Dear Madame Zoltar

Hello, my hothouse honey bells! How are you? I don’t care whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not. After four weeks of February, I go into spring mode. It doesn’t matter if there’s snow or if there’s cold in March, because it is spring. You will see green begin to poke up its little head here and there in March in Racine. Sometimes it snows on the green, but the green is used to that… I get so excited, dearies, about spring. I can hardly wait.

I had a great time at the JT Irregulars Christmas Party. It was wonderful to meet each and every one of you. The cream of mushroom soup was delicious. And I never would have expected such a hilarious rendition of "We Are The Champions" from Mr. SER and his ukulele. Oh my! I laughed until my sides ached. It was such a good time. And a special thank you to Ms. Beejay for those “Sugar balls” she had shipped in. Who would have thought that a cross of plums and grapes would be so delicious?

There were no messages scrawled in the pixie dust this week, my friends, no tapping from the hulls of sunken dreams.

What I want to blog about this week is alternatives to cable TV. My cable TV/internet bill keeps creeping up and up. My income, meanwhile, continues to go down and down. If stocks in Zoltar® start trading any lower, they’ll be paying people to take them. So I’m faced with a squeeze and something has to give. It would be nice if the local cable provider would reward people who have been loyal customers for decades rather than give special deals to only new subscribers. Yes, it would be nice, but it certainly wouldn’t be Time-Warner-y.

I’m thinking of retaining my internet connection but disconnecting from TV entirely. Although more and more “content” is available on TV, I find myself with less and less time (and disposition) to digest it. Rather than going to dish TV or even putting up an antenna, I think that maybe I can cut the cord completely. Besides, my television set is an old one and would need one of those converter boxes for an antenna. I didn’t get a free coupon when they were available (because I have cable).

I know that we touched on this briefly at the Christmas party, with Ms. kk mentioning a site called “Zulu” that has free TV online. It has also been discussed on various other blogs at various other times, but I would appreciate it if everyone would speak up again on their experiences and/or advice about online television and other entertainment alternatives to the conventional boob tube. I want to hear what irregular minds have to say on the subject.

I would love it if some of the old time television was broadcast these days, but the best place to find that is online. YouTube has a glut of old shows. Here’s one of my favorites, Groucho Marx in “You Bet Your Life:”



And here’s that sexy Jack Webb portraying Sgt. Joe Friday in a classic “Dragnet” (with special guest Lee Marvin):



They don’t make them like that anymore, my dear friends. In fact, I don’t know if they make them like us anymore, either. Oh my. Thank you for reading my blog this week, dears. I love you all.

Send your bipartisan and/or nonpartisan screeds to: madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com.

Be careful out there, my irregulars and regulars, and have a good week. Gobbler’s Knob, indeed!