The Longest Night of the Year

I have just never been cool enough for New Years Eve. As a kid I remember it being one of the longest nights of the year. My parents used to attend parties called Hootenannies on New Years Eve. My father and some of his friends would bring their guitars and play songs like Wabash Cannonball and Red River Valley for the  hours it seemed to take  for midnight to arrive. Maybe that's because living in the Central time zone, it was only eleven o'clock when we saw the ball drop in Times Square and then we still had another hour to fill.

I can stay up well past midnight most nights but New Years Eve bores me to death. I guess if I drank I would have something to do but I have just never understood holidays whose main focus seems to be drinking. I have never needed to drink to have a good time. Let's face it I don't have a good time that often. It's so much trouble. I need weeks of rehearsal and lots of beads, feathers and sequins to really enjoy myself.

As an adult I have slept through New Years on several occasions. The last few years I have resorted to watching Anderson Cooper pretend to be shocked by Kathy Griffin on CNN while she pretends not to know he is gay. Why can't he just come out? No one is watching CNN anyway. 

CNN fires her every year then hires her back. It must be tough having to top herself each year. But if George Carlin is to be believed there are seven words you can't say on television and Kathy is only on her fourth year. I guess she is good for three more. By then even Fox will have a openly gay host and Anderson's coming out announcement will be obsolete. 

It's tough deciding  which would be most frightening, an out and proud Hannity, O'Reilly or Beck. Please, don't let it be Beck. I would even help pay for the gay aversion therapy his family would be sure to  arrange for him. After all the detox program they put him through was a total succes, right?

I Can't Wait...

Despite the fact that I swore to myself I would wait until I got to NYC to buy tickets at the TKTS booth for my trip in Feb., I couldn't help myself and pre-ordered tickets of Other Desert Cities. At least it is playing Off Broadway so I didn't have to pay the full Broadway price.

This new play by Jon Robin Baitz, who created the TV series, Brothers and Sisters is about a young woman who returns to her parents' Palm Springs home after a six year absence. The premise doesn't sound groundbreaking but that is secondary. The reason I want to go is for a chance to see Linda Lavin on stage again.

I went to see her almost twenty years ago when she replaced Madeline Kahn in The Sisters Rosensweig. I was prepared to be disappointed. I didn't think there was any chance that "Alice" from television could fill Madeline Kahn's shoes. I still don't know that she could because I never got to see Madeline Kahn in the role but I do know that I was mesmerized with Linda Lavin's performance. It was impeccable. Every line, every move, every nuance was perfect. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

This play also features Stockard Channing, an actress I have never had the opportunity to see perform livel.

Who knows? Other Desert Cities may be the only show Larry and I get to see in NYC this trip. Everything except Spiderman is closing the first part of Jan. and none of the new shows I am wanting to see, The Book of Mormon or Priscilla Queen of the Desert will even be in previews by the time we get there. I guess that means I will just have to book another trip to NYC soon.

I doubt  that we will go see Spiderman Turn off the Dark. It doesn't sound so much like a musical as a disaster waiting to happen. Besides I don't feel like spending $250 to see if someone is going to fall into a pit. If I want to do that I can buy a metrocard and watch the homeless people teetering on the edge of the subway platforms like I always do when I am in NYC.

More and Less for 2011 (part 3)

And on we go......

I want to see more Tim Gunn and less Michael Kors on Project Runway this year. I would have said I wanted to see less of Nina Garcia as well but she recently got ousted from Elle magazine and is now working at whatever something called Marie Claire is so I figured she needed a break. (See....I do have a heart)  I would also like to see more of Heid Klum but if she wears her skirts any shorter we are going to see Seal's next offspring before he does.

Tim is perfection. When they expanded the show to ninety minutes last year it seemed to give the producers an opportunity to show more of his lighter side, like the time he cracked up in the workroom over the fuzzy balls one designer wanted to add to a garment.

Michael on the other hand is just too damn prissy for me. If he calls another outfit matchy-matchy I am going to lodge an official protest. My mother told me not to wear more than three colors at one time, Michael and she was a fashion goddess!  But it is his love of "separates" that bore me beyond belief. That's the way we ended up getting a winner like Gretchen instead of Mondo last season. I know Michael has made a fortune off his line of separates. I don't care. So have Jaclyn Smith and K-Mart. And despite the fact she was my favorite angel, I don't think anyone other than the ladies on The View are going to mistake Jaclyn Smith for  a designer any time soon.

I want to see more of the Good Wife and less of American Idol. Actually It's not possible for me to watch much less of American Idol than I already do. I am surprised this show ever became popular. It always seemed cheesy to me. But then if I knew anything about the music industry my CD shelf would have something on it besides show tunes.

The Good Wife is currently my favorite scripted show. I am also riveted to the television when  the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are on  but I am positive nothing on that show is planned in advance. They always just happen to run into one another at the salons to have their manicures, don't they? Oh and look, there's the film crew!

The Good Wife has the best cast on television. Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Chris Noth, Alan Cumming, Josh Charles (who it took me an entire season to realize was handsome.....that's the way it is with those sensitive guys sometimes). I can't believe I am actually rooting for him to get the good wife instead of Mr. Big.

It's also fun to see which actor or actress that Larry and I have seen on stage in NYC pop up for a guest role, like the time last season when Karen Olivo from In the Heights started dating, Josh Charles' character.

The only trouble with this show is that you actually have to sit down and watch it. If you try to multi-task you are going to miss something. if it weren't for Kalinda, Alicia would never get the client cleared of the charges they're facing and I would have no idea what was going on in the episode.

Flocked Trees

I rarely get the urge to sing How Great Thou Art (I guess I had to watch too many Billy Graham Crusades when my Baptist  grandmother was babysitting me) but I did get the urge on Christmas Day as I was driving to Paducah. Just outside Sparta on rte 154 the Christmas Eve snow we had this year had flocked everything beautifully.

The trees lined the road on both sides. It was absolutely beautiful, not much traffic, a quiet Christmas drive through a winter wonderland. I just kept murmuring to myself, "Oh my God.... oh my God." Finally, I came to my senses realizing How Great thou Art was not an appropriate Christmas selection so I  popped the Bette Midler Cool Yule CD instead into the player instead. Bette pulled through like the trouper she is and added just the right soundtrack to my drive. (until she got to that Hawaiian Christmas tune of hers)

The Animals Christmas Eve

Forget the Night Before Christmas. This is the Christmas book I most remember reading to my daughters.

The Animals Christmas Eve

a Little Golden Book, by Gale Wiersum and illustrated by Jim Robison.

In the barn on Christmas Eve, after all the people leave,

The animals in voices low, remember Christmas long ago.

One small hen, upon her nest, softly clucks to all the rest:

“Little chicks, come gather near.  A wondrous story you will hear.”

Two white doves, on rafters high, coo a quiet lullaby:

“Long ago in manger hay, the little baby Jesus lay.

“Three wise men from far away, came to visit him one day,

For he was born, the doves recall, “to be the greatest king of all!”

Four brown horses in their stalls, snug within the stable walls,

Tell of his birth: “‘Twas long foretold, by chosen men in days of old.”

Five gray donkeys speak with pride, remembering one who gave a ride”

“Our brother donkey went with them, from Nazareth to Bethlehem.”

Six spotted calves now nibble hay, like that on which the baby lay.

“They put him in a manger bed, so he could rest his sleepy head.”

Seven goats, all black and white, describe the sky that holy night:

“A star appeared at early morn, to mark the place where he was born.”

Eight nestling kittens lick their fur.  They nod their heads and softly purr:

“And he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, to keep him warm from head to toes.”

Nine woolly sheep, down from the hill, on Christmas Eve remember still:

“Shepards heard the angels sing, praises to the newborn king.”

Ten soft lambs say Jesus’ name, “He was the Lamb of God who came.

He was the greatest gift of love, sent from his Father, God, above.”

Eleven puppies listen well, in hopes that they, in turn, can tell

The Christmas story another year, for all the animals to hear.

Twelve chimes ring out from far away-the lovely bells of Christmas Day.

And every beast bows low its head, for one small babe in a manger bed.

Merry Christmas!

More and Less for 2011 (part 2)

I want to see more Maury and less Oprah. Well not really. I cannot endorse Maury in good faith. The show is the biggest waste of air space on television.How many women can there possibly be that don't know who the father of their children is? What am I saying? This is America 2010. But at least a lot of what we see on Maury is fake indignation. I hope so anyway. These people must rehearse for weeks before their appearance. "Now, Sybil, when Maury say, "You are not the father," I be running around wailin' while you fall on the flo'," they must tell one another.

I also know there is less chance of me seeing less of Oprah than there is of Julie Taymor calling me to don a Spiderman outfit on Broadway. (of course if she keeps injuring actors she has to get down to me sometime)

I believe Oprah is just as fake as all those Maury guests. At least Maury seems to be in on the fact that his whole show is a joke. Oprah started to believe her own publicity years ago. It's so bad that one talk show isn't enough. She's starting an entire network called OWN for heaven's sake. There is no end to her self-promotion. She isn't fooling me with those "favorite things" episodes. You know her favorites are all found in the bakery aisle. But you won't see her giving away Twinkies, Ding Dongs or Milky Ways. She's keeping those for herself.

I want to see fewer computer animated films and more movies that have actors in them. And isn't Jack Black bad enough himself without having to see an animated version? Whether real or computer generated he is still an bore.

The last animated film I saw was Beauty and the Beast. At least they made part of that movie the way they were supposed to, by drawing it. Cartoons are supposed to look flat! 

And I am tired of computer animated films being marketed to adults as well as kids. I am weary of the phrase, "There is a lot of humor in it for adults." Grow up, America, go see  a real movie. If your kids do manage to drag you to a cartoon you ought to have to suffer through it the same way I did when my kids were growing up.

Whether it is a comedy or a drama I want to see movies with real people. (hopefully starting Colin Firth) I'm not talking about one of those movies where the hero somehow manages to kill three or four hundred bad guys while only suffering a few smudge marks himself. I mean movies with dialogue where the characters talk to one another or a film that features some ridiculous premise like newlyweds taking a honeymoon in a long, long trailer that almost falls off a mountain and Lucy gets flour all over her while she attempts to cook dinner while Ricky drives. That's entertainment!

Why this Guy?

If you read this blog with any regularity, (and I know there are two of you who do) you know that I don't trust drug companies that feel the need to advertise. One of the commercials  that befuddles me is the one that has the guy painting his chest. I am not opposed to seeing hot men on television bare chested but this guy's chest does not fit the bill. 

Whoever this guy's agent is, I want him. Not that I want to paint my chest on television. The rain forest is already endangered. We don't need to go out and harvest that much latex.

Of all the men on TV that should be removing their shirts and painting their chest this guy is pretty far down the list. He has no definition and is just a couple of Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies short of having  a pot belly.

So why him? I guess if you are going to have a guy paint his chest on television you need someone with a large, fairly flat surface area. Well defined pecs and abs would have just gotten in the way. Still, couldn't they have settled for a smaller logo and gotten Zac Efron?

My Favorite Childhood Christmases

I ran across this picture of an advertisement for one of my favorite childhood Christmas gifts and it reminded me of some of my favorite toys. I don't know where my parents got my Vac-u-form but I do remember going uptown to have to buy replacement supplies for it at one of the local shops. Remember when small towns actually had small, local shops instead of Wal-Marts? (The cheap Chinese goods they sold uptown just seemed to be so much more American in some way than the ones Wal-Mart imports.) I remember creating several of the toys pictured in this picture myself although I am pretty sure the roof on my cabin would have leaked had any pioneers had the courage to inhabit it.

The year I finally got my race car set I thought my life had been made complete. And it was for several weeks. My brothers, parents and I had a lot of fun with that thing. This set looks almost exactly like mine except it had a red and a yellow car. One of them was definitely more responsive than the other. Whoever had the bad car could be assured that it would jump the track before the race was over.

But the most memorable Christmas morning was the year we had to go down the slide in the living room to get to the kitchen. Yes. you read that correctly. One year my Dad made us a slide for our yard. He had also made a swing set. He didn't bring the swing set inside the house but he and Mom set the slide up in the living room of our little four room house. The only way to fit it in was to set it up so that one end was in the kitchen. We climbed to the top of the slide and slid into the kitchen for breakfast that morning.

As a kid I had no idea how modestly we lived. How could I when I had a Dad talented enough to make us anything we wanted? At one point in our lives before he started working on antique cars he made us several go-carts, each one better than the other. 

Our swing set was so much better than anything we could have bought at the hardware store. (No there were no mountains in the background in Carmi, IL....can't a guy a have a little artistic license? This is the Internet after all) We could swing very high and the thing never tipped over. It was industrial strength. Dad set it up at the top of a hill in our back yard. We would swing as high as our legs would pump and then "bail out," flying through the air before landing in a ball and rolling down the hill. It is quite possibly the butchest thing I have ever done in my life, accomplished before the age of five or six before I had sense to know any better.

 Thanks Mom and Dad making us feel rich every Christmas.

They Forced Larry King off the Air for This?

Larry King signed off his long running talk show tonight with a lot of dignity and grace.


The most historic part of the broadcast was the assemblage of all three of the current network news anchors; Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Diane Sawyer who met at CNN's New York studios to honor Larry. Why Barbara Walters joined them I will never know. Sure she anchored the news for a brief time in the seventies but they didn't go out and dig up Peter Jennings, who probably still has more life in him that Barbrara does. I can't help it the woman irritates me.


Former president Bill Clinton also showed up and even had the good humor to make a reference to his own trouble with zippers when Larry, Bill Maher and Ryan Seacrest began discussing Larry's penchant for zippered jeans as compared to button-flies.

To his credit Bill Maher only interrupted the proceedings for a split second to call the former president out on his support of Obama's wretched tax cut compromise. I was proud of him.

CNN won't admit it but they are really pushing him out in an attempt to get someone who is a little less old school, someone hip enough to interview Lady Gaga. (apparently Larry had an interview with her recently in which he appeared out of his element....did no one stop to consider that about 95% of the general public might have trouble keeping up with her?)


And who are they replacing Larry with? Piers Morgan. Oh yeah, he's hip. That ought to bring in the ratings. The guy is all personality, if you consider smug, arrogant and rude personality traits. Apparently he has journalistic credentials in Great Britain. I don't care! I have only seen  him on America's Got Talent and Celebrity Apprentice.  (Oh and by the way....America may have talent but most of the contestants on that show don't...that includes you Susan Boyle.....you are  no better than most singers that could be found  in any church choir.....the fact you needed an extreme makeover does not qualify you for a recording contract....) 

Trace Adkins detested Piers on Celebrity Apprentice and that's all the lack of endorsement I need. Any man who can write an eloquent anthem like Honky Tonk Bodonkadonk must be trusted. A man who crafted such a masterpiece obviously has his hand on the pulse of the nation.

Why Don't TV Executives Consult me More Often?

A couple of developments on television have me very upset. The first is that no one consulted me when they were picking out which cities were going to get to see the trial run of Fran Drescher's new daytime TV talk show. St. Louis was not included. Amazing given the fact that if you listen to St. Louis local news you would think that St. Louis were the center of the universe and not the provincial little up-tight burg that it is.

One of the producers on the show is her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson. I feel a special affinity to this couple since their story is very similar to my ex-wife's and mine. He came out to her after twenty years of marriage. They are still close friends.

People always think the wife should have known that their husbands were gay after they come out but there is no way of knowing. Unless you are a mean-spirited person you wouldn't suspect or know someone is gay who doesn't know or admit it to themselves. (Being a mean-spirited person I do usually suspect of course.)

The minute I saw pictures of this guy in a speedo my gaydar went off. Peter definitely falls in the "too cute to be straight" category. Although there are plenty of very cute straight men....you know, like Tom Cruise.

She has another show in development with Jacobson, a sitcom entitled, Happily Divorced based on their own relationship. I wonder if they need a consultant. I was never in television but I have done a lot of community theatre. No wait, on second thought they probably couldn't take that much drama. It's supposed to be a  comedy.


You can see clips from the show on frandrescher.com

The other new development is the complete overhaul of the Early Show on CBS. They have ousted the entire anchor team on that show and are going to replace it with a new crew on Jan. 3.

I have only rarely tuned into The Early Show weekdays but when I have I have enjoyed seeing Harry Smith. He is seems like a pretty regular guy and he doesn't give me the inferiority complex I get from watching Matt Lauer. This has only gotten worse since he started losing his hair. At least before when he looked better than I did I could blame the hair. But the fact that he remained gorgeous without it is more than I can take.

The new team is led by Erica Hill. I watched her on Anderson Cooper 360 but if she were a real news person wouldn't she have outed him by now?

Her co-anchor is Chris Wragge. He just strikes me as the kind of guy that knows he is good looking. He is too arrogant for me. It's as if someone told him he were good looking and he believed them.

The only time I watched The Early Show was on Saturday mornings when Russ Mitchell used to host. I always had to turn it off though by the time they got to the Second Cup Cafe. All the acts were too obscure for me. I felt like I was back at Mckendree College in the early seventies trapped in the shed they called the coffeehouse.

The new news anchor, Jeff Glor is cute but if they are going to get me to watch with the arrogant Chris Wegge around they are going to have to let the even cuter Seth Doane contribute. Otherwise I am sticking with Matt.

More and Less for 2011 (part 1)

I would like to see more of Evan Lysacek (although if he shows much more than he is showing in this pic I will have to change the privacy settings on this blog) and less of Johnny Weir. Evan skates with power and grace while Johnny only seems to be interested in photo ops lately, showing up in outfits that he picked up at Lady Gaga's garage sale. I get it Johnny, You're unique. But that doesn't make you interesting.

More Joy Behar and less Barbara Walters. I don't think Barbara's stock is as high at ABC as is used to be because she keeps dropping by The View a lot more often than she has in the past. And when she does she can't keep herself from chastising her employees publicly. I love the fact that someone named Joy isn't afraid to be  abrasive and crass (two of the traits I find most admirable) when she is ranting about the far left which seems to be holding this country hostage since the mid-term elections.

More Darren Chris and less Lea Michele on Glee...unless he ends up breaking poor little Kurt's heart that is. I try not to download any new programs on my computer since they never seem agree with the programs that are already installed but I made an exception and installed iTunes just so I could download all of Chris's songs. On the other hand I am growing tired of Lea Michele's character. I get it. Rachel is supposed to be unlikeable but somewhere in Malibu Barbra is breaking dishes and sticking pins in little Lea Michele dolls every time this girl remakes one of her hits. Her recent remake of Karen Carpenter's Merry Christmas Darling had nothing of the richness of Karen's vocals. Sometimes a soprano needs to admit they need to leave the mellow tones to the altos.

My Father's Favorite Cookie

I only cook during the months of Nov. and Dec. Lately I don't even mix up my own sugar cookie dough but there is one holiday tradition I always keep and that is baking my father's favorite cookies. He only got them once a year, at Christmas time, probably because they have more than four ingredients and the dough had to chill.

How my mother got the time in to bake even one batch per holiday season is beyond me. She spent the entire month of December cooking batch after batch of fudge for the neighbors. She was known in the neighborhood and the church for having the "knack" when it came to making fudge and divinity. Guess who got to stir every damn batch? And only got to eat the scrapings from the pan? Me! But I am NOT bitter. (Thanks to years of therapy)

I usually hate cooking segments and don't think for one minute this blog is going to become some haven for Martha Stewart wannabes but I am going to share this recipe because these cookies are worth the trouble. They are light and delicate. (Just like I used to be before I became a sedentary retiree) They are called Jubilee Jumbles and they are a soft sugar cookie with a burnt butter glaze. Come to think of it this cookie is right up Martha's alley. She likes delicate things. Or at least that's what she told her prison roommate, Earlina.

Jubilee Jumbles

1/2 cup soft shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 white sugar

2 eggs

1 cup undiluted carnation evaporated milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 3/4 cup sifted flour

1/2 tsp soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts

Mix thoroughly shortening, sugars, eggs. Stir in evaporated milk and vanilla.

Sift together flour, soda, salt and stir in. Blend in the nuts

Chill one hour.

Heat oven to 375

Drop rounded teaspoons full onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake until delicately brown.

While warm frost with burnt butter glaze and garnish with nuts.

 Burnt butter glaze

Heat 2 tbsp butter until golden brown. Beat until smooth 2 cups softened confectioners sugar and 1/4 cup undiluted evaporated milk.

(This is never enough glaze for me so I usually double that portion of the recipe. There is usually enough evaporated milk in one can for the cookies and the icing....)