The Second Third, Week 24: Less TV Is Good TV

May 4, 2011 / J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Fraggarackincarklefargis…

Remember when your parents told you TV would rot your brain? I think perhaps the most compelling evidence of the truth of this statement is what passes for TV today. Those who are passionate enough about television to choose to make it their career were likely exposed to it as children, and the fact that their brains were affected negatively is evidenced by what they produce.

For example: until I rented a Looney Tunes DVD, my kids didn’t know TV cartoons were meant to be laugh-out-loud funny. Everything they had seen up to that point either A) taught them Important Life Lessons and Thinking Skills, B) counteracted A with brainless humor and bodily functions, or C) was primarily meant to sell collectible cards and toys. Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, and the Roadrunner were comic revelations (not to mention the music)! They laughed until they fell from the futon, laughed until tears fell from their eyes, laughed until they hurt and begged between great gasping breaths for more.*

Then we sent the DVD back, and they returned to Blue’s Clues, Dragon Tales, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Sponge-Bob.

Earlier in our marriage, Jodi and I watched a handful of shows regularly. Most were sitcoms: Seinfeld and Friends, the short-lived Sports Night, Mad About You, Everybody Loves Raymond. We were hooked on Alias for a few years, and I used to love This Week (with Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will) each Sunday morning, just to get the juices flowing.

I remember the Seinfeld finale: how the joke was on us; how it drove home that we had spent countless hours over the past countless years watching four awful people behaving like selfish children and hurting those around them. The friends on Friends were also whiny and self-centered, and Raymond made a career out of the miseries of married life. Don’t get me wrong: I laughed at these shows — but sometimes afterward I wondered why.

Today my bride and I watch two sitcoms: The Office and Community. We used to watch 30 Rock, but found the humor less and less to our liking. Community is now in the same tailspin for me. It’s still funny at times, but some of the jokes are beginning to clog my filters. Like 30 Rock this year, next year I suspect I won’t miss missing it. The Office edges into that territory from time to time, then redeems itself…we may stick with that one.

So this spring we found another show. They hooked our whole family with a free burrito at Chipotle. (Good bait.) We watched America’s Next Great Restaurant on NBC, a reality show in which people with ideas for a restaurant competed for the chance to partner with four chef/restauranteur/investors to open a new chain of restaurants in NYC, LA, and (yes!) Minneapolis. Aside from about 43-too-many jokes about the Joey’s original name for his meatball shop (Saucy Balls, which ultimately became Brooklyn Meatball Company after the 43-too-many jokes), the show was clean, the food was good, the winner had a great story: his father rescued him from a bad spot with his mother when he was little, and the soul food recipes that helped him win were his Dad’s. The winner was the favorite of all of us except Trevor (he was Trevor’s second pick); a great cheer went up in the Thorp house when he won; and Emma has asked that her belated birthday dinner be at the new Soul Daddy in Mall of America.

And now it’s over. We enjoy a few other shows that we watch online or on demand — History Channel’s American Pickers and Top Shot and Travel Channel’s Man v. Food, in particular. They are fun, interesting, educational…but they insist (in the case of Pickers and MvF) to edge toward adult humor at least once an episode, or (in the case of Top Shot), machismo and obscenities (bleeped and unbleeped). I used to watch Nature on PBS as a kid, which was narrated with a sense of wonder and mystery; the recent LIFE series on Discovery Channel (with Oprah narrating) seemed to relish describing the mating habits of the creatures they filmed as though both the subjects and audience were lusty teenagers.

I want a TV show in which I never have to say, “Okay, gang — what that guy just said? Never say that.” Or, “Yeah, you don’t need to worry about what she meant just yet.” Or, “Sorry, Trevvy, if he was your favorite character; nice people don’t act like that.”

Yeah, I know. I’m getting older, and older-fashioned. The good news is, in my Second Third, we watch way less TV than we used to. And I don’t miss it.

Now get off my lawn.

Three Disconnected Thoughts

April 15, 2011 / J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Every so often on my commute I surf the FM airwaves to hear what “the kids” are listening to. Not my kids, mind you — I brought them up right on The White Stripes and Ella Fitzgerald and Johnny Cash and stuff — but their classmates and friends. I discovered two things: 1) nothing worthwhile is going on above 100 on the dial (unless you get nostalgic for high school; then there’s Jack FM*) and 2) the five most requested songs in the Twin Cities (as compiled by KDWB) are brainless, heartless, soulless, and painfully repetitive. It’s like a free day in junior-high Phys Ed class, as scored by R2D2. Beeps and bleeps. Twits and tweets. A steady bass thud and random screeching. Whining and bravado. Cat-calls and wolf-whistles. Turns out I’d rather listen to death metal. Anyone can wear excess makeup and questionable clothing, jump around on stage, and not sing. But at least the metalheads play instruments and break stuff.

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Ever walk down the street and spot someone coming toward you whom you can’t quite place…and as she gets closer, her face breaks into the sweetest smile, and her eyes gleam, and you’re a bit embarrassed because you must have met her, but you just can’t remember…so you smile a little, sheepishly, and now she’s grinning, and gives a little wave, and you start to raise your hand in greeting, almost close enough to speak…and then you realize there’s someone walking about 15 feet directly behind you, and you don’t know this girl at all?

No? Okay, yeah, me neither…

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I did a little Easter shopping this evening at St. George Catholic Books and Gifts in Blaine. Wonderful selection of all things Catholic — like many such stores, it used to be in a tiny little space, but it has since expanded significantly. Nevertheless, every time I go in there, they have boxes of new stock on the floor and seem to be reorganizing; every shelf is chock-a-block with books, icons, statues, and keepsakes; the walls are lined with paintings and crucifixes…clearly they have everything, if they could just remember where they put it! I love the store, and always spend more than I intend. It occurred to me today that St. George’s is very like the local hardware: everything is organized just well enough that I feel comfortable browsing myself, and everything is in just enough disarray that by the time I find what I’m looking for, I’ve picked up at least two other items, as well. Savvy storekeepers?

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* Ever re-listen to the songs we were singing along to back then? Eesh. I had no idea.

The Second Third, Week 22: Stay-At-Home Dad, Part 2

April 13, 2011 / J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Last week’s Second Third post (posted just yesterday) touted the family-related advantages a new job that will enable me to telecommute. As the count currently stands, this new opportunity will give me a flexible schedule in which to complete some of my own writing, and will substantially cut down on time stuck in traffic and away from home so I can do more of the fun fatherly things I ought to do with my brood.

In this post (Part 2 of yesterday’s), I turn from my brood to my bride.

I’m not the perfect husband and father. (I know: shocker!) I generally think I’m right, I’m overly emotional, I change plans only with reluctance, and I like to be in charge. I can be diplomatic (with effort), but can also have a short fuse. And as I’ve said before, I’m also a bit of a navel-gazer — I know these things about myself because I spend a lot of time snooping around the corners of my mind. But I’ve been a bit near-sighted for a long time now, so I see things through my own lenses, and assume that others see and react to situations the same way I do. And I’ve never been quick, so when I make a cosmic leap — such as If I were in that situation, I’d be irritated, therefore, she said that because she’s irritated! — I usually realize 30 seconds too late that I’ve reacted wrongly, or at least prematurely.

Unfortunately, my current job demands extraordinary levels of restraint, consultation, and patience. Everyone has an opinion, and at a university, multiple opinions are given more or less equal weight and consideration. This can be a great strength, but it also exhausts the mind and saps the soul. I’ve trained myself to jump through hoops during my work day, with mane neatly combed and a domesticated grin. As a result, I come home with much roaring and gnashing of teeth. The best of me is spent on my colleagues and the issues of the day, and my bride gets the leftovers. Not pretty.

It’s not right that my very best friend takes the brunt of all my worst characteristics. It is a strangely beautiful thing that I feel comfortable enough, confident enough, loved enough to let down my guard and turn off my filters around her. But I should love her better than that.

So here’s the theory: if my work is at home, and my circle of colleagues is reduced, I will spend less on others and have more…tact? discretion? charity! to spend on Jodi. In my Second Third, God willing, I’ll treat at least as well as my co-workers…and hopefully even better.

The Second Third, Week 21: Stay-At-Home Dad, Part 1

April 13, 2011 / J. Thorp / 1 Comment

First off, let me say that initially I committed to a Second Third post every Wednesday for a year. The “every Wednesday” part came unhitched when I remembered that I had also committed to teaching confirmation classes almost every Wednesday. For awhile, I started adding (Belated) to the titles when I posted after Wednesday. Now I’ll just be satisfied to hit 52 Second Third posts sometime around the second week of November.

Long story short: this is last week’s post.

Our dear friends Todd and Suzette and their kids were here last week. The weather was lovely, so we went to the park and even improvised soccer and kickball games in our too-small front yard. I tracked a high fly ball with such laser-like intensity and speed that I collided with the neighbor’s basketball pole, which rang like a bell, but left no mark. Classic Jim. I ran, jumped around, got myself winded and sweaty and sore. The kids are still talking about it. Everyone had a blast, and it was easy. It just requires me to be home a little more during the daylight hours.

So I mentioned in an earlier, different Second Third post that I was making a transition to a new position that would allow me a great deal more flexibility to write (and finish!) a book of my own. My new position also enables me to work from home more regularly, which means less time on the road. We’ll spend less on fuel and parking, and I’ll be home for Trevor’s baseball games, Emma’s soccer games, fishing, canoeing, gardening, swimming. I lose 10 to 15 hours a week in traffic; meanwhile, Gabe bought a knife with his birthday money, and it occurred to me that neither he nor Brendan have ever really whittled or scaled a bluegill. And Jodi and I have so little time alone together that a 20-minute lunch conversation over PB&J is a tremendous blessing. I need to be home more, and not just to finish a book!

In my Second Third, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work from home more often, and I don’t intend to squander this gift. Indeed, at this point I’m counting down the weeks.

A Wee Bit Irish?

March 17, 2011March 17, 2021 / J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: The soundtrack to this post is above. You can about imagine a bare-knuckles brawl a la The Quiet Man, can’t you?

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which in the U.S. means wearing o’ the green and drinkin’ o’ the beer. (Unfortunately, too many folks are drinking green beer tonight, instead of the real deal: thick, black, and pleasantly bitter.)

I’ll confess that I’m wearing green today. Am I Irish? Depends on how you count. I’m half Polish (my mother’s side: Galubenskis and Koczwaras), and the rest is a mix. According to my late grandfather, Duane Thorp, we Thorps are English, French, Dutch, maybe a little bit American Indian, and Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish, which, according to at least one account I’ve read, means I’m descended from some really ornery Scotsmen whom the English settled in Ireland to drive out the Irish Catholics in the 1800s. Even in the 1950s, when my father was a boy in the Thumb of Michigan, he recalls an older relative — a bare-knuckles brawler of some repute — having a few drinks and going looking for Catholics to fight.*

So am I even a wee bit Irish? Well, tonight I won’t be drinking green beer, or black stout, or golden Irish whiskey, because it’s Lent, and I’ve given them up until Easter. Instead I’ll be celebrating with the beautiful Lorica of St.Patrick. These Thorps are Catholic now — and more Irish than ever!

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