nycdilettante

The Glad Game

When I was little...I remember watching Pollyanna on TV with my Grandmother Tet.  She always said she was a Pollyanna...and that she looked for the positive in life.  I love this movie...especially the food at the festival.  The cakes are AMAZING.  I love a good slab of cake.

Apparently the Pollyanna books were very successful and after that Eleanor Porter wrote several other Glad Books.  Pollyanna was a child with an extremely positive outlook on life.  The story went that she was the child of a missionary...and they were rather poor.  She and her father would play The Glad Game...which consisted of looking at a bad situation and trying to find something to be glad about.  Of course, this is tested when Pollyanna is hit by a car (in the novel - in the movie she falls out of a tree) and loses the use of her legs.  She gets very bummed out...and then everyone in town comes in to make her feel glad.  And at the end...everything works out.

I remember distinctly watching this movie with my Grandmother.  I'm sure it was on a Sunday night...as part of the Disney Sunday Night Movie...I remember the scene where she tells the elderly lady that the crystals on the lamp are rainbow catchers and the impact she made on the whole town.

A few words about Television

I am a child of the television era.  Not the 50's...the 70's.  I grew up watching an inordinate amount of television.  When I watch...to some extent my brain shuts off...which is a pleasurable feeling when you spend 40 hours a week (or more) in intense thought during the day and you need to shut off at some point.

My favorite TV has always been cartoons.  Right now I'm in love with Phineas and Ferb.  In childhood...I loved The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show...Bugs Bunny...and so on.  I LOVED sitcoms.  Bewitched...The Partridge Family...Barney Miller...MASH.  I also liked mystery shows...for some reason Ellery Queen stands out in my mind.  I loved Colombo and the Rockford Files.  And then when Murder She Wrote appeared...I loved that also.

When I was living in Brooklyn, I could only get TV by using an antenna.  That continued when I moved back to Virginia.  And then I bought my condo and as a part of my condo fees...cable was included. 

Now that I have cable...it is quite an achievement for me to turn off the TV and move on. When I worked as a maid on Ocracoke Island...often my friend Mary who worked with me would come in and I'd be just a deer in headlights in front of the TV.

When I'm working out at the gym watching TV...often I talk out loud to the TV because I'm used to watching alone.  And around 7:00 PM they run WHEEL OF FORTUNE (a favorite of my grandparents) and JEOPARDY (another favorite of my Grannie) and I just answer out loud...mostly because I have on headphones and am listening to my i-Pod.

The other day I was listening to a podcast of Sound Opinions and I realized I wasn't paying attention at all because I was watching Seinfeld.  And I've seen that episode a million times.

Hypno-tized by TV...that's me. 

Why am I watching Rock of Love II?

My question is...is the only song that Brett Michaels will EVER SING to those women aspiring to get into his pants EVERY ROSE HAS HIS THORN?

I tell you what...it's time for the writer's strike to end.  I will not under any circumstance watch FLAVOR OF LOVE...

An afternoon with Doris

After going to the gym five days this week, I left the gym and had plans of going to shop for groceries, etc, etc.

Instead I took a shower, moved some clothes around, and then had lunch and turned the TV on.

This is always where my plans fall apart because I am mezmerized by TV.  I can't even remember what I watched. 

And then...I clicked past a Doris Day movie.  TMC was having a Doris Day marathon.  You just can't beat an afternoon of Doris movies!  I love the way they dress Doris in her movies...espically A Touch of Mink and Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.  A Touch of Mink is awesome because Cary Grant is in it.  He is the perfect fairy tale boyfriend...rich, smart, handsome...but of course his fatal flaw is that he won't ever marry.  So Doris Day's character talks herself into running off with Cary Grant and defying her nature as the good girl.  You know it's all going to end with marriage...but it's so fun to watch.

ER is plotting against me

I will never watch ER again. I mean it...I hate how they torture Kerry Weaver. She finally came out as a lesbian, had a stable relationship and a baby and they killed her lover. And now...the family won't let her see the baby. So she is once again utterly alone.

I give up.

Plus I had the single worst yoga class ever. My usual Thursday night teacher Mary wasn't there and some hipster girl was teaching. The class was so not about the students...and I was not pleased. Next Thursday I'm calling OM first to be sure Mary is teaching.