Friday Folderol – Upbeat

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May 26, 2023 by phicks2012

I’m one of those people who doesn’t handle negativity well. I like happy endings, or at least positive resolutions, and I love to laugh — and to release all of those lovely endorphins!! Yeah!!

I can handle murder mysteries, because even though someone (fictional) gets whacked, the guilty party nearly always gets nabbed in the end. If they don’t, well Pfffffttt! Not my style or preference.

I can handle suspense and horror as long as the heroes win out, and the monsters, villains, mutants, zombies or rampant diseases are wiped out. I can deal with the occasional cliff-hanger ending, but they are just SSOOOO CLICHÉD! Really! The dude isn’t really permanently dead? AGAIN? Yeah, you’re bucking for 20 money-making sequels I won’t watch, right?

I can handle drama very easily as long as it’s coupled with heroics and characters I can identify with and care for. I just don’t want protagonists to be unlikeable, unrelatable anti-heroes, sleaze-balls or villains, and I don’t want my books, movies, and TV shows (and political elections) ending with no positive resolutions and extended stays in a toilet. 😉

I love to laugh, but (surprisingly) I don’t care for a lot of comedies these days. If the premise of a comedy is just stupid (coupled with dumb dialog and dumb characters) — well, I give you the TV show “Two Broke Girls”, and the movie “Dumb and Dumber” (though I do realize the latter is almost a cult classic), and you can keep them both! 😉

I want my humor to be either intelligent and dry or knowingly absurd (or both). I don’t generally laugh at dumb schtick unless the comedian(s), writer(s), producer(s), director(s) obviously KNOW it’s dumb schtick (delivered deadpan), and are making the most of it — examples being parodies like Clue, Murder by Death, Knives Out, Wacko, Scary Movie, Airplane, Hotshots, A Christmas Story, The Naked Gun, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Robin Hood Men in Tights, Dragnet, Yellowbeard, Young Frankenstein, and a fair number of sketches on SNL. I laugh a LOT at THOSE!!

Admittedly, my tastes are very probably dictated (to a large extent, and especially nowadays) by the fact that in the “Real World” we have so much meanness, negativity, and senseless anger and hatred shoved in our faces on a daily bases. I mean, we need to know what’s going on around us in the world, but in response it becomes all too easy to believe that the world in general is a God Awful place filled to the brim with narcissists, spree killers, hate-mongers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and their mindless drooling followers — and that’s the REAL “Zombie Virus”, if you ask me.

In any case, when I want to be entertained and diverted I don’t crave “more of the same”, right? I mean, why would I? I want optimistic (or at least hopeful) content, villains slain (or jailed and humiliated), stupidity overcome (or made fun of), and tyrants taken down a notch (or ten). I want good dreams coming true (or at least not crashing and burning), problems and mysteries being solved (rather than shelved for the next episode or bad sequel), and occasionally miracles happening (disabled jets landing safely, the mean girls getting ditched by their hot boyfriends, and Christopher Pelant or Hannibal Lecter, or Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers being defeated for GOOD). Yeah!!

A disproportionate amount of entertainment these days sometimes seems to be taking its cues from the News and Politics — Dark and Nasty (they like to call it “gritty” and “edgy” and “dystopian”) with very few positive outcomes — but if that’s what’s trending I think I’ve proven that I’m definitely not “fer it”! Nope. I want Frodo finally destroying the One Ring, and Harry Potter finishing off Voldemort, and Wesley and Princess Buttercup finally living happily ever after, and Miss Marple or Father Brown pointing out the real killer, and Bones & Booth finally getting together, and (the too often underestimated) Stetson Bennett quarterbacking two consecutive NCAAF Championships….and maybe (in some idyllic future world) someone punching out Tucker Carlson on Live TV and the Real Housewives and the Kardashians finally going off the air. 😉

Give me UPBEAT!!!! What do you think? Should I keep hoping? 😉