November 28, 2021
I lied. I am a liar.
I said I was going to try and post three times last week and I fell short by 66.67%. Raise your hand is you saw that coming.
Anyway, I was convinced that the holiday weekend, combined with time off would be sufficient to squeeze in a couple of extra entries. What sucked up my time instead? In chronological order:
- Christmas shopping (not on Black Friday...)
- Biking
- Mowing/mulching leaves
- Apple Pie from scratch (peeling apples takes a freaking long time)
- Thanksgiving/general sloth
- Running
- Not going to mention the distance...
- But long enough that I sort of shot the day after Thanksgiving fully on running while listening to entirety of Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces 1.5 times.
- Christmas decorating
- More Biking
- Cooking
- Cleaning
- Laundry
- Hanging my paltry supply of Christmas lights
I still have little more Christmas related stuff to do, but I've put most of it behind me at this point, so all I have left to do (in theory) is to relax and enjoy the lights and general goodwill of the season. I plan to watch the same Christmas specials I've watched since I can remember.
(Mini rant: Even though Apple bought the Charlie Brown specials, public backlash has made it so that you can still catch them on PBS. The means that the great Christmas travesty is the inability to find Mickey's Christmas Carol easily on the TV. One of the greats has been banished to hard to find airings on basic cable.)
I also plan to read A Christmas Carol, and hopefully catch a Christmas show - probably this one. If I have time (I probably won't), I might try to revisit some old stomping grounds and check out some art at the Speed Art Museum.
Onto the show.
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
Looming over this week's episode was the recent passing of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. It's funny how there's famous, there's Broadway famous, and there's Stephen Sondheim. Being famous means everyone knows who you are. You may have talent, you may not. Fame waxes and wanes like the moon. Included amongst the ranks of the famous (some waxing, some waning) are Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Paula Deen, Derek Jeter, Brad Pitt, Kim Kardashian, Pauly Shore, Paul Reiser, Kristen Bell, Adam Sandler, and most presidents since FDR. In other words fame, binds together a motley crew.
Broadway famous means that you have talent, but you primarily known amongst a group of wealthy white people in and around the New York City area. The only Broadway show (meaning I actually saw it on Broadway) I ever saw was a production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Laroquette. Truth be told, they are more famous than they are Broadway famous. Some can be both. Idina Menzel and about a third of the cast of Hamilton. To be Broadway famous, you sort of have to get your start there. Treading the boards as it were, maybe off, but eventually on Broadway. Some actors may have gotten their start there and/or often return, but they move past Broadway fame into general pop culture, at which point, they are famous. Such is the case of Mandy Patinkin and John Lithgow. This may sound sexist, but I think it's easier for women to stay Broadway famous - Bernadette Peters, Carol Channing (have your heard Andy Richter's Carol Channing story?), Annaleigh Ashford, Kristen Chenowith, the aforementioned Idina Menzel. No matter what else they do on TV or movies, I am fully prepared for them to start belting out a song any second which is of course, the quintessence of Broadway. When most male stage actors launch into a song, I'm more like, "Oh, ok, this is happening..."
And then there's Stephen Sondheim - the man who looks like Peter Falk and sounds like Mike Wallace (it kept bothering me throughout the episode - who does Stephen Sondheim sound like? I think it's Mike Wallace.) Find me another person whose influence so far outstrips their notoriety. Theater people love Sondheim the way Sci-fi people love Star Trek. Mainstream Broadway is like Star Wars - for the general masses. But Sondheim is for the true diehards who revel in the minutiae of that which they love. Theater people love Sondheim. I know because I was theater adjacent through high school. I did not know who Sondheim was until grad school though. Maybe that's why I did not end up making out with any of the theater girls at the after parties for the one high school play in which I performed. (I was Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream since you must know.) I did not really know who Sondheim was until I was in grad school because I knew an ex-theater person and sometimes theater people might love Sondheim a little too much and should just shut up about him every now and again.
But this is their week to let it all out. I begrudge lovers of Sondheim nothing over the next week. I fully expect Stephen Colbert to spend over an hour on Sondheim this week.
For me the truth is, the first, and maybe only Sondheim song I know is because of, what else, The Simpsons:
Some purists may be offended that my knowledge of Sondheim begins and ends with a bit from The Simpsons, but I choose to see it a tribute the genius of the man. At a certain point in time, you had to either hurdle a very a high bar (or limbo below a very low one) to merit parody on the best TV show of the 90s.
If you aren't familiar with Stephen Sondheim, and I only know his work in passing, believe me when I say you've heard his work.
Also, if you have Netflix, you should watch the Documentary Now! episode that spoofs Company called Co-op. (Or watch it here, but don't tell anyone.) I've never seen Company - the play or the documentary, and I love that episode so much. I'm sure I'd love it a thousand times more if I was even a little familiar with the source material. Perhaps Sondheim fanatics would bristle at his work being used for laughs given how seriously they take his work. Hopefully Sondheim himself would disagree.
2) Mo Rocca/Pati LuPone (tie)
We're just going to cover all the Sondheim stuff together. I honestly don't know why I went on so long about him other than it was basically his show this week. I am only passingly familiar with his work. But I can see see how much it meant to other people and, thus, understand that he was an important person. I assumed that he would get more than the standard "Sunday Passage" mention. I didn't expect the show to blow his obit out across three segments. I would argue that more impactful people have passed away in 2021 to far less Sunday Morning fanfare. (Hank Aaron got a nice obit from Jane that lasted a minute or two. Colin Powell only got a slide as far I know.) But Sunday Morning is a bifurcated show and the east coast side of things has it's heart in Broadway (and various art museums). So it goes that Sondheim gets three segments. (I guess they also do a lot of segments from Europe as well... a trifurcated show?)
I will also admit that I enjoy when Jane does the obit, but enough of the correspondents have a hand in the theater game that it made sense to leave it up to them. I'll admit, when the obit got thrown to Mo, I was a little surprised. The firs thing that popped into my head, "Pogue is a Broadway guy! What about Pogue?"
Confession: it was only recently that Pogue's Broadway bona fides were pointed out to me. How he went from aspiring Broadway composer to covering science and technology for various outlets is a fascinating mystery. How do those worlds collide? Considering that I am a physics PhD and my day job is software development, yet I still aspires to gain fame as a novelist and I write about pop culture through the lens of Sunday Morning for chuckles, maybe I should realize it there is no great mystery here. We all contain multitudes.
So the main Sondheim obit fell to the Off-Broadway starring Mo Rocca. This is fine. Obituaries are sort of his thing.
The eulogy, as it were, was delivered by Pati LuPone (who is Broadway famous, meaning, I'm sort of aware of her, but I would not know who she was with Sunday Morning providing her CV). It was heartfelt and delivered by someone who loved the man and the artist in equal measure. Pati and Mo get lumped together, because it really was two companion pieces acting as a single segment.
As for Pogue, he got his say with a commentary towards the close of the episode. As a young aspiring artist, apparently he got to know Sondheim a little. Pogue teaching Sondheim how to use a computer sounds like an idea for a sitcom, or maybe fodder for a Sondheim musical depending on how those lessons went. But Pogue gets the top slot because it was a two-fer week.
Pogue also gave an Econ 101 primer. Supply, demand, inflation etc. A buddy of mine teaches undergrad economics courses. I was hanging out with him one day and on a whim, took the final he was giving his class. It took me about 20 minutes to finish and I got an 85% on it. The point is that while people don't like inflation, it is no great mystery. It's what can happen after a series of unfortunate events. And honestly, we're all a little culpable on the demand side of things. Hopefully we can mitigate the effects on the most vulnerable.
Also, Pogue's Broadway background definitely explains his willingness to ham it up when explaining dry topics. And ham it up he did on November 28, 2021.
I'm usually not the biggest fan of the celebrity interview segment, but sometimes one just hits me in the right way. I watched Ben Mankiewicz interview Sharon Gless for five minutes and from the moment she opened her mouth I said, "Where do I know that voice from?" She's most famous for Cagney & Lacey, but that's a bit before my time and I definitely recognized her voice from something more recent.
Luckily in the modern age we have IMDB, so the second the interview was over and I had still not divined the source of my recognition, I looked her up. It was Burn Notice. She was Michael's mom in Burn Notice. That's right. I watched Burn Notice. As a show it was fine. I mostly sucked into it because of cult icon and author of If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell. The show had a formula that got replayed every week, it had rampant product placement (the Hyundai Veloster!), and it paid lip service to a back story/show arc that kind of pretended it was a closet prestige show and not a rung above Baywatch! in terms of plot over establishing shots of scantily clad people on the beach.
But it also had Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless, and guest rolls for basically every cast member of The Wire that was not otherwise occupied. Burn Notice and The Wire are never going to be confused with each other. One is enjoyable but borderline trash TV (I don't mean trash to be pejorative) and the other is the greatest TV show of all time. But I always got tremendous joy from Bunny Colvin or Kima Greggs randomly show up in the pastel colors of South Florida. A toast to good times.
If we're talking west coast nature, you gotta know Conor Knighton is about to show up. Does Conor Knighton have the best hair on television? I answer that question with a question. Are there living Bristlecone Pine trees that predate monotheistic religion?
Bristlecone Pines are gnarled, twisted works of natural art.
They're like big banzi trees. I know that's an oxymoron, but the harsh environment in which they live and thrive forces them to grow in weird and strange shapes turning each one into a work of art the same way as a carefully manicured bonzai.
Bristlecone's also accounted for the moment of nature outro. With each tree, I kept thinking that some modern artist has made it their life's work to evoke the same gnarled, twisted, intertwining shapes that these ancient trees naturally mature into. Most of what I know about art comes from what Sunday Morning tells me, so the only names I came up with were Frank Stella and architect Frank Gehry. (Maybe we should call them Frank trees?) Anyway, I'm sure there's an abstract artists that deals with pure form and shape and creates sculptures more evocative of the Bristlecone. If you know who that might be, please let me know.
John Wilson's "How To with John Wilson" seems like the type of quirky show I'd binge while doing my daily stretches/core strengthening exercises that I hope will stave off the demise of my genetically doomed back. (I should probably not be running half marathons on a whim. Damn, I wasn't going to say it, but I did.)
If/when I pick up an HBO subscription (I hear I must watch Succession.) I'll probably put it on. The vibe I get from Kelefa's profile made me feel it was spiritually akin to Joe Pera Talks With You. I've only seen a few episodes of that show, but I really would like to catch the whole series which, apparently, I can also do through HBO Max. (I'm starting to feel like this is an add for HBO Max.) It's profoundly weird and absurd. It's a comedy. In the three episodes I've seen, I think I laughed three times. That seems like a terrible batting average, but when I did laugh, boy did I laugh. It's probably not for everyone though. If I start to date someone, Joe Pera Talks With You might be the fourth or fifth date test to see if the relationship is worth exploring further.
7) Jane Pauley
Jane doesn't get to give any obits this week, but it's always nice to have her there and know she could if we needed her. I guess she sort of gave the Sondheim pre-obit before Mo took over. Anyway, I know Jane acting as a correspondent is a once or twice a year treat, but I do wish she was a little more involved. (Insert plea for the return of Sunday Almanac here.) The host always has to do a little something extra to introduce music, mirth, and cheer for the Christmas episode, so I've got that to look forward to at the end of advent among other things.
Susan Spencer again falls victim to the fact that I just don't like medical stories. (At least I didn't almost pass out during this one. Bonus points for that.) Don't get me wrong. Finding treatments for Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia would be cause for celebration. However, I look at an MRI of my own brain once a year. Seeing MRI's of brains with amyloid plaques kind of skeeved me out. Luckily I'm not quite enough of a hypochondriac to look at an MRI and say, "Hey doc, does this spot look kind of plaque-ish to you?"
9) Jim Axelrod
I can't act like I'm a closet fan of Pat Benatar or that I find her music a somehow underrated vestige of the unremembered 80s. (Joan Jett has already corned that space in my mind.) I'm not really interested in commenting on the looks of Pat Benatar. Although, despite the 80's of it all, she was and still is a good looking lady. Focusing on appearance is a trap, but Ms. Benatar even cops to the fact that she hit it big once she nailed her look, which started with a Halloween costume based on the B-movie Cat Women of the Moon so it's a little hard not to at least mention it in passing.
The part that had me nodding my head in agreement was when
10) Steve Hartman
File this Hartman story in the "Awww, kids are cute!" box. I'm not mean enough to Teichnerize a kid who has the courage to give a speech and end up bawling at his sisters wedding. For what it's worth, when a close friend of mine got married, he gained a brother-in-law who I think is 18 years his junior. His young brother-in-law did not give a speech at the reception. But then again, even if he did, the full wedding video only ended up being about four minutes long, so who would know? Not Steve Hartman.
If said friend ends up reading this and makes it this far down, I should expect an angry text from him because I know I've just hit upon a sore spot. Hopefully, he can laugh at it now. Comedy = tragedy + time, right?
Anyway, it's very sweet, but something has to take the bottom spot. Generally speaking Hartman stores fit into two categories - youngs and olds. I don't know why, but I just enjoy the olds more. However when the story falls in the intersection of the Hartman Venn Diagram... magic!
The Hartman Venn Diagram.
Anyway, I hope to do one more post this week (maybe tomorrow or maybe Saturday). Will I finish by Halloween post, the November 14 post, or bang out a quick post on the Forever Young special. You're killing me Sunday Morning. I'm already behind and you are tossing out prime time specials now? It's a prison of my own making I suppose.
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