Excitement is in the air. Can you feel it?

I know I can. While skimming through the TV listings... which now takes around ten minutes to discover there is nothing on as opposed to when I was a kid when it took around two minutes to actually turn on each of the five or six channels we had available... I discovered that tonight, the Miss Universe pageant is on. Now THERE is some amazing television. What?? You aren't watching? You can even watch it in Espanol on telemundo or something like that, only it's called Miss Universo. Those Spanish speakers are so clever with all their code words that nobody understands, don't you think? As usual, I digress. I'm very good at that I think. It's quite possible that I could be the worlds number 1 digresser. Or is it digressor? The spell check on this thing doesn't like either spelling, but it doesn't like Espanol either and I'm sure that's a word. Doesn't matter, I'm using it. I'm not gonna let blogger tell me what's a word and what ain't. Is ain't actually a word? According to this it is, but not according to my 4th grade English teacher. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. Digressing. That's right.

My 4th grade English teacher looked nothing like this.

Anyway, the beauty pageant. I know I'm dating myself, which would be really cool if I was a hot blonde, (don't you hate when you think something is funny and then you say it, or in this case type it, and then it's just lame?) but I remember when one of the television events of the year was the Miss America pageant. Just about everyone my age watched it. It ranked right up there with the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz, Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Muscular Dystrophy telethon with Jerry Lewis. (Okay, now I'm REALLY not listening to this spell checker because it doesn't know the word Dystrophy and when I right clicked it, the only suggestion was "Astrophysics." Really?!?) To those of you 25 and under, it must sound like we lived a boring life, but it really was fun to get together with friends once a year to watch the Wizard of Oz. We didn't have VCRs or cable TV, and the kids shows available were on for about half an hour after school 1 day a week (remember the ABC after school specials?) Saturday morning cartoons, or on PBS, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and the Electric Company, starring Rita Moreno, the amazing Spider-man and Mr. Morgan Freeman.

I really hope my movie career takes off.
This bites!

Yes, THAT Morgan Freeman. That was just about all the kids programming for the entire week. So when Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was coming on on a night in December, every kid knew, and every kid got to watch, because "it's only once a year" and if you missed it, you were S.O.L.

And so it went with Miss America. It was corny. The speeches about curing hunger and bringing about world peace were lame. But, for two or three hours, every middle aged man in America could watch a bunch of hot young ladies prance around in evening dresses and then in swimsuits, and he was able to act like it really mattered to him if Miss Illinois was going to make it into the top five. This crap was important! Again to you 25 and under folks, as you probably know, we also didn't have internet, Cinemax after hours, or the Victoria's Secret catalogue, among other things. The pageant was about as close to porn as many of the men of my father's generation got for many years... although, I did once find a Playboy in the bottom drawer of a cabinet in my bathroom when I was around 12. I'm guessing my Dad wanted to read the Jimmy Carter interview in it, but I could be mistaken.

Hmm, Jimmy Carter, or Sex in Cinema? What should I read?

Thinking back, my favorite part of Miss America was when they were down to two finalists and they would say that the first runner up would get to take over if the winner was unable to fulfill her duties as Miss America. What an awesome amount of responsibility it must have been for both of them! They would announce the winner and you just knew the first runner up was plotting ways to knock the crown off the winner's head. They would both hug and cry, moms at home would watch and cry over how beautiful the whole thing was and hope that their daughter would one day rise to such heights, and the dads would cry because they had to go back to watching news, or nature shows on PBS. Porn night was over.

I hope my mascara isn't... oh crap. It is.

Maybe it was a little boring, but we didn't know better. Sometimes, boring and naive is okay, don't you think?  Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays from the Snarky Family!

mele kalikimaka!

PS. Sorry Mr. Snarky is such a bad liar. This is only my second post since February 29th. I'm not gonna lie and tell you I'll write more soon, but I hope I get the urge a lot more.

PPS. After last week's awfulness, be sure and tell the ones you love how much they mean to you... and not just for the next few weeks. Do it all the time. It just feels good. I love you guys. Snarky.... OUT.