Here's Johnny!

I love cooking shows. I love to cook and I like to find inspiration from all the shows on Food Network and all the others. I certainly don’t find inspiration in the dishes I post about on this blog. When I was a kid, the only cooking show I remember was “Julia Child.” But I wasn’t that interested in Julia Child, until the Dan Aykroyd version on Saturday Night Live. But my real favorites are sitcoms. “Modern Family” is the best. That show makes me laugh out loud. That hasn’t happened since Frazier ended its last season. If you haven’t watched Modern Family, do yourself a favor and tune in to ABC on Wednesday nights.

I’ve loved sitcoms since I was a kid … a really little kid. It was kind of an extension of family dinner—we’d all eat together then sprawl out on the couch or the floor and watch TV together.  When I was growing up, we had just one TV. That’s right all you youngins  … one TV. And guess what? There was no remote. We were the remote. And we watched what our parents wanted to watch. Oh yeah, I’m not kidding. If we were lucky, we got to watch comedy shows like “Laugh-In” or “The Flip Wilson Show.” (“Killer!!”) Other times we had to watch “Gunsmoke,” or “Dragnet,” or “Perry Mason,” or something just as riveting. Of course Mom and Dad indulged us on Friday nights so we could watch “The Brady Bunch,” ” Nancy and the Professor” and “The Partridge Family.” Hey, sometimes we didn’t watch TV at all. Maybe we played Bingo for candy; Dad took great pride in being the Bingo Caller. Sometimes we’d play another board game. Sometimes we’d just hang out on the living room floor and give each other Indian burns while Dad slept on the couch and Mom piddled around in the kitchen. Or sometimes we actually went to our rooms to READ A BOOK or something insane like that.

I remember our first TV in Vallejo. It had rabbit ears on top. No children, not actual bunny ears, but an old antenna that had a box with a dial that you would turn to try and turn the antenna on your roof so you could get one of those THREE local TV stations to tune in a little better. Sometimes it would only work if a kid stood there and held one of the antennas. You’re welcome, Dad.

Kids today are so spoiled. I guess every generation thinks the younger generation is spoiled. I imagine my Grandpa B.K. sat around thinking, “These damn kids … they expect me to buy two radios so they can go listen to “Inner Sanctum” instead of the “Grand Ole Opry.”

I’ve always loved TV. My Mom said I loved it from the beginning. Apparently when I was a baby, Mom would have to sleep on the couch, waiting for my baby self to be tired enough to go to bed. She said I would lay awake in the playpen (which for whatever reason she’d prop in front of the TV) and watch “Johnny Carson.” I would lay awake and take in every second of his show, and once it went off the air, I dropped off to sleep. I guess I loved good comedy even as an infant. So why I’m watching Andrew Zimmern eat a 100-year-old egg on “Bizarre Foods” right now is beyond me. Jay won’t touch seafood but he is zoned in on this show like Andrew’s about to read off our lottery numbers. And he’s even giggling. I’m breathing through my nose and waiting for Jay to drop off to sleep so I can revisit my Netflix copy of ” The United States of Tara.” It’s like getting five TV shows for the price of one.