The A-List: Summertime TV

It used to be that when summer came, all the television networks played nothing but reruns.  Since we'd seen all those already, we didn't want to see those.  This is why all of us not necessarily athletic types spent our childhood summers outside.  Not because we were intrepid explorers and wanted to run and play, which is what I tell my kid when I want him outside.   What kid wouldn't have rather spent an hour in air-conditioned comfort watching The Six Million Dollar Man? 

The networks are on to us, however.  They can't afford to miss a moment of bombarding us with ads, what with the cable channels actually showing quality stuff like Breaking Bad and Justified.  They've started showing new stuff during the summer so they can make more money.  Now, when the sun is falling below the horizon, we are once more glued to our televisions, as Nielson intended.   These are the shows that my family has been watching consistently. They aren't necessarily the greatest shows on the planet, but we like them well enough to watch them if they are on.  

1.  Wipeout   Contestants on this show have to make their way over an extremely punishing obstacle course, and if they do, they get to go over another extremely punishing obstacle course, and if they manage to finish THAT, there's another extremely punishing obstacle course, followed by yet another.  So the contestants are really just gluttons for punishment. When I say 'punishing', I don't mean difficult.  I mean that, while a contestant is running the course, things pop up and hit them.  Or drop on them.  Or fling them about.  Punishing.  My family loves watching these poor people getting punted.  We bond over this stuff, all of us cringing and wincing at the same times.  There is no way we would ever consider running such a race, but it is fun to watch the people who do.  Especially when they fall. 

2.  True Blood   Before anyone gets upset and starts chastising me for allowing my four-year-old watch this show, shut it.  Give me a modicum of credit for the little bit of parenting skills that I have.  Larry and I record the show and watch it when Zane is asleep.  True Blood is racy, and risque', and they show all the naughty bits because it is HBO.  Vampires on this drama have "come out of the coffin" and they are not sparkly at all, they are exactly what the legends and the horror stories say that they are.  They are things to be afraid of, which ups the good fun in my book.  I also like the fact that, in this particular television universe, there are more than just humans moving about.  There's also werewolves, my very favorite movie monster.   There are even fairies out there in True Blood world, although not the Tinker Bell type.  Disney would likely faint, but TB is definitely adult fare.  

3.  Gator Boys   I am okay with alligators.  On the other hand, I do not want to walk out in my backyard and find an alligator underneath the purple sage.   This is one of the reasons that we do not live in Florida.  Yes, we have alligators in Texas, but they tend to mind their own business; if they do not, they end up as boots and handbags.  (I am not condoning such behavior, merely acknowledging that it exists.)  Florida gators, because there are so many of them, tend to be more forward.  The gentlemen who are the Gator Boys run a sanctuary for alligators.  They catch alligators with nothing but a catchpole and a roll of tape.  One guy jumps in the water and swims around looking for the gators, then he pulls them onto the shore, where the other guy 'wrestles' the alligator until it gives up.  Then they tape up the gator and put it in the truck.  The alligators are not killed, but taken to the sanctuary, where they are allowed to live out their days.  Oh, they also catch snakes. 

4.  Call of the Wildman     This is a guy named Ernie, who lives in Kentucky.  Ernie has only seven teeth left in his head, and he likes to catch animals barehanded. People call him to get rid of nuisance animals, such as raccoons and possums, which have invaded their homes or barns or whatever. If there is a hole in the ground, the Turtle Man will stick his hand in there just to pull whatever is in there out.  The show plays up the whole "Hillbilly" angle.  Ernie's house apparently doesn't have a shower, since they usually show him taking one at his mom's house.  Ernie also has his mom cut his hair for him, and he brings her dead squirrels to cook for him.   Ernie has a friend named Neal and a dog named Lolly, along with a few other members of the "Turtle Team".  Zane will run around the house hollering about "Live Action", just like Ernie. My son loves the Turtle Man. I tell him that this is not really the best way to get women to notice him.   

5.  Ultimate Spiderman and The Avengers.   The art of the cartoon has been lost on most people.   Once they reach a certain age,  it is as if all the joy they once got from watching Saturday morning cartoons is sucked out of them.  I've seen some of the crap that passes for cartoons today, and I can't say that I blame them.  It never happened to me, because I watched the good shows like Looney Tunes, Freakazoid, Rocko's Modern Life, Pinky and the Brain and Ren and Stimpy.    I've been consistently watching various animated shows since I was a kid, and I don't intend to stop just because of my age.  Ultimate Spiderman is another attempt to reboot the animated Spiderman franchise, and I have to say that it is pretty darn good.  I have liked the stories so far, and the characters are likeable, and it's nice to know that Hayden Christiansen can still find work after being Anakin Skywalker.  The Avengers, which is an extremely great show that seemed to be holding true to the Marvel comic universe, has been cancelled because the Disney XD channel is as stupid as Fox was when they cancelled Firefly.  

Okay, feel free to point and make fun of me if you want to.  What shows are you guys watching this summer?

Passing Down the Habits

My son is like all small children, in that he likes to watch movies, etc. over and over and over and over and over and over. He's seen the movie UP about 400,000,000 times just in the past month, for instance!

I kid...it's only been about 200,000,000 times.

We have tried many times to get Zane to watch other movies instead of the same one a kajillion times, finally resorting to telling him that the movie is in time out. For instance, Finding Nemo is currently in time out because Nemo did not listen to his father. The Toy Story movies are all doing time because the toys didn't put themselves away when they were done playing. Up is on the shelf because that little boy did not ask his mother for permission to head to South America. My son is learning valuable life lessons from the 'punishment' of his dvd collection.

I understand that kids have to watch movies repeatedly. I know that it is developmentally appropriate to repeat a task over and over again. I did the same thing with my Donny Osmond records. At least until they disappeared under 'mysterious circumstances' and somehow ended up on the top shelf of my parents' closet.

What I find interesting is that after about 10 minutes of watching, my son starts playing with his toys, wandering around the house and following me around. He seems completely oblivious to the television and what is on it, so I turn it off. The second the television is off or the channel is changed, Zane comes running, hollering that he was watching that. Huh?

Are viewing habits genetic? My husband has to be sitting right there in front of the television from the second the show starts. He cannot handle missing any part of the sequence of events; it completely ruins his enjoyment of the show. He enjoys watching the shows that he likes multiple times, and will buy the blu-rays of his favorites. On the other hand, I wander about while watching television, doing laundry and various brief tasks. I am pretty good about extrapolating what is happening, so it doesn't bother me if I miss a bit here and there. You can even tell me the end first, and I will still enjoy what comes before it. But there are very few movies or television shows that I want to watch more than once.

I focus more on the conversations and the people in books. Too many extraneous details(as if people stand around counting the windows on buildings!) make my eyes cross. I skim those parts to get to the meat of the story. I read submersively, from beginning to end, without a break. Once I read a book, unless it is an absolutely awesome book(such as Lonesome Dove) on a colossal scale, I am not likely to read it again. There are too many books and too little time for me to go back.

My husband, on the other hand, reads very slowly. He reads every single word painstakingly, sticking his mind into the smallest detail and committing them to memory. If he loves a book, he reads it again and again, until that particular book becomes a part of him. For example, Larry can quote Tolkien because he's read all the books so many times. He's currently rereading the books of A Song of Ice and Fire, just so he can then read A Dance With Dragons with the previous books still fresh in his mind.

My son isn't really old enough to have habits, but he seems to be taking after his father in the book reading. Whatever book he is 'reading'(meaning that Dad or Mom read to him) must be read repeatedly. Zane can repeat, almost word for word, the book When Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, and he points out specific details in the pictures on the pages, like the fact that the dinosaur got water on the floor while taking a bath, and his Mama was going to be mad. I think that is pretty awesome, whether it is genetic or not.

RemembeRED: TV shows

Prompt: TV is something that people either watch a lot of or have definite feelings about. This week, we want you to think about a tv show from your past. Maybe you watched it, maybe you didn't and it was just something that everyone else talked about.

What feelings does the show evoke? What memories does it trigger?

Growing up, watching television was something that my family did together. I can remember watching Gunsmoke, and all of us rooting for Marshall Dillon to save the day. I can remember Charlie's Angels, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman.

But the show I remember loving best is the original Star Trek. I was four when the show first went on the air, and I don't remember that, of course. However, we went to Germany when I was 8, and the only channel we had to watch that was in English was the one the military piped in. That channel showed reruns of Star Trek. I could hardly wait to hear the intro.

"Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

I loved Captain Kirk. He was smart, he was bold, he was decisive, and he got the job done, even if he had to break the rules sometimes. Captain Kirk was born to lead--you could see it in his body language, his voice, his expressions. Captain Kirk believed in himself and his abilities; he had healthy self-esteem, the psychologists would say. I guess that one would have to have good self-esteem, to believe in yourself, in order to lead a bunch of people into uncharted space, but that hadn't occurred to me as a child.

But I had an affinity for Spock. I wanted to be more like him, with his unemotional view of the situations the crew encountered. Personality-wise, I was probably more like Dr. McCoy, passionate and caring, but I wanted to be Spock. Even back then, however, I noticed that Kirk usually made decisions that fell between the viewpoints of his two colleagues. A leader does have to listen to the opinions of his crew, I learned, but he also has to make his own decisions, because he's the leader.

I can remember watching episodes of Star Trek and being scared. The episode with the Horta, a creature that melted rock, gave me a nightmare or two. I can also remember wanting a tribble, and laughing at the sight of Kirk being bombarded with tribbles from a grain storage unit. In all those episodes, I felt that I was a bona fide member of the Enterprise.

In some ways, I still do.

When I was in college as an undergrad, my friends and I would go to a boy's dorm to watch the original Star Trek; a station played reruns every weekday at 4pm.

My answering machine, once upon a time, was the intro to Star Trek. People often called me just to hear it.

One of the reasons I became interested in my husband was his love of all things Star Trek, although he is more of a Next Generation fan than I am.

And my husband sits with my son these days and watches remastered Star Trek episodes on our Blu-ray player. When I can, I watch them as well.

I want to see my son, as an adult, to explore, to seek, and to boldly go toward whatever life has to offer him.

Lesson learned, Captain Kirk.