A number of years ago, when I was visiting northern New Brunswick over the Christmas holidays, I took a drive up to Campbellton. On my return trip, I found CBC Radio and a program I’d never heard before: The Vinyl Cafe, hosted by Stuart McLean. McLean was telling a story–a long story–about the Christmas misadventures of a couple named Dave and Morley, who lived in a typical neighborhood. It was about culture misunderstandings and good intentions going terribly amiss, and it was hilarious.
At some point after that–I’m not sure if it was during the same trip or not–I picked up a copy of Vinyl Cafe Unplugged at the airport in Toronto. Somehow it ended up packed away and I didn’t rediscover it until a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that Christmas story and decided it would be the perfect book to read to my wife at bedtime. Each anecdote takes about 30 minutes. We finished that book last night. Most of the stories were light and amusing. Some had good punchlines while others sort of petered out. The one called “Odd Jobs” was hilarious–it was predicated on the theory that men have an innate sense of when a friend is using his power tools and they all show up with their own favorite weapon of choice to wreak mayhem (like on Home Improvement). The narrator theorizes that the Berlin Wall didn’t come down because of a failure of communism–it was just a weekend home improvement project gone terribly wrong.
The night before last I read the story about the Christmas pageant Morley was organizing for the elementary school and I swear I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. I was crying at times. I could see a line or so ahead of where I was reading and just knowing what was coming next cracked me up. The thing is, I remember pageants like that from when I was a kid and although none of them ever approached the level of disaster this one did, it all rang true. And then the close-out story was so touching that it invoked tears of a different sort. Having finished that book, I immediately bought Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe for Kindle and read the first story, an amusing tale about growing older and still finding the magic in life. I highly recommend McLean’s books if you’re looking for something to take you away to an amusing and fun place. Vinyl Cafe apparently airs on NPR as well as CBC Radio and McLean has a podcast on iTunes.
NCIS was interesting this week. Whenever they bring Tobias Fornell into a story, you know it’s going to have some light moments. Adding the wife he and Gibbs have in common doubles those odds. The wife came off as something of a shrew at times, but the roundhouse punch at the end was unexpected. With the case resolved and the status quo returned, Diane goes to a familiar place, the basement of Gibbs’ house, where they rehash their relationship. Gibbs admits that he liked Diane but…at which point Diane steps in and says but there’ll never be another Shannon for you, referring to his first wife, who was murdered. There’s not much to say to that. The truth is obvious. But then Diane, as she’s leaving, says: You were my Shannon. Whoa. K.O. punch.
This was one wild week on Survivor. Last week, Ozzie volunteered to go to Redemption Island. He figured he could win and return at the merge, which they assumed would be this week. If he lost, or if the merge didn’t happen when they thought it would, the plan would have looked like a stupid move. However, everything played out as they hoped and Cochran even gave him back his hidden immunity idol. Then things started to go south. Fast. Cochran was supposed to be the secret double agent, pretending to be up for grabs. Except, there was so much truth in what he was saying that he started to believe his own copy. And what’s funnier…the other team didn’t. Coach had him figured out from the beginning. So it goes to tribal, the vote is tied, so they vote again and it comes out 6-4 instead of 5-5, and a strong player from Ozzie’s tribe goes to Redemption Island. To top things off, Cochran immediately confesses that he flipped. Immediately. What a maroon!
The truth is, everyone who didn’t have some sort of immunity was willing to play the numbers game. If the second vote had ended in a tie, they would have drawn lots and there was a 10% chance that any one of them would have been evicted. The question to me isn’t: why did Cochran flip? It’s: why didn’t more people realize that by evicting someone, even a former fellow tribe member, you reduce your chances of being evicted from 10% to zero? Makes sense to me. I might have done the same thing. But I would have kept my mouth shut. Next week should be interesting. Ozzie’s tribe, all of sudden, has the short straw. It was 6-6 going into the day, they lost one and had one defect so it’s effectively 7-4 in favor of Coach’s tribe. But who knows? Anything can happen.
