Michael: “And you finished off the whole bottle?”
Lindsay Funke: “I had to, it’s vodka. It goes bad once it’s opened.”
Michael: “I think that’s another of mom’s fibs, like ‘I’ll sacrifice anything for my children.'”

Watching this week:

“Television ate my family.” — Lance Loud

We came up with the best way ever to spend our wedding anniversary this year: watching the Loud family implode on PBS’s “An American Family.” Me to Steve: “Don’t get any ideas.” His response: “Don’t even worry.”

I remember my ma telling me that she and my dad spent hour after hour, week after week, watching the documentary (the first “reality” TV program) when it first aired in 1973. I didn’t know what to expect, really, but I wanted to watch “Cinema Verite” (with Diane Lane and Tim Robbins as Pat and Bill Loud, and James Gandolfini as the series’s producer, Craig Gilbert). Didn’t feel like it was fair to the Louds to watch the fictional filming of their documentary, or the “behind-the-scenes-making-of” film of the film of the documentary (it all gets a little wiggy) without watching their documentary — the real one, which began shooting in 1971 — first. Now I want to give them all a hug, especially Lance, who I just adore, but he is gone now.

Also we’ve been watching non-stop “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” over here and Lord, does my head hurt now. It’s all good TV, people. Have you watched any of these films/shows? If so, what did you think? Gimme the Louds over the Kardashians any day, and gimme Honey Boo Boo any day over “Survivor,” woooooooooooooo-hoooooooooooo :) We love that little firecracker, she’s a pistol. She fractures me, I am not even kidding.

No, I’m not getting much writing done, but I need that once in awhile.

OK, I have to go to bed. More on all of this later. Much.

“I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

I got those quotes from Cheryl Strayed. Aren’t they good?

Happy summer, everyone.

— wm

“I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The young people think the old people are fools — but the old people know the young people are fools.”

Agatha Christie, from “Murder At The Vicarage”

“The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, and this magazine, and the chair. And I don’t need one other thing, except my dog.” (dog growls at him.) “I don’t need my dog.” — Steve Martin in “The Jerk”

“You need to get back on that board is what you need to do. You gotta just pull yourself up by your wetsuit, get back on that board. Hey, look man, if you’re attacked by a shark, are you gonna give up surfing?”

“Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive; they walk and run.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

“My child, we are not born to hold a gun, we are born to love. Love is the only weapon we carry.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, from “Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World”

http://youtu.be/nNbadNyHBSU

“Never cut what you can untie.” — Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)