HasenPfeffer Incorporated

Nicholas Bradford.

 Wednesday Addams.

 Shirley Feeney.

They were with me in my living room, my lovable  family members, in upholstered furniture, smoking Pall Malls and drinking glasses of water with too many ice cubes in them from recycled Flintstone jelly jars..

(The latter describes my real family, not these goofy sitcom characters, although I think Pall Mall is the brand Wilma and Fred indulged in)

They were nonetheless family, with all their flaws and foibles, and now everyone is... gone.

  I think  these (morbid) thoughts every now and then..I mean, every day.

The only one left from "The Mary Tyler More Show" is Gordy the weatherman.

And Bess Lindstrom.

I always hated that old saw, that death comes in threes.  I always thought it was a random coincidence, that those who gave it any validity were just looking for answers to questions that can't be answered.

But three characters within a week from popular sitcoms from the 60's-80's???

 From an era when there were only three major  networks to chose from?  When viewers like me remember the lyrics from catchy, cheesy  theme songs, almost word for word?

Hoping there's a Hasenpfeffer  Incorporated in that Deluxe Apartment in the Sky that's looking to hire the six remaining Bradford kids( Six is Enough??) and a weird little braided girl who inspired a popular Netflix series decades later.

And of course, Laverne and Shirley, who are looking for pet friendly accommodations.

I'm betting Boo Boo Kitty is long gone as well.

The 67 lament

Thanks for all those shout outs, folks

'though many were generic

a lot of them had depth and wit..

..a bit more esoteric..

in olden days, we'd all get cards

they bore a ten-cent stamp

but now, there're Facebook's warm regards

Thanks! (friends from school and camp)

I loved each clever video..

each special birthday meme..

they give me hope..they help me cope

when Jim applies that cream

to help me with those aches and pains..

arthritis is a bummer...

and so's grey hair! It's everywhere!

Come check me out next summer..

I had a special birthday night..

much thanks to Jim and Evan..

It made me glad....

(It made me SAD!!)..

'cause..  F*CK!!!! I'M...SIXTY SEVEN????!!!

Blonde bomb

Still trying to see as many movies as possible before tomorrow's Oscar nominations come out.

Absolutely hated "Blonde".... because I didn't drop acid before I watched it on Netflix. 

Experts say Ana de Armas will get one of the five spots for Best Actress, but I'm not sure.

 If there's a shocker in the category, I think it may be Lesley Manville for the forgotten but enchanting "Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris." 

 It's a two-way race anyway, between Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett. 

 I can't imagine Cate not winning.

I also saw a great contender, this time in an actual theater.

"Women Talking" sounds like a very talky movie, and it is, but I'd rather hear snappy, smart dialogue any day than see  gratuitous car crashes.

It's a wonderful movie, set in a barn, and at first, it was a little hard to follow who was who, since everyone dressed alike and all had these complicated Mennonite names where my trick of coming up with mnemonics to remember characters' names wasn't even working.

Mennonites, mnemonics..tomato, to-mah-to. 

I'm nit-picking..the movie is a must see.

Both movies have a lot to say about how certain men view certain women, men who should know better.

Like religious leaders..and beloved Presidents.

This is the least predictable Oscar race I've seen in years, in all but one category,  but maybe my opinion will change after the SAG awards are given out.

Get your scorecards ready, movie fans!

And be prepared to lose your Oscar office pool.

Septa and the 70s: getting to Jerry’s place

The nonsense that takes up space in my memory bank.

Everyone who grew up in Philly was obsessed with the "Geator With the Heater"...everyone loved him, even 'those of us who couldn't afford to Make Memories in Margate.

While all my contemporaries were obsessed with Philly's legendary Geator,  Jerry Blavat, I was fantasizing about the rhyming  intellectual that  I personally idolized,  Dick Cavett.

They wanted their Jerry, I wanted Dick.

In the summer of 1972, I lied about my age, dragged two friends who also lied about their ages, and took the train to NYC to see a taping of "The Dick Cavett Show" for audience members who were eighteen and up.

I got to shake his hand and almost broke it, because as I was in the middle of  shaking it, the news was breaking that the taping would be cancelled because of the Democratic Convention.

That's what I get for lying...

Going to see Jerry Blavat was much easier.  There wasn't an age limit, and the taping of the show was in Philly.

I recall it took a few buses to get there with SEPTA, Philly's public transportation system.  You'd be on hold forever asking a SEPTA operator how to get from point A to point B, how many transfers you'd need.  You'd give them the very specific address of both your starting point and ending point, and I remember when my bestie Marla volunteered to map out our bus route.  

She called SEPTA and simply asked, "How do you get to "Jerry's Place?"

Without providing any address, but that was the name of his show, so she assumed that's all the info anyone would need.  

 I'm so glad those days of public transportation are behind me.  I'm certain everything is done via  an app these days, but I hated waiting on those  crowded   smoke filled platforms on freezing winter days.  I did love the smell of pizza wafting up to the elevated train..there's nothing like Philly comfort food!

Or Philly  music. 

Back to the topic at hand, Philly music.

I remember when Judi Trachtman almost missed the bus(she joined us one full stop after ours) but managed to see us and hop on.

I remember when Cathy Ripka left her loose-leaf notebook, filled with homework assignments, back at the last bus stop, and her boyfriend Michael Lennox volunteered to miss the taping and hike all the way back to the stop to try and find the book.

The things we did for love back then!

For comp tickets to a show!

For fun!

You didn't need to get lucky with 1iota, your only source  for getting tickets to a television studio these days, you just needed a wall phone and an address.

I can picture that studio now...packed with excited eighth graders like me, dressed alike, with unflattering center parts in our uninspired hair styles,  watching our idol do a dance that looked like a chicken was trained to do.

"Go Jerry, go!" we'd shout.

Betcha he's still going..

RIP, Jerry Blavat.

Bear in Paris

We finally finished watching "The Bear" and it deserves both an Emmy AND a Michelin star or two..or three..

It took us awhile to get into it..the camera shots are dizzying, the dialogue is frenetic, but it eventually won us over in our hearts, souls... and guts. 

There has to be a new category for "dramedy" which this is. 

 I'd  almost recommend you'd start with episode eight, which gives clarity to a complicated backstory, and has the most clever, unanticipated plot twist I've seen from anything in over a decade--plus a soliloquy by star Jeremy Allen White that will leave you breathless.

Don't literally do that..watch from Episode One, but stick with it, even when you think you've had your fill. When you can't fathom having another bite of anything, even just a spoonful of this salty and often bitter fare.

We also just finished Season Three of "Emily in Paris" where gourmet meals and a busy restaurant also play a major role in the story, but this fare was a bit more light--more easily digested--more apt to give you a sugar high an hour after viewing.

Now this I'd like to see:  Gabriel and Carmy working in the same kitchen.

Who wouldn't tune in for a rousing season of "Bear in Paris?"

Let’s go Brendan

It all began with boredom and gluttony and an unopened bag of fresh, salted sunflower seeds.

I needed those seeds and I needed both hands to handle them with..one to lick off the excess salt and one to discard the shells ( I tried to think of a creative way to recycle them but could not)into a sandwich-sized baggie.

As fellow seed addicts know, you can't just eat one and you can't just  eat forty--you will devour fifty to seventy percent of the bag's contents, which will take approximately ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes to accomplish, so then you have to think of how to can kill that time and not use your hands for anything BUT the shelling of freshly purchased, salted sunflower  seeds.

I decided to watch--or in this case--rewatch--a movie that's getting Oscar buzz, mostly because I wouldn't have to use the remote control while viewing a feature-length film without commercials.

Because of the excellent Golden Globes showing and a half dozen friends advising me to give "The Banshees of Inisherin" another go, I decided I'd give this "gruesome and excruciatingly boring" movie  one more chance to change my mind.

I had time to kill anyway.

These sunflower seeds weren't going to eat themselves.

And the movie, on the second viewing, was..fecking FABULOUS.

I think it's because I have watched some remarkable TV since we first watched this film over a month ago, (namely, "Derry Girls") that I have gotten used to Irish brogues and insane antics..

I was fully awake with this viewing(which I obviously wasn't the first time I saw it, since I obviously  missed so many crucial plot points) sating myself with sunflower seeds and salty dialogue.

NOW I get that the movie is an allegory..a sick but brilliant satire, and I finally get why the HFPA put it in the "Best Film, Musical or Comedy" category.

It is a demented fairy tale, not  for the weak at heart but for  the strong at deranged thinking.

How did I miss this the first time around?

It's basically about a character who is driven to madness by..small talk!!

I might never have chopped off all my fingers(especially the necessary middle one) but I've bitten my nails to the quick after enduring excruciating conversations about returning tea towels to Target.

About the new car part you bought..I wouldn't care about that if I were your fecking mechanic..don't corner me at a cocktail party with details.

I don't give a hoot that your Aunt Gladys is getting her basement remodeled because I never met her. 

 Talk about that with her kids. 

 I bet they hang up on you within a minute or two.

I'm still rooting for Brendan Fraser to win the Oscar, but I won't be disappointed if Colin Farrell does now.  

(Austin Butler can wait..he's brilliant as Elvis, but we just had a musical biopic win a few years back with Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury)

Loved the scenery, the Irishness, the hilarious and shocking dialogue, the terrific work of the entire ensemble, particularly Brendan Gleeson as an aspiring songwriter who'd rather lose a limb then be subjected to inane conversation.

(I related to THAT more  than I did to fellow foodie Brendan Frasier)

I can't believe I changed my mind so completely, but I did.

I'm giving this movie two (salty) thumbs up.

Unless someone responds to this post with drivel and excruciating nonsense.

Then there won't be any thumbs left to lift up:)

Jim.. not Gaffigan.. stop snoring..

Oh, you nasty,  miserable first week in January.

You are boring and self-centered.

 You torment us with unpredictable weather forecasts, making most of us opt to stay inside..where there's nothing new on TV.

No wonder I..er..sincere people..break so many of your damn   resolutions.

You are one cruel, selfish bitch, January!

My fellow Capricorns and Aquarians despise you.

And just when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, cursing the fact that YOU are my birth month, (because I am unlucky and/or because my parents got free accommodations at my great Aunt Minnie's rooming house in Atlantic City and conceived me in April of '55) you  do something... nice.

You take a blank calendar, a deadly dull weekend, and fill it up... with wonderful surprises!

We were  fortunate to obtain four last minute, third row center  tickets to see Jim Gaffigan's sold out concert  on Friday night, the first audience we've been in where we are not the youngest people in attendance. 

Gaffigan  talked about laziness and food obsessions and all his selfish  flaws and I hated him because..who can relate to that stuff?

Liars like me, that's who. 

He described HIS life, which is basically the male version of MY life,  and he was irreverent and phenomenal.

It was so great to have my beautiful niece join us, and regale us with this hilarious story:

I may no longer be watching Big Brother, but Big Brother is obviously  watching me.

She told me that a few times during the night, at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM, she gets an alert on her TV, a muffled message that she thought MIGHT sound a little like it came from me, her crazy Aunt Karen, but..how could that be possible???

She thought she recognized   that gravelly voice in her slumber,  a voice  that said, "Jim..stop snoring!" or  the more sadistic, "I've kicked you and I've begged you..if you don't stop snoring, I'm waking you up with an army bugle!"

My niece couldn't understand why she was hearing "Reveille" at that blasted hour,  until we remembered we once briefly shared an Amazon account. 

 She was indeed hearing whatever I was commanding Alexa to do, even from seventy five miles away.

I'm glad my commands to Alexa  were rated G.

It was a great night of laughter and camaraderie and spicy Mexican food.

And the calendar gods were just as generous the following night, as one of our favorite couples were available at the last minute to join us for the new Tom Hanks movie.

"A Man Called Otto" won't get Oscar love, because it's not boring and pretentious, but it SHOULD. 

 It should get some award buzz because it was a crowd pleaser and a tear jerker with more schmaltz than a bucket of  their chemical-flavored popcorn.

 Mariana Trevino is superb as the kindly neighbor Marisol.

Nobody does curmudgeon quite like Jim Gaffigan does, but Tom Hank's Otto gave him a run for the money.

 Put this on your movie list and get off my lawn.

It's pure entertainment, which is what we want our movies to be.

I guest if this post has a moral it would be this one:

"Never judge your Weekends by your Wednesdays."

I think that needs to go on a t-shirt or bumper sticker.

But I'm still mad at January.

A snarky start to 2023

oh wow..I get on Facebook this morning and absolutely nobody is sharing photos of fireworks and sparkly "2023" sunglasses and champagne flutes and Time Square countdown videos and photos of party guests indulging in tapas and tequila. 

Not a single photo of a beagle in a party hat or streamers of confetti and schmaltzy sentiments..

(This is the fastest I've ever broken my "I will cut down on all the snark this year" resolution)