30&P

XMAS '09

2009-12-07T20:27:00.006-06:00

H1N1 Party Ideas

2009-10-11T17:52:00.009-05:00

Recently, Glen Beck told listeners on his Sept. 29th Fox News show that instead of getting the government recommended H1N1 flu shots, he preferred the idea of swine flu parties, where party goers could swap bugs, munch finger foods, and have a good ole time getting sick. Like a wild 1970s key-swap party, the night would presumably involve lots of new exchanges that would send party goers straight to bed.

While many are calling Mr. Beck a crazy conspiracy theorist nut because, as his logic goes, the government cannot be trusted, so "do the opposite," I think he may be onto something. Frankly, I'd like to be the first to publish a lush, photo-rich cookbook/manners guide on how to throw a flu party for the rightwing nut. The potential host (in more ways than one) needs to know what the etiquette of a flu party entails. Where to go? What to do? What to cook? How can one get the most bug for the buck?

Here are some preliminary ideas on the subject:

Have lots of chips to munch on and many, many bowls of dip. Guests should be welcomed to double, even triple dip. Please, no veggies or fruits, as they may somehow benefit the immune system.
Sneezing on food is welcomed.

Shake lots of hands, rub eyes, nose, and lips frequently.
Remove soap from the bathroom/kitchen.
At given intervals, the host can tap a glass and everyone will then swap eating utensils, drinks, and napkins.
Instead of games such as bobbing for apples, guests can lick door handles.
Guests should touch as much of the food as possible before selecting the right cookie, pastry, or chip.

Stress guests out with doomsday Obama conspiracy theories to hammer away at that pesky immune system. Suggest that ACORN is a shadow government.
Appropriate party favors include Thera Flu packets and used tissues of H1N1 sufferers for further and maximum exposure.
Instead of dipping rims of margaritas in water, use spit of the infected. It's not only festive, but rather culturally appropriate considering that the first major outbreak was in Mexico! Pinatas with infectious materials inside could be worth serious consideration.

Huevos rancheros

2009-08-31T22:00:00.008-05:00

Tonight I made huevos rancheros from Cooksillustrated.com. It was unlike any other HR I've ever seen in a restaurant, but I liked it a lot. The tortillas were crispy, and the eggs were cooked in holes scooped out in the sauce and simmered--kind of like poaching I suppose. It was good, although like I said, not really what I am used to (no cheese!?), but a fancy pants version I can certainly live with. The roasted tomatoes and tomatillos were quite easy and tasted great. Actually, the recipe didn't call for the tomatillos, but I think the papery leafy covering is amazing--a little jacket for fruit, how smart.

Pop, pop, fizz, fizz...

2009-08-31T21:42:00.010-05:00

Looky here everyone, Lincoln seems a little bit edgy and cool. We have a new soda shop, Rocket Fizz, in south Lincoln. Dave and I drove out there on Sunday after seeing Food, Inc. The store specializes in selling old timey and up-start sodas, especially classic root/ginger beers and fruit sodas. They also sell candy, but that seems like an afterthought. Thankfully they also offer a selection of cold sodas, so I grabbed a Boylan's Birch Beer made in New Jersey (it's a pretty common brand in NYC stores). It tasted like root beer candy (thankfully it did not taste like the sickeningly flavored root beer chap stick/candy thing I ate on a car trip once when I was ten or so) but with a nice kick. Big yum.

Here are my upcoming tasty delights: Dr. Pepper (made with real sugar and the original 1891 formulation), AJ Stephans Green Lemon Lime (New England's Tonic, the label tells me), Bubble Up, Faygo Root Beer, and Pearson Bros. Root Beer. Full reviews as I open!

2009-08-08T22:51:00.001-05:00

Melissa's English Dept. Dog Party/Adoption Celebration

2009-05-02T18:46:00.002-05:00

2009-05-02T18:44:00.001-05:00

2009-05-02T18:43:00.001-05:00

iPhone Madness

2009-03-29T20:47:00.002-05:00

I am in a honeymoon phase with the iPhone. I was able to directly post this picture of Bo-bo with my phone, which is totally cool. I will try to post some picture of fun things from now on, and soon, get back to blogging...I have some good posts on Lou Grant and most especially Nancy Drew.

2009-03-29T20:46:00.000-05:00

A tribute to a favorite color

2009-01-21T15:59:00.011-06:00

I can't get over how entirely cute, adorable, and lovely Obama's youngest daughter, Sasha, was in her orange and pink ensemble. Orange has always been one of my favorite colors--I think it goes back to my plastic orange Bert and Ernie bowl when I was a kid or the '70s Brady Bunch orange Formica counter top in our kitchen. Later, in college, I took a class at Concordia College just across the street from MSU, and a fellow student introduced herself with, "My name is __(Erin? Geeze that was a long time ago!)___ and I wear at least one orange item everyday." Needless to say, I had an instant liking for her. Hopefully Sasha's style is a sign of great things to come. I could see a new flag in orange and pink, what do you think?

Merry Chirstmas

2008-12-25T11:07:00.002-06:00

XMAS Tree

2008-12-01T20:02:00.003-06:00

I put up the tree on Saturday night--we were bored out of our minds. It's always way more work to get all this done than I think, especially when inspiration hits at 10:30 p.m. However, I love my angel + robot and she brightened my night and made me think that life is robot good, especially when it's all connected with a gold pipe cleaner.

Time Machine

2008-10-27T15:05:00.012-05:00

I spent way too much time mining the Internet for postcards of Lincoln. Sadly, it affirmed everything I found out writing my dissertation: this damn city used to be pretty cool. I especially love the castle-like state penn and Tudor-looking insane hospital. A nice row around Epsworth Park Lake or a restful night's sleep at the Topper would be wonderful things to do. The Lincoln below looks like a place I could visit and enjoy--where did it go?

Click on images for a better view...enjoy.

A Tree Doesn't Grow on 30th Street

2008-10-26T21:47:00.013-05:00

It was a windy day in Lincoln today. I was grading at Barnes & Noble with Jeanine for most of the afternoon and didn't realize how windy it really was until I got home and saw one of the massive trees in our yard was blocking 30th street. After last summer's strong thunder storms, I'm surprised the tree lasted as long as it did given the rotting trunk that was exposed after it broke in half. Luckily, it fell into the street and only did very minor damage to the house across the street.

I'd write more to eulogize the tree, but a) I'm renting and b) it honestly wasn't the prettiest tree I've ever seen but I do wonder:

how old was it?
who lived in this house when it was a mere sapling?
who planted it?
how lovely was my neighborhood at one time?

This all reminds me of my favorite Robert Frost poem, although the trees in Lincoln are only now beginning to drop their leaves.

A Leaf-Treader

I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn-tired.
God knows all the color and form of leaves I have trodden on and mired.
Perhaps I have put forth too much strength and been too fierce from fear.
I have safely trodden underfoot the dead leaves of another year.

All summer long they were overhead, more lifted up than I.
To come to their final place in earth they had to pass me by.
All summer long I thought I heard them threatening under their breath.
And when they came it seemed with a will to carry me with them to death.

They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf.
They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief.
But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go.
Now up, my knee, to keep on top of another year of snow.

(I was playing around with iMovie here, sorry if it's a bit dull.)

If I was a better iMovie director, I would give the tree a nice--if heavily recreated--montage of memories from across the years: it's first winter, its first thunder storm, its first spring...its 21st birthday bash with the trees on 30th street.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night

2008-10-06T22:51:00.014-05:00

Dave took me to homecoming last Saturday for what has become my annual Husker game. This year it was a night game (v. Missouri's Tigers), which I was glad for--my first game last year resulted in a nasty sun burn that took weeks of gross peeling to endure.

This year, unlike last, I didn't make it without having to use the restroom, which proved to be both loud and smelly. The men's room was like a sauna if saunas were cement and smelled like pee. Screaming fans, drunk men who could barely walk, and the pee smell are, I suppose, part of the experience. So I experienced it. Here are some highlight pictures.

I am personally glad they make band people do this and not orchestra people. I could not stroll in line if my life depended on it.

When I start paying attention to just how many people are around me in the stadium I get a wee bit sick. It's just too much like a koi fish pond where they thrash over one another to get the food. Gross.

I didn't get pictures of them, but sitting behind us were some tried and true old timers. I have always had a fondness for old timers, but I really loved lines like, "Quit clown'n around!" I wish that they only let in old timers into the stadium.

This part--when Nebraska scored--was fun. The kid below us was high-fiving us a ton--even accidentally when Missouri scored. He high-fived hard. My hand hurt. He began to mope when we were losing and he never ended up returning after half time. I suppose he was too sober by that point.

The guy below, however, ruined the spirit of the game by totally stealing the flying hot dog that hit Dave's shoulder. Ever since Czech Fest, I strongly believe that Dave and I have an affinity for attracting flying hot dogs and what better place to prove it than at a Husker game where Der Weinerschlinger hurls dogs into the air via a small air canon? The flying wiener was ours, I say, ours!

It was very, very quiet as we left the Stadium in the third quarter. Everyone was sober by this point. So much for Husker power and all that. There's always next year, folks.

Did I mention that my building on campus is falling apart and that Dave and I saw the luxurious new sports training complex? I'm glad we Huskers have things in perspective, especially when I show up to work.

And yet, I'm still mad about the wiener.

Photographs

2008-10-05T23:48:00.020-05:00

Recently after my great Uncle Lyle passed away, relatives going through his belongings have been sending pictures to my mother and other family that "belong" to our side of the family. This has me feeling and thinking all kinds of things--none of which are particularly surprising given the circumstances--but it is strange to come into contact with these pictures that Lyle surrounded himself with.

The ties that bind us together are brought into focus: images that document lives lived, time spent growing and changing, and what all of this suggests and covers up is equally lovely and so sad. I have a feeling that the gap in photographs during my grandfather's early teens revels a hellish time. After my grandmother died he told me some of that story: living in barns, being used in a slave-like state by friends of his father's after his mother died in child birth--a family dissolved by an emotionally distant father. After he ran away, he worked harder than I can imagine a twelve year-old working to afford food and shelter and who found time to study at night with a kind school teacher who personally took him on as her student and saw him to the 8th grade. These things, I know, are not a part of what I see. He's a small boy in the images, carefree and not yet aware of the hard fate in front of him.

Likewise, my grandmother's scrapbook was buried in a dresser drawer in the room I often slept in growing up--so close and yet so out of reach. It is full of the ephemera of a high school girl in the 1920s who went to dances, posed for pictures, and collected dance cards. When I first saw the book after she died it was like opening up a new world of her life--so strange to have it open up after she died, but it did. I was captivated by these photographs from the scrapbook because the woman I knew is so evident in them. Yet who was this girl then? What did she want out of her life?

(Click to see larger version, very cool if you do!)

Through all of these things, the stuff left over, my grandmother's life took on new dimension for me. As cliched as it sounds, she took shape as a person--I could see beyond the gray hair and curlers that she must have adopted in her early 50s, judging by the pictures I've seen. Old before her time.

These recent pictures have added to my understanding of her life, as well as my grandfather's life. These pictures are endlessly fascinating to me, and I'm so grateful that for the split second of the pose, the shutter click, and the amazing alchemical process that produces the images. But most of all, I am grateful to--and you can see this in the last picture below--to the shadowy figures who snapped the pictures, the picture takers who wanted to capture the moment.

Later, after the birth of my mother and her siblings, after the tragic death of their first-born daughter, the series of images gets to me. The story plays out. The pictures tell the story--and yet they miss something. I'm lonesome as I look at these pictures for the conversations I could have had, for the smell of a soapy smelling kitchen in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and for the voices of a generation now gone.

A couple of treats to go with Y&R

2008-09-09T23:11:00.005-05:00

One of my second cousins in a Y&R scene.

The Young and the Crazy

2008-09-06T17:43:00.012-05:00

Now that school is starting, I suppose it should be bon voyage time sucks, but thanks to the Internet, I can still have my time suck and watch it too. Ah, The Young and the Restless. My affinity for this soap, as opposed to the one that I was actually on for four seconds (General Hospital...erg...20 years ago) is that my grandparents watched this everyday and, strangely enough, my second cousins were on the show as babies. The character they played is now dead, so sad.

Anyway, Y&R gives Genoa City, Wisconsin way more credit than it ever deserves, and that's certainly one of the swaying factors for me. This fictional world, only a short distance away from Chicago, is so urban (judging by the skyscrappers outside the corporate headquarters of Restless Style magazine), and yet everyone seems to wind up in the same exact three spots everyday.

Kane

For some reason this summer, one of the things that struck me about this soap (and soaps in general) is how absolutely resilient the characters are--even in the face of utter horrific and or strangely unthinkable situations, they have maybe a week or two bounce-back time--usually less. There is no lasting damage from fake deaths, divorces, attempted muders, and on and on... I suppose in the world of Genoa City, you know there is always a new love-of-your-life down the road, another story line to carry you onward and upward...and if you die, maybe you do, maybe you don't.

Let's take Kane, for example. He's only been on the show for roughly six months, and in that time he discovered that he just happened to move from Australia to the exact city where his mysterious birth mother lives. Not only that, she's the loaded heir to one of the biggest cosmetic companies in the country (Jabot) and he's now the CEO--when questioned about his qualifications based on the fact that he's only had bar tending jobs, his mother quipped, "He's got good instincts, what more do you need?" I know, that would be cool, right?

Yet, Cloe, another new character, has the hots for him, yet he's in love with Lily, the exclusive model for his mother's cosmetic line. Cloe, set to trap Kane, mysteriously winds up preggers with Kane's baby and the DNA tests prove it's true. How did she get preggers when Kane has no memory of shagging Cloe? I personally sense a Tom-Cruise-turkey-baster baby, but that's just me. So instead of trying to figure out how Cloe possibly did this, Lily comes to Kane, the love her life, and tells him he must marry Cloe for the sake of his baby. So he does. Simple as that.

Lily

So at the wedding reception it comes out that Cloe isn't even her real name, it's Kate. She's the daughter of Kane's grandmother's maid. Now Kane is upset by this tom-foolery and as of the last episode, he was kissing Lily who overheard Kate confront her mother at the coffee shop about her real identity.

Cloe/Kate

Another example: The million-year-old Victor Newman. (When Victor was falsely reported dead by the Mexican authorities, his daughter recently explained that he renamed himself in a youthful attempt at starting over after a shabby, poor life. Victor--she explained--stands for VICTORY and Newman stands for NEW MAN. Do you get it?)

Victor/Sabrina

Victor was married last summer in a beautiful wedding to his young, European trophy wife Sabrina. She met Victor because she was friends with his daughter, Victoria. However, Victoria hated Sabrina after she hooked up with her father--a gold digger she said and most everyone else thought so too. Victor's ex-wife, Nicky, also remarried, but he was not quite the catch as Victor's Sabrina. Nicky's husband was, it turned out (what am I saying? It ALWAYS turns out), a gambler and a mob hit man....what a combo! So after the charity gala which Victoria and Sabrina co-chaired (what a cat fight that was), Sabrina got a ride home with David, Nicky's husband. Too bad a mob hit was ordered on David by his mobster enemies and Sabrina died over the course of three or four episodes due to liver damage sustained in the car accident. Lots of tears and scenery chewing conversations before her liver finally conked out.

So Victor went nuts, blaming every one for her death. Did I mention that Restless Style did a controversial hack piece on Sabrina? Well they did, and Victor hated everyone before, and after, well he went out of control--most especially taking his older daugher and son out of his will and leaving everything else to Victor Adam Newman, Jr.--the son Victor only recently knew he had. Actually, this was probably the most logical emotion I've seen on the show. Nicky, however, was horrified by Sabrina's death and especially that her husband was mobster and responsible for Sabrina's death. Later, other bodies were dragged out of her horse stable. Turns out, she was kinda wonderfully clueless about hubby.

Now, after Nicky tracked down Victor in Mexico where he personally killed the hit man who was ultimately responsible for Sabrina's death, Victor does seem like a new man. He's a lot nicer for starters. Yet for the last two weeks everyone thought he was dead. They had a funeral and everything. You would think that finding out that your father is dead and then alive would cause some damage, but in Wisconsin these things just happen---it's like breathing. Actually, the characters do mention this kind of stuff a lot...do you remember when we thought that your father was killed in that accident and then it turned out he wasn't? Maybe this is like that time? Wait, who has these convesations?

This is all by way of me making a point. I am jealous that these people get to have great jobs--I'd kill to have a job at Restless Style--and wear great clothes and get to hang out at the Athletic Club and the coffee shop all the time and have REALLY INTENSE conversations that I could never have in my real life, but please, could I for two minutes handle life in Genoa City, WI without a total breakdown? Probably not.

On the up side, "No-show-Glo" has some tricks up her sleeve in her evil plan to take over Jabot Cosmetics. I can't wait!

Forget Biden

2008-08-23T01:35:00.002-05:00

ObamaMadonna '08, please?!

Fag University

2008-08-22T13:40:00.004-05:00

P.S. I work at faggy, smut-peddling university! yay!

Hollywood

2008-08-17T23:14:00.037-05:00

The California trip blog continues...

Part One: The Hotel

Dave and I decided that we needed to stay somewhere fun and swanky since we were only going to be in California for a few days. The W was booked so we opted for The Standard, a West Hollywood boutique hotel full of hipsters.

So I've never, ever been at a place where I've used valet services--it just seems too lazy and weird to me--but we had to use it at the hotel to park. The only reason I bring this up is because we rented a Chevy Cobalt and it was totally and utterly out of place from the other guests' lux sedans, but I suppose we all kind of felt that way the entire time we were at the hotel anyway. The hotel is, as you can probably tell from the pictures, a bit self-conscious of how cool it is/wants to be. I have nothing wrong with this, and in fact, it's probably what attracted me to it. So when we checked in, we immediately noticed the Cactus lounge was full of the beautiful and the well-dressed. A bit intimidating, actually. So we checked into our room, took turns sitting in the silver bean bag chair, and played with the thermostat which only read: blow "hard" on one side, and blow "harder" on the other (heh).

So then it was off to the pool. This was the closest thing I've ever been to being on another planet--uncomfortable on the one hand, fascinating on the other. Again, I wish I would have taken pictures: this was a land of the very privileged 20 somethings. It was kind of like going to a really horrible cliquey high school dance if your high school was filled with the cast of The Hills. Instead of bolting, we sat down and had $12 cocktails. After taking everything in for a while, the landscape seemed to come into better view. While at first glance everyone was amazing looking, there were just as many ordinary people there too. Of course, as I told Dan, for all anyone knew, we could have been the sons of billionaires who burned money to sleep at night, so no one was really looking at us knowing we were Nebraskans utterly out of our element. The experience, to me, was like being inside a Brett Easton Ellis novel--a mini Less Than Zero all there to mull over. In fact, I think having read so much Ellis made me appreciate the scene at hand even more. The over-sexed tan hotties in the pool with their $50 pitchers endlessly smoking could have come right out of the novel. I know my coping mechanism is supposing that everyone was coked up and had totally unhappy, empty lives,but it's just as likely that they have everything they want and are well adjusted wonderful people.

On our last day at the hotel, I decided that another trip to the pool was in order. Since it was Sunday morning, there were only a few people around, mostly maids in pink uniforms vacuuming the blue astroturf back and forth. A couple sat across from me on the other side of the pool. They were mid-20s and pretty in a "we-have-money" kind of way. The woman pulled out a script from her large Louis Vuitton tote and began to study it, mimosas were ordered, sun tan lotion applied, and then he read Wired, frequently breaking off to read passages of the article to her. Above them, patio doors opened, the hotel guests were waking, smoking, getting ready for another day in LA. Then, more mimosas. What a life.

The last picture below, by the way, is when we arrived back at the hotel around midnight. The glass box behind the front desk was occupied with a girl who apparently just sat there looking at the Internet. I think she must sleep there, too. I told you it was too hip. So, in the spirit of the hotel, I have a picture of me trying to be too hip in the hotel.

Part 2: Holyfuckingshit, it's radonkulous

Thanks to one of Dan's colleagues at his conference, we had a new term to throw around during our trip: radonkulous. It's like ridiculous, but on a much grander scale. There were many things we saw in California that fit this definition to a T, especially the film festival we happened to find as we drove by the Silent Movie Theatre. They host a Saturday night filmfestival called Holyfuckingshit that features--exactly--the kind of B-VHS movies we enjoy on weekends. The night we were there, they screened The Story of Ricki-Oh. The link will show you some highlights. It was a great group of fun people, and the movie along with the previews, including Night of the Lepus and Bugs, were really funny.

A few other radonkulous items to report:

Driving into the Hollywood and Vine area, we spotted Marilyn Monroe walking her dog. There was something so, well, pedestrian about seeing her on the sidewalk, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary in seeing a long-dead celebrity walking her dog. So truly wonderful.

When walking down Hollywood, we found this great bar called the

The walls were great, full of Hollywood icons, inlcuding

LA was fun, radonkulously fun.

The anticipated second entry--Specifically, the Pacific

2008-08-10T23:21:00.025-05:00

After such a great kick off to my blog, I have been really bad about updating. I hope the photo at least offers some explanation as to what I have been up to (and it proves that I was thinking about the blog in California!). Now that I'm back, I have been wasting even more time (different obsessions, future blogs).

The picture was taken at Point Dume in Malibu. The day was perfect for the beach, although it would have helped had we thought to bring any kind of beach-going staples with us--namely towels--but in our defense we had only been in California for a few hours, not sure what our first stop was. After a few trips off the Interstate we scored no towels, although we did keep seeing places like Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond off in the distance. We could only surmise that they were indeed beyond our reach because when we backtracked for them, they were no where to be seen. We tried one of the largest 99 cent stores I have ever seen, but they only seemed to carry massive quantities of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble DVD (in Spanish, even better).

So we nevertheless made it to Point Dume after twisting and winding around the PCH for a few miles--every inch is like the most amazing postcard, one blending into the next. For someone who has lived his adult life on the Plains, the Pacific Ocean was breathtaking. Actually, it was breathtaking once the first wave hit me and threw me back a few feet. I was pretty hesitant about getting far out into the water--I have always seen surfers on TV diving in to waves and it looks so seamlessly easy, but in person the water is heavy, powerful, and well, moving faster than it looks when you are daydreaming on the beach, thinking it's just a massive pretty picture. Dave and Dan got pretty far out. I will vividly remember the image of Dan inside a wave for a split second, and Dave's head bobbing in and out of the grayish-blue water.

Once we got out, we dried off on the beach, using our shirts as towels. The sun was warmer only a few yards away from the ocean. Dan had work to do with his podcast (those are his feet above), so Dave and I decided to walk along the beach, headed toward the "point" of rocks that jet out into the ocean and presumably gives Point Dume its name. By this time it was late afternoon and people were headed home so there weren't many people to walk around as we headed toward the rocks. The houses on the cliff above the beach were so strange to see in person--yes, people live in this kind of splendor every day--I just can't image that. These houses are the kinds of places that Joan Didion rented in the '70s and writes about in The White Album (the newer '80s and '90s houses, however, are the kind you'd find in say, a Lifetime movie or an episode of Silk Stalkings had it been set in California and not Florida).

We walked a lot further than we thought and finally ended up at the rocks. I took some pictures, and Dave took one of me:

As you can see, getting to the craggy point was pretty cool. Of course a long walk to means a long walk back, and I must say that walking in sand isn't easy, but it was a lot fun.

After reuniting with Dan, we drove (about 50 yards, ha) over to a very 70s looking restaurant/bar fittingly called The Sunset (right of the red Hummer in the picture above). We enjoyed a fruity drinky treat that the bartender claimed was his speciality, but strangely he had no name for it. As we sipped his concoction (it was pretty good), we took in the fascinating people who were in the bar. I should have been braver and taken pictures: there was an aging hippy couple who looked like rich Hollywood types and they took most of our attention. There were also singles talking to Bluetooth head sets (some stranger than others) eating sexy flatbread salads and drinking expensive wines, as well as a few other groups of tan people (they all seemed so utterly casual) who came and went. The people who came for dinner were equally fascinating: lots of plastic surgery, blonde do's, and expensive outfits that were, in true Malibu style, passing as "casually thrown on."

We only had one drink at the Sunset, and fittingly, by the time we left the beach in search of a hotel in Burbank, the sun was setting: emitting a blindingly golden light.

A new blog...about?

2008-07-15T23:46:00.000-05:00

After doing a lot of a lot last year, I've really taken more than enough time to stare at blank walls and watch really bad tv and just be a time suck in general without getting anything productive done. So I suppose it was in that spirit that I decided to start this blog--at least I can post some of the nothing I've been doing and have a kind of net result for it. Maybe I'll even post more than nothing, who knows?

Biggest time suck to date? The Love Boat. It's streaming on CBS.com. I haven't seen this show in so long, and even as a kid I remember thinking that maybe, just maybe they had some trick to super-impose those waves behind the couples on the late-night deck scenes--but that took me a while. I do fondly remember fighting with my brother as to who would have the best seat in the house: sitting with my mom on the rust-colored couch (which I had through grad school).

Yet in 2008 what really gets me is just how much action the crew seems to get--this was the '70s after all. Well, Julie, I suppose, with her dreadfully ashy/reddish hair was a catch (although I do have to admit to admiring her style). But the doctor? Really? Ack! (On a side note: his almost one-per-episode Laurel and Hardy impressions drive me nuts!) As for Isaac, he usually ends up falling face-first into a cake or having a gallon of paint dumped over his head in just about every episode--or at the very least something equally stupid/humiliating happens, like here, where he had to wear his bow tie around his neck collar. And, of course, no love plots so far for him...

But the guest stars are fun to see...so impossibly young. Take a look.

OK, Ruth Gordon wasn't young, but so amazing, right?

Yes, the plot lines are stupid, the stories are formula 409, but I'm going to keep watching a few more episodes this summer, because it's like visiting a strange and yet familiar floating past full of guest stars and a sense that no matter how rough the sea, the journey always wraps up with a laugh track.