I Certainly Didn't...

 

I blame it on the Dodgers.   After all, there has to be a darn good reason why I would binge three seasons of a comedy series in a single week.  This, by the way, is something I hate to do. 

But the Dodgers didn't make it to the World Series.   And, for the first time in two years, I found myself with an empty calendar for the last two weeks of October.   I looked around for something that had some good credentials.  I stumbled onto the sitcom "Nobody Wants This."   It had garnered some decent press and some Emmy nominations.  I'd give it a day or two.

Seven days later, I had finished all 30 episodes.   Shame on me.

So, obviously, I liked it and that's probably due to the leads who are quite engaging.  I know she's been around for a while, but this is my first exposure to Kristen Bell and she's quite a good actress.

The plot is pretty simple.  Remember the 70s show "Bridget Loves Bernie?"  Well, that's what this is.  Average white girl (with a podcast, of course) meets and falls in love with a young up-and-coming rabbi.  There's all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't get together but they do.  Family throws all kinds of drama at them, but it's charming enough.  You also wind up with a pretty copious education of the Jewish faith.   I probably could be bar mitzvahed with what I learned.

Indeed, when I was done with Season 3, the show got a little unwanted bad press.  Adam Brody plays the rabbi and publicly shot himself in the foot when he made a "Pro-Palestine" comment.  Pretty stupid when you realize a lot of his co-stars are devout Jews.

Regardless, give it a try.   Although I do wish the Dodgers hadn't given me a chance to tune in.

Dinner last night:  Sandwich.

This Date in History - November 11

 

It's Veterans Day, everybody.  Remember when that was a national holiday?  No more.

1100:  HENRY I OF ENGLAND MARRIES MATILDA OF SCOTLAND.

Not sure why, but the name Matilda never brings to mind a ravishing beauty.

1215:  THE FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL MEETS, DEFINING THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION, THE PROCESS BY WHICH BREAD AND WINE ARE SAID TO TRANSFORM INTO THE BODY AND BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST.

The wine is blood thing always scared me when I was a kid.

1620:  THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT IS SIGNED NEAR CAPE COD.

But wait...I reserved a subcompact.

1675:  GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ DEMONSTRATES INTEGRAL CALCULUS FOR THE FIRST TIME.

God, I hated that course in high school.

1750:  THE FHC SOCIETY, KNOWN AS THE FLAT HAT CLUB, IS FOUNDED IN VIRGINIA AND IS THE FIRST COLLEGE FRATERNITY.

For sophomores with flat heads.

1831:  IN VIRGINIA, NAT TURNER IS HANGED AFTER INCITING A VIOLENT SLAVE UPRISING.

Or is it hung?

1864:  AMERICAN CIVIL WAR - UNION GENERAL WILLIAM SHERMAN BEGINS TO BURN ATLANTA TO THE GROUND IN PREPARATION FOR HIS MARCH SOUTH.

Little did he know but it would make for a great scene in Gone With the Wind.

1885:  GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON IS BORN.

Slap!

1889:  THE STATE OF WASHINGTON IS ADMITTED AS THE 42ND STATE OF THE US.

Seven more until Hawaii.

1899:  ACTOR PAT O'BRIEN IS BORN.

Always the good guy in those Jimmy Cagney films.

1911:  MANY CITIES IN THE MIDWEST US BREAK THEIR RECORD HIGHS AND LOWS ON THE SAME DAYS AS A STRONG COLD FRONT ROLLS THROUGH.

Thus ending the 1911 argument for global warming.

1918:  ACTOR STUBBY KAYE IS BORN.

Sit down, sit down, sit down, you're rockin' the boat.

1921:  THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWNS IS DEDICATED BY US PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING IN ARLINGTON CEMETERY.

See above.

1925:  ACTOR JONATHAN WINTERS IS BORN.

Pure genius.

1926:  THE US HIGHWAY SYSTEM OF NUMBERS, INCLUDING ROUTE 66, IS ESTABLISHED.

Get your kicks.

1940:  WORLD WAR II - THE ROYAL NAVY LAUNCHES THE FIRST AIRCRAFT CARRIER STRIKE IN HISTORY ON THE ITALIAN FLEET AT TARANTO.

Take-a that, paisan.

1940:  AN UNEXPECTED BLIZZARD KILLS 144 IN THE US MIDWEST.

Thus ending the 1940 argument for global warming.

1942:  WORLD WAR II - NAZI GERMANY COMPLETES ITS OCCUPATION OF FRANCE.

So that was accomplished in what?  Two hours?

1960:  A MILITARY COUP AGAINST PRESIDENT NGO DINH DIEM OF SOUTH VIETNAM IS CRUSHED.

Pronounce that name please.

1964:  ACTRESS CALISTA FLOCKHART IS BORN.

Ally McBeal, meet Indiana Jones.

1966:  NASA LAUNCHES GEMINI 12.  

I didn't realize there were that many Gemini missions.

1969:  FASHION DESIGNER CARSON KRESSLEY IS BORN.

Sat next to him on a flight to NY.   Major body odor.

1974:  ACTOR LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS BORN.

God, he got old in a hurry.

1979:  COMPOSER DIMITRI TIOMKIN DIES.

What a great movie soundtrack album he has.

1981:  ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA JOIN THE UNITED NATIONS.

Okay, they'll let anybody in these days.

1984:  PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING SR. DIES.

Outliving his son by 16 years!

1992:  THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND VOTES TO ALLOW WOMEN TO BECOME PRIESTS.

Why not?

1993:  A SCULPTURE HONORING WOMEN WHO SERVED IN THE VIETNAM WAR IS DEDICATED IN WASHINGTON, DC.

Again...why not?

2004:  NEW ZEALAND TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR IS DEDICATED.

So I guess they had them even over there.

2004:  THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION CONFIRMS THE DEATH OF YASSER ARAFAT FROM UNIDENTIFIED CAUSES.

Well, that's a strange thing to put on the death certificate.

2008:  BASEBALL PITCHER HERB SCORE DIES.

The perfect name for a baseball player.

2013:  ACTRESS SHIRLEY MITCHELL DIES.

Marian Strong from I Love Lucy!

2014:  ACTRESS CAROL ANN SUSI DIES.

Howard's mother on the Big Bang Theory.

2016:  ACTOR ROBERT VAUGHN DIES.

D.E.A.D.

Dinner last night:   Salad.

Unequaled

 

Here we go again.   Another Netflix documentary.   At this pace, they'll be doing one on my life by February.

Don't get me wrong.   I welcome this perspective because I was a huge fan of the SCTV franchise.   For my money, their comedic sketches were on a par with those from the old Carol Burnett shows.  And it soars over SNL which has never recovered from the loss of their first cast in 1980.

The talent behind SCTV was second to none and, despite the fact that it was only on the air for a couple of years, its comedic moments have never been equalled.

The cast is phenomenal.   Andrea Martin.  Eugene Levy.  Rick Moranis.  Martin Short.   They all went on to wonderful careers.  But none of them have come close to the work they did up there in Canada.

When the subject of a documentary is so revered, you can't help to expect the tribute film to be excellent.   And this one is.   Lots of good talking head interviews.  And clips, clips, and more clips.   At one point, I had torn emotions.  I was laughing so hard at the special "Perry Como Barely Alive."   But it also brought tears to my eyes.

God, we miss this kind of variety show on TV.

LEN'S RATING:  Four stars.

Dinner last night:  Leftover Chinese noodles.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - November 9, 2026

 Multi-cam Sitcom Month continues with this glimpse at one of the best "Frasier" episodes.

Dinner last night:  Ribeye steak.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Give Me A Hand

 

Indeed, there is some connection between Mickey Mouse and today's memories.  You see the way he is dressed?  For my junior and senior years in high school, I'd dress in a similar fashion going to bed every night.

No, not the shoes.   Focus on the white gloves.   I wore a pair of them whenever I went to sleep.  For a while, I used my grandmother's old ones.  Who else would have had a drawer full of white gloves but her?   And maybe Queen Elizabeth.

Of course, I quickly figured out that those white gloves didn't fit me so I had to go to Genung's Department Store in Mount Vernon, New York.   Um, these don't come in sizes for men.  I asked for the largest ones they had.   Small, medium, large, and Beatrice Arthur.

So, why the need to do this single evening for two solid days?

Contact eczema.  An ugly, ugly skin disease and those are the photos, like frame 313 of the Abraham Zapruder films of the JFK assassination, are not something you want to see.

Yet, I lived it.  

It came out of nowhere really.  I thought it was part of puberty.  Body hair growing in weird places, voices cracking, and incredibly itchy fingers.  The latter became so intense that only the constant wringing of my hands would alleviate the need to scratch.  Of course, once the itching stopped, I felt relief as if it was an orgasm.  Or whatever a fifteen-year-old sense that an orgasm felt like.  

Once the itching stopped, my fingers, and particularly the skin between them, would get dry, crack, and sometimes bleed.  It was disgusting and the main reason why I was always sitting on my hands in American History.  It would take a week or so for the condition to dry up and then you'd think it was gone.

Wrong.  The process would start all over again.

Okay, in the not-trusting-doctors world that was embraced by my folks, this disgusting display had to go through about a dozen iterations until my mother made the obvious suggestion.

"That looks terrible.   You better go to the doctor."

No shit, Mom.

Going to the doctor meant a visit to Dr. Weisberg in the Bronx.  He was our family physician and everybody trusted him with their lives.  I wouldn't have relied on him to pick up my dry cleaning.  The man didn't really work hard and he treated everything as if he was a Boy Scout using a First Aid kit on a mountain hike.   Every possible ailment was handled with aspirin or an Ace bandage.  I've always thought that if Dr. Weisberg was on duty at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, he would have sprayed JFK's head wound with a shot of Ungentine.

Marcus Wel-not-by didn't fail with his treatment of my hands, either.  

"That looks terrible.  Get some Vaseline hand lotion."

D'oh.

The hand cream was useless.  I started using anything of the sort that was in the house.   Whatever Mom had in the bathroom.   Whatever Grandma had in her cosmetics drawer.  I found going to class smelling like a hooker in Berlin.

Nothing worked.  Hand wringing, hand wringing.  Orgasm.  Dryness.  Peeling.  Bleeding.

And all over again.

I completely stopped making hand contact with anybody and anything.

I don't remember who was the genius that finally suggested I visit a dermatologist, but that was the move that saved my teen age dignity.  At last, somebody was going to help.

The diagnosis was a stunner.

I was allergic to virtually every soap, cleanser, shampoo, and cologne.

Thank God oxygen was spared.  

The treatment was even more of a head scratcher.

I was instructed to soak my hands every single night.   Whereas some folks would enjoy a glass of warm milk before bedtime, I got to have the same.   Except instead of drinking it, my hands would soak in it for an hour.  After that, I was told to apply this very greasy prescription ointment to my hands.  

And then cover them all night with white gloves.

This worked well and alleviated the problem.   Except the allergy never went away.  

I couldn't use regular bar soap.  There had to be special purchases of something called Basis Soap, which is chemical free.  In public bathrooms, I could rinse off my hands but never pump the soap dispenser.  

I couldn't put cologne on my hands.  If I ever wanted to smell better, I needed to use a spray.

I couldn't use shampoo unless I was standing in a shower where the constant cascade of water would always and immediately rinse it away.

And I couldn't dare touch household cleansers like detergent, dishwashing liquid, or bleach unless I was wearing rubber gloves.

Whereas it all seemed like a chore at the time, I quickly adapted this all to my life.  

And, decades later, I still maintain the same practices.  Basis Soap.  Rubber gloves.  Shampoo only in a shower.

There are those times where I might spill a little Tide on my hands and I can immediately feel my skin reacting.  It feels like something out of "Little Shop of Horrors."  The monster is being fed.  I run to a sink and run my hands under warm water for two minutes.  

You learn to live with it.

I thought this was solely my cross to bear until a few weeks ago.   The British sister of a good friend was here on holiday from England.  We were somehow talking about childhood ailments and I brought up my long-forgotten eczema.

"I had that, too."

And she described it all.  Step-by-step.  Itch-by-itch.  The nightly dipping into warm milk.  The ointment.

And the white gloves.

I was not alone.  It must be how you feel when you realize there are people in the world who are alcoholics or drug addicts.   A common bond.  Except we don't necessarily have the need to be anonymous.

But, truly, if you saw my hands back then, you really wouldn't want to know me.

Dinner last night:  Night noodles with beef from Chin Chin.

Classic TV Commercial of the Month - November 2026

 Remember when this commercial was a big deal.

Dinner last night:  BLT at Art's Deli.

November 2026 in the Local Lock-Up

 

And this is definitely extra creepy!

I knew that football helmet was on a little too tight.

Banana pudding fight!!!

And this is without botox.

Overdosing on Just For Men.

Fashion tip:  Mascara is not lipstick.

I can see the jury from here.

And also knee-deep in it.

Also available on e-Harmony.com.

And if you can't get a date with the one above...

He's in the bag.

This is somebody's grandma!!!

Dinner last night:   Had a big lunch so nothing really.