The Once-in-a-While
Daily News
1 Wow.
2 Last night I had just put this nonsense to bed when news came in of the passing of Alan Thicke.
3 Amazingly, the piece I had finished centered on Hallmark Christmas movies.
4 My first impression was that it was a hoax. As the news came over the social media, I realized that it was not a hoax, that we had lost a familiar friend.
5 I began enjoying a second or maybe third round of the multi-talented Thicke while watching him in Fuller House, a show that many out there are just discovering.
6 Bold statement, but I loved that he was in the thick of it, if you'll excuse the pun.
7 I could get worse, but I'll hold back.
8 A quick look at his wiki bio shows us nothing about his current work, which was to play to the 2016 crowd, and play wonderfully.
9 I didn't want to say too many cliche' things, but I certainly had to pay tribute. Late-breaking news. He did so many different things it is pointless to list them here.
10 He even made a small blurb about making Christmas movies, which has probably already been posted by others.
11 Had a good link to share, but when I livened it up, it ran away. So I'll have to leave it with this:
12 Rest in Peace, kind sir. You won't be missed that much because you have left a grand legacy.
13 Peace be with you, and thanks.
I will make today's Once-in-a While Daily news two-in-one.
Here is my original, the one I finished last night late. I didn't include Alan Thicke, but it is interesting that he worked his way in anyway. Fun coincidence!
So here ya go:
I will make today's Once-in-a While Daily news two-in-one.
Here is my original, the one I finished last night late. I didn't include Alan Thicke, but it is interesting that he worked his way in anyway. Fun coincidence!
So here ya go:
The Once-in-a-While
Daily News:
The
H-H-Hallmark Christmas
S-chool
S-chool
Uh-Uhv
Ah-ahcting...
1 Okay.
2 All kidding aside.
3 Last night I watched my four-thousandth Hallmark Christmas movie. As always, I pay little attention to the plots.
4 After a while, it becomes easy to see what they look for in actors and in acting.
5 I thought about it for a bit, and came up with an idea.
6 I wondered if there exists somewhere a Hallmark Christmas School of Acting.
7 They would have to have some sort of focus, and some sort of formulaic ideas for what the curriculum might be.
8 Ready to jump in? Keep in mind that these are MY impressions of movies I pay little-to-no attention to.
9 Here go:
10 How'd we do?
11 I realized the other day that MOST of my experiences with Hallmark movies are Hallmark movies made in the past five or so years.
12 What a rookie. Hallmark movies.
13 They've always worked as a sort of lava lamp when I would grade papers.
14 And YES, I DID grade papers with noises and interruptions. I did better than Grammarly, which tried to correct my subject/verb agreement in item 11, above. It needed absolutely no correction. It read the word "most" as a singular. Bleh. I caught Grammarly's error and thumbed my nose. But I digress. Let's get back to my own ability to write with noise. Screw Grammarly.
15 Stephen King insists you can't write nor concentrate with noise.
16 HE can't.
17 I can. Always could.
18 I could never do it well, but I could do it.
19 I am arguably the King of Mediocrity. Proud of it.
20 Nice way to be.
21 A Wal-Mart commercial just appeared on the teevee screen. The commercial had a guy walking through Wal-Mart. His cart had a 60-inch teevee in it. I laughed, of course.
22 I think that little beauty has a place in my home office.
23 So yup.
24 It is officially on my Christmas list. It's for the house, of course.
25 I already bought myself that giant Teddy. He's still sitting amid Christmas lights and presents, drinking it all in.
26 But a teevee is within my reach, which is within my grasp, or whatever that saying is.
27 What it says is I should be able to grab me a pretty good teevee from Wal-Mart.
28 Moving On, Part One: I already moved on a bit. Glad about that.
29 I'm gonna party like it's 2016.
30
31
32
33 Who's with me?
34
35 <crickets>
36
37 Didn't think so.
38 I'll be all right.
39 Some Hallmark movie, with competitive teachers who grew up in the same town and who attended the same high school, a place where they were competitive as teenagers, is on right now.
40 What are the odds?
41 I think I should go gentle into this good night. I lied about when I wrote this. I actually wrote almost all of it on Monday afternoon/evening.
42 The hardest part was finding all those pictures.
43 It's a livin'.
44 I think I might call it an early day, or night.
45 I'd love to lure Grammarly into another trap, but I haven't the heart.
46 Hope you had fun learning about Hallmark movies, 2016 style.
47 I...I g-gottago.
48 H-have a g-GREAT day.
49 Live life.
50 Love life.
51 Peace.
7 They would have to have some sort of focus, and some sort of formulaic ideas for what the curriculum might be.
8 Ready to jump in? Keep in mind that these are MY impressions of movies I pay little-to-no attention to.
9 Here go:
- Actors must have slightly elfin features.
- Actors (the term includes actresses, of course!) m-m-must s-s-stutter at least three times per sentence. They shall be judged on their TPSSR (times-per-sentence-stutter rate) score.
- Setting shall be some small, one-caribou town east of the Mississippi.
- Town name must include at least one of the following words: "Lake," "Falls," "Wood,"or "Village."
- Town must have an ice skating rink. Rink must be a natural lake frozen over.
- When two people ice skate, one must have butter for ankles.
- Every woman must be in love with the wrong guy at the beginning of the story. She must accidentally sign over property to him so he could raze the town and put in a business office.
- She'll meet a much nicer guy at a Christmas farm. See below. Just before the town gets razed, we'll find that he has a rich uncle, who manages to undo the property signing, saving the town.
- Every story must have a round-faced guy with white hair, a white beard and suspenders. If needed, he could be married to white-haired rotund woman whose job seems to be baking. Absolutely nobody suspects they might be the Clauses.
- Every Christmas dinner must have an uncarved turkey that a woman could carry over everybody's head and then set gracefully down on the table, using only one hand.
- The town Christmas tree lot must be a "Cut-Down-Your-Own Tree" farm with free hot chocolate.
- Somehow someone owns a reindeer and a rusty sleigh that will look beautiful by the end of the movie.
- At some point, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" will be sung by a Dickensian group of Carolers.
- Everybody in the town must have gone to the same high school AND to the same college.
- Given ten Hallmark Christmas movies, three will have Dean Cain in them, two will have Ed Asner, and one will have an actress whose last name is "O'Toole.
- At the end of the movie, the guy with the beard will turn into Santa Claus and fly past the moon with real reindeer, which look nothing like the classic Christmas reindeer that used to be on Hallmark cards.
A-n-n-n-n-n-d that's about it for that nonsense. MY impressions of movies I pay little-to-no attention to.
10 How'd we do?
11 I realized the other day that MOST of my experiences with Hallmark movies are Hallmark movies made in the past five or so years.
12 What a rookie. Hallmark movies.
13 They've always worked as a sort of lava lamp when I would grade papers.
14 And YES, I DID grade papers with noises and interruptions. I did better than Grammarly, which tried to correct my subject/verb agreement in item 11, above. It needed absolutely no correction. It read the word "most" as a singular. Bleh. I caught Grammarly's error and thumbed my nose. But I digress. Let's get back to my own ability to write with noise. Screw Grammarly.
15 Stephen King insists you can't write nor concentrate with noise.
16 HE can't.
17 I can. Always could.
18 I could never do it well, but I could do it.
19 I am arguably the King of Mediocrity. Proud of it.
20 Nice way to be.
21 A Wal-Mart commercial just appeared on the teevee screen. The commercial had a guy walking through Wal-Mart. His cart had a 60-inch teevee in it. I laughed, of course.
22 I think that little beauty has a place in my home office.
23 So yup.
24 It is officially on my Christmas list. It's for the house, of course.
25 I already bought myself that giant Teddy. He's still sitting amid Christmas lights and presents, drinking it all in.
26 But a teevee is within my reach, which is within my grasp, or whatever that saying is.
27 What it says is I should be able to grab me a pretty good teevee from Wal-Mart.
28 Moving On, Part One: I already moved on a bit. Glad about that.
29 I'm gonna party like it's 2016.
30
31
32
33 Who's with me?
34
35 <crickets>
36
37 Didn't think so.
38 I'll be all right.
39 Some Hallmark movie, with competitive teachers who grew up in the same town and who attended the same high school, a place where they were competitive as teenagers, is on right now.
40 What are the odds?
41 I think I should go gentle into this good night. I lied about when I wrote this. I actually wrote almost all of it on Monday afternoon/evening.
42 The hardest part was finding all those pictures.
43 It's a livin'.
44 I think I might call it an early day, or night.
45 I'd love to lure Grammarly into another trap, but I haven't the heart.
46 Hope you had fun learning about Hallmark movies, 2016 style.
47 I...I g-gottago.
48 H-have a g-GREAT day.
49 Live life.
50 Love life.
51 Peace.
~H~
fin.
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