It’s a phrase we’re hearing with greater frequency every day — “The New Normal.”
It rolls off the tongue, as almost all alliterations do. Every time someone comes up with a new, more severe way to fight the Black Plague of the 21st century (a/k/a the coronavirus) you just shake your head, roll your eyes and say “well, it’s just the new normal.”
Sunday I had to go to Walgeens in Wyoma Square. Because our president suggested wearing masks if we went outdoors, I dutifully complied. And didn’t I just walk around with an air of superiority, especially around all the idiots who didn’t!
Damn right I passed judgment on them. If I have to do it, so does everybody else. It’s right up at the top of what I call “Krause’s Corollaries.”
You sure do some weird things in this “new normal.” I never watched “Ghost Whisperer” when it was on. It wasn’t really my type of show. But when you’re home every night, working remotely during the day, and facing the evening with a putrid set of shows that are already in rerun (most of them anyway) you look everywhere for something different.
So one night, I tuned in. It had a decent plot, and nobody ever accused Jennifer Love Hewitt of being unattractive, so there you are. A television earworm is born. My wife DVR’d both episodes Sunday night because I was working and couldn’t watch.
Of course, anyone who knows me knows that the all-time earworm for me is Perry Mason. I thought I knew every killer in the show’s nine-year run. But I got stumped the other night, and had to wait until the end the same as everyone else.
A word to the wise: the killers in these whodunits are usually characters who fly just under the radar for the whole episode. Look there first. It may not always be the case, but most of the time it is. And that goes triple for “Murder, She Wrote,” where everybody tries to sound like they’re from Maine.
I go to Maine often. Maine is one of my happy places. But nobody up there sounds anything like Angela Lansbury trying to do Downeast. And forget Tom Bosley. He should have stuck to being Mr. C.
And is it me, or, for a town of its size, is Cabot Cove’s murder rate abnormally high?
Let’s see. I prefer Matlock over the Andy Griffith show. Andy Griffith was a good comedian who got stuck playing it straight so that Don Knotts could get all the yucks. But on Matlock, even though it’s a courtroom drama (and Perry Mason ripoff), Griffith got to show off his comedy chops as a cantankerous trial lawyer.
I have to admit, it has grown on me.
Crossing Jordan was/is an underrated show. It had a quirky cast, especially the two lab guys who played off each other. And that made it fun.
Sadly, I rarely get to see the daily doubleheader of Crossing Jordan because, well, that’s the shank of my work day.
But I do get to see Cold Case. I take a break to watch at least one episode of the daily twin bill on StarTV. On this show, the cops open up one cold case a week and solve it. The best part is the beginning, where (I assume) the long-forgotten victim lets forth a blood-curdling scream. You know, the voice of the dead.
Cold Case reminds me in a way of Perry Mason. Perry was to Los Angeles district attorney Hamilton Burger (get it? Ham-Burger?) what the Harlem Globetrotters were to the Washington Generals. Burger was so incompetent you had to wonder how he ever got re-elected.
Similarly, Lilly Rush solves every cold case the Philadelphia Police botched years earlier. It doesn’t say much for them.
And of course, there is Jeopardy, the elitist’s game show. I love Alex Trebek. I want to pound him sometimes, but I cannot imagine life, or Jeopardy without him.
I hear George Stephanopoulos wants the gig. He’d be perfect. He has the right touch of smarminess to go along with his elitist personna.
Some shows don’t make the cut. There’s something about The Closer that really bugs me; and Cagney & Lacey is, was, and ever shall be dreadful.
This is my “new normal” when not in my cluttered man-cave working. I haven’t seen anyone, except my wife and, occasionally, our son (save for running into people while walking) since March 14, when we went to a children’s birthday party. That was my last public appearance.
Even my regular checkups with the doctor were conducted over the phone.
It’s not the best situation, but as long as I remain on this side of the grass line, I’ll take it.
I feel, like, totally vapid talking about this stuff. Here we are — hunkered down in eternal blizzard mode. People are snatching up items at the supermarket they’d never buy any other time. We all live in terror that when our guards are completely down, we’re going to accidentally brush up against a walking petri dish at the drugstore.
And here I am, talking about TV shows that would qualify for Social Security and Medicare.
And the next time Jed Clampett (speaking of geriatric TV) goes shootin’ for some food, and finds something in the woods, it’s not bubblin’ crude that’s going to come gushing up. It’ll be rolls and rolls of toilet paper.
