the ocean

Much as 2017 was kind of a blur, I think it is actually a legal requirement at this point that I do some kind of year-end retrospective. It was a year of big events for me, for instance a new job, which has turned out to be pretty great. My previous experience at a large firm left me, well, nearly dead, but so far I've really enjoyed my new gig. There's lots of free soda, which is important to me, and I have an adjustable-height desk that makes a fun whirring sound as I move it up and down for no real reason. The access to office supplies is top notch and, oh yeah, I actually generally like what I'm doing. So there's some year in review for you!

Ian and I also got married, which changed pretty much nothing, other than giving me an excuse to continue to be derelict on developing an estate plan. It was a courthouse wedding, which I made extra romantic by scheduling it for the day of my office move so that I could be sure no one would be trying to reach me. Oh, and there was Olive Garden catering! Three kinds of pasta, three kinds of sauce, three kinds of meat, dozens of breadsticks, and a big old vat of soup. That's how all of the best marriages have started -- look it up.

What else, what else? There was Hawaii, but I've probably already said way too much about that. And it's subzero here now so thinking about it depresses me. There was this year's Bar Show, where I wore a bald cap that made my head look like a giant tumor. There were a lot of fun social events, which probably wouldn't fare well in transcription. It was a fun year.

And then there's culture. GLOW was a lot of fun, even for those of us who aren't into ladies beating on each other. Master of None was more like Master of FUN, and I can't think of any puns about Lady Dynamite, but we liked it. On the drama side, we loved The Deuce, despite the presence of James Franco, who I consider to be America's most punchable celebrity. Mindhunter made serial killers fascinating without having to resort to anybody wearing anybody else's skin. And a show that was the opposite of that in pretty much every respect, Vanderpump Rules, pretty much made my entire year.

So that's 2017. Minus all the politics and news and stuff, because frankly who can bear it? 2018 has such a much better sound to it, as years go.

It's that time of year again -- the time when Hallmark Channel shelves Jessica Fletcher and The Golden Girls for a couple of months in favor of Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Now, if you've seen the commercials where Candace Cameron Bure or Alicia Witt explains what doesn't actually need explaining, you already know that Hallmark actually has two channels, one of which shows touching dramas (i.e., extra Jesus) and one of which shows lighthearted romantic comedies (i.e., B-list actresses doing slapstick). But what you may not know is that if you actually watch Hallmark Channel for the entirety of this period, you will likely go insane.

This year's new offerings, I must say, aren't super compelling. There's something where Rachel Boston plays an angel who falls in love with a human while saving Christmas; the only real shock is that it looks like there's something on her face the whole time. We also got one where Alison Sweeney runs an inn of some sort where families inexplicably want to spend time together and seem to talk about egg nog a lot. There was some sort of madness involving allegedly magical Christmas ornaments, I guess because they've run out of other things to randomly declare magical. And there was something with real life married couple Alex and Carlos PenaVega somehow demonstrating less sexual tension than the average episode of the Property Brothers.

The new Cameron Bure is kind of a wonder, though, in that she plays mismatched twins, both of whom come off prissy as hell because, well, Cameron Bure, but are very different because one is a suburban mom while the other is a city-dwelling businesswoman. There's a trading of places, some crap about party planning, mutual respect discovered through madcap mishaps. It's a definite recommend.

I've been MIA for a while, I recognize. I always hate to open posts that way because it is 1) fairly obvious and 2) not interesting, but it is sort of the elephant in the room, isn't it? Or maybe I'm being presumptuous to assume that anyone cares if I'm not dissecting the Housewives on here on the reg. But regardless, yeah, I haven't been posting. Instead I've been working on an amateur theatrical for lawyers, which might actually be an equally useless deployment of time. But it is what it is, am I right?

Since the powers that be for the show consider themselves to be a sort of aspiring The Capitol Steps (google it, then marvel that anyone would aspire to be something that you have to google to know what it is), this year's production has taken on that orange Trumpish tint. And so I am playing James Comey, who happens to look just like me but in an FBI jacket that arrived from Amazon a week late and missing two buttons. Speaking of which, I am also playing Jeff Bezos, which means I am wearing America's saddest bald cap. And I am playing Jon Stewart, who strangely has the same wig as Barack Obama had two years ago. Why are all my character descriptions so weirdly hair related? They do say the hair is the window to the soul.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing. I'll be back. And undoubtedly better for it. Nothing builds character like doing jazz hands to Broadway hits of the 1970s for inebriated attorneys.