OH, BROTHER!

Season 10 of CBS’s reality series “Big Brother” has lately been chewing up three hours a week of my valuable time. I wonder if relatives of George Orwell, creator of the Big Brother concept in his novel 1984, receive any royalties from CBS. They should. If not for Orwell’s futuristic “Big Brother is Watching You” mantra, the show would be named something like “Window Peeper,” or “Peek-a-boo. I see you!”---neither of which have much appeal.

Of course, before I ever became familiar with Orwell’s novel as a teen, the term Big Brother just meant Beans, my elder sibling by almost three years. He never failed to remind me of his superiority. In the earliest picture I have of us together (above), you can already tell he is plotting devious designs against me. (“I can’t wait to singe that hair right off your head!”--which he and my older sister actually did, according to family legend, although I have no recollection of the dirty deed.)

Eventually, though, I made efforts to get even. I never failed to remind him what a pain in the ass I could be to him. Hmmm. Might make a good plot for a TV sit-com. “Little Sister.” (Subtitled: “Little Sister is Watching You--Get More Agitated by the Minute.”)

Since I knew Beans loathed me, I’d do all I could to get his attention. My typical modus operandi, as I grew older, was to dart into his bedroom when he was, say, reading a comic book or counting his baseball cards, catching him off guard. I’d whack him a good one, then dash back out to the bathroom around the corner and snap the lock shut so he couldn’t retaliate. I’d be safely giggling behind the door, rubbing it in that he’d been had.

Of course, most of the time he was the aggressor and I was the punching bag. We couldn’t even play a simple game of slap jack without it turning into a fight. If I’d get in the first slap on the cards, which was rare, he’d double up a fist and pound it on my outstretched hand. If I was winning in Monopoly, he’d steal from the bank and suddenly come up loaded. If I had the lead in Scrabble, “Oops!”--he’d upset all the letters on the board so we’d have to start over.

--Come to think of it, Beans deserved every cheap shot I could deliver! I wished I’d gotten in more.

SETTING LIMITS

I’m so excited!! My great nephew Bo (left, at 13) is arriving today to visit for the rest of the week. I get to have a 15-year-old to pal around with for a few days. Yippeee! A full agenda of activities is planned--movies, Cosmosphere, salt mines tour, melodrama, interactive mystery at the library, and whatever else strikes our fancy.

There is only one problem when he is a houseguest--Big Bore tends to regress to being a teenager (right, age 13). Last year they had so many belching contests that I thought the house was going to blow up from all the excess gas. Even worse, Bo showed BB how to access video TV games from the satellite dish. Man, that was a big mistake. I have since lost total control of the remote.

Ah, but men will be men, and if they want to bond over burping blow-outs and video poker, I guess I shouldn’t complain. But if they should decide to start wagering on fart contests, I’m laying down the law! They’re going to have to include me!

WHAT LURKS BENEATH

One of my new year’s resolutions for 2008 has been to do a better job cleaning underneath the refrigerator. Late last year I swiped a yardstick under the ‘fridge, looking for a pill that had fallen on the floor and, honest to God, I was frightened by what came out. I thought that I’d found what was left of my missing cat Shadow, based upon all the gray cat fuzz that emerged before my startled eyes.

Keeping up with the stray hair of four indoor cats is a challenge. I can take a lint brush to the sofa and five minutes later it’s back to being a total mess. I always warn visitors at the door, “If you are allergic to cats, don’t come in.” Their hair is everywhere!! One day I took a cotton swab to my ears--there was no wax inside the canals, just gray cat hair!

There’s also the dilemma of kitty barf/hairballs. The cats usually give me a gag warning, so sometimes I can respond quickly enough to slide a newspaper in front of them, but, more often than not, they get choked in the middle of the night and the upchuck lands on a rug, or on a t-shirt, or inside my shoes, or on the sofa. We have a special jug of chemical that is supposed to clean it right up, leaving no stains--ha!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my four felines and wouldn’t want to live without them because they are so slobbery and silly, but as long as they’re hanging out with me and ruling over the household, I sure wish they’d learn to clean up after themselves. Is that asking too much?

ACE OF BASS

Friday night I motored up to Emporia to attend the Shrine Bowl band concert. My great nephew Bo was one of over 200 teens in this musical bunch, and the only freshman among 15 tuba players. I consider this quite an honor considering he’s yet to experience a single day of high school (but did some high school band gigs while an 8th grader).

The band played a series of zippy tunes that had me clapping and shaking my head and tapping my feet to the beat of the music in no time. My other great nephew, 8-year-old Luke, slouched next to me, trying not to be seen with Auntie Goofball. My effort to energize him resulted in the bored “Back Off, Jack” glare.

Saturday night the band was to play at the Shrine Bowl football game, which was to be televised on PBS, so I was excited about catching the pre-game and halftime shows on TV. To heck with the jocks. I just wanted to see my bass-playing Bo. So, at 6:30 PM, I tuned in…. “Sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulty” the screen read. Rats! There went the pre-game show.

Finally, with 8 minutes and 44 seconds left in the first half, the difficulty was fixed. --Exactly fourteen seconds later, the game was delayed due to a nasty thunderstorm. Run for cover!

Forty-five minutes passed before the game resumed…but by that time, the storm that had been in Emporia blew south to Eureka, and with the first “ka-boom,” my satellite dish went blank. Oh, no!

Four minutes until halftime, the picture miraculously returned. No more close lightning strikes. No more reception problems. I’d get to see the band after all!

Halftime. Where’s the band? Oh, we have to listen to four Shriner’s promos first. I won’t begrudge them. They’ve helped a lot of people.

At long last! Here’s the band! --Their show is being shortened due to the earlier delay? We only get to hear three numbers? Where’s Bo? Somewhere in the masses. Quit zooming in on the percussion. Come on! Let’s give the tuba players equal camera time!

Three minutes later…and over three hours after I’d first turned on the TV…they marched off the field, no close-ups of my sweet Bo. Hmmm. Do you think I watched the second half of that lousy football game? You can bet your sweet brass I didn’t!

60's TIME CAPSULE

“….and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains....” Simon and Garfunkel “Sounds of Silence”

The past few days I’ve been consumed by reading newsman Tom Brokaw’s latest book, Boom! It’s about the 1960s and the Baby Boomers who have since made significant contributions to our society. He’s interviewed the famous and not-so-famous….entertainers, journalists, politicians, businessmen, community activists, nurses, teachers, etc. to get their reactions to growing up in the turbulent decade. Brokaw’s book certainly re-opened a bank of memories of what the world was like back in the 1960s. Here are the ten that I most remember, in no particular order of significance:


President Kennedy assassinated

Beatles mania

Vietnam War

Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinated

Space race--US lands man on the moon

The "Make Love, Not War" Hippie Movement and great music that went with it

Race riots and Black Power

Kent State war protest and killings by National Guardsmen

Manson Family murders

Woodstock Rock Festival

STYLIN'

For some oddball reason, I’ve gotten into watching “Shear Genius” and “Project Runway” on Bravo Channel. Now, why I have even a smidgen of interest in shows about hairstyling and fashion designing is beyond me, since I’m just a ponytail/sweat pants kind of gal. Even Big Bore, if he’s awake, will sit and watch these shows with me and NOT complain or taunt me with the remote. He even makes comments about what he does and doesn’t like. Incredible. Must be the global warming.

The other night I jokingly told Big Bore his mussed-up hair looked like Albert Einstein’s, and within minutes he had dragged out a razor and buzzed away. Now he looks like--hmmm--well, not exactly “Shear Idiot”--but close.

But I digress. Back to our programs. What cracks me up about the contestants is that most of them have hairstyles from hell and dress like bag people. The other night, I applauded the choice the judges decided to cut on “Project Runway.” Any man who wears black shorts with a pair of red Crocs is not worthy of being the fashion world’s next big Versace.

I’m never too critical about the hairstyles or clothing actually created on these shows, though. I know how difficult it is to do such work. I can scarcely get a brush through my hair, and my seamstress work is pretty much limited to repairing crotch holes in pants. When I was enrolled in a sewing class in junior high, I once stashed home a pair of flannel pajamas I was making/ruining so Mama Bore could get ’em done for me. The teacher gave her an A.

So, I really do admire the “Genius”/“Runway” folks for at least trying to develop their skills--even though sometimes their talents seem to be hidden in a galaxy far, far, away.

PUZZLED

My favorite part of the daily newspaper out of Wichita is a section that’s labeled “DownTime.” Down time?? Talk about a misnomer! This page contains the Sudoku numbers puzzle, the cryptoquip, word jumble, and crossword puzzle. These little gems make my brain anything but down. When attacking them, I’m about as UP as I’ll be all day!

I start with the Sudoku. What the heck does that mean, anyway? Is it Japanese for torture? This puzzle gets harder as the week moves along, so by today, Thursday, I’m in a snit, and by Saturday I’ll be in a big fat ball of snit. If I don’t get it solved the first time around, I copy it off in larger format and start over. I give myself three tries…after that, I wave the white flag. I always finish the other three games--first time, every time--snitless.

Using a pencil and eraser to work on these so-called brain teasers is not the style of the Flaming Bore. That’s for wimps and losers. Pen only. It’s my way of being cocky and confident…and, (with all my scratched out trial-and-error corrections) sloppy. But, the Puzzle Police say, “Neatness does not count!” After all, it’s down time!