“Just singing a song…”
March 15, 2022, 12:00 PM
This past Thursday evening, Elyse and I found ourselves at JMU, touring the recently renovated Zane Showker Hall. I’m going to go into more detail on that adventure later, so stay tuned for that, but while we were in the lecture hall formerly known as G5 (now numbered 0212), I found a microphone up front, and it turned on and worked. When you give me a microphone, you never know what I’m going to do with it. In this instance, I had a little bit of fun with it, and belted out a tune, which Elyse recorded:
Continue reading…Categories: Harrisonburg, JMU, Today's Special
Something about sitcom endings…
September 29, 2021, 9:44 PM
Recently, I was thinking about the way various sitcoms that I watched ended their runs, and it made me realize that I actually prefer a certain kind of sitcom ending over others. I admit: I didn’t ever think that a preference for certain kinds of sitcom endings would even be a thing, let alone that I would have a preference for types of sitcom endings, but here we are.
First, though, to clarify: I am referring to shows that had a proper final ending, i.e. shows where everyone knew when they were taping the final episode that it was to be the final episode. To clarify what I mean, Perfect Strangers and Full House, for example, had proper final episodes. Everyone knew that the final episode was to be the final episode when it was being made, and it was aired knowing that it was the last episode. By comparison, Family Matters and Step By Step, while both long-running series by sitcom standards, did not have proper series finales. Both shows were cancelled after their ninth and seventh seasons, respectively, and a proper finale was never filmed for either one. In this entry, I am talking about the former case, where the end point is known, and not the latter case, where the final episode was not intended as such from the outset.
And interestingly enough, my preference is for series endings where the characters are set up to just go on and on, where things don’t drastically change in the finale, where we’re left feeling like the characters that we had come to love would be just fine going forward, even though we wouldn’t be watching them anymore. In other words, I prefer the ones where the people involved don’t pull out all of the stops to make a huge grand finale. They may still provide some sense of closure – a capstone of sorts – but it leaves the premise of the show intact.
Categories: Television
Thinking about the credits music…
September 17, 2019, 9:14 AM
As you well know, I am a big fan of Today’s Special. I certainly know more about the show than most, and have traveled to Toronto to visit a number of different filming locations from the show. And before we get too far along, nerd alert: I’m going deep into the weeds with this one.
There’s one episode, though, where I take issue with the credits. In that instance, I think that the music that they chose to use doesn’t completely fit the mood of the ending. That episode is “Babies“, from 1984. In that episode, we learn that Wanda Willoby, from the Willoby Tale stories, has run away from her home in Possum Ridge and has come to the store, because she feels as though she is being replaced by a new baby that’s on the way. After everyone finds Wanda, they comfort her, and explain to her that her parents won’t love her any less now that there will be a third child in the family. Meanwhile, Wanda, while meaning well, causes a lot of trouble in the store, including accidentally dropping a large display of balls in the Children’s Department, and inadvertently backing into an alarm button in the Computer Room. This underlines the need to get Wanda back home to Possum Ridge as soon as possible. In the end, Wanda realizes that she is not being replaced by the new baby, and the episode ends with the storyteller, a young Lori Chodos (whom you might better remember as Beezus from the 1988 Ramona series), telling everyone how well Wanda handled the new baby after her experience in the store. The episode ends on a high note, though certainly differently than any other episode, since the storyteller had never been integrated into an episode like this before (storytellers typically appeared in standalone segments).
The end credits music used was the slow flute theme, which is the basic melody of the theme on flute with some other accompaniment. This is used on four episodes: “Babies” and “Butterflies” in 1984, and “Wishes” and “Phil’s Visit” in 1986. Of those four episodes, “Butterflies” and “Wishes” have sad endings. “Phil’s Visit” doesn’t have a sad ending per se, but it’s a very emotional episode about alcoholism, and the slow flute ending fits. Out of the four, only “Babies” has a happy ending. “Babies” is also the first episode to use that piece of music. For recurring pieces of music, the first usage is sometimes very different than the other usages. For instance, the music typically used during suspenseful scenes first appears in a relatively lighthearted scene in “Police“, where Sam is attempting to help Officer Hardy look for clues, but ultimately gets in his way. In almost every other instance, the tune is used to help build suspense, such as when a spaceship lands on the roof, or Muffy is rescued after becoming trapped in a utility chase.
Categories: Today's Special
I still think about it twenty years later…
May 15, 2019, 11:46 PM
This month marks twenty years since I did The East Coast Price is Right. That was a fun experience, and I did all of the legwork myself. I built the set, chose the pricing games, researched all of the prizes (though we played for fun – no actual prizes were given out), wrote all of the copy, picked out all of the music, and even made and wrote out all of the nametags. I still think about the production from time to time, and I wonder what I might do differently if I were to do it all again.
That production was the culmination of a series of writing assignments that I had done in high school. In Mrs. Hevener’s English and composition classes at Stuarts Draft High School, we did freewrite assignments on a regular basis. I tended to have fun with these, writing on various topics that interested me, much like I still do on here. Some of my old freewrites ended up on Schumin Web under the now-retired “Writings” section. In 11th and 12th grade, many of our freewrites were required to be related to the material that we were studying in class, which I resented a bit. After all, I loved to write, and still do. But I didn’t really much care about the literature that we were working on, and I didn’t like the poetry much, either, since the way that it was taught essentially beat the life out of it through overanalysis (by the way, what is a good way to teach poetry that doesn’t kill it?). That said, I tended to stretch the definition of the “based on the literature” requirement until it was holding on for dear life, but doing so enabled me to continue to write about topics that I was interested in. The problem with the “based on the literature” requirement was that in the case of the literature, we were expected to read it in massive quantities in such a short time that nothing sank in. I tend to get the best results when I read at a slower, more thoughtful pace. At the pace that they required, my eyes might have physically read every single word on the pages, but it wasn’t sticking, and I still couldn’t answer any of the questions about the material. I did no better than when I didn’t read any of the literature and just BSed it, and so I went back to that. After all, if I wasn’t doing any better in class when I read the literature than when I skipped it, there was no point in reading it. In 12th grade, where half of the class material was about poetry, I tended to gravitate towards that, because it was easier to base stuff on for the freewrites. I would take whatever style we were studying or had studied previously, and use that as a template to write about things that were far more interesting than whatever literature we were reading. It wasn’t ideal, and I found it frustrating at times trying to fit to the format, but at least I could have fun with it. Others tended to stretch it by saying that their poems were based on a poem called “Dover Beach“, which was in the poetry book. That’s why I put “Based on the poem ‘Dover Beach'” in the introduction – because it was the catch-all poem that people often used, and that line spoofed that.
Categories: High school, Television
Toronto in a nutshell…
April 24, 2019, 9:30 PM
I mentioned about a month or so ago that Elyse and I were going to Toronto in mid-April. That trip is now in the history books, and much fun was had. I’m going to do a more detailed photo set in Life and Times later, but I want to present a high-level view of what we did on our trip now. Much of the focus of the trip was to visit various locations where Today’s Special was filmed. We visited the store, as well as other places where various characters visited over the course of seven seasons. We also rode a lot of the TTC, visited friends, had dessert at a poop-themed restaurant, and rode some vintage elevators.
So here we go…
Main Place Mall, a mostly dead mall in Buffalo, New York, where we met up with a friend.
Categories: Public transportation, Today's Special, Vacations
Why was I afraid of this as a child?
January 18, 2019, 1:16 PM
Remember this segment from Sesame Street episode 1578, where Gordon talks about rain?
For some reason, that segment, which I called “Gordon in a wig”, terrified me as a small child. I watched it once, and apparently, didn’t like it. After that first viewing, I would turn the television off whenever it came on.
Categories: Television
Bill Cosby goes to jail…
September 29, 2018, 1:34 PM
Like everyone else did, I read about Bill Cosby’s being sentenced to 3-10 years in state prison for sexual assault, and his eating a pudding cup as part of his first meal as an inmate. I also finally figured out the word to describe my own feelings about the whole Bill Cosby situation: disappointment. I am not angry over Cosby’s conduct. I am not sad about Cosby’s conduct. But I am very disappointed over Cosby’s conduct.
After all, I was part of a generation of kids that practically grew up with Bill Cosby, and his very wholesome brand of education and entertainment. His stand-up comedy was mostly about his family and his children. We watched Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, where, in the opening, Cosby indicated that, “If you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done.” We watched Picture Pages, where Cosby taught us about math and other subjects with friend Mortimer Ichabod Marker. Cosby also had a long relationship with the folks on Sesame Street, making many appearances there. We then watched The Cosby Show, which was a wholesome comedy about a successful family, and ensuring that the children were positioned for their own success. The final episode was about a college graduation, after all, driving home that heavy emphasis on education. He also released a book, Fatherhood, during this period. And then Cosby was all over the commercials during this period as well, pitching Jell-O gelatin, Jell-O pudding, Kodak film (“No seal? Who knows!”), and EF Hutton, among others. All of those wholesome and family-oriented roles caused him to develop a public reputation as a father figure. We all looked up to Bill Cosby, because he had made himself as someone worthy of looking up to, as a successful father of five, a strong proponent of education, and from all appearances, an all-around nice guy.
That Cosby, in the end, turned out to be a grade-A scumbag, is just disappointing, and felt like a punch to the gut. “America’s Dad” turned out to be a dangerous sexual predator. There’s a certain feeling of disappointment and betrayal that comes with it, discovering that a role model is anything but. We all looked up to him, and then soon discovered that he was not worthy of our respect. Watching his fall from grace is a sad reminder that people are not always who we think that they are, and that Cosby’s wholesome public image was merely a facade over an absolutely despicable person. Cosby will likely be remembered not for the work that made him famous, but as the scumbag who drugged and sexually assaulted many women over several decades. And that’s how he should be remembered, because that sort of conduct is inexcusable. No more love for Cosby, as the real Cosby is a person that is not worthy of admiration and who lost everyone’s respect. Sigh…
Categories: News, Television
I have reached a milestone…
September 11, 2018, 4:08 PM
I recently reached a milestone when it comes to my overhaul of my Today’s Special site. I last wrote about this project in 2013, at which time I had settled on a platform for the site (WordPress) and had written a few articles, mainly as proof of concept. The build plan has always been to start with “Hats” and work my way through to “Memories“, adding content in the order that it appears in the show. After I get through all 121 episodes and the content related to those, I will then write the articles for the content that doesn’t necessarily tie neatly into an episode or episodes, like the articles for the main characters, the various sets, and so on. Then once all of the articles are written, I just need to write the “business” pages like the main page, privacy statement, etc., give everything a final check, and then launch.
Since I announced the project in 2013, the project has made good progress, though that progress has happened in fits and starts over the intervening years. I completed the articles for “Hats“, “Snow“, “Noses“, and “Family” in late 2013, and then set the project aside for about two years. I suppose that other matters took precedence during that time. Then when I picked it up again in late 2015, I got a lot of prep work done for the episode pages, such as all of the writer, director, and sequence information, and then by March 2016, I had completed things through “Games“, i.e. the twelfth episode. I then picked it up again in December 2016, and finished up the first season in February 2017. I picked up on the second season in September 2017, starting with “Dance“, and finished it up exactly one year later, taking approximately six months off from it from December 2017 to June 2018. That work on the second season also included writing seven brand new episode synopses, to replace some temporary short synopses written in the nineties. You know what they say: there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution. That said, the new synopses are the same length as the standard ones.
In finishing the 1982 episodes, and a number of other articles related to that, I believe that I have reached a significant milestone as far as Today’s Special goes. Going into the project, I was concerned that I would get bogged down in those early episodes and the project would stall indefinitely. But now I’m done with them. I have completed the early material, and am now moving into the middle of the series. Starting in 1983, the series really “grew out its beard“, as the show definitely hit its stride during that period. The 1981 episodes were fairly light on story, focusing mostly on teaching about the various concepts that the show covered, such as hats, snow, camping, fruit, and so on. The 1982 episodes were built around an actual plot, but still had a lot of teaching and explaining in them. Starting in 1983, the concepts are taught through the storyline, with less direct explanation of concepts. There’s also more conflict, as 1983 has five episodes where characters get very upset with each other for very valid reasons. In addition, the characters are far more developed in 1983, as all of their origin stories are shown. The show also changes its appearance slightly, as this is when Jodie begins wearing her third uniform, which is the version with the long sleeved button-down shirt and pocket on the right side, rather than the short sleeved jumpsuit that she wore previously.
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Today's Special
“Roseanne” becomes “The Conners”…
September 1, 2018, 10:51 AM
Funny how real life sometimes writes the plot. I was planning to do a review of the tenth season of Roseanne in this space back in May, but while I was writing it, the show was cancelled by ABC after Roseanne Barr posted some pretty vile stuff on the Twitter. That put the partially-written Journal entry on hold, because those events affected a lot of what I was working on. However, the network’s reaction to the Twitter rant was completely understandable. I can’t imagine that any company would want to be associated with such vile rhetoric coming from one of their key players.
Based on the fallout, where Barr blamed Ambien for her racist rant, I can tell you one thing: she’s not sorry. Sure, she’s sorry that she ran her mouth and lost her job, but she’s not sorry for what she said. If anything, her using the medication as a scapegoat cements that those were her true feelings. The idea is that the medication “removed the filter”, and, with nothing to prevent vile things from being said, she let out what she had really been thinking all along. And then she doubled down on it on a Fox News appearance later on. I’m disappointed, because I expected better from Barr. But I suppose that it doesn’t matter anymore, because Barr’s career is most definitely over, destroyed by an ill-considered Twitter post.
I suppose that this is also a lesson about how to handle your relationship between your personal social media and your employer, especially when you’re in a very public position. People hear about stuff like this and complain about free speech, but the whole concept of “free speech” as laid out by the First Amendment only applies to the government. A private entity is completely free to fire you for saying something vile on the Internet, and that’s what happened with Barr. The government played no role in her firing. She ran her mouth, and boom – she lost her job.
Categories: Television
I’m pretty sure that I now have the modern equivalent of TXL…
June 1, 2018, 3:50 PM
Over the last month or so, Elyse and I created a network of smart speakers in the house. Elyse has had a Google Home Mini since early January, and I expanded it, first to three, and then to seven speakers when I realized the capabilities of the devices. With speakers throughout the house, we can use the “broadcast” feature as something of a home intercom system, and we’ve also created speaker groups in order to play music on multiple speakers in various sections of the house, or throughout the entire house. I love these things, because I can, for instance, just ask the system what the weather is, or what time it is, and it will tell me. I can even make phone calls on them and control the lights, though I don’t typically use the phone feature because of audio quality issues, and I’m not willing to spend money on the lights at this point in time (but maybe in the future). Right now, I use them most often for music, and for the home intercom function. And then if I ever get various Nest products, I will be able to connect them to the system as well. Pretty neat.
All in all, I can do a lot of things that TXL could do on Today’s Special. I can talk to it and it gives me information back, I can place phone calls through it, and I can make it control various building systems. I still don’t know how to get it to play “Yo He Ho” at the most inopportune times, though one day I might figure out a way to make it do that. Only thing about this system that I’m not a fan of is that you have to activate it by saying, “Okay, Google,” or “Hey, Google.” If I could customize the phrases that it responds to, I would make it respond to “TXL”, to make it complete. Considering that it does a lot of things that TXL could do on Today’s Special, it seems rather fitting.
Those of you who have used the various smart speakers also know that Google has built some Easter eggs in them, like if you ask what the answer is to life, the universe, and everything, it will tell you that the answer is 42. Using custom routines, I built in a couple of Easter eggs of my own, related to Today’s Special. I wanted it to respond to “How many size 9 shoes are for sale in the store?” with “There are ten pairs of size 9 shoes for sale,” (from “Boxes and Boxes“) but for some reason, it couldn’t comprehend that one, try as I might.
Categories: Computer, House, Today's Special
Now to build on the successes of the past year…
January 3, 2018, 9:37 PM
A new year always brings a lot of feelings. It’s a time to reflect on the past year, and a time to look ahead to the year ahead. Reflecting back on 2017, I’d say that I had an outstanding year, and laid the groundwork for a strong future. After all, at the beginning of 2017, I was still relatively new at the whole train operations thing, and lived by myself in an apartment with a hostile relationship with the property management. Now, I’m more experienced with my work and more comfortable with all of the ins and outs of my job, and I’m also a homeowner with a roommate. I made my first mortgage payment at the end of December. Things suddenly became very real when I wrote that check.
Now, in 2018, I want to build on my successes from the past year and reach even greater heights. After all, in 2017, I got the house. Now, I want to make it my home, and not someone else’s idea of a home with my furniture sitting in it. That means getting rid of that chandelier in Elyse’s room, painting a few rooms, and getting my wallhangings up. I’m excited to design the new decor, because I have so many blank canvases upon which to expend some pent-up creative energies. My parents are delighted about this as well, because I’d been fantasizing out loud about redecorating their house for a few years in order to expend those creative energies that I couldn’t do with the apartment, but they were a bit cool to the idea. Now I have my own place to paint and decorate as I wish. The previous owner of my house decorated the place fairly minimalistically, using pale colors on walls and few wallhangings and furnishings, such as in the living room:
Categories: House, Myself, Schumin Web meta, Today's Special, Wikipedia, Work
“Crisp bacon strips, sliced French bread, hot cheesy sauce, on a plate full of macaroni!”
December 25, 2017, 10:14 AM
For the last several years, I’ve made it something of a tradition of watching the Today’s Special episodes “Christmas Part 1” and “Christmas Part 2” on or around Christmas Eve. It only makes sense to me. Most Christmas specials are awful, but Today’s Special‘s two Christmas episodes are outside of that mold, taking the same care with Christmas that they do when discussing the night or feelings. The end result is a timeless story that still leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy inside after all these years.
This year, I decided to take a minor element from those episodes and bring it into real life. Across the two episodes, they sing their own variation of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” using food. It starts out early when Sam sings, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a plate full of macaroni!” Then Muffy later adds, “Hot cheesy sauce on my plate full of macaroni!” Near the end of the second episode, it takes its full form:
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me crisp bacon strips, sliced French bread, hot cheesy sauce, on a plate full of macaroni!
So on Friday evening, I went to the grocery store after work and bought this:
Pasta, generic Velveeta, bread, and bacon.
Categories: Christmas, Food and drink, Today's Special
Apparently, Sam Crenshaw is an Ottawa Senators fan…
December 18, 2017, 12:47 PM
Sometimes, you never know what you’ll find online. Check this out:
Categories: Today's Special
Going to show that you never know what you’ll find at the thrift store…
July 30, 2017, 2:39 AM
It’s amazing what you find sometimes when you hit the thrift store. Case in point, at Unique Thrift Store/Value Village in Hillandale Shopping Center, Elyse and I found this:
Categories: Cameras, Elyse, Shopping, Silver Spring, Today's Special
“If what doesn’t kill us is making us stronger…”
April 30, 2017, 10:00 AM
So according to Deadline, there will be an eight-episode revival of the 1990s sitcom Roseanne. From what I’ve read, most of the actors from the original series will reprise their roles.
Roseanne is probably the last sitcom that I would have imagined would do a revival. Reason is that over the course of the final season, they more or less trashed the entire premise of the show as things went completely off the rails, as the Conners won $108 million in the lottery, turning them from working-class to fabulously wealthy overnight. Then there was the ending of the final episode, which retconned much of the series with the revelation that Dan had died from his heart attack, Jackie was gay (and not Bev), Darlene married Mark and Becky married David, that the events of the final season were a fantasy, and that everything that we saw over the past nine seasons was actually a book written by a heretofore unknown person named Roseanne Conner. So where do you go from there?
First of all, however, in exploring where this show might start, I’m inclined to dismiss speculation by Roseanne Barr from 2009 about what the characters might be up to. From the article cited above:
On her website in 2009, Barr gave her detailed take on where each of the main characters from the show would be in a possible Roseanne revival: Roseanne and Jackie opening the first medical marijuana dispensary in Lanford; Dan reappearing alive after faking his death; DJ being published; Mark dying in Iraq; David leaving Darlene for a woman half his age; Darlene coming out, meeting a woman and having a baby with her; Becky working at Walmart; Arnie befriending the governor of Illinois and remarrying Nancy; Bev selling a painting for $10,000; Jerry and the grandsons forming a boy band; and Bonnie being arrested for selling crack.
Categories: Television