And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend

[sovay]

On the telehealth this afternoon with the nurse practitioner, I had the opportunity to include "comedically loud sneezing" among my repertoire of symptoms. I am being treated for a presumption of bronchitis for a week, after which if I do not improve I have to walk into a building and get X-rayed. Please cross your fingers for Team Bronchitis. In the meantime, have some links.

1. I learned this story originally from the radio astronomy side: "Why You Generally Can't Find TV Stations on Channel 37."

2. I'm not crazy about the headline, but it belongs to an intelligent essay by Emily Mortimer: "How 'Lolita' Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture." Also I grew up on her father's books and scripts and I had no idea of the connection.

3. I knew how much Henry Ford had angered American Jews (I wrote him a haiku once!), but I did not know our calendar had in fact come for him.

So both days of this weekend I had recording sessions over Zoom with A Besere Velt, in consequence of which in the evenings I was a puddle of mush with a cat on it and occasionally coughing, in consequence of which I fell face-first into The Greatest American Hero (1981–83), in consequence of which I have now been playing Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" for something over twelve hours: sholio has the full story. Music licensing for home release is beginning to assume the proportions of a devil. I am enjoying the series immensely. It is one of the shows where the narrative level of the plot is almost always nonsense, but all of the character work is engaging and sound and sometimes criminally endearing—it's not at all serialized, but it has continuity and growth. Robert Culp's Bill Maxwell has been added to my list of favorite characters. I suspect the show of being terrifically idtastic, but most of the time its id is really nice.

Comments

[sovay]

Especially since the show doesn't immediately brush off the trauma from it (I mean, for the next few minutes, anyway), and his gratitude to Ralph for saving him!

Bill is so adamantly (if not always convincingly) stoic most of the time, any scene where he actually admits to vulnerability is incredibly effective and the helicopter aftermath is a particularly strong example, as Ralph helps him up out of the scrub they augured into:

"Bill, you all right? What's wrong with your knees?"
"Fear! Or I'm drunk."
"You're not drunk."
"Then I'm alive."

And the way Ralph flicks a beetle out of his hair afterward is really stupid and really sweet, which approximates so much of this show.

[sholio]

Yes! And also, that rare vulnerability persists into the next scene, with Bill still so shaken up that he's babbling and Ralph recognizing it as a trauma reaction. Good stuff.