Watching That's So Raven in my underwear, why do you ask?

I somehow watched a full hour of Power Rangers Mystic Force this morning. I'm not sure what caused this, I didn't plan it, but I've been sick and also on painkillers from my dentist, so I think I kind of zoned out. I'm actually pretty sure, it was about 20 after the hour when I realized it had come on after whatever else I was watching and I hadn't done anything about it.

Not that I have anything against kiddie shows, or superhero shows, or even cheesy costumes; I'm a fan of all three. I can watch an hour of "That's So Raven", although that is pushing my limit, I don't think I could take a third episode in a row. TSR is probably what ended and led me into PRMF, now that I think of it. Not probably, definitely; I just read the title of this post.

I have to give the producers credit, the Power Rangers have been around for a long time, and they have managed to change the format over a dozen times without changing the content all that much. I noticed much better production values since the early days when I first checked it out. They are limited in what they can show; they have to show battle scenes that are exciting and action-filled, all the while being sure to show that no one is seriously injured, including the bad guys. This requires a lot of explosions followed by people (or creachtures of some kind) flying through the air, and the requisite 'I'm Okay' sitting up and shaking their heads. "Yikes, what a whollop!" The choreography and camera work has got to be painstaking, it looked as good as the average Jackie Chan or Jet Li thing. The acting and script, unfortunately, were also as good as the average Jackie Chan or Jet Li thing.

This particular twofer of episodes was the last two of a several parter, something about a bad guy wishing that they had never become Power Rangers thus taking all the color and music from the world, enslaving Humanity, etc. The PRs ventured to some council of genie-wish-reversal-capable entities in red, black, and white flowing robes. One color each, they looked a bit like some nice chess pieces I used to have, other than there being three colors, of course. Oddly familiar, probably stolen from a forgotten film I've seen. They denied the request, leading to the episode where they, of course, reconsidered based on the determination of the PRs to continue fighting even without their magic. Gumption rewarded, ah the lessons we learn. I'm not really sure what happened after that but I'll venture a guess that it was all back to normal for the PRs. I won't know for sure since by the time they got their powers back I had realized I was watching the Power Rangers and found something else to do.

It reminded me a lot of pro wrestling, except without all the gay. NTTAWWT, I am very pro-gay rights, but that doesn't mean I want to watch thinly-to-not-veiled-at-all homo-erotic storylines featuring oily men in underpants and boots beating on each other. It doesn't make it any more appealing that they have oily superbabes as well; I have access to porn. I'm actually a little skeeved out by the heavy-handed mixture of violence and sex, so maybe I'm not as jaded as I thought. I know a lot of folks enjoy the hokey storylines and the athleticism, and I remember watching in the mid-seventies, when I was in single digits, but I just don't have any interest now. I suppose there is something very masculine about watching what is basically a bad soap opera as long as there is 'whup-assing' going on, I just can't get into it. I'm comfortable with my manitudinousness enough to watch actual soap operas for my hokey storylines fix.Then again, Mexican soap operas offer horrendous acting and superbabes with the added bonus that I don't understand enough to feel bad that I don't care. And Mexican wrestling, well that's just downright entertaining, maybe I should rethink all of this.

I won't though.




Duty Freebie: The Hairy Beast is great one-stop shopping for shark-blogging and coherent political dissertations.

Not older, better bwahahahahaha

 I'm getting old. So are you, so STFU, this is not free-for-all, it's a sensitive, endearing self-examination that really suffers when I can hear you mocking me. As I was saying; I'm getting old. I'm pushing 40, in the sense that I will be 40 in just under 3 years. In the more real sense of people only having the ammunition that you hand them, I will start telling people I'm 40 in 5, maybe 8 years. Or sooner, I'm not really hung up on numbers, but damned if one thing isn't really chapping my ass (and affecting my vision). What brought on this little mini wahh wahh crybaby rant is that I have an eyebrow hair that is so long that it is bending down and getting stuck with the tip against my eyelid. Seriously, look.

 I was okay with gray hair on my head. I am starting to cultivate silvery winglets on the sides like Paulie Walnuts, although I first think of some comic book character from so long ago I don't know which comic or what sort of character he was, just that it looked kind of cool. Nick Fury? I was fine with white hairs popping up in my beard, I don't wear a mustache anymore anyway, and like most men, the goatee thing was a little played for me a few years before the gray came in anyway. I even talked myself into pretending that I was okay with the one gray hair that sprang up in the, um, carpet. (Since I've let that out I'll admit that I pulled it the other day, that was ... uncalled for.)

 Yeah, gray I'm over, but long, flowing eyebrows I'm just all incoherent and discombobulated by. You might can tell by the photo, (rather a difficult self-shot, and not one that I'm likely to employ a photog for); it's not the only one that is overgrown. I will be trimming them, I just have to, although I'm going to wait until tomorrow afternoon just in case I screw it up and need a couple of days to get someone to even them out, or maybe I'll shave them and start a trend. It's just something I never saw coming, even though I've been mocking people with stupid eyebrows my entire ... Oh, Karma, and just as "My Name is Earl" starts on the telly. Spooky.

 I, however, will not be one of those people that people like me mock behind their backs; "Can't he see that those things are going to catch a wind shear and throw him into traffic one of these days?" I will take a more studious look into the mirror in the mornings from now on, and tend to personal grooming that people might notice. Like big overgrown eyebrows that dwarves could live in. Or like the day last week that I missed shaving about a third of my face, I shit you not.

 That's the way this getting old crap compounds itself. You're getting old and stuff starts changing without notice, and this coincides with over 20 years of basically the same face looking back at you each morning. You don't really look at it with any real interest, no matter how handsome you think you are; you've seen it too many times before. You look up the nose as you turn off the trimmer, you look at the teeth and the tongue after you scrub them, look at the locks as you brush them into whatever wannabe Conan pomp you can manage, and then you turn off the light and get on your way. You're not exactly expecting anything new, in fact, that is the one good thing about your own face: predictability. Until this afternoon when I felt something crawling on my eye.


 Duty Freebie: Fun things continue to be offered and sopped up frequently over at  Gallery of the Absurd, so head on over and have a look. She (14) is offering some prints now, so maybe go buy yourself an Obsolete Tara print for over the good couch.


 Why can't I even type the word 'predictability' without the words 'the milkman, the paperboy, even TV' droning through my skull? Damn you Stefan Urqelle!!

Go ahead and eat the crackers shaped like fish, you deserve 'em

  I have seen a lot of television over the years, so I would never have predicted that I would be watching as little at this point in my life as I currently do. Then again, I never would have guessed that the greatest advantage of Internet access for me would be banking and bill-paying, but here we are. Oh, I enjoy perusing the oddities offered up by cretin and genius alike, and of course the constant blather of every political stripe and then some; but the writing of checks and checking my balance with a few keystrokes is what I value most. Television on the other hand, holds very little interest for me these days, which is confusing to say the least. The old shows I viewed sucked pretty hard, it's a bitter pill to swallow but reviewing those favorites makes that fact undeniable.

 There's my other quandary, how is it with the channels multiplying all the time that there is less quality programming than ever? Channels devoted to Golf and Travel I understand, but what's with the WE channel? Currently showing reruns of Dharma & Greg and Hope & Faith, making up the other 24 hours with Guthy Renker and Lifetime castoff material. Can Hope & Gloria be far behind? (Wait, I liked that show.) What else is on, so-called 'reality' shows that are all so far removed from real life that the death of irony isn't even being debated anymore? Who gets to date Flavor Flav? Who gets to work for Donald Trump? Aren't those both things you might pay to avoid? Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart have talk shows? There is obviously a dearth of good ideas and many, many hours to fill, but this can't be all there is. I've veered off-topic.


  Watching all that television over the years has taught me a few things, at least about what people that go into television writing think of the rest of us. You see, Marie Barone took the plastic slipcovers off of her furniture the other day, Monica's wedding china got broken last night, and to top it all off Bleeding Gums Murphy died this afternoon. All of this got me thinking about special things that we set aside for special occasions that never occur, although Murphy did indeed play his saxophone up until his death; giving it to Lisa the day before he died. But the other two, Marie Barone and her guest towels with the gold fringe that had never demoistened a single hand, and Monica Bing's fine wedding china that she really, really, had not wanted to debox and use - what's the use?

 My Grandmama has two china cabinets filled with knick-knacks, brica-brac, and whatnots, even a couple of chatchkes; but no never-to-be-used dishes. All of the things in there are actively doing what they do - taking up space and being ready to be stared at, should someone walk up and want to do so. On top of that, she has several sets of dishes of which one is considered special occasion worthy; but she uses them. Often enough that over the years new dishes take their place and all the other sets shift downward, at which point I get new dishes. Lol. I'm a single man, and I don't have any dishes that I consider deserving of disuse, it's pointless. I'm sure if some woman finds herself unlucky enough to crash my bachelor paradise, a 'good' set of dishes won't be far behind.

  Not to say that I don't know real people that do those tv things, my Grandmama's sister does have china locked behind glass, and towels that match everything that have never been wet outside of the washing machine. My sister has a separate 'living room' that is not for people that live there, but she and her husband are allowed in it when there are guests over - the children not so much. I went to high school with a guy whose Mom did the same thing down to a 'guest entrance', which is reasonable when you have a mansion; less so in a townhouse. Oh, my Aunt and Uncle used to keep name brand soda around for guests and store brand for the kids. Wow, that's cold-blooded.

  My point is, we should live in the now, not the yet-to-come. There is no way to justify plastic on your furniture, little soaps that can't be used, towels that hang unused until they collect dust across the top. If you have visitors that would balk at the thought of using the same hand towels that the inhabitants use on a daily basis then I wish you all the luck in the world, I wouldn't have them over for all the kickbacks in Cheney's Fortress of Solitude. Join me, won't you, in using the guest bathroom, sitting on the guest couch, eating the guest croutons? Open that bottle of wine, you know the one, the one you're saving for an occasion that just isn't going to happen, kick your feet up on the good couch and make that occasion today; the first day of the rest of your life.


Duty Freebie:  I haven't even been reading the blogs I regularly read, and I don't want to recommend watching babies fart on Youtube, so head on over to bloggyaward for concise reviews of some good to not so good weblogs.