Addiction

A Tale Of TV

Yeah, Another Blogger166 Comments

When I sat down to compose this piece about television, I was of the opinion that I’m a casual TV-viewer rather than a TV-viewing addict, seeing that I engage with the boob tube for an average of one and a half hours per day. That’s a fairly modest amount of time. As has happened frequently before, however, working on stories for Yeah, Another Blogger has led me, as if by magic, to discern the truth about things. Meaning, I now realize I’d go half-mad were my TV-watching privileges ever to be revoked. Anyway, what would I replace those hours with? Learning to crochet erotic hand puppets? Attempting to become one of the world’s best tiddlywinks players? Hell, I don’t even want to think about life without television, because I absolutely need TV. I’m addicted!

An ace dial-flipper, I regularly tune in to bits and pieces of news, sports, nature, cooking and late-night talk shows. I’m all by my lonesome when viewing the majority of those bits and pieces. What I catch the most of, by far, though, are scripted drama and comedy series. And I always watch them — in their entireties, unless we ditch them because we decide they suck — with my spouse Sandy. It’s one of our favorite things to do, for we have similar tastes in series fare. Let’s take a look at two shows that entertained Sandy and me recently.

Have you seen Adolescence, a British miniseries? It is a huge Netflix hit and has garnered a lot of media attention. Justifiably so. I place it in the pantheon of series, up there with The Queen’s Gambit, Anxious People, The Investigation and Call My Agent, to name but a few. Adolescence is really, really good.

Foremost among its explorations, Adolescence delves into the mind of Jamie Miller, a seemingly normal 13-year-old lad who, his insecurities enflamed by the taunts of a female classmate, loses all control and murders that young lady after meeting up with her one evening. The foul deed turns his life upside down and deeply damages the lives of the people who love him the most: his parents and older sister.

The show probes its subject matters with precision and honesty. The third episode hits especially hard. Set in the youth detention center where Jamie is being held, nearly all of its 52 minutes are devoted to a talk between Jamie and a court-appointed psychologist. The episode left Sandy and me shaken, so powerful and disturbing are Jamie’s words and actions as the session progresses. In my opinion, Adolescence is not to be missed. Its scripts are as tight as square knots, and each main member of the cast performs magnificently. First-time actor Owen Cooper, for example, is incredible as Jamie. Equally splendid is Stephen Graham, who not only plays Jamie’s father Eddie Miller, but co-created and co-wrote the production. What a talent he is. Adolescence, I believe, will stay in my mind for quite a while.

And then there’s the frothy Loot, a series that tips heavily into the wacky–as–hell category. Your life won’t be incomplete if you skip Loot, whose two seasons are available on Apple TV+. If you decide to tune in, however, you might end up digging it as much as Sandy and I did. It’s light, but it’s also refreshing.

Maya Rudolph shines in Loot, her comedic and dramatic talents fully on display. The show centers around her character, Molly Wells, who goes ballistic when she discovers her husband John has been cheating on her. She loses no time in divorcing him. The dissolution sends Molly reeling. She’s in pain. She’s also unimaginably wealthy, to the tune of over 100 billion American dollars, her share of the assets she and John, a tech industry genius, had jointly owned.

What to do with all that dough? Well, Molly, spoiled but possessing a heart of gold, doesn’t go for the usual approach of attempting to become even richer. Instead, she opts to give it all away, to groups and social causes that will better the human condition. The conduit for her generosity becomes the Wells Foundation, a do-good organization Molly founded while married but then totally forgot about until after the divorce came through.

I’m going to leave it at that, except to note that crazy situations have no trouble finding and enveloping Molly and her Wells Foundation employees, and that I laughed my ass off at some of the lines tossed out by the actors.

Till next time, boys and girls! If you have any series recommendations, please let me know. Sandy and I always are on the prowl for viewing options.

I’m Still Grooving, But Not As Much As I Used To

Yeah, Another Blogger162 Comments

For decades and decades, listening to music was a dominant activity in my life. The infatuation started in 1957, I think, when I was nine and a half or maybe ten years old. That year, by way of top-40 radio stations, rock ‘n roll and pop songs began to ring my bell vigorously. Wake Up Little Susie, by The Everly Brothers, for instance. I loved that tune. Still do. And I became totally captivated by Honeycomb. Sung by the little-remembered Jimmie Rodgers, it seemed as sweet as a warm, sunny day. I remember singing Honeycomb to myself over and over again, the first time, probably, I’d ever done such a thing. Music had hooked me, and the hook, as the months and years went by, penetrated deeper and deeper.

The Beatles sealed the deal. In 1964, their great songs and incredible charisma turned me into a music junkie. I couldn’t stop listening to Beatles creations and to loads of other songs on the radio and on the smattering of vinyl albums I’d accumulated. By the time I graduated from college, in 1969, my record collection was on the verge of becoming pretty substantial, and I’d become a bigger addict than ever. And the addiction grew even stronger one year later, as I began to attend concerts at an admirable pace.

I don’t know what the actual count is, but I’ve taken in well over 1,000 concerts in my life. Hell, in 2008 alone, determined to set a personal best I’d unlikely ever top, I went to 104 of them. And my collection of vinyl albums, CDs and cassette tapes is huge, numbering somewhere in the vicinity of 1,500 items.

But things have changed. Since 2020, I’ve gone to far fewer concerts annually than before (last year I caught nine). And during that time I’ve bought hardly any recorded music at all. Even more telling about my altered relationship, for these years, is this: I’ve listened to music at home for an average, I’d estimate, of an hour and a half per day. For many a moon, the figure had been two to three times higher.

So, what happened? Part of the answer is age-related. Meaning, I’m old as f*cking dirt, and with age has come what seems to be a need for longer periods of quiet. My mental and emotional systems function better when sounds aren’t around me all that much. Ergo, music plays at home on a fairly limited basis — in the evenings and on weekend mornings, primarily.

That said, I still adore going out to hear live music. But I’m not a fan of driving home late at night from a venue, unless the place is reasonably close to my home. Why? Because, as I just mentioned, I’m old as f*cking dirt. Alas, most of the venues I favor aren’t nearby. Which, along with other reasons not worth going into, accounts for my decreased concert-attending statistics.

Here’s the thing, however: When I listen to music intently, it can get to me the same as it did when I was younger and feeling my oats more frequently than I do these days. I haven’t lost any of my ability to groove mightily to rock, jazz, blues, R&B, soul, bossa nova and the other genres I’m keen on. I love to sync myself with the vibes and rhythms of strong, honest music, and let them carry me up, up and away.

Last year, my wife and I went to see Alejandro Escovedo, a rocker who has been at it for about 50 years. Criminally not as well-known as he should be, Alejandro is the total package: excellent songwriter, singer and guitar player. He remains at the top of his game. What a great show he and his band put on. I’m in the mood right now to be transported to the stratosphere, and to be enveloped by the take-no-prisoners powers of musicians who know how to deliver. Here, then, is the song titled John Conquest, the opening track on Alejandro’s latest album (Echo Dancing). Prepare yourself to be rocked righteously.

Two Million Cheez-Its And Counting

Yeah, Another Blogger20 Comments

Circa 1970 one of the greatest culinary stories of my life took root: My infatuation with Cheez-It crackers. Just about everyone knows Cheez-Its. They are crunchy and salty one-inch squares, baked amalgams of cheese, wheat flour, paprika, etc.  Back then there probably was only one variety of Cheez-Its. The divine original in other words, the sort I stuck with through the years till recently switching to the Extra Toasty style. Today there are more than 25 Cheez-It types to choose from, including Whole Grain, Cheddar Jack and Mozzarella. They take up a whole lot of shelf space in most supermarkets, so clearly I’m not alone in loving Its. As we’ve been told, great minds think alike.

Cheez-It crackers in two of its many varieties.
Cheez-It crackers in two of their many varieties.

And you know what? I’ve eaten 2,000,000 Cheez-It crackers in my life, give or take a couple hundred thousand. That’s a lot of individual food items going down the gullet. Have I ever eaten more separate pieces of anything over the years? I’ve given this plenty of thought. Who wouldn’t? The only thing I can come up with is grains of rice. Maybe I’ve consumed more than 2,000,000 grains of rice. I’ll investigate that subject one of these days and let an anxious world know the results. But on with the current story.

Two million Cheez-Its. How did I arrive at that figure? It wasn’t easy. The question is deep. And so, at a loss for determining a calculation method, I started where most sensible people would start. That is, I got in touch with someone much smarter than me. I had been in phone contact with Dr. Vinnie Bubalinsky before. He’s head of the mathematics department at St. Louis Institute of Advanced Abstract And Profound Research. I had called him from out of the blue a year ago, explaining that I was wondering about angels gyrating, not dancing, on the head of the average pin. How many might fit there? Vinnie hadn’t a clue, had very little response at all to tell you the truth. I was glad to learn that tough questions don’t necessarily evoke glib answers.

The other day I dialed Vinnie’s number again and told him about my Cheez-It quandary. Vinnie remembered me. “What the f – – k’s wrong with you?” he asked. Patiently. “Get a life, you loser,” he added before ending our conversation. I would if I knew how.

I was on my own. I grabbed my favorite pen, a load of blank paper and a calculator. And I began to work out the numbers. Leave it to the Cheez-It manufacturer to make things difficult. I mean, for decades Its had come in an understandable size, a one pound package. That’s the same as 16 ounces I’ll mention to those of you who left school a long time ago. But in 2008 the Its maker downsized the box to 13.7 ounces, a strange number to be sure. And last year they did it again. The standard Cheez-It box now contains 12.4 ounces of product.

And if all that weren’t bad enough, I had to throw into the equation the fact that my Its consumption habits have changed over time. For years and years I would down three or four pounds of Its weekly. I easily could knock off a box while watching a baseball game on television. But those heights are a distant memory. In the early aughts my intake of Its dropped by half. And it has continued to shrink. For the last few years I’ve eaten about three-quarters of a pound per week.

The tools that I used for my daunting calculations.
The tools that I used for my daunting calculations.

OK. I sat at the dining room table for hours, scribbling, sweating, cursing, punching wildly at calculator keys. The basic fact that I always held onto came from the side panel of each Cheez-It box: Twenty-seven Its weigh 30 grams. And 30 grams, I found out elsewhere, are the same as about 1.1 ounces. Needless to say, progress was slow. But things eventually started to come together, to make sense. Two million Cheez-It crackers was the approximate number that I had chewed and swallowed, I finally concluded. I picked up the phone and dialed Vinnie Bubalinsky’s number, ready to gloat. But I hung up after one ring. He will read about my triumph soon enough, no doubt, on this page. Vinnie, some losers never quit.

I’d like to put my Its consumption in perspective. We all agree that 2,000,000 Cheez-It crackers are a massive amount. In fact, if you placed them edge-to-edge on a flat and straight-as-an-arrow highway, they would extend for 31.5 miles, a very sizeable distance. But wait . . . there’s something I hadn’t thought about: In a car you’d cover those miles in less than half an hour. And yet it took me 45 years to eat the crackers. What does this mean? That cars are about 1,000,000 times faster than the human mouth? That highways inherently are inappropriate places to place Cheez-Its? I really don’t know. I’m confused. I need help.

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(Photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on a photo, a larger image will open)