My friend and colleague, Lynn Gerlach, recently posted a most enjoyable article in her Speakeasy Blog entitled Has Fiction No Place in Our lives? (you can read it here). She speaks of the wonder and enjoyment those of us who are “of an age” experienced as youngsters watching those great television shows back in the 1950s. Unbeknownst to us, we were, of course, witnessing the birth of an industry. In fact, prior to 1947, U.S. households with television sets could be measured in the thousands. But, by the late 1990’s, 98% of all homes had at least one. Fast forward to the current era and the introduction of cable and satellite and, as she notes, we have programing coming out our ears.

Continue “The vast wasteland”

A couple of nights ago, while biding my time until weeknight baseball comes back around (opening day: April 2), I found myself clicking through my 140 TV channels only to end up back at my usual seven p.m. default – The Wheel of Fortune, or simply “Wheel”, to which it is referred by its more avid followers. This simple game show, which draws heavily on the word-puzzle crowd (myself included – I do at least two crosswords most days, especially when there’s no baseball on TV), is one of the masterful creations of Merv Griffin, who also gave us Jeopardy. The show premiered in 1964 with Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford as the original hosts and Pat Sajak and Vanna White taking over the controls in 1983.

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I feel fortunate to have grown up in a rural environment. Behind our hilltop home in Southwestern Michigan my father owned twenty acres of rolling farmland where each spring he would plant fields of corn or wheat until the Feds offered to pay him NOT to plant fields of corn or wheat (it was a government thing, naturally). And just beyond those farmlands to the south was a vast expanse of virgin forest.

When not otherwise engaged, my younger brother and I and, oftentimes, our neighborhood friends, all accompanied by any number of family dogs, would spend countless hours entertaining ourselves in those woods. In fact, it was not uncommon for us to spend all day out there: picking wildflowers for Mom, playing hide and seek, building forts, chopping down trees, killing small animals, you name it.

Continue “Woods, campfires and dogs”

I must admit, following the conclusion of the Cubs’ World Series’ 7^th game victory this past November, my appetite for viewing baseball games was completely sated: As you may recall, the game went ten innings and lasted nearly four-and-a-half hours. It was reminiscent of how I feel shortly after finishing the last bite of that last piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day – I couldn’t possibly ever eat another bite. And then six p.m. rolls around and its deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say. And so it goes for baseball, as we impatiently count off the days till the opener on April 2^nd.

I hate this time of year for weeknight TV viewing: pretty much nothing on the tube but basketball. Maybe a soccer match from somewhere or other (soccer’s a sport, right?). And airings of the earliest stages of the golf season. But I refuse to watch golf this early in the year. Doing so disrupts my circadian rhythms and can lead to Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression caused by imbalanced serotonin levels (this condition is also caused by living in Michigan in the winter, which typically runs from early September through June). Golf doesn’t really start until Pebble Beach as far as I’m concerned.

Continue “Batter up!”

I have used a charcoal grill for my entire adult life, at least during those years when I had some place to store a grill when not in use. I long ago convinced myself that my grilled entree’s taste better when cooked over charcoal than when cooked over a blue, propane flame. In fact, I have convinced myself that it is so much better that it’s worth screwing around with all that ash removal and the setting of lit matches to the jet fuel that is required to get it started. My son went to the dark side several years ago, buying a huge, stainless steel gas grill. His barbecue tastes pretty good. I may not be holding out much longer, but I have not yet turned that corner.

Continue “Turning corners”