About six weeks ago the mechanic told me that the battery was dying on our 1988 Acura Legend. For the last year, our daughter has been driving my 2003 Honda Civic while I used to the twenty year old Acura to get to work. The goal with the Acura was to make it to August 10, when our daughter heads off to college where she won’t have a car for her freshman year. Jump starting the car every three days just wasn’t working for me so I persuaded my wife that it was worth eighty bucks to... Read Full Story
About six weeks ago, the guy who’s sort of my boss gave everyone pedometers. As an obsessive counter of all things except money, it’s encouraged me to walk a bit more. With our daughter off at yet another volleyball camp, my wife and I decided to walk down to the new smoothie shop in the new center that used to be our town’s bowling alley. A Starbucks and a Subway anchor the center, but the smoothie shop is a mom and pop place. Pop was putting up shelves. Mom was explaining that their... Read Full Story
Wow, was I wrong! A lot of us were. A few minutes after they aired After the Final Rose (without the usual promo for the next Bachelor), I called the police. CL: I’d like to report a missing person. P: What’s the name? CL: Deanna Pappas P: Wow, you’re not the first one who’s called looking for her. How do you know she’s missing? CL: She was supposed to turn up with Jason Mesnick and his son in Seattle. P: And how are you related to Ms. Pappas? CL: She’s a friend... Read Full Story
Suppose they get a marriage out of this one, maybe they can go on the new Newlywed Game and Bob Eubanks can ask the couple about the most unusual place they've made love. If ever there was a Bachelor moment, it came when Jeremy Anderson asked to stop after they drove him off in the limo of shame. He gets out, starts to walk around the walls of Deanna's fortress of roseitude then does kind of a myspace.com-age take on Scarlett O’hara’s speech from Gone with the Wind. “As Fleiss will be my... Read Full Story
Last night my wife sent me out to bring back some videos and I came back with Definitely Maybe, a DVD whose cover leans heavily on its connection to Love Actually and Notting Hill (a little misleading because some of the same production people, but those two are very English while this one's set in New York). Of the four movies I’d brought back on my bicycle, this was the one she wanted me to put on right away. Five minutes in after Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) showed up, she... Read Full Story
Graham Bunn and Deanna Pappas sit on a bench together and the Bachelorette lectures her reluctant suitor about “stepping up”. She even says the four letter “B” word multiple times and all but tells the former high school basketball player that she feels like he’s Womacking her attempt to give a hundred percent of her heart to the show. “You’re the one I wanted to fall in love with, “ she sobs. Graham keeps shaking his head and gesturing as if he’s trying to say something. Eventually, he... Read Full Story
I went to my aunt’s ninetieth birthday party last night at her restaurant in San Francisco. You measure the size of a Cantonese celebration in tables (10 people each around a circular table with a lazy susan in the center) rather than by counting the number of guests. There were fifteen tables last night which is significantly smaller than her family celebrations in the past. The last really big one was for my uncle’s seventy first birthday around 1984. Danny Kaye who had befriended my... Read Full Story
photo courtesy of ABC A few people have noted that Deanna Pappas blinks a lot. On Deanna Tells All she also had a bit of hair that kept dropping across her forehead. These things happen when you violate the time-space continuum. While some reality shows really are more or less “live”, the Bachelor, by nature, is shown mostly after the fact. I think the only time it was live was when Charley asked for extra time to choose between Krisily Kennedy and Sarah. A few other reality shows do... Read Full Story
photo courtesy of ABC A few people have noted that Deanna Pappas blinks a lot. On Deanna Tells All she also had a bit of hair that kept dropping across her forehead. These things happen when you violate the time-space continuum. While some reality shows really are more or less “live”, the Bachelor, by nature, is shown mostly after the fact. I think the only time it was live was when Charley asked for extra time to choose between Krisily Kennedy and Sarah. A few other reality shows do... Read Full Story
Photo courtesy of Arctic Ferret I sit in the first row of the bleachers behind court 1 at the UC Berkeley recreational center. My daughter backs up to prepare her approach for her jump float serve in the too tight space between the back line and the bleachers. It’s early in the game. The score is actually close, but there’s little doubt about the outcome. The group on the other side of the net is Golden Bear Forefront 18, one of the strongest teams in the country. They won the... Read Full Story
