There is quite a bit of “scuttlebutt” on the googles today as to whether actress Anna Torv will leave the Fox series Fringe, killing off the show’s protagonist Olivia Dunham. Scuttlebutt is what we science show geeks do when any small ripple appears in our isolated entertainment universe-we scuttle around on our bums looking for clues as to the direction of our stories. Often we may pick fights with Eliza Dushku scuttlebutts, or Battlestar Galactica fans, but we’re generally content to watch our shows and search for clues (I was an MST3K scuttlebutt for years. Yep. A grown man watching puppets critique bad movies). The real question for fans at the mid-season finale (i.e.-American Idol break) is not whether any of the actors will leave, be it Torv, Joshua Jackson, or John Noble. They are the franchise and will more than likely see the show out. No, it’s a question of whether Fringe will rebound and recapture its quality form next season. There is quite a lot lacking in the episodes that have aired since the end of the World Series and it would be nice to see a rebound to earlier form.

Earlier this year I wrote a  post about my excitement at the return of Fringe for the Fall (“T.G.I.Fringe: The Return of T.V.’s Sharpest Drama” 9/18/09). I was and still am enthused about the show, despite the fact that it has not lived up to the quality of season 1. This is the expected sophomore slump. Season 2 started out with FBI agent Dunham returning from/to  the alternate dimension and confronting William Bell (Leonard Nimoy). Viewers were treated during the first season to an episodic creschendo building up as Dr. Jones worked to bridge the gap between parallel earths and bring super soldiers into this world. This season, after a few Fall episodes, the story thread (the Pattern) was left behind and viewers are left with to stand-alone shows for much of the season. Often good stand-alone shows, but not part of the overall story arc. Little disappointments are creeping in. Has anyone seen the Man in the Hat since one his brethren was killed earlier this season? What of director Broyles? After his one episode back story revelation, he’s also been relegated to the ancillary character file. Now, there is a “pattern” that each episode follows rigorously and some of the fun of the show is gone. No more Walter-isms. No mention of Massive Dynamic. No, each week follows another one of Dr. Bishop’s attempts to reconcile one of his misbegotten creations as it causes havoc in the world.

Sadly, the problems started with cost cutting at Warner Brothers and Fox. Kirk Acevado’s character agent Charlie Francis found himself thrown into a furnace by a dimension crossing shape shifter early this season. The reality, as Acevado has publicly fumed about, was that his firing (along with core staff) as part of a budget purge. Charlie was brought back, to the confusion of many, in a re-heated leftover episode that didn’t even make the season 1 DVD cut. Killing Charlie was the start of poor Fringe writing and formulaic episodes designed solely to have something in the can. So, we’ve now reached finale time and next week’s show looks like a barn burner. Still, a show that gave us a freshman season of barn burners could have done better all along.

(A very grateful thank you to everyone who has written a comment on the blog over the past few months. Due in part to my being a noob at this, and to the reliability of the filters on Word Press, I have only just discovered some of the things readers have said recently.  As always, you all are valued more than anything and constantly keep me honest {and not writing in a vacuume} )

During my bright college days in the mid-nineties, I had this vision of channeling the spirit of Forrest Gump. The tag line from the famous film was “You’ll never see the world the same way once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump.“  The tag was right. I suppose every person has a movie that informs and manages to elucidate their character in certain ways and Gump was mine. The fifteen year old argument will persist that Pulp Fiction should have gotten all the laurels that Forrest Gump received as it result of its universal success. It is also true that Gump spawned many unnecessary cultural touchstones (never mind the chain restaurants and the fact that Dubya lists it as his favorite movie). I just wanted to live the Gumpian life. I saw the picture in theaters more times than all the Star Wars movies combined. Forrest Gump was my depression buster, the movie that made me want to get out of college and go live life. It is only now as I live my ponderous existence that I realize just being alive often forces us down the Gumpian path. This is not a post, in fact, about the fictional novel/film character, but about my Grandfather, myself and the road of life we not-so-aimlessly run along.

My Grandfather, George Stanley Robinson, passed away last night. He was 87 years old. By all rights, this is not a day for posting some cheeky little blog note. I found out an hour and a half ago and have tried to see the world through his eyes for some of that time. Grandpa embodied all the 1990′s cliches-both that of Gump and  Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation ones. Just by virtue of being born in 1922 he managed to live through nearly every great upheaval of the 20th Century. He was a post-Armistice baby and suffered polio (which showed in his mangled thumb, a childhood fixation of mine). Grandpa, forced by the Great Depression and the greater need of his family quit school during the eighth grade. He lived his childhood during the rise of Michigan’s auto industry. A native of the Flint area, he secured a “good” job on the line at General Motors. When war broke out in Europe, He was forced off the assembly line and drafted into the Army. During training with the 82nd Airborne, due to insolence, Grandpa’s managed to get his rank stripped and bumped out of the first wave to land at Normandy. Most of those he trained with didn’t live through the experience. He eventually did land in France and wound up in Belgium at the Battle of the Bulge. He described the horror of war to me as “waiting in the snow for a week at Christmas, hoping to not be killed by Hitler’s troops.” Grandpa came home, met and married my grandmother within a year. They raised three daughters together, one (my mom) severely handicapped. They managed to see three teenage girls through high school years during the late 1960′s. He worked as a metal finisher, machinist and truck driver, retiring in the 1980′s. By the end of the 90′s he was facing that one last upheaval for so many Americans of his century: seeing my Grandmother through Alzheimer’s Disease. He spent the last few years making himself sick, not letting on how ill she really was. He went with her to the nursing home over Thanksgiving. Partly to take care of his congestive heart failure, but more (I suspect) to make she Grandma’s needs were care of.

Life is not necessarily what happens while you’re making other plans, but what happens to you while you’re living. So it was for Grandpa, so it is for me. Life will never be the same now that I’ve seen it through his eyes (and my own).

The following is a preview of Wednesday, January 27th’s State of The Union Address by President Barack Obama:

• “America is better and stronger than it was just twelve months ago. With the help of Congress, we’ve seen job growth in vital industries such as escort services and pharmaceuticals for middle-aged men.”
• “We’re saddened to see Press Secretary Robert Gibbs leave his post to take a job at an Illinois Chevy dealership. He couldn’t sell you health care reform, but Gibbs might be able to get you a sweet deal on a gently used Cavalier.”
• “In order to counteract the budget shortfall, all government agencies are to be outsourced to Mexico.”
• “The Boy Scouts of America will now be fully absorbed into The Department of Homeland Security. The Scouts will now be helping old ladies through airport security and guarding our port system against the threat of bears.”
• “I’ll be retiring following the end of this press confer…oh, wait. I thought this was my Minnesota Vikings speech.”
• “American scientists have made great strides this year. Our Six Million Dollar Man program has produced bionic soldiers for just under forty billion dollars apiece.”
• “Its taken a year, but we’ve found a collar Dick Cheney can’t knaw through.”
• “Pants on the ground…yeah, I know that was so two weeks ago, but it just gets stuck in your head!”
• “In lieu of stimulus checks this year we’ll be sending out cigarettes. Mmmm….smooth, rich, American made cigarettes.”
• “James Cameron will replace Ben Bernacke as Federal Reserve Chairman, since Cameron is the only person in America with a clue about  money.”
• “E pluribus unum will be changed on all American coinage to ‘Watch Your Back’.”
• “Thanks for coming out tonight. We can’t validate your parking, but feel free to take a handful of Watch Your Back nickles!”

Every third weekend I’m in charge of the hospital cafeteria. Since we have very few customers during the off-peak days, the job becomes like curating a food museum. Physicians don’t schedule any elective procedures on Saturday or Sunday and that is just as well. After all, who’d want to have a gallbladder removed or false eyelashes excised by a doctor who can’t concentrate because he’d rather be home watching the Pro Bowling Tour on ABC?  The last sentence shows that I get all of my medical knowledge from endless games of Operation. So, I put pans of vulcanized eggs out for the skeleton crew along with lots of Sea-Monkey bacon and go about polishing all the door handles for eight hours a day. Every once in a while I find myself running the food museum on a weekend in which we have a larger number of staff members and the E.R. is jumping. You never hope for knife fights to break out locally, but they do promote job security and bolster the economy. This past weekend was an example of this. The temperature in the region had risen to a balmy 40 degrees and there were lots of people in the Emergency Room. You can’t just leave your house after a month of heavy snow and expect to not get into a brawl. At least not in southern Michigan. This extra staffing, by the way, is how I found myself having to tell a nurse to not eat from the cafeteria trash cans.

My cafeteria is overseen by a managed food service I’ll call Gigantor Industries (a division of Gigantor Laundry Services). The company managers insist that we display real food at all times to give the consumer and idea of what our specials that day might be. Unlike plastic food, the real stuff deteriorates rapidly. This doesn’t stop random people from walking by the displays and eating them. Disgusting displays that have been out for 6 to 8 hours. Doesn’t matter. Some people have purchased the displays and eaten them. At least once, a visitor has taken the entire display and run out the door. People honestly don’t care what they ingest. This seems to apply to trash, too. Yesterday, I threw away products that had passed their expiration two weeks ago. A genius float pool nurse dug to the bottom of the can and brought the items to the counter. When I explained the harm in selling them to her, she took the spoiled goods and bragged to a doctor that she’d gotten free food. Someday I’ll get a grown up job, I swear.

During some posts it may seem that I enjoy making fun of nurses. To the contrary, I think that nursing is one of the most demanding and often heart wrenching professions a person can give their life to. Most of the nurses I know are dedicated, extremely intelligent and ultra decisive.  Nursing is not for the weak-one of the many reasons I’ll never take it up. I concede that there are happy garbage diggers in every profession, including mine. I just hope she didn’t immediately go and treat patients. Onward and Out of The Trash.

Thank whomever its Friday! This third week of January has been several days too long. Just under the surface of actual news this week has bubbled an undercurrent of the disgusting and lascivious. Stories I shouldn’t care about, but there they are. Bikini pictures of Octomom and the sugar mama symdrome. In my infinite attempt to throw stuff at the wall like a bored chimp, here are the stories that have been on my mind this past week.

Octomom Nadya Suleman posed recently for Star magazine in a series of smallish bikinis. The story purports that Suleman lost 150 pounds in the year since having eight babies and she herself is quoted as not having had any surgical augmentation in order to model swimwear. I don’t read as much high quality supermarket material as I should and Star is obviously the highest, so I should trust them. Suleman does look eerily like a product of science. While Star readers should use the photos as motivation for fitness and health, the reality is that Octomom purchased her looks (as well as care for her 14 small children while she jets to various locations for photos and interviews). Lesson: Have 14 kids. The tabs and TV networks will foot the bill and you can get the body you always wanted.

2.My other favorite story this week was NPR (I know, I pay too much attention to their stuff) writer Jennifer Ludden’s on the trend toward wives being bigger breadwinners than husbands. The Pew Trust has gauged the percentage at 22% which is a rise from below 4% in 1970. My wife and I shared an uneasy laugh about this since she makes three times as much annual income than I do (not counting semi-annual bonus money). Then she made me rub her feet and get her some more gin. I pointed out that I could survive on my hamburger flipping income and showed her that my adequate, dozen year old Honda and fifteen year old tube television would suffice if she left me. This caused another laugh and I was made to brave the January cold in just my loincloth and wash her car.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122612096

Lesson learned. I love you honey. Thanks for letting me back in the house. Onward and Upward.

Today was my day off from making hamburgers at the hospital. This meant that I only spent four hours in the building. Even my boss questioned aloud why she bothers to give me time off. In the afternoon I had to give a short lecture on compassion and empathy as hospital wide goals for the year. A nurse interrupted, and she was summarily pushed out of a window. Compassionately, of course. During the morning, I took my wife Lori for an m.r.i. Well, being the modern woman she is, Lori took herself for the scan. I provided really good coffee with my payroll account. She didn’t marry me for nothing. I found myself increasingly nervous for Lori and “mother henned” her to death after the tests finished. Even if the scans don’t indicate anything, I still worry myself sick over her. This is the nature of loving someone for life, I suppose. Late in the day, I was still thinking about her, hoping and praying that all goes well, with the  The Roe Conn Show playing in the background. The topic  was that moldy oldie, The John Edwards Baby Mama Saga. The story managed to mingle with my own thoughts about Lori, as these messed up things do, and I began to wonder how anybody could cheat on a spouse stricken with cancer.

If you aren’t familiar with the sordid story of Edwards’ affair with videographer Rielle Hunter, no worries. The relationship  is to become a Broadway musical entitled Love In The Time Of Obama. Edwards finally confirmed that Hunter’s child is his this morning. Never mind that the affair took place so long ago that the Edwards/Hunter baby was born when “The kid is not my son” was a popular song phrase. I’m not even getting into the details of the story. My biggest issue is that the man fathered a child with another woman while his wife was between battles with breast cancer. This being a fairly honest blog, the truth is that it could happen to any of us. Hey, I’m not above posting underwear photos of Megan Fox, after all. Then again, this doesn’t have much to do with physical beauty. Angelina Jolie could descend as if from the heavens at any point and it wouldn’t change my feelings for Lori. No, it’s a deeper issue within the murderers row of unfaithful public figures.

President Clinton, Senator Edwards, Steve Phillips, Tiger Woods. During the last year I’ve had fun writing about their extramarital affairs, but the reality is that they all cheated with women of less than astounding physical attractiveness. The only answer is sycophant-ism. Sometimes just the hint of understanding and human warmth can make any of us upright knuckle draggers lose our composure a bit. We like kind, smiling women who agree with us a lot. Sometimes we end up going to Costa Rica (i.e., the Appalachian Trail) to find that level of sycophantic groupie. I don’t sympathize with Edwards, or the way he’s handled this situation. There is part of me that wonders if he may have been so ground down by years of watching his wife go through treatments that part of him snapped. In other words, thank the compliment giver, shake hands (not in The Graduate sense) and move on. Don’t listen to the spin from well wishers. Sure, like I would handle things any better. Onward and Upward*

*Otto, the faithful editor of Spatula In The Wilderness has recently started pointing out that Onward and Upward is a redundant phrase. Thanks Otto for pulling one needle-like redundancy out of the haystack of mindless repetition that is this blog!

At 23 years old I was stranded briefly in a medical ward with nothing to do for 16 hours a day but read from a stack of 1970′s mass market novels. The books were a very female centered (polite way of saying “chick lit”) and dated. Having no contact with the outside world, however, I read my way through many of the offerings. The first novel I picked up was Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which made time pass, but probably wasn’t a good choice for isolation reading. Some of the other books included Coleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds and two of Eric Segal’s best known novels, Love Story and Oliver’s Story. These were not my desert island picks by any means, but now I treasure that strange passage in my youth ( not to mention having 16 hours a day to do nothing but read) and those novels that got me through the long days .

Eric Segal passed away this past Sunday after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease. His daughter Francessca eulogized him with a comparison between the way his mind and body were ravaged by decades of disease and  the destruction of the library at Alexandria.  Here was a man who taught classical literature as a profession, yet gave the literary world an enduring signpost to remember the ’70′s by. To hear that the way Parkinson’s destroyed him saddened me.  Even if you don’t like the novel, or screen version of Love Story, you can’t deny a certain appeal.  The  barricades of old social mores had broken down and…gasp…people were having sex without the benefit of marriage (or monogamy). Along came Love Story in 1970 with its old fashioned tough love tale of an embattled relationship, marriage, disease and death.  Between the lines is something timeless. The story of a rich young man and a hardscrabble college girl. The story of living out a relationship until death severs it. The film on the other hand…

The film version of Love Story is a gauzy window into early 1970′s life,  a moment from the era trapped in amber forever. I’ve watched it several times while flipping past AMC and harbor no shame in admitting as much. Love Story has the feel of an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. The tinny soundtrack, which went on to win an Oscar, is at times unbearable. I have thought  that every couple considering marriage should watch the last 45  minutes of the movie. There is a lesson in watching Oliver and Jenny as she races toward the grave and how they cope with the misery of cancer so early in married life. Yep, I’m a weepy, sentimental wuss bag, but I don’t care. While the ambiguity of a modern, non-Love Story like (500) Days Of Summer may be more sophisticated viewing, sometimes the sentimentality of watching Ali Mcgraw and Ryan O’Neal not survive 1970 is simple, clean entertainment.

I went on and on about Love Story, but Segal should be remembered for screenwriting Yellow Submarine. All of the dialogue which is miscredited as “Beatle-speak” is actually the work of the classics professor. So, thank you for the years of work professor. Onward and Upward.

The Martin Luther King holiday is always one of my favorite working days at the hospital. The cooks have an opportunity to make their favorite dishes and we’ll eat lots of great nearly home cooked food without a lot of guilt. The basement I work in is with reminders of Dr. King’s life and work and we’ll dine on smothered chicken, baked macaroni and hot water corn bread. This has been a traumatic year for much of our staff. Several have felt the effects of poor diet and years of inattention to diabetic and stroke issues. Nevertheless, for one day we’ll count our blessings, enjoy the food and consider all that has transpired in everyone’s lives. I’ve never worked with a group of people so fully aware of their history and so mindful of their achievements in life. A year ago this week, I had one of the greatest working experiences of my short life. On inauguration morning, as I waited on customers, the sound of Sam Cooke’s anthem A Change Is Going To Come started to wend its way from the kitchen outward. This was not the “Change” of some spray tanned, suburban 16-year-old American Idol wannabe. The song that carried out and began to be picked up by everyone in hearing distance was neither mournful or overly glib. This “Change” was proud and defiant and knowingly sung from the top of the proverbial mountain top. Of course, in my infinite jerkitude, I ruined part of the moment. Someone scrawled “Change We Can Believe In!” on the menu board, which I answered with a scribbled “I only believe in cash.”  So much for sensitivity.

My favorite game of the past few days has been “Spot the Second City Influence.”  Chicago Sun-Times writer Mike Thomas recently published Second City Unscripted, the oral history of the famed Chicago/Toronto comedy clubs. The book traces the history of Second City and its heirs (SCTV, Saturday Night Live) through the recollections of the actors and directors who’ve made it successful. I am loath to admit that I’ve never taken in a Second City production, despite being just down the road from Chicago. After reading the interviews in Thomas’ book, I am making plans to do the pilgrimage. Unscripted details the career beginnings at Second City of hundreds of comic actors/actresses of the last five decades and reveals to the reader that nearly every TV program and feature comedy of the last two generations probably has a Second City alum involved at some level. Check out the book. I’m going to my corner to read, stare into space and mutter “pha.”                 www.secondcityunscripted.com

This has been a week I’d like to leave off the record when it comes time to document the journey of my soul.   I’m spending the weekend at home, fighting a cold with two old homeopathic remedies-mass quantities of orange juice and jalapeño Buffalo wings. There is really nothing for me to complain about. Good home, quality food, and a marathon of Modern Marvels on the TV. ‘Nothing like eating some face melting wings and watching the manufacturing processes for peanut butter, tar and snow shovels. I am in the process of composing a letter to executives at the History Channel persuading them to do a half hour on Megan Fox. The term Modern Marvels absolutely screams for the unique combination of genetic composition and incredible organic structural engineering that is the 22 year-old actress, Megan Fox.

Yes, this another one of my cheesy posts about a favorite entertainer. In the case of Megan Fox, I think at least one terribly juvenile blog post seems warranted. The actress is the star of the Transformers movies and the high school bite-fest Jennifer’s Body. Those who’ve worked with Fox claim that she isn’t all that bright. Huh. This doesn’t trouble me all that much. No, she really deserves a profile by Modern Marvels. The show, which gives viewers the history and techniques used to produce modern creations, could interview her parents and find out exactly what conditions were in place to produce such a person. Possibly, by finding out everything about her educational background, the school systems could be tailored to crank out  Megan Fox nation. She probably isn’t  the most brilliant actress of our generation, but I don’t think much of the male population cares. In the meantime…there was a cheese-tastic profile of stars in recent/racy ad campaigns (prominently featuring Fox) in a January 12th Daily News post.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/galleries/scintillating_celebrity_endorsements/scintillating_celebrity_endorsements.html

I don’t usually talk about much that happens in Saint Joe, but I  want to keep putting  the story out there about my friend Jason Lee. Even though we first heard that his show was canceled over Thanksgiving weekend, support for Lee (and family) has been building in the area ever since. Good guy, good show. Enough said. http://www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2010/01/14/features/1102574.txtd.

( 2/2 note: I apologize to anybody who has recently clicked the above link, as the HP is now charging for online peeks at it’s daily fish wrapping, er,  I mean news articles. In the links to the left is a tab for Jason, and you can keep up with the local movement at the Save The Jason Lee Show  Facebook page)