SATURDAY COMICS (A HAT SQUAD O'BSERVATION)

It feels like a while since I looked at TV shows turned into comic books. But it’s a shame that I had to bring it back this time….

From the Los Angeles Times:
When he got his start in the 1940s, Stan Lee was embarrassed by his profession.

“I would meet someone at a party, and they would ask what I did and I would say, ‘I’m a writer,’ then start to walk away,” the man who helped create Spider-Man and other famed superheroes recalled years later.

Pressed for more details, he would say he wrote for magazines. And if the questions kept coming?

“Finally I would say, ‘comic books,’” Lee said. “And they would walk away from me.”

A half-century later, the writer who in the 1960s spearheaded Marvel Comics’ transformation into a powerhouse brand was considered a superhero in his own right. He was mobbed by fans at conventions and became the toast of Hollywood, with blockbuster films based on his characters racking up billions at the box office.

Lee died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to an attorney for Lee’s daughter, J.C. Lee. He was 95. His cause of death was not immediately known.

Marvel Comics and the Walt Disney Company honored Lee in a statement posted online Monday.

“Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created,” said Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company. “A super hero in his own right to Marvel fans around the world, Stan had the power to inspire, to entertain, and to connect. The scale of his imagination was only exceeded by the size of his heart.”

- By DENNIS MCLELLAN AND DAVID COLKER

Nobody has control over how History remembers them.  And that holds true for Stan Lee.  The characters he came up with for Marvel Comics, who now live on in the Cineverse and the many dimensions of the Toobworld Dynamic, are often pictured standing by his side – either embodied by actors or in illustrations.  Thor, Hulk, Spiderman, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four – they may have been drawn from other sources or at least inspired by the imaginations of others, but it was the mind of Stan Lee (with help from the artistry of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko among others) who made them immortal.

But it wasn’t just superheroes who were provided their dialogue by Stan the Man….

From Wikipedia:
The "My Friend Irma" comic strip, illustrated by Jack Seidel, began September 11, 1950, receiving a promotional boost in the November 7, 1950 issue of Look. In 1951, Dan DeCarlo took over the strip with Stan Lee scripting.

Atlas Comics (Marvel) published the "My Friend Irma" comic book which ran from #3 to #48 (1950 to 1955), and was most often written by Stan Lee with art by Dan DeCarlo. After Atlas stopped publishing "My Friend Irma", DeCarlo and Lee created a similar feature for Atlas titled "My Girl Pearl".

The comic book overlapped the radio series and the TV series which ran on CBS.  ‘My Friend Irma’ branched off into other fictional universes like the Cineverse with two movies as well as in comic strips.  (Unfortunately, I still don’t have good names for the comic strip and comic book universes; not even sure if I should be combining them or not.)

So as a salute to the Mighty Marvel Master Maven, here are a selection of covers for “My Friend Irma” with an example of the interior art.

Thanks go out to one of my FB friends, the muppetational Andrew Leal for bringing this comic book to my attention…..

So long, True Believer... and Excelsior!

 

 

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMER 11/16/18 - JIM MORET

From Wikipedia:
Jim Moret (born December 3, 1956) is the chief correspondent for the syndicated television news magazine 'Inside Edition'. Moret has covered entertainment news and traditional hard news stories for over 25 years. He is a regular guest contributor, legal analyst and guest-host on CNN, HLN, Fox News Channel, Court TV, and MSNBC. He is the son of singer and actor James Darren. 

Moret has covered many major California criminal cases including the Night Stalker trial, Billionaire Boys Club murder trial, the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil trials, Scott Peterson double murder trial and the Michael Jackson molestation case, for which he served as the broadcast legal analyst for numerous television and radio networks.

Before joining 'Inside Edition', Moret was probably best known for anchoring CNN’s coverage of the O.J. Simpson criminal trial in 1995 and hosting the long-running 'Showbiz Today' and co-anchoring 'The World Today'. After leaving CNN, Moret hosted a series of specials for ABC, and, for three years, co-hosted the Academy Awards pre-show for the network. He has also been a guest anchor on the KTLA Morning News in Los Angeles, and on Fox 5’s 'Good Day New York'. His first on-air reporting position was at KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

Moret has made plenty of appearances in TV shows, usually as reporters or TV program hosts and listed only by those generic job descriptions, no names given.  As such, because they were performing jobs which Jim Moret handles himself in the real world, I'm going to make the call - in all of those instances Jim Moret was appearing as himself, as his own televersion,

Here is a list of those roles, or at least most of them, in descending order.....

Dirty Sexy Money 
- The Silence (2008)
- The Summer House (2008) 
News Anchor
 
The Young and the Restless
- Episode #1.8669 (2007)
Jim Moret

In Moret’s big scene, one of the main characters has just announced he's started drinking again, prompting the Inside Edition reporter to ask: “Are those issues related to your son Devon marrying your former wife. Did that drive you to drink?"

Monk
- Mr. Monk Goes to Jail (2004)
Talk Show Host

LateLine

- Pilot (1998)
Himself

The Practice
- Heroes and Villains (2003)
Reporter

As you can see, only two of those five shows had Jim Moret playing himself.  But as he has been a reporter and anchorman and interviewer, I’m going to claim that all of those other roles were Jim as Jim as well. 

And he’s multidimensional!  He played newscasters in both ‘The District’ and ‘The West Wing’ which are in alternate dimensions apart from the main Toobworld.  But those two shows are not sharing the same alt-Toobworld.  Both of them overlap in the Toobworld timeline but they each have different Presidents in the Oval Office.  (Actually I’m assuming they were different POTUSii; we didn’t meet the President during the run of ‘The District’.  But the series had a crossover with ‘The Agency’ in which Tom Arnold guest starred as the brother of President Moreland. 'The West Wing' of course had President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet.)

The District
- The Second Man (2002)
Newscaster

The West Wing
- Evidence of Things Not Seen (2003)
- Disaster Relief (2003)
Reporter In the first; Newscaster in the second

Here’s a behind the scenes look at Moret’s work on ‘The Young & The RestLess’. 

So there’s more than enough to qualify Jim Moret for membership in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

Welcome to the Hall as a November newsmaker!

TWIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES FANFICCERS' FRIEND

From CNBC's Mark It:
One year ago, you could find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez working behind the bar at Flats Fix, a small taqueria near Union Square. Come January, you will find her in Washington D.C., representing New York's 14th District as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

But just because she is making history, doesn't mean she is making money. Ocasio-Cortez recently revealed that she is currently unable to rent a D.C. apartment.

Her transition period will be "very unusual, because I can't really take a salary," she said in an interview with The New York Times. "I have three months without a salary before I'm a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real."

For the full story, click here.

I had seen that story when it first broke but didn't read it with the Toobworld Dynamic in mind; nothing clicked in regard to my little playground of the TV Universe.

But when my sister "Iddiot" Kristin McCracken posted the link to the story on Facebook, this Tweet showed up in her feed:

And now the light bulb clicked on!

A celebrity chef and his family welcome a newly elected congresswoman into their home.  I think this would make for a great premise for a TV sitcom.  In fact, CBS already has something similar on the air now:

'HAPPY TOGETHER'
From the IMDb:
Claire and Jake's married life is mired in routine, but when megastar Cooper shows up at their door, they get dragged into his life of fame.  (The series' premise is based on a real situation in which Harry Styles moved in with the show's executive producer Ben Winston and his wife.)

There would need to be more detail added to give this proposed series some meat on its bones or it's not good enough for even just a one-off.

Here's my idea for how to expand the premise....

The young Congresswoman is a firebrand and very liberal.  That at least would be in keeping with the Trueniverse model.  But the chef is set in his ways in everything but his flair in the kitchen.  Very conservative in his political viewpoints, but he keeps them well-hidden because he wants to cater to both sides of the aisle in Washington. 

The chef's wife is more open-minded and she also serves as her husband's business manager.  It was her idea to reach out with this offer, never thinking that the young woman would take her up on it.  For her, it was just a publicity stunt to endear her husband to a new base of fans.

But the Congresswoman does take her up on the offer and through a misunderstood response by the chef, accepting his response as an invitation to stay!

The couple have four children - twin daughters, polar opposites to each over the  congresswoman's stance on issues.  Plus there's a teenaged son who has no interest in the body politic but is fixated on the politician's body.

And the fourth offspring?  The Chef and his wife have an older son who is in training to be a restaurateur by working as the assistant manager at his parents' celebrity hotspot.  Sparks could fly between him and the Congresswoman.   (This would cause friction between the oldest son with his younger brother.)

I know nothing about Chef Andre so I had no restrictions on my imagination in creating his doppelganger and family.  The same should hold true for the young woman on her way to Congress.  Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has an Hispanic background, but that's not who would be on screen; the sitcom character would be inspired by her.  She doesn't have to be an Hispanic character.  She could be black or Asian, perhaps even a Native American.  Like 'Law & Order' with its "ripped from the headlines" stories which blend several inspirations  together, if this young woman from a Western state (or maybe Maine?  Alaska?) is a Native American, it would tap into the news made by two of the new congresswomen coming into Congress this January.

What do you think?  Sounds like a show you'd watch?  How about fanfiction?  Would you like to write that up?

Let's see what you'd come up with!

Thanks for the inspiration, Kristin!

BCnU!

WISHCRAFT WEDNESDAY'S FANFICCERS'S FRIEND

Recently, the admin for the "Make Room For Daddy Fans" FB page - Tina Bradley - posted this picture of Angela Cartwright and asked for family-friendly captions.  

For me, the best one was submitted right out of the gate by Phil Wala:

"I have three siblings: 

Rusty, Terry, and the other Terry."  

I thought it was a very funny way to address the fact that a recastaway occurred in the show.  Sherry Jackson played the role of Terry Williams, daughter of Danny and Margaret Williams from the first episode in 1953, "Uncle Daddy".  (Surprisingly, for you younguns, debut episodes in those days actually had titles other than "Pilot".)  But "Terry Goes Steady" was her final episode in the October 1958 episode "Terry Goes Steady".

The  character continued on in the series, however.  A year after Terry went off to college, she came back - but now played by Penney Parker. (The episode was the aptly entitled "Terry Comes Home".)  I was only a little kid at the time and couldn't watch the show in its original run.  I did catch it often in syndication a few years later but I don't think I noticed the change in actresses.

There are plenty of Earth Prime-Time splainins to do as to why recastaways change a character's appearance - plastic surgery is the mundane reason shared with Earth Prime.  But there's also alien and android replacements, replicants, imperfect clones, demonic and angelic possession, magical remakes, holographic glamours, and quantum leapers.

The trick for a televisiologist like myself in accepting these changes in appearances is to remember that the audience of the Trueniverse is not seeing the events of Toobworld from the full perspective of the people who live within the TV Universe.  We can see the people are different, but the other TV characters can't. 

In this case of the two Terry Williamses, there is another option, something a bit more drastic. 

With the episode "Terry Comes Home", the Trueniverse audience was no longer watching "Make Room For Daddy" as it existed in Earth Prime-Time.  We were now viewing the lives of the Williams Family in an alternate TV dimension, most likely Toobworld2, the Land o' Remakes.

Let's face it - any of those other splainins would betray the reality of the Williams household, even if none of us could relate to the show biz aspect of their family life.  That was just a superficial element; the heart of the show was the family dynamic with which we could all identify.

So for the rest of the show's run, we were watching the doppelgangers of Danny and Kathy and the kids in another dimension.  However, the show came back in 1970, slightly revamped and now entitled 'Make Room For Granddaddy'. 

The premise which kicked it off was that Terry had come back to the family hoping that they would take in her six year old son while she joined her husband wherever he was deployed in his military service.  And for that one episode of this single-season series, Sherry Jackson returned to the role of Terry. 

So "Make Room For Granddaddy" returns the Williams Family to the main Toobworld fold.  (I've dealt with that last year in a post about Terry.)

But it's Phil Wala's excellent caption which got me thinking about a possible fanfic idea - what if Linda Williams had the ability to sense the difference between dimensions.  What if she was an omnipresent sentience trapped in a child's body, existing as one being on all planes of reality?  The same Linda Williams in the main Toobworld, Toobworld2, in all TV dimensions except maybe Black Tooworld and the Tooniverse.

She would feel the difference between all of those TV realities, knowing that it was a genetic quirk which caused her step-sister's chromosome arrangement to be altered.

That concept and the look of that picture does give me the 'Twilight Zone' willies....

Thanks for the question, Tina, and thanks to Phil for a great caption!

BCnU!

TVXOHOF HAT SQUAD MEMORIAL - NEIL SIMON

Neil Simon, whose comic touch in “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and many other hits on stage and screen made him the most commercially successful playwright of the 20th century — and perhaps of all time — has died, according to his representative. He was 91.

From “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 to “45 Seconds From Broadway” in 2001, 30 of Simon's plays opened on Broadway, including five musicals for which he wrote the book. Seventeen of them ran a year or more, and many were subsequently embraced by theater's grass-roots, seen year after year across the nation as staples of community theater, dinner theater and high school productions.- Eric Boehm, The Los Angeles Times

From Wikipedia:
Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.   

During 1961, Simon's first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, ran for 678 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Simon took three years to write that first play, partly because he was also working on writing television scripts. 

During 1966, Simon had four shows playing at Broadway theatres simultaneously: Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park.   
Simon has twice rewritten or updated his 1965 play The Odd Couple, both of which versions have run under new titles. These new versions are The Female Odd Couple (1985), and Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple (2002).  

I’m sorry it took the death of Mr. Simon for me to realize he belongs in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  He should have been installed years ago during the month of September when we traditionally honor those working behind the scenes in the television business to expand the greater TV Universe.  And it is with one of his plays, originating in the metafictional universe of WorldStage, which made him eligible for membership in the TVXOHOF….

From Wikipedia:
“The Odd Couple” is a play by Neil Simon. Following its premiere on Broadway in 1965, the characters were revived in a successful 1968 film and 1970s television series, as well as several other derivative works and spin-offs. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates: the neat, uptight Felix Unger and the slovenly, easygoing Oscar Madison. Simon adapted the play in 1985 to feature a pair of female roommates (Florence Ungar and Olive Madison) in “The Female Odd Couple”. An updated version of the 1965 show appeared in 2002 with the title “Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple”.  

In 1985, Neil Simon revised “The Odd Couple” for a female cast. “The Female Odd Couple” was based on the same story line and same lead characters, now called Florence Ungar and Olive Madison. The poker game became Trivial Pursuit with their friends becoming the girlfriends: Mickey, Sylvie, Vera, and Renee. The Pigeon sisters became the Costazuela brothers, Manolo and Jesus. 

As for “Felix and Oscar: A New Look At The Odd Couple”....

From Variety:Neil Simon’s latest version of “The Odd Couple” is a new paint job on an old vehicle. The car has lost some of its original charm and the engine shows the heavy wear of its mileage, but it’s still a classic. In this second revamp — women took over the lead roles in a 1985 version — Simon rewrites, but he doesn’t really reimagine. Joe Regalbuto manages to make the character of Felix his own, more so than John Larroquette does with Oscar, but he doesn’t do anything surprising. Regalbuto just seems comfortable in the role, fussy, needy and always on the verge of tears — and he cleans his sinuses with aplomb.

At this point in the run, Oscar and Felix actually get upstaged by the upstairs neighbors who come to dinner — typically, the menu has changed, but not the structure of the scene. Initially, these neighbors were two British sexpot sisters, then Simon transformed them into Spanish brothers for the female-lead version. Now they’re Spanish sisters, and the third time’s the charm. In two pitch-perfect performances, Maria Conchita Alonso and Alex Meneses make every one of the one-liners funny — no matter how predictable and overdone they are. If Simon and company could find a way to make the Oscar and Felix scenes this refreshingly silly, they would have a livelier piece of theater on their hands. - Steven Oxman

O’Bservation: WorldStage is not my bailiwick, but I assume it’s like the TV dimension of ToobStage:  Events of that world and its inhabitants repeat for eternity, with subtle changes in the look.  Sometimes they are repeated but with the influence of some character like Mr. Sweet in Toobworld – the events are set to music.  (“Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Cyrano”… which I just saw last weekend, as a matter of fact.)  In this case, a whole subplot was rewritten so that the English sisters living upstairs are now Spanish.  

Let’s move on to the Cineverse and its version of “The Odd Couple”….

From Wikipedia:
“The Odd Couple” is a 1968 American comedy Technicolor film in Panavision, written by Neil Simon, based on his play of the same name, produced by Howard W. Koch and directed by Gene Saks, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. It is the story of two divorced men - neurotic neat-freak Felix Ungar and fun-loving slob Oscar Madison - who decide to live together, even though their personalities clash.  

O’Bservation – Matthau reprised his role of Oscar from the Broadway original, but it was Art Carney who originated the role of Felix on the stage.

So now, let’s take a look at “The Odd Couple” and how it fared in five different TV dimensions.  The highlighted summaries are from Wikipedia, save for a more expansive one for the German Toobworld televersion.

EARTH PRIME-TIME [THE MAIN TOOBWORLD]

“The Odd Couple”, formally titled onscreen “Neil Simon's The Odd Couple”, is an American television situation comedy broadcast from September 24, 1970, to March 7, 1975, on ABC. It stars Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison, and was the first of several sitcoms developed by Garry Marshall for Paramount Television. The show is based on the 1965 play of the same name, which was written by Neil Simon, as well as on the play's 1968 film adaptation. Felix and Oscar are both divorced. They share a Manhattan apartment, and their different lifestyles inevitably lead to conflicts and laughs. 

O'Bservation: Felix and Oscar were inducted into the TVXOHOF as the January Classic members in 2002, the year we paid tribute to TV duos.  And it is because of that indelible narration at the beginning of each episode that I decided to wait until today, November 13, to honor Mr. Simon....

GERMAN TOOBWORLD 

In 1980 ZDF produced a six-part series called Felix and Oskar . Heinz Baumann played Oscar, Horst Bollmann as Felix. In 1991, Michael Günther filmed for the ARD “A Strange Couple” with Harald Juhnke as Oscar and Eddi Arent as Felix.  

(O'Bservation: The following segment was written for Fernsehserien.de)

A cheerful series about a strange couple. 6 pcs. German sitcom by Peter Vincent and Peter Robinson based on the play by Neil Simon, directed by Michael Kehlmann.

After their respective divorce, the friends Oskar (Heinz Baumann) and Felix (Horst Bollmann) move together into a shared flat. The official Felix is a morbidly order-fanatic, the sports reporter Oskar leaves havoc wherever he is. These differences regularly cause a stir. Blanche (Evelyn Hamann) is the ex-wife of Oskar.

The series was a simple copy of the successful and much longer-lived US sitcom men's business, which had already preceded the movie “A Strange Couple” and of course the eponymous play.

O’Bservation: German Toobworld is an alternate dimension in which the Germans dominated the world and forced its inhabitants to accept the German language as the primary language.  American-made TV shows which have been dubbed into German might be found in this Toobworld, but home-grown adaptations take precedence.  (This holds true for other Toobworlds dominated by other languages.) 

BLACK TOOBWORLD

‘The New Odd Couple’ is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1982 to 1983, and was an updated version of the 1970s television series ‘The Odd Couple’. ‘The New Odd Couple’ was the second attempt to remake a series of one of Neil Simon's plays with a primarily African-American cast. The first was ‘Barefoot in the Park’ (which also premiered on September 24, 1970, the same day the original ‘Odd Couple’ series did).  

O’Bservation: Black Toobworld is the alternate TV dimension in which certain TV characters are black.  Or events within that world were altered drastically because Africans weren’t treated as a minority and instead were the dominant race on the planet.

For example, because there was no slavery in that Toobworld (at least not on the scale we have in our own history), there was no Jim to run away with Huckleberry Finn in that world’s televersion of the Mark Twain story.  (‘Climax’ – “The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” [1955].  According to the IMDb, “To appease censors of the time, the African-American slave Jim, who is such an important character in the original novel, is completely omitted from this adaptation, along with all mention of the slavery issue.”) 

TOOBWORLD2

‘The Odd Couple’ is an American multi-camera television sitcom that aired on CBS from February 19, 2015 to January 30, 2017.  The series starred Matthew Perry as Oscar and Thomas Lennon as Felix; it was a pet project for Perry, who also served as the show's co-developer, co-executive producer and co-writer.

O’Bservation: Toobworld2 is the Land O’ Remakes where new versions of previous shows are housed (unless something determines that they should be situated elsewhere.  (For instance, the previously mentioned ‘The New Odd Couple’ was placed in Black Toobworld because of its special circumstances.)  Other shows which fall into this dimension would be the second versions of ‘The Fugitive’, ‘Hawaii Five-0’, ‘MacGyver’, and ‘The New Addams Family’.

THE TOONIVERSE

In the fall of 1975, ABC aired a cartoon version of the play entitled ‘The Oddball Couple’, produced by Paramount and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. The roles were played by a neat cat named Spiffy and a sloppy dog named Fleabag. 

O’Bservation: Live-action TV characters often have doppelgangers in the Tooniverse – Superman, Batman, Gilligan, the Brady Bunch, Mork, Exigius 12½ (better known as Uncle Martin O’Hara),  and Laverne & Shirley.  But this may be a rarity in which previously established TV characters have been translated into “funny animals”.  (There is an artist whom I know online and she recreates episodes of ‘Columbo’ with funny animals replacing the originals.  In her world, Columbo is a fox, all the Jack Cassidy killers are rabbits, Robert Culp’s four roles are wolfhounds, each of Patrick McGoohan’s four murderers are variations on bears.)

So there you have five TV dimensions in which Neil Simon’s immortal characters exist.  And if you don’t want to include ‘The Oddball Couple’, I’m good with that.  We still have the four other live-action dimensions, more than enough to qualify Mr. Simon for membership in the Behind The Scenes category.

But you have to admit, there never would have been an "Oddball Couple" had it not been for Mr. Simon creating "The Odd Couple".

And in front of the camera, he got the chance to actually meet characters he created in the main Toobworld!

‘THE ODD COUPLE
“TWO ON THE AISLE”

While filling in for the vacationing theatre critic at his newspaper, Oscar got to meet other critics like Dan Sullivan and John Simon.  And he and Felix got to meet Neil Simon on the streets of NYC.  We’ve seen authors who played themselves, but if they did meet characters they created, they are usually being portrayed by TV characters.  And with authors played by others who met their own creations, but usually in a fantasy dream sequence.  Here we had Neil Simon playing his own televersion and getting the chance to meet the living, breathing televersions of Felix and Oscar.  It’s a heady experience for this televisiologist to view.

So welcome to the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, Neil Simon.  And thank you for all of your wonderful theatrical output, but especially Felix Unger and Oscar Madison whom you’ll find have already arrived in the TVXOHOF.

BCnU!
 

VETERANS' DAY OBSERVED with PETE & DAN

Today is the day on which Veterans' Day is observed and to my mind, the acknowledgement of the service by our military was better observed in the greater Toobworld Dynamic than it was in the Trueniverse.....

From EW:
[Lt. Commander and Congrssman-elect Dan] Crenshaw, a Republican politician and military veteran who lost his eye in Afghanistan in 2012, had been targeted by Davidson as part of SNL’s midterms preview. Davidson mocked the politician’s injury, saying he looked like a “hitman in a porno.” Davidson had quickly added, “I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war or whatever.” This week, in the wake of Crenshaw’s election to represent Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, Davidson was sincerely apologetic, saying, “In what I’m sure was a huge shock for people who know me, I made a bad choice last week.” 
 
From UpRoxx:
Pete Davidson returned to SNL‘s Weekend Update tonight with a surprise guest, newly elected Texas congressman, Lt. Com. Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw’s appearance was both funny and fitting on Veteran’s Day weekend. Davidson apologized and Crenshaw revealed his ringtone was Ariana Grande. Then Crenshaw delivered some jokes about Davidson’s appearance.

When it was all said and done, Crenshaw, a rising star in the G.O.P., encouraged people to Never Forget. It was a legitimate moment with Davidson, whose father died on 9/11. A reminder that people can joke and disagree and discuss serious things.

Crenshaw took the original jab in stride and parlayed it into a high profile TV appearance. Davidson again acted like a human, and reveled in being the butt of the joke.

So those are the two pertinent videos and I know that should have been enough to do justice for this Veterans's Day post.  But I know how it goes - eventually these videos may be pulled from YouTube and if you come looking for them months from now, you'll just see those gray screens of yanked videos.  I hate that image.

I think what Lt. Commander Crenshaw had to say was important and should have a more fitting and lasting commemoration.

So I made screencaps!

And there you have it - my tribute to all who have served this country, especially my Dad.  But also to others in the various facets of my life who have served or are currently serving - my Uncle Aksel, my cousin's husband Ed, high school buddy and  fellow Scout Chuck, my former bosses Steve and Roger, and my second cousins Justin and Jesse.  I know there must be others, but they probably don't worry about the attention.  I think they'd be happy with just the respect they deserve.

Remember this Veterans Day and never forget.....