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Avoid the news?

cOVID shot #8

A friend recently posted that 42% of people in the US and 46% in the UK sometimes or often avoid the news, according to the 2025 Digital News Report.

Meanwhile, another friend told me to limit my news consumption to preclude going crazy. (I think this was a misunderstanding of what I had been trying to say, that I felt melancholy. But it wasn’t because it was reading the news, but physical pain and mourning.)

Anyway, they read The Guardian and the New York Times, as do I. However, as I’ve noted previously, it is essential to look at many different news sources and understand the context of what is happening.

Don’t care

This is not to say that every story in every source is significant. My wife and I do the New York Times news quiz every week, and we usually get nine or 10 out of the 11 questions correct. But I’m convinced that at least one weekly question is of the “Who cares?” variety.

One was about the workout that Pete Hagseth and Robert F Kennedy, Jr. are touting; I didn’t know they were doing that. It asked what the components of the Pete and Bobby fitness regime were. My response was a shrug. As it turns out, we guessed correctly, but I would not have felt unworthy as a news consumer if I didn’t know.

There was the thing at a baseball game about a home run ball that a guy gave to his son. Then a woman scolded the man, claiming she had the ball first, and the guy gave her the ball. The team gave the boy some swag, as the woman was labelled a “Karen.” I saw this on CBS Mornings. I didn’t care.

If I look back five years, I won’t remember the workout or the baseball kerfluffle. I might remember the earthquake in Afghanistan because it had consequences for those people and geopolitical implications.

Remember the so-called Coldplay Kiss Cam story? Can I remember the name of the company those two people worked for? No, I’ve seen it cited several times, but my brain seems to have this weird filtering-out thing that says what I need to know and what I can let go of.

Conversely

Here’s some information I really did like. I was on Facebook, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes crap. Somebody I knew had written that they had gotten a COVID shot in my area on Sunday. I had gone to the CVS portal several times, including that morning, unsuccessfully trying to get an appointment.

I tried again Sunday night, and behold! There was only one location in my area where I could get a shot: Delmar, a suburb south of Albany. That was OK, as it turns out, I had a medical appointment very near there on Tuesday anyway. There were no side effects except a muscle ache for a few hours at the injection site.

Incidentally, I had gotten my flu shot four days earlier, at a different CVS, when I thought I wouldn’t be getting a COVID shot. So this was COVID shot #8, all at various CVS pharmacies, at least four different ones.

- September 9, 2025
- August 28, 2024
- October 13, 2023
- December 5, 2022
- April 12, 2022
- September 30, 2021
- March 24, 2021
- March 3, 2021

Ten Favorite TV Characters

I was reviewing my draft posts recently when I came across a piece from 2009 (!), titled “Ten Favorite TV Characters.” I had only finished the first three and then likely forgot about it.

Peggy Fair, Mannix (Gail Fisher, 1935-2000): Peggy was Joe Mannix’s secretary, and most of the time had little to do but patch up her boss. But about once a year, there was a Peggy story; Peggy wooed by an African prince or some such, and those episodes always showed how utterly underutilized Peggy was.

Subsequently, I wrote about Gail here when I discussed a short film titled “The New Girl,” which Steve Bissette introduced me to. She was one of a relatively few black people on network TV in 1968.

Rob Petrie, The Dick Van Dyke Show (Dick Van Dyke, 1925-): Rob had a talented, beautiful and charming wife, great friends/colleagues, and about as complete a back story as I can remember. He also had a pill for a boss, but no life is perfect.

I wrote about the show in 2012, and how my daughter was turned onto it via our DVD DVD collection in 2013. But I’ve mentioned Dick at least 100 times in this blog.

Boomer

Dr. Jack Morrison, St. Elsewhere (David Morse, 1953-): Jack was, at once, a major screwup – he got through med school at a less-than-credible Caribbean locale, and yet so dedicated to his work that he neglects his marriage. His wife’s death made him a single dad just trying to muddle through. I always related to Boomer, as he was often referred to.

I have the first season of St. Elsewhere on DVD. It wasn’t a gift as such; someone sent it to me to review, which, it appears, I never did. Morse appears on various TV shows and movies; I last saw him in the movie Cabrini in 2024.

Frank Pembleton, Homicide: Life On The Street (Andre Braugher, 1962 -2023): Pembleton was passionate, intelligent (he knew Latin and Greek), focused, and very intense, very successful in eliciting confessions from suspects. But he was also impatient, particularly with his young partner.

I also enjoyed him in a half dozen episodes of Law & Order: SVU as a defense attorney. He was on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which I rarely watched, but he was surprisingly funny.

Hawkeye

Benjamin Franklin Pierce, MAS*H (Alan Alda, 1936-): Captain Hawkeye Pierce evolved tremendously, especially after Trapper left and B.J. joined. I wrote about the show in 2015.

I saw Alda most recently in the movie Marriage Story in 2020, just before COVID.

Kermit the Frog, Sesame Street/Muppet Show (self). The frog was the relatively rational center amidst chaos. And he’s green, which, I can tell you from personal experience, is not easy.

Frasier Crane, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer, 1955-) Frasier was even more arrogant on his own show than on Cheers, and therefore even more oblivious. His cop father was smarter than he was. Frasier was unaware of his brother’s great infatuation with a woman staying in Frasier’s home.

He just turned 70.

Bob Newhart Show or Newhart?

Emily Hartley, from The Bob Newhart Show (Suzanne Pleshette, 1937-2008), was very smart – a third-grade school teacher and later an assistant principal – sarcastic, and a good sounding board for her psychologist husband, Bob.

This season’s final Celebrity JEOPARDY! Final JEOPARDY clue: “In Memoriam 2024” category: “This comedy legend always credited his wife, Ginnie, for the idea behind what is still called one of the greatest finales in TV history.” The response is Bob Newhart. The classic ending of his Newhart show, which has its own Wikipedia page, can be seen here.

Det. Sgt. Arthur Dietrich, Barney Miller (Steve Landesberg, 1936-2010). Very intelligent, but also delivered his lines with a deadpan expression, monotone voice, and comedic timing.

From here: “Dietrich is very low-key and highly intelligent, having trained in both the medical and legal professions, and he has a vast knowledge of specialized topics. He can be counted on to define some esoteric concept quickly and clearly. “

Sue Ann Nivens, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Betty White, 1922-2021) – she was the perky star of The Happy Homemaker on WJM, whose TV persona did not match the backbiting, snarky, sexually obsessed real Sue Ann.

Famously: “On The Golden Girls, debuting eight years later, White was cast as man-hungry Blanche Devereaux, with Rue McClanahan, the befuddled Vivian Harmon on Maude, cast as naïve Rose Nylund. The two actresses realized how similar their new roles were to their previous ones and, at the suggestion of veteran comedy director Jay Sandrich, approached the producers about switching roles. (White quotes Sandrich as saying, ‘If Betty plays another man-hungry neighborhood you-know-what, they’re going to equate it with Sue Ann and think it’s just a continuation of that.’)“

Amazon Prime perk is ending

free shipping for others

My first-world problem for today is that an Amazon Prime perk is ending. I got Amazon Prime a few years ago, primarily for the free shipping. Especially during the pandemic, getting a package, usually compact discs but occasionally books, brought me joy.

I had considered dropping it for political reasons, which I don’t need to discuss. Indeed, I made only one purchase on Amazon in 2025 for myself: a couple of computer mice (mice? meeses?).

However, I’ve been purchasing several items regularly for someone with a mobility problem, and it’s much easier to get them from one source than many. Also, the daughter has needed a few items.

“Amazon is ending a program that allows members of its Prime membership subscription program to share their free shipping benefits with people who don’t have the same primary address.”

Lots of “presents”

Also, “This doesn’t affect the ability to ship gifts to others or send orders to different addresses. It only ends the option for invitees to place their own orders without a Prime subscription while still enjoying free shipping.”

“Amazon is encouraging users who don’t live with the account holder to subscribe to their own membership at a discounted rate of $14.99 for one year. After that, it’s $14.99 per month or $139 annually. The offer starts Friday [September 5] and is valid until Dec. 31, 2025.” How kind.

Theoretically, I could order all these things and make them “gifts.” Still, frankly, there are so many items, some of which are out of stock, discontinued, or otherwise complicated, that I do not wish to add the inventory maintenance to my plate.

So, in the short term, the recipient will have their own account for the following year, which I’ll pay for. Then we’ll figure it out.

This is my understanding of the new Amazon process, which could be wrong. Feel free to correct me.

Movie review: Dirty Dancing

Grossinger’s

I finally saw the movie Dirty Dancing (1987). My wife had seen it years before, but misremembered parts of it. We went to a matinee at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in early July.

One thing that worked that should not have was the seemingly seamless mix of music from the early 1960s and mid-1980s. One critic noted: “The dance finale…, although an obvious crowd-pleaser, is performed to a contemporary song, clearly intended for the charts, which blows the period feel right off the dance floor.” I think is mitigated largely by the voice of former Righteous Brother Bill Medley, whose duet with Jennifer Warnes, Time Of My Life, seemed to fit.

As a couple of critics noted, the film was pro-sex. The seeming differences between the haves, such as the family of Baby/Frances (Jennifer Grey), and the performers, such as Johnny (Patrick Swayze), gave it a certain Romeo and Juliet vibe, except that (SPOILER!) no one dies.

In many ways, the film’s hero was Baby’s father, Dr. Jake Houseman, played by the late, great Jerry Orbach, whose relationship with his daughter is one of the two most important in the movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes scores were 72% positive with critics and 90% with audiences. The negatives were that it was “dull and charmless,” “boring,” “blah,” and/or “objects of choreography used to push a thoughtless agenda of sound and movement.” Meh.

Bias

While I liked it far more than I thought I would, separating the movie from the vaguely familiar setting, a Borscht Belt resort, isn’t easy. I traveled past a few of these buildings in the Catskill Mountains. “The movie is based on Grossinger’s, “a major star in the upstate New York constellation of recreation.

“Alan Zweibel, one of the original writers on “Saturday Night Live,” is writing “The Mountains,” a show about Grossinger’s, Deadline reports… The Liberty, New York, mainstay known for supplying luxury and entertainment closed in 1986.”

Deep in the recesses of my memory, I know I’d been in one of the resorts, but I don’t think it was with my family. Could it have been a high school choir trip? I distinctly remember the separation of meat and milk.

The movie also nameschecks New Paltz, where I went to college.

Sunday Stealing Makes the Grade

schmucky people

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

It’s fall, kids are back in school, and we’re asking you to grade yourself. This was originally posted in 2017 by Kwizgiver, who stole it from Cat.

From A to F (Makes the Grade)

Give yourself a letter grade (A, A-, B, B-, C, C-, D, D-, F) on the following. Just the letter grade is requested, but you’re free to elaborate.

• Happiness: B-. I’m way too hard on myself. “Hey, you should have done this when you did that.” Blah blah blah

• Being a decent human being: I’ll say an A-. I try really hard to be that.

• Being serene (calm, peaceful): C. I would not expect that except in specific settings.

• Kindness: A -. That is desperately important. Tom Lehrer described it in the intro of National Brotherhood Week, and how he hates those who don’t love each other.

• Anger management: I’d give myself a B, especially if I ignore the stupid political choices made in 2025 by certain parties. Generally, I don’t get that angry about most things. In fact, I will go as far as to say that when I get angry, especially in a public setting, it’s because I have been pushed beyond my limits. I mentioned one of those situations in a recent quiz.

Define “creative”

• Creative thinking: B-. It depends on what manner of creativity. If we’re talking about art or doing technological stuff, I’d probably give myself a D. For instance, I sucked at woodshop and ceramic shop. I’m constantly reminded of when I was in 7th grade and my parents came to a school open house and saw some of my artwork. My father asked how I was getting a B in art. The teacher said I worked as hard as possible and produced as well as possible. But I can figure out historical, intellectual, and math things.

• Modesty: A- Drawing attention to myself is a bit cringeworthy. (And yet he blogs.)

• Being an original: A. I don’t think there’s anybody who’s exactly like me: somebody doesn’t drink beer, doesn’t drink coffee, doesn’t drive, knows ridiculously obtuse pieces of information, keep secrets very well, hears music in his head all the time, observes situations of seeming injustice – even small things like branches that somebody broke down that were strewn onto someone’s sidewalk and I will move them because some person who’s either vision impaired or physically impaired could trip on them (I did that this week.)

• Knowing yourself: A – I’m pretty much unsurprised when doing things I do.

• Being true to yourself: A-

• Getting along with others: B+. I’m not that good with schmucky people.

• Liking yourself: B – I suppose I like myself well enough.

• Admitting your flaws: A

• Self-improvement: C. My office is a mess, I weigh too much, blah blah blah. There’s always something more important.

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