Death of a Bachelor

by Bob Sparrow

Death of a Bachelor by Panic at the Disco was the first song that Jeff and Pam Sparrow danced to at their wedding.

Pam & Jeff

The ‘festivities’ started a week ago Thursday with the arrival of the ‘Minnesota Gang’ which included Linda’s 93 year old mother, Phyllis, Linda’s sister, Starlet, her husband Donnie and Starlet’s three daughters, Denise, Debbie and Melissa.  Melissa came in from her home in Houston and was glued to the TV watching ‘her’ Astro defeat the Yankees to earn a trip to the World Series.  Linda’s brother, Dale flew in from Florida. My brother, Jack and wife Sharon came in from Santa Maria on Thursday and our daughter, Dana dropped by to see everyone and to see what was going on.  My sister, Suzanne (you remember her from last week’s blog) and niece, Shelley came in from Arizona on Friday.  All arriving for the marriage of our son, Jeff to the now, newest Sparrow, Pam Lechtenberg (her last name is now so much easier for me to spell).

Some of the amazing Barnes-Sparrow ladies at rehearsal dinner. Missing: Shelley (Sparrow) Watson, Sharon Sparrow

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at our house and daughter, Stephanie joined the aforementioned group as did all the out-of-towners from Pam’s side of the family, including Pam’s parents, Tom and Betty.  Jeff and Pam wanted a Hawaiian theme dinner, so I brought in hundreds of palm trees that had to be back at the nursery by Monday.  Just kidding, those who have been in my back yard know that it’s already has a fairly tropical theme.  We had 55 people coming to dinner and we worried about lighting and heating and wind and . . . almost everything else one could worry about, but all for naught – it was a perfect evening, not too cool and no wind – the Hawaiian gods were smiling on us.  The caterer’s food was very good and the open bar seemed to keep everyone happy.  Gosh, those young kids can drink!!

Addison pushing Will down the aisle

One of my favorite photo of the night: Jeff dancing with his grandmother, Phyllis Barnes

The Wedding ceremony took place on Saturday at sunset on the Hornblower’s Endless Dreamswhich cruised Newport Bay on a weather-perfect evening.  The wedding ceremony which was on the top, or third deck, commenced with Addison, the flower girl, pushing Will, Pam’s sister, Jen’s son, down the aisle in a small car, followed by the wedding party and finally Pam escorted by father, Tom.  The dinner was served shortly thereafter on the first deck and once the speeches and toasts were done, the party was adjourned to the 2nd deck where the DJ and bar were located and the dancing commenced.  The four-hour evening went by in a flash and the next thing I knew there were 25 people back at my house to finish off the evening.

For my short speech I welcomed Pam into our family and told her that she would add to the already-great legacy of the Sparrow-Barnes women.  I told Jeff that he reminded me of two people, my Dad and Linda’s Mom, two of the nicest, kindest, most caring people I know and reminded him that while his mother and I really aren’t all that nice and kind and caring, we carried the gene for all that stuff and passed it along to him.  You’re welcome!

Best Man, Chase Johnson giving his hilarious and heart-felt toast to Jeff & Pam

 

Linda, making sure her mother didn’t fall when dancing with Jeff

 

 

 

 

Sister, Suzanne, with empty cake plate in hand, ‘photo-bombing’ an otherwise classy picture of the ‘Barnes-Sparrow’ girls with Jeff

It was an exhausting and exhilarating weekend and it was great to connect to family members new and old.  Jeff and Pam are going to take a few months to rest up before heading to Thailand for their honeymoon in February.

Thanks to all who came and made it such a great event.

MY BROTHER IS IN A FOG

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

 

Yes, it’s me again.  My brother has a good excuse for being absent this morning.  In fact, one could even say he has been in a fog.  This past week he was playing a special role –  Father of Groom. His youngest child, and only son, Jeff, got married over the weekend.  It was a fabulous affair but I’m not going to provide any spoilers.  My brother will be back next week with a full description of the festivities and pictures of the highlights.  Instead, I’m going to follow up on my post of last week because several of you (okay, maybe it was three) asked me for recommendations for the British shows I’m streaming in lieu of the news.  I’ll start with some of the ones I’ve already watched and then provide the results of my research on the subject.  Fair warning:  everyone has different tastes.  For example, Fleabag on Amazon’s Prime Video ran away with the Emmy awards.  I watched two episodes and just couldn’t get excited about it.  So, for better or worse, here are my recommendations.

  1. Downton Abby (Amazon) – This is first because it’s so obvious.  You need to watch this if you are at all interested in English lifestyles and good acting.  There’s a reason it was renewed for six seasons and now is a feature film.  It has some unexpected twists and the high-arch eyebrow of Maggie Smith’s tart observations.
  2. Victoria (Amazon and PBS) – This is still a current offering from the PBS Masterpiece Theater program, with Season 4 due out this winter.  But you can catch up on the first three seasons on Amazon.  Again, great history and the bonus of getting to see Victoria’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Dash, for whom my CKCS was named.
  3. The Crown (Netflix and HBO) – Just when you thought this series couldn’t get any better they announced that the delightful and very talented Olivia Coleman is going to take over the role of Queen Elizabeth and the quirky Helena Bonham Carter will play Princess Margaret in the next season.  I can’t wait!
  4.  Broadchurch (Netflix) – speaking of Olivia Coleman, she co-stars in this murder mystery that carries on over three seasons.  Well worth watching.  In fact, I recommended it to a friend and she thanked me for it.  So…you’re welcome.
  5.  The Fall (Netflix) – hurry up if you want to watch this because it goes off of Netflix at the end of October.  Like Broadchurch, it is a three season series that continues the same storyline about a mass murderer in Belfast throughout all three seasons.  Okay, not exactly light viewing but it stars Gillian Anderson and she is reason enough to watch.
  6.  The Great British Baking Show (Netflix) – I needed something a little joyful after watching The Fall so what better to turn to than this wonderful show that features 12 bakers each season vying to become the best baker in Britain.  After all, there is cake involved.  Lots of cake.  The contestants are engaging and it’s actually interesting to compare desserts across the pond from what we typically serve here.  The first few seasons featured the lovely Mary Cherry (yes, that’s really her name) but frankly all of the hosts and comedians they feature on the show have been terrific.
  7.  Sherlock (Netflix) – This program aired on PBS for a few years but now you can stream all four seasons.  The plots are always tricky, as in hard to figure out, and Benedict Cumberbatch is so fun to watch.  There are rumors about a Season 5 – let’s hope so.
  8. Poldark (Amazon) – Again, this is a Masterpiece Theater program that is currently showings the fifth and final season on PBS, but you can catch up on the first four seasons on Amazon.  The series takes place in Cornwall and the stunning views of the cliffs and countryside alone make it worth watching.  The story is very compelling – good guys vs. bad, poor vs rich, workers vs dandies.  WELL worth watching.
  9. Call the Midwife (Netflix) – For a wonderful throw-back show you can’t do much better than this  The series starts in the 1950’s, featuring midwives in East London, still riding bicycles to their appointments and delivering babies at home.  This show is also still current, with the latest season taking place in the mid-60’s.  It is fascinating to follow the progression of societal norms and maternity practices, not to mention hairstyles and music, over that decade.

I could go on keep going but I do want to get to some of the shows that came up in just about every result in my research for “best British shows to stream”.  So, here they are in no particular order:  The Bodyguard (Netflix), A Very English Scandal (Amazon), Peaky Blinders (Netflix), Lovesick (Netflix), Happy Valley (Netflix), Luther (Netflix), The IT Crowd (Netflix), Father Brown (Netflix) and Doc Martin (Acorn).  

Finally, if you want to skip back to this side of the pond and feel good about yourself, Netflix offers Nailed It!, an American take-off on the British baking shows.  The contestants are shown a lovely dessert drawn from the impossible-to-replicate photos on Pinterest and then asked to create it.  There are three seasons ready for streaming and it’s worth watching for the humor and to see just how out of touch people are about their baking abilities. Honestly, by the end you’ll feel so much better about your lopsided birthday cake.

If you have any recommendations please share them in the “Comments” section here.  After all, we’re going into an election year and we need to get prepared.

 

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO SPEW

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

I met up with a friend at the gym last week and as she was whirling away on the stationary bike she tried to find an unbiased news report on one of the five TV’s in front of her.  “Where do you go to get unbiased news”, she asked, as she swiveled between CNN, Fox and MSNBC.   “Sesame Street”, I responded, “it tells me everything I need to get by in life”.  I was only half-kidding but it is a subject I’ve been thinking about in this increasingly divisive atmosphere we’re in.  As my brother correctly pointed out last week, we are Presbyterians so we don’t wade into the political fray in this forum.  However, I will observe that every network seems to have camped out on one part of the divide or the other and they’re all getting richer for it.  The networks obviously pander to their audience, grasping for ratings and ad revenue at the expense of our edification.

 

I know I’m not the only one who is disgusted by the news coverage.  Sure, I could watch C-SPAN all day long but that smacks of being a bit too nerdy, not to mention my tolerance for windbags is at low ebb right now.  I consulted my friend, Google, and found several charts that basically tell us what we already know – a few organizations (mostly print) try for impartiality, but most fall into either left-or-right leaning, and then there’s a whole category on the bottom of both sides that is garbage.  So, where DO we go?  I found a website, allsides.com, that provides articles on the same subject by left, center and right leaning print media.  That seems like a whole lot of reading for me.  I’m trying to think of a subject that would interest me enough to read three articles about it.  Outside of the Food section, I couldn’t think of one.   One could always go to mediabiasfactcheck.com but there are a LOT of ads and it’s a bit distracting.  Snopes, of course, has been the go-to for figuring out internet and Facebook claims but there are wide-ranging topics one has to wade through, such as today’s top question: Can the snakehead fish survive on land?  I’m sure that’s of great interest to the snakehead fish, but I venture it’s of limited interest to everyone else.

What I really long for are newscasts that present information in a factual way, and then have really smart people debate the issue in-depth so that I can sort through the facts and form my own opinion.  For those of us of a certain age, we can recall the 60 Minutes segment, Point/Counterpoint featuring Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick.  It was good old-fashioned sparring over a new topic each week and was always good entertainment as well.  So good, in fact, that it spawned the Saturday Night Live parody of it featuring Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin.  Its seminal line may have been, “Jane, you ignorant slut”.  Mark Shields and David Brooks do a political point/counterpoint on the Friday night edition of The PBS News Hour, but somehow, it just isn’t the same.

The upshot of all this is I barely watch the news at all anymore.  I read a bit and try to vary my periodicals so I get different opinions.  I’m saving my TV watching for Netflix.  I just looked up the 20 most popular British TV series, many of which have multiple seasons available for viewing.  The advantage of the British shows is that you get to hear that glorious accent and there aren’t any references to American politics.  I’m hoping these shows will keep me occupied though the 2020 election. If not, there’s always BritBox.

 

 

 

A Filler-buster: The Skinny Palms

by Bob Sparrow

Before: Notice brown husks and dead limbs

This blog is termed something that Suzanne and I have come to refer to as ‘ a filler’.  I haven’t gone anywhere in the last two weeks, except to the bathroom. Nothing interesting has happened to me, in fact nothing interesting has happened to anyone I’ve talked to in the last two weeks.  So if you’ve got something else to do or somewhere else to go, I’d suggest not reading the rest of this drivel and get on with the rest of your day.

The palm trees in the photos?  That probably tells you more about my last two weeks than you’d care to know.  In preparation for our son, Jeff, getting married and the rehearsal dinner at our house, I had all of my palm trees trimmed, more accurately, scalped.  There are 24 palms in my yard, 12 queen palms and 12 pigmy palms.  Some of my pigmy palms are 10 feet high, not sure why they’re called pigmies.  A crew of 5 came in over the weekend and blitzkrieged my yard – saws buzzing, limbs flying (tree limbs, no human limbs that I saw) and people hauling stuff out to the ‘chipper’ in the street.

After: skinny palms, even the sky looks bluer

You’re probably on pins and needles wondering what the trees looked like after the blitzkrieg.  Well, here’s a photo of those same three trees.  Looks like the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos for a weight-loss program, huh?  Actually it was similar to a money-loss program.

They also trimmed up two banana palms I have in my back garden, but I didn’t take a ‘before’ photo, so the ‘after’ photo wouldn’t really tell you the whole, thrill-packed story – you’ll just have to use your imagination . . . or not.  Are you still reading this crap?   I can guarantee you that it’s not going to get any better.

I’m a big college football fan and I could pontificate on the California law being run through the system currently allowing college athletes to profit from the use of their name or likeness.  Apparently a $100,000+ college education isn’t enough profit for a 19-20 year old.  On the surface it looks like it will only benefit the stars of the team, who would probably get a pro contract in another year or two anyway.  I’m sure there’s another side to the story, I just don’t want to hear it.

I understand we have an election year coming up; I’m sure the contests will be fair, civil and boring given the current atmosphere of political malaise in our country.  My sister and I will continue to stay above the fray and remain apolitical as we are both Presbyterians.

I’m guessing you hope I go somewhere, soon!  Me too, but with the approaching nuptials and the holidaze just around the corner (only about 11 more weeks to get that Christmas shopping done – nothing big for me this year, please!) I‘m afraid I’m house-bound for the remainder of the year, which could mean more ‘fillers’.

Hey, Suzanne, maybe we should just take the last quarter of the year off.  What are our readers going to do, ask for their money back?