the ocean

Last night I hosted a fun show featuring several of my favorite performing friends. They all nailed it and I asked a few questions and then sat on a stool at the back of the stage watching them sing and looking awkward. It was great!

Of course, we forgot to practice our bows, and they were messy AF, but I consider that to just be a metaphor for life.

After railing against the very concept of fall, I went to a fall festival with my sister and her family this weekend. It was a lot. Things did not begin on a good note when I pulled into the wrong entrance and a woman with a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth reprimanded me vigorously, despite my seemingly uncontroversial position of complete capitulation and apology. But it did improve from there.

They had a lot of these for the kids to pose in. And unlike pretty much everything else at this event, they were free. (The event operated on a ticket-based economy, like many a Dave & Busters and Lake Zurich Alpine Festival before it.)

We were not fortunate enough to see the Wheels of Agriculture Game Show, much less participate, but I can tell it was amazing from the name alone.

Maggie said she wanted to ride the camel, then got scared and refused to ride it after we had already forked over the tickets, then changed her mind again and said she wanted to ride it with her mother. This photo looks like they had a glorious time, but the constant fear and tension in my sister's face as she attempted to prevent her daughter from lurching off the camel's back are not pictured.

This sign was in the porta potty. Which ruined my day, let me tell you. Where else was I supposed to make my chicken fricassee? 

As it turns out, most of their calls are not laughable in retrospect. The Beatles at #1? Groundbreaking. Elvis at #2? You're probably not getting any angry letters on that one. But there are some inclusions that perhaps not aged as well. I mean, I enjoyed the X-Files as much as the next person, but not if the next person was on the staff at Entertainment Weekly, because I remember them doing approximately 2700 cover stories on that show. And it comes in at #76 on their list. Just ahead of Diana Ross at #79. Sorry, Ms. Ross, you had some hits, but no Cigarette Smoking Man.

And while we're on the subject, how is a TV show an "entertainer?" People are entertainers. Bands are arguably entertainers, though also arguably groups of entertainers. But shows are shows. And if we're including shows as entertainers, why X-Files, Star Trek, and Saturday Night Live, but not, say, The Dick Van Dyke Show or All in the Family? Or The Single Guy with Jonathan Silverman? Egregious oversights.

The all-new iMac! We had a lab full of them at my college. They looked less cute when you were up all night trying to finish that Major English Authors paper you put off to the last minute. I'm sure now they really brighten up the landfills, though.

Huge boxy TV! And woman who is probably not Julie Bowen but definitely there's a resemblance. Wearing clamdiggers. And a sweater. What a time it was to be alive!

They also did internet polls that they included in the issue, which were definitely very representative of the public at large. What figure loomed larger in '90s television than Seth Green? I mean, perhaps David Spade, but I just don't think he was given the same caliber of material. And this was before James Van der Beek became a meme.

Can I add that Meryl Streep (#38) was ranked below both Bill Cosby (#24) and Woody Allen (#26)? I mean, I know none of us were psychic, but did people really love Mighty Aphrodite that much? And Ghost Dad? Okay, that was unfair, Ghost Dad still slaps.