Lessons Gleaned from Dick Van Dyke

I know.  These are dark days  Parlous times.  We have a guy with a real (if slim) chance to become President who is such a huge racist that it almost... almost...obscures what a vile misogynist he is.  Fortunately, the hateful motherfucker umbrella is a big one and there's room to offend just about every class of people under it.

I swear I came up with that hateful umbrella metaphor all on my own, but when I did a Google images search for a funny gif to go with it, this turned up:

There is no new idea under the sun.

Except maybe this one.  I present to you that as shitty as things seem now, they are, in fact better than they have ever been before here in these United States of America. And for evidence, I'm going to tell you about an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show that I recently saw, called "The Lady, The Tiger, and the Lawyer."

The premise of this episode: a suave, handsome single man named (IIRC) Ted moves in next door to the Petrie's charming New Rochelle manse.  Laura decides she needs to set him up with someone because you know how women are!  Women be matchmaking!   But when Rob suggests perpetually single lovelorn Sally Rogers as a potential match, Laura demurs.  Sally is a little too... too... you know?  She thinks her single cousin, Donna, is a better choice.

Rob and Laura engage in marital hijinks (not that kind!  Babies still came via stork in 1965) and decide that the Superior Matchmaker component of the ongoing game, Marriage, has begun.  Dinners for Handsome Ted are arranged for the next two nights.

First Ted and Donna hit it off swimmingly.  They like all the same things, one of which is rocks (I don't know).  Rob is ready to throw in the Sally Rogers-shaped towel, but Laura insists he go through with it for the Honor of the Competition.  Whaddya know, Ted and Sally hit it off just as well.  Ted gets Sally.  He thinks she's hilarious. (She is hilarious, but maybe a little exhausting, right?  Same with Buddy.  Maybe just once stop with the jokes?  Just a little?).  The question of who is currently winning Marriage remains undecided.

By night three, Ted hasn't called either "girl" and Laura and Rob are just all kinds of twitterpated about this because Marriage demands a winner! As Rob and Laura begin to work through their scheme database to come up with  good way to find out which "girl" Ted has chosen, Ted knocks on the door!  

Ted wants to explain to Rob and Laura (noteworthily: not Donna or Sally) why he isn't going to call either "girl".

Are you guys ready for this?  Are you?

Turns our Ted's under psychiatric care and is only allowed to see a "girl" once. Because, you see, he's been married three or four times before and he has this problem.  He has a terrible temper and this unfortunate habit of hitting his wives.

Hilarious, right?  

It all worked out and neither Rob nor Laura lose Marriage, because it's all  down to Ted's little wife-beating habit!

Now, look, I know what you're thinking. I'm being a ridiculous anachronistic strident feminist killjoy because it was a different time.

But that's just my point.  

The endless navel-gazing of the Internet and social media in particular can be exhausting.  The constant interrogation of humor for sexism, racism, classism, etc may seem to suck the joy out of comedy. Donald Trump is VERY opposed to political correctness.  But there's no such thing as "political correctness."  We've just taken away asshole carte blanche from white, straight cis-men.  And this makes us better. It makes the world bigger and more open and funnier.

So when you find yourself descending into Trumpian despair, ask yourself this: if I could live at any point in history, but with no control over gender,  race,  able-bodiedness, or sexual orientation, when would you live? The answer is either now or GTFO.   

  

(The Dick Van Dyke Show was still pretty good, y'all.  And I love Laura's capri pants.)

Seriously, You Guys, Where is the Damn Carrot Peeler?

I always return from vacation cheerfully replete with good intentions.  You know how it is - you're all refreshed and relaxed and also you've just spent several days eating and drinking to vast excess?  (Right? That's not just me, right?) So I went to the store to buy some healthy food because a woman cannot survive on alcohol, sugar and fried foods alone.  I shopped with the full intention to embrace virtue, you know, gastronomically.

In the immediate present, though, I find myself sitting here in front of my laptop with a damn cut on my damn right wrist which I got scavenging through my damn kitchen drawers looking for the damn carrot peeler and I cannot, dammit, find it anywhere! Where is the carrot peeler, you guys?  Where did I put it?

I do not believe it is possible to become a woman who will put the carrot peeler back where it belongs. I know this because I wrote this exact same damn blogpost two years ago about tweezers rather than carrot peelers.

One of my post-holiday good intentions was to try and write more.  I had some plans to bloggily sort through my complicated feelings about the demise of Gawker.  I had a post in mind about how I think that while Donald Trump is an absolute joke he still may manage to foment terrorism from within the Crazy Motherfucker rank and file (Not all Donald Trump fans are Crazy Motherfuckers - but, man, a whooooole lot of them are and I am kinda low-key worried about the Crazy Motherfucker surfeit in America these days). I had a bloggy idea about familial competition (within my little family, we are weirdly competitive about who's getting the best cell service).  I had ideas is what I'm saying.

But they've been buried underneath a mountain of frustration because I cannot find the goddamn carrot peeler and I have no one to cast this annoyance unto but my own damn self.

Seriously, though, do you guys know where my damn carrot peeler is?  And if you do not know this (and why would you) can you recommend some sort of blog or something?  Not to learn how to be more organized (I will never be more organized), but with some advice on how to accept that it is OK to be a little disorganized and that, as it is possible to get a new carrot peeler for under $5, I should just, Jesus, you know, relax about it a little?  Because I remain all goddammity.

Sigh. I'm just going to have a beer and some cheese or something.