I know things

Happy middle-of-the-week day, everyone.  Not much on talking about "hump day," so there you go!

I think I had mentioned before that I've had some fun with several of my grandkids by referring to myself as Richard, the Knower of All Things.  Most of them chuckle along with me, but our middle granddaughter just can't bring herself to admit that I know a thing or two, and responds by calling me Ricardo.

You never can tell.

Anyway, I don't have a specific theme for today's post, so it's a little bit of several categories.  Here goes:

We watch a show called Morning Joe on MSNBC most weekday mornings, as they routinely discuss politics and national issues and have a pretty good variety of guests on the show.  I began watching a number of years ago, when Joe Scarborough, the primary host and former Congressman, very suddenly replaced Don Imus on MSNBC after Imus offended some viewers with one or another of his comments.  The co-hosts of the show were and are Mika Brzezinski, a reporter on this network and a couple of others and the daughter of former Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski, and Willie Geist, who had previously worked for CNN and is the son of retired CBS News correspondent Bill Geist.

I liked the show immediately, as it generally featured a literal table discussion of up to six people, often talking over each other, and addressing all manner of issues, whether they be political, social, cultural or otherwise.  Smart talk, unfiltered.

However, somewhere along the line Joe and Mika both divorced their spouses and wound up a couple and are now married and then they began hosting the show remotely (and this was pre-pandemic).  Willie was often alone in their New York studio with a handful of guests.  Then COVID changed how so many television programs were produced and it became rather common for everyone to be on a remote connection.

Once in a while they return to the original format, now that most everyone who appears is vaccinated and it's therefore safe to gather in person.  But it's no more than a day a week, and that's disappointing.  I miss the old days.

Speaking of which, it was announced yesterday that current MSNBC anchor and host and former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will be leaving the network at year's end.  No announced plan of what's next, and his fall from grace was rather silly, in retrospect.  Wish him well in whatever comes next, as he's only 62.

We watch enough television that we actually have favorite commercials, and perhaps you do, too.  Our current favorites are those featuring a faux therapist named Dr. Rick (no relation) who helps new homeowners from turning into their parents.  All part of a series of spots for Progressive Insurance (which already featured Flo and her fellow workers in pretty funny bits).  Have to see to appreciate.

There's also a character actor whose name I don't know, and he has appeared in commercials for Chevy trucks and Spectrum, a cable TV and cellphone provider.  Witty and snarky in both, and while I know he doesn't write the commercials, he performs the lines with gusto.

Then there are the countless commercial voice-over performers.  Sometimes they're famous people (for instance, did you know that Will Arnett does the Reese's commercials?) and often not.  To wit, there's a female voice doing commercials for Dairy Queen and more recently Wal-Mart.  The speaker is hard to understand at times because she speaks at a somewhat low pitch and more breathes than speaks the words in the script.  Always puzzling that people who lack good diction are hired for this kind of work.  That I don't care for her style probably guarantees that we'll hear more from her.

And where does it say that using a narrator with a foreign accent adds cachet to a product?  Lexus has used a female voice with a British accent for quite some time to advertise their Japanese cars.  Odd choice, as is some entity promoting gold as a way to secure one's wealth, narrated by a man with a Scottish accent.  I don't get it.

I just finished assembling this year's Christmas cards.  Yes, we still send out about 35 to folks we don't see during the year, as well as family members and others whom we want to remember and update on our family.  Getting them ready extra early in the Louis DeJoy era of Postal Service inefficiency.  Did you know that the USPS announced HIGHER rates for shipping specifically for the holiday season?  Why, it makes a guy think harder about using FedEx or UPS!

I hope that you have a good rest-of-the-week!