The last couple of days here have been the cold, rainy, dreary, generally not the kind of weather you want to go outside in unless you have to type of days you find when fall really turns into prep days for winter. So I’ve been practicing sitting around and relaxing since most of my days include “don’t go outside unless you have to” on the to do list.
Mostly I’ll read, write, or puzzle something out to bide my time on those inside days. Every so often I’ll turn on the television and see what I might have missed in prime time over the past few years by watching whatever new has hit the late afternoon/early evening syndication runs. I’ve discovered that I’m much too overdressed to be properly relaxed. Apparently the All-American male cannot relax with pants on. I missed that somewhere along the way.
In every sitcom on television today, there is a male character who barely crosses the threshold of his house before taking his pants off. These males range from youngster at the cusp of teendom, to teenager, to young adult, to middle aged parent, to grandfather. They are from struggling, middle class, well to do, and outright rich families from New York across America to California, of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Their only common denominators are male-ism and being pantsless at home.
This concerns me. I never ran across this behavior in my personal experiences. I have often been in what I would otherwise consider a relaxing situation and I have always kept my pants on. I have observed other men from my own, older, and younger generations, and have never seen any of them kicked back on the sofa in boxers or briefs. Yet our television role models are dropping trou before they clear the front door. And not just in solitude. They do it and stay that way in front of wives, mothers, siblings, offspring, and on several occasions, delivery persons.
Don’t say that they’re only sitcom males and I shouldn’t be taking them seriously. Sitcoms are America. We may want to think that the hour long dramas are where Americans are really at but they aren’t. The dramas may be what we want to believe us to be. We want to be that deep, that inclusive, that concerned with the environment, current causes, and family. But we aren’t. As much as we want to be the Pearsons, deep down we know we’re really the Hecks.
Clearly I’ve been doing it wrong for a lifetime. And I’m afraid that as I’ve gotten this far in my life I’m too old to change and will continue relaxing with all of my clothes on. I know, I’m bucking convention here but I can’t see myself any other way. And I sincerely hope it doesn’t offend any of you to know that as I’m typing this, I’m wearing pants.
I must have bought the last one of those 6 or 7 years ago because I haven’t seen one since. Yes, I’m the one who’s one aisle over pushing all the buttons and laughing like I’ve just seen A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time. (That reminds me, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown will be on ABC this Sunday at 8.) (In case you were wondering.)
For the last few years I’ve publicly marveled at the extent to which each fall pumpkin has invaded our daily lives. Please understand that I am the last person on earth who would turn down an extra slice of pumpkin pie for dessert. I have my very own self with my very own hands fashioned a pumpkin cheese cake. I will wait with rapt anticipation for the once a year release of Reese’s pumpkin shape peanut butter cups. (Yeah, I know they’re not pumpkin flavored and barely look like a pumpkin but it’s my post in my blog and I happen to like peanut butter cups, or didn’t you read “
But up until this week’s grocery store ad, pumpkin chewing gum was the most extreme pumpkin offering out there. So extreme it was that after that one sighting in 2014 it didn’t even show up in the case load buy outs stores. But this week we might have stepped over the edge. This week we might not be coming back from. This week, somebody, somewhere, for some reason…..is going to actually buy…..pumpkin pie liquid hand soap in a convenient pump dispenser.
Let’s look at some of the ventriloquists I grew up with. Shari Lewis was the first ventriloquist I have any memory of. Shari hit the national stage with Captain Kangaroo in 1956 which was when I was hitting the stage for the first time also. Granted, my stage was in home movies but hey, all the world’s a stage, right? I loved Shari Lewis as a child (when I was a child, not her) (maybe I would have loved her as a child too, I dunno) (her as a child, not me) (maybe both of us as a child) (children). Shari played on stage with Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, Charlie Horse, and Wing Ding. She and her puppets might have been more popular than even I realized because now that I think about it, I recall my own daughter playing with a Lamb Chop puppet when she was a baby 30 years after I put my puppets into cold storage. And I seem to also recall that her Lamb Chop was new.
Hand puppets, though the least techy of puppets (although exactly what Lamb Chop and friends were) had the biggest impact on me as a developing mental genius. (It’s my blog, I can call myself whatever I want.) In particular, King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday, and X the Owl, the puppets of the Neighborhood of Make Believe in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fred Rogers was a force in puppeteering and all things educational for children. From his earliest days with the Canadian Broadcast Company’s “Children’s Corner” he introduced children to his own childhood make believe characters. But it was in 1966 from WQED in Pittsburgh, the nation’s first public-owned broadcast company, that Mr. Rogers, his puppets, and his live neighbors swept a nation, and a generation.
If you are looking for exercise while vacationing around the autumnal equinox your choices are limited to the indoor exercise room or sprinting across the hotel parking lot to the neighboring bar and grill and back. Now, about those exercise rooms. They are almost universally labeled “Fitness Center” on their door signs and the hotel floor plans but they aren’t likely to be mistaken for your quintessential, full service YMCA. You’ll find no sauna, no juice bar, no Pilates classes. These “centers” do not boast of juice bars or healthy living cafes. And they have no indoor pools! There are, at best, travel size “fitness centers.”
From the 40s through the 60s to the 80s, everybody smoked. By the time we got to the 2000s people just stopped smoking. Movies today even have disclaimers at the end of the credits stating nobody, but nobody involved in the production of the just viewed movie got any financial, moral, or athletic support knowingly, unknowingly, or even accidentally from anybody, any corporation, or any organization supporting or even involved with the tobacco industry. Often the disclaimer is more prominent than the notice of what type of camera used to shoot the film and the union local responsible for driving the caterer from location site to location site. In the most recent Bond, James Bond volumes nobody smokes. Not in the bars, not in the casinos, not on the stakeouts. Not just the spy and the supporting spy people. No body. No where. No Smoking. They must have all gone cold turkey.
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