Rainbow's End

I've just heard that the kids' show Reading Rainbow has been canceled. I couldn't believe my ears. How did we lose an iconic program that inspired the joy of reading in two generations of children?

According to the story at NPR.org, nobody would fund it. What? NOBODY would fund Reading Rainbow? No parent group, no charitable foundation, no publishing houses? I find that impossible to believe.

Apparently, as part of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind program, the emphasis is now to be on the mechanics of reading; teaching phonics is the primary goal. That's important, sure. But what good are tools without a vision of what you can do with them?

Not every kid has somebody reading to them at home. Not every kid gets to browse at the library. Without shows like Reading Rainbow, those kids are definitely going to be left behind.

Goodbye, Golden Girl

Dorothy: [Sophia is busily cooking] Ma, what are you doing? You're supposed to be resting. Remember what the doctor said?
Sophia: Dorothy, I'm feeling anxious. And when I feel anxious, there's only one thing that calms me down.
Dorothy: I know, Ma. Cooking a big meal.
Sophia: No, making hot naked love in a closet. But hey, you do what you can.

Estelle Getty passed away this week. I knew her only as Sophia, the irascible, sarcastic and hysterically funny octogenarian of Golden Girls. Sophia's best lines were zingers, but there was more to her than that.

In her best episodes, she gave voice to the forbidden thoughts and fears about growing old and dying--and about alternately adoring one's grown children and wanting to kick their shins. Through it all, scrappy, sharp little Sophia was full of life, a force of nature, raging against the dying of the light. We haven't seen the likes of her since the show went off the air.

So. Ms. Getty, Godspeed. And thanks for being Sophia.

Lights, cameras, magic

Tonight's the night! NBC's new reality show, Phenomenon, premiers at 8 PM, and I'm counting down the hours. Magicians of all stripes will take their best shots to become the Pharaoh of Phenomena, Prince of Prestidigitation, Sultan of the Old Switcheroo ... man, I love magic.

Yes, I know it's all illusion. And no, I most emphatically do NOT want to know how it's done.

The hosts are Uri Geller and Criss Angel. Geller wouldn't have been my first choice; his big signature trick is ::yawn:: spoon bending. But I do have a story about him:

Back in the 70's, when he first hit the TV scene, Geller would ask the TV audience to gather up broken watches and bring them to the TV set. He would then make heavy-concentration faces and do some fist clenching, then take calls about all the watches that were miraculously repaired.

Silly as that sounds, I gotta tell ya that during one such episode he "fixed" an old pocketwatch of my great grandfather's that hadn't ticked a tock in decades. Probably a coincidence, though. Right?

*Update, 10:10 PM. The show was a major disappointment. The promos promised illusion and amazement, but all we got was cheap mentalist crap and a couple of amateur bar tricks. The only thing that disappeared was a half hour of my life. So watch this, NBC: Poof. I'm gone.

Sunday snippets

Well, a whole week has come and gone, and not one entry got posted. Herewith, the things I could have written about, had I not been distracted by something shiny:

Masonry. I'm still searching for the meaning of the pin mentioned in the last entry, Talisman. I can't find another like it anywhere on websites selling Masonic jewelry. There are 33 seed pearls, probably for the 33 degrees in Masonry. The inverted horns may refer to Seshat, Egyptian goddess of wisdom, writing, architecture and mathematics. She was the divine measurer and scribe, assisting the Pharaoh in temple building, so it may be some kind of pin for the scribe's office. Or, it could be a Shriner symbol. There actually is a pin made to be worn by female relatives of Masons when they travel, but that is the blue slipper pin. So the mystery continues.

Paris Hilton. She is going to Rwanda to call attention to the suffering there? Give me a freaking break. Hey Paris, here's a clue: The rest of us already heard about it. How about taking the money you'd spend on your entourage for this trip and just giving it to aid workers on the ground, who can actually use it to help people? Better yet, send them what you spend on handbags in a month. That should pretty much fix the whole place.

'The Office' season premier. I used to love the show. But putting a live cat in a freezer to die in pain and terror is not funny in any way, shape or form. I don't know why cruelty to cats is so often considered humorous. Would the writers have put a dog in the freezer? A child, perhaps? I don't think so. And I won't be tuning in again any time soon.

Ewwwwwww. There is a murderous amoeba living in lakes and streams that gets up your nose and attacks your brain, "where it feeds until you die." Six deaths so far this year.

Glasses. I need new ones. Because it turns out that the plants I've been secretly watering at work are fake.

And that's all, folks.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy

It's Donald Duck Day!



Happy 73rd Birthday to Disney's bad boy. Gotta love that duck.

It's hard for me to pick my favorite Donald Duck cartoon, but I think I'd have to go with 'The Band Concert' or 'The Three Caballeros'.

The older Disney character cartoons were among the best animated shorts ever. Hardly anyone today has seen the remarkable Der Feuhrer's Face, a propaganda film from World War II that won an Academy Award in 1943. The link goes to a YouTube video that's worth checking out, if you're interested in classic film.

How about you? Do you have a favorite?

Lost without 'Lost'

I think I'm in withdrawal. What else can you call it, when on Wednesday nights you find yourself sitting all alone in the dark, staring at a blank TV screen, with a little tear trickling down your face.

OK, maybe it's not quite that bad. But ABC's 'Lost' is my favorite guilty pleasure -- and I have a lot of guilty pleasures. (Can a true pleasure not be guilty? A topic for another time.)

The show virtually wallows in my all-time favorite mysteries: The nature of reality, the nature of time, the nature of consciousness, coincidence and synchronicity, and the odd way a chance encounter or a single small event can change the course of one's life -- or the world.

It's got free will vs. destiny, the meaning of life, the butterfly effect, subtle allusions to myth and literature, archetypal characters ... a veritable smorgasbord of Deeply Geeky Goodies.

And we haven't even mentioned The Island itself yet, an apparently conscious, autopoietic system with the power to move people between many worlds. (That's my personal theory. There are others.)

Now you tell me. Where the hell am I going to get a fix of all that between now and the next season?

Speaking of treasure ...

I'm really looking forward to Treasure Hunt, the new NBC show starting Sunday evening.

Done by the producers of DaVinci Code, and sharing the look of the movie, it's actually being touted as a "smart" show. There's a breath of fresh air.

There's an online game associated with it too, which looks inviting. You have to download a Flash player if you don't have it, but that's like five seconds. It won't let you proceed past the initial screen until Sunday.

I'm hooked already.

American idols

Let's hear it for the losers: the Idol wannabees. The fat, the ugly, the weird, the tone deaf and shrill who look in the mirror and dare to say, despite all evidence to the contrary, "YES. I AM the next American Idol."

It's the triumph of of hope over every socially inflicted wound they've ever experienced, and I'm willing to bet they've suffered quite a few. I wish I had their courage.