I went out shopping today while Seinfeld was on so that I could go see what the would would look like after a nuclear war.
Turns out the streets wouldn't be deserted, they'd just be full of people who don't speak English. I ran into people speaking Spanish, French, Russian, and lots of Arabic (half my building speaks Arabic.) Unfortunately, nobody asked me, "Hey, how come you're not watching Seinfeld?" 'cause I'd carefully rehearsed a full five minutes of "Oh, I saw it last week at a press screening. I've been under a non-disclosure agreement, which doesn't end until [check watch] oh, about now. Thank God that's over. For a whole week I haven't been able to complain about how insipid that ending was, where Elaine shot Jerry with a crossbow and then they all got launched into space." However, around 8:15, someone who was in a real hurry to get home asked me for directions, and I gave her some that were more or less accurate.
At 8:15, an ice cream truck playing "The Bear Went Over The Mountain" (well, part of it -- the lyrics to the music box would have been "THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN, THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN, THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN...") cruised by. The poor guy must have had his head in the ice cream freezer for the last six months.
At Tower Records, it was business as usual. I tried to eavesdrop on as many people as possible to see if any of them were telling their longtime companions, "Oh, I would _never_ watch Seinfeld. My tastes are much too _sophisticated_. Hey, they've got the soundtrack to 'Meet The Deedles'!" but I didn't hear anyone saying that. On the second floor, the Muzak was playing that Weezer song "Buddy Holly" ("Oh, ah, oh, I look just like Buddy Holly, and you're Mary Tyler Moore...") but they weren't showing the video, which has them singing that same insipid song to Ritchie and Fonzie in Al's diner. Why can't people go back to making music videos without any crappy music in them, what they used to call "video art" around 1980?
I bought a CD that had the original recording of the good version of the "Match Game '77" theme (composed by Robert Israel, not the Bert Kaempfert song used from 1962-1979) and another that had the original soundtracks to several of my favorite movies (i Diafanoidi Vengono da Marte, i Criminali Della Galassia, il Planeta Errante, and la Morte Viene dal Pianeta Aytin -- their spelling, apparently the last is about a piano from outer space.)
Although Tower Records had people of various degrees of loserness in it, besides me, Star Market was relatively empty, except for people conversing in Chinese and so forth. And one of those homeless guys who has a Walkman and walks about ten steps and then his brain suddenly locks up tight and for the rest of the night he stands there in the middle of an aisle staring ahead until some kindly cop pushes his reset button.
At the checkout, I bought The National Enquirer (actually, "The *NEW* National Enquirer") because a cover story was "BOB HOPE: I'M NOT DEAD YET!" Turns out he says he's not dead. The main cover story is about how celebrities *always* lie. So I'm going to keep checking up on the late Mr. Bob Hope until I can find the proof I need to get him buried. THE DEATH CERTIFICATE IS OUT THERE.
Then I came home and watched my tape of the final episode, which was considerably worse than I had hoped.
-- K.
WAAH, JERRY SEINFELD
DIED BEFORE BOB HOPE!