Ridiculous Opinions #189
It’s a testament to the poor readership of Ridiculous Opinions that I looked to see what number the current issue should be and discovered that, for the last two newsletters, I jumped back almost TWENTY ISSUES for the last two installments. Last week was labeled as #163, but the truth is that it was #188. I have no earthly idea why that was the case, but it was. Now, we are back on our regular numbering system.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE WORRIED, please rest easy knowing that everything is now back in its right place.
Today is a day of VARIOUS THOUGHTS. There is no rhyme or reason to what I am writing. I’m just writing it.
PHOTOS
I am currently migrating my entire photo library from Google Photos, which I have used for years and years, to iCloud. This was something that has needed to be done for a while. I have been taking care of this for about a month now, and I am only halfway through. The first part involved me downloading ALL of my photos and backing them up (786 GB). Then, importing them into the Photos app on my computer and uploading them.
The main problem with all of this is that not all of the photos have the correct metadata. Which means that, for some reason, some of them are labeled as being taken in the year 2043, when, in reality, they were taken in 2005. Why this is the case, I don’t know, but that’s how it is. So, I have to go in and meticulously relabel the photos that have the wrong dates.
At first, I thought this would be easy, but it’s not. We just have too many photos. I am about halfway done and we have around 80,000 photos in our library. Being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, I wanted to get this all done in one day, but after one afternoon where I spent six hours doing this when Tracey wasn’t here, I discovered that it was IMPOSSIBLE. So now, one of my daily tasks is to go in and spend five minutes relabeling photos in the library.
When I finish, this will be a work of art that will last for generations in my family. I will create a shared photo library for all four of us with no duplicates and properly labeled photos. But until that moment, my daughters hate me for messing with the library and don’t understand why I am doing what I’m doing. I’M DOING IT FOR YOU, HARPER AND ABBEY!
CHEERS
It’s about to be Good TV time, with the return of Succession, Yellowjackets, Ted Lasso, and the best show on TV, Survivor. But prior to this month, it’s been pretty bleak on the television front. During the pandemic, Apple was selling the complete series of Cheers for $19.99. I thought, I’m so bored with these lockdowns, I have no problem paying that money for eleven years worth of television!
And just as usual, I bought it and never watched it. It sat there on our Apple TV, staring at me. You paid for me, you chump! And you’re never going to watch me!
Well, Tracey and I finally broke down and started watching it. Lo and behold, it’s pretty darned good. What I particularly like about the first few seasons of the show is the fact that almost every episode takes place entirely in the bar. It’s like watching small plays with each installment.
As a writer, I’m shocked by this. Somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s, shows moved to being single-camera, scripted shows, which meant they were filmed like movies. Modern shows have many locations. But early sitcoms were like little plays, with one location, multiple cameras, and long scenes that played out between the characters. Cheers was like that in the beginning. (Note: we are now on Season 3 and the only other location, besides the bar, has been Diane’s apartment).
I did a little bit of reading on the show and it appears that the creators/directors of the show would tell all of the actors on set that they should be prepared to be on camera at any time, so everyone is reacting to their surroundings like a play. Quite frankly, I find this to be a bit joyful, as sometimes there are some nice little moments in the show that couldn’t be scripted. (Of course, there are other shots that they cut to that aren’t so hot, but that’s television).
For instance, there is an old man who is a background actor in the show. His name was Al Rosen. All he does is sit at the bar and watch everything like he’s a member of the audience. I swear on my life, he is sometimes looking directly at the camera. His character was called “Al” and didn’t interact with anyone, save for two spoken words towards the end of Season 2 that felt improvised and had the audience rolling (the line, both times? Sinatra!). My imagination tells me that he is someone that was an extra and he was just so quirky that they kept him.
There are things to both love and hate about the show. The bad parts are the horribly dated references, casual homophobia, sexism, and racism. But it was the eighties and to enjoy anything created in the eighties, one has to be able to be aware of those things. We can be aware of them, but we shouldn’t ignore them. Some of those things get a little weird, like the fact that Cliff Clavin might have been the first incel on television or the fact that all of the jokes that Coach tells probably stem from early-dementia or CTE. Oh, and no black people ever visited Cheers. Not a good look.
Conversely, there’s the fact that Coach is really funny. Sure, the character may have Alzheimers, but Nicholas Colasanto knows how to deliver his lines. Ted Danson is a gloriously charming lead, Rhea Pearlman brings it every episode, and Shelly Long is just straight-up wonderful and much better than I ever remembered.
There are also the long takes and interactions between the characters, which I’m sure would challenge today’s audiences. In addition to that, there is a level of sincerity to the show that is hard to find in modern TV. Maybe it’s because I’m older and maybe it’s because I constantly crave something different from my entertainment, but this feels different. It’s old, but it’s kind of unlike anything that exists on modern television, and I have to say that I like it. It’s refreshing to me to watch these little, 25 minute plays with characters that I enjoy and a level of sincerity that is hard to find in this day and age.
It inspired me so much that I went out and wrote something like it. After watching a few episodes, I wanted to write a thirty-minute sitcom like Cheers, with a cast of characters interacting in a single location. I decided to make my sitcom about a university theater (a recurring subject in my creative life) and I mapped out a season very quickly, before beginning the writing process.
Lo and behold, this may be one of the fastest scripts I’ve ever produced. I’m not saying it’s good, but I am saying that I wrote the pilot to a sitcom over the course of a week. I might even write the second episode soon. (I doubt anyone will every read them, but I’m leaving a creative goldmine for my daughters, should anything happen to me).
All right…enough rambling. If you’re bored, drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.
