A convincing victory by 30 Rock last week reinforced the balance among the three shows we’ve seen so far this year. There hasn’t been one show that’s dominated so far this year. In fact, I don’t think any of the shows has won back-to-back weeks when all three had new episodes. How did things shake out this time around? Let’s take a look.
This was SitCombat for February 16, 2012:
Hilarious friends from myriad walks of life have bombarded my Facebook feed with guffaw-inspiring pictures that show the various perceptions about a given occupation. The purveyors of this meme have extended it to jobs as diverse as public relations people, college students, sports information directors, home-schooled kids, photographers, disc jockeys, improvisers, seminarians, and even cats.
Examples of the “What People Think I Do” meme continue to proliferate. Since I’m always up for meme-participation (Anyone who knows me knows that I live for this stuff!), I thought I would throw my hat[1] into the proverbial ring.
So, here’s my attempt to shed some light on my own life and livelihood. I don’t see why directors and web developers and stay-at-home moms should have all the fun!
Bon appetite!
From my perspective, anyway.
Valentine’s Day (f/k/a St. Valentine’s Day) arrives to bestow upon us its annual bounty of heart-shaped confections and edible unmentionables.
Most of us are simultaneously delighted by this wonderful holiday and perplexed by how best to spend it. Anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account has no doubt been inundated by complaints, apprehension, and questions revolving around the ideal method of celebrating Valentine’s Day. In fact, what was once a simple day of passing pink and red cards at worst, or a straightforward jewelry-for-sex exchange at best, has transformed into an increasingly pressure-packed, stressful event.
I’m not going to list a series of detailed Valentine’s Day ideas or suggestions. There are hundreds of other articles that fit that structure, and, besides, what works for me may not be what works for you. All I can do is present my own Valentine’s Day agenda, which hopefully might provide vague insight—if not specific instruction—into how you can make your holiday a successful one!
I guess the first thing I should say is that it will come as a surprise to most of you that this is not actually an article about my love of pork products.
I’ve been fostering dogs for Bonnie Blue Rescue for about two years now. The first year went as I expected: I would receive a dog from the service, and, a short time later, the dog would leave me to go on a trial visit that inevitably became a permanent arrangement. A “forever home” in the parlance of the industry.
Credit: Emily Nolte-Shotwell
The length of time a particular dog stayed with me varied. Sometimes I would keep the animal only a few days if he were in transit. Sometimes it might be over a month, especially if the dog were too young to be adopted immediately. More often than not, each animal remained at my house for two or three weeks.
That was the first year. Things have been quite different in year two.
Whereas more than a dozen different animals stayed with me during my first twelve months helping Bonnie Blue, the second twelve months have been occupied by a single creature: A dog named Bacon.
Bacon came to live with me last February, when his name was still “Mick Jagger” for some unknown reason. He is a dachshund / beagle mix who stands about a foot off the ground at his highest point and tips the scales south of thirty pounds. “Bacon” seemed a more appropriate name for him.
Bacon traveled to Virginia after being thrown from the back of a moving truck by his previous owners. He not only survived the incident, but he miraculously suffered no serious injuries, possibly due to his unorthodox body type (he and I have that in common).
The Office scored its first victory of the year with a humorous tale of responsibility-avoidance, while Archer hit a minor bump in the road after a very strong start to the season. 30 Rock was solid as usual, but that wasn’t enough to take the win last time around.
Who will prevail this week?
This was SitCombat for February 9, 2012:
Archer and one of the two new episodes of 30 Rock tied for victory last time around, in a week in which The Office did not air. That changes in this edition of SitCombat, as Dwight Schrute and company return with a surprising new show.
Archer is two-for-two so far this year, but 30 Rock has moved past the Tracy Morgan storyline into fresh territory, so this should be a good battle for all three shows. Let’s see how this contest unfolded.
This was SitCombat for February 2, 2012:
I love Major League Baseball, but my first and greatest love as a sports fan is the National Football League.
One of the many peculiar things about me is that I own a large DVD album filled with disc after disc of the television broadcasts of NFL games I deemed worthy of memorializing. I recorded most of these classic games myself when they actually aired. Part of my annual routine in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl is to revisit a few of these classic contests. I focus mostly on the Super Bowls themselves, but I’ll occasionally dust off a good playoff game or two.
Seeing these old games reminds me of how many commonplace facets of the sport from a generation ago (which, sadly, now means my generation) would be strange to a modern audience. These oddities ranges from the uncluttered screen of a 1980’s NFL broadcast to the presence of multiple professional kickers who thought it was a good idea to kick barefoot, even in freezing temperatures and snowy conditions like the ones present in the 1986 AFC Championship Game.
There was something else I noticed in that particular game that, insofar as I’m aware, has never happened before or since.
I’m trying my best to keep this charmingly eclectic website from morphing into an all-wrestling blog, but I feel compelled to discuss a few things that happened last night after spending so much time in fevered anticipation of same. I will preface this by making two points.
First, I like Sheamus. I really do. I thought him winning the WWE Title in his first year in the company was great, and the creative team executed that angle superbly. I think he’s a main-event-level star.
Secondly, I’m a borderline-apologist for the WWE. I’ve said over and over that the writing on RAW in the post-Attitude Era, from a television perspective, has been as good as or better than it’s ever been. The point is that I’m not the stereotypical older fan who thinks “everything sucks,” or that nothing is as good as it was in 1998. As I said in my Rumble preview linked above, I had been very impressed with the character development for Daniel Bryan, John Cena, and Chris Jericho heading into the Rumble (and, by extension, WrestleMania 28). I’m generally happy with the product.
However . . . the one thing I can’t abide is a breakdown in narrative integrity. Poor storytelling. That’s what happened last night.
Ranking the Dwarfs
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Snow White. Almost all of us are familiar with the Brothers Grimm collected story of the ongoing efforts of an evil queen to snuff out the only woman in all the land more beautiful than she.
The change to which I’m referring relates to the Seven Dwarves (called the Seven Dwarfs by Disney and others). The Dwarfs were nameless in the original, referred to only as “the first one, the second one,” and so on. There was a more obvious need to name the Dwarfs for the purposes of non-literary versions of the story. For example, the 1912 stage production called them Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick, and Quee.
Disney, however, gave each of the seven a distinct personality, complete with a defining characteristic and names to match. However, some of these little guys made out better than others. For no reason aside from my own amusement, here’s a ranking from worst-to-first of Snow White’s seven companions.
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