Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
In Dreams
Read on for the Question of the Day.
With apologies to Roy Orbison.
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
Go to sleep. everything is all right.
. . . and then that bastard fills me with images you wouldn’t show a seasoned war vet. What have I ever done to the sandman to deserve this?
Admittedly, last night didn’t rise to the usual levels of repulsiveness. The sandman’s mood ranged from annoying to irksome, rather than sadistic. I had one of those running dreams: I’m on the lam from someone, trying my damnedest to make it across country without detection, and I manage to elude capture after capture.
Usually I like these dreams because I always find some clever trick to get away, or I out-maneuver the baddies through sheer physical prowess. Those are good dreams even if I do wake up feeling exhausted. But last night, my usual writer must have been on a Thunderbird binge, and his stand-in was a fugitive scribbler from Will and Grace*.
Imagine: I’m in a hotel room. The baddies are at the door. How do I get away? By sliding the deadbolt on them! Then I grab a sweater so that I can change my clothes while on the run — yes, that would be my disguise: a new sweater.
Scene change. I’ve been caught by a huge, naked, black man who has me pinned to the ground by kneeling on me with his powerful legs. Cheap Freudian symbolism aside, the annoying part was (once again) how I got away. I rolled to one side, pushed a desk between us, and hollered, “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” before exiting stage right. Lame!
It went on and on like that. Those bozos never did catch me, but only because their collective IQs wouldn’t have warmed a room. I woke up feeling cheated.
But that’s not the worst of it. There was, for example, the time about a week or two ago when I spent close to an hour in a doctor’s waiting room, bored silly. It really, truly felt like an hour. My mother was seeing her dermatologist and I was along for the ride.
Eventually, I was the only person left in the waiting room, and I became suspicious. I checked the parking lot, and my parents’ car was gone!
I had my Blackberry and my wallet, but no cash, so I had to walk home. This, too, seemed to take the better part of an hour. Then my parents passed me in their car and waved at me. When I finally caught up with them, my hands shook so much with anger that I couldn’t tie my shoes.
One loooong dream and all I can manage to do is sit on my butt reading magazines in a dermatologist’s waiting room. I couldn’t manage to dream about, say, a nasty tryst with a beautiful and dangerous Russian gal. Oh, no.
When the sandman gives me amorous dreams, he becomes unspeakably cruel. Last week, I found myself in a threesome with one of the seediest couples in Del Norte County. On the upside, their hygeine wasn’t nearly as bad as it is in real life. On the downside, when I washed my mouth out afterwards (in the dream!) a bunch of cole slaw came out.
I told my employee, Catrina, all about it. She agreed with me: My subconscious hates me.
***
*Question of the Day
Was Will and Grace the worst sitcom of all time? Lots of people seem to think so, which is why I picked it for that line above. I was tempted to use Seinfeld (in my opinion, one of the most overrated sitcoms of all time, after MASH — or AfterMASH, for that matter), but I suspect I would have been misunderstood. Or perhaps all you rabid Seinfeld lovers would have dragged me through the eStreets of Blogland.
This is a tough one. I keep remembering the great sitcoms; apparently, the dogs have slipped through my memory cracks. But I think I’ll have to go with Three’s Company, because that idiotic show only had one plot, and each character was the object of only a single running joke.
Question: what do you think is the worst sitcom of all time, and why?
Or, feel free to tell me how your subconscious hates you, too.
D.
Worst sitcom? Not sure, but it probably was one that I hoped would be canceled after one egregious episode, but managed to get enough viewers to keep it going year after atrocious year.
Overrated: I’m with you on Seinfeld. There’s only so much whining that I find funny, and half an hour is well over the limit.
Best sitcom: Hmmm, we’ve got Corner Gas and Made in Canada (apparently shown on PBS as The Industry south of the border) fightin’ it out for top spot in my heart.
I just watched a few YouTube clips from those shows. I would vote for Corner Gas. That pump jockey is such a smartass!
I can’t narrow it down to the worst, but the horrific minstrel show that was Will and Grace is pretty high on the list. Can I vote for a whole genre of sitcom? Cos anything where a fat, immature slob has a smart,hot wife gets my vote.
I never watched Will and Grace, but I can recall tuning into Friends for the first episode and then trying it one more time and thinking much much later…how can these people be so lucky to be paid soooo much for such crap? I know I’m in the minority here, but I’ve always felt Friends was way overrated.
Worst one of all time…I’d have to give my age away on that one, and I don’t think I could choose just Three’s Company…I’d have to go with The Beverly Hillbillys (I can’t even recall how that was spelled); that one was stupid beyond belief.
This will mean nothing to most of you, but
“Pizza!” gets my vote for worst.
And “Fawlty Towers” for best. Of course. No Contest.
i LOVE Will and Grace! but i’m a girl. apparently all girls like that show (this is according to one of my male friends).
worst sitcom ever? does the simpsons count? i hate Friends too. or Everybody Loves Raymond–um, no, they dont, cuz i HATE him. hmph. apparently i’m nobody.
Ooh, yeah, Fawlty Towers rocks! We just watched “The Germans” last night – sheer brilliance!
And my subconscious doesn’t hate me, but it is bloody weird. I had a dream the other night where I was trying to take a bath, and some woman wanted to use my bathroom to train Hooters waitresses to walk in spike heels on a wet floor.
“Three’s Company” is a great choice for worst sitcom, although Suzanne Somers would later go on to do another truly awful show called “She’s the Sheriff”.
Oooh, oooh, oooh! I forgot one, I forgot one!
“Welcome Back, Kotter.”
And another: “The Dukes of Hazard.” Ah hyuk hyuk!
Aw now I loved Welcome Back Kotter! Being eight and getting all those choice jokes for free was aces!
There are so man y bad sitcoms, how does one list them? I know! I can go to our ABC channel listings and just read them off the pages. I will say, all time worst sitcom in my book is: Rosanne. Oh yes, the trials and tribulations of almost middle class but one step above trailer trash families. Yeeha! Generally I think most stand-up comics turned sitcom stars shows are crap. Only exception is Home Improvement, I love Tim Allen and could hear him man-grunt forever.
I can’t remember the bad ones – I must block them out.
I love Corner Gas – I own 3 seasons on DVD. Add my vote for that as the best sitcome. I’m also a big fan of the Office (US version).
MASH for preachiness. Ugh.
Beating the waiting room dream with a housework dream:
I dreamed that I defrosted the freezer. I mean every detail was lovingly reproduced, including boiling water in a pot and having the argument with someone about how it’s a bad idea to put that in the freezer. I was even chipping at the damn ice in that dream. Anyway, I woke up and felt cheated that I’d done all that boring work and the freezer was still coated with ice.
I haven’t watched much sitcom tv for years and years now, but for worst, I’d say ‘Gilligan’s Island’ even though it has special meaning for the sxKitten and I.
Most 60’s and 70’s sitcoms were moronic and dull, particularly after their first season.
Somewhere on the web, I seem to recall a Marxist exegesis of Gilligan’s Island. And if there isn’t, someone should write one. I wish they would write a “Return to Gilligan’s Island” in which Gilligan and MaryAnn (representing the plebs) eat the Howells and Ginger (the aristocracy). That would be satisfying.
MASH was the ultimate in preachiness, I agree. Painful. Even if I agree with the underlying message, I hate to be swatted over the head with it.
And you’re right, Kate, that dream beats waiting an hour in the waiting room.
Mo, I’ll have to look for those DVDs, although I doubt I’ll find them in any of our local stores. Philistines.
Lyvvie, what could you have possibly liked about Welcome Back Kotter? Were you a closet Travolta groupie? 😉
“My Mother the Car”
Seriously, the mid 60’s Jerry van Dyke was the lead human. His mother was played by a Ford Model T automobile.
Either that or “60 Minutes”.
Morley Safer can’t tell a joke if life depended on it.