I have not been blogging! I've been trying to make it through a difficult stretch of planning for the future. The Criss Cross function at the U of M starts tomorrow, which I will be attending, and then a couple of weeks after that there's a trip to Cincinnati, and finally ARSC in Philadelphia at the end of May. It's such an ambitious program I'm not sure how my dollars will stretch, but I'll do my best to make it work. Mrs. Lewis is highly helpful with, and supportive of, these ventures generally.
I drifted away from the so-so Harold Lloyd feature that ran at 8pm Sunday and found myself seated before the current episode of the Simpsons, to my dismay. I really think the writers have decided to make the new episodes so bad that it will drive away the core audience. Clearly Homer's encounter with gay lifestyles is something that is designed to make mainstream America tune elsewhere. Talk about "jumping the shark" - it was like jumping a shark dressed like Ellen DeGeneres.
Incidentally, if you aren't familiar with the phrase "jump the shark" everything you need to know about it is at www.jumptheshark.com It is a highly useful resource about TV shows that go astray (and the few that don't). The Flintstones, of course, is one of the top vote getters for shark-jumping. I logged into vote for Gunsmoke as one show that never did "jump", and was disappointed that only 14 other people had voted for it.
On Friday Keith and I got together and watched one of the better Harold Lloyd features from the previous Sunday, The Kid Brother (1927). Great fun and lots of action. While we were watching, my wife mentioned that Monica Lewinsky had been named to host a TV reality show. Immediatedly Keith and I popped up with titles for it. Mine was "Who Wants to be a Slut", but I liked Keith's better - "Name That Cum Stain". As it turns out Monica is hosting the generically titled "The Bachelor."
The whole of last week is basically a blur. On Saturday I planned my show, and on Sunday I went to Keith's and watched a Méliès and an Arbuckle/Keaton DVD (turns out that adaptor I found isn't the right one to our DVD player after all.) Since then my life has been about working, doing household chores and flopping at the end of the day. I did get a call from an archivist at the Library of Congress who has found some Cincinnati May Festival recordings from the 1930s - that is very exciting!!
Sorry for falling off the blog wagon. I'll try to do better, and at least post my playlist tomorrow - even it is unfinished!
Uncle Dave Lewis