Modern Family

Alright so this is a bit of fluff and I'm a little late to the table, but I’ve noticed over the years that with the more choices on television these days I seem to watch less and less of what’s being shown. Sure there’s the stuff on HBO like True Blood and that Mormon show that I can’t remember the name of right now that I watch and then there’s Boardwalk Empire that I’m trying to warm up to, but other than those there is nothing else that I actually watch. On the networks I’ve seen maybe 20 minutes here and there of Glee and the CSI shows and fallen asleep in front of something else, that is until a few weeks ago when I found on Hulu one of the funniest shows on TV, Modern Family.

Apparently the guy who played the father from Married With Children is married to a much younger woman with a son of her own from somewhere in South America. Al, I call him Al because that was his name in the old show, has two children of his own. His daughter, a well meaning controlling shrew of a woman is married to some sort of wuss who seems to live in his own ill conceived version of "coolness" and fatherly masculinity. They have 3 children of their own, but they’re just there to move the story along.

Al also has a son who is married to another man and they have an adopted Asian girl. Of course if you’re white and gay in America the only children that you will be allowed to adopt will be a minority or a better yet a foreign minority. Let the hilarity begin. And yet in point of fact, it really does.

With this combination of characters of different people with different ages and different outlooks on life and script outlines written by the numbers you would think that the show would have been cancelled before the end of the second commercial. Except of course it wasn’t. What was presented has been show that has been well written, well paced, and reasonably well acted. The scenes are sharp, inventive and thoughtful. They make you satisfied without dumbing down to all the usual sensibilities which many shows do. Everything in this sitcom flows easily for less than thirty minutes making it seem like you just sat down in front of the TV. Well it would seem like I just sat down in front of the TV if I hadn't watched all the shows that I've seen on my laptop.

But all in all, this show is a keeper.

Inflight Entertainment

I was on a plane and I was bored with the movies and sleep doesn’t come easily any more, as my mother would say,” too much guilt.” Anyway as part of writing better resolution thing I took at the beginning of the year, I wrote this because there was nothing else to do…

There is something about travelling that I will never understand. Well actually I do understand but I just can’t accept it. Why is it that whenever I pack a bag, it never comes out right?

If you have ever seen the movie the Accidental Tourist there is part in the beginning where the protagonist tells the audience the art to travelling is to carry just one carry-on bag with the minimum of clothing. The best combination will be one jacket and two pants socks, shirts, socks, underwear and a good book or at least a large one that will tell people that you are busy and help keep them away from you.

I used to try that. In fact I was quite good at it. The last time that I went to London I had a small bag with just the right amount of clothing for long week-end. I laughed at my friend when we met at Heathrow We had departed the US from separate cities. He had with him a large almost steamer trunk like wheeled bag and a smaller one that hung from his shoulder. I asked him if he was the one who had actually decided to carry the kitchen sink with him. I hadn’t known at the time that he had decided to buy out half of London and then turn to my credit cards when he had run out on his.

The other thing that I didn’t know was that once I was back at Philadelphia I would be subjected to questioning by customs and immigration and then further questioning by customs and immigration once they took a look at my at my carry-on and told me that it was much too small an amount of luggage for someone to be travelling from Europe with and just what exactly had I been doing there, who with what and when. Of course he irritated me, but I tried not to show it which failed and we both started circling each other as men often do when they want to show whose dick is bigger. When I told another friend what happened, he said that if it had been up to him he wouldn’t have let me back into the country.

So this time I’m heading to Rome for the weekend and I’m writing this on the flight and I’m wondering why is it that this time I have a bag that I thought that I would never be able to fill and yet it is? Why is it that I have so many more things with me than I need but I’m also starting to make a mental list of the things that I forgot to pack or didn’t even think about? I mean really, do I really need to travel with two cameras, lenses, this computer and an iPod. Well in all honesty I don’t go anywhere without the iPod, I’d rather lose a limb than that. And why is it that in a row of four seats in between the two aisles of the plane the woman next to me feels the need to spread herself out and takeover not just hers but both the of other unoccupied seats? Doesn’t she feel or think that I would like a little room too.

Maybe I should just get some sleep before I start to notice the difference between those passengers that are used to flying and those that aren’t. Like that man over in there diagonally across from me as he tries to curl forward on to some sort of flat pillow pressed against the TV screen in the back of the head rest in front of him. Poor fellow probably doesn’t realize that his seat can lean backwards and thus have less chance of a crick in the neck which he will have when he leaves this plane.

This has been more of a ramble than I thought it would have been. Oh well I’ll post this tomorrow when I arrive at the hotel I guess, unless I collapse from exhaustion.

Globalization

I remember years ago when Ross Perot told us what his thoughts on NAFTA, (the North American Free Trade Agreement), were. It went something like,” That giant sucking sound that you hear is the sound of Jobs flowing to Mexico.” Well something like that. Now I don’t know about anyone else’s job, but my job, even though it just begging for foreign placement, has not left. Apparently, someone isn’t sucking hard enough. I would give tips, but that’s a different story. What I’m trying to say is that I believe in Globalization, and for a reason.

I believe that artificial protectionism and forced mercantilism are the millstones around our necks that keep us and the world from truly benefiting from all of the resources that are out there and need to be dismantled both here and abroad. I believe that the import duties that we pay for products just because they are cheaper than the ones made domestically hurt the poor and prop up industries that are in need of overhauling or at least revitalization. I believe that subsidies given to farmers so that they can make their crops cheaper for export help hurt famers in Africa and elsewhere by undercutting their prices and so force peoples of poverty stricken nations to remain poor and hungry and not develop their own farms and rely more and more on American grain that they will soon no longer be able to afford.

I believe in the attempts in Doha of the WTO (World Trade Organization) to have the United States, the European states and other nations drop tariffs and taxes and other trade barriers that nations put up to protect their own industries so that everyone could gain from lower prices and increased competition and the possible development of industries in the less developed nations.

Why do I believe in all of this? Because I just ordered a new laptop for almost a third of what I paid for one 4 or 5 years ago with a hell of a lot more bells and whistles than I have now. Designed by some people in California and made with parts that were constructed in Malaysia by some woman making some ridiculously low salary, but still high for her neck of the woods. And then it was assembled in Mexico for pesos on the dollar. Who knows what the thing would have cost if it were all done in New Hampshire. Progress? Perhaps. World trade and globalization? Definitely, and I’m loving it.

If all of us can can create wealth then all of us should share the wealth. And so I say in the spirit of the Olympics, One World! One Dream!

Like Columbo Used to Say

I was lying in bed last night sort of minding my own business when quicker than you could sing a rousing chorus of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” I suddenly realized, my nuts were aflame. Let me explain.

Last night was one of those nights where I couldn’t fall asleep. Earlier I had taken a nap in front of the TV and had woken up just in time to see the ending credits of Nightline. If I had just gotten up and went straight to bed I might have been able to fall back to sleep right away. Instead, I watched TV for about 20 minutes they were doing some story on looking for a Turkish fleet that was sunk by the Spanish in the 16th century on PBS, the regular stuff on cable and the talk shows on the networks. There was really no reason that I should stay up any longer so I went to bed.

I knew that I wasn’t tired, I was too alert, but if I didn’t fall asleep soon I also knew that I would suffer for it the next day. I thought about visiting Mary Palmer for some relief. Do the five finger shuffle. Choke the chicken or spank the monkey. Funny, I’ve never known anyone to have used those phrases except in the movies, but masturbation didn’t really seem like it would help anyway.

I decided to lie in bed and surf the web instead. Look up shit that I wasn’t really interested in, porn I guess. I downloaded stuff from iTunes, read blogs and made comments or replied to those comments that needed replies. But after about an hour, I was seized by this searing pain in between my legs. I reached down under the comforter, blanket and sheet only to feel this great heat surrounded my privates. It was a heat so great that you would have believed someone had set the iron to cotton and slapped it on my genitalia for 10 minutes without even having the decency of at least allowing the steam function to work. My laptop was burning my unborn spawn.

Now like everyone, I know that computers generate a certain amount of heat, but isn’t the whole reason for calling a laptop a laptop the idea that you can rest it on your lap without jeopardizing yourself or your future children? So I have a question, I don’t usually ask anyone anything, but my computer is 4 years old this September. Does it threaten one of the few pleasures in life that I don’t have to pay for because it’s old or will getting a new computer not make any difference to my level of discomfort?

Anyone who has an answer please, feel free to help me out.