Guilty pleasures

It's summer and time to enjoy some guilty pleasures. My first one is Til Lease Do Us Part. It is a mildly amusing web series about two lesbians who break up but share the same apartment. Sort of fun. I like Eduardo.

Another guilty pleasure is a mainstream comedy on CBS, Mom. It seems this show has been getting a lot of airplay this summer. It shows the modern American family. Three generations of women live in one household. Mom and Grandmom are recovering alcoholics and the daughter is pregnant. The episodes of the AA meetings are fun. Sounds weird in concept but it is sort of endearing.

I originally thought Last Tango in Halifax was about Canada but it is about an extended family in rural England. It is also a show about a December to December romance and the troubled families that both oldsters have. Unless most shows, the women are all pretty homely, an unusual feature in tv. At heart a soap opera, but I find myself getting drawn in to this series. Nothing like a guilty pleasure when it is too hot to go out.

American teeth

Lately I've noticed that whenever French or British novels bring up American characters, they always bring up their teeth. Apparently, one way Brits distinguish themselves from Americans is by those symmetrical white monuments between our gums. In Peter Mayle's A good year, the character identifies a long lost relative as American simply by looking at her teeth. Apparently no matter how hard an American may try, the locals in foreign countries can spot them simply by looking at their bicuspids. Americans, at least Americans who travel abroad, visit the dentist more than our international friends.

Are we obsessed with our teeth? I always knew we Americans were obsessed with b--bs. Now I find out Americans are also known throughout the world for our dentifrices.