthor”) and the real, Earth big bad is a billionaire named Morgan Edge–who was introduced into the comic books series during the 1970’s. I am enjoying this so much that I am thinking I might want go back and finish watching Arrow, give The Flash another chance, and start watching the other Arrowverse shows. Batwoman looks terrific, and so does Stargirl, and I am also still hoping for a third season of Titans. I never did get to see the second and final season of Krypton; I enjoyed the first season (I always loved whenever the comics would explore something about Krypton, and John Byrne’s mini-series The World of Krypton is still one of my all-time favorite comics) and still hold out some hope that Warner Brothers and HBO might bring it back for another season….there was so much to still be explored.

So I am working from home today, and am about to head into the spice mines. I have some data entry to do and there’s always condom packs to make, of course; not sure what I want to watch while I make them today; not really in the mood for a movie. I was thinking about revisiting Megan Abbott’s wonderful television show Dare Me–hey, I’m writing about high school students currently, and why not watch a show developed and produced by one of our best writers based on one of her amazing novels? I was also thinking, for the times when I am not in the mood for a slasher/horror or a Cynical 70’s or a teen movie, that I should find an old television program and watch it from the beginning and binge it all the way to the end. Paul and I never finished watching The Sopranos, for one example–Katrina interrupted our viewing–and I have never seen The Wire, either, for that matter. Alas, my education in television classics is just as inadequate as my education in film and literature…something to consider, of course.

And on that note, I have data to enter and condoms to pack, so it’s best for me to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will see you again tomorrow.

Hello Darlin’

I was reminded yesterday morning of one of my favorite shows of all time–Moonlighting–which made me think of how this particular show (and television crime shows) have influenced me and my writing.

For those of you who are too young to remember, Moonlighting was a television show in the mid to late 1980’s, that starred Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes, a wealthy retired supermodel, who had been completely wiped out by an embezzling accountant (or agent, or manager; I’m not sure I remember which clearly) and the only asset she had left was a private detective agency–which she had primarily invested in as a business loss to reduce her tax bill every year. Facing financial ruin, Maddie needs to turn the Blue Moon Agency into a source of income, which puts her squarely into conflict with fun-loving extrovert David Addison, the private eye who enjoys life, takes nothing very seriously, and has a joke for everything, and is the primary boss at the agency. David Addison was played by Bruce Willis–this role, along with Die Hard, made him a star–and he and Shepherd had the most amazing chemistry. The writing was whip-crack smart, sometimes breaking the fourth wall, with the two characters always arguing and talking over each other, kind of like classic comedies like His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby, and out of nowhere it became a huge smash hit. The first season was abbreviated–a spring replacement, with maybe four or five episodes–but season two was absolutely phenomenal. But the pressure on the writing and production staffs was incredibly difficult, the show always ran behind on filming, and it didn’t help that Willis and Shepherd hated each other. She also got pregnant during the run of the show, and they wrote the pregnancy into it.

Ironically, the chemistry between them was what drove the show’s success–kind of like Sam and Diane on Cheers–but once the show’s focus moved away from their cases and onto their relationship, the quality went down and so did the ratings. It’s a pity, because those first two seasons were pure gold.

One of my favorite things about the show was how every episode opened with David and Maddie arguing about something–and then over the course of the episode, the case made each other see the other’s side, and then at the end they had reversed themselves, arguing the opposite positions from the original argument….and sometimes, agreeing that they could the other’s point, and accepting that there’s another way of seeing everything.

I absolutely loved that. My goal, years ago, when I started the Chanse series was to make sure that Chanse learned something about himself by working on, and solving, whatever case came his way.

I really wish someone would buy the streaming rights to the show. I’d love to watch those first two seasons again. Like I said–all those episodes were pure gold.

I took yesterday afternoon off–I’d intended to work from home, after getting the mail and stopping at Rouse’s–and also started the lengthy process of trying to get my email inbox cleaned out, which is a Sisyphean task, to say the least. But progress was made indeed, and far now the rock is at least most of the way up the hill. I also sat down in my easy chair and read some more of Daphne du Maurier’s odd Gothic fairytale “The Archduchess” with Scooter purring in my lap and, as one is wont to do with a purring cat in your lap, fell asleep for about an hour. People rarely talk about how cats all possess that super-power; adorable little agents of Morpheus that they are. I did manage to read some more of the story, though–I’m interested to see where it’s going to go, since there’s such a dreamy, fairytale-like quality to the story, which is about the fall of the monarchy in a fictional little European county called Ronda. It’s weird that it’s taking me this long to read the story, but this is also my first full week of going to work at eight every morning, so there’s little wonder that it’s getting harder to wake up and harder to stay awake the further the week progresses.

But today is Thursday, and I only have one more day to get through before it’s the glorious weekend, and I really do need to get my shit together. I’ve got to get that Sherlock story done, I have to pay the bills, I need to get back to work on the Secret Project…there’s so much to do, so little time in which to do it, and I can’t keep wasting precious time.

On that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and stay safe out there.

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