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Mom Loves Netflix

30 Jan

January 30, 2018

I was spending a nice evening at home with my mother, I wrote, knowing that she may read this. It was a Saturday night but hey- do I have anything better to do? No I do not.

We were watching TV. More accurately, we were not watching TV. It was on but I was at the computer where I may have been one of the last humans on the planet to finally see an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It stars some Jerry Seinfeld fella you may have heard of. Mom was reading the newspaper.

Reading the daily newspaper is a lost art, one that frankly deserves to be lost. Think about it. The paper gets printed in the morning, full of stories written about news the night before. It gets bought in the late morning then sits around until afternoon or evening. By the time you read about a bank robbery, the crooks have already been caught and are planning their escape. Many is the time, and this is true, I’ve said to Mom “wow that was some horrible tragedy yesterday” and she’d say “yeah, the Mets lost again.” Meanwhile I was talking about the latest natural disaster in which 287 Sumatrans died when their village was flattened by a hurricane.

But the plight of the poor Sumatrans is not what we’re talking about here. (Honestly, I say if you can’t stand the heat, get out of Sumatra.) It is the sorry state of television. There was nothing worth watching on TV that night, unless you want to see the 697th rerun of The Big Bang Theory where Walowitz gets shot into space, or an episode of Redneck House Flippers Live!

I asked Mom if maybe there was something she wanted to see on Netflix. She said that Netflix has all those good TV shows she’s been dying to see. How long has she been dying to see them? For about eight years, which is also about how long she has had Netflix. (In case you haven’t figured it out yet, she has no idea how to access Netflix. “What time is the Netflix on? Does it come on after Judge Judy?”)

Well this was her big chance because I actually know which button to press to get Netflix. HINT: It is the same button you press to get everything else. So, Mom, what should we sit down and watch?

“I want to see Orange is the New Black.”

 I was thinking more in the line of the new Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Me to Mom: “You want us to watch a show about women getting beat up and sexually assaulted in prison?”
Mom: “I heard it was good.”

So I did what any good son would do. I watched another episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (guest: Joel Hodgeson) while Mom watched Walowitz getting shot into space.

 

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Return Of The Grammar Fool

5 Jan

January 5, 2018

Longtime readers of this blog may recall that when this blog began, I was an English teacher. Since then I moved on, first to the Company I Am not allowed to name and now to a position as a freelance investigator. What do these jobs have in common? They were all silly enough to pay me.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The phrase “longtime readers of this blog” may now be an anachronism. The longest-time reader, Mr. Al Bickley, has been a proud subscriber since day one, when this blog first appeared on MySpace. However, he has been in a medically induced coma since 2012 and while technically still a subscriber, he is definitely no longer a reader. The second-longest tenured reader is my Aunt Edwina, whose constant requests to be unsubscribed from my blog have been cheerfully ignored for years, since I know them to be nothing more than playful jests. Though that does not explain why she doesn’t invite me for Thanksgiving anymore.)

But sometimes, the old English-teaching days still haunt me. If you have the stomach for it, go back and check out the many blogs where I complain about bad grammar. (Here’s one making fun of Michael Bloomberg.)  HA HA HA, boy was that annoying. What was I thinking?

I’ll tell you what I was thinking. Read this, which is an actual status I posted on Facebook today.

Let someone else deal with OBJ.

Get it? It works on two levels. It’s funny because A- it’s a bad snowstorm and B- the Giants stink. I’ll take my West Coast Wildcat offense somewhere else, thank you very much.

But here’s where the grammar stuff kicks in. It’s that word “today.” That pesky “today.” There were three ways to write that post.
1- The snow is so bad that I’m skipping my interview today for Giants head coach.
2- The snow is so bad that I’m skipping my interview for Giants head coach today.
3- The snow is so bad today that I’m skipping my interview for Giants head coach.

Speaking now as a former paid English expert, the word “today,” in this context, acts as some sort of adjective modifier thingy, emphasizing that the interview was today (option 1), rather than emphasizing that the position was to be the Giants head coach today (option 2), which would be inaccurate. (But as I read this back, I think option 3, emphasizing that the snow was so bad today, was the way to go. Oh well.) 

See? It makes sense. I realize that most of you don’t care (so why are you still reading? This is the internet, go find some wrestling rumors or tweet or something) but hey, I actually put thought into that stupid status update.

The moral of the story? It is a snowy day, I’m stuck indoors, and this is what happens.

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