Vital Viewing (Tick Tock, Tick Tock Edition)

Time. There just doesn't seem to be enough of it. Not time enough to do the things we want to do, like waste it, because we're spending so much time on things we don't want to do, like making productive use of it. Interestingly, I've been told that for some people, while they agree that they never seem to have enough time, it's somehow for the opposite reason of what I just stated.  If you happen to be one of those unusual individuals, perhaps the following video can offer some helpful hints:

Didja hear that? TV, computers, and mobile devices can be distractions when not used for productive purposes. Let me think. This blog can be found on two of those three devices. Well...FUCK THAT SHIT!

Besides...

...you really want to put a major corporation out of business? Remember, one person's distraction is another person's bread-and-butter.

Furthermore, there's one distraction that the video didn't mention. I hesitate to bring it up myself as I have no first hand experience, but it's my understanding that...

...the perpetuation of the...

...species can be a tad time-consuming.

Perhaps Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde can explain it better than I can:
 

They're a Hollywood power couple. You'd think they could afford nannies.

Nevertheless, for the Hollywood-less, powerless rest of us, their point is well-taken. So much demands on our time, both at work and at home, when will it ever...

...end?

A man by the name of Burgess Meredith once saw a bright side to all of this:

That Rod Serling, always with the I-told-you-sos. As for Mr. Meredith, he'll find enough time to be both a Gotham City criminal and a grizzled fight trainer in Philadelphia.

Now, I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Time is money". Well, maybe that's the answer. Time a commodity that can be bought and sold:

Can you buy stock in that company? It would give a whole new meaning to the word timeshares.

As you probably guessed by the both the accents and the £ instead of $, the above video was filmed, or rather drawn, in Britain. For our final clip, let us go to the American Midwest...

...and see if anybody in the Windy City can tell us how best to manage time:

If only time came with its own horn section.

Quips and Quotations (Friends and Acquaintances Edition)

Noel and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Noel's door, and he asked, "Who is it?" I lowered my voice and said, "Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?" He answered, "Just a minute, I'll ask him."

--Beatrice Lillie

  

Diverse Voices

 Eddie Money 1949-2019

Ric Ocasek 1944-2019

They really didn't have all that much in common. One was a solo artist, the other a lead singer in a band. One was mainstream rock, the other new wave. One came across as a regular guy, the other eccentric. One showed emotion, the other hid behind dark glasses. One belted out a song, the other drolly warbled the lyrics. One was built like a jock, the other looked undernourished.

But that's all right. I don't need my rock stars, or any music stars, to be exactly, or even remotley, alike. All I ask is that they occasionally come up with a tune that's worth a listen. And these two gentlemen did just that.

A Man of Wealth and Taste

It's July of 1965, and we find a typical English gentleman enjoying a cup of tea. Except this particular native of the UK is Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, and he and his bandmates have just been charged with "insulting behavior"--they were caught urinating on the side of a building. OK, maybe that's not so typically gentlemanly, in England or anywhere else. But, as you can see, Richards has made himself nice and presentable for his day in court, though he probably could do with a haircut.  

Quips and Quotations (Utilitarianism Edition)

Well, there's a Book that says we're all sinners and at least I chose a sin that made quite a few people happier than they were before they met me.

--Sally Stanford, San Francisco madam who went on to become mayor of Sausalito, California.

 

In Memoriam: Valerie Harper 1939-2019

Though she's not known for it, Valerie Harper, like Mary Tyler Moore, started out as a dancer and chorus girl, appearing on Broadway with Lucille Ball in the musical Wildcats. She also played one of the hillbilly wives in the 1959 film version of the musical Li'l Abner. But dancing was soon left behind when Harper met future husband (one of two) Dick Schaal, a member of Chicago's Second City. Harper joined the famed improvisational troupe herself, it quickly become her true forte wasn't dancing but (like Moore) comedy. Harper and Schaal eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where, around 1970, she was asked to audition for a new situation comedy starring Dick Van Dyke Show veteran Moore titled The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Moore died two years ago, and in my obit for her I spent a paragraph discussing Harper and her character:

 Rhoda Morgenstern (Valarie Harper) The Mary Tyler Moore Show is often thought of as a "workplace comedy", but in the early years the series was neatly divided between Mary Richard's professional life and her personal life. If Lou Grant was the linchpin of the former, then wisecracking upstairs neighbor and best friend Rhoda served the same function in the latter. Not that the two worlds didn't occasionally merge, as Rhoda eventually becomes a familiar figure to the WJM-TV gang (MARY: Rhoda, you know my boss, Mr. Grant? RHODA: Oh, yeah. Hi, Lou!) Rhoda also figures into the workplace stories in another way. Whatever was going on in the newsroom, Mary was sure to tell Rhoda about. Just as what was ever happening in the many Rhoda-centric episodes, the WJM bunch was to find out through Mary. Nevertheless, it was outside of work that this relationship mattered. Mary and Rhoda forged a female friendship that rivaled that other sitcom pair, Lucy and Ethel. And without having to don disguises so as to sneak into a nightclub act. Pals and confidants as the song goes. Despite many differences between them. Mary was a WASP. Rhoda was Jewish. Mary grew up in the Midwest, Rhoda was from the Bronx in New York City. Mary was the daughter of a doctor, Walter (played by Bill Quinn), and thus probably grew up in the upper-middle class. I'm not sure what Rhoda's father, Martin (played by Harold Gould), did for a living--the internet is coming up short--but Rhoda has a kind of working-class brashness about her. What made this friendship especially intriguing, as well as comically tense at times, is that Rhoda had an inferiority complex that seemed centered on her best friend! Though roughly the same age, Mary was certainly the more mature of the two, and could sometimes come across as more as an older sister than a best friend. Rhoda was more streetwise, or at least came across as more streetwise, and sometimes called her more mature friend "kid" as a way of putting her in her place. But the main point of contention is that Rhoda envied Mary her good looks. Now, to my eyes, and no doubt to yours, too, Rhoda was herself a damn good-looking woman. True, in the early years of the show she had a weight problem. I know this because she would tell everyone, and especially Mary, that she had a weight problem ("I don't know why I'm putting this in my mouth. I should just apply it directly to my hips.") Eventually, she loses the excess pounds and even wins a beauty contest at the department show where she works (in an episode written by Treva Silverman, often credited for, if not creating, then at least fine-tuning, the character of Rhoda.) What vexes me is that in those episodes where's she supposed to be overweight, she merely looks to my eyes to be wearing baggy clothes. Nor is there any evidence that Valarie Harper (who like Moore started out as a dancer) ever had a weight problem. So did Harper just wear baggy clothes to convince us that the character she played was overweight, or maybe, just maybe, the character of Rhoda was never overweight to begin with, but just THOUGHT she was? I suspect the latter, but can't prove it. Anyway, the new, improved Rhoda didn't hang around for long. No, I don't mean she put the weight, or the baggy clothes, back on. She got her own show!  

A spinoff, actually, titled Rhoda. So she got to play the same character but in a far different setting. Rhoda returns to her home town of New York City just for a visit, and meets, through her sister Brenda (Julie Kavner), handsome hunk Joe Gerald (David Groh), a divorcee who owns a wrecking company and has a ten-year-old son Donny. This all happens in the first episode, which achieved a number-one Nielsen rating, the first time that ever happened for a series premiere. And it hasn't happened again in the 40 years since! So Rhoda decides to stay in New York permanently, dating Joe for the first eight weeks of the series, while at the same maintaining a comic relationship with the aforementioned Brenda (who has her own weight-and-self-esteem problems), the drunken doorman Carlton (producer Lorenzo Music), never seen but whose voice could be heard over the apartment intercom, and parents Ida and Martin, both of whom had earlier appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (indeed, in the case of Ida, those appearances had revitalized Nancy Walker's career.) After some haggling--they briefly live together--Joe pops the question, Rhoda accepts, and a wedding the wedding is held in her parents apartment. Among the guests are TMTMS characters Mary Richards, Lou Grant, Murray Slaughter, Georgette Franklin, and, uninvited, Phyllis Lindstrom. The latter is given the task of driving Rhoda to the wedding, but forgets, and so the bride-to-be takes the subway and runs through the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx in her wedding dress. All of what I just described was a major media event in 1974. I mean, a real life major media event. The episode was watched by 52 million Americans, half the TV viewing audience, the highest ever up to that time. Why? Because people (including myself) loved Rhoda, and liked the fact that she finally got a happy ending. Unfortunately, that happy ending proved to be the series undoing.

The problem was, there's nothing particularly funny about a happy ending. Oh, sure, lot of movie comedies end happily, but that happiness is immediately followed by the closing credits. A TV series, if it's successful, is going to be there again and again and again. Which, in the case of a comedy, should mean laughs, and laughs, and more laughs. But on Rhoda, those laughs were in increasingly short supply. The marriage was awkward. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show Rhoda was known for her cutting remarks, but such remarks might wreck the marriage on her own series. So she held back. The series became very unfunny, while sitting at the top of the ratings. Then one day the producers decided the only way to make the show funny again was to have Rhoda and Joe divorce. And when that divorce happened, the show became much funnier. It also plunged in the ratings.

Wait a second! High ratings when the show is unfunny, and low ratings when the show is the opposite. What gives? Well, TV viewers no longer cared about funny. Rhoda wasn't a clown. She was their friend, a friend they never met and would never meet because she was totally fictional. No matter. Their friend deserved a happy ending, no matter how unfunny! Rhoda lasted five seasons, not bad for TV show back then, but by the time it was canceled, the one-time Neilsens champ could only muster a meager 94 in the ratings.

Afterwards, Valerie Harper did the usual ex-TV star things. Broadway knew she could be a draw, and so she played Tallulah Bankhead in one show, and Golda Meir in another. There was another sitcom in the 1980s, Valerie, which she was fired from over a salary dispute (the series carried on as The Hogan Family.) Ten years ago, Harper was diagnosed with lung cancer. She was 70 at the time, and it was assumed her stay on this Earth would soon end. But she made it to 80 anyway. Say what you want about the Grim Reaper, but he was far more generous toward Harper than the Nielsens. 

Climate Change

Summer isn't over yet, so while it's still hot outside, make sure you have some ice cr--Wait a second. These two look like they're dressed for winter! Or at least late fall. You'd think they'd want some hot cocoa instead of ice cream. Well, it's actually Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman on the set of Spellbound (where they not only acted together, but also are said to have had a brief affair.) Back in 1945 almost all Hollywood films were shot in...Hollywood, where I'm told it's like summer all year round. However, the Alfred Hitchcock-directed film has a few scenes that take place in winter, albeit a studio-simulated winter, hence the coats. Think about that for a second. Dressed for winter in summer, or summer-like weather. Add in that they got the hots for each other, and it's no wonder they're wolfing down those ice cream bars!