I'm Finally Binge Watching The Middle

I'm baaack friends! I was hoping to get back to writing last week, but I'm fighting some neck pain that makes writing more difficult. Alas, I begin to write slowly. I have been taking some summer time for sun, fun, and comedy binge watching!

Image from ABC.com- The Wisdom Teeth

      I was looking for something to put on Hulu while I wound down to go to sleep, and I settled on ABC's The Middle. The Patricia Heaton (Deborah from Everybody Loves Raymond)  and Neil Flynn (The Janitor from Scrubs) led sitcom embraces everyday life to a somewhat extreme point, but the family is ultimately likable. Frankie Heck and her husband Mike live in Indiana with their three kids, Axel, Sue and Brick. Axel and Sue have gone off to college and teen Brick (Atticus Shaffer)  thought he was finally getting comfortable as the only kid in the house. Sue and Axel are far from ready to leave the next, and pop in often from their school, which is less than an hour away.

     This basic premise brings me to the 7th season finale, "The Show Must Go On", which chronicles Brick's 8th grade graduation. Brick's graduation is almost eclipsed by Sue's sendoff to a summer job at Dollywood. Frankie quickly realizes the stars on the calendar must be there for some important event she forgot. Quickly, she tries to make Brick's graduation day special. Brick shares with the family he was going to be one of 15 acts singing in graduation. This would have completed his "hero's journey" because he lost out at being valedictorian. Then, the teachers had a drawing to only pick 9 acts to perform and Brick lost out.

     Suddenly, the very passive Frankie jumps up to protect her son and get him on the stage for graduation. Mike talks to the principal first and gets nowhere, lamenting that everyone thinks their kid is a star these days and he's not buying it. He doesn't even know if Brick can sing. Frankie  meets with the principal, explaining that she's not one of those  parents that marches down to the school and complains but she needs to make a stand this time  for this kid, because he's the youngest and he's always getting shafted. She rants about the "fuzzy math" that led to picking 9 acts. Long story short, all 15 are allowed to perform, and it's the longest graduation ever. Brick surprised the family by singing a beautiful song while his friend played the ukulele.  Sue has to make a quick exit to make it to Dollywood and the whole family piles in the car to see her off to Tennessee. As summer begins, Sue succeeds at playing a grandmothery hostess part at the theme park restaurant, and Axel meets the girl of his dreams. The whole episode was endearing, quotable, and reminded me a lot of real life. It's so hard to find a sitcom these days that resonates with everyday problems. Bravo!

Other Episodes That Rocked this Season:
1. Find My Hecks:
Frankie installs a chip in the kids' phones to track them when they go to parties.
2.  The Lenai:
Frankie has a beautiful new porch and loud neighbors move in next door.
3. The Wisdom Teeth:
Frankie babies Sue and Axel when they come home to have their wisdom teeth out.

I'll Be Back...

I'm taking a much-need writing break for some vacation time and I'll return with new ideas!

Don't Get Your Tickets Here

Jason Aldean from the last row
at MetLife Stadium (c) PipPepPop

     Back in March, I lamented on the blog about how hard it is to get good concert tickets these days. Don't worry, getting tickets has not gotten any easier. You still probably don't have your pick of seats during pre-sales, let along the actual ticket on-sale. But, due to the recent Curt Schlesinger et al. v. Ticketmaster settlement, they may be a little cheaper to loyal concertgoers. Essentially, Ticketmaster was sued for their outrageous and "excessive" fees (finally). I cannot justify paying $75.00 for tickets in the very last row of MetLife stadium, but I paid it last summer to see Jason Aldean and Kenny Chesney.  Tickets on the floor were at least $300.00 and standing room only. Where is the benefit in that? But I digress...

     Ticket "processing" fees (which average from $15-$20 dollars on top of the seat price) were the brunt of the spoils in this case. There is also a second reward/class for the ridiculously  high fees for USPS delivery. As a whole, Ticketmaster has charged as high as $8.00 to ship regularly ordered tickets (not overnight or a week before the show kind of deals) via US mail, a service which used to be available for free. This led to the ride of free PDF print-at-home tickets, which are their own fun pain in the butt. I have also been to a concert where my friend left the tickets at home and we had to download an app for our phones to get into the concert, and keep the tickets up on our phones every time we left the area to get drinks or go to the bathroom. As much as the technology was supposed to make out lives better they're not making concerts easier, yet. Maybe in the future, we can get retinal scan tickets!

     Tickets purchased from October 1999 through February 2013 make you eligible to be part of the lawsuit's class and should guarantee you something back. On bright side in this whole deal,  Ticketmaster has done all of the work for us. I logged into my account the other day to check out my cut of the $45+ million dollar settlement. I have 11 pairs of general admission ticket vouchers (good through June 2020) and 11 sets of $2.25 credits to use toward ticket purchases. Before you plan to take 20 of your closest friends to the lawn seats, keep in mind there are restrictions, as suggested by Yahoo! News earlier this week. General admission vouchers are only allowed to be used for events at Live Nation venues. The tickets are redeemable for floor general admission or lawn GA tickets to these events, and up to two vouchers at a time (totaling 4 tickets). USPS shipping codes ($5.00 each, I had none of these because I wasn't  going to pay to ship tickets) can be used two at a time for USPS shipping, and these deals cannot be used with other tickets.

Live Nation site screenshot, 6/23 (c) PipPepPop

     The ticket site for Live Nation began posting events early Wednesday and as of Thursday night, all available vouchers through November are sold out (at venues across the country). I am curious to see how the next few months go, when the novelty wears off and people forget about the ticket vouchers they have sitting in their account. Maybe I can get some tickets then! In the meantime, I'm going to see how we can convince them to put pre-sale e-mailed codes directly into out accounts too. I have scrambling at the last minute to find phrases like SUNSHINE or DEEJAY and plugging them in to try to get tickets. I also hate clicking on the images of Trucks or waterfalls to prove I'm not a robot. Hmm.. maybe ticketing robots is the way to solve all of this frustration....
 For more information, visit the settlement website: http://www.ticketfeelitigation.com/

Sometimes It's A Grammar Fail Day...

     To be honest, I never want to be the person at a party mentally correcting the grammar of my friends. To be perfectly  honest, sometimes I can't stop myself. It's good to know my other fellow English major friends are still there for me! (Thanks!) It's not the everyday misuse of THEY'RE vs. THEIR or TWO and TOO that can get me, it's the plural possessives that keep me up at night. How many signs have to incorrectly refer to a group of co-workers as EMPLOYEES'?? HINT: I have seen more than one. Here are some of the grammar fails I've caught in the last few months. Let's get them off our chests and move on peacefully.


5. Supermarket Sunscreen Ad

(C) PipPepPop

I know these little ads have a premium on their space. I cannot understand why someone would use their full space and still not use the correct word on there.

For the record, I always SCREEN the sun away from my body.





4. Cleaning Reminder at My Office

(c) PipPepPop

     My personal favorite reminder from work is a photo of Alice from The Brady Bunch with an accompanying quote:
"Now we're all got to keep this place tidy, ya hear?"

     This was since replaced with a new reminder, typed up a few months ago in an extreme haste. First of all, the last line switches from lowercase to all caps during the sentence. Why not make it all caps to really send the message home?

     Secondly, there are two apostrophes listed in the word don't. Are we that concerned? Does this mean we DO NOT NOT with added emphasis?

     In conclusion, we are not supposed to put food in the drian. At first, I thought this was some new hip slang the teens were using. It is not. They simply mis-typed the word DRAIN.




3. Movie Ad

(c) PipPepPop

      If your movie has a long title, I expect it might be shortened on billboards and other promotional materials. this is exactly why the Twitter hashtag was invented. The part about this that mystifies me is that the movie is called GOOSEBUMPS, and they took one letter out of the title to shorten it to GOOSEBUMS, which sounds like a long-lost John Belushi movie from the 1970's.



2. Fancy Engagement Ring Ad Copy

     The copy for this engagement ring collection and fancy jewelry store is missing something. The KWIAT jewler calls out the "Lorem Ipsum Dolor Et AlCollection". That's not an actual collection. Yes, the typeset and wording are just some Latin mumbo jumbo and it's not even separated for the word collection. According to Wikipedia, "Loren Ipsum..." is filler text in the publishing world that translated to "Pain Itself." 

(Photos (c) Pippeppop)

1. Political Campaign Brochure
     This brochure was delivered to my house a few months ago. While I will not reveal the name of the candidate and humiliate the person, I will say the candidate does not have a shot at becoming president at this point.
     The brochure spells the very wordy unconscionable correctly, then goes on to say    "... full-time workers lives in poverty." It adds a singular verb with a plural noun. Why????

A Weirdly Offensive CD Title (BONUS)

(c) PipPepPop

I found this GEM in a record store in Memphis. Sadly, I didn't take it home with me to give it a listen. Instead, I submitted it to The Tonight Show Do Not Play List, (I'm still waiting, Jimmy Fallon!)There is technically nothing wrong with this title, it follows the rules of grammar. 

a) I'll is the correct contraction for I WILL. 

b) There is a comma before water and baby, indicating the speaker is talking directly to his baby, like the great Barry White. 

     Quite honestly, I found the title it to be very unsettling. This man is in the woman's bath, with a champagne glass that may be filled with her body-soiled water. No thank you! 

Nashville '16-'17: Where Are We Going?

From Change.org E-mail

     As much as I hate to see T.V. shows end, I hate it even more when they end without a valid wrap-up of their story lines, like The Mindy Project. This also was the case with ABC's Nashville. It came down to the last two cancellation-doomed episodes for fans to put out a public outcry to give the show a 5th season. In the last week, I joined almost 175,000 fans in signing a change.org petition to bring the show back. That's got to be at least a good chunk of their average viewership. Rest easy, Tennessee Titans, the show will be coming back for a season 5! The show's Lionsgate production company has cemented a deal with Country Music Television (CMT) for a new season. If you don't have CMT (like me), you can catch episodes the next day on Hulu, which is the new home of The Mindy Project (since FOX gave it the boot last season). The best news of all is that the show has been ordered for 22 full episodes for the season. Keep in mind, that's 22 episodes for a show that does not film in L.A. and it's gone from a network budget to a cable budget. I see big changes ahead!

 

Downtown Nashville (c)PipPepPop

   The 22 episodes will give us enough berth to get things in Nashville back to normal. But the new questions becomes, what is normal? With so many plots, actors, and guest stars, something may have to give. We left off season 4 with some major resolutions. Finally, Rayna and Deacon reunited with their angsty, emancipated teen daughter, Maddie. Then, the on-again, off-again band "The Exes", Gunnar and Scarlett shared a kiss while performing, and Will became a crusader for gay rights while patching things up with his ex, Kevin. Even Luke Wheeler, who has had a rough time these few years (his teen son joining the army, his daughter running off to boarding school, Rayna leaving him at the altar, and almost going bankrupt), managed to make a positive change in the country community and reach out to his ex-wife. Justly deserved, the wicked ingenue Layala was left all alone as her record exploded on the charts. Her desperate attempts to ruin Juliet's life blew up as Juliet opened up to the press about her struggles with suicide, depression, marriage troubles and her manege'rs resulting accidental death. Win for Juliet as she reconciled with her manager Glenn and rushed home to meet estranged husband Avery and their baby, Cadence. Where are we headed now? It's definitely a shocker!

     It's time to find out if Juliet's plane has crashed! The last scene showed Avery at the airstrip, receiving news that Juliet's jet lost contact with air traffic control. This plays heavily into the plans for season 5. Hayden Panettiere (Juliet) missed about 1/4 of the last season as she recovered from postpartum depression. The good news is that both Panettiere and Connie Britton (Rayna) have confirmed they will be back for the next season. With new showrunners moving into place, I'm hoping for a season that drags less. I felt that Luke didn't have much to go on this season, and at the same time Will was stuck in the same story lines over and over again. With tighter budgets looming, I hope to see some fresh stories. If there's one thign for sure, I can guarantee that all this hype will bring a 2017 Stars of Nashville tour. With Rayna and Juliet now longtime friends instead of  the warring divas they began the show as, I hope we can focus on the music again.