June 20, 2021

Happy Father's Day everyone! I guess I should mostly direct that to fathers, but in a certain sense, aren't we all fathers? The answer is no. Is something a father contributes to parenting that cannot be replicated elsewhere? Sure. The closest thing I ever was to Dad was sharing responsibility for the care of a cat. While I was not the feline's primary caretaker, she was pretty cute.

That's a fluffy pud

Poll question of the week: should I adopt a cat?

That's my intro for the week. I spent Father's Day with family, which was a good time. This entry will be a little late, but not as late as last week. What can I say? Father's Day > recap blog.

I know I've sort of said this before, so let's see if stick to it, but I'm going to try scale back the word count for awhile to hopefully allow more to focus on other things - house/yard maintenance, reading books, writing ambitions, etc. Let's see if any of that pans out or I just watch TV. (Take the under.) But should some tickle my interest and I get in a writerly flow, I cannot be held responsible.

The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS

It was a very personality interview heavy father's day episode, but here we go...

1) Martin Braver

As I putz around the house after getting home from work, making dinner, eating dinner, doing my routine of stretches and core strengthening exercizes in the futile hope I can avoid genetically inherited back problems. I usually have Seth Meyers or Colbert on the background. I was surprised at how happy Colbert going back to live audiences made me. It really does make for a better show. It's kind of like live sports ain't live sports without fans. That's why I'm going to baseball game this week. But I digress.

Braver doing a celebrity "Sunday Profile" is a rarity. And celebrity profiles, I'm usually not a fan. But I like Seth Meyers a lot. Rita really hammers home the point that Seth is nice, which is nice. I guess Rita got the interview because they needed a New York person to head over to 30 Rock to interview Seth. (Tracy Smith is strictly a left coast gal, if I had to guess.) Anyway, Seth's sense of humor is very writerly, and has a subtle embrace of the absurd and surreal without being overbearing about it. Although I'm all about the weird. Give me all your running Thornbirds/tiny closet/sea captain bits. Give me all the strange Werner Herzog/Christoph Waltz impersonations. So let's rank Late Nite's recurring segments. I'm not going to bother to embed video because they are easy enough to find

1) Jokes Seth Can't Tell: The closing line, "Black women and lesbians are liars!" gets me every time.

2) Anything with Amber Ruffin: A grab back of "Amber Says What?", any parody song Amber does, or Amber's 1 minute recaps. Amber going to Australia was great, but I don't think video is available any more

3) What does Karen Chee Know": I think I lie almost exactly between Karen and Seth age-wise, so I'm always unreasonably proud that I usually know both the old things that Karen doesn't know and the new things that Seth doesn't know. FWIW, Karen is usually more likely to stump me than Seth, so I guess I skew old. That's what I get for being old.

4) Second Chance Theater: The SNL cast of Seth's Era was the best of my left time, so I'm always down for them to trot out the rejected sketches of yore. I can't put it too high, because it's too rare, but always great.

5) Ya Burnt!: One of the few bits that survived from the show's early days. Even though it's always the same joke, I do enjoy the misdirection about migrating tree frogs in the intro.

6) Popsicle Schtick: Always absurdity to new levels, and I love it.

7) Late Night Casserole: Screamo Robert Frost poem is what I need.

8) Tiny Secret Whispers: I think this running segment just wrapped up. For a bit that lasted 2-3 months, the culmination was a delightfully silly punch line.

9) Fred Armisen _____ Aficionado: Fred Armisen's fine, but sometimes I find him and/or his humor grating. Maybe this is why I've never actually watched Portlandia despite it being the zeitgeist show for a hot minute.

10) A Closer Look: I don't really like A Closer Look. I mean can it be cathartic to dump on those with whom you disagree politically. I guess, maybe. But aren't we all burnt out on politics? Some go on too long and at the end, I'm just angry even though I agree with (some of) the points being made in the screed. Happily, the post Trump-presidency version of a Closer Look doesn't harsh my mellow as much as it used to and has come too include questionable Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson impression, self-effacing breaking of the 4th wall, and references to the doof warrior from my favorite movie.

2) Syl Whitaker

I have broached reparations in previous posts that touch on the subjects of racial iniquity. My opinion? I'm doing fine, take my money. How much of that is Catholic guild compounded with White guilt? Dunno... most of it? Does it matter? Do I really put my money where my words are? Not as much as I should. I don't know that I've every given to the point where I've truly had to sacrifice.

The financial implications of slavery and Jim Crow are staggering. The median household wealth for Blacks is $23,000 compared to $184,000 for white households. Blacks make up 12% of the population, yet have just 2% of the wealth. People who argue against reparations say it isn't fair to hold the current generation accountable things that were done 150 to 400 years ago. Counterargument: Jim Crow was in full effect until, best case, 50 years ago depriving many Black and Brown folks of life, livelihoods, and wealth. Many racist housing, education, economic policies extend up to the new millennium and present day. So, yeah, I don't buy that the statue of limitations has expired here. Do you think the above figures are fair? No one argues of equality of outcome, but for anyone thinks that we are anywhere close to equality of opportunity, you are delusional. If your response to that is that life isn't fair, well, then you won't mind if some of your wealth is requisitioned for the purposes of reparations.

I post a link to this music video every time reparations are brought up, so I might as well embed it this time:

I think I first saw this the on an MTV2 show on Sunday nights that showed videos for indie acts. It either came on right after or right before Broken Social Scene's "Cause=Time". You gotta enjoy the eclecticism. Want something more mainstream? Nobody does righteous anger like Chuck D.

3) Lamin Sanneh

Kelefa interviews his New Yorker colleague about his new book, The Bomber Mafia, I've ready most of Malcolm Gladwell's books and I listen to his podcast. I guess I might be a Malcolm Gladwell fan. He does interesting stuff, although the part of me that staunchly believes in an objective reality recoils a little bit in horror when Malcolm says he is more interested in being interesting than right. Even though some of what he has written has been thoroughly debated and debunked (like 10,000 hours) he rarely not interesting. If I view him as a raconteur/professional contrarian, i.e. take him with a grain of salt, I can live with him being wrong. When he is, he has a tendency to say, no he's actually right and that we've misunderstood him, but whatever. My three favorite non-fiction writers are probably Joe Posnanski, Malcolm Gladwell, and Chuck Klosterman. From that you probably know all you need to know about me.

Anyway, I've been looking for a reason to put Kelefa high on the list, the clip of Kelefa and Malcolm appearing on The Jim Gaffigan Show is as good a reason as any for for the #3 spot.

4) George Hartman

I know triathlon people. I am friends with them. I haven't done one myself yet. I probably will, but I also have a desire to be lazy sometimes which conflicts with the training for the swimming, the biking, and the running. The two things I take away from a solid Steve Hartman segment triathletes with Down Syndrome: One, Chris Nikic pretty jacked. Two, when people complain about diversity somehow being an unfair burden/imposition, this is the power of what seeing someone who looks like you succeeding can do. It's why diversity is important.

5) Horses, Judy Hole, Dads

I like a white or gray horse.

I always root for grays in horse races.

Semi-related, Paul Rudd voiced a black horse in a memorable Bob's Burgers bit.

As a Sunday Morning fan, it's sad to hear someone in the show's family has passed. These sorts of obits, with old footage and older photos always make me smile though.

Father's Day, so this week, we've ranked by Dad if you haven't noticed.

In honor of Father's Day and old photos, here's a great old photo of my grandfather:

6) Imtiaz Tyab

Our new British correspondent is back again for a second straight week, so I guess I should welcome Imtiaz to the Sunday Morning family officially. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of Mark Phillips though. Anyway, I didn't see anyone in the end credits who would obviously have been Imtiaz's dad. Word is he is quite protective his and his family's privacy so maybe he didn't want to put that in the credits.

I can't speak to the gay experience, but one reason I tune into Sunday Morning is to get a glimpse into windows of experiences that are different than my own. The name Russell T. Davies sort of rang a bell, but not really and then close to the end of the segment, there it was. Doctor Who. He was the guy who revived Doctor Who. I guess given Mr. Davies's other work, there may be something to be said for a queer reading of Doctor Who, but lets not. Let me enjoy it for what it is in my own way. We're all ok with that right? Besides, once you put a story out into the world, it's no longer yours. People will make of it whatever they want to for better or worse. All you can do is hope for the better.

7) Michael Gaffigan

I do kind of miss Gaffigan's early pandemic segments. They were good fun. Someday, I'm going to watch a couple of stand-up specials when I'm out of stuff to watch on TV. So maybe never. The man's be cracking Hot Pocket jokes for what 20, 25 years now? Still funny.

8) Glen D. Begnaud

I'm not sure I'm really buying the narrative that Trent Preszler is selling (there is a book of course, so he is really actually it). His dad sounds like kind bigot and perhaps an abusive jerk. I'm not sure that I buy the deathbed semi-reconciliation story if no one actually said "I love you." Maybe it was implied, maybe it didn't need to be said, but this was a man that punched a child in the face. It kind of sounds like a story that's half reality and half what a man needs to tell himself to forgive his father. Which is probably for the best. Forgiveness is better than bitterness. Once someone passes, you can color the story any way you want to help you move on.

Trent undoubtedly makes a nice canoe from his father's old tools. They don't make 'em like they used to, except for Ron Swanson.

9) Bill Flay

I guess this segment was about Father's Day? Well, it's Bobby Flay so it's about food right? Maybe a promo for the podcast he does with his daughter? For TikTok? If it was a food segment, there weren't enough shots of food.

10) "Peppi" Teichner

Apologies to NPR's Allison Aubrey, but I don't like medical stories. You show me a needle or IV in an arm, and I'm liable to vagal, so as cool as mRNA sounds, this segment was not for me. Also, I got the impression the muckety-mucks from Moderna were plants in an infomercial. "With mRNA, you not only get a cure for CoV-SARS-II, you get a cure for all coronaviruses, cancer, and it'll wax your car."

Also this super handwave-y graphic:

mRNA makes perfect sense now! My vaccine hesitancy is gone!

Reminds me of this one from The Simpsons:

Only Duff fills your Q-Zone with pure beer goodness

I think the ultimate test of Teichner's ability would be if she could get me through a medical segment without squirming.