A Visit to a Vast Wasteland

I watch television a lot. I use it as white noise for reading the paper, working puzzles, cleaning house, folding laundry. When I see something interesting or unusual, something I want to remember, I jot it down in a little notebook on the end table.  Here are some tidbits:

In the movie The Man Who Knew Too Much, the eight-year-old boy playing Doris Day’s son sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles “Que Sera, Sera.”  Most of us can hardly produce a noise that way, but he whistles a song … on pitch, yet.

On the game show, 1 vs. 100, the question was: how many six packs would it take to have ’99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall?’  The contestant pondered and said, “Well, I don’t drink beer…”  Yes, she was blond.

Some words of wisdom from As Time Goes By, a Britcom on PBS, Lionel tells the women in his life, “Say what you want to say to the person you want to say it to.”  What sage advice!

And on Judging Amy, someone observed, “Everybody loves a strong person because they never ask for anything.” (I didn’t note if it was Amy or her very wise mother.)

In a short Film The Support Group on PBS, came a twist on a growing cliche about denial: “The Euphrates is not just a river in Mesopotamia.” 

And of course commercials appear in my note-taking. A disclaimer for a perscription drug, “If you’re allergic to Astepro, don’t take it.”  Well, duh.

A man dressed in a white coat tells us, “I recommend Breath Rx not only to my patients but to everyone I know.”  That’s how to win friends, all right.

A commercial for a behavior management technique is rather long but never really tells us much about how it works. The salesperson boasts, “Turn your child’s attitude around in one minute or less.”  Now, as someone who has parented for many years, I want to know: What IS it?  A baseball bat? Thumb screws? 

Yes, I watch television a lot, mostly old movies. And the new season of Monk starts Friday, August 7.