|
Happy New Year, everyone. Both of you. Ok, maybe there are a few more readers out there now. I think this journal has come a long way since its beginning 1 year ago. That's right, LS Place started on January 1st, 2001. There were a few abortive attempts before that but the first entry was one year ago today. I don't know if it has gotten any better, but I like doing it and that's all that really matters. One of my goals this year is to actually learn how to write. I mean actually relearn some rules of grammar. I know how to spell somewhat. I know how to use words correctly. But you must have noticed that I am a comma fiend. I will stick a comma anywhere. Just last week, I caught myself putting a comma inside a word. That's right, right between the letters - I didn't even wait for the word to finish before sticking my little curvy friend into the mix. Ok, that might be called a typo, but you know what I mean. I am the king of the run-on sentence. So I think that some people are put off by the illiteracy of the whole thing.
Claudine and I had a quiet New Year's Eve. She is reaching the "I'm always tired" stage of her pregnancy. She took a nap earlier in the evening, so she could be awake up for the dropping of the ball, the drinking of the champagne, and the kissing of the husband. And yes, she is a pregnant OB/GYN and she did have a glass of champagne. You got a problem with that? We watched our first DVD. Planet Of The Apes. I got it for her for Christmas. She told me she had to have it. One of things that first attracted me to Claudine was that she was a Planet of the Apes freak. I talking about the original movies now. She loved those movies when she was a kid. People in the NY/NJ area might remember a thing called the 4:30 Movie on channel 7 WABC. This was in the days before Donahue and Oprah and early local news shows. Everyday, Monday through Friday, there was a movie from 4:30 to 6:00. Actually, this reminds me of an interesting historical sidenote.
In New York, the three local affiliate stations that carry the networks (remember, there were only three networks at that time. No FOX, UPN or WB) are actually owned and operated by the networks themselves. They were (and still are) WNBC, WCBS and WABC. There was an hour of news on these stations every night. A half hour of local news at 6:00 and a half hour of national news at 6:30. Then in 1978, there was an 88 day newspaper strike in New York. After a couple of weeks, the three local stations started running "extended" newscasts They came on the air a half hour earlier and they would actually read parts of newspapers from around the area. They would read (and show) the comics and read Dear Abby and Ann Landers (as if they are really two different people. I saw through that twins scam along time ago). After about a month of that (and good ratings, I'm sure), they started an additional half hour earlier. That was an hour and a half of local news. People loved it. Even when the papers went back to print, the local news programs stayed in their extended coverage. This effectively ended the WABC 4:30 Movie.
Anyway, the 4:30 Movie used to air the entire Planet of the Apes series in one week. Five movies, five days. I would get home from practice after school and rush to sit in front of the TV, to watch Taylor and Nova, Cornelius and Zira. And it turns out that Claudine was doing the same thing. Although she was 6 years younger at the time. And oddly enough, even now she is still 6 years younger than I am. But back to the story: in one of my first conversations with this gorgeous creature, I made some reference to Planet of the Apes. She knew the reference and was able to come back with one of her own. I was in love. ahhhhhh.
Wow, that was a lot of story for not much payoff. Well, anyway, we watched Planet of the Apes (2001) on New Year's Eve. We stopped the movie around 11:45 and watched friggin' Dick Clark yammer on and on and on about nothing as the ball fell. We made out. We watched the end of the movie. She went to sleep. I played with TiVo. I went to sleep.
I spent so much time talking about Apes and newspapers that I didn't describe the real fun that New Year's Day brought. Click here to read on -->
|
