Shameless

I know I'm eight years behind, but I've just finished season 1 of Shameless am quite impressed. It's a show about the real America as lived by a family of con artists in a snow filled Chicago. The leader of the clan, Frank Gallagher, is living the American dream of having family members work for him while he hangs out in bars and collects disability insurance.

What a great show. I'm sure it goes downhill from the first season but I am having a swell time. Here's a sociologist interpretation of the show. Now on Netflix.

The $1500 frozen pizza

It was a rainy afternoon and I had been driving all day and I felt like a beer. I drove into a friendly looking bar and ordered a brew. Next to me was an older man with a golf hat on and a smile to his face. He looked at me and said, "The last frozen pizza I made cost me $1500."

I suspected I was about to hear a story. I turned off my cellphone, sipped my beer and said, "Really, how did that come to be?"

"I was a chilly night and I was too lazy to cook. Instead I took a frozen pizza out of the fridge and put it in the oven. My oven only has a top burner because the bottom one is broke. I turned it on and to my surprise, for the first time in years both burners worked and the oven got nice and toasty.

" After ten minutes I could smell the pizza but I hear a sort of sizzling sound. I opened the oven and it was full of black smoke. The pizza was done but apparently, so was the oven.

"I went to PC Richards and picked out a Samsung oven that would match my TV and cell phone. The lady said, "we'll install the oven if it has a plug.

" My set up is the old fashioned kind that has a wire going from the oven to the wall.

"Sorry, but you need a 40 amp plug. Call an electrician and have him put in a wall plug and I'll order the oven.

"The electrician came and said he could install a plug on the back wall but only if I got rid of the old oven first, since he needed the area to work. I went onto Nextdoor and found a guy who hauled old electronic equipment. He was an organic farmer and hauled stuff with his son and truck for extra income. He was late coming over because his pet turtle escaped and he had to find him.

"The electrician came back and put in the new wall plug, but let it loose against the wall. When the PC Richards guy came he drove a hole in the wall and put the plug there, giving me an extra two inches of space so the oven could go flush against the wall.

"Finally I had a new oven with timer gizmos, a convection oven, a warming tray and other stuff I don't know how to use. The oven heated up the place so much I needed to turn on the air conditioner. That's when I noticed the air conditioner didn't work.

"I changed the battery in the thermostat but I still got no results when I turned on the fan, the air or the heat. Finally I called the air conditioning guy."

My new friend sipped his beer and the bartender winked at me. "He's been telling that story all week. Anyway I make better pizza here than he can make at home."

"Anyhow" the storyteller continued, "the air conditioning guys checked the thermostat and found out  it wasn't  getting any power. They checked the air handler and found out it wasn't getting any power either. They monkeyed around with my fuse box. Finally there was an a - ha moment. The switch in the air handler was frozen. Apparently when I first shorted out the oven, it blew the fuse in the air handler and burned the switch.

"The air conditioning guys charged me two hundred and fifty dollars for the service call." The cost of that, the hauler, the electrician and the oven cost me fifteen hundred dollars."

"So, after all that, how was the pizza?" I asked.

"I over cooked it. I guess I got to get used to the new oven."

I finished my beer and got ready to leave. By now the bar was filling up and so was the highway.

Editor's note: Now that I reconciled my checking account I see that they only charged me $150 for fixing the air handler.

Los Angeles as shown on Netflix

Recently I've been alternating between two Netflix shows, Flaked, set in Venice, and the Girls Guide to Divorce, set in the swankier parts of LA. Both shows have lots of exterior shots of Los Angeles, and serve as a travelogue. 

Girls guide is entertaining and shows how upper crust 30-40 somethings navigate divorce and love while living in gorgeous digs and dressing well. The characters have difficult children and exes and problematic boyfriends. In this show average looking, not so youngish women are shown to be attractive to good looking young men. Perhaps this fantasy is presented to attract women viewers. We also get an inside look at the world of television, media and law for these privileged characters. 

Venice has always had a special place in most baby boomers hearts for its hipness and at the same time being a little rough around the edges. This show, like Tales of the City, shows what happens when aging hipsters confront the high rents as their neighborhoods gentrify. This is a likeable show, and makes you want to spend a week in Venice, just to soak up the ambience. The male female equation is reversed here, with good looking women being attracted to less than remarkable guys. Guess they are looking for a more male oriented demographic. 

Both shows have some hard to believe plot twists. Love the bicycle built for two in Flaked. 

Impossible whopper

Apparently hipsters have been given permission to go to a fast food restaurant. It is now okay to go to Burger King to order an impossible whopper. It was even recommended on a Slate podcast.

Having gout, I thought it might be fun to eat a burger without having to worry about uric acid or triglycerides so I tried one.

First thing I discovered is that they are expensive. A small meal with cheese came to over ten dollars, almost four dollars more than a regular Whopper with cheese meal. They do look like a regular Whopper, though.

The taste is actually okay. Definitely better than any Morningstar product I have ever tried. If you were in a bar and had just consumed four beers and few shots and were handed one you probably would wolf it down and think you were eating a real hamburger.

On close inspection it doesn't taste exactly like a hamburger, although I can't exactly say why. I also noticed a slight taste of peanut butter lingered after the meal. Still if you were in a motor court on a highway and were tired of lackluster chicken sandwiches, it might be a nice alternative.

Cheddar

I noticed a new channel on my cable this week, Cheddar. It came out of Buzz Feed and was recently purchased by Altice, which owns Optimum Cable. I guess that's why I'm seeing it on my Optimum service. It is also on YouTube.

What is Cheddar? It appears to be a business oriented channel with millennial aged hostesses. The YouTube has mini documentaries on topics like "Why does New York City smell?" Apparently the absence of alleys has a lot to do with it.

Is it worth looking into? I dunno. It looks like it is an attempt to reach a business oriented audience that is youngish, perhaps people who have invested in the market while living in Mom's basement. I will have to watch more of it before I come to a definitive answer.

Bocce

One of the traditions that people of Italian American descent are exposed to is the playing of Bocce. Yesterday I played bocce in Bradley Beach New Jersey, followed by the competitive sport of eating pizza, along the great coastal shore of New Jersey.

Although I usually suck at sports, I can proudly say I was only the second worst player in the group and even got a few lucky moments when I brought honor and points to the "reds". The team name being determined by the color of the ball used.

You'll see bocce, in different forms, being played throughout Europe and in Italian neighborhoods along the East coast of the USA. In America it is traditionally played by old men of Italian origin but it is slowly picking up speed among non Italians in places like Texas. Like pickelball, it is one of those sports where, with perseverance, even someone who sucks at sports can play a decent or at least non embarrassing game.

Editor's note: The white marker ball is the pallino not polenta.

I missed Woodstock

When baby boomers reminisce about their weekend at Woodstock, I have an evil (until now) secret that I have held. Instead of going to Woodstock that weekend I went with my parents to Mo-No-Mo-Nock. Instead of skinny dipping in the rain, I swam in the pool with the bathing suit that Mother picked out for me. Instead of taking acid and listening to the Grateful Dead, I went to the square dance and line danced with the other guests at the hotel.

All the hip kids at school went to Woodstock (if they weren't back packing in Europe) while I was playing golf with my father at Mo-No-Mo-Nock. I was one of the guys at the pool saying, "Woodstock! I would draft the whole lot of them!" While most baby boomers remember Woodstock, I will always remember the weekend at the Pocono's with mother and father Hubbard.