Semo.net Weblog

For ”Hooked on Daytime TV”, Part I, click here; for “Hooked on Daytime TV”, Part II, click here! 

“…Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Roy Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery had clearly been through some changes…” 

I dropped in on the Pine Valley crowd on “All My Children” a few years ago to see what, if anything, had changed since I’d tuned them out. My impressions:

1) The majority of the townswomen were underfed and overexposed, and viewers were expected to see these as desirable traits; 2) 20-year-olds were running every major manufacturing, retail, and media empire on the eastern seaboard; 3) Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Roy Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery had clearly been through some changes, but was still “it’s-all-about-me” fabulous; and 4) Eileen Herlie, the Scottish actress who’s played Myrtle Lum Fargate since the Civil War, remained at the top of her game in every way. (She’s a swingin’ 88 years old now!)

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For “Hooked on Daytime TV”, Part I, click here!

…There you had your infamous Luke and Laura storyline; your major heartthrob, Dr. Noah Drake; your nefarious Cassadine family…and an up-and-coming ingenue named Demi Moore, done up boldly in the Flashdance trappings of the day…

So there I was, this kid parked in Ohio for the summer, longing to watch cartoons and comedies, but faced with the interminable sins and sufferings of “All My Children”. I was only slightly taller than Aunt Nickie’s family collie, and considerably less intuitive than he, yet forced to cope, along with my aunt, in the overwrought aftermath of Phil Brent’s departure from Pine Valley for Vietnam.

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Watching Grandma watch the soaps gave me my first experience of seeing a human being talking to a television set. She often felt compelled by decency to ask these fabulously-coiffed but deeply-twisted soap people, “Are you really gonna tell that lie?”, or “How long you think it’s gonna take before he finds that out?”…

How far back does your soap-opera memory go? I must not yet have been in school when my mother spoke to me of one Amy Ames, a heart-of-gold heroine featured on “The Edge of Night”. There was also a guy named Adam Drake at some point on the show, and a dark-haired beauty named Nicole. Who these people were, I don’t know; I can only remember the announcer intoning daily that eerie title: “Theeeee EDGE…of NIGHT!!!“, and doing so over the scariest set of fright-night piano chords ever heard on TV.

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For “Babysitting Made Easy”, Part I, click here!

I stood for a moment in a rainswept parking lot with a small, padded person hanging down my back…with me gripping his calves tightly as we gazed off in opposing directions…

Spanky and I’d done a million horsie-back rides without incident. But as it happens, we’d never done one outdoors in winter, with Spanky gloved, cushioned, layered, and padded as if for a historic lunar expedition.

In my mind, as we made our way across the Black River Coliseum parking lot, it did, in fact, register on some level that his grip was beginning to loosen, that his hold on me was receding ever so gradually. But I thought he was playing one of his little games, testing himself, if you will, and that when he’d had enough, he’d put the ol’ hammerlock around my neck once again.

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A dear friend gave me the chance to take her visiting 4-year-old cousin to see “A Garfield Christmas” at the Black River Coliseum last winter. I, who have no children, jumped at the chance to play auntie to a great little guy.

I’ll call this young friend of mine, oh, “Spanky”, I suppose, for his pre-school street cred may require some discretion here, since he’s already made one risky public appearance with a dork who obviously knows nothing about his kind. I myself didn’t realize how little I knew about very little humans until the evening of the event—and by then of course, it was too late to secretly deposit him back on the family doorstep and flee without arousing suspicion.

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Last Week’s Weigh-In: 135 lbs.

This Week’s Weigh-In: 136 lbs.

Folks, I’m genuinely excited! Why? OK, I have living proof now of what should be obvious, but often isn’t: Exercise truly does stave off undesirable weight gain!

In my largely unsuccessful attempt to catch up in work and life after my bout with illness, I paid less attention to what was going into me than I did when I was sick. Though I didn’t let The Little Wolf call the tune as much as I have in the past, I had some pretty deluxe pig-outs on some days. (BEWARE THE CHURCH SUPPER! ESPECIALLY AT CHRISTMAS AND EASTER!) I just sort of abdicated at times in favor of some other “urgent” thing, leaving The Little Wolf to clamber up onto the throne and play Queen for a Day. (more…)

semo.net will be closed on Sunday, March 23rd in observance of the Easter Holiday.

We will resume normal business hours on Monday, March 24th.

“I would recommend CompTIA testing for anybody that’s interested in the IT field.”

—Shane Barnes, Broadband Specialist, semo.net

semo.net broadband specialist Shane Barnes recently obtained “Network+” certification, a distinction conferred by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), and one increasingly in demand by employers in the information technology (IT) sector. The “Network +” exam is a rigorous 90-minute exercise designed to gauge skills with various network types; it covers everything from hardware and software issues to connections, protocols, cable specifications, and troubleshooting techniques.

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Last week’s weigh-in: 141 lbs.

This week’s weigh-in: 135 lbs.!!! YESSSS!!!

You know that saying about life giving you lemons, and you, ever optimistic and resilient, going on to make lemonade with them?

Well, first of all, let me just say that I can hardly claim credit for the remarkable weight loss described above (and verifiable through the Butler County Health Department). My “lemons” came in the form of that horrid viral, flu-like scourge that’s been sweeping the land for the past few weeks. I was flattened for about a week myself, with bone-piercing chills, fever, cough, headache, muscle pain…not to mention those fleeting mental images of the planet’s craggy surface during prehistoric times, and of the scaly, lumbering reptiles that may even currently—but secretly—be burrowing around throughout Middle Earth. (Am I the only one who gets that, when consumed with fever? I’ll bet you hope so.)

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Who’s in this play, anyway?

semo.net thought it might be helpful for our readers to get a sense of why community theater is called…well, community theater. Some of your friends are in this play. Some of your colleagues and classmates have found their way onto the stage in a bid to bring live theater of quality into the heart of Poplar Bluff life. Your boss may be wearing a glowing white wig, eye shadow, rouge, and control-top pantyhose on the only occasion you’ll ever get to see him this way in public. Looking good, too!

As you can tell, the reasons for patronizing live theater are many and varied…

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