Do your John Houseman imitation

We sort blogs the old fashioned way, WITTTH PAPER. I'm chasing paper, and trying to find the reason I've been writing this blog for three and a half years. It's been an extremely satisfying outlet, but now what? What would I have if I sorted out the 999 posts by subject?

And so I sort between more pressing efforts. It's a low-tech project involving print-outs, scissors, highlighter, and stapler. Professor Kingsfield is peering down his nose at my mere mortal approach. Playing the mental roles of God, father, professor, judge, critic, mentor, junior high principal, or conscience, John Houseman voices imperious internal expectations and evaluations.

The Paper Chase was a novel, then a movie and a t.v. series, about an Ivy League law school and Professor Kingsfield in the Seventies. Houseman was a contemporary of Orson Welles, but he may be best remembered for the Smith Barney ad campaign of 1979-1986, with the line, "We make money the old-fashioned way, we eaaarrrn it!”

One son really does not like the NPR voice of authority, Carl Kasell. You may have other suggestions for The Voice of Authority. Besides Houseman and Kasell, I vote for Walter Cronkite and James Earl Jones.

Why Ninety Minutes Is Not Enough

The World Cup games are just too darn short for some of us. It's not the lack of scoring compared to most American sports. It's not that we need to hear yet MORE ranting by the U.S. sportscasters about the proliferation of yellow and red cards. I admit ninety minutes isn't enough time to appreciate the tanned and lined visages of the coaches and refs who have been squinting, analyzing, instructing, calming, and letting go of the outcome of games played by comparative pretty boy youngsters.

I am watching World Cup matches when I can, mainly on the weekends. My tv is not high definition. It is small aggravation. If I sit on the sofa across the living room, the players resemble the VW bugs escaped from Chernobyl down on Chicago streets when viewed from the Sears Tower observation deck. When I sit in the rocking chair and skooch up closer, they look like day-glo orange meerkat finger puppets (made from hunter's fleece) in an bioluminescent green diorama. Yikes. It's the Netherlands again, and time to reach for the remote control.

A new Adam Sandler movie opened this week, and I would rather yank out all my teeth with needlenose pliers than see it. Still, I understand the premise involves having a "universal remote" control of the universe.

Watching the Netherlands in their orange uniforms makes me feel like I'm in need a universal Photoshop program to tame the contrasts and color saturation. The games are in the stoppage seconds before I get the nuclear reactor leakage out of the screen! Too late again. Netherlands, go home!

Better productivity through television

Sounds backwards, I know. In a not very scientific experiment known as the 2006 FIFA World Cup on ABC and ESPN2, I've learned that when I sit down to watch tv I get a lot accomplished. Once I sit down in the living room, it's obvious that I won't be able to concentrate unless I vacuum the carpet. Then there are the Vonage and Progressive commercials that run continuously, it seems, before, after, and in the middle of games. Those prompt me to grab the laundry basket and start folding. Just sitting is something I do best on a bus or train, not at home, so I've done the ironing with Japan and Croatia this morning. Did the mending with Trinidad and Tobago. Now it's time for paying the bills with Ronaldinho and the Aussies. If they show the Master of Champions ad with the jump roping car again, I'm going to start cleaning toilets!

Nice runners, bad coverage

Dallas' premier running event, the White Rock Marathon, usually known as The Rock was run this morning by thousands of runners. Runners come to the Metroplex for the event from all over the world, or from just down your street. About 4000 runners do the 26.2 mile marathon through lovely parts of Dallas, and the rest run the half-marathon or the five-member team relays.

After volunteering at the timing chip testing station for two days, I had greeted a big chunk of those runners, and wished them a good race. In two days, I met one (1) grumpy runner. The rest were polite, and easily amused. As they waved their timing chip above the scanner, they were stunned by the technology that instantly brought up their name, age, hometown, and race number on the computer screen. For many it seemed to be an official acknowledgement that whatever their time was on Sunday, they had already done something major by committing to the race and being disciplined in their training. "Sweet!" "Bingo!" "That would be me!" Spouses were proud of each other. Children were proud of parents, age twenty-five to seventy.

WFAA (Channel 8) coverage of The Rock was new this year. The t.v. show seemed to think viewers were only concerned about which man and woman won $12,000 in their divisions, and which handicapped runner completed the Hummer-sponsored Cooper Gender Challenge to win $25,000. I bet you could count on ten fingers the viewers who wanted to hear George Mason University coach Juli Henner's opinions about the decisions leading up to the Cooper Challenge handicap figure for the elite women. Nothing against Frank Shorter, but I wanted to see REAL LIVE PARTICIPANTS more than hear a pivotal figure in the sport analyze the history of modern marathons. I wanted to see coverage of all the elite runners finishing, of the enormous mass of runners at the starting line, coverage of outstanding local runners, and footage of runners passing the aid stations with live music.

My mom would have been so annoyed. This is what frustrated her about golf tournament coverage. It's all talking heads analysis, commercials (the same ones over and over), speeches by pompous corporate sponsors, the requisite athletes' visit to hospitalized children, and allegedly heart-warming stories of people overcoming adversity (or obesity) to compete. Thank heaven when I watched the NCAA mens soccer championship match on ESPN2 this afternoon there was coverage of the play, not coverage of the sportscasters.

Don't make me put on Midge's mittens!

We had a bit of wintery precipitation on Wednesday. It got a bit cold, although where I grew up it would have been considered a heat wave.

The local t.v. stations switched to non-stop weather coverage. Reporters haven't had enough chances to stand on street corners and exit ramps and yell into microphones since Katrina and Rita. There's a risk they could lose their skills. This time they informed me that I should "drive more slowly than normal", and "not follow too closely". Most profound, I should "stock up on toilet paper". For a one day ice storm?

Weather Doll Midge will need a change of attire for the winter. I may still have her red and gold ice-skating dress.


I spy with my little eye something that is icy. How on earth did the homesteaders survive without tv weather and Doppler radar? Those poor people had to walk outside to see what was happening! They had to use common sense and caution when deciding about travel. They had to take a shovel, a blanket, and sand along.



Lots of memories this week of time spent reading Berenstain Bears books to my sons. We all need a refresher course about Too Much TV. Maybe curl up and read how Laura and Mary twisted hay to burn during the Long Winter when they ran out of coal. Sure hope they stocked up on toilet paper!

Good patient, bad patient

Impatient. My condo is just fine for most of my life when I am off to work, sleeping, writing, reading, or collaging. It is not good for being home sick from work. This is day three for me to sit around drinking water and staring at the walls...and the gigantic cobwebs...and the ugly caulk around the kitchen sink and bathtub. Decongestants make reading too demanding, so I sit here fantasizing about the perfect man.

Ask any woman my age to describe their favorite fantasy guy. Is it one of the 007 actors? Tommy Lee Jones? A sports hunk? Be honest, ladies, about your most compelling urges and desires. Who do you really need?

Yes! It's Eldin the housepainter from "Murphy Brown"! It might take Eldin six years to redo the caulk, knock down the cobwebs, repaint the condo, maybe pull up the bathroom carpet and replace it with a nice tile, but wouldn't it be satisfying?

Robert Pastorelli played Eldin Bernecky from 1988-1994, and he described the character thus:

"He's not just a house painter. He's an artist," Pastorelli told USA TODAY in 1992 about the part that made him a cult figure. "He keeps Murphy emotionally grounded. He smooths the lumps in her emotional oatmeal."

Best not to ponder lumpy oatmeal too long in my current schnozzy condition. I'm going to close my eyes for a little nap now, and hope the cobweb will have disappeared when I wake up.

Home Improvement Makeover

My condo has a new decor and special fashion accents thanks to a nationally known program. No, it isn't the latest project of the Queer Eyes. It isn't being gutted down to the load-bearing walls by This Old House, although I have invited Bob Vilas to stop by with his Craftsman flame-thrower for a special consultation. I'll give you a hint. In the past Collagemama has ranted about the Auto Zone battery and toolboxes in the living room, and the bucket seat from a sold-to-salvage-yard Geo Prism in a bedroom upstairs.

My new living room conversation piece/decorating accent is a half-empty case of Valvoline. Aren't you so jealous? Don't you wish Click and Clack would do an extreme makeover of your home, too?

Even my Sims families don't have the Car Talk design options for their houses. I haven't seen the new Sims game yet, I admit. It is supposed to be more realistic. Maybe it will have audio background noise of a washing machine running, running, running washing greasy rags.

Should your life need more excitement, I found a new way to waste time on-line. You can literally watch paint dry at the This Old House web cam archive time-lapse site.

The Trouble With Memory

For reasons I won't go into, the phrase "fatty tissue" kept nagging at the corner of my memory all week. Finally remembered a tape of a PBS kid show about using arithmetic to solve mysteries. The boys probably watched the tape in the early Nineties. I think Fatty Tissue was the name of a character on the show--sort of a hapless former baseball player with a heart of gold...

Fatty Tissue was not the name of the poolshark in that Jackie Gleason movie. About that time I realized that I had confused Fatty Arbuckle with Chubby Checkers again.

The trouble with history is that it won't stay pinned down and neatly labeled in my memory like the entomology specimens in the cases at the Field Museum in Chicago. Whatever I once knew has scuttled under the refrigerator during the night. It may have been a shiny scarab, or a hideous roach, but it'll be mighty tricky to find it now.

"Whittaker Chambers" flashed in my stream-of-conscious this week, too, in a very small font size. So who was Whittaker Chambers? Someone in history....someone with a pumpkin....someone with McCarthyism...I had to look it up, of course. It's a sickness. If you already remembered Alger Hiss, you win our grand prize. Don't get mixed up with Horatio Alger or Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlin. Obviously, the memory roaches are breeding further confusion down there under the refrigerator.

Last week when I was looking for padlocks that still had their keys, I came across the Ento-Pins from the ninth grade biology class insect project. I still need the display board and the labels, and a long-handled net...

World Domination, Parker Brothers, and Milton Bradley

Way back when we lived in Edmond, Oklahoma, I used to watch a 6:30 p.m. tv show with Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson drawing on dry-erase boards with celebrity teammates. It was on during that calm half hour after the kiddies were fed, their daddy came home, and mommy was briefly off-duty but completely brain dead. The tv game wasn't Pictionary, but something similar. Not as annoying as Hollywood Squares, though.

A dear, demented friend and I have been brain-storming a team parlor game about redrawing the political map of the world. You know, redraw the Kurds into Turkey, or add the Turkish Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds to create an independent Kurdish nation. Make the Kurds try it out for a year, which could be a spinoff reality show. Circle gets Red Square. And for Eastern Europe, nobody gets to buy a vowel! I am dieting so I will look good in those Vanna White outfits.

Please tell me you have read Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg. We often design board games in my art classes. We make card games, too.

My favorite part of playing Risk as a kid (who was finally old enough to play with the big kids) was grooving on all the tiny colored wooden blocks for the armies. I loved how the colored blocks fit in their little plastic boxes. World domination was secondary.

I really loved playing Clue. I first played it at a friend's house in fifth grade. When I got home I recreated the game board on corrugated cardboard from an old box, and drew all the cards from memory. The game fit so well with my obsession with drawing floor plans for houses on graph paper, and my Nancy Drew/Cherry Ames book favorites. It was Professor Plum in the billiard room with the candlestick...

The students at my Montessori school sometimes play the old-fashioned game of Life. You remember the little cars with the pink and blue pegs for people. At the school the kids are allowed to choose same-sex marriages if they just want pink pegs or blue pegs. It's very open-minded.

We used to play Monopoly on school snow days. Texans don't understand the incredible snow glare headaches we used to get when the sun would come out after the blizzard. Texas winters are so gray and wimpy. Thinking about Monopoly gives me a snow headache sometimes.

Yahtzee isn't a board game, but we always played it during Christmas vacations. We might have 8 or 10 family members and friends around the dining table laughing, telling family stories, and rolling the dice until midnight, then eating sugar cookies. Howie and I prefer our sugar cookies very thin and dark brown.

Playing Scrabble is how we honor my mom. She enjoys it, and my dad won't play. I love when 3 or 4 generations are playing Scrabble. We set the board on a lazy susan. It's fun to look back through the scoring notepad to see who was old enough to add the scores in a particular year. Again, I have this thing about the little wooden tiles.


And, dang, if real life isn't a whole lot like Chutes and Ladders.