Category Archives: Television

Is Mark Sanford entitled to equal time on Comedy Central?

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I thought this question, posed on Slatest, was intriguing:

As the faux-conservative Colbert Report host, Stephen Colbert has lampooned campaign finance laws and the U.S. electoral system by starting his own super PAC and announcing bids for the presidency and “the president of the United States of South Carolina.” But another Colbert—this one with a hard t at the end—is also vying for the political spotlight: Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Stephen’s older sister, who’s facing off against avid Appalachian Trail hiker and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in a May 7 special election for South Carolina’s 1^st Congressional District. Colbert has twice devoted show segments to his sister’s campaign, including one endorsing her candidacy, and has mocked Sanford on countless occasions. With the show’s nightly viewership of 1.5 million and the documented “Colbert bump” in a politician’s support after an appearance, is Colbert violating election laws by blending his hosting role with his sister’s campaign?

Probably not. The central law in play is the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule. Beginning with the Radio Act of 1927, which Congress enacted in response to fears of broadcasters’ ability to sway elections by limiting a candidate’s access to the airwaves, radio and television networks have been required to offer equal airtime (or opportunities to purchase advertising at a reduced price) to all candidates if they request it. Exemptions were later added for documentaries, newscasts, news interviews, and on-the-spot news events.

Since it covers news stories and political issues, The Colbert Report would likely fall under the newscast or news interviews exceptions…

Really? I would have thought it was entertainment.

In any case, I’ve always found the equal-time rule sort of hard to follow. And now that we have “news shows” that are entirely satire, how would you go about giving equal time, anyway? And if you gave it, how could you be assured it would be to the advantage of the one demanding it? When everything is dealt with ironically, how do you make sure your equal time is quality time? Make it an infomercial, so you have total control? Maybe. I don’t know. But even that could backfire, as Comedy Central viewers go there for smart-aleck, not for earnest.

What do y’all think?

The overshadowed passing of Annette

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Long before there was a Cher, or a Madonna, or a Sting, there was Annette, who preceded them all in needing no surname. Even “Elvis” had “Presley” attached more than Annette used “Funicello” in the early days.

That’s because she was the most famous of the Mouseketeers, and I mean the original, real Mouseketeers, not the latter-day imitations.

We expected the passing of Margaret Thatcher; that movie with Meryl Streep made it seem imminent. But Annette, leaving us at 70, was more of a shock.

I suspect you have to be almost exactly my age — one whose preschool years were entirely contained within the ’50s — to get this completely. Later, seeing her in the beach movies, I’d form another picture of her, and that one probably stuck better — that of a young woman rather than a child, although still a squeaky-clean image. (Alas, she was not my favorite character in those films; that honor belonged to Eric Von Zipper.)

John Updike used a passage, early in Rabbit Run, in which Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom watches the “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which comes across as a way of assuring us that this is, indeed, a quintessentially American novel. But Harry could never connect with the Mouseketeers the way we did. Harry was spoiled goods; he wasn’t one of us. Harry, in that and subsequent novels (OK, so I really only made it through Rabbit Redux before I gave up on him), was always too old for the cultural passages he was experiencing. Yet he plunged through them anyway, which for me imbued him with a certain falseness.

How did we get on Updike? Oh, yeah, Annette…

The Mouseketeers, Elvis, Mickey Mantle and Andy Devine were my first celebrities. It was years and years before I learned from Dumas there had been something in history called a musketeer, which at first looked to me like a misspelling.

Annette! If only once more we could see her standing by Jimmie as he led us through:

M-I-C (see you next week!)
K-E-Y (Why? Because we LIKE you!)
M-O-U-S-E

… and know, with a child’s certainty, that yes, we would see them next week, and that they did indeed like us as much as we liked them…

Top Five baseball movies, 2013 version

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Marking the start of the season and the release of the new movie about Jackie Robinson, the WSJ offered a slideshow of stills from baseball movies this morning, which was fun to flip through.

It didn’t really make judgments or rank them. It just grouped them into categories: One Last Shot (“The Rookie,” “Mr. 3000”); The Church of Baseball (“The Natural,” “Field of Dreams”); Game Changers (“Moneyball,” “A League of Their Own”), etc.

But what’s a list without a Top Five? So I quickly drew one up. And only after drawing it up, while feeling a bit of déjà vu, did I realized I’d done this before. (When I realized that, I almost trashed this post, but then thought maybe some of y’all would enjoy it anyway.) The new list differs slightly from what I said before, indicating that list-making is affected by mood. Or something. Here’s what I came up with this morning:

The Natural — I don’t care how sappy it is. Baseball is sappy. I don’t care that it’s nothing like the cynical novel on which it’s based — which I hated. I like that it’s a celebration. I like the gauzy sentimentality. Not in all movies, but in this one, because it fits the subject matter. Roy Hobbs is what we want our baseball heroes to be, and we have a right to want that.
Major League — Silly, yes, but it captures the fun of the game. I watched it again recently, and wondered what had happened to Wesley Snipes. Turns out he’s in prison. I had no idea.
Eight Men Out — A baseball tragedy. Or morality play. It’s like the entrance of the Serpent into the Garden of Eden that was baseball. Still, there’s so much innocence among the guilty, and so many gradations of corruption, that you find yourself sympathizing (for some of them), even if they can’t honestly say it ain’t so. Nice ensemble of actors, too.
The Sandlot — Very much like my childhood, since I never played organized ball until senior Little League when I was 15. I spent a lot of time on sandlots. Yes, this is about mythmaking (although on a less heroic level than “The Natural”), but its cliches and stereotypes are so lovingly drawn, and they ring true.
Field of Dreams — You know what? I changed my mind about this. See below.

Initially, I was going to say sorry, ladies… I couldn’t include “A League of their Own” because there was crying in it, and there’s no crying in baseball. That was my first thought this morning. Last time, I included it at number five, on account of the deep flaws in “Field of Dreams.” Such as Ray Liotta being nothing like Shoeless Joe Jackson. (D.B. Sweeney in “Eight Men Out” was a thousand times better.) And the famous writer not being J.D. Salinger, which is who he was in the novel.

And because its gauzy sentimentality seemed more forced and artificial, unlike in “The Natural” and “The Sandlot.” Like the difference between sugar and saccharine.

So, never mind. I think I was right in 2011… In fact, the only reason I’m posting this is to celebrate the season, and give any of y’all who missed the previous post a chance to voice your opinions.

The amazing thing about newspapers, as interpreted by ‘George Costanza’

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Romenesko shared this, which he got from The Harvard Crimson. It’s from an interview with Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on “Seinfeld”:

The first time I really thought, “Oh my god, Jerry Seinfeld is brilliant” was when he did a joke about newspapers, and how relieved the editors of a newspaper must be when exactly the right amount of things happen everyday to make the paper come out perfectly, so that at six o’clock at their deadline, you don’t go, “Oh, one more thing happened,” and now you have a blank page with two paragraphs.

I’ve always loved that joke, too. Because while it is meant to be seen as ridiculous, it taps into a sense of wonder I had about newspaper from an early age.

When I was in second or third grade, I read a book of short stories aimed at people my age. It had a theme — each story opened a window on some different aspect of the big wide world, meant to show kids the possibilities for when they grew up. One story, the one I remember best, was about a kid who went to work for a newspaper as a copy boy (which would be my first newspaper job, at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, years later). The reader followed the boy as he learned about everything it took to publish a newspaper each day.

I was struck with awe at the enormity of such a task. I couldn’t believe any group of people, no matter how experienced or talented, could get all of those things done in a day, every day. And yet there was the proof, on my doorstep each morning.

Decades later, after I had mastered every aspect of the process, I used to wonder sometimes at the complaints we’d get from readers. Someone would be griping at me about some small thing that, in his or her opinion, wasn’t quite right in the paper, and I would remember that story and how it impressed me. And I’d think, Hasn’t this person ever thought about what a miracle it is that the paper comes out at all? Obviously not, or they’d have backed off a bit.

I’ve never thought a single actual error in any paper I worked for was excusable. And readers deserved to demand the same high standard from us. But occasionally, when they were going on and on about some tiny thing that had gone wrong (or that they saw as having gone wrong), I’d find myself wishing they’d pause, just a moment, to be impressed by everything that was right, against all odds…

Oh, wait, one other thing… Having spent a lot of years making the news fit the paper, ruthlessly wielding a light-blue felt pen (which humans could read, but the camera that shot the page when it was done could not pick up) in composing rooms, or trimming with marginally greater delicacy on a computer screen, I found myself puzzled that Yahoo paid a high-school kid tens of millions for an app that… well, here’s the description:

Yahoo was attracted to Summly’s core technology for automatically summarizing news articles. The technology, which included an algorithm for deriving the summaries, was created with help from SRI International, a Silicon Valley research-and development firm that has an artificial-intelligence lab and has an ownership stake in the startup….

In 2011, Mr. D’Aloisio founded his company, at the time called Trimit. He redesigned the app to automatically boil news articles down to 400-word summaries and re-launched it as Summly in late 2012 with help from SRI…

I thought, hey, I could have done that for Yahoo for half the money. And I wouldn’t have needed an app for it. It only takes seconds per story. I’ll admit, the slashing I used to do in composing rooms (and on computer screens) wasn’t always a work of art when I was in a hurry (which was most of the time) — but I kind of doubt this app is any more respectful of the writers’ precious words…

Top Five TV Shows about the Cold War (I’ll stop now)

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tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-alec-guinness_brownsuit

Alex Guinness as George Smiley.

Just to beat the topic from yesterday totally into the ground, here are my Top Five TV Shows About the Cold War:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — The Alex Guinness version, of course.
Smiley’s People — The sequel to Tinker, Tailor. I have both series on DVD at home.
Game, Set and Match — A series cobbled together from the first three novels in a Len Deighton trilogy of trilogies. It took some liberties, and I seem to recall hearing that Deighton hated it. This is possibly because the character that Ian Holm created for the series was quite different — a more tormented, stressed-out character — from the Bernard Samson in the novels. But I enjoyed the series anyway.
The Missiles of October — Worth watching if only for Martin Sheen’s version of Bobby Kennedy.
The Day After — A huge TV event at the time when it came out. Sort of the Cold War equivalent of “Roots.”

There’s sort of a lack of variety in this list, I’ll admit — the first three are spy series, and two by le Carre with the same chief protagonist. But I have to work with what TV gives me. And I really believe the first two are among the best things ever made for the tube.

“The Day After” — nuclear apocalypse in Kansas.

‘Jumping the shark:’ You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means…

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In today’s WSJ, under the headline, “Jumping the sequester,” columnist Kimberley A. Strassel writes the following:

The phrase “jumping the shark” describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester.

The precise moment came Tuesday, when the administration announced that it was canceling public tours of the White House, blaming budget cuts. The Sequesterer in Chief has insisted that cutting even $44 billion from this fiscal year will cause agonizing pain—airport security snarls, uninspected meat, uneducated children. Since none of those things has come to pass, the White House decided it needed an immediate and high-profile way of making its point. Ergo, it would deny the nation’s school kids a chance to view a symbol of America.

The act was designed to spark outrage against Republicans, yet the sheer pettiness of it instead provided a moment of clarity. Americans might not understand the technicalities of sequester, but this was something else entirely. Was the president actually claiming there was not a single other government item—not one—that could be cut instead of the White House tours? Really?

Yeahhh… I don’t think that’s jumping the shark. Do y’all.? That sounds to me like somebody wrote the headline first, and tried to force the column to fit it. Let’s look at the Wikipedia definition:

Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that is used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of “gimmick” in a desperate attempt to keep viewers’ interest…

And here’s the origin:

The phrase jump the shark comes from a scene in the fifth season premiere episode of the American TV series Happy Days titled “Hollywood: Part 3“, written by Fred Fox, Jr.^[4] which aired on September 20, 1977. In the episode, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where a water-skiing Fonzie (Henry Winkler) answers a challenge to his bravery by wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, and jumping over a confined shark. The stunt was created as a way to showcase Winkler’s real life water ski skills.^[5]

For a show that in its early seasons depicted universally relatable adolescent and family experiences against a backdrop of 1950s nostalgia, this incident marked an audacious, cartoonish turn towards attention-seeking gimmickry. Initially a supporting character, the faddish lionization of an increasingly superhuman Fonzie became the focus of Happy Days. The series continued for seven years after Fonzie’s shark-jumping stunt, with a number of changes in cast and situations. However, it is commonly^[who?] believed that the show began a creative decline in this era, as writers ran out of ideas, and Happy Daysbecame a caricature of itself. As a nod to the episode, Henry Winkler’s character again jumped a shark in the 2003 show Arrested Development…

To me, that’s a pretty clear definition that the Strossel example doesn’t fit. You can call the White House cancellation of tours all kinds of things — in these parts, we’d call it a “Big Bird defense” — but it’s not jumping the shark.

That said, the very same Wikipedia entry I quote above gives an example, also involving Barack Obama, that I don’t think fits either:

In 2008 during the Obama presidential campaign, at a meeting of Democratic governors in Chicago, each governor was identified with a name plate while Senator Obama had a large seal – that looked official but was not.^[11] The New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich wrote “For me, Mr. Obama showed signs of jumping the shark two weeks back, when he appeared at a podium affixed with his own pompous faux-presidential seal”.^[12]

So what do I consider to be a perfect example of jumping the shark? This: When the Beverly Hillbillies went to England. Actually, that series jumped the shark several times; it was sort of a defining characteristic. It sort of did so when Jethro received his draft notice and costumed himself as Patton and bought a tank. It really, really did so when the whole cast jumped fictional universes, going to Hooterville to interact with characters from “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres.” (A radical change of venue can be a good sign that a shark is being jumped.)

In fact, those examples are so good that I have trouble coming up with any others that illustrate the concept so well, as I understand it. It’s not limited to iconic sitcoms, of course. And it can be translated to politics. When Bill Clinton played saxophone on Arsenio Hall seems a pretty clear example. If you go way back, there’s Richard Nixon’s “Sock it to me?” on “Laugh-In.”

But closing the White House to tours? Not so much…

Stephen Colbert, promoting his sister’s candidacy

Macfarlane on the Oscars: Funny, offensive, both, or neither?

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Everyone’s buzzing about Seth Macfarlane’s performance hosting the Academy Awards last night. Such words as “sexist” and “racist” have been used.

But what did anyone expect? If anything, his material was significantly toned down from the stuff you can hear, and see depicted in cartoon form, on “The Family Guy” before prime time each evening. To call Macfarlane’s brand of humor sophomoric is to promote it several years past its middle-school level. That is, it’s the kind of humor you’d hear from a middle-schooler who was demonically quick and witty. Admittedly, Macfarlane’s material is the sort that makes people laugh, even if they’re feeling guilty while doing so.

Racism (we are all invited to laugh at Brian, the racist dog), graphic violence involving children, incest, and mockery of religion are pretty much standard fare on “The Family Guy.” (And at this point, I’m feeling pretty embarrassed for knowing all that.) Ditto with “Ted” — it’s funny, but don’t be fooled into letting the kids watch it just because it’s about a Teddy bear.

So explain to us why anyone would be shocked at his “We Saw Your Boobs” bit last night? From him, that’s pretty mild stuff.

At one point, a joke was made about how it would have been better to have engaged the services of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who co-hosted the Golden Globes. Hey, no joke — they would have made people laugh without cringing.

But seriously, if you engage the services of Seth Macfarlane, this is what you get, at the very least. No sense moaning about it afterward.

House of Cards: A political fantasy in which a South Carolina congressional district is represented by a white Democrat

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That — what I said in my headline — is what struck me first about the American version of “House of Cards.” Kevin Spacey’s character is a powerful congressman who represents South Carolina’s 5th District. At least, he’s from Gaffney, and that’s in the 5th District. (The Peachoid features prominently in episode 3.)

Indeed, that district was represented by a senior white Democrat, John Spratt, just a couple of years back. But that was before the Tea Party, before the Republican Party cemented its hold on the entire delegation — except for Jim Clyburn, whose district is secure because the GOP doesn’t want those black voters in their six districts.

Have you seen the series? It’s the first original series on Netflix, and in keeping with the new national watching habit that that service helped foster, they’ve given us the entire first series all at once. I appreciate that. That is, I would appreciate it if the series had proven to be as addictive as “Breaking Bad,” or “Homeland,” or “The Walking Dead.”

But it didn’t. Netflix had hoped it would, that the series would give it the kind of cred as a content producer (because it is such a hassle negotiating with others to use their content) that “The Sopranos” gave HBO. But this is no “Sopranos.” Nor is it a “Mad Men.”

First, it’s not original. It’s based on the 22-year-old British series of the same name, starring Ian Richardson, whom I will always think of as Bill Haydon in the original BBC production of le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” The first season co-stars the lovely Susannah Harker, who five years later played Miss Jane Bennet in the definitive production of “Pride and Prejudice” (the one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. (Hey, did y’all recognize her in “Zero Dark Thirty”? Jennifer Ehle, I mean. I knew I knew her, but I didn’t realize who she was, with her hair down and all, until the credits. And can you tell my caffeine is starting to kick in? I’m writing this at Barnes and Noble, with a cuppa the black stuff from the Starbucks across the parking lot — I prefer it to the “proudly served” version served here — and since I don’t drink it much since my ear thing started, I’m feeling it. Sorry about the digressions…)

Let’s focus in on Ms. Harker’s character, because I think it will help define why I don’t like the new American series as much. Oh, the production values are better; you can tell more money was probably spent making it look good, and the technology’s just better now than it was in 1990. But it’s not as engaging. My wife and I watched two episodes a night for two nights, then stopped. Last night, I proposed going back to it, and my wife OK, but as I called it up, said with disappointment, “Oh, you mean the American one…?” So we watched the last of the first season of the original.

But back to Ms. Harker’s character. She’s much, much more engaging than the extremely irritating little girl (which I mean both literally, in the sense of stature, and in the sense that our governor uses the phrase) played by Kate Mara in the Netflix version. She’s also more believable. It is far more credible that this is a person who would be able to keep a job. OK, so she eventually gets fired, but she kept the job for awhile.

Yeah, I get it. Mara’s supposed to be the brash “new wave” of electronic journalism, sweeping aside the conventions established by the old-timey ink-stained wretches. And maybe that offends me because I’m pretty sure I’m as adept at blogging and social media as her character is, and even if I’m not a grownup, I know how to act like one. Obnoxious is obnoxious. Then there’s the fact that we’re asked to believe that Spacey’s character — who has Robin Wright waiting at home, and no end of young lovelies walking the halls of Congress — would be attracted to her. She was cute in “Shooter” several years ago, in a waiflike sort of way, but both physically and in terms of personality, is about as cuddly as a hedgehog in this.

By contrast, Susanna Harker’s character in the original series, which debuted when she was 25, draws you in. Even though, or perhaps because, her tragic fascination with Richardson’s character makes me think of the refrain of Elvis Costello’s “You Little Fool,” you can’t help caring about her. You see why, for instance, her editor loves her hopelessly. Oh, and for any young people who think, “Well that was made in the olden days before women were set free and allowed to have sharp edges,” I’ll point out that it was 20 years after the leading edge of the movement that produced today’s allegedly liberated generation. (Sorry, but y’all didn’t invent independence and assertiveness.) Harker made her soft and vulnerable, but she also made her real. I found myself wishing she were a little more cynical and tough-minded, to keep her out of trouble, but at least she doesn’t come across as cheesy and contrived.

Why is this difference important? Well, because the main problem with the new American series is the utter lack of a sympathetic character. Everyone is horrible. It doesn’t have to be a soft, vulnerable young woman — any sympathetic character would do. This sort of thing doesn’t bother everyone. And indeed, a really excellent series can get overcome that flaw, as I think “Breaking Bad” does — I keep watching in horrified fascination. But normally, the lack of a likable character will ruin any work of fiction for me. As much as I enjoy Tom Wolfe’s old New Journalism — especially Acid Test and The Right Stuff (his only book in which one could detect a hint of admiration of his subjects) — I hated Bonfire of the Vanities. Brilliant writing, interesting Tory social commentary, but everyone in it was so contemptible, like loathsome little bugs being fried under Wolfe’s magnifying glass.

Eventually, I’ll watch the rest of the new version, if only to see if it ever does anything interesting with the supposed South Carolina connection. But so far, I’ll have to say that it doesn’t live up to the ambitions that Netflix had for it.

My Top Ten favorite ads from the 2013 Super Bowl

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To hundreds of millions of Americans, today is the day after Super Sunday. To me, it’s Monday. (Hey, if I were a football fan I’d use those Roman numbers instead of “2013” in my headline.)

Still, I took some time this morning to look at the ads from the big event last night for the ADCO blog, and following are the ones I put in my Top Ten. (“Top Ten” may not sound very selective, until you reflect that there were 47 of them. Really.)

Here were my admittedly simplistic, off-the-top-of-my-head criteria:

Does it sell the product?
If it features a celebrity, does it make good use of that star power (or is it just a gratuitous appearance)?
Is it original, clever, creative, witty, funny, whatever?

Anyway, here’s my list:

Time Warner Cable: “Walking Dead” — Definitely sells the product, and most awesome use of star power: Isn’t Daryl everybody’s favorite “Walking Dead” survivor? “Yes, ma’am.” See video above.
Mercedes: “Soul” — Great casting (nobody else can do that evil look like Willem Dafoe), and only Martin Scorsese has made better use of the Stones’ music. I was wondering how they were going to get out of the trap of the Mercedes actually being a devilish temptation; it was handled deftly, by punching the car’s (relative) low price.
Dodge: “Farmer” — Accomplished what the “Jeep” one tried to do, and did it in an unexpected way. This one is the rightful successor to the much-maligned, but remembered, Clint Eastwood one.
Kraft MiO Fit: “Liftoff” — I’m gonna miss that character. Or maybe not. Good thing we have Netflix. My favorite line of his from last episode of “”30 Rock”: When he calls a computer “the pornography box.”
Volkswagen: “Get Happy” — Not a match for the Darth Vader kid, but a laudably original attempt.
Samsung: “The Next Big Thing” — Two of Judd Apatow’s stars took it to one level, Saul from “Breaking Bad” took it to the next.
Toyota: “Wish Granted” — Funny. Good star power. Give it a B+.
Go Daddy: “Big Idea” — Had the hurdle of communicating (to the remaining millions who don’t have their own websites) what Go Daddy, does; jumped over it nicely. Far better than the other GoDaddy ad that everybody’s on about.
Hyundai Turbo: “Stuck Behind” — Loved the “Breaking Bad” reference, if that’s what it was (the guy in the hazmat suit).
Budweiser: “Brotherhood” — Deftly evokes the question, “Can a really big horse be man’s best friend?” (See video below.)

Why would SC Dems want to link themselves to Bill Maher?

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I was a bit surprised that I received an email announcing that Bill Maher will appear in Columbia from… Amanda Loveday, executive director of the S.C. Democratic Party.

Then I saw why:

The South Carolina Democratic Party will be hosting a fundraiser and pre-show reception in conjunction with show and invite you to join in the company of fellow Democrats, food, drinks and premier seating. Click here to buy tickets to the show and take part in the pre-show reception. Tickets are limited and they will be offered on a first come, first serve basis.

What was missing from the release was anything that might answer the burning question: Why on Earth would Democrats in South Carolina want to link themselves to Bill Maher?

It really kind of floors me. The guy is sort of a modern apostle of incivility. His whole shtick is about being obnoxious.

I’m not alone in thinking this. When I mentioned in a post awhile back that I was sorta kinda almost agreeing with Maher about something, and how rare that was, we had an extended discussion, and only one person didn’t find the guy (at best) off-putting. That was Phillip, which sort of surprised me, Phillip being such a thoughtful guy who deals respectfully with those with whom he disagrees. Unlike Bill Maher.

More typical were the comments from Kathryn Fenner:

Bill Maher has that tone of dripping sarcasm and snide condescension, and he did a lot to hinder the cause of vaccinations with his ridiculous campaign. What a jerk!…

Bill Maher divides people and turns off a lot of people who otherwise might agree with him. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do a far better job of saying what needs to be said and possibly winning converts to their point of view.

Maher would be far more effective if he’d get over himself: stop trying to establish his superiority and disdain for those beneath him and just stick to his point….

His “humor” is of the tripping somebody or otherwise humiliating somebody kind that most of us out grew in junior high, if we ever found it funny…

So, I ask again: Why would Democrats in this state want to link themselves so directly to someone this unlikable?

The simple answer might be: Dick Harpootlian. But still…

Yeah… sadly, conventional wisdom on The Monkees was right, for the most part

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I was looking this week at some promotional material for an event called “SHE Columbia: The Ultimate Girls’ Weekend,” and given my penchant for digression, I of course got to thinking about Elvis Costello’s “She,” which seemed more aesthetically rewarding than thinking about the 1965 film by that name.

Then, I also thought of “She” by The Monkees.

Which got me to wondering…

I was into The Monkees when the show first came on, when I was in junior high school in New Orleans. That was in my first year or so back in this country after two-and-a-half years without television or any easy access to American (or English) pop culture, and I was really, really into almost everything that TV threw at me. Take your pick: “The Monkees,” “Batman,” “The Time Tunnel,” “The Wild Wild West.” Hey, I even enjoyed watching Merv Griffin and “The Dating Game” (which will always have my respect for using Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream”). If it was on TV, I thought pretty much anything was cool, with the obvious exception of Lawrence Welk.

Anyway, I bought The Monkees’ first couple of albums, and when I briefly took drum lessons, it was the percussion part of “Stepping Stone” that I tried to master.

So, when I found myself highly impressed at the choice of music over a meth-cooking scene on “Breaking Bad” this past half-season (sorry; I can’t find video of it), and finally recognized it as The Monkees’ “Goin’ Down,” I thought, Wow.

The song worked so well as the accompaniment for that frenetically edited scene that it got me to thinking… were The Monkees actually better, musically, than conventional wisdom had it? After all, I hadn’t listened to them since I was a kid with indiscriminate tastes. How would they sound now? I had that thought months ago, but it didn’t occur to me to test the supposition until this week, by calling up their songs on Spotify.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but, well, conventional wisdom was mostly right. On song after song, my mind went “Ow!” and I clicked on the “next track” button.

The good stuff — and “Goin’ Down” fits in that category, with “She” and “Stepping Stone” not being all that bad — was pretty rare amid all that dross. The few hits for which they are remembered, such as “Last Train to Clarksville,” tower over the filler material on the albums.

Which, I suppose, is what you’d expect from a made-for-TV band in the mid-60s. You can’t just manufacture hits; they sort of have to come from inspiration. Which makes the achievement of those who did the music for “That Thing You Do” even more impressive. You ever listen to the soundtrack? One song after another that, while it might not make your Top Ten, you can easily imagine getting decent airplay on the radio circa 1964-65.

But you have to hand it to The Monkees “Goin’ Down.” That actually clicked. Not even the lyrics made me cringe.

Graham may not vote against Rice for SecState

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I thought this was interesting. After several days of being the point man on criticism of Ambassador Susan Rice, one might think (by the news coverage) that at the very least, Lindsey Graham would vote against confirming her were she nominated for secretary of state.

Well, on “Meet the Press” Sunday, he kept up the heat on the ambassador, but refused to say he’d vote against her:

GREGORY: Senator, can Susan Rice– can Susan Rice be confirmed of Secretary of State if nominated by the president?

SEN. GRAHAM: I– I don’t know. You know, I’m deferential to the president’s picks. I voted for Kagan and Sotomayor. President, oh– Senator Obama voted against John Bolton, Elido and Roberts. He had a very high bar for confirmation. I have a very low bar. I’m going to listen to what Susan Rice has to say, put her entire record in context, but I’m not going to give her a plus for passing on a narrative…

GREGORY: But your…

SEN. GRAHAM: …that was misleading to the American people…

GREGORY: You wouldn’t filibuster her nomination?

SEN. GRAHAM: ….and whether she knew it was misleading or not. I’m going to wait and see what the State Department’s review has, but I’m very disappointed in– Susan Rice…

That may sound, to people who like a simple, dichotomous, partisan world, to be be inconsistent. But it’s actually completely consistent with the senator’s oft-expressed maxim that “elections have consequences” — which means you let the president have the people he chooses, barring some gross disqualification.

And bottom line, Graham indicated, it’s not Rice he really blames anyway. He seems mostly ticked that the administration put forward someone who didn’t know squat about Benghazi to speak publicly about it:

I’m saying that the ambassador that had nothing to do with Benghazi– why would you choose someone who had nothing to do with Benghazi to tell us about Benghazi? That’s kind of odd. The president said, why pick on her? She didn’t know anything about Benghazi. She was the most politically compliant person they could find. I don’t know what she knew but I know the story she told was misleading….

(W)hat about the months before this attack? What about the rise of al Qaeda in Benghazi? What about the British ambassador closing the consulate in Benghazi because it was too dangerous for the British? What about the Red Cross leaving? What about all of the warnings come out of Benghazi? Did the CIA tell the president that Benghazi is falling into the hands of al Qaeda? And I blame the president more than anybody else. Susan Rice is a bit player here. Was he– was he informed of the June attack on our consulate where they blew a hole where 40 people could go through? Was he aware of the August 15th cable where Stevens was saying we can’t withstand a coordinated al Qaeda attack? There are 10 militia groups all over Benghazi. I blame the president for… making this a death trap. I blame the president for not having assets available to help these people for eight hours…

Still, even with blaming the president, the Lindsey Graham who likes to work across the aisle asserts himself if Angry Graham lets his guard down for a moment:

I’m just not here to pick on the president. I look forward to working with him on immigration and solving the fiscal cliff problems. But I’m going to get to the bottom of Benghazi and hold him accountable for a national security breakdown…

He might find it’s tough to do both of those things, but we’ll see.

One other interesting thing from this interview was the senator’s musing on what’s wrong with his party:

We’re in a big hole. We’re not getting out of it by comments like that. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. … We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration. And candidate Romney and the primary dug the hole deeper. You know, people can be on public assistance and scheme the system. That’s real. And these programs are teetering on bankruptcy. But most people… on public assistance don’t have a character flaw. They just have a tough life. I want to create more jobs and the focus should be on how to create more jobs, not demonize those who find themselves in hard times…

Is ‘The Walking Dead’ about today’s economy?

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Just another sunny day in the New Normal.

Late last night, in a fit of despond, I Tweeted the following:

Call me a pessimist if you will, but I must confess to a sinking feeling that things are not going to get better on “The Walking Dead”…

I mean, have you been watching this show lately? We thought things were as bad as they could get in the very first episode of the first season, but now? It’s almost like the makers of the show are daring us each week to keep watching. Recently on Netflix, I called up an episode from the first season — the one in which the survivors find temporary refuge at the CDC — and I was struck by how clean and relaxed and sane everyone was, even before they got access to the hot showers. Over the next two seasons, you can observe the decline of hope in the characters along with the layers of dirt and dried zombie blood encrusted on them.

Rick's just not inspiring a lot of confidence these days.

This show raises a lot of questions. For instance — if the only “life” in walkers (as demonstrated by the researcher at the CDC) was a trickle of activity at the very base of the brain, then how come a blow to anywhere on the head will put them down? Looked to me like the target area would be about the size of a walnut, and well shielded. And once you suspend your belief enough to ignore that, how are we to believe that humans with no firearms experience before the zombie apocalypse can hit a moving walker in the head at forty yards with a pistol, every time? That would be a toughie for the members of Seal Team 6, I suspect.

But set all that aside, and let me get to my epiphany. Last night, as I looked on Deputy Rick covered in zombie mess, sitting there on the floor of the prison out of his mind with grief over the loss of someone dear to him, I got this sinking feeling that nothing was ever going to get better. Based, you know, sort of in the fact that this is the third season, and nothing ever DOES get better. Everybody was just going to keep scraping by, day to day, adjusting as well as they can to this new reality that seemed permanent…

And it hit me how much that felt like our economic situation since September 2008 (the show premiered in 2010, as we were realizing that our economic woes were the New Normal, and not a short-term thing). Only without everybody being covered in zombie blood.

Is that what it’s about? Does that cause us to identify with these people enough to keep watching? Does it cheer us up, because unemployment and underemployment aren’t nearly that bad? Are the choices presented to the characters like our political choices? Is “the Governor” supposed to be Mitt Romney, presenting an idyllic suburban Republican sort of vision of what life could be? Deputy Rick seems to have the same pitch for holding on to leadership that President Obama used: No, I haven’t led you out of this, but without my leadership, things would have been worse.

Maybe not. But I’m trying to come up with a socially-redeeming excuse for why I keep watching. Because I do, and will. Right now, I can’t wait to find out who was on the other end of that ringing rotary-dial phone…

And I’m supposed to believe this kid can hit a moving walker in the head, at 50 feet, from a tower, with a pistol as big as he is?

“Breaking Brad,” or, “I need an old drug”

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With the change of weather, my throat started feeling a bit scratchy yesterday, although with the help of an antihistamine, a decongestant and cough drops, I got through dress rehearsal last night.

Today, there’s a definite soreness creeping in, and it feels… I hesitate to type this… the way it does before my voice goes all croaky and barely inaudible. I share that periodic condition with Bill Clinton. Related to allergies.

And we open tonight.

So I started thinking about what I could do about it, and my mind naturally turned to thoughts of Tedral.

Tedral was an amazing, cheap little pill that used to be prescribed for asthma, but I discovered a neat side effect — it cleared my throat, and my voice, like nothing else in the world. Back in the 70s and early 80s, I used to take one before speaking, or appearing on stage, or singing in the folk choir at church, and it worked wonderfully. It was like magic.

Very off-label, of course.

So I was about to call around to some pharmacies (starting with my own) to see if anybody still had it, or knew who did. Because near as I can recall, the last time I got any, it was available over-the-counter.

But I thought I’d check the Web first. And as near as I can tell, Tedral was banned from the U.S. market in 1993. Although I haven’t really found what looks like an authoritative source on that.

It probably had something to do with the ingredients, which according to the Web were:

theophylline
phenobarbital
ephedrine

I had known about the theophylline (a bronchodilator) and phenobarbital (a narcotic that I suppose was meant to take the edge off the bronchodilator). But I hadn’t remembered the ephedrine.

Looks like I’m out of luck. And I’m glad I didn’t start calling multiple pharmacies looking for it. They might have thought I was a Walter White copycat.

So... you wouldn't happen to have any, um, Tedral in stock, would you?

Obama gets an actual, literal lift in Florida

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Not only is Barack Obama enjoying a post-convention bounce, not only has he outstripped Mitt Romney in fund-raising for the first time in four months, he actually got a physical lift while visiting a pizza parlor in Florida.

No word on where the Secret Service was during this, but I suspect the president’s detail spent the next hour breathing through paper bags, trying to calm down…

Meanwhile, Cardinal Dolan spanked the Democrats on their home field

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My favorite moment in either convention came late last night, when one of the commentators on PBS used the word “exegesis” in describing what he’d just heard.

He was referring to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction right after President Obama’s speech. I had not heard it, whether because PBS didn’t show it or I was out of the room, I can’t recall. But C-SPAN had it, as you see above.

The commenter — I think it was Ray Suarez — was saying that the Cardinal had delivered “a riff” on something. Then he corrected himself, saying perhaps the word “exegesis” was more appropriate. His colleagues were impressed.

I very much appreciate that the Democrats gave the cardinal this forum, only about an hour after ostensible Catholic Joe Biden had roared out his approval of the party’s embrace of abortion. The cardinal said, among other things:

Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us to defend it. Life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected…

At the end of his prayer, the assembled Democrats responded with a strong “amen,” which was a settler for all those Republicans who think they’re just a bunch of heathens. To what extent all had been listening carefully, I don’t know. But the fact is that as with most public prayers, most of the words were ones they would most likely have agreed with.

The coverage came later, after the assembled media caught their breath.

The cardinal was the one person who spoke at both conventions, by the way.

Oh, what did I mean by my headline above? Well, this morning I saw a Tweet from the Charleston paper that said, “Bishop England beats Porter-Gaud. Story:http://bit.ly/NYyg6j .” So I couldn’t resist responding, “… And Cardinal Dolan thrashes the Democrats. Big night for the Catholics…”

Mackerel-snappers had a big one the night before, too. Among the non-headliners, I thought the speech by Sister Simone of “Nuns on the Bus” probably the most uplifting, least off-putting of the two weeks. Her delivery was beatific, but pulled no punches: After taking apart the budget of another dubious Catholic, Paul Ryan, she said to fervent cheers, “This is part of my pro-life stance, and the right thing to do.”

Both of them expressed what I believe. Which is a big reason why I’m so uncomfortable with both parties.

Quickly, now: What do veep hopeful Paul Ryan and ‘Paulie Walnuts’ have in common?

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Well, nothing, strictly speaking. There’s no direct connection, anyway. But bear with me…

Some time ago, as you’ll recall, I expressed my pleasure when Rep. Ryan used the word “subsidiarity,” a favorite concept of mine arising from Catholic social teaching, coupled with my dismay at the odd way he used it. The word (to me) refers to the principle that in any system — governmental, economic, what have you — functions should be left to the smallest, most local unit that can competently perform them, with larger entities only performing the functions that can’t be carried out by the smaller units. Applied to government, that means the federal government should only perform those functions that can’t be effectively carried out at the state or local level, and so forth. It’s sort of related to what was for a time popularly called “devolution,” but with differences.

But fellow Catholic Ryan startled me by interpreting the principle as meaning functions should be performed by private entities other than public ones — which is convenient for him politically, but not the way I’ve understood it.

I’m not the only one who sees Ryan’s use of the term as misleading, if not outright wrong. I ran across this a couple of days back. Carrying it further, here’s a piece further explaining the problems with “small-government” libertarians trying to claim subsidiarity as their own. For one thing, it points out, “Subsidiarity is a communitarian philosophy.” Well, yeah.

Furthermore, Ryan has been taken to task for his misapplication of Catholic teaching to the federal budget by 90 faculty members from Georgetown University (a Jesuit institution), and more to the point, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized his 2012 budget plan for failing to protect the poor and vulnerable.

But there there are those, including some Catholic clergy, who would defend the Ryan interpretation of subsidiarity. I was led to this knowledge by Paulie Walnuts.

I’m a big fan of the Internet Movie Database. I have the app on my iPhone, and can’t watch a movie on television without constantly turning to it to answer such questions as “Who’s that actress?” or “What else has she been in?” or “Was this directed by…?” Sometimes I go from there to Wikipedia for elaboration.

Anyway… and I forget what led me to this… I found myself recently reading the Wikipedia entry about Tony Sirico, the actor who played Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri on “The Sopranos.” Mr. Sirico, I learned, has also played gangsters in “Goodfellas, Mob Queen,Gangsters, Love and Money, Fingers, The One Man Jury, Defiance, The Last Fight, Innocent Blood, Bullets Over Broadway, The Pick-up Artist, Gotti, Cop Land, Turn of Faith, and Mickey Blue Eyes.”

I read on, and was told that there’s a very interesting reason why he is so convincing as this sort of character:

Before turning to acting, Sirico was reportedly a fast-rising mob associate of the Colombo crime family, serving under Carmine “Junior” Persico, and had been arrested 28 times. There is a Sopranos reference to this fact when Paulie says, “I lived through the seventies by the skin of my nuts when the Colombos were goin’ at it.”^[3] In 1967, he was sent to prison for robbing a Brooklyn after-hours club, but was released after serving thirteen months. In 1971, he pled guilty to felony weapons possession and was sentenced to an “indeterminate” prison term of up to four years, of which Sirico ended up serving 20 months. In an interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine, Sirico said that during his imprisonment, he was visited by an acting troupe composed of ex-cons, which inspired him to give acting a try.^[4] According to a court transcript, at the time of his sentencing, he also had pending charges for drug possession.^[5] Sirico appeared in a 1989 documentary about life, The Big Bang by James Toback, in which he discussed his earlier life.

Father Sirico

Interesting, but what does it have to do with the definition of “subsidiarity?” Well, continuing to read the “Background and Career” section, we see that “His brother, Robert Sirico, is a Catholic priest and co-founder of the free-market Acton Institute.”

Really? This was, to me, at least as interesting is Mr. Sirico’s alleged past as a wiseguy. So I checked out the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, where I found commentary with such headlines as “The Rich Don’t Make Us Poor,” “Challenging Liberals on Economic Immobility,” “Moral Formation and the School Choice Movement,” “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business” (that’s my personal favorite) and “Black Scholars Give Obama an ‘F’.”

This is from The Acton Institute Core Principles:

Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government – The government’s primary responsibility is to promote the common good, that is, to maintain the rule of law, and to preserve basic duties and rights. The government’s role is not to usurp free actions, but to minimize those conflicts that may arise when the free actions of persons and social institutions result in competing interests. The state should exercise this responsibility according to the principle of subsidiarity. This principle has two components. First, jurisdictionally broader institutions must refrain from usurping the proper functions that should be performed by the person and institutions more immediate to him. Second, jurisdictionally broader institutions should assist individual persons and institutions more immediate to the person only when the latter cannot fulfill their proper functions.

On their face, I wouldn’t argue with those assertions, although it’s odd that subsidiarity is being described in terms of an individual’s relationship to the state, rather than between larger and smaller governmental entities. Quite Ryanesque. Here’s how subsidiarity is further interpreted by a writer on that site:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

In spite of this clear warning, the United States Catholic Bishops remain staunch defenders of a statist approach to social problems. They have publicly criticized recent congressional efforts to reform the welfare system by decentralizing it and removing its perverse incentives. Their opposition to the Clinton Administration’s health care plan was based solely upon its inclusion of abortion funding. They had no fundamental objection to a takeover of the health care industry by the federal government…

So I read that, and I thought, “Where have I seen subsidiarity used that way?” Which brought me to the man of the hour. Paul Ryan would no doubt feel very comfortable with the ideas espoused by “Paulie’s” brother, or at least by the organization he heads. But that’s the only thing they have in common, that I know of. If you were hoping for something more, I’m sorry.

Binge TV watching: “You don’t want to know”

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Never mind that noise. It's just a bunch of walkers...

The “walker” down in the well was making that characteristic noise they make — the half-strangled, wheezy, snuffling snarl — as the survivors debated what to do about getting it out of there. And I guess I had it turned up a little louder than usual.

My wife called from another part of the house, “What is that noise?”

I hesitated.

Then, I said, “You don’t want to know.”

She laughed, and dropped it. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to answer further, which would have embarrassed me. I was deep into a “Walking Dead” binge. And I knew that my wife had the exact attitude toward the series that I did before I got hooked on it — I couldn’t imagine wasting my time watching something that gross.

I had recorded the entire second season when they showed it in marathon form a weekend or two back, and was well into it now. This was to prepare me for the premiere of the third season, which is in… October! How’m I going to wait that long? Especially if this season leaves things hanging the way it almost certainly will, with this unresolved conflict between Rick and Shane, and Herschel likely to throw everybody off the farm any minute? And of course, walkers all over the place, and ammunition in finite supply.

At the back of my mind lingers another worry — my DVR is running out of space. Do I go ahead and erase this when I’ve watched them all? And what about the most recent seasons of “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” which aren’t on Netflix yet? OK, I can erase “Breaking Bad” Sunday, when the Season 5 premieres and Season 4 does go up on Netflix, but what about the rest? It’s a tough call.

So it is that I could identify with this piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning, headlined, “Binge Viewing: TV’s Lost Weekends,” which is all about how, “Using streaming and DVRs, TV viewers are increasingly gobbling up entire seasons of shows in marathon sessions: How that’s changing the game for media companies, advertisers and show creators.”

An excerpt:

With the new season of “Breaking Bad” starting Sunday night, Chad Rohrbacher plopped down on his couch recently to catch up on some past episodes of the show about a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin. Twenty-two hours passed before he clicked off the set. Pausing only for bathroom breaks, sandwiches and occasional comments of disbelief from his wife, he watched two entire seasons in one go. “It just kind of snowballed,” the 40-year-old novelist and college professor recalls.

When last season ended with a showdown between the bespectacled antihero and his drug boss, Mr. Rohrbacher watched the climax alone in his Greensboro, N.C., living room at 4 a.m. “I could barely see,” he says. The next day, “he was there in body, not in mind,” says his wife, Melanie, who did not participate. “I have a house and kids to take care of.”…

I feel for you, Chad. Been there.

Used to be, I had Netflix — and my DVR — just for the movies. In fact, that was pretty much the only reason I had a TV. But now, that’s changed. And AMC has played a big role in making that happen. They seem the best at making must-keep-watching, high-quality TV shows. And now, you can watch them all at once.

So you’re saying that you’re a grownup, and you have your head on straight and a solid set of priorities, so this doesn’t affect you. Well, yes it does, if you watch TV at all — because it’s altering what’s being offered. Writers are having to write differently for this kind of audience. And it’s changing the whole business:

The industry ramifications are bigger than the occasional weekend lost to “Lost.” Bingeing breaks habits that have long supported the TV business, built on advertising and syndicated reruns. TV executives are torn by the development: gratified that people are gorging on their product, frustrated because it’s a TV party that all-important advertisers aren’t invited to. For middlemen like Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus and Netflix, it’s a godsend, boosting their quest to attract and retain subscribers. Writers and producers are just starting to confront the challenges of creating TV for an audience that may digest an entire season in one sitting.

Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad,” got his start in the writers room for “The X-Files.” There, he was schooled by creator Chris Carter in building cliffhangers to lure the audience through commercial breaks and into the next episode. Now, besides unspooling a narrative week by week, year by year, writers must also keep in mind fans who take the story “in a giant inhalation,” says Mr. Gilligan.

He describes his show as “hyper-serialized,” in the way writers try to close the loop on every character and plot point. A homemade poison that methamphetamine whiz Walter White (Bryan Cranston) tried to use on a drug dealer in season two ended up driving a big plot twist in season four. “We use every bit of the buffalo,” says Mr. Gilligan. He now believes fans who devour multiple seasons in short order are “more rewarded” because their memories of all the story threads are fresher. (Others disagree: TV critics are arguing about whether serialized TV is better when savored between episodes.)

Of course, the good news is, if I’m caught up on all three of the AMC series I watch (there would be four, if they hadn’t cancelled “Rubicon“), and I haven’t gone off on another tangent, like that period several months ago when I was plunging through all six seasons of “Lost,” I’m relatively free to live my life — interact with actual humans, or even read a book.

But when I’m in the middle of a season, it can be bad. The WSJ piece warns, “Brain chemistry plays a role in bingeing. ‘We get into something akin to a trance with great storytelling,’ says psychiatrist Norman Doidge, author of ‘The Brain That Changes Itself.’ Viewers identify with characters on screen and subconsciously begin to mimic their emotions—be it sadness or triumph or anxiety—and each emotional state triggers different brain chemicals, which linger.”

No kidding. I remember, in the first couple of seasons of “Breaking Bad,” when I’d stayed up long after my wife had gone to bed, I’d hesitate to go in and hit the sack, because I felt guilty. She might wake up and ask questions. No, I hadn’t personally been running a mobile meth lab and killing off competitors and keeping it a secret from my wife. That was Walter White. But I’d been so wrapped up in his tension, trying to keep it from his wife, that my nerves were on edge. I felt like an accomplice. I felt like I was descending into the sordid depths as surely as he was.

This feeling eased up in the most recent season, as Walter became more ruthless and started agonizing less over his actions. So… does that mean I’m as bad as he is now? Aye, there’s the rub.

But there’s always the fallback. If there are any questions, I’ll just say, “You don’t want to know.”

Nothing, dear! I'm just cooking up a batch of... stuff...

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