I Like Streaming

You may remember that we got rid of our two-ton tube television set and bought a "smart" TV.

We did this for a couple of reasons. "Two Ton Tessie", the old tv set was purchased in 2002. That still seems like yesterday to me, but it was 17 years ago.  The son, who bought a house a couple of months ago, had just graduated elementary school.  We rented DVDs at this place called "Blockbuster". You might have heard about "Blockbuster".  It was there where I got charged a dollar fine for being 30 minutes late returning "Remember The Titans".

Tessie was old, but she still worked well so the cheapskate in me wanted to keep it.  However, smart TVs are relatively inexpensive and we heard about this new service called "streaming".  I'm not sure what it is but it has something to do with  the internet. I think. I was raised in an analog world so it takes me a while to understand the digital universe.

Our son encouraged us to buy a new TV and eventually old tightwad (me) relented and we bought this brand new smart TV.

There are three major streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

We already had Amazon Prime because my wife likes to order things off of Amazon and the things arrive within a day or two. Sometimes the things arrive within an hour after the order. Sometimes, it is mere minutes. Some people are worried about Amazon, but I say bring on the stuff!

We bought a subscription to Netflix.  We haven't bought into Hulu.  I'm a little miffed by Hulu because their biggest show is "The Handmaid's Tale" which is about a dystopian world where Peggy Olson of "Mad Men" has babies. Okay.

But we have enjoyed our digital entertainment and here are some reviews of some the shows we've seen.

"Stranger Things 3":  We just finished ST3 and it was very, very good.  It is hard to explain ST because a lot of it is kind of "made up" and you can't really write about it unless you want people to type "TLDR"  next to your post. It has good acting. The kids on the show are all likable. It can be very scary. It also has plot holes you can drive a truck through. For example, all of the parents, with the exception of Winona Ryder are AWOL.  I know parents of the '70s and 80's were not as helicopterish as now, but if their 12-year-old, didn't come home at night, they would have started looking.  But, you can't help to like a show where two characters, Max and Lucas, are making fun of Dustin by singing the theme of "Neverending Story" and Dustin flips them off.

"Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story":   Martin Scorsese's pseudo-documentary of Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Revue" in 1975.  I say "pseudo" because a lot of the material is a put on.  Bette Midler's husband appears as the director of the movie. Sharon Stone says she joined the tour. (She didn't.) This harks back to Dylan's beginnings when he told everybody he was a runaway that worked for the circus instead of the truth: a nice Jewish kid from Minnesota.  Still,  Scorsese manages to take "Renaldo and Clara", the four-hour movie Dylan made about the revue, and makes it watchable. ("Renaldo and Clara" is Bob awful.)  It is nice to see when Bob gave a crap.

"The Romanoffs":  My least favorite show I've seen streaming.  If you have ever wondered if Matthew Weiner can do a bad TV show, the answer is yes.  We gave up on it after two viewings.

"Forever":  Take two Saturday Night Live alumni and add a "Parks and Recreation" writer and you should get a fairly funny show.  You should. But you don't with "Forever".

"Dead To Me":  What happens when a weirdo moves in with the widow of the man she ran over? Hilarity ensues.   It's actually not bad. There is just a lot of swearing in this comedy.

"Schitt's Creek":   This is a Canadian version of "Green Acres".  There are times when the show is literally laugh out loud funny.

"Goliath":  Billy Bob Thorton plays a brilliant but down on his luck attorney. Are there other kind? If you like Billy Bob, you will like the first season of this show. Plus, it has Dwight Yoakam as the CEO of a Defense Contractor.  Southern accents abound in this show.  Season two of this show is depressing and gross.

"Bosch":  This is the most underrated show on any type of television.  A detective that doesn't follow the rules.  Where have we seen that before?  It is just a well-made show with a great cast.

Questions

I know I should really feel bad about it, but I missed both of The Democratic Party debates.

For one thing, they came on at 9:00 at night and that is very close to beddie-bye time here at Manis Manor. We have to get up early to milk the cows around here.

I also have no idea what an "Eric Swalwell" is or why that thing called "Eric Swalwell" is running for President.  (It sounds like a side effect from a prescription drug they advertise on TV: "If you develop Eric Swalwell, seek immediate medical attention")

I knew it would be basically Dump On Trump. That's okay,  I guess, but I'd rather watch something else.

Based on news reports after I noticed I was right. But I felt this strange desire to ask these candidates some question, too.

To Bernie Sanders:   We have a friend whose mother lives in New Zealand.  Her mother had to wait 10 months to have Cataract Surgery. Why is this system preferable to the one we have?

To All:  Besides ICE, is there any government department you would like to shut down?

To Kamala Harris:  Do you think we should go back to forced court-ordered busing?  If so, why? If not, why not?

To All:  If elected, would you be the head of The Democratic Party or will you let a 29-year-old bartender continue to set the agenda?

To Elizabeth Warren:  Why should the kid who went to technical school to become a plumber pay for the education of another kid that went to an Ivy League School and majored in Russian Literature?

To Joe Biden:  We've heard a lot about the 25 Amendment and how it could possibly be applied to President Trump.  Wouldn't a President Biden be likely to have the 25th Amendment applied also?

To Amy Klobuchar:  Did you ever pay for the undercoating to rust proof your cars in Minnesota or is that just something they show in the movies?

To Pete Buttigieg:  In 2004,  while running for Senate, Barack Obama said this about same-sex marriage "I’m a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”  Was the President a homophobe in 2004 or was he lying?

To All:   Do you believe that a "wall" or a barrier at the border of this county is immoral?  If so, why?

To All:  Do you believe in free speech, even if you do not agree with what is being said by the speaker?  If so, what, as President, will you do to protect the rights of those who express unpopular opinions on college campuses?

To All:  If a fetus survives an abortion, should the fetus be saved?

To Bill de Blasio:  Really?  You know everybody hates you, right?

I Was There

"They were unkempt, hairy, hedonistic, improvisational, analog, inefficient — anything but neatly calculated and Instagram-ready." - Jon Pareles

"There’s a notion in the minds of some that the 70s were a carefree time, cool and kitschy and fun and innocent, in a peculiar fashion. It was not. For one thing, there was peculiar fashion. For another - well, consider this... a brief against the nostalgia that inevitably attends any bygone time. Every era has its good points and regrettable trends, but for sheer idiocy, ugliness, meretricious music, televised banality and general malaise the 70s are unparalleled.

Trust me on this. I was there"  - James Lilkes

I was there, too. In the 70s. That magical time in which we actually thought wearing "leisure suits" made sense.  If you don't know what leisure suits are, consider yourself #blessed.  Just imagine something Hillary Clinton would wear except it was made for a man.  You had to buy a shirt to go with it. The shirt had to have a collar that was nine miles long.  Some of our dads would buy one but wear a tie with it, which sort of defeated the "leisure" purpose of it.

Technically, the '70s was from 1970 to 1979. But, really, it was much shorter than that. I believe the 70's actually started in 1973, around the time of The Watergate Senate Hearings. It ended on November 4, 1980, the day Ronald Reagan was elected President.

It was the decade that saw The Vietnam War come to an end. It was not so much as we lost Vietnam, it was just the outcome was what it always seemed it would be.

It was the decade we had three Presidents in three years.

The first one, Richard Nixon (stop me if you had heard this before) was a deeply talented and thoughtful politician that thought the truth was as malleable as clay.  The Watergate Scandal was the Mother of All Scandals and frankly dwarfs anything Trump could come up with. Nixon had a Vice President named Spiro Agnew. For real. Agnew had his own scandal dating back from the time he was the governor of Maryland. He resigned so he wouldn't be sent to jail.  Nixon selected Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader to replace Agnew. Then, about nine months later, Nixon resigned and Ford became President on my 15th birthday.  If you lived through this you know this is a very short summary.

Ford was different from Nixon in many ways, mainly because he appeared to have been born on the planet Earth.  He really wasn't a very good speaker and at times seemed like the President of The Kiwanis rather than President of The United States.  A former All-American center at Michigan, Ford was portrayed as an uncoordinated klutz.  Plus, and this is the truth, he survived two assassination attempts in the same month. The first was by a member of The Manson Family.  That's the way the '70s were. A member of The Manson Family could get close enough to the President of The United States to pull a handgun on him.

Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, who was the former governor of my home state of Georgia. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. He wasn't truth impaired like Nixon or a klutz like Ford. However, he turned the Bully Pulpit of the Presidency into just a regular Pulpit for Brother Jimmah. He lectured us about energy a lot. He was really concerned about the setting of your thermostat and not so much about lunatic theocrats taking over in Iran. To top everything off, he was attacked by a killer rabbit. This wasn't a "rumor" or an "urban legend". He told the Washington Press corps about the attack. On the record.

It was a time when you could buy a Pet Rock.  Someone brought theirs to school one time.  It was a small stone, in a box.  I'm not sure if you were supposed to name it.

As far as popular music goes, Elton John was the King, at least for a time.  He sang  "Rocketman, something, something, something here alone".  He also sang about Benny of "Benny And The Jets".  Benny (or "Ben-NAY" as Elton pronounced it) had "electric boobs".  No wonder we asked Candy and Ronny if they've seen them yet.

If it wasn't Elton, it was the Eagles. David Bowie was big, but let's face it, David Bowie was a couple of decades too early with his gender-fluid Ziggy Stardust mess.  Chicago (the band, not the city) was big at my high school.  My son once compared them to "The Backstreet Boys".

But the day the music died was when the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack came out.  It didn't exactly kill rock music, but it did lasting harm.  By the end of the decade, even Paul McCartney cut a disco song.

The beginning of the decade saw people willing to wait in line to see a movie because, well, you may not ever see it.  I know people that waited three hours to see "The Godfather", which was about Italian business practices.   I waited ninety minutes to see "Billy Jack".   To quote the great Ludlow Porch, Billy Jack was about a peace-loving guy that "loved to kick Republicans".

The biggest movie of the 70s was "Star Wars". You may have heard about it.  I saw "Star Wars" for free because of a bunch of kids from my high school worked at the theatre where it was showing. Yes, I used my connections to see "Star Wars".

In the 70s, you had to carry change around just in case you needed to use a pay phone. Our phone, now this is really wild, were connected to our house and came in one color: black.  If your parents were real tech savvy, they had a phone that had buttons on it.  North Georgia had one area code and I had only one phone number: 971-1904.

Cars were big-big enough to make babies in. Except for cars like "The Pinto" which Ford (the car company-not the President) placed the gas tanks in the back which made them rolling bombs.

The 70s were simply tacky. Over the next couple of months, I'm going to be reliving those thrilling days of yesteryear leading up to my big 60th birthday.  I'm happy to still be stayin' alive.

Try To Go

Two years ago at this time, I was knee-deep in reunion stuff.

If you remember, I was on the 40 year Class Reunion Committee of The Class of 1977 of Wheeler High School (Class Motto:  "Where The Leaders Of Tomorrow Are Looking Out The Windows Of Today").  I  became a part of the committee simply by showing up at the first committee meeting at "Come And Get It" (the actual name of the restaurant we met at).

I know we are not supposed to acknowledge the existence of Woody Allen or that at one time he was very funny, but he once said 80 percent of life is showing up.  That's how I got involved: I showed up.

The reunion was a lot of work and a lot of fun. However, there were some challenges along the way.

The Bad:  We had five class members die in the five months before the reunion. Only one of the class members had been seriously ill before death. Our buddy, Barry Suttle, died suddenly, without warning. Our Homecoming Queen committed suicide.

Additionally, we had two classmates who were in jail. One was not surprising. He seemed like an okay guy, but he also seemed like a guy that would break into your house and take your stereo.  The other guy was a total shock and is scheduled to get out of jail after serving ten years in the fall of 2019.

On top of that, we found out one of our classmates had, um, transitioned genders. The dude became a lady.  We found a picture of her on the internet and she looked like he did 40 years ago except with a rack.

We never found out when all of this change happened. She didn't come to the reunion.

She wasn't the only one.  We had several people that couldn't make it for one reason or another. Most had to do with long-planned vacations or events. Some would come out and tell you that there was nobody they wanted to see and that all the people there were stuck up. (Note:  in 70's lingo, "stuck up" meant people who thought they were better than you)

I'm sorry they felt this way. They missed some fun times.

We had a five-year reunion in 1982. It was at that reunion someone asked me if I had gotten laid yet. My answer:  Well, I live at home with my parents, I'm still in college, I go to Kennesaw, I'm majoring in history, I work at a convenience store, and I drive my dad's 1973 Lime Green Plymouth Scamp my brother's friend Rex Fortenberry nicknamed "The Snot Rod".  You tell me.

By the time the ten-year reunion came around, I was married (Yay!). I remember the band cut loose with "Johnny B Goode" and the whole class was shaking its groove thing. When the song ended, the whole class slowly walked off the floor. That's when I knew we were getting older.

The 20-year reunion had me walking up to the DJ and requesting a song. I walked back to my wife and said, "I've requested a song for you".  The song: "Brick House". I don't remember getting into trouble.

I showed up to the 30-year reunion in my goatee. It made me look older.  I shaved it off.

At each of the above reunions, we had a student speaker. At the 5-year, it was Steve Leary. Steve had hemophilia and died of AIDS due to a toxic transfusion a few years later.  Our class sponsor, Mr. Collier spoke at all of the reunions.  He couldn't attend our 40-year reunion. He has Alzheimer's.

I know everybody's high school experience wasn't the greatest in the world. I know people have moved on with their lives.

My son is having his 10-year reunion this year. I've told him to go. These are the people of your life, like it or not and they are intertwined with your life. They walked the same halls, looked out the same windows, and worried about the same silly things.

Up In Smoke

As I have mentioned before, I will be celebrating my 60th birthday this year.

I used to joke about being old. Now I am. I think.

Supposedly sixty is the new forty. I don't know who came up with that, probably somebody who just turned sixty.

But as you turn sixty, you start talking a lot about the past.

To me, the biggest difference between "back then" and "Now" is that "back then" everybody smoked cigarettes.

When I say everybody smoked cigarettes, I mean everybody.  Even preachers.

In Southern Evangelical terms, preachers were not supposed to smoke because the body is the temple of the Lord. It also had something to do with a holy rhyme we were given:  I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls that do.

But still, there were some denominations which didn't care if the preachers smoked or not. I know this makes me a hick, but it always bothered me to see a man of cloth smoking a cigarette.

Legend has it that a famous Baptist preacher, J.D. Gray, smoked cigars (or as my Uncle Jimmy called them:  "Cee-gars").   I guess it was okay because Brother J..D. was tall and he was funny.  That means a lot in some circles.

Everybody's parents smoked.  My parents smoked. My parents loved smoking. I think it was their hobby.

Old Man Manis smoked Winstons.  They tasted good like a cigarette should.  Sometimes he would walk a mile for a Camel.  He was not above a pack of Lucky Strikes every now and then. The pack had written on the bottom: "L.S.M.F.T". Translated: "Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco".

Inez usually shared whatever brand the old man was into, although she did eventually get into a brand called Doral.  One time she got really wild and got into Virginia Slims, which was a "woman's cigarette".  Steve Martin, that wild and crazy guy, said each Virginia Slims cigarette had breasts.

People smoked everywhere. At work. At restaurants. At bars. At stadiums. At church, except not during worship. But that few minutes before church, the good deacons would be standing around outside taking one last puff.

You could smoke in the hospital, except while performing surgery. Maybe. (Doctor: "Scapel". Nurse: "Scapel".  Doctor: "Pall Mell"  Nurse: "Pall Mell")

You could even smoke at school. My high school, Wheeler, had a designated area called "The Smokehole", which I wrote a best selling book about it and as luck would have it is still for sale.

You can't do that anymore. I'm not certain that it is legal to smoke on earth anymore.

On top of that, a carton of cigarettes cost, at Wal-Mart, $29.39. That's an expensive habit.

This has led to the creation of something known as Electronic Cigarettes or E-Cigarettes which "are battery-operated devices that people use to inhale an aerosol, which typically contains nicotine (though not always), flavorings, and other chemicals." 

It is better known as "vaping" and is considered "less harmful" because "a study found that some toxic substances have levels 9 to 450 times lower than in regular cigarette smoke".

It is also, generally, cheaper than smoking cigarettes. Clark Howard could probably vape for $387.00 a year if he used his Costco card.

Vaping is still rather new and the long term consequences haven't been determined. And it still looks kind of New Age-ish to see somebody walking around, sucking on a pen and then watching that person disappear in a cloud that smells like waffles.

I don't know what it is about smoking, but people just like it. John Prine says that when he gets to heaven he's "going to smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long".  He'll probably have to fight Old Man Manis and Inez first.

 

Goodbye, Grumpy

In September of 2012, Bryan Bundesen posted a picture of his sister's cat named Tarder Sauce. The cat looked like she was frowning. She was soon named "Grumpy Cat' and a thousand memes were born.

According to CNN, "Grumpy Cat garnered 1.5 million followers on Twitter, 2.4 million on Instagram and 8.5 million on Facebook.".  CNN also notes "She was basically the Kim Kardashian of house pets".  That's a terrible thing to say about a house pet.

Grumpy Cat was a published author. Just a guess, I don't think she actually wrote the book. I mean, I've never seen a cat send a text message much less write a book. In any event, Grumpy Cat's book hit number seven on The New York Times How-To-Do bestseller list.

I have written three books myself which are still available on Amazon. I've been outdone by a cat.

Grumpy Cat also met a lot of famous people. She met Stan Lee, the late, great founder of Marvel Comics, J-Lo, and Hulk Hogan.  By the way, my wife says she saw Hulk Hogan in a Ryan's Steakhouse one time so she and Grumpy Cat have something in common.

All I'm saying is that Grumpy Cat did pretty well for herself. Her owners dispute a Huffington Post report that says Grumpy Cat brought in $100 million in 2014. However, the owners did win a $710,000.00 in a copyright infringement case in 2018. Not bad, for a cat.

When Grumpy Cat died the other day, she received an obituary in The New York Times. I can't think of any other cat that got an obit in The Old Grey Lady.  Morris The Cat, maybe? (For you younger folks, Morris The Cat was a cat used in several years worth of cat food commercials and was sort of a '70's version of Grumpy Cat).

Here's how the newspaper of record reported on the death of Grumpy Cat.

"Grumpy Cat, the ubiquitous internet celebrity whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments, died in the arms of her “mommy” on Tuesday, her family said on Friday. She was 7. Her death was due to the Trump Administration along with complications from the passage of  Georgia's  Heartbeat bill and the Alabama abortion ban"

 Sorry, the last sentence I just made up. But, come on, "whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments"?  Isn't that just a little bit much?  She was a cat. Cats are very libertarian. They speak, or meow, for themselves.

Grumpy Cat died from complications of a urinary tract infection.  We are dealing with some of that now.

Our Grumpy Cat is named Gracie and she is 21 years old. You might remember her from a previous post I wrote several years ago. https://manisville.blogspot.com/2013/02/gracie.html

We got Gracie from a no-kill cat shelter for our son for his seventh birthday. Although she hasn't written any books and never had one meme created about her, she's been a valued if a not bossy member of the family.

She has a nasty urinary tract infection right now. We took her to the Vet a couple of weeks ago. We got a call.

The Vet said that Gracie had a mass on her lungs.  It looked like cancer and they wanted to send the x-rays off to a specialist.  The specialist said it was "calcification" and probably wasn't cancer. But, she still had that UTI and she received an antibiotic for it.

But for now, we are watching the slow decline of this little cat, who we have fed and taken care of for so many years.  One of my friends from high school noted that a third of my life has been spent with this cat.

Gracie mainly wants to sleep or sit in my lap and sleep.  I could have sworn she liked watching "Stranger Things" with us, but I know that is simply personification.  I think.

I would like to think that somewhere in that feline brain, Gracie realizes that she won a form of the Cat Lottery. You get all your meals taken care of and you don't have to worry about predators. But, you know, she's just thinking about her next meal and if that fat guy is ever going to sit down.

So, goodbye, Tarder Sauce. Gracie will see you soon. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.

No Place Like Home

My son and his wife moved into their new house last week.

Yes, my son is now one of us: those with a mortgage.  So, in a little while, he'll have something else: equity.  Even though there are positives to living a rental life:  you don't have to make the repairs yourself and if you live in an apartment you don't have to mow a yard, it doesn't beat having equity.

My wife and I lived in an apartment for three years.  I loved it. Didn't mow a yard once in that time. However, the apartment was flooded, twice.

There were the occasional loud parties. And my upstairs neighbors.

We lived on the ground floor and the neighbors on the second floor were newlyweds like we were.

Around two o'clock in the morning, usually on a Saturday or a Sunday, we would hear "Thud. Thud. Thud, Thud. Thud. THUDTHUDTHUD" followed by a giggle. Ah, young love.

Being the wise man I am, of course my son sought my advice when buying a house. I told him, "Never buy a house that has a mechanic's lien on it".  It is advice like that gets me the cool Father's Day presents.

When my wife and I bought our first home, it was in a subdivision being built by a builder that had hair like a professional surfer.  It was blonde and kind of shaggy.  That was my second bit of advice to my son:  Never buy a house from a builder that has blonde, shaggy hair.  I really should write a book about it.

We met him at the closing and we gave him the list of items we noticed for the "punch list". That is, things around the house that need to be completed or corrected. By law, the builder is responsible for corrections made on a newly built house.

One of the corrections on the punch list was on the walkway from the driveway to the front porch. It had a size 11 footprint in the concrete.*  Yes, I know, picky, picky, picky.

About a week or so after we moved in, the shelf in the closet of our bedroom fell because it was not screwed into studs, but simply screwed into the sheetrock.  I called the subdivision's superintendent and asked him to go and fix it.  I must say he did. That was the only thing he fixed.

Two weeks later, the builder declared bankruptcy and skipped town. He took the superintendent, who seemed like a well-meaning guy and the superintendent's sorry son-in-law who keyed my car (I asked him when they were going to fix something).  This winner was also a Peeping Tom that saw our next door neighbor's wife naked.

The hits just kept coming at that place.  We bought a corner lot and put the mailbox next to the driveway, which was another street, not the actual address street.  No mail.  Finally, I had to call the post office and spoke to the Post Master.

The Post Master said it was against the law to deliver the mail in the mailbox at my driveway. The mailbox would have to be moved to in front of the house for it to be legal.  I am not making this up.

I told the PostMaster that I lived at 460 Holt Road in Marietta, Georgia for 9 years and our mailbox was on Beckwith Trail.  The PostMaster said that my parents and their mailbox were in violation of the law.

If you can believe it, this conversation ended with both of us screaming at each other. The Post Master said, again, this is the truth because I am not making any of this up, the fire department would not be able to find my house in case of a fire if my mailbox stayed by my driveway.  I replied, in a loud voice, that I thought the flames shooting out of my house would be a big enough clue.

I moved the mailbox.

Which means the mail was finally delivered and then came the cherry on top of this new homeowners dessert nightmare: a mechanic's lien.

When builders skipped town, they don't pay their subcontractors. The subcontractors are forced to hire an attorney to slap liens on the houses in the subdivision that the builder didn't pay. The idea is to somehow pressure the builder (or somebody) to pay the subcontractors because nobody will buy a house that has a lien on it.

My mom was still alive back then and I told her about the mechanic's lien. She said, "Alan, how many times have I told you not to buy a house that has a mechanic's lien on it.?!"   Being the loving son, I said, "None" and then Mom insisted that she told me in some great real estate seminar that she taught one day when we went to Burger Chef to pick up lunch.

When we closed on the house, the house was free and clear of liens, which meant that the liens were exhausted.  So, the builder kept his money. The subcontractor didn't get any money. I got a lot of hassle and had to prove the house was free and clear of liens when we closed. Plus, I got a free real estate seminar from my mom.  The only person who got paid was the subcontractor's attorney.  Funny how that works out that way.

Eight years later we sold that house.  A few weeks after we moved, we went back to see one of our old neighbors.

The guy we sold the house to moved the mailbox to right beside the driveway.

I pray there is never a fire.

*This may come as a big surprise, but that footprint was still there when we moved from the house. It was a great conversation piece.