Indy the Cat meets a treadmill...

...and hilarity ensues. Enjoy!

 

This just popped up on my YouTube page. I wasn't even looking for anything in particular. 

It almost makes me want a treadmill just to watch Sophie try to figure it out.

Back to the beach!!!

Great news - I'm moving back to the beach in a few weeks!

Back to the same apartment complex, in fact. I haven't been this happy in months, the past few years even, as you probably noticed if you caught the full-blown meltdown blog and social media posts that I would periodically put up and then take down later when I'd calmed down a bit.

It's a huge, beautiful apartment and I'll also have an office, plus I'm walking distance to the channel and the beach! And in good news for both Sophie and I, we'll have a fireplace again! So you can all look forward to many, many pictures of Sophie camped out in front of the flames. Those have been missing since the last move. 

We can all also look forward to the return of beautiful sunrise and sunset pictures, now that I'll have access to unobstructed views again. 

Other things that will be resuming are writing and cooking. I haven't been writing much since the beginning of the year due to stress and here's the story on that and not cooking: This will probably sound stupid to most people, but I've had a cricket infestation in my kitchen that wreaked havoc on my bug phobia. It wasn't the reason I moved back to the beach but it accelerated my plans (I'd originally been aiming for summer). So, silver lining and all that. But still, not fun or conducive the preparing food.

What happened is that just before Thanksgiving, I found four crickets in my kitchen within a week. Then it stopped during the holidays. I had a great Christmas and New Year's Day with plans to be busy and productive at home in the new year. Then on January 2, the crickets returned. Even after having Orkin out twice to spray, I was still getting them at the rate of about four a week. It got to the point very quickly where I stopped utilizing my kitchen. I'm a trained chef and I didn't want to go into my kitchen. How sad is that? Finally, in mid-January, I decided fuck it, I'm out of here. I started looking at apartments in Marina del Rey and last weekend I found my new home. 

It will be so nice to lose the stress and be able to focus on writing, plus I really want to start cooking again. I'm looking forward to just being able to make a damn sandwich without freaking out about something gross jumping out at me. And I can look forward to just being happy and healthy and enjoying life. Even before the lockdown, I'd always been a homebody, so my home (and being happy and comfortable in it) is really important to me. And now I will be.

Pretty much the only downside is that it's been really nice to live within a half-hour's drive to The Brother's place. He's not a beach person so going out there to hang out isn't something I can dangle like a carrot to make him do that drive, plus it was convenient when I needed a big strong man's help around the apartment, especially when he became my go-to Dead Bug Disposal Team. But we'll make it work.

I'm so grateful to be going back home. I'm grateful to my leasing agent who was so patient while I looked at God knows how many apartments until I found just the right one. I'm especially grateful for The Brother who was so understanding and encouraging when I delivered the news that I was going back to being at least an hour away again, because I needed to go home. 

I've gone from spending the first couple of months of this year feeling plagued and on edge to feeling so damn fortunate. And I will not be ungrateful again. This is truly a new beginning and I'm not going to screw it up.

And now I've got to get back to packing. 

Life is good.

Valentine's Day special!

For that special piece o'shit in your life:

Make that call!!! 💕💕💕

H/T to Officer Parker on FB.

Recent reading: "Deconstructing The Rat Pack: Joey, The Mob, and The Summit"

Deconstructing The Rat Pack: Joey, The Mob, and The Summit 

by Richard A. Lertzman with Lon Davis

I came about this book in a kind of roundabout way. Until Better Call Saul and Barry return, there's absolutely no first run TV shows that I have any interest in. Luckily there are a couple of channels showing old and classic TV shows, MeTV and Antenna TV. I've been DVRing old Carol Burnett episodes and stumbled across a couple of shows I'd never seen or heard of before: Lotsa Luck! and The Joey Bishop Show.

Lotsa Luck! was produced by Carl Reiner and starred Dom DeLuise as a New York City bus company employee who lived with his mother, sister, and deadbeat brother-in-law. It's a typical studio-bound 1970's sitcom, but for some reason I got hooked on it.

And then there's The Joey Bishop Show, a sitcom starring, of course, deadpan comedian Joey Bishop. Bishop had a decades-long standup career, was a fixture on 1950's and 60's talk shows (eventually guest hosting The Tonight Show over 200 times), was known for his quick wit, hosted the Emmy Awards multiple times, and most famously was a member of The Rat Pack, the uber-cool collection of superstar entertainer friends who briefly ruled Las Vegas, and according to this book helped make Vegas the destination it is today. 

The Rat Pack was comprised of Bishop, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and Peter Lawford. Sinatra was the undisputed king. Davis was an established song-and-dance man and entertainer. Martin had not yet made the transition from Jerry Lewis's straight man to a successful TV show host on his own. Lawford, a handsome, British-born film actor, was included mainly due to his connection to future president John F. Kennedy (Lawford had married JFK's sister Patricia).

Bishop's show, like DeLuise's, is pretty typical of its time. But it made me curious about Bishop. You know that expression "don't meet your idols"? I was shocked to discover that Bishop was absolutely loathsome and despised by so many people that by the time his career tanked, he had burned so many bridges that he was pretty much over despite only being in his early 50's. Eventually he even pissed off Frank Sinatra, who then declined to include Bishop in future Rat Pack projects and performances. 

This book, just released in December, is the culmination of years of often combative interviews with Bishop in the years prior his death in 2007, along with some highly unflattering interviews with some of his co-workers from the sitcom. 

Bishop paid his dues in his early years, working his way up from small clubs to popular nightclubs. At the time he was considered cooperative - most clubs were mob-controlled and Bishop was the kind of guy who knew how to keep his mouth shut, so the mobsters liked him. His career really took off when Frank Sinatra chose him as an opening act. It was an ideal situation for Bishop - he was a low-energy performer who would warm up the crowd, but not wear them out before the headliner took the stage. But after The Rat Pack became huge, he shifted into star, rather than sidekick, mode. 

At this point in his career Bishop had two strikes against him - one, he was unable to update his act to fit changing tastes of the 1960's post-Rat Pack era. And as far as his sitcom was concerned, he was handicapped by not being trained as an actor. He also was a terrible tyrant to the people who worked on the show. Actors and writers were verbally abused and often fired. No one on the show seemed to have anything good to say about him. To add to Bishop's displeasure, the show was ripped to shreds by critics; in fact the original concept of Season 1 was was completely jettisoned for subsequent seasons. For various reasons the show was able to get through four seasons before getting the axe. 

There was some hope that his skills were better suited to a talk show, which became his next endeavor. His late-night talk show was intended to compete with Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show, but after two seasons he was replaced by Dick Cavett, who like Carson was better equipped to interview more intellectual guests. Bishop's career never recovered.

The book also delves into the legendary Rat Pack and aims to dispel some of the long-term stories and legends about that era. 

Joey, who had burned bridges earlier with Ed Sullivan and had alienated Danny Thomas, was attacking and firing the top writers and directors on his show, angering NBC executives with his prima donna-like behavior. But to bite the hand that fed him - Frank Sinatra - the man who made his entire career possible - that was tantamount to career suicide.

January Words of Wisdom

 

A negative mind will never give you a positive life. --Ziad K. Abdelnour

If you want the moon, do not hide at night. If you want a rose, do not run away from the thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself. --Rumi

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier. --Anthony Hopkins

Is the sheep preaching hate when he says, "I'm not going to let the wolf eat me anymore? If the wolf comes in here, next time he comes in here, I'll do whatever I have to do to keep him off my back." Is the sheep violent, or is the wolf the violent one? --Denzel Washington

Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them. --Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot. --Mark Twain

Words of Wisdom: The Beach

"A beach walk is for stretching your legs and your mind, for looking at life with newfound eyes." --Sandy Gingras

Things are looking up.... :)

Words of Wisdom

"Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention." --Richard Feynman

"1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual."

Guess what's the best selling literary novel on Amazon right now. 

Go ahead, guess.

Not coincidentally, I found this online today:

Some info on that quote here.

He's not wrong, Part 2

Rowan Atkinson on "cancel culture": "...medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn." He also teases a very tiny possibility of a Blackadder reboot.

Speaking of the return of great shows, Dexter Morgan has his big bad for the new season of the Showtime series. Clancy Brown has been cast as his adversary, a self-made "man of the people" who will make you pay dearly if you cross him. Great casting, and sounds like a formidable opponent for our favorite sociopathic serial killer. 

He's not wrong

This is a perfect example of how ridiculous these rules are. We are required to wear masks, but if the masks protect us from the virus, then why not open up all businesses? And if they don't, why are they required? Why can I go to Costco and Walmart, but not my local mom and pop shop or restaurant? If the six foot separation helps prevent transmission, why can I walk right past someone in the grocery store, but then have to stand way behind that same person at the check stand? And what happened to wearing gloves? That was a thing when this all started, and then suddenly it wasn't.

And then there's this picture, which has been making the rounds on the internets:

Yeah.  None of this makes sense.

Happy New Year!!!

Here's hoping he's right...

"Tonight we celebrate the coming of a new year, a time of expectation and promise. I believe it's going to be a very good year indeed." (From President Ronald Reagan's Radio Address to the Nation on New Year's Eve 1988)

My wish for 2021 is that it isn't another 2020, that the world regains some semblance of a sense of reason, and that we leave the insanity and evil of 2020 in the dust.

H/T to Reagan Presidential Library on IG.