Paging Clark Griswold

What kind of person takes a family vacation these days? If you believe travel magazines and the occasional commercial, lots of happy families take to the road or the air every day, exploring one part of the US of A or another. Personally, I haven’t taken a vacation in years for a number of reasons. Only a few of those reasons are handled through high doses of psychologically-prescribed drugs. And by “vacation”, I’m talking about the true, get away from it all, vacation. Not the kind where you schlep off to Florida to visit relatives. That’s cheating because you’re not dealing with hotels and other things that go along with the typical vacation. I have a minivan. I have a family. A have a supply of anti-anxiety medication. Family vacations should be a cinch. The closest I came to a vacation was last summer, where something told me it would be fun to drive the family to Virginia, park the car on the Amtrak Auto Train to Orlando, spend a couple of days at the Nick Hotel (okay, that part was cool) and then drive down to see the in laws. And you wonder why I don’t go on vacation.

Well the scheduling gods were truly against me again this year as we had to try to fill the 2-week gap between the end of camp and the beginning of school. While a trip to a beach or some kind of simple thing like that would have been easier, finances kept us local. But what to do with an 8-year old with no attention span and a 4-year old who won’t remember anything we do anyway? I was presented with a number of nails-on-a-blackboard ideas and ended up with where I am now, in a tiny motel in Cooperstown, NY.

To be continued....

Greatest Hits of a Generation, and a Sale on Chick Peas

As the boomer generation of music lovers ages, it becomes harder and harder to find classic rock. The New York area is down to one dedicated classic rock station and they've been playing music from the grunge era lately. But just yesterday, I heard the opening strains of "And You And I" by Yes coming from the speakers of a most unlikely of places.

Shop Rite.

This wasn't some remixed version of "And You And I". It wasn't some classic song from the 70s redone into shopping-friendly Muzak. No, this was the original hit by the original artist. This was followed by Lou Reed singing "Sweet Jane". And before I had the chance to put down the 8-pack of Juicy Juice Apple Juice I was holding, on came "Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith. My iPod couldn't play a better list. I found myself singing along while I wheeled my cart past the tampons.

And then I remembered where I was: smack in the middle of suburbia, daughter in tow, pushing $200 worth of groceries along with hordes of people just like me. Has Shop Rite become the place to go to catch some great tunes? Do I have to go to Foodtown next time I need a Pink Floyd fix? It's possible that I have to accept the fact that I am of an older generation. With the younger generation filling the airwaves with their crap (and it is crap), people like me have been forced to find shelter in the frozen foods section of our local supermarkets. Local arenas and stadiums have, for me, been replaced by Pathmark. Maybe that's okay. It's okay until I start singing Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" and adding the lyric, "clean up in aisle 4."

Extreme Weather: God's Greatest Weapon

Early this morning, I got this e-mail from a friend of mine:

Just a few trains are affected, here’s what to avoid since these lines are all reporting 30+ delays: 4, 5, 6, N, R, 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, F, L, J, D, M, B, Q, Metro North, and LIRR. Not a huge problem, just a little flooding. You know, throughout the entire subway system. Buses aren’t really working either. Consider yourself warned. Give it up and just walk.

New York City has been through a lot in it's history and has always managed to come through. But throw a little rain into the mix and it's ever man for himself. My train line was shut down and there were several flooding-related traffic jams on all highways leading in to Manhattan. That's to be expected. But this morning was ridiculous. 9/11 was a tragedy. If it were raining that day, it would have been a disaster of biblical proportions.

People don't seem to know what to do with themselves in bad weather. I understand chaos when some town in Texas gets a few inches of snow. They're not used to it. The majority of today's rain came early in the day and by the time I got on a bus in New Jersey, the sun was poking through the clouds. Yet somehow, there was enough rain to shut down a majority of the subway system and fill the humid streets of Manhattan with commuters trying to get on buses. It looked like those scenes you see of crowds of people in Calcutta trying to get onto a train. Madness I tell you! Madness!!!!!

There was an episode of "The Bionic Woman"with John Houseman playing disgruntled OSI engineer Dr. Franklin. He creates the killer Fembots (hubba hubba!) as well as a weather machine which enables him to create catastrophic storms. If some terrorist group ever got a hold of one of those, we'd be in big trouble. Forget bombs or anthrax or something. Make it rain a lot. That'll bring us to our knees!

Buzz Off

Much has been written lately about the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees. Well nature lovers, you can all relax. They've been located behind the shutters on my house. I found them when I was removing the old shutters.

And now they're dead.

That's How The Story Ends

There have been many articles about the death of commercials due to Tivo. People who have Tivo or Replay or any kind of digital recording device have the capability to watch shows whenever they want and skip the ads. But I think these devices have meant the death of appointment television.

Not so long ago, there were TV shows that could not be missed. NBC was right when they called it "Must See TV." We couldn't miss that new episode of "ER" or that very special "Blossom". And that was just for regular episodes. What about final episodes? These are events that signal an ed of an era. You remember where you were when you watched. And you still remember what happened.

Viewer loyalty isn't what it used to be due to the large number of shows available to us. So we tend to watch a little bit of a show and try to catch up from time to time. Or we rent DVDs of the series. But when it comes to the end of the series, we'll almost always watch. Final episodes are unlike season finales in that they're so final. There is no more. Is historical, in some ways. And whether or not you were into the show, you've probably heard about it. People will be talking about the end of the story or the characters and it's human nature to want to be a part of any kind of major event. So we watch. We even go out of our way to catch it, which is something we just don't do anymore.

My wife tunes in to all final episodes. She watched the final episode of "Everwood" and "7th Heaven", even though she had never seen the show.

Somewhere between mowing the lawn and scraping wallpaper off the walls in the basement, I watched the series finale of "The Sopranos". I won't get into the overall quality of the episode or of the outcry from "fans" of the show. There were a lot of them. Because there's something about final episodes that brings everyone out of the woodwork. Much was written about the decline in viewership of the show but the final episode netted almost 12 million viewers, about 5 million more than normal. An extra 5 million people tuned in just to see what would happen to these pop culture icons. And many of them were first-time viewers. They just wanted to be a part of something.

The good thing about final episodes is that they tend to be amongst the best of all of the previous ones. Some of the better ones include the final episode of M*A*S*H, which remains amongst the most watched shows in the history of television. The final episode of "Newhart" was incredible, using a stunt that surprised and amused everyone. The final episode of "St. Elsewhere" tried copying the "it was all a dream" idea that "Dallas" did once. It didn't work this time. And the end of "Six Feet Under" was fantastic, summing up the show for the present as well as the future.

What was your favorite final episode? Sam turning off the lights in "Cheers"? Chandler and Monica moving away in "Friends"? I'd love to hear what you think.