The Electron Pencil

As If You Didn’t Know

Y’wanna know how weird I am? Okay, I’ll tell you. I woke up this morning with Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park” playing incessantly in my head.

Rock Star?

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As earworms go, this one isn’t all that bad. In fact, it put me in a real sweet mood for a glorious Sunday.

MP was perhaps the most pretentious pop song ever to hit the charts. Let’s see, now, there was “Stairway to Heaven,” — oh wait, did that chart? Lemme check. Ah, ixnay, babies. S to H never was released as a single in the USA, ergo, it never charted. Anyways, pretentious pop songs:

• “Atlantis” by Donovan [Even his natural British accent seems contrived on this platter.]
• “In the Year 2525” by Zager & Evans [And crushingly depressing to boot.]
• “Nights in White Satin” [Or, for that matter, anything by the Moody Blues.]
• “Lady” by Styx [Makes me embarrassed to be a Chicagoan.]

Styx Even Looks Pretentious

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• “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas [Perhaps the most influential pop song ever released. The argument can be made that its very existence kick-started the entire punk music genre; it was as if everyone from the Sex Pistols to Patti Smith was striving to atone for what had happened to pop music.]
• “Ebony and Ivory” by Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney [Like adding heaping spoonsful of sugar to honey.]
• “We Are the World” by USA for Africa [Of course, because we’re Americans!]
• “The Wind Beneath My Wings” or “From a Distance” by Bette Midler [Ick. Double ick.]
• “We Built This City” by the Starship [Just goes to show how horribly hallucinogenics can mangle your mind.]
• “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion [I once asked a gorgeous dame out on a date. During said date, I asked her what she had on her CD carousel. She replied Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, and Celine Dion. I silently vowed at that moment never to go out with her again.]
• “Born This Way” by Lady Gag [I know, I know, it’s Gaga, just go with me here.]

You knew this was coming: Here’s “MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris.

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Need I add that just because a song is pretentious does not necessarily mean I have to hate it? Although I hate every single one of the aforementioned blowhard ditties, save for “Nights in White Satin” and, natch, MP.

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You Have The Right To An Attorney….

I hate like hell to have to say this: The new Arrested Development episodes are deadly boring.

As you know, I consider AD to be perhaps the best sitcom ever aired on broadcast television [or even cable TV.] That is, the original AD.

The Ron Howard executively-produced opus [did you know the plural of opus is opera?] lasted a scant three seasons on Fox TV, running from November, 2003, to February, 2006. The show was impeccable, from its madcap characters to its scathing wit and topical observations to its fantastical situ’s. Pretty much every single episode elicited at least two loud guffaws from me.

Buster

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The thing is, it’s no tragedy that AD I only latest three seasons. That seems to be the max for any sitcom. After the third season virtually every sitcom becomes a shadow of itself. M*A*S*H, for instance, became a useful emetic even sooner than that. And, of course, Happy Days [which was never, ever good in the first place] inspired the now-ubiquitous term of dismissal, “jump the shark.”

Fonzie Jumps The Shark

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For some reason, Howard, et al, decided to resurrect AD, with spanking new episodes released last week on Netflix. The Loved One has been gobbling them up voraciously for seven days now [and loudly guffawing, I might add]. Me? Meh.

It’s as though the show’s writers are trying to be too clever by a factor of three. There’s less relationship comedy than wacky situation snickering. And Howard, who serves as narrator, seems to have as many lines as all the cast members put together, an indication that the situations are increasingly and needlessly complex. If you have to explain the joke, it’s bound to fail.

Anyway, too bad. But hell, if it makes TLO titter, then who am I to carp?

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