Archives for 2012

No More Good Christian Cream Cheese

March 11, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Everyone’s in a huff about yet another moronic sounding tv show – GCB, based on the book by the same name (although un-abbreviated). It’s being touted by ABC as the replacement dramedy show for Desperate Housewives, which I quit watching many seasons ago when Susan turned out to be such an idiot. If not for Dallas Mavericks basketball, Top Chef and Modern Family, I could donate my television to the good Christians at First Baptist Church.

GCB was filmed three streets from our home on Swiss Avenue, although the setting is reportedly Highland Park. Film crews are likely not allowed within the Highland Park bubble, forcing them to shoot over in our hood. This is mildly interesting, but not enough to make me tune in and donate and hour of my life each week. However, in the spirit of being a good Christian b!#@h myself on occasion, I offer a few brief observations.

First of all, doesn’t Kraft Foods, which pulled its advertisement, realize those good Christian women comprise a major market segment of Philly cream cheese purchasers? Those WMU women deliver cherry cream cheese pies and spinach artichoke dip to the ill and survivors of the dearly departed all over the South on a daily basis. They thrive on it. They have funeral phone trees. Its part of their mission, taught in Sunday school classes at an early age.

Secondly, did the ABC producers, bless their hearts, really think that abbreviating the show name would fool anyone? Or keep the title from offending anyone?

Thirdly, even though I haven’t seen it, I’m sure botoxed lips and Big D bleached hair are plentiful in GCB. That tired ratty theme has been beat to a pulp. Can’t the creative heads come up with some new and exciting trainwreck? How about Fine Scientologist Ba$t@#d$? Now that’s a captivating title for a new hit show if ever there was one. All the good Christian bi#@h$ would watch it for sure. When pray tell does that premiere?

talya

Musical Pairings:

Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Teach Your Children Well”
Barenaked Ladies, “If I Had $1,000,000”

“I mean why would anybody in their right mind leave Dallas for Southern California? We’ve got the same weather without the liberals.” (Gigi in GCB)

Twelve . Twenty-One . Twelve

March 10, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Has anyone started Christmas shopping yet? Not me – I never start until December. But, are we even going to bother with it this year, with the end of time and all? It’s fast approaching. According to the doomsday fans who follow the Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012 is our day with destiny. No need to contribute to your 401(k) or worry about overeating at Thanksgiving this year. Stop doing those stupid abdominal crunches. It’s over. Finally.

Who can read this thing?

Of course, it was supposed to be over in May, 1980, right before my high school graduation. There was a huge theory in Keiser, Arkansas at the time, that the world was going to end the first week of May. Jesus was going to return, and I was convinced I would be totally left behind, home alone, alone on the planet Earth, NEVER receiving my high school diploma. It wasn’t that I was an evil person or more sinful than the next, but I was worried that I hadn’t done enough. What if I hadn’t been good enough or prayed enough? What if Brother Brown hadn’t given me a proper baptism at Brinkley Chapel where I grew up? And often, on Sunday mornings, I had a hard time concentrating on Brother Brown’s boring sermons. I just couldn’t help it. And the pews were hard.

When I was in high school, Keiser Baptist Church showed A Thief in the Night over and over to the youth group. A horrifying rapture movie, it was completely traumatizing – right on par with Night of the Living Dead, the scariest movie EVER. I can’t believe my mother let us see it. I wonder if she saw it? Eerie music played as unattended lawnmowers mowed grass and suddenly empty cars crashed into each other, the drivers raptured into the heavens. Freaky!! The mark of the beast and the whole nine yards – it scared the living daylights out of me and every kid in that sanctuary. I guess that was the point. It was gloomy and dark and creepy and resulted in many sleepless nights as I worried about my soul and graduation. I should have been a Catholic – I hear they worry a lot and feel guilty about everything…?

Shouldn’t the second coming be about hope and celebration and joy? But that terrifying movie promoted wide-spread panic and fear. The youth in Keiser discussed this – the signs all pointed to it – rain, drought, frogs, boll weevils, earthquakes, grasshoppers, fires. Who the hell wanted to do those last few months of school work? What did it matter? Couldn’t Mr. Ford somehow move up our graduation so we could at least be raptured (or not) as high school graduates?

Someone miscalculated, our date with destiny came and went, and the class of 1980 proudly marched across that stage like every class beforehand. Now, 32 years later, we are closing in on another date with fate. Do we really think the early Mesoamericans somehow knew the exact date of the apocalypse? The solstice to end all solstices? The Great Solstice? Similar to The Great Pumpkin?

I’m sure I will go ahead and plan for Christmas. But, we are having the hottest winter on record. And walking this morning, I saw a frog which was a bit strange in this Texas drought.

talya

Musical Pairings:

R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”

The Doors, “The End”

If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.
Mark Twain

Frog Legs? Yes, please.

March 9, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Had any good frog legs lately? Deep fried with white cream gravy?

When I was in high school, the Wilson Tavern in Wilson, Arkansas had the best all-you-can-eat frog leg buffet on Friday nights. They were slap yo’ momma good.

Frog legs are a true southern delicacy, and my boyfriend, Steve, could make an impressive dent in that buffet. Sadly, The Wilson Tavern closed, but maybe someone in Wilson still has that recipe?

The Wilson Tavern

During the hot steamy Arkansas summers, hours after sunset, Steve taught me to frog gig. We spent many a hot date trolling ditch banks in a john boat looking for frogs. Romantic, no?

Steve wore a flashlight strapped around his head like a coal miner. It takes two hands to properly gig a frog. The victims were thrown into a burlap sack in the belly of the boat where they jumped and twitched sporadically. With my feet holding down the bag-o-frogs, I watched for water moccasins in the low, overhanging tree branches. Mississippi County ditches were tangled with brush and twisty vines, the perfect hiding place for snakes, and each came with an intricately crafted beaver dam.

Frog gigging was not a sport for the faint hearted.

Recently at my neighborhood Dallas grocery store, I asked one of the workers to point me in the direction of the frog legs. She responded with a blank stare on her young tree-hugger face, as if I hailed from a far away galaxy.

After a pause she replied, “We have organic fruit from Frog Hollow Farm.”

I returned her stare knowing she wasn’t yet born when Yoda trained Luke Skywalker in that frog pond. Then she added, “And we sell organic wine from Frog Pond Winery.”

OhNeverYouMindHippieGirl.

Apparently this particular grocery store was a big annual supporter of Save the Frogs Day. I didn’t have the heart to explain to the young grocery clerk that the cute little bright green and yellow tree frogs disappearing from the rain forests in Belize, with zero leg meat, aren’t the same ones we gigged in the swampy ditches of Keiser, Arkansas or ate at The Wilson Tavern. I kept this information to myself, paid for a bag of organic asparagus and politely left.

Soon I’ll be back in Arkansas for a visit. Maybe while I’m there, I will eat a platter of frog legs. They taste just like chicken. Only better.