Weekend questions

(Links in meme-roll)

Friday 5   Touch that dial

(Please feel free to define TV anyway you wish.)

1. What’s the most boring thing on TV?

Cable TV commercials. Holy moly those things are brutal.

2. What’s the most enlightening thing on TV?

I think that is entirely dependent on what you need to feel enlightened. TV no longer does that for me.

3. What’s the most comforting thing on TV?

MASH episodes, or Bewitched.

4. What’s the tawdriest thing on TV?

From what I can tell, the entire Bravo channel.

5. What’s the most thrilling thing on TV?

Of late, it's been football. I think generally, it's either sports or, if you're a political wonk, the news.

____________________________________________________________________________

 

Saturday 9    This Could Be the Start of Something (1959)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

Welcome to the first Saturday 9 on 2024.

 

1) We're beginning the year with an optimistic song about starting something new. Right now, are you feeling positive about 2024?

I don't feel optimistic about much these days, but I'm feeling internally as positive as I've felt in awhile. Maybe it's knowing I'm headed somewhere warm next month. Maybe it's because I'm not getting blasted at work (at the moment), and I'm about to finally get the office I've been asking for for 2 decades. Maybe there is a tiny nugget of buried hope in the back of my mind that things aren't as dire as I think.

2) In this song, Jack Jones* sings that because he's on a diet he declines a rich dessert. Are you trying to lose a few pounds after the holidays?

It's not so much losing weight as getting my blood sugar level to stay below 225 for more than 30 seconds.

3) The specific dessert referred to is a Charlotte Russe, a cake made with custard, fruit, cream, whiskey and gelatin. Preparation sounds like a great deal of work! What's the most recent dish you whipped up in your kitchen?

I don't cook anymore. I'll be heating up a Factor dinner in about 20 minutes, if the microwave counts. Sparky cooked us a frozen pizza on New Year's Eve; as the oven preheated, I could smell dust burning.

4) The lyrics contrast dining at Sardi's in New York with sunbathing in Malibu. Do you enjoy nightlife or are you more outdoorsy?

Of those options, outdoors wins hands down: fewer people.

5) This week's song was written by Steve Allen. While best known for his work on TV (he was the first host of The Tonight Show), he was also a composer who felt most creative at the piano. When do you feel most creative?

When I'm asleep. I'm not even being silly or snarky; I have some amazingly creative dreams that I actually can "direct" once in awhile.

6) This week's artist, Jack Jones, won a pair of Grammy Awards and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yet he's probably best known for singing the song that welcomed travelers aboard The Love Boat every week. What TV theme song can you sing along with?

Well, that song, so ... thanks for that. 😉 I can do most of the typical 60s/70s classics, including The Partridge Family. IYKYK

 7) In 1959, when this song was popular, "continuing dramas" (aka soap operas) like Young Dr. Malone and Ma Perkins were broadcast daily on the radio. When you turn on the radio, do you listen for news, talk or music?

Sports. Literally the only time I've had the radio on in the car in years was either accidental (i.e. Bluetooth signal loss) or last month to listen to the Packer game.

8) Now let's turn the calendar and our attention from 1959 to 2024. Is there a skill you're looking forward to learning, or improving, this year?

I've decided that I need to have something to do during meetings to keep myself out of trouble. I don't know what that's going to be for sure, but last week I brought a pile of scratch paper and made lists and did word-finds from long words the speaker (my boss) used. Like, what words can I make from the letters in THEORETICAL or whatever. If I do this I don't feel compelled to fill silences with Cat Being Dumb.

9) Have you purchased anything on impulse yet this year?

I sent an order to Amazon this morning that included a book on chair yoga because my knees are really unhappy with me, and I do not like feeling like a blob of goo.

* If you like Jack Jones and want to hang on to your image of him, do not read Shirley Jones' biography. I can barely watch The Partridge Family anymore because I did.

____________________________________________________________________________

Sunday Stealing

Stolen from Pinterest

1. Favorite food

If it's carb-based, I'm probably going to put it in my facehole. I especially love cake. And pie. And pasta. 

2. Favorite color

Blue. It's boring as heck, but there are so many varieties of it and I love them all.

3. Favorite Animal

I love dogs. Their dander is poison to me, but I can't help myself from petting them, talking to them, letting them lick my hands, or ankles. 

4. Favorite thing to do on a cold day

So, like today? I'm fuh-reezing for the first time this season and I hate it. I spent 3 hours on the couch under TWO blankets napping and I'm going to have to go take a shower to warm up for bed at some point.

5. Favorite vacation spot

Ouray. Or Moosehead. 

6. Favorite TV show

Ever? The Wide World of Sports was so much fun and you never know what you were going to see: skiing? softball? darts? biathlon? I miss that. 

(I'm getting old--everything fun happened decades ago lol)

7. Favorite Mythical creataure

I favor Pegasus. Doesn't get much play these days, so it's kind of a stealth cryptid.

8. Favorite fairy tale

They are all wonderful, especially the original Grimm ones. Absolutely horrifying and grisly and occasionally funny.

9. Favorite thing to draw

A bath.

10. Favorite scent

Pine, vanilla, cinnamon, clean.  All combined is particularly wonderful.

11. Favorite mode of transportation

Realistically, pragmatically, my own car.

For fun, vacation-y things: trains.

12. Favorite vegetable

Most of the green ones are good. Definitely NOT beets! (long Christmas dinner discussion last month with my sister about Ways Mom Ruined Meals, and beets was a big topic--although to be fair, I will at least eat them if I have to)

13. Favorite candy

Yes. I prefer non-chocolate, but I'm not fussed if I 'have' to eat it.

14. Favorite sport

Football, of course.

15. Favorite weather

Spring or fall, without rain. So, mid-70s up to mid-80s, no humidity, breezy, and cooler at night.