From Roseanne to Elton: Spicy Reviews

Belly up to the table, friends! This week Mr. B reviews the some favorites, dishes up some more spiritual journey steps, and doles out some wacky animal facts he's sure you haven't tasted before. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

It's time for dinner. Ding dong ding ding ding dang. From the creative mind of Scott Bertelson, after four decades of teaching our impressionable youth, the dinner belt, you are invited to enjoy conversational morsels for the mind at Mr. B's dinner party.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Yeah, dinner. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to another podcast. Mr. B's podcast is on the air.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Mr. B's got a table so wide. Pull up a chair, let your worries slide. School days, tales, and a movie or two. He's serving up wisdom with a side of stew. Belly up to the table, my friend. The feast of thought will never end. From travels far to a spiritual climb. Morsels of music served in rhyme.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

And that is entitled, as you should know, Mr. B's Dinner Party. And I've used every reference to eating that's possibly imaginable. So I'm just going to say, let's eat. Hey grandpa, what's for supper? Remember that from Hee-Haw Grandpa Jones? Oh my goodness. Then he always talked about black-eyed peas and spinach and hog jowls and things like that. But you can get all of that at Arby's. But anyway, I got a plethora of uh information I want to share with you today. Uh, we're going to look at a TV show. I'm going to share some more Elton John songs. Uh, I might share some more unusual animal facts because I just think they're fun. And that's just why I do it. And um I'm going to uh review The Graduate, the movie, one of my classic films that I love. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about the two wicked movies that I said I would, that you all probably said, oh, we are so sick of wicked. But anyway, without further fiddle-did-dee, let's dive into our appetizer.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

For the next course, come one, come all. Nothing spoiled here. From Comfort Classics to what's hot now. Film reviews from Mr. B's Rewatchables.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

My happy TV viewers, even though you should limit the amount of time that you watch television, there's just so many great things on TV these days. And I'm not here to tell you how much that is. Uh, there have been so many sitcoms that I've talked about that I've really enjoyed that I come back periodically. Uh I might skip it for a number of months or years, and then all of a sudden I'm in the mood for uh Green Acres, or I'm in the mood for uh Superstore, whatever it would be. One that I always never tire of is Roseanne. Now, now just a minute. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, or don't shun me because I love Roseanne. I absolutely love that show. And I guess part of the reason why I love the Roseanne show, uh, both versions, that uh were on ABC a number of years ago, is that it was so different from your traditional TV sitcom of Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best or any of these other sitcoms where they lived in immaculate homes and and the mothers all wore dresses and nylons and high heels and pearls, and everything was just oh Donna Reed, there you go, another example. And how everything was just perfect, and the only dilemma you might have in life is are you going to have apple pie for supper or cherry? I don't know. I mean, her show was so far removed from that that I constantly still come back to it. You can find it on TV Land, I believe, yet um used to run every Saturday morning on TV Land for like five or six hours, and I would sometimes catch some of those episodes. I know I've seen every single episode at least two to three times, maybe even more. If I had to say I do prefer the first three to four seasons when the kids are quite small, I really, really, really like those. Uh when um she and uh won all the money from the lottery, not so much, a little too far-fetched, so to speak. But I still watched it because I was dedicated and that was my job. But it was such a great representation of middle class people.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

From now on, he'll be hitting the books, or the books will be hitting him.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Wrong, Dan. We're not gonna punish him, we're gonna support him for a lot longer than we thought.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

People who are living from paycheck to paycheck, who don't have enough time to prepare a decent meal, who don't have time to clean the house, who have to work more than one job, who constantly they're struggling all the time. And she does it with humor. And I I've always enjoyed Roseanne. I I will have to say there's some of her viewpoints she has today that I don't necessarily agree with, and but I still think that she's a hilariously funny person. So Roseanne was an American television sitcom that was on ABC from 1988 to 1997. Yeah. And then was briefly revived uh two decades later, from March 27th to May 22nd, 2018. And then bye bye, it disappeared, and then it became The Connors. And the Connors, I like that show too, nor of course not as much as Roseanne because they didn't have Roseanne as uh major character, but I still thought that was a funny show. Uh it definitely did receive general positive reviews for its portrayal of a working class American family and was in number one uh in the Nielsen ratings for quite some time. Uh while it was on for the first time, the show was always in the top four uh shows for the week. People really liked it. Uh and then in 2018 there was a revival with all the original cast returning. And it was very, very well received and very well taken by people, and it was renewed for an eleventh season. Uh, but then ABC reversed this decision and canceled it May 29th, um, 2018, after Barr uh likened former Obama administration, you must know that uh Roseanne, the person, the comedian, is very, very uh right. She's very, very Republican. Uh and anyway, this Obama administrator named Valerie Jarrett, uh, she compared her to a something in looking like something from the planet of the apes. And major outbreak of people protesting and saying she had no right to say that, even though I don't necessarily agree with that, that a person should be ousted from a TV show just because she's expressing her opinion, which she I thought had the right to do. Um she was uh fired from ABC, and so that show never continued called Roseanne. Um you know, before we had Roseanne, you had all these shows about working mothers, but they always still could take care of their families in the best way, kept the house immaculate, prepared four-star meals, and then they thought it was time to bring on a character like Roseanne, who seemed to have PMS all the time, and um didn't necessarily always appreciate her kids and didn't always necessarily treat her husband Dan very well, and definitely seemed to come from a very uh dysfunctional family with her mother and her father. And anyway, that that humor, uh, which probably a lot of so-called typical American families can relate to, uh, is part of the reason why I like the show so much. Um they're all on this show trying to survive with a limited income. Uh in the early episodes, uh Roseanne worked at Wellman Plastics and Dan what uh did uh Sheetrock. And they were always staying just one step ahead of the bills all the time. And they lived in a small town which was um Lamford, which was not too far from Chicago. Um but they really did, and I know I've said this before, but I this is just to me the most compelling reasons why Roseanne was so successful, was that it portrayed a blue-collar American family with two parents working outside the home instead of mother just sitting home all day in her pearls. And they also were overweight. There's another big kicker. Whereas previous um sitcoms, everybody was just the right weight. Well, Roseanne was not, and she went through a number of different um transitions with her weight throughout the duration of the show. She also had a facelift uh during the duration of the show, uh, hair color, hair length, all these different things. Um she also dealt with some really controversial issues. She was um, I believe, the first woman in a sitcom to engage in uh lesbian kiss with uh uh some other person, and it was I think they weren't even going to at that time show that episode on ABC, but then they did run it, and now of course it doesn't really mean anything. You see that happening all the time. But that was something very, very different uh at that time. Also on the show, you had John Goodman who played her husband. I loved him, Dan Connor, uh, a man who really didn't know what was going on with his household all the time because uh Roseanne was always in charge, always, always had the last say, and he just kind of went along for the ride. Uh then you had the great actress Lorian Metcalfe who played Jackie, and Jackie was Roseanne's sister.

SPEAKER_05 11:49

Annie Barbara? It's Jackie. Jackie. I'm fine. Fine. I have some bad news. Daddy's not with us anymore.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

And Jackie never could find the right man. She was always dating losers and going through all these different jobs. At one time she was a police officer, then she was a trucker, then they bought a diner. Uh, she does finally get married, uh, has a baby, but then she and her husband break up. Anyway, uh another great person on the show was Sarah Gilbert, who played Darlene. Uh Darlene was my favorite of the three children. Um Darlene was very much like Roseanne, very bitter, very sarcastic, uh, very dominating. And then you had two uh people who played Becky. Um one girl, uh Lacey Gormison, played her for a while, and then it went to Sarah Chulke, I believe. And uh they made fun of that change all the time on the show, so they never took themselves seriously. Uh then you had Crystal, a good friend of Roseanne, uh who had no success with men either and uh was just a working class person. Uh then you had Mark uh Connor, who uh dated Becky and married her eventually. Uh George Clooney. Oh yes. George Clooney was even on the show in the first, maybe first season, second season. He worked at uh uh Wellman Plastics, where Jackie and Roseanne worked until they all decided to walk out one day because of the way they were treated. Uh another great person on the show, and the last one I'll mention is Estelle Parsons, uh a great actress in film who played Beverly, the dysfunctional mother of Jackie and uh Roseanne, who drove them absolutely bonkers. And she goes through quite uh transformation on the show. Uh she um has she finds out her husband's had an affair for many, many years. He dies, she becomes an alcoholic, then she becomes a lesbian and uh uh falls into um dementia, lots of different things. So very, very interesting. So you've got um in the early season, Darlene was a tomboy who struggled with femininity, femininity, who is very much a uh a jock, and now her dad, Dan, really likes that. Uh Becky, of course, is the oldest of the three, and she's always facing date dating problems, and her first boyfriend is Chip. Chip. And then you've got the younger youngest child, DJ, who uh seems to have the intelligence of a gnat.

SPEAKER_05 15:40

I think we should consider the possibility that your son is, shall we say, special.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

And they're always picking on him, and he's always doing uh deceitful things uh on the show. And uh the three of them, the three children are constantly fighting all the time, all the time. In season two, Roseanne and Jackie uh leave Wellman because of being uh harassed, and um then they find new jobs. Jackie becomes a police officer, and Roseanne uh does lots of different things: fast food, restaurant, cashier, sweeping floors at a beauty parlor. And uh in season two, uh she meets her soon-to-be husband in real life, Tom Arnold, uh, which that didn't go very well as a marriage. And uh season three, uh, that's when Roseanne takes a waitress job at the lunchonette at Rod Bell's department store and works with uh Martin Maul, who plays her gay boss, and that's really funny. And then Crystal is going to marry Dan's dad and finds out that uh Crystal is pregnant with his baby, and Dan's not happy about that. So, anyway, uh season four, uh Becky starts uh dating Mark, and they don't like Mark at all because he's from the wrong side of the tracks. Fancy that. Anyway, um and uh also at this time in season four, Sandra Bernhard, who uh is a great actress and comedian, was um introduced, and she plays Arnie's, that's uh Tom Arnold's um fiance, and they get married, and that marriage lasts about one day. And season five, uh Dan had bought a bike shop, and uh they have to close it because they go under financially. And so there's definitely some seriousness with the show too. Um and then season six, uh Roseanne and Jackie uh buy a diner in town called the Lunchbox, and we find out um what um they're going to do with that business, and uh then we find that Darlene is living with her boyfriend in Chicago while she's going to art school and uh that doesn't go well and also uh Darlene goes through this major, major, major depression and all she wants to do is um sit on the couch. And then in season seven, uh Roseanne's character becomes pregnant. And in this season they also deal with abortion, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual dysfunction, racial prejudice. Uh Darlene and David break up. Uh Darlene starts dating somebody on campus. Um and then she does give birth to another child. So then they do have four children and lots of guest stars on that season. Um so then in season eight, uh we find out um Dan who's been working uh uh on this with the city doing a job there, he goes back to old construction crew to Drywall, the new prison that's being built outside of Lamford. He won the contract on that. And then we find out that Darlene is pregnant, and then they're going to get married, and then this is also the excuse me, the season where Dan has a heart attack uh at the wedding, and then um he recuperates, but he's supposed to then change in season nine, change his whole lifestyle, and uh stop drinking beer and eating all these uh fancy foods. Uh also the Connors win the Illinois State Lottery of$108 million. Uh-huh. 108 million. And uh they always say money is a root cause of all evil. Uh Dan ponders the meaning of life, Jackie meets the prince, DJ finds love, and Darlene gives birth to a daughter. Uh John Goodman, as Dan is gone most of the season because he's filming movies. And in the final episode, uh Roseanne reveals the entire series is actually a fictional story written by Roseanne Connor, inspired by her real life. Uh so uh in reality, Dan's heart attack near the end of season eight was fatal, and the Connor family did not win the lottery. A family arc throughout the season that Dan betrayed Roseanne by having an affair is revealed to be false. Uh Dan's betrayal was not having an affair, but dying. So essentially, Roseanne could always take the worst life could throw at her and survive. And I think that's one of the endearing qualities about the show. And then, of course, the revival came and went very, very quickly, which was devastating for Roseanne Barr. Uh, she thought that she was treated very, very badly. So there you had the Roseanne show in a nutshell. I told you some of the characters, what happened. Happens during the major seasons, uh, and why I think it's just such an appealing show. And I also really enjoy uh all the um humorous Halloween episodes that they do. They could really, really, really create uh a really scary uh scenario, whether it was in their home or at the lodge or or whatever it was. They're always trying to outdo each other to scare each other. And um, maybe that was a metaphor for the show that you were supposed to be scared of somebody who lives like this. I don't know. But anyway, uh Roseanne Barr still performs, I believe, uh stand-up. Uh I think she uh had a podcast, I don't know if that's still on anymore, where she interviewed people. And so if I need something to bring me back to what I really enjoyed were the early 90s, I always watch Roseanne. And that voice of hers, irritating as it is, always, always is representative of one of my favorite sitcoms of all time, Roseanne. Okay, for another TV favorite. I told you that I'm a sucker for award shows, for movies and TV shows. I love to see the uh performers, the actors in their best garb, and what are they going to wear that's going to outshine all their competitors and all the fakiness that goes on with them loving each other and respecting each other when they just want to rip each other's hearts out. I don't know that for a fact, but that's what I think. So I said I wasn't going to talk about the Golden Globes last time. I said I would just simply discuss the critics' choice. And then also last time I talked about my guesses for the Academy Awards. But never say never. So I am going to talk today, the the big winners, so to speak, of the Golden Globes for this year. And this ceremony took place in uh January. So without further ado, here we go. What won as the best dramatic picture? That award was given to the film Hamnet, which is the story of uh sh William Shakespeare and his wife and the death of a child was Hamnet. We'll have to see how well that does at the Academy Awards. Uh for a category that they have for the Golden Globes is called Box Office Achievement, that went to Sinners, the um Michael Jordan film about the Deep South and vampires. Yes, there's a connection. Uh also the best TV drama went to The Pit, which has just started its second season, and that is about what happens in a hospital emergency room. Best animated feature film at the Golden Globes went to the very, very popular K-pop Demon Hunters, the animated film, which I have not seen. Uh, best supporting actor went to Stellan Skarsgard. Stellan Skarsgard in the film called Sentimental Value. Uh, best motion picture winner for the category they have at the Golden Globe, it's called Musical or Comedy, goes to one battle after another. Another. Paul Thomas Anderson's great story that's doing incredibly well. Best actor in a musical or a comedy went to Timothy Chalamet for the quirky but yet entertaining film Marty Supreme. Uh Best Actor in a dramatic motion picture went to the foreign film The Secret Agent, and that was Wagner Mora. Uh Best Actress in a musical from the film If I Had Legs, I'd kick you. Rose Byrne. Not seen the film yet. Really looking forward to seeing it. And actress in a dramatic motion picture went to Jesse Buckley for Hamnet, who played William Shakespeare's wife. Best supporting actress went to Tyana Taylor, who just recently hosted Saturday Night Live. I thought she was very funny, in one battle after another. Best foreign film went to The Secret Agent. Best director of a motion picture went to Paul Thomas Anderson for one battle after another. Best screenplay of a motion picture also went to Paul Thomas Anderson for one battle after another. Original score went to Sinners. Noah Wiley won as Best Actor in a dramatic TV series for the pit. And let's see. Michelle Williams won for Best Actress in a miniseries for a mini-series entitled Dying for Sex. Jean Smart, one of my favorite actresses all the way back to Designing Women, Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for TV. She won for Hacks. And uh TV show The Studio won Best Musical or Comedy TV series. Best Podcast went to Good Hang. Should have gone to me, but I wasn't nominated. Not right. Anyway, Good Hang with Amy Polar, who is an actress and a comedian. She was on um Parks and Recreation for years and also on Saturday Night Live. Best actor in a TV, musical, or comedy went to Seth Rogan for the studio. So that's just an overall compilation of the big winners at the Golden Globes. And again, uh was there some overlap with the critics' choice? And will there be more of these same uh titles and people represented at the upcoming awards that ultimately end with the Academy Awards in March? Who's to say? I would say probably yes. But we will have to see how this all works out. So keep enjoying watching them walk the red carpet. And if you can get me a ticket to the Academy Awards, I would be really grateful. I would love, love to go and sit with some of those stars. Can you get Meryl Streep to sit beside me?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

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SPEAKER_00 32:21

And I remember when I saw it in the theaters, I was, of course, um blown away, almost literally, jumping out of my seat with the excitement for the culminating song uh that Alphabet sings in that movie. And I thought that the songs for Act One, which is essentially what uh the first Wicked movie, what that encompasses, uh, were spirited, fun. I thought the story was very, very entertaining. I thought visually it was absolutely gorgeous. And I thought the performances of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Arevo were brilliant. And I really felt it was one of the best films of this last year. And I've seen it on stage three times. I'm going to see it again, uh, coming up here in a few months, again in Des Moines, and went into more detail about the story, of course, uh, what the motion picture. Uh, sometimes they change the song to the order, um the purpose of the song, that type of thing. But this was so much fun. It was wonderful eye candy to watch this first show, first part of the wicked story. And it was so popular and did so well and made billions of dollars and made major stars out of as she probably already was, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Orivo. And then the sequel, I guess you would call it, Wicked for Good, was released on November fur twenty-first, uh, twenty twenty-five. And the plot of that, which I guess I didn't go into great detail about the plot of the first one, but that's where uh um Alphaba and um Glenda meet as they go to a wizard school and how they really detest each other, but then grow to really, really, really uh like each other and become almost like sisters. But in The Wicked for Good, uh Glenda the Good uh at the start of the film joins the citizens of Munchkinland as they celebrate the death of the wicked witch of the West. And Glenda explains that the witch was the product of an affair between Governor Thrupp's wife Melina and a mysterious traveling salesman, and offers her a green elixir, causing the witch, of course, the Cynthia Revolu character to be born with green skin. And because of her inherent uh ability to use magic powers, and because of the color of her skin, um the witch fostered a wish to meet the wiz wonderful Wizard of Oz. And the Munskins asked Glinda if she was friends with the witch, and she reflects on her relationship back at school. Uh of course, then in the second part, uh we find out how uh Alphaba, who has been shunned uh from the citizens of Oz and has become, so to speak, a witch, uh find out that she's really not evil and um is misunderstood and what ultimately happens to her and what happens to Glenda. And I guess what I wanted to say, and it seemed like because of the box office uh results and Wicked for Good not really being uh highly viewed for the award season, that Wicked for Good just was not as stimulating for me as the first one was, the first part. Uh essentially that's part of the story. Uh you've got uh Cynthia O'Reilly trying to uh show the citizens of uh Oz that the Wizard of Oz is really not a good person and is taking advantage of them and she's being shunned because of that. And then what is um Glenda going to do with that situation? Is she going to befriend um the wicked witch or is she going to uh uh treat her as uh a vile person? And it was again breathtaking to look at. Oh my goodness, yes. I thought the performances of both those women was amazing. Uh the biggest song that came out of the second one was For Good, which is a beautiful, beautiful song to talk about their friendship. Uh they added a couple new songs for um part two that were not in the Broadway show. But it just did not grab me. Why do you use grab me, Scott? Because the first one grabbed me. I was really wanting to find out what it was like about the relationship between these two women, one green and one white, and what it had to say about prejudice and what it had to say about discrimination. And the dancing was amazing, beautiful, wonderful, the singing, uh amazing, beautiful, wonderful, the songs uh amazing, beautiful, wonderful. Um of course the culminating song of act one, defying gravity. Oh my goodness, my favorite, favorite, favorite song from Wicked. Um just defying uh any kind of can you possibly stay in your seat while you're watching this in a theater? So beautifully done. They can do so much more with film than they cannot do with uh an actual stage show. So what am I saying through all of this? I say number one, you should see both parts. Number two, I still recommend both parts. Number three, I do really like the first one better because of the songs, the story. I just found it more appealing than I did for Wicked for Good, which was much, much darker, which that's the way the story is, and I remember that from seeing it on stage. Doesn't have quite as many memorable songs, but that's just the nature of the show. Now, the major question is should this all have been made and put together in one film? Doesn't matter what my opinion is about that, it wasn't. It's two different movies, both equally valuable, would it have worked as one film and maybe cut back on some of the detail? Possibly, but that's just me. So I hope that soon, if you haven't seen either one, that you have the chance to see both films, I would suggest back to back and experience the grandeur and the beauty and the wonder and the spectacle of this film version of one of the greatest Broadway musicals of all time.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Wicked and Wicked for Good. Let's lend our ears to the wacky observations of the world, according to Scott. Mr. B's wacky, wacky, wacky, wacky world.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

I've done many, many pet peeves, many, many, many, many, many, many, many. But last time I talked about strange, bizarre, unusual animal facts, and I so much entertained myself with these that I thought I would share some more with you. Don't turn off the podcast. Come on, think about some of these and ponder these. Okay. Number one, I'll just share ten today. Do you know that an octopus has three hearts? Yes, three. One pumps blood around the body while the other two pump it to the gills. And do you know that the blood color of an octopus is blue? Because of high copper. Anyway, do you know for number two that owls don't have eyeballs? They call them eye tubes. Yes, an eye tube. I don't know why. I just don't get it. Uh also, number three. Did you know that polar bears have black skin, which helps them absorb heat from the sun to stay warm in an Arctic climate? And it also protects the bears from harmful UV rays. Oh, I sure wish I had some black skin during this cold winter. Anyway, couldn't keep warm for a moment. Uh, let's go to the next one. Do you know that butterflies taste with their feet? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Feet. Using something called a chemoreptor to help them identify plants. Females select the correct leaf on which to lay eggs by drumming it with their feet. Yes, to release juices. I'm not making this up. Okay. This is true. Some higher power has put this all together that butterflies should taste with their feet. Okay. Do you know that reindeer's eyeballs turn blue in the winter to help them see at lower light temperatures? And in the summer they're golden colored. And supposedly no other mammal is known to. Have this ability. Well, I don't have a herd of ranger in my backyard, so I don't know. I've never experienced this. Oh, where am I at? What number am I on? Ugh, no wonder I can't balance the checkbook. Uh, how about this one? A single strand of spider silk is thinner than a human hair, but five times stronger than steel of the same width. Wow. Spider silk. A rope just two inches thick could reportedly stop a Boeing 747. Oh my goodness. Now that is strong silk. Uh let's see. A sea lion is the first non-human animal with a proven ability to keep a beat. I give that a 10. Remember that on American Man's 10? Uh, scientist trained a female sea lion named Ronan to do it, and she then showed she could transfer that skill to a song with a different beat that she had not heard before. So the next time you're out dancing, you might want to look to see if there's any sea lions on the dance floor. Oh, okay. I'll share two more. Is that ten? Who knows? Squirrels. Oh, I think I might have shared this one, but it's so much fun. I'll share again. Can't burp or vomit, nor can any other rodent, which is why rat poison is so effective. Other mammals tend to expel any toxic substance they ingest, but most rodents cannot. Yes. And the last one, I'm just speechless. I don't know what to say in reference to that. Um, cats and horses are highly susceptible to black widow venom, but dogs are relatively resistant. Sheep and rabbits are apparently immune from black widow venom. Well, I guess we can all probably stay away from black widow venom. Anyway, I just wanted to share a few of these. You can probably find any of these lists on uh Google, on YouTube, any of these different places on the internet, but they're just interesting to me. So maybe I'll share some more. Uh, if you really, really dislike hearing about these quirky animal facts, then you need to let me know. But if I don't hear from you, I might share some more. I might just do that, but I'll only share a few at a time. Alright, so enjoy your life in the wacky, wacky world we live in.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Let's have a seat round the proverbial table. Would you like to say Grace? With a nod to our higher power and Mr. B's spiritual journey.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

My spiritual friends, as I shared with you, uh, I'm going to be reading from the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Oreaters Anonymous, which we're going to go into more detail about the steps, the 12 steps that have saved my life and have uh transformed me from an odor who has transformed me from an overeater to a sane eater with the help of my higher power. Step two is about coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. So let me share some information in more depth today. I will now read from the book. Many of us compulsive overeaters tend to look at this step and say, Restore me to sanity? Well, I don't need that. I'm perfectly sane. I just have an eating problem. But how sane are we really? When we look with complete honesty at our lives, we see that where eating is concerned, we have acted in an extremely irrational and self destructive manner. Under the compulsion to overeat, many of us have done things no sane person would think of doing. We have driven miles in the dead of night to satisfy a craving for food. I've done that. We've eaten food that was frozen, burnt, stale, or even dangerously spoiled. We have eaten food off the other people's plates, off the floor, and off the ground. We have dug food out of the garbage and eaten it. We have frequently lied about what we have eaten, lied to our others because we didn't want to face the truth ourselves. We have stolen food from our friends, family, and employers, as well as from the grocery store. We've also stolen money to buy food. We have eaten beyond the point of being full, beyond the point of being sick of eating. We have continued to overeat, knowing all the while we were disfiguring and maiming our bodies. We have isolated ourselves to eat, damaging our relationship and denying ourselves a full social life. For the sake of our compulsive eating, we have turned ourselves into objects of ridicule and we have destroyed our health. Then, horrified by what we were doing to ourselves with food, we became obsessed with diets. Oh yes, we spent hundreds of dollars on weight loss schemes. We bought all types of appetite control drugs. We joined diet clubs and spas. We had ourselves hypnotized and analyzed. We had major surgery on our digestive systems, we had our ears stapled or our jaws wired shut. All of this we did willingly, hoping we would someday, quote, have our cake and eat it too, unquote. Which we know we can't. I can't have cake. Some of us went to doctor, to doctor looking for a cure. The doctors gave us diets, but we had no better success with those than what the other diets we'd been on. The doctor gave us shots, pills. Those worked for a while, but we inevitably lost control and over ate again, putting back on the weight we had worked so hard to lose. Many of us tried fasting with and without a doctor's supervision. Usually we did lose weight, but as soon as we started eating again, the compulsive eating behavior returned along with the weight. Some of us learned to purge ourselves with vomiting, laxatives, and excessive exercise. We'd stuff food in our mouths until we were in the physical pain, then we'd try to get rid of it. We damaged our digestive systems and our teeth, while we starved our body of nutrients needed to live. Those of us who were overweight got plenty of advice from others about how to get to the quote ideal, unquote size, but nothing permanently solved our problem. We found that no matter what we did to ease our turmoil, our compulsive eating eventually returned. Over the long haul our weight went up and our self-esteem went down. After a while we became battle weary and discouraged. Still, we could never can my talk, Scott? Still we could never accept our power powerlessness. The prospect of being obese, sick, and out of control for the rest of our lives led us, led some of us to conclude that life was simply not worth living. Many of us thought about suicide. Some of us tried it. Most of us, however, never reached a suicidal desperation. Instead, we took comfort in a feeling that everything was alright as long as we got enough to eat. The only trouble with that, as our compulsive eating progressed, it became harder for us to get enough. Instead of bringing comfort, the overeating backfired. The more we ate, the more we suffered. Yet we continued to eat. Our true insanity could be seen in the fact that we kept right on trying to find comfort in excess food long after it began to cause us misery. Once we honestly looked at our lives, it became easy for us to admit that we had acted insanely where food and weight were concerned. Many of us, however, were able to confine our cost of eating to the houses where we were alone and to carry on with relatively normal lives. We worked hard during the day and ate at night. Surely we were sane in most respects. More self-examination revealed many areas in which our lives were out of balance. We had to admit that we had not acted sanely when we responded to our children's need for attention by yelling at them or when we were jealously possessive of our mates. Too much of the time we had lived in fear and anxiety. More comfortable with food than with people, we sometimes limited our social lives. We drew the grapes. We drew the grapes. I don't think you can draw the grapes. Disconnected the telephone and hid in the house. And one more paragraph. When we are around other people, we smiled and agreed when we really wanted to say no. Some of us were unable to stand up for ourselves in abusive relationships. We felt we deserved the abuse. Or we focused on our other faults and thoughts for hours about what they should do to solve their problems while our own problems went unresolved. So we'll be doing some more reading and finish up step two the next time we get together. But the highlights of this is that it really, my happy friends, describes me as a person who really believed I could take care of this problem myself and tried lots of different diets, pills, powders, and none of them worked. I lost the weight and then gained it back and then even more. And I had to realize that I was completely insane when it came to overeating. The only way I could survive was for my higher power to take care of me. And my higher power has done that. So don't believe that your life is worthless. Don't believe that you can't find hope. There is hope. And you deserve happiness. Anyway, you might remember a few episodes back I talked about Little and John, one of my greatest, greatest, greatest uh people I enjoy as a pop performer. Uh and I alpha be I was cool, Scott. I was talking about his songs in alphabetical order. And I'm going to uh talk about songs D E F G today that start with that in his songs. And is there a reason for that? No, probably not. But anyway, I guess I wanted to be in alphabetical order. So anyway, I'm just going to mention some that I really like. Uh and hopefully my producer can play a little music for you. Of course, you can find all of these on Spotify. Uh first song with the letter D is Daniel.

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Daniel is driving tonight on a plane. I can see the red t lights and bike in the I can see Daniel waving goodbye.

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Which comes from Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player in 1973. Daniel, my brother. He was older than me. Anyway, I love the story of that. Uh I would also, oh, the duet, and he's done a number of duets, but in 1976, he did a duet with a performer called Kiki D. Yes, Kiki D. And it was Don't Go Breaking My Heart.

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Don't go breaking my heart. I couldn't if I tried. Maybe you're not the time.

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Which is a story about uh people who should stay together, don't take advantage of me, don't use me. Just enjoy our love. Uh another D song would be Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, which comes from the album Caribou in 1974. And uh a song about uh redemption, a song about having belief, a song about uh never giving up. That would be another D song. All right, I'm going to talk a little bit about an E song. Okay, let's uh go with uh probably uh empty garden. Hey, hey Johnny.

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What happened here as a sunset? I found an empty garden among the flagstones there lived here must have been a gardener that cared.

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From Jump Up album nineteen eighty-two, that's a beautiful song. You might want to think about that. Uh and let's not have too many E songs, uh, but I do have some here for F songs that I would like to mention to you. Uh one would have to be Funeral for a Friend, Love Lies Bleeding, which I think I had mentioned earlier about uh Candle in the Wind. That's from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road nineteen seventy-three. Uh that's a really, really uh good song that I would suggest that you listen to. And I'm going to finish today with some G songs. And probably uh the first one I'm going to mention, one of my favorites, if I had a top ten list, would be Goodbye Yellowbrick Road. From the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in 1973, uh a song about uh you can't always live in a world of fantasy, you've got to live in reality, and you've got to face reality, and you have to overcome the obstacles. That's a great, great, great, great song that you might want to think about uh listening to. Um and then for another G song that I would suggest for you would be Good Morning into the Night. Really, really great song. And oh, I also like the song Goodbye Marlon Brando. Which comes from Reggie Strikes Back, the album from 1988. Now, yes, there are many, many, many, many, many other great songs. Uh, for example, for G Songs there's uh Guilty Pleasure from Wonderful Crazy Night in 2016, uh Goodbye from Mad Men Across the Water 1971, uh A Good Heart, Wonderful Crazy Night 2016. So I'm basically saying to you, my happy podcast music lovers, that if you go to Spotify, you can find all of his albums and you can find his greatest hits. And it might be better to just start with his earliest albums and work all the way up to the present. Uh, and he is still recording, so I can't tell you specifically the last time he had an album out, but it hasn't been that long ago. That listen to the whole realm of songs on the album. And I've only selected a few that I re really think stand out, and I'm going to continue doing this until I get to the last letter of the alphabet. But Elton John, I think, is warranted to be uh regarded as one of the greatest pop artists who ever lived. And absolutely brilliant. And as I shared before, he's also done scores for Broadway musicals and for animated movies. He his um his piano playing is absolutely phenomenal and he is the very queenessential performer. So until we get together again to talk about Elton John songs, I hope that you are constantly at least once a week, maybe twice a week, maybe three times a week, maybe daily, listening to some Elton John songs that deal with lots of different themes and motifs and enjoy the king of pop. Not Michael Jackson, even though he's wonderful and we'll talk about him too in depth, but Elton John. Well, I write songs that um have no bunny lyrics, and they're very dear to me. Well, that just about does it. And what could happen next? Well, who knows? I mean, whatever it is, it's going to happen because you need to come back for Mr. B's dinner party. Now move slowly, get out of that chair slowly because you probably had too much dessert. I gave you my share, remember? So, with that being said, I welcome you all back again soon, soon, soon, for another delectable, delicious episode of Mr. B's dinner party.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:01

Television dramas and comedic reviews, pet peeves buzzing like honeydew blues, poetry sprinkled like salt on a dish, every word served with a twist and a swish belly up to the table, my friend. The feast of thought will never end from travels far to a spiritual climb. Morsels of music served in a rhyme.

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Mr. B's dinner party is hosted by Scott Bertelson, edited and produced by Troy Thompson, recorded and distributed at Sunnyside Farm Studios and platformed by Buzz Spread.

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Conversations flowing like fine red wine. World journeys mapped with tales divine. He's hosting a dinner for your hungry mind. A banquet of life where you can unwind belly up to the table, my friend. The feast of thought will never end from travels far to a spiritual climb. Morsels of music served in rhyme.

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Subscribe so you never miss an episode and share with your friends. Listen and enjoy every other Wednesday conversational morsels for the mind on Mr. B's dinner party.