To Absent Friends - Ron Popeil

 

Ron Popeil

1935-2021

Inventor of Gadgets That We Didn't Know We Needed Ron Popeil died this past week at the age of 86.  You can see some of those items in the picture above.  Who doesn't need an in the shell egg scrambler?  Oh, and you might also say that in addition to all of these gadgets, he also invented television infomercials.  If he didn't, he certainly perfected the model.

His death brought to mind a personal story.  

Back in 1987, I found myself unemployed for a four month period.  Naturally, it was an upsetting time, and many nights I found that I was unable to sleep because of it.  So I would toddle on downstairs to watch television.  Now back in 1987, there were no streaming services on which to watch movies and limited series, and all ESPN was showing was week old college football games.  What was on television in the wee smalls, though, were infomercials, many of them featuring Ron "Set It and Forget It" Popeil.  I was fascinated by them and always said that it was a good thing that my wallet with the credit cards in it was upstairs and out of my reach.

One item with which I became particularly obsessed was a food storage "system" called Popeet.

Popeet consisted of accordion-type plastic containers.  Easy to store when not in use, but expandable to accommodate ANY KIND OF LEFTOVERS.  Soup, vegetables, desserts.  You could store candy, snacks, and cereal in them.  They were leak proof.  They were unbelievably amazing, and, as I said, I obsessed over them.  And if you called within the next twenty minutes, you could get a second set of Popeets for free, paying only the additional shipping and handling!

My "obsession" became a bit of schtick that I would talk about with friends, and it was good for a laugh or two.  Finally, when I did find employment, friends of ours celebrated the occasion by giving me.....a set of Popeets!!!!!

The story doesn't have a happy ending.  Popeet was not all that Mr. Popeil claimed it to be, and they were probably consigned to the trash bin within a year.

RIP Ron Popeil.

"Jungle Cruise"

The reviews that I have read from the professional critics for Disney's new "Jungle Cruise" can best be described as "tepid."  And not without reason.  However, as we left the theater yesterday after seeing it, Marilyn, aka, Mrs. Grandstander, offered the best review of all:

"Is there anyone" she asked "cooler than The Rock?"

Throw in the wonderful Emily Blunt, who has proven that she can play "spunky heroine" better than anyone since, perhaps, Katherine Hepburn, and there you have the reasons that make "Jungle Cruise" worth seeing.

The movie is based on the Disneyland/Disney World ride of the same name.  A cruise ride on a jungle river that is loaded with dangerous animatronic animals.  The plot of this one concerns a tree that has magic petals capable of curing any illness, a native curse upon Spanish conquistadors from the 16th century, the undead, an evil son of Kaiser Wilhelm - oh, yeah, the movie takes place during World War I - and sexism among the stuffy British Historical/Science/Exploration Society.  There are plot angles - and plot holes - and MacGuffins all over the place in this movie, but so what.  You don't go to a movie like this to see "Citizen Kane" or a Hitchcock classic, and it is upon that curve that a movie like this should be judged.  You  go to a movie like this to relax and have fun, and to that end, "Jungle Cruise" delivers.

Blunt, Johnson, and Whitehall

She looked GREAT in that hat!

To expand upon my wife's take on this one, Dwayne Johnson can match anybody when it comes to screen charisma.  Blunt has proven herself to to be both a terrific dramatic actress (A Quiet Place, Girl on the Train) and an equally charming comic actress (Mary Poppins Returns), and she handle herself nicely as the Don't-You-Dare-Take-Me-Lightly action adventuress in this one.  Johnson and Blunt may not be the next William Powell and Myrna Loy, but if they teamed up for another movie (but, please, not a sequel to this one), I'd buy a ticket to see it.

Oh, and Jack Whitehall does a great turn as Blunt's stiff upper lipped brother. He has packed more clothes and gear on Johnson's jungle cruise boat than Thurston Howell III packed for his three hour tour on the Minnow.

Like I said, when you rate a movie like this, you have to realize that a Star for this one is different than a Star for, say, "Some Like It Hot", so with that in mind, The Grandstander bestows Two and One-Half Stars on "Jungle Cruise."

Shifting Paradigms: Cutting the Cord

 Yep, as you can see from the title and the picture above, we made the decision this week to "cord cut", i.e., abandon cable television which we have been getting through Verizon FIOS for over 15 years, and go to a streaming service.  We had been contemplating this move for awhile.  No beef with the quality of the product that Verizon provided, it was a cost cutting measure, pure and simple.

Our monthly bill for our Verizon Bundle - phone, internet, TV - was coming in at $198 and change per month.  A few weeks back, I called Verizon and asked what it would cost if I just kept the phone service and the internet.  The answer, about $65/month, plus taxes and "fees."  So I then went looking for a streaming service TV provider.

My first choice was YouTube TV.  Cost: $64.99/month.  It provided local channels and all the other services that I had been using - CNN, TNT, ESPN, ACC Network, HGTV, you get the idea.  However, it DIDN'T provide one important one:  AT&T Sports Net Pittsburgh. That meant no ability to watch the Pirates or the Penguins games.  That was a deal breaker for me.

I then explored FuboTV.

With some exceptions, Fubo offered everything that YouTube did for the same price, $64.99, and, for an additional $5.00, AT&T Sports Net.  So I signed on for a seven day free trial, liked it, and yesterday, I called Verizon, cut off the TV service, and today I returned my two cable boxes and one digital converter to them.  So now, instead of paying $199/ month to Verizon, I am now paying $67/month to Verizon and $70/month to FuboTV, a savings of $62 per month, close to $750 ($744 to be exact) a year.

So far, I've been happy with the service.  The quality of the picture on my TV's has not suffered.  I am still learning the navigation of the system with the TV remote, but that is certainly no big deal.  And yes, you can now  use your TV remote for this; no separate remote control gadget.

Any down side?  Well, those exceptions I mentioned above....FuboTV does not carry any of the Turner Network stations.  No CNN, TNT, TBS, or TCM.  Losing TCM could have been a dealbreaker, but if you have HBO Max, which we do, you have access to the full TCM library.  Also, FuboTV provides all the broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.  This gives us access to our local affiliates as well with one exception:  there is no local broadcasting from WTAE-TV Channel 4, which now means I can only see the local newscasts from Channels 2,11, and 53.  Also, no PBS on FuboTV either.

(UPDATE, July 31:  Soon after I wrote this post, I discovered that I do indeed receive the local programming from WTAE-TV, Channel 4.)

Those are the negatives, and the loss of TBS and TNT will come into play when the NCAA basketball tournament is telecast in March and April, but here's something that I could do.  Sign up for YouTube TV for a month and then cancel it.  There are no contracts, not yet, anyway, with these services, so you can play the system with a bit of effort.  Will it be worth sixty-five bucks for me next spring to be able to watch three weekends of college hoops?  I don't know, but at least I know that I have options.

Another option, if things don't work out, would be to call Verizon and ask to be taken back into the FIOS TV fold.  I am sure that they will welcome me with open arms, and probably with an "introductory offer" that will be less than the $199 that I was currently paying.

So with that, I leave you with this.....

Lydia Jacoby's Olympic Moment

Did anything ever define an "Olympic Moment" more than the Gold Medal victory of seventeen year old Seward, Alaska native Lydia Jacoby in the 100 Meter Breast Stroke event last night?  She lives in a city of fewer than 4,000 residents, in a state with one (1!) Olympic sized swimming pool, and no Alasakan has ever won a medal for the USA in the Summer Games.  And the cherry was put atop this delightful swimming sundae when you watched her Seward High School classmates watching and celebrating in real time.

No screenwriter would write a script like this.  It was yet another moment that tells you that THIS is why you follow sports.

"Glory Days" by L. Jon Werthem

Hey there, sports fans, have I got a book for you!

"Glory Days, The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever."

Yeah the title is ponderous, and perhaps a bit overblown, but it is still terrific book.  L. Jon Werthem is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, and he examines a specific point in time, in this case, the Summer of 1984, and crafts a book that makes the case that events in that period "changed sports and culture forever."

Did they?  Maybe, maybe not, but Werthem details a whole bunch of stuff from that period that, if you were around then, stirs up a lot of fun and provocative memories.  Here are some of them.....

• David Stern had just become Commissioner of the NBA.  At the time, the league was clear fourth in popularity among the four major North American sports leagues, and was only a few years removed from having its Championship series telecast on tape delay.  Stern would change that.
•  Part of that change was ignited by an epic seven game Finals series between the Lakers (Kareem, Magic) and Celtics (Bird).
• The 1984 Olympic Games were staged in Los Angeles
• The US Olympic basketball team was led by a young guy who was about to leave the University of North Carolina a year early and enter the NBA Draft.   While he certainly wasn't unknown at the time, Michael Jordan used that Olympics stage to truly announce himself to the world.  Certainly, personal brand marketing in the world of sports would never be the same again.
• ESPN, a fledgling money losing all sports cable network was purchased by ABC, thus assuring its survival.
• An obscure US Supreme Court ruling that went against the NCAA was about to bring about a huge change in college sports, changes that are still being felt in 2021.
• The Michael Jackson "Victory Tour" took place and a cause-and-effect line between that Tour and the New England Patriots dynasty that would dominate the first two decades of the 21st century can be drawn.
• A bombastic young New York City real estate developer bought into the United States Football League.  Through hubris, lies, betrayals of his fellow owners, and sheer narcissism, that guy managed to put the  USFL out of business, but it sure ensured his brand recognition.  That owner?  Donald J. Trump. 
• Vince McMahon Jr. consolidated the provincial fiefdoms of professional wrestling, and planted the roots of what would become a billion dollar empire, the WWE.  He did so in large part with some assistance from a crazily coiffed and dressed female pop singer and another fledging cable television network, MTV.
• Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer, and all Olympians in Los Angeles were given a password that they could use to communicate "electronic messages" among each other throughout the Olympic Village.  The numbers show that fewer than twenty percent of them availed themselves of this pioneering technology.
• These were the Olympics that were boycotted by the USSR and a whole bunch of Soviet satellite nations.  I knew that, but I did not know about an attempt by the USSR to undermine the Games by sending racially tinged (to put it mildly) letters to the Olympic Committees of many African nations in an effort to have those nations boycott the Games in America as well.  Yes, it was a Russian hack.  By 2020, the Russians got a bit more sophisticated in their methods of trying to undermine American institutions.

Where Werthem reaches a bit is when he tries to bring other areas of pop culture into his narrative.   The details of the Jackson Victory Tour can be related to sports, but "The Karate Kid?"  Maybe not so much.  That aside, I highly recommend this book to the sports fans among you.  I gobbled it down in two days.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

 

Gone Goes Frazier

 Adam, we barely knew ye...

In what has become a depressingly familiar scenario, the Pirates yesterday traded a popular and quite good player for, say it with me now, prospects!

Like many of the deals that have sent popular players packing in recent years....Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, Gerrit Cole....the trade of Adam Frazier can be defended in a pure baseball sense, to wit:

• He will turn 30 years old this coming off season, an age when, or so the data tells us, players begin to decline
• The Pirates are a rebuilding team, targeting a window of contention that should begin to open in 2023 or so, by which time Frazier's skills really will be in decline, or so the data tells us
• Ding-ding-ding....He will be eligible for free agency after the 2022 season, he will no doubt test those waters at that time, so trade him now and get something for him 

We Pirates fans can recite this kind of shit in our sleep, and like I said, in a pure baseball sense, it is all true and defensible.  However, rooting interest in a team is an emotional thing.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is, and when you are rooting for a lousy team, a guy like Adam Frazier, a solid and good ball player, is someone for whom fans (aka, paying customers) can latch onto and cheer, and now....gone!

This is Adam Frazier in 2021:  125 hits (leads the league), .324 BA (second in NL), .836 OPS, Gold Glove caliber second baseman, a starter on this year's NL All Star team.  

Here is what the Pirates are getting in return:

• Infielder Tucupita Marcano (fifth best prospect in the Padres organization!!!)
• Outfielder Jack Suwinski
• Relief pitcher Michell Miliano

Are any of these guys any good?  Is this a good trade?  As a Pirates fan, I sure hope so, but we really won't know the answer to that for years.  Let's just hope that the plan of GM Ben Cherington works.

Hey, in the end, we're all just rooting for the laundry anyway.

Old Movie Time - "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990)

 

What, you may well ask, would prompt me to watch this thirty-one year old movie?  A movie that was pretty much panned - it was nominated for Razzie Awards in multiple categories - when it came out, that co-starred an actor for whom I don't especially care, and is generally swept under the carpet when the film oeuvre  of the great Tom Hanks is discussed?  Well, it was a podcast that did it.  Specifically Season 2 of TCM's "The Plot Thickens" podcast.  This one is called "The Devil's Candy", and it is based upon a book of the same name by critic Julie Salamon, who had daily access to the set of "Bonfire of the Vanities" when it was being filmed by director Brian DePalma.

The podcast is a fascinating look into how the sausage gets made on a major motion picture, and back in 1989 when this was being filmed, it was quite a controversial story.  "Bonfire of the Vanities" was a major literary event in the 1980's, a best selling novel by Tom Wolfe (Full disclosure: I have never read it), and Warner Bros. was banking on it being their BIG Oscar bait movie for 1990.  The novel skewered Wall Street, White Priviledge (before that was an actual term), and cast an especially bad light on crime and racism in New York City at the time.  The backlash was immediate from the powers that be in NYC, and it ranged from the producers not being able to gain access to locations in the city, protests and picketing when filming took place, and even the cast and crew being pelted with eggs by residents of the Bronx when some scenes were being filmed.

The podcast also confirmed that (a) Bruce Willis was, and probably still is, an jerk, (b) Melanie Griffith was, and probably still is, foul mouthed, and (c) that Tom Hanks REALLY is the nice guy that we all know him to be.  He's about the only person in the whole shebang who comes off as a decent human being.  Oh, and Morgan Freeman, who has a juicy role as a judge, has a great quote in the podcast.  Remember, this was 1989, and Freeman wasn't nearly as ubiquitous then as he is now.  He was appearing in Shakespeare in the Park in New York when this was being filmed, and much of his background was on the stage.  In an interview with Salamon he said that unlike the other principals in the film, he wasn't a "movie star", and he wasn't sure he wanted to be one because "when you get to be a movie star, you don't have to worry about having to act anymore."

The Podcast is really good stuff, and I highly recommend it if you love movies.

So, all of the above is a long way of saying that I became curious to actually watch this movie, which Mrs. Grandstander and I did yesterday.  The opening scene is a five minute single take tracking shot that, from a pure movie-making standpoint, is outstanding.  The rest of the film? Meh.  

Actually, I went into the movie expecting to revel in the sheer awfulness of it all, but that didn't happen.  A contemporary review of the movie by Roger Ebert, which I read afterwards, was semi-complimentary but said that if you read and liked the Wolfe novel, you would no doubt hate the movie, and that appears to be the consensus of other reviews that I found on line.  DePalma apparently took some bones from the book and crafted a very different movie.  Not the first time that's been done, and it surely hasn't been the last time, either.

I thought the movie was somewhat overdone, and the performances were over the top by just about everybody (e.g., F. Murray Abraham as a conniving and politically ambitious District Attorney).  It was a bit jarring to see Hanks as a Heel in this one, but he was, well, Tom Hanks, and this movie was a break away for him from the comedy roles that he had been playing up to that time.  Griffith chewed scenery as Hanks' southern bell malaproping mistress, although she looked amazing in not one but two separate scenes where she wore nothing but a bra-and-panties set.  Both Willis and his character were unlikable.  About the only decent character in the whole movie was Freeman's judge.

Oh, and if you like seeing actors who were no big deal then but who went on to other things later....Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) played Hanks' wife, a then seven year old Kirsten Dunst played their daughter, and Rita Wilson (Mrs. Tom Hanks, although I'm not sure if she was at the time) played a P.R. aide early in the movie. Also, in that opening tracking shot I mentioned, Brian DePalma himself appeared as a security guard.  It was the only way he could actually direct the scene as it was being filmed.  Learned that fact from the podcast.

So, if I were to watch "Bonfire of the Vanities" cold, having no idea of all of it's historical baggage and having not read the book, what would I say?

Not great, somewhat entertaining, and it did hold my interest.  Two Stars from The Grandstander.