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Maude has left the building

Listening to:	Doc Searls, Reframing the Net
Reading:	some short stuff
Weather:	60, sunny, climbing fast

It's suddenly summer. It snowed 4 inches two weeks ago, and it was in the mid 80's yesterday. Wardrobe confusion.

Bea Arthur died yesterday. That has some significance for me cuz I was a TV kid of the 70's. I probably saw most episodes of Maude, as I did the show it spun off of All in the Family. We had TV's in every room in the house I grew up in. OK, not the bathroom. But definitely the kitchen. TV was what's for dinner. And all those sitcom characters were slightly more than just fiction for me, some were people I thought about almost like cousins you don't see very often. I'm an only child, so is my dad, and my mom has one brother, so my family tree's a little thin. Vinnie Barbarino and Ritchie Cunningham were sorta like interesting older kids that went to a different school than me.

Bea Arthur, according to her Wikipedia entry, was actually born with the name Bernice Frankel. Really? She ditched Bernice for Beatrice? Girlfriend, please. Wish I had one more question she could answer, but, alas, too late now. Anyhoo, I loved the show Maude. I loved her character in that show. That attitude. As if she were always surrounded by idiots, and her gliding around wearing those crazy long open jacket thingies all the time, riding roughshod over the mousy mustachioed husband. Her gravelly voice and that never-crack-a-smile affect, I loved that shit. That show had some content, too. That part I didn't realize till later, but she had an abortion in one episode of that show, holy shit. Nobody even touches that shit now on TV, in 2 thousand freakin 9.

Bea Arthur is dead. But Maude lives forever, I suppose, in TVLand and here in networld. [roll that awesome Dave Grusin theme music. . . ]

permalink posted by cat 8:23 AM

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