Must-See TV

 

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When your mom is known as the mistress of the malaprop, it can be a little disconcerting when something does come out right. Yes, she recently praised the song from the movie "Beaches," "The Shoulders Beneath My Wings," and yes, she did call the 1992 Sharon Stone movie "Basil Instinct." 

Guilty. 

Now there are some calls to me my mother makes that I have dubbed "Mom's Must-See TV," where she will quickly and emphatically tell me to watch something she's found on one of the six channels she has, usually during a commercial, since almost all of her six channels have them. On such calls, the dialogue will go something like this:

"Hi mom. How are you?"

"Good. Hurry up and put on 243! 'Now, Voyager'is on."

For those of you old enough, or merely well-versed  in movie history, that film stars Bette Davis as an old maid transformed by love. It's also one of the few instances in movies where smoking still looks glamorous as the characters pull their cancer sticks from a gold case. At one point, Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes at a time, one for his lover (Davis).

I don't always snap to it when Mom makes those strong recommendations, but in the case of some movies, I  do: "Terms of Endearment," "Penny Serenade" (a real tearjerker, as mom likes to say), "Funny Girl," "Imitation of Life," etc. You get the point. The fact I could call up any one of them on demand matters not. It's the novelty of finding it instantly, a throwback to when TV Guide magazine determined what to watch and when and you could plan your week around it.

But in the latest of those "Must-See TV" calls, I heard this: "Make sure you watch '20/20 tonight. It's all about Joey Buttafuoco!" Now, in keeping with malaprop tradition, it should of come out something like, "Bada bing, bada boom." One could have a lot of fun messing with a name like that. Yet there it was, a perfect annunciation.

I didn't end up watching the sordid tale of the body shop owner whose wife was shot in the face by his underage lover in 1992. And mom reverted to the malaprops again when she called John McCain McCann and Nelson Mandela Mandera during our discussion of recent Trump insults.

The Donald's one-syllable name always comes out right. Biden might not be so lucky; two syllables could be one too many.  

      

   

                      

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