By Bob Gaydos 

The marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Too funny for her own good?

    I have a love/hate affair with bingeing.

     … Let me start over. Who ever came up with the concept of bingeing? I mean, putting your feet up and watching hours of your favorite show in one sitting? No commercials and no waiting a week for the next episode? What a concept! What a great idea. I love it.

     Until the episodes end and the seasons end and the pandemic doesn’t end and no one can film new episodes because the actors don’t want to die. And I’m left wondering what, if anything, will ever happen to the marvelous Midge Maisel.

     So I hate bingeing because, well, I always want there to be another episode. So I resist bingeing. Just two episodes a night is enough. Sometimes.

     Living in a locked-down world requires having something to look forward to tomorrow. At least it does for me. Netflix has provided thousands of options to take my mind, and millions of other minds, off the infection curve. Right place, right time. Sign in, Robert; take your pick. Who knew from streaming shows after growing up and getting old on weekly TV series? I don’t watch regular TV and you can only read so much and you can’t go out to the movies. 

    So, “What’s on Netflix?”

    “How about ‘Grace and Frankie?’”

    How about Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin!? And Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston! What a show! Who knew? Well, apparently lots of people who caught on to streaming before me because there were six seasons. Anyway, we loved it. Four veteran actors defying aging and other stereotypes. Funny. Binge!

    And then, uhh, is it over? Apparently, for now. They’re talking about filming the final season. Before the stars really fade, I suspect.

      So now what? Well, Michael Douglas has a show that looks kind of interesting. “The Kaminsky Method.“ He’s an acting coach. And Alan Arkin is in it. More talented veterans. God, I remember when Michael was too young to have his character dealing with prostate problems. “Greed is good!” No matter. Excellent. Funny. Binged. That’s all? Still waiting for a promised new season.

     Then we discovered “The Good Girls.“ Bingo! It’s dark and funny and it’s impossible to watch just one at a time. Usually, it was three, although I tried hard to argue for two. Always wanted to have something left for tomorrow. It ended with a cliffhanger, but came back. Then it went away again. But it’s coming back again. Soon I hope. 

      While exploring and waiting on the “Girls” to return, we looked in on “The Good Place.“ After being mildly interesting, it turned out to be pretty much the same place every episode. Sam Malone seemed a little out of place running Heaven. We didn’t stick around to see how it turned out since the whole concept is really about how it all turned out.

     Umm … Pass the chips, please. Speaking of bingeing, you can’t watch all this great stuff on an empty stomach, right? Apparently, a lot of people put on a lot of weight sitting around for a year bingeing on snacks. Not me. I may have even dropped a couple of pounds

      They call the shows comfort bingeing and I can see why. It certainly helped my mental health. But the new way of watching shows also led to a venture into new comfort foods. To be more specific, more healthful snack foods that satisfy the need to munch, but won’t make me regret all the bingeing later on.

      The basic concept is that the potato isn’t the only vegetable that can be made into a chip, to dip or just munch straight out. As long as we were trying a new way of watching shows, why not new munchies? Let me say straight out, they are all a bit light and airy, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be tasty and also satisfying. Veggie Crisps are mainly rice, peas and black beans and I can polish off a whole bag without feeling guilty. Not bad. Organic lentils (with turmeric) and organic sweet beet crisps didn’t really do much for me, taste wise, but again, they filled the void. Sweet potato crackers held their own. Skinny Pop popcorn, though, is a major favorite. Also pita chips, especially when scooping hummus.

       But the surprise thus far is cauliflower. Cauliflower puffs or sticks, doesn’t matter how you shape them, they just taste good. It’s like eating air with flavor. No heavy aftertaste and no extra pounds after many hours on the couch. It probably should go without saying, but I’ll say it: It’s important to try to stay healthy when bingeing during a pandemic, people.

       It also pays to be adventurous. When Netflix came up dry, Amazon Prime rewarded us with “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” I love it. My era. Greenwich Village in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Lenny Bruce. And all the music. The best. A wonderfu ensemble cast and a meshugganah script. Funny stuff.

      And yeah, we’re waiting for the new season. Midge’s personal brand of humor got her into trouble one more time in the last episode. We left her standing at the airport, alone. Maybe she’ll spend more time with her kids in the next season. Or maybe the pandemic will end before we run out of shows and cauliflower puffs. Or maybe Grace and Frankie will return. The Good Girls are already on regular TV, so it won’t be long before they’re on Netflix, right? Right?

       Pass the Skinny Pop, please. I have a feeling this will not be the end of bingeing.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

South Dakota’s Governor Kristi Noem called for “less Covid, more hunting.”

  “If you legalize marijuana, you’re gonna kill your kids. That’s what the data shows from around the country.”

  With that absurd, ungrammatical and easily refuted statement to the press, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts last week boldly entered the competition for “dumbest” Republican governor in America. It’s turning into quite a contest in a steadily growing field. And, while I may be mocking this collection of nitwits, let me be clear in stating that this is no laughing matter.

    Let’s start with Ricketts. He is vigorously fighting an effort to legalize medical marijuana in his state. That’s right, they’re not even talking about recreational marijuana in Nebraska, just catching up with the 39 states and the District of Columbia, which have legalized marijuana use for medical purposes. 

     But killing kids? The Drug Enforcement Agency says “no deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported.” Ever. As for its classification as a Schedule 1 Drug by the DEA — meaning it supposedly has no medicinal value — that was a product of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, passed by Congress as part of Richard Nixon’s racist campaign to demonize and nullify black voters. Fifty years later, and in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary, Republicans are still trying.

        There’s no real race issue in white bread Nebraska, so this is likely just one more Republican politician playing to the lowest common denominator — the proudly uninformed who make up much of the party’s base. The Trump voters. The governor also threw in the false claim that marijuana serves as a gateway drug for teenagers to other drugs. The Centers for Disease Control says there is no evidence of this. In truth, alcohol has long been the gateway drug for young people. Yes, there are risks, especially for young people, in using marijuana, but Ricketts could have stressed common sense approaches to its use rather than making up scare stories. Unfortunately, Nebraskans suffering pain from a variety of illnesses would be deprived of the relief medical cannabis can provide if he has his way.

         At least Nebraskans still have a chance to escape the consequences of having a “dumb” governor. Others, Texans, for example, have already paid a steep price. On March 2, with most of the nation, including Texas, in the early stage of receiving Covid-19 vaccinations, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order lifting the mask mandate and increasing capacity of all businesses and facilities in the state to 100 percent. When the mayor of Austin, the state capital, said the masks would stay on in his city, Abbott went to court to challenge this affront to his authority to put Texans at risk.

          This mandate came on the heels of the deadly deep freeze in the Lone Star State. When the state’s independent power grid failed during a winter storm in February, with Texans literally freezing to death, Abbott went on Fox News to say, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for America.” Abbott said solar and wind power got “shut down,” while noting that those sources account for only 10 percent of the state’s energy.

          The truth: natural gas lines, which provide the largest percent of Texas’s power, froze up as well because anti-regulation Texas didn’t require companies to winterize. So, yes, almost all power sources froze up. A few windmills did keep producing. Also the truth: Texas refuses to join national power grids for protection against blackouts because Republican officials don’t want federal oversight. Neither do power companies who support them financially.

          Of course “dumb” governors are not new in Texas. In the midst of the blackout, with Texans looking for food and shelter and just trying to stay alive, former governor Rick Perry said Texans would rather deal with blackouts than have the federal government regulate their power grid. Perry, of course, was Energy Secretary in the Trump Administration.

           To top it all off, when the Texas lieutenant governor tried to roll back $16 billion in exorbitant power bills sent to residents, Abbott disagreed. Said he didn’t have the authority. But he can order people not to wear masks. As of March 17, Texas was still averaging 173 Covid deaths a day.

          Abbott has had serious competition on ignoring health experts in responding to the virus from other Republican governors, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who answered the question of whether anyone could be more obnoxious than Rick Perry with a resounding yes. In fact, anti-mask, open-up DeSantis, with an eye on the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has made his anti-science, anti-press approach the hallmark of his public utterances, again echoing the success of Trump with a core group of Republican voters.

          The same can be said of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has taken her campaign on the road and likes to come across as a wise-cracking cowgirl (where are you, Sarah Palin?) and has said from the beginning that South Dakotans don’t need any masks or social distancing and was disappointed when she couldn’t have a big fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. All this as Europe is seeing a resurgence of the virus.

         There are more candidates, but you get the idea. The real question, of course, is whether these politicians are truly dumb, or just playing a cynical role that makes them sound dumb to a majority of Americans, but enhances their reputation with the core group of Republicans who vote for them, often against their own self-interest. The willfully dumb.

          Given the prevalence of this in-your-face obnoxious ignorance, real or feigned, among Republican members of Congress (too many to name here), I have to think this is just further evidence of the disintegration of the Republican Party as a serious, principled participant in the governing of this nation. And that is a serious loss.

         Today, for GOP governors and other elected Republican officials, no platform is necessary. Atttack science. Deny history. Ridicule education. Blame “others.” Demonize the press. If people suffer, if they die, well those are the breaks. Make it all up as you go along. It will get you elected. Hey, it worked for Trump, didn’t it?

         Yes. Once. And if it happens again, we’ll have only our dumb selves to blame.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Ron Bloomberg of the New York Yankees was the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball.

   OK, baseball purists, welcome to 2021.  Finally free of the obligation to try to make sense of the daily tweet storm, I have lately been pondering one of those niggling, lifetime questions. And it’s not political at all.

       I’m wondering when National League team owners will come to their senses and sdopt the designated hitter rule permanently, not for just one pandemic-shortened season. I mean, really, after nearly a half century of acting superior to their fellow millionaires in the American League, who eagerly embraced the DH, aren’t the “purists” tired of watching pitchers flail awkwardly at routine fastballs and sometimes hurt themselves in the process?

       Why not give them a break from the embarrassment as well as the added risk of injury running the bases should they accidentally hit the ball? Let them focus on pitching, which is literally all they’ve done since graduating from high school.

       The National League is one of the few leagues in the world that still requires pitchers to bat. All but a handful of minor league teams switched to the designated hitter around the same time as the American League, 47 years ago. That’s how today’s pitchers grew up in baseball — pitching and rarely hitting. Hitting a baseball is not easy when you do it regularly; it’s almost impossible when practicing it is an afterthought.

      Yet, once again, it appears that the National League and the players union could not come to agreement on using the designated hitter for the 2021 season. Although the arguments around use of the DH generally focus on the so-called “purity“ of the game, when the owners and players are involved in any discussion, money is usually the central issue.

       Frankly, I have no sympathy for either side. This is a bunch of rich men — the players — versus a bunch of richer men, the owners. Everyone’s got plenty of money. The goal here should be to make the game more interesting and exciting so that more people come to the ball park, when allowed again, and more watch on TV, which will add to advertising revenue. More money. Plus, you can give some popular veteran players another year or two in the majors.

        Some say the DH takes away the element of strategy, but a double up the alley or a home run is a lot more exciting and productive than a sacrifice bunt or a strike out. I am what you might call an old school baseball guy, but school has been out for a long time. More hits and runs tend to make the game more exciting to watch over a season. By the same token, watching a pitcher easily frustrate a lineup of supposed sluggers is also impressive. I’d rather watch Jacob deGrom pitch than hit. So would most Mets fans, who remember his elbow injury suffered while swinging futilely at bat a couple years back.

       Baseball may have been the national pastime at one time, but football has assumed that position. It has changed to meet the times. So has basketball. There’s a lot of competition for the sports fans’ attention these days and most younger baseball fans have not grown up savoring the delicious question of whether the manager should remove a pitcher for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning, even though he’s pitching a great game, because his team is down by one run and there’s no one on base. Today, the pitcher is likely to have been removed in the seventh-inning because he exceeded his pitch count, even though he’s pitching a great game.

        It’s a different game. Pitchers are coddled to protect their arms. Why expose them to injury and embarrassment by making them bat when they haven’t been allowed to practice that skill for years? And why, for heavens sake, have a different set of rules when both leagues are under the auspices of Major League Baseball?

          There are a handful of pitchers who are actually fairly decent hitters in major league baseball. If they’re that good, the manager can feed their egos and use them as a pinch-hitter once in a while. Embarrass a position player by having a pitcher hit for him. That might shake him up.

        Football pretty much eliminated the two-way player and goes out of its way to protect the most valuable player, the quarterback. If pitching really wins games, as all the baseball experts insist, then let the pitchers focus on pitching. And, for the purists, having a designated hitter for the pitcher might just keep that baseball staple, the hit-and-run, alive.

         Moneyball pretty much did away with the sacrifice bunt. Not only pitchers, but most major leaguers, are lousy at it today. Asking pitchers, some of whom can throw the ball 100 miles an hour, to also try to hit a pitched ball coming at 100 miles an hour, when they’ve had virtually no opportunity in their careers to do so — in fact, were never asked to do so — is unrealistic and unfair.

         Besides, after the Babe, the phrase “good-hitting pitcher” became an oxymoron.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com