Learning From Lucy

I am not making this up: Dave Barry has a new book out.

That's not news. Dave Barry is always releasing a book.  For a while, it seemed like he had a new book every six months. Dave Barry Slept Here. Dave Barry Talks Back. Dave Barry Does Japan. Dave Barry's Complete Guide To Guys. Dave Barry Forgets His Wallet, Dave Barry Does The Dishes, Dave Barry Explains His Haircut.

Okay, the last three titles I made up, but the point is Dave Barry has written a lot of Dave Barry books and Dave Barry sells a lot of books because Dave Barry is one of the funniest people on this planet.


Dave Barry's book is called Lessons From Lucy: The Simple Joys Of An Old Happy Dog.

The premise is this: Dave Barry is 70 years old (actually, he's 71). His dog, Lucy, is 10 years old, which means Lucy is the same age as Dave. (Note: for this to work, you have to accept the 1 dog year equals 7 human years theory. Therefore, a 10-year-old dog would be 70 years old because  10 x 7 = 70. I went to Cobb County Public Schools.  However, a quick check on something called "the internet" shows that it is not that simple. The breed and size of the dog are now used to determine the age equivalency of the dog. For example, a 10-year-old small dog would be 56 in "people" years. What's interesting Lucy is a fairly large dog and would be 66 under the new Dog Age math.


Dave Barry learns 7 lessons from Lucy.

1. Make New Friends (And Keep The Ones You Have)

2. Don't Stop Having Fun (And If You Have Stopped, Start Having Fun Again).

3. Pay Attention To The People You Love (Not Later, Right Now).

4  Let Go Of Your Anger, Unless It's About Something Really Important Which It Almost Never Is.

5. Try Not To Judge People By Their Looks And Don't Obsess Over Your Own.

6. Don't Let Your Happiness Depend On Things. They Don't Make You Truly Happy and You'll Never Have Enough Anyway.

7. Don't Lie Unless You Have a Really Good Reason Which You Probably Don't. 

Each of these lessons is presented with Dave Barry's explanation of how Lucy taught him the lesson.  Of course, each lesson is laugh out loud funny.  Nobody can write about a dog like Dave Barry.  In the next to last chapter, Dave Barry gives himself a grade and he's pretty tough on himself. Here are mine.

1. I give myself a B+ if you count people I meet using social media.  I've made several friends on Facebook with people I've never met in my life.  In person, I give myself a C-.  I'm not rude, but I have to "warm up" to new people. Plus, and this is a fact, some people are jerks.

2. B. It depends what you mean by having fun.  If you mean staying up all night, nope, I'm not having fun.  But if it means watching a good TV show, like Bosch, then I'm having fun.

3. A-  I work remotely at my house 5 days a week and my wife works 2-3 days a week at home It's like that line from the John Prine song  "If I get lost I can always find her standing right beside me in the rain."  I think I  pay attention to the people I love and as soon as I remember my wife's birthday, I'm going to buy her a present.


4. A-  I'm slow to anger mainly because my anger doesn't work because I either get red-faced (due to my hypertension) or I act like a rabid chihuahua. I've never heard the statement: "Don't tell Alan, it might make him mad".  Now, I get irritated and ticked off. But not angry.


5. C-  I judge people by the way they look.  For example, if a guy has multiple face tattoos, gages, and a nose ring, I tend to believe he's not a neurologist. I also judge people, if they are from Cobb County like me, where they went to high school. I held a prejudice against one of my son's football coaches because he went to Sprayberry High School, which was Red Neck Central when I was in high school.  I might have some work to do.

6.  B+  For a center-right Republican voting almost old man, I'm not very materialistic.  I just traded up my TV set from a tube set I bought in 2002 to a snazzy smart flat screen tv. That's how I know Bosch (a show recommended to me by a Facebook friend I've never met) is such a good show. But, and this is the truth, I generally don't care what other people have.

7  B-   I generally do not lie and I don't go around telling what I know to be untrue.  But, I always don't say what I think.  My family tree has a lot of people proud of the fact "they said what was on their mind".  I've found, during my not as long of a life as Dave Barry, people really don't care what is on my mind because they are too busy telling me what's on their mind.

In Lessons From Lucy,  Dave Barry has written another great Dave Barry book and you should buy it.  I am not making this up.

My Advice To Newlyweds

We went to what will probably be our last wedding for a while.

You know how it is. When you are young, it seems like you are going to a wedding every other weekend.

There was one Saturday we had two weddings. We had to go to both.  For real.

One, in the afternoon, was when my sister-in-law married my other brother-in-law named Bill. My wife was the Matron of Honor.

The other, which was in the evening, was a couple who broke their necks (figuratively) coming to ours.

Oh yeah, it was on my 27th birthday.

I doubt I could do two weddings on the same day anymore.  I'm not sure I could do two weddings in the same year.

For the past couple of years, we've been going to our friend's children's weddings.  The one yesterday was the youngest child of a friend of ours.  We went to his brother's and sister's weddings. Most of that young man's friends are friends of ours and we went to their weddings.  I think it is the last of the bunch.

The Groom is a tall, handsome lad. The Bride is a petite, beautiful young lady.

As I watched them exchange vows, I thought of this line from John Prine:

"Love gives, love takes.
 It takes a lot of lucky breaks."

In this case, it was very true. The Bride, just ten years ago, was in a Nicaragua orphanage.  As a teenager, she was adopted by an American couple that just happened to live in Woodstock, Georgia. They happened to be involved in the church. The Bride shares their faith and she just happened to meet The Groom, who happens to share the same faith.

It takes a lot of lucky breaks.

Speaking of lucky breaks, this wedding was a day after our 33rd wedding anniversary.

When I was single, I never thought I'd be married 33 minutes, much less 33 years.

33 years is a long time. It was so long ago (how....long...ago....was....it?), nobody had ever heard of Bill Clinton, much less of Hillary Clinton. It was so long ago, Donald Trump was still married to his first wife.  It was so long ago, American's favorite dad was Bill Cosby.

Things have changed. Back then, you still had pay phones.  Nobody had computers in their homes unless they were super rich or a super nerd.

Now I have friends who married around the same time.  Some of their marriages lasted. Some of theirs didn't.  Some of them have married multiple times, with the same results. I have learned some lessons from all of these marriages, including my own, and I have formulated my Keys to a Long Lasting Marriage.

1. Do not have sex with other people.

2. Do not be a jerk.

3. Try to listen.  The proudest day of my marriage is one time my wife was telling me something as I was attempting to fill my plate in a buffet line.  For those of you that know me, multi-tasking is something  (walking, chewing gum)  I am only marginal at best.  She was pregnant with our son at the time and occasionally was more sensitive than usual. She suddenly accused me of not listening to a word she said.  My response?  I quoted what she just said word for word. The truth?  Boy, I was lucky I was listening to her that time.

4. Have specific duties in the marriage.  For example, my wife handles "the books".  I'm just eye candy.

5.  Remember your spouse is a human, too. They have feelings and you do not have the right to hurt their feelings.

6.  Take your spouse seriously, but do not take yourself seriously.

Teaching Uncle Joe New Tricks

When we last looked at The Democratic Party, there was only, oh, 485 people running for the party's Presidential nomination.

This included California Senator Kamala Harris who proudly exclaimed to Charlamagne Tha God (Remember when politicians proudly exclaimed things to Larry King?) that she smoked marijuana in college while she was listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac. It must have been some powerful weed because neither Snoop Dogg or Tupac had albums out while Harris was in college.

It includes Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth "High Cheek Bones" Warren, who I think we have all concluded is not of Native American ancestry.

It includes former Congressman Robert Frances "Beto" O'Rourke who is basing his candidacy on the fact that he can't beat Ted Cruz.

The candidate getting the most buzz this month is Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg happens to be a Navy veteran and happens to be the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, which happens to be a mid-sized Midwestern town that happens to be the home of Notre Dame University. Until now, being the mayor of South Bend, Indiana would not be enough for a candidate to be taken seriously in the Democratic Primary. However, Buttigieg, who happens to be white, also happens to be gay. I guess that is enough for the Democratic base.

Of course, how could you forget Bernie Sanders?  Bernie is still out there, yelling like he wants you to get off his lawn because, let's face it, Bernie is 300 years old.

The biggest name, that hasn't announced yet, is former Vice President Joe Biden.

Like Sanders, Biden is old. How old do you ask?  When Biden was first elected as a Senator from the great state of Delaware, I was in the eighth grade at East Cobb Junior High School.

Yes, Biden has been around a long time. In fact, he has run for President two times before. Once, in 1988, he was considered a leading contender when it was discovered he gave a speech that was originally given by Neil Kinnock, who was the bass guitarist for The Kinks.

Yikes, Neil Kinnock was a British Labour Leader ( in England they spell "Labor" with a "u" because it makes them look snooty).  Biden really liked the speech.

 "During an event at the Iowa State Fair, Biden mimicked entire portions of Kinnock's speech from earlier in the year. At one moment, Biden repeated the line that he was the first "in a thousand generations" to graduate from college, gesturing to his wife in the exact same way Kinnock did  while also saying the same line about her education and lineage."

Then in classic Joe Biden style: "Biden would later acknowledge that he, in fact, did have relatives who attended college, directly contrasting the Kinnock lines." 

This caused Biden to drop out of the 1988 race, with the Democratic nomination being won by Neil Kinnock Governor Michael Dukakis, who if I remember right, had the charisma of cottage cheese.

All of this goes to show Biden has a problem with running his mouth. He made some odd comments in 2007 when he ran against Barack Obama. When Obama selected Biden to be his running mate, Biden said: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.”   What is great about this comment is that he got two historical facts right. One, the stock market did crash. Two, there was a person named Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Other than that, nothing about the comment is accurate because the crash happened in 1929 and Roosevelt wasn't President. Television was also not around for Roosevelt to get on.

He was our Vice President during the Obama years and basically, he was okay. He said Republicans wanted to put minorities in chains. He also said Obama care was a "big (really bad word) deal". Besides that, Biden was just your Uncle Joe.

However, Uncle Joe had a habit of massaging women's shoulders, giving them hugs, and smelling their hair.  Now all of this was done out in the public at swearing-ins and campaign rallies. But that was back in the wild and crazy age of 2014.

Now, it is 2019 and we are a year and a half into the #MeToo movement. A man can't just go around sticking his nose in a woman's hairdo, doesn't matter whose Vice President he was. Uncle Joe has gotten in trouble with the "conversation police"-the people who always say we ought to have a "conversation" about a topic but what they really want is to lecture and hector.

So, Uncle Joe has released a Twitter video, like the hip kids, stating that he "gets it" and will now allow women their own personal space.

Of course, President Trump responded with his usual grace and charm by retweeting a meme that shows Joe Biden coming up from behind to sniff Joe Biden's hair and giving Joe Biden a shoulder massage during Joe Biden's statement. New York magazine quickly advised its readers that "The leader of the Free World tweeted a doctored video of Joe Biden fondling himself".

For a second I thought it was real, thanks to New York magazine for letting me know the video was "doctored",

This is going to be a fun couple of years.

 

The Waste Of Time

It is time, once again, to restate my opinion of our President, Donald J. Trump.

Not a fan.

I wrote two posts, one in 2011 and one in 2015 stating he would never be the President of The United States.  Hey, even Jeanne Dixon would have missed that one.

At the start of the 2016 Republican primary, I was offended by Trump's comments on John McCain. Trump repeated a Chris Rock joke*, which was stupid when Chris Rock said it**, but it was double-stupid when it came out of Trump's mouth***.  A man who received five deferments for bone spurs should never mock the service of someone who was a POW.

That was the start of my total bewilderment with my fellow conservatives when it came to Trump. It would take all day to list all of the things Trump has said that are just plain weird.

For the first time in my life, I did not vote for the Republican nominee.

I voted for Gary Whatshisname, the former governor of New Mexico.****

I expected Trump to lose and I expected to be on the receiving end of the blame cast by the Trumpsters. But, as they say, God said HA!  Trump defeated Hillary Clinton because Trump ran the only game he could to win: win in the electorial college and not just the major cities.

Soon I was on the receiving end of the blame cast by The Resistance: those people who think life is a comic book. In one little scrum on Facebook, someone told me my vote for Gary Whatshisname caused Clinton to lose Wisconsin, which was a cute little trick considering I don't live in Wisconsin.

So for the past couple of years, if I said Trump did something good, I would be called just another one of those MAGA hat people who is probably a Nazi.  If I said Trump did something bad, I would be called another one of those snowflake Resistance people who scream at the sky.

Now is the time to give you my opinion about Special Counsel Mueller's report on Russian Collusion in the 2016 campaign.

It was a waste of time.

The idea that Donald J. Trump would "collude" with The Russians is laughable. Trump and his campaign team could barely collude with itself, much less a foreign government. Chris Christie compares Trump's campaign to a salesman whose office is in the trunk of his car.

Former FBI director Robert Mueller was selected as the Special Counsel to see if there was Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election. So far, all we've heard about was the special Facebook memes the Russians purchased  that have the power to turn Obama voters into Trump supporters.

While Mueller has indicted several Trump associates, they are for alleged crimes that are unrelated to Russian collusion.

So after almost two years, Mueller ended his investigation and there will be no further charges brought up by the Special Counsel.

Trump won again.

The problem with the Mueller investigation is that it was a witch hunt in this sense: the purpose of the investigation was to find something-almost anything-to impeach Trump over. After this came up bumpkis, the Democrats are left hoping for the Southern District of New York to do something,

Here's an idea. Instead of wasting all of that money on "investigations" how about the Democrats really think about why Donald Trump appeals to some voters. Here's a hint: it is not a good idea to insult them or make fun of them. 

* "He a war hero that got captured. There's a lot of guys in jail that got captured. I don't want to vote for nobody that got captured. I wanna vote for the [expletive] that got away"

** In fairness to Chris Rock, he wrote this when McCain died:  "R.I.P senator John McCain. Definitely a man of principle. Ran against Obama in 2008 and never made it racial . Took the high road the whole time . War hero served his country well. God bless."

*** “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” 

**** I know his name. It was Gary Johnson. He was the Republican party reptile that was really into the wacky tobakky.  He didn't know anything about Aleppo. That's okay, neither did I.  

Junior Varsity

"Teachers teach that knowledge waits can lead to a hundred-dollar plates" (Bob Dylan)

It is confession time. I must confess I gave the admission staff at Georgia Southern University a ten dollar Wal-Mart gift card in order that my son would be accepted into the school and taught how to drink Fireball Whiskey.

I 'm joking.  My son earned his way into Georgia Southern the old fashion way. He filled out a form online.

This was the week we found out that Felicity Hoffman was married to William H. Macy.  We also found out that Lori Laughlin apparently has a lot of disposable income because she paid somebody $500K to get her daughter into the University of Southern California. In true kid fashion, the daughter posted a YouTube video saying "I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know."

Laughlin would have been better off just handing the $500k to her daughter.

Yes, the college admission bribery scandal is here and it will not go away any time soon.

Why?  Because most middle-class people try to send their kids to college because we have bought, with good reason, that a college degree is your ticket for success. And it is, but it is not the only ticket for success. Hard work, doing a good job, and (the easiest) just showing up are all tickets for success.

True story. I was working a temp job one time. I was hired full time because they said: "you show up".

It is going to be an issue because nobody really knows what it takes to be admitted to college. I defy anyone to give me a clear explanation on how to be accepted into the class of 2023 at the University of Georgia. Good luck.

It is going to be an issue because admission to "elite colleges" are not on academic merit. If it were, Asian-Americans would be 43 percent of the student population at Harvard University (by Harvard's own estimate) instead of 18 percent.

No, admission is a smorgasbord with money, legacy, and yes, a student's race given "points" or "weights" to allow the university to create a utopia of a  "diverse" (racial, but not political) community of individuals. Heather McDonald in The City Journal says, "In fact, admissions officers are simply allocating a scarce resource based on their own prejudices and inclinations".

It is going to be an issue because it doesn't seem like the graduates of these "elite" colleges are all that "elite" if you catch my drift. Do I have to name all of the Ivy League graduates who act like they have never stepped inside of a classroom?

It is somewhat of a cliche but some of the brightest people I know didn't go to "elite" colleges. I have a friend that went to Oklahoma State and he's one of the smartest individuals I ever met.   I graduated from college, my wife never went. Guess who does the checkbook for the family.


We have this debate over the grades of various politicians over the years. We can't see Donald Trump's grades but we never saw Barack Obama's either. My question is why do we care what grade a 20-year-old made in Western Lit?   Personally, I don't care if Bernie Sanders made straight A's, I'm not going to ever vote for him.

It is going to be an issue because it confirms what we thought to begin with:  College is somewhat of a scam.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to become a Democrat.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to party.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to do the least amount of work for the maximum amount of profit, which I admit is a pretty good skill.

College is all about making money for the college. That's why they advertise.  That's why they don't pay their best marketers:  football and basketball players.  That's why it costs so much.  It costs $67,580.00 a year to send a student to Harvard.  If your family makes under $65,000.00 they will "allow" a student to attend for free.  If your family makes $66,000.00, too bad, Y'all have to pick up the full freight.

We are going to be talking about this for a long time because it is about gaming the system.

This is why Elizabeth Warren will never be President.  She wasn't going around yapping about her Native American background because it was an interesting fun fact about her. No, it helped in employment, pure and simple.

People know that a piece of paper showing you've graduated from a fancy-schmancy school ensures you have a leg up on your competition. A graduate from Harvard will have an easier time (theoretically) finding employment than someone from Kennesaw State.  That's just a fact.

College has to change from being "a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense".  

In 2007, seniors at Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Duke, and UC-Berkely scored lower on an easy test of  American history than they did when they took the same test as freshmen.  If that doesn't tell you why socialism is making a comeback, I don't know what will.

It all reminds me of something that happened to Ronald Reagan in the '60s.  He was in Washington, DC and some campus radicals recognized him and began to surround his car.  They started shouting: "WE ARE THE FUTURE".  Reagan asked an aide for a pen and paper. He wrote "I WILL SELL MY BONDS" and showed it to the radicals.

If this doesn't improve, we all might want to sell our bonds.

Come On Bill

I've watched Bill Maher, off and on, for about 24 years.

I used to watch his first show, "Politically Incorrect" when it was on Comedy Central.  Comedy Central was so awesome back then. "Mystery Science Theatre 3000"  was on three times a week and there was a great Dana Carvey stand up special they used to air a lot.

Maher is a practitioner of political humor, which is a little dicey comedy-wise. For one thing, it becomes almost immediately dated as soon as the joke leaves the comedian's mouth. Hey, what would happen if Eisenhower died and Nixon became President? What about that Midnight Basketball?  Newt Gingrich?  What type of name is that for a Speaker of The House?

It has to be delivered evenly also.  Bob Hope used to joke about Democrats and Republicans alike. Unfortunately, "Saturday Night Live" seems to have forgotten this. Granted, President Orange gives them a HUGE target, but there's absolutely no joy in SNL's political work in the past few years.

Maher's "Politically Incorrect" has morphed into "Real Time With Bill Maher" on HBO which means Maher can use dirty words in his monologues and interviews.

The few times I've seen "Real Time", I've noticed it kind of mimics the host. Sometimes it is funny and clever. Sometimes it is mean and nasty. Sometimes it is right and sometimes it is wrong.

A few weeks ago, Maher had a segment on his show in which he was discussing Amazon HQ2 and its tabling of the moving half of HQ2 to Long Island City in Queens.  If you followed the story, the idea of bringing a lot of jobs to this part of Gotham somehow did not agree with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even though it was not a part of her district.  This caused Amazon to split from New York and now they are looking for another place to put HQ2.

Maher said Amazon shouldn't have tried to go to New York in the first place, but instead, should have tried to "turn Nebraska into the next Silicon Valley.”  Maher went on to say, “We have a problem in America called spacial-geographic inequality, which means that the most affluent and educated people are clustered in just a few cities."  My inference is that "few cities" are New York, LA, Chicago, and San Francisco. My guess is the "few cities" do not include Huntsville, Alabama which has the second largest research and technology park in the country. It is also ranked in the Top 25 of the most educated cities in the country. It probably doesn't rank with Mr. Maher 'cause they talk real funny down there.

Amazon's founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos is "worth $130 billion" so he should "take one for the team", and put the HQ2 in someplace that has been left behind.  If Amazon doesn't, the "red" states are "going to keep getting angrier and crazier”, says Maher.

Maher says  “There are two Americas. We have chef Wolfgang Puck, they have Chef Boyardee,” he continued. “Our roofs have solar panels, theirs have last year’s Christmas lights. We’ve got legal bud, they’ve got Bud. The flyover states have become the passed-over states. That’s why red state voters are so pissed off. They don’t hate us, they want to be us. They want to go to the party.”
  
This explains everything. We want to be like Bill Maher.


He said this would happen if West Virginia got HQ2: "People get better jobs that don’t give them black lung,”  From there on, the hillbillies meet people of different races, backgrounds, and sexual orientations. Soon, the wacky tobaccky is legal and they are teaching science again.  West Virginia turns in to California.

If only HQ2 had come to Georgia. We could have gotten those new-fangled things I've seen on the internets called shoes.  Maybe they would help my feet not to stink so much.

Let's be clear exactly who Maher is talking about: Trump voters. Everybody in a state that went for Trump is a mouth-breathing redneck that needs some infusion of that good ole Gospel liberalism.

Maher is the worst evangelist ever.

His basic point about HQ2 is correct.  Instead of trying to please the myriad of interest groups you have to please in New York, Amazon could have gone to Youngstown, Ohio and found a very hospitable welcome

But come on, Bill. The answer is not blowing in the wind because it is very simple. People in "the red states" are mad because people like Maher think they are "better" simply because they live in a different Zip Code
.
So, you can have Wolfgang Puck. We have Chick-fil-A.  There are three in a three-mile radius of my house.

Blow Up Your TV

We did it!

We finally upgraded from our old, out of date, obsolete, antiquated, ancient, antediluvian, antique, dated, dinosaur tube TV set to a brand spanking new Smart TV.

I remember the time when the TV set was an actual dumb piece of furniture and had to be delivered by two men. Some TV sets had stereos included!

It may come as a surprise to you that the humble Manis family had one of the first COLOR TV sets in Beverly Hills. (Our subdivision in East Cobb not the city in California.)

You would not believe what a big deal they made out of COLOR TVs. You could see "Gomer Pyle, USMC" in COLOR!  (Like it would have made a difference.)

Now we were not pretentious. We had a simple COLOR TV, not one of those monstrosities that had the stereo included which had to be delivered by a crane. Nope, we had a simple COLOR TV.

It came in handy when I made my television debut on "The Popeye Club" as "kid in white shirt sitting in the third row."

When it comes to children's television, I rank "The Popeye Club" as number one because:  it was a local Atlanta show and they didn't try to teach kids to become Democrats.  It was just a guy (Officer Don) and a dragon (Orville, who was green). Office Don would have the kids play some games like "The Ooey-Gooey Bag" and watch Popeye cartoons. It was great.

You actually had to "turn the channel" to find something to watch. In the Atlanta area, you had the choice of 2. 5, or 11. If you thought you were better than everyone else, you could turn the channel to channel 8, which was the "educational channel".

Having a color TVwas a big deal because in a few years you could watch "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In".  Kids today have no idea how big this show was and how much parents hated it.  It was dancing, corny jokes and catchphrases like "Here comes the judge", "Very interesting", and "Sock it to me"

It may surprise you that Marion and Inez (my parents) were not too keen on "Laugh-In".  Mom didn't like what she called "silliness".  My dad thought everybody associated with "Laugh-In" came from another planet, if not from another solar system.

So when "Laugh-In"  was on, the COLOR TV set was on the show God wanted us to watch: "Gunsmoke". That meant I had to watch "Laugh-In" on the old black and white set in my bedroom. I remember this one particular skit:

Ugly Lady (sitting on a park bench)

Dirty Old Man (walks up and sits next to the Ugly Lady):  "Say, do you believe in the hereafter?"

Ugly Lady: "I most certainly do"

Dirty Old Man:  "Good. Now you know what I'm here after."

Ugly Lady (hits Dirty Old Man repeatedly with her purse).

You can't imagine how funny that was in 1970.

All through the years, I have followed the changes in television.  First, it was cable. You went from five channels to four hundred, with half of them being either Spanish channels, Shopping channels, or preacher holding microphone channels.

Then it was VCR. You rented VCR tapes at a store, usually a Blockbuster. I can't tell you how many times I have yelled at a pimple faced kid about charging me a late fee for a return and having him remove the fee. For some reason, when I got home I would remember that I did return that movie late.

Time marches on and soon Blockbuster only rented DVDs and you had to buy a DVD player. which I did.

Then, God and his mercy provided something called On Demand for your cable package and you no longer had to go to Blockbuster to rent a DVD.

Now there is something called "streaming" and don't ask me to explain it. There are services like Netflix and Amazon Prime which streams movies, old TV shows, and original programs via a "Smart TV" which is the type of TV we bought.

We have already watched the two seasons of  "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" on Amazon Prime. It is about a young divorcee who stumbles into becoming a stand-up comic in the late '50s. It is a very funny show. It has several historical lapses, like having Bob Newhart becoming famous two years before he became famous and people dropping F-bomb like they were in a Martin Scorsese movie.

We have also finished the first season of "Stranger Things" on Netflix.  I know, 2016 called and it is looking for its Pokemon Go.

I can't describe what "Stranger Things" is about except it is about some kids on bicycles and monsters. It is sort of like "Twin Peaks" but without the dancing midgets. I liked "Stranger Things'.

I  paid to have the store where I bought the Smart TV to come out and install it in my house. I was pretty sure if I attempted it, I would somehow set the house on fire.

They sent only one man. He set it up in 30 minutes. He didn't even bring a crane.