This Is Boston, Not LA
As I sit in sunny Long Beach, waiting for my car to be delivered, here are a few things that I'll miss about home:
-Stump Trivia at Joe Sent Me. The Tuesday ritual. It took a while, but it was finally a place for me where people knew who the hell I was when I came in. What I liked to drink. What I liked to eat. Cute, familiar waitresses. The best trivia jockey in the biz. And many well played games by the team. I wish we had kept track of the winnings over the years.
-Sports. The stereotype is that Californians don't really have to care all that much about professional sports because there's so much to do all the time. Why bother rooting for a team that could crush your spirits when you could just go to the beach? Then again, lax interest in baseball around here means that I could get bleacher tickets on the day of the game for probably $10.
I'll also miss WEEI, obnoxious warts and all. It was the loud background chatter to my day.
One other thing: I'm not looking forward to getting up at 10:00 am on Sundays to watch the Pats play.
-The seasons. Man, I'll miss the seasons. I won't miss the torrential rain that's been coming down on New England this past week, but I'm gonna miss the fall, when the air is cool and crisp and you can smell the leaves for the last time. I'm gonna miss the winter and the cold, cold air. The beginning of spring -- what Massachusetts has of it -- when baseball starts and the sky is sunny and blue. Out here in California the weather is great 90% of the time. I find that a little boring.
-Dunkin Donuts.
-The Bull & Finch. Ah, what a place. Remember that time when Norm sat there and drank beer? Or when Woody was dumb or Sam was charmingly incorrigible? Oh wait, I hate Cheers.
-Most of all, I'll miss my very excellent friends and my terrific family. Stay well guys, and I'll see you all in September. Until then, Qapla'.
Labels: baseball, Boston, Dunkin Donuts, Klingonese, Los Angeles, sports radio, trivia
posted by Elliott @ 12:58 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Cheers really was an excellent show. I think you may not have understood it, and perhaps your experience has been limited to the later seasons when the show wasn't of consistent quality (I generally find that stations prefer to show the later Rebecca years). Or it could just be a generational thing. I don't really find a lot of the pre-Cheers sitcoms to necessarily be very funny. Since we came of age in the Seinfeld and one-camera Larry Sanders era, I think a lot of people have different expectations for sitcoms now. You might not like some of the cliched set-ups or one-liners, but that was part of the sitcom form. Cheers did it as well as, or better than anyone.
I'd also note that Frasier the show (which won an ungodly number of emmys) actually had its beginnings in Cheers episodes where Frasier was the lead. In fact, in the later seasons of Cheers (and after Long's departure) Frasier began to take a larger role in the show and Sam was not the sole leading man as he was before.
If you ever give Cheers another shot, I'd recommend the first 2-3 seasons, when the writing was superb each and every week, on both a comedic and dramatic level. Those seasons were a textbook on how to maintain tension and story arcs throughout an entire season, developing in a seemingly natural fashion. This was writing at the same level of a great romantic comedy on the screen. I wonder if this is partly responsible for the disconnect: you don't seem to be the rom-com type.
In closing, I'll always return to Cheers not just for its great writing, but the lovable cast and excellent chemistry. The magic of the show was that the viewer at home really felt like one of the guys, sitting on a barstool and joining in the fun. I find great comfort in that.
I like it when people troll through blogs looking for that one blog that mentions cheers so they press "ctrl+v" and plock down that ol' Cheers blog they wrote back in '94 when everyone was using Prodigy.
Seriously, it was a good post to your post.
And, big props on including the link to Klingonese!
Remember me when you get famous!
i never took to cheers because i thought all the main characters were assholes. this makes me want to at least give it another chance, though.
did writing about joe sent me inspire you to write about the place "where everybody knows your name?"
we'll be missing you too, dude.
I was trying to think of other places that I liked to frequent, but couldn't really find any love for bars like Our House, Wonder Bar or People's Republic (it had its day, but not so much anymore for me).
Oh man, I missed your grand departure! I would've liked to smash some champagne against your airplane or sommat. Cheers to you man, fare thee well!!!
I am not a "Cheers" troll!
Elliott knows who I am.
Jon, the characters certainly went over the line occasionally with their cruel wisecracks and pranks. But it's kind of like the TNG episode where an alien observer disguised as a child gets the impression humans treat their children unfairly. I'd bet if you watch the show regularly you'd see that while there are plenty of digs and ribbing going on, it's always tempered by some warmth and understanding by the end of it's 24-minute runtime.
That being said, Carla does go overboard quite often.
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