Christmas mittens
Here's a real-life holiday story to rival O Henry's "Gift of the Magi."
My girlfriend plans to shop for me on Wednesday. On my way to work that day, I notice a new tear in one of my winter gloves. They're already in bad shape and so late in the morning, I text her this gift idea in case she needs one. She responds "haha ok." About an hour later, as I leave work for lunch, I stop to use the bathroom. I place my gloves under my arm and see a man about a horse, as it were. After washing my hands, I exit the door and reach for my gloves. They aren't there.
My first thought: check my desk. Did I even bring them with me? But the search there proves fruitless. Then I walk back into the bathroom and witness the unpleasant scene. One glove is lying on the floor next to the urinal. I move closer, and yep... there's the other one floating
in the urinal. It turns out I don't have as much armpit adroitness as I thought. I gently (and sanitarily) discard both gloves in the trash bin, but not before I briefly consider keeping possession of the one glove that fell to the floor. You see, a blizzard is due in that night, and the snow will have started flying by the time I leave the office at six. I dread the idea of brushing and scraping without hand protection. Even one glove would be handy to have. But I also know that I plan to tell my girlfriend this story one day soon, and I know that if I keep even that one glove, that's the only thing she'll take away from the story when I tell it.
This was three days ago. The blizzard has come and gone, leaving 10 inches of snow in its wake. Christmas is still two days away. Getting new winter gloves has turned from a desperation gift idea into an emergency situation. This story does not yet have an ending. How will it conclude when we gather at the Christmas tree?
The end(?)
---
In other news, one day soon we’re going to all be ankle-deep in glitter. It’s slipping out of greeting cards, from wrapping paper, out of scrapbooks, falling off of ladies' faces. It's just too bad it doesn't have a practical purpose like de-icing the roads and sidewalks.
---
It’s a valid point that Adam Lanza also could have committed murder with a knife. That’s why I’m also supporting a ban on semi-automatic, self-loading knives with 30 round clips.
---
I'm on my way to Moeller Manor for the weekend, then it's off to Texas for four days and four nights. This will likely conclude my blogging for the calendar year, my
eighth in this modest little space. It might seem like I'm stopping early, but I actually considered 2012 to be over the moment my fantasy football team was eliminated from championship contention. Have a jolly Christmas and a bitchin' new year.
My deepest TV secret
There's something I need to tell you that's not easy for me to say. Are you ready? Here it is: I don't like the TV show "Parks & Recreation."
Oh, that feels so good.
You see, although the show is not a winner in the Nielsens, my immediate circle of (mostly) left-leaning, middle-class, hipster-lite compatriots adore it. Friends like it. Family members like it. The television critics I consume on the internet absolutely love it. And that love, I feel, is completely unjustified.
This is a show that has completely changed its course over five seasons. Rarely have the fingerprints of network executives and focus groups been so visible on a piece of television art that's considered "a critical darling."
And it wasn't that great to start. It began as a ripoff of "The Office," another "mockumentary-style" show where the writers can be lazy by having the characters read exposition directly into the camera. And why the hell is there a camera in their fictional lives to begin with? Is there really a documentary film crew recording the day-to-day actions of the city employees of Pawnee, Indiana? Does the lens really follow them into their bedrooms and into every private area of their lives? (I have this same problem with "Modern Family.") It would be one thing to use this narrative device to make a clever comment about human "performance" in the age of reality television. That's what the first, British version of "The Office" did.
Yet it's obvious that the catalyst instead for this technique on "Parks & Rec" was a network note that read something to the effect of: "This show will be on Thursday nights after 'The Office.' Can you make it like 'The Office'?" And then the network notes only continued to pile up after the fact. After the short-order first season and then a full second, Amy Poehler's character Leslie Knope required a new love interest. Actor Paul Schneider's performance as city planner Mark Brendanawicz had been widely perceived-- accurately-- as something akin to a piece of chewing gum stuck to the LCD flat-panel and he had to be replaced. Network notes (which always read something similar to this) said--
bring in a handsome leading man-- or two.
Some television comedies value humor and execution above the actors' physical appearance, and it leads to back-and-forth battles with the network. Farsighted comedy producer Paul Simms wanted Dave Foley (who looked like he was 12-years-old) as his leading man on a pilot television show called "Newsradio" in 1994, got him, and then NBC forever hated the hilarious "Newsradio," moving it around the schedule almost weekly. But that show today stands strong against the challenge of time. Other shows take those network notes close to their proverbial bosom, and that's how you wind up with Rob Lowe fumbling his way handsomely through the corridors of Pawnee city hall.
Joining the cast in season three, Lowe's character was a non-starter from the beginning. As the tone of "Parks" was becoming increasingly saccharine sweet in an effort to contrast it from the show it was ripping off, Lowe's Chris Traeger was introduced as the new "boss" of the fictional office. The writers concocted a beaten-to-death, artificial story line in which Traeger forbid office romances, keeping the mad love from blooming between Poehler's character and one played by the other newcomer, Adam Scott (a very capable actor stuck playing a sweeter-than-sweet bore of a love interest). The angle on Lowe's Traeger, evidently, was that he was a high achiever, and in terrific physical shape. He was paired off romantically with Rashida Jones' character (who had been present since the outset of the series) because going into season three (and now, incidentally, through season five as well), the writers still had no idea what to do with her. For a show that's increasingly about the empowerment of women, the considerable charm and talent of Jones goes almost completely to waste on the show. Write her a role already!
And that leads me to my biggest complaint about the show, the lead character of Leslie Knope. Leslie was well-meaning, but pretty ditzy, during the brief six episode arc of season one. Now, as she's portrayed by Poehler, she's become increasingly competent in her career, but growing to be more and more a hollow shell. Leslie is presented to us as a politically-liberal stock character type, and her liberalism is the soft, squishy kind favored among Hollywood's phony progressives. She believes in "big government," so as to contrast her from the more clearly-drawn Ron Swanson (played expertly by Nick Offerman), a dyed-in-the-wool, "man's man" libertarian, who served as her boss prior to Knope's season four election to the Pawnee city council.
The Swanson character actually believes in something, but in a lame effort to identify Knope in this character comedy, writers and set designers have decorated the public servant's office with photos of the famous American female politicians she admires-- Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice, Janet Reno, and Nancy Pelosi- a veritable "who's who" of American Republicrat criminal imperialists (only Sarah Palin is apparently out-of-bounds politically). The effect of this badly written character beat is that Knope comes off as not a principled political heroine at all, as she's intended to be, but a office- and status-chasing dimwit, who's impossible to root for because her most strongly-held belief is not a political issue of right or wrong, but one of toothless, gender-identity politics-- should women seek political office?-- which hasn't been controversial for almost half a century. Does Lesley Knope, for all of her civic-mindedness, ever pick up a newspaper?
This fall's season five premiere episode found Leslie in Washington D.C., hobnobbing with Barbara Boxer and John McCain (portraying themselves), again inviting the audience to embrace the childish alternate reality of the "Parks & Recreation" world where our politicians, not just in fictional Pawnee, Indiana, but even in the real-life capital, are self-effacing, well-meaning, idealistic heroes. (Joe Biden appeared later in the season.) This fantasy props up the political status quo, and provides a fine dessert for people who tuned in all fall for "Saturday Night Live's" impersonation-heavy and satirically-shallow Thursday night (prime-time) and Saturday night election-year political coverage.
As "Parks" continues to try to be everything to all people (as "Saturday Night Live" has for its last quarter century), and fails miserably at it in the ratings while holding a valuable slot in NBC's Thursday night lineup ("Community" finally returns February 7th!), three performers stand out. I enjoy Offerman, as I stated. I do
so enjoy Aubrey Plaza as April (worthy of her own series much more than was "The Office's" Mindy Kaling), and Aziz Ansari as Tom. These are a trio of fresh, biting characters who actually inspire laughter when they're not being pulled down into the sugar bowl.
The biggest problem with the uncomplicated world of "Parks & Recreation" is that, without complications, the dramatic stakes are very low. There are no villains. I can't imagine how the show can possibly become more sweetened if it manages to maneuver a sixth season out of Kabletown executives. Even the die-hard fans of this show are lying to you if they tell you they care about what happens to Rob Lowe's character, and the Poehler and Scott characters have basically already been written off into the sunset. Knope and Swanson used to butt heads. Now they're basically father and daughter.
The show yearns for an America in which there is less political divisiveness, failing to recognize that the political divisiveness that has sprung up since 9/11 is the result of actual collective self-reflection. It's progress. This is the same thing NBC's news division fails to understand, coincidentally. We don't just all go along anymore. This is a nation, consciously or not, starting to come to grips for the first time with the sins it commits. This sitcom thinks the two major political parties should get along better, when in reality, they agree on almost everything that's important already, argue over cultural trivialities, while the citizens, who are depicted as collectively stupid on "Parks & Rec" during every town hall meeting, are increasingly dissatisfied with both parties for just this reason.
This show was launched as something much darker than what it is now, and that original version, as I said, was a clone of something else, but at least it was cloning, essentially, the Ricky Gervais British masterpiece that held considerable truth. The only dramatic stakes in a given episode today are that Leslie Knope might encounter a person that doesn't value her sincerity, doesn't identify with her lack of cynicism, and doesn't personally like her as much as those of us in her real-world audience are supposed to like her. And as a viewer, I don't like her. See my problem?
Peak Farmland
Who needs some good news? I do.
An environmental program out of Rockefeller University in New York
proposes that the planet has reached a plateau for what it calls "Peak Farmland," that is, the amount of space required to grow a sufficient amount of food. And here's the good news: we have reached this point not because we have depleted all of our arable land, as long feared, but because crop yields have risen and population growth has slowed.
And there's more. The Program for the Human Environment says that this global achievement allows for 370 million acres of land to be converted back to natural conditions (read: forests) by 2060. That's roughly the size of 10 Iowas quilted together.
Iowa should take the lead on this. Take a healthy chunk of its land devoted to agriculture, much of which no longer serves family-based communities, or even healthy diets, but rather the corporate agri-giants and the methamphetamine trade (let's clear out a few sub-divisions too, while we're at it), and start this conversion process in earnest. Let's devote more space to human recreation and healthy, natural growth for all living things. Stop tilling and we'd be cutting a break to our strained and polluted waterways, and boosting our overall quality of life.
Great job, people. We did it. Resources for all if we find a way to share them properly. Don't screw things up now. Farm in harmony with nature, keep eating less and less meat, and absolutely keep tying on those condoms.
The latest gun tragedy, in any sort of context
As with many things, there are elements of truth in their fears. The threat of disempowerment is real. Our government
should be feared in some circles. It boasts the most powerful military in the world, exponentially too large for its formal purpose. It intrudes upon the civil liberties of its citizens. It sends robot bombs to kill people all over the world-- and does so through its national intelligence agency, rather than its military, so that it doesn't have to publicly cop to it. The United States federal government, its military, and 33 individual state governments commit public murders with the legal protection of the Department of Justice and the courts. Should be we surprised after all this when so many of our citizens also place so little value on human life? Our weapons killed 50
Palestinian children just a few short weeks ago, and there was no national outrage, not even a little hand-wringing.
But trust me, "America-first" reactionaries, your government is not coming for you. You're too useful. You back the regime, the war machine, the hideous beast with two political parties. You swallow the talking points. You provide the public cover for the crimes of the military and the law enforcers. You willingly assist in the intimidation of those that peacefully dissent. At the base of the empire, it's important for the political leaders to keep the comforted middle-class from getting too squeamish. Your protection will always be their Priority #1.
Do guns make us safer? The dichotomy is indisputable. Individually, they make us feel that way, but collectively, they can-- and have enslaved us all inside a sort of minefield of terror. What's
indisputable is that they make gun manufacturers richer, and the more that these quasi-political, but very commercial, groups convince you there is a threat to your physical person, the more their sales spike. They're selling you a dangerous product that you will have no logical use for, because it's so fucking easy to make you feel afraid. The outlaws that have the brassiest balls are the ones that challenge authority without being armed.
My 2012 gift list
I almost have my Christmas shopping done for another year. Here's what you're each getting from me...
My father: "The Talk Show Hosts of National Public Radio" trading card set.
My stepmom: A Ladyship, becoming a Scottish landowner thanks to
this website. And maybe one of their calendars too.
My 8-year-old sister: A 50 caliber rifle. She's old enough now to learn firearm safety.
My brother: An Android. Not the phone, a robot that looks and acts like a human.
My sister-in-law: A water-powered jet pack. For obvious reasons.
My stylist: If I could, I would throw a lasso around the moon and pull it down from the sky for him.
My accountant: An eight-part series of graphic novels I've drawn chronicling our adventures together.
My spiritual adviser: His own radio show so he can prank call the royals.
My bookie: The Hickory Farms Summer Sausage and Cheese Gift Box. He's so damn hard to buy for.
My pool cleaner: Soft silicone ear plugs
My Gal Friday: Sensible shoes
My AA sponsor: A heartfelt card and a bouquet of flowers. She's dying of ovarian cancer.
My food taster: "Girls" Season One
My beverage taster: An extra week of paid vacation
My laundress: Tim Allen's 1996 book "I'm Not Really Here." Inside joke, she'll get it.
My bedazzler: An ambassadorship
My lightning rod: I plan to bake something.
My co-defendant: The rap
My boy scout pack: Individual pieces from my personal coin catalog. Young boys, you see, love coin collecting.
Assorted friends: Photography lessons. Your Facebook photos suck.
My girlfriend: Paula Gladwell's book on David Petraeus. These elegant 432 pages describe approximately how I feel about her.
My readers: This handy gift-giving guide.
The upper hand
Reading these comments by the GOP leadership regarding fiscal cliff negotiations is a hoot. Maybe even more hilarious than Chris Elliott’s new book “The Guy Under the Sheets” (a strong stocking-stuffer option for that comedy fan or funny person in your life). Orrin Hatch called Obama’s very sensible plan to hike taxes on the nation’s top 2% of earners “stunning and irresponsible.” Really? “Stunning and irresponsible?”
Obama has the bully pulpit, and for once, seemingly the stomach, to fight for something. Polls show the American people are strongly behind the liberals' idea to increase taxes on the wealthiest of Americans; and just as importantly, they also show that Americans would overwhelmingly blame Republicans if the federal government goes “over the cliff” early next year.
It’s not a golden time to be a House Republican. In the melee, they’re starting to kick at each other. It’s time for Obama to double-down. He should schedule a televised national address, to be delivered from behind his desk in the Oval Office, as close to Christmas as possible, to push this already-very-popular idea of taxing the rich that’s supported by the most basic tenants of the Christian gospels. Grover Norquist’s ruinous no-tax pledge is losing signatories now, almost by the day. Don't give in on tax cuts, and push back even harder now in support of entitlements. It’s time to hit these fuckers right in the jaw. Politically speaking.
---
The anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a reminder for Americans to keep careful watch over the telling and re-telling of the nation’s history, though I’m not sure the famous military strike in 1941 has been gradually losing its historical context in quite the way that’s being described this week by newspaper editorial boards. The story has really
never been told properly.
While the ultimate goal of the Japanese imperial government in ‘41 was extended military dominion over the islands of the South Pacific, a policy of violent aggression and war, Americans seem to have a hard time understanding that
we were the standing imperial power in the region at the time of the attack—and therefore, hardly an innocent player in the game. The U.S. had acquired both Hawaii and the Philippines in the South Pacific for overwhelmingly commercial purposes in 1898 as it also claimed Cuba and Puerto Rico after war with Spain.
Hawaii was a U.S. territory in 1941 because of this annexation, and it had long served as a linchpin base of military strength in that part of the world. It’s incorrect to call the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack an act of terrorism, a befuddled argument I now hear and read being made in some circles. (Then and now, the U.S.
routinely has a difficult time identifying and labeling acts of state-sponsored terrorism and being capable of recognizing examples of its own.)
Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor was not an attack upon civilians, it was an attack upon a competing military installation. It was an attack upon the military and economic interests of the United States. The formal war that it precipitated in the South Pacific was basically one fought over turf between two competing gangster states. The U.S.’s moral upper hand in the conflict boils down to an argument of “we were there first.”
The conflict was basically a repeat of the Battle of Manila, fought at the Philippines a generation earlier, with Japanese pilots now taking on the role of the United States Marines, and the occupying United States forces now in the role of the Spanish. Yet if you polled Americans today, you would not find this to be the conventional wisdom, not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, you would probably find that an alarming number of Americans believe that Hawaii was a state when the Japanese attack took place.
The attack on human life was devastating, tragic, and immoral in the Pearl Harbor assault, but we need to keep several of these points in perspective because they still resonate today in regards to America's global empire. According to the Pentagon’s 2010 Base Structure Report, the U.S. military maintains 662 foreign sites in 38 different countries around the world, and every federal office seems to report a wildly-different number, lending credence to the accusation that the numbers are being kept purposefully covert. That same Pentagon report, for example, makes no reference to a single U.S. military base in the “blacked-out” area of Afghanistan, even though there could be more than 400 there.
How many countries on Earth have military outposts located within the United States? I'll let you look that one up yourself.
A People's History of TV Fest XI
In the attendees' own words-- anonymous comments, without context, culled from the comment box on Saturday...
Special thanks to those that came from out of state- Tim from Peoria, David from Kansas City, and Jamie from Chicago, even though he didn't fly in as promised.
She's a-DORK-able!!
Schmidt is my favorite character on this show.
Caroline- so that's the waitress's name.
I give blood all the time. Just between you and me, I'll do anything for a sugar cookie. Lowell.
mmm...freak sammiches
Anyone else notice the large bearded man in the background when Schmidt wore the earrings?
I take all of my feelings out with dance
Special thanks to the people who worked so hard preparing the food, like Alex, Aidah, and Chris, and thanks to the parents who worked so hard making the costumes
Special recognition to our first-timers- Brian and Aidah!
Does everyone know how the toilet seat works?
Photo time?!
You guys remember when Chris did the worm at Aaron and Alex's wedding?
Stella makes me miss Maggie
Do they have a good husband, bad husband training system?
1. I need a puppy 2. I miss Maggie
If Jesse was sick, he would want me to go to a Lady Gaga concert.
Has everyone seen Aidah's photo with Joe Biden?
Grab your buckets and meet Chris in the kitchen!
Sophia Vergara has 2 big hearts. giggity
It was nice to not have the episode cut-off, a la DVR
Fred Savage... director?? Whaattt?!?
Who's the good cop/bad cop roles in the Levenhagen house?
Tucker and I are going on a rat shoot tonight. I'd invite you along, but you know what they say about rat shoots: two's company, three's cross-fire. Lowell.
Eventually peanut phonographs will catch on, we just aren't ready for the technological shift, yet
The Beatles were big in the '80s.
Oh by the way, everyone gets a picture frame
Dr. Erwin Fletcher looked better when he played for the Lakers and had an afro.
Unfortunately I have to leave for a friend's wedding reception. It was nice meeting you all! Aidah.
I think Chris and Aaron need to have a Stevie Wonder karaoke-off!
Do you know who's playing the saxophone right now? Benton Community High grad Chad Eby
That toilet seat came down hard on his head- they make better seats now.
What exactly is a "chitlin"?
I won a pie this week on the radio
Thanks to the stonecutters for making this show possible. Steve is just passing along the favor to other aspiring actors.
If I had millions I'd be like Guttenberg and buy: wine, crappy art, muscles and jheri curl.
McLovin!
Half of us are in costumes. The other half- great writers. Let's get to work!
Count is up to 3 hot tubs
Show me your genitals genitals Show me your genitals Genitalia!
About time they made a male version of "Girls."
Does anyone else use evaporated milk?
My mother didn't use Carnation. Was I not loved??
everyone look @ my awesome new phone case.
I hate when Burns speaks directly to the camera, he's ripping off Bernie Mac
Aaron, it would be really helpful if you could keep those comment cards in order. They get posted online.
These episodes are in the public domain so if we showed only Burns & Allen episodes at TV Fest, we could charge admission.
Gracie Allen played the old one in Sex and the City.
Heather Graham is useless and I am confused. But not as confused as Heather Graham.
Anybody been to Portland? Tell us about it.
I totally thought the women group had men in it. Did not click.
Batty Batterson had a hint of Spongebob
I like the tryouts so far - but I need more cow bell!!
Would anyone like to complete my _____ (get someone to say sentence)
The bagel product placement is shameless
Betty- I'm sorry I put you on my death list. I don't want you to die. I just want to beat Dave. Danyelle (heart drawn next to name)
instead of sitting around, talking in the kitchen every episode, they should be sitting around a hot tub
go from the center out
The next week psychic Jean Dixon was a guest star on Miami Vice
who would win in a fight, the Golden Girls or Designing women?
I do NOT miss shoulder pads.
I'm sorry Aidah missed the Nairobi reference.
What's the oldest celebrity you would do?
This episode reminds me of the classic film "Rashomon"
I don't know why Chevy Chase thinks this isn't funny
Best timeline episode ever!
by Moeller TV Festival standards, that was kind of a mindfuck
I'm a leg man, but I consider a woman's chest hair to be her sexiest body part. Lowell.
Why is this episode sponsored by Jamie in the program?
Aaron thinks I have a baking problem
Joel McHale thinks I'm sexy
How can I write comments when this is so hard to follow?
Andy Kauffman was the inter-gender wrestling champion of the world.
Never knew there was a feminine/masculine way to strike a match
Anytime I sneeze it is between 3 and 6 times.
This show was developed after the movie Taxi Driver, with Robert DeNiro, was a success at the box office, but ABC felt that a TV show about a psycho violent cab driver needed a comedic twist. Hence Taxi... ok that's total B.S. You just totally got Kaufmaned
I wish I played an instrument. It's so boring standing in the subway looking for drugs. (I drew these for you)-- (arrows drawn to abstract art in the corners of the index card)
There are 8 instances where Cleveland's house is destroyed. One w/out him & one by a giraffe, tank, hot air balloon, missile, Peter's car, and the Cleveland Show pilot, and most recently by a reverse cannonball
Cliff Bars are good. Garbage Pail Kids cards are back. Brian and I get some at Dollar Tree in Ankeny.
Brian likes old ladies. :)
Brian really has a foot in both the human world and the dog world.
I lived in Nantucket all of my life. As a child, I was once trapped in an icy lake for 5 hours. I was in an issue of Time magazine for it. Lowell.
Another MTF has come and gone
Moeller Television Festival XI was a wild success. We had caviar from the North Atlantic, mandazis from Kenya, sausage and cheeses from Wisconsin, fried chicken from Kentucky, beer from St. Louis, rum from the Caribbean, mojitos from Cuba, chip dip from the... uh, great American buffalo, I guess, wine from Northern California, television shows from the time capsule, and costumes and commentary from 12 rich and warm imaginations. I can't remember when I've experienced so much merriment and personal growth.
Keeping with festival tradition, today I'm reprinting the greetings that Aaron and I wrote, respectively, for this year's program, for those of you who couldn't attend, and for those who did but ignored the programs that were spread liberally about the living room. Check in later this week for the public posting of a large number of the written, anonymous comments submitted this weekend for the Festival Comment Box. Now the greetings...
-
TV Festival – The Process
In our 22 years of television festival planning, Chris and I have both developed our own very unique styles for selecting episodes. Each of us has an individual method that separates us, but also bonds us together. We’ll leave it to the critics and historians to someday define how our methods reflect our personalities, and how they’ve changed the nature of television programming, and ultimately, America’s viewing habits.
Chris’s process has found many forms. In 2008, our entire lineup was result of one of his opium-fueled fever dreams. Another year, his half of the schedule was inspired by a method learned from Andy Dick, who borrowed the method of hypnagogia from Edgar Allen Poe. This is the method in which Chris would fall asleep with a bell in his hand every night, thus dropping the bell and waking himself as he was right on the edge of sleep to scribble down notes and ideas, his state of consciousness at its most creative. (To quote Andy Dick, paraphrasing Krusty the Clown, “If this is anyone but Edgar Allen Poe, you’re stealing my idea!”)
My method, however, is based on blood, guts, hard work, and is drenched in historical research. I also try to make my selections as fresh and timely as possible. I studied hours of television this year and, finally, made my selections this morning, when Alex and I were driving in from Cedar Rapids. We scrambled to Best Buy and bought the necessary DVD’s for the schedule. I like to take the festival day’s weather into account when making my decisions, as well as weighing the temperature of the world’s daily-changing political atmosphere. I wanted to gauge the reaction to Larry Hagman’s funeral. Also, I wanted to see what Rob was wearing today. (Verdict: It’s ridiculous.)
Chris and I are proud to begin our second decade of festivals. Growing up together, we always had many shared loves; among them, music, baseball, alternative medicine, and theories of how the government faked the moon landing. So we invented the TV Festival as a way of sharing one of those loves with our friends. Television was the choice we’ve never regretted. Besides, nobody had ever heard of a music festival either, but we’ll leave that for someone in the future to invent. Welcome back!
Aaron T. Moeller
-
A message from the ghost of William Frawley, broadcast on WOI-AM, Iowa Public Radio, Thursday, Nov 29, 2012
Hello, this is the ghost of William Frawley. Welcome to Moeller Television Festival XI. You probably know me best from my days as a corporeal being when I portrayed neighbor Fred Mertz on “I Love Lucy.” I am pleased to be back in Iowa this week for this wonderful event. You know, I was actually born in Burlington, Iowa way back in 1887. That probably seems like a long time ago to you chickens, but in ghost years, it’s a New York minute.
I’ve been on this side of the great divide for almost half a century. Yessir, I dropped dead of a heart attack right there on the street on the way home from the movie theater in Hollywood, California. The movie was “Inside Daisy Clover.” Natalie Wood. Robert Redford. Good picture. Don’t blame them. It’s not as bad as you might think over here. Each of my pals in life has joined me now. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight—all of it actually. I get into all the ballgames for free. When I heard about the Moeller Television Festival, I wanted to come and be a part of it. I never had children of my own, so without the television fanatics like you, guys like me would be too easily forgotten.
You’ve all probably heard the stories about how I didn’t get along with Vivian Vance, who played my wife Ethel on “Lucy.” It’s all true-- even the part where she yelled “Champagne for everyone” in a crowded room when she heard I had died. My spirit had already entered the room that night, and I assure you she did. But I was taught never to speak ill of the dead, even when you’re among them. Nobody knew about our feud until after the series had ended so I’m proud that we kept it from the cameras. It’s about the work.
I’ve kept my eye on TV over the years. “Will & Grace” was a favorite of mine. Debra Messing reminded me a lot of Lucy. I was disappointed that “Mad Men” didn’t acknowledge my 1966 death during its fifth season, but that was a long shot and that’s an interesting show. Incidentally, the Moellers have picked out a real group of winners for you this year. I’m looking forward to seeing the episode starring my dear friend Betty White. She and I appeared together once on “I’ve Got a Secret.” What a sweetheart, that one. Enjoy the shows. I'm skipping choir practice today to watch along with you.
You are not dreaming this.
Respectfully,
Bill Frawley’s ghost
P.S. It doesn't hurt.
