(Sunday Paper, Volume III, Issue 48)

I recently looked up the 1990 television lineup.

I might have guessed some of the shows that were on then: Sunday night had Life Goes On and America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, In Living Color, and Get A Life on Fox, Monday on NBC was The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Blossom, Tuesday’s ABC lineup featured Who’s The Boss?, Roseanne, and Coach, Wednesday had The Wonder Years, Growing Pains, and Doogie Howser, M.D. Thursday there was The Simpsons, The Cosby Show, A Different World, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Cheers, on Friday was Full House, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers, and on Saturday there was The Hogan Family, Golden Girls, and Empty Nest.

That’s a lot of shows I just listed.

But, somehow, we watched at least a little bit of all of them. (A lot of those Saturday ones when Grandma was over.)

The reason I’m zeroing in on 1990 is because - in addition to being a pretty good year for TV shows, apparently - that was the year I was 12.

Which is how old my oldest daughter is right now.

And I’m about to share my favorite show with her and I wanted to make sure it was comparable to what I was watching at that age.

The show, as you can probably tell from the picture above, is Bob’s Burgers.

Due to constraints on our time, a DVR switch that resulted in having to lose a lot of DVR’ed episodes of shows we planned on watching, and just general lack of interest, Kathy and I really only watch one show together. That’s Modern Family. I sometimes think, would I watch this with the kids? And the answer is usually, No.

But besides Modern Family, the only show I consistently make time to watch (by myself, because Kathy has never been interested in it) is Bob’s Burgers. And when I ask myself, Would I watch this with the kids? The answer is usually, I think I should.

So I’ve spent the past couple of years thinking, maybe when the kids get older, we can watch this together.

And now my oldest is older.

And she’s the age I was when I started watching The Simpsons…And a ton of other shows. I think she’s ready for Bob’s Burgers.

And the reason I’m writing about this today is that tomorrow TBS starts over in its syndication run of Bob’s Burgers with Season 1, Episode 1…because I’ll allow my daughter to watch a show that might occasionally dabble in the slightly inappropriate but I’ll be damned if we watch them out of order.

(And for some godforsaken reason they’re not showing Episode 2 until like a week later and it comes after Episodes 3 and 4, I think, but you better believe I’ll DVR them and watch them in the proper order.)

My daughter told me, when I asked her if she’d be interested in watching the show with me, that she’s curious about it because sometimes she hears me laughing by myself downstairs watching it.

I guess I’ll keep you posted on how she likes it.

And consider this a PSA if you’re interested in watching Bob’s Burgers from the very beginning that it’ll start with episode 1 on TBS on Monday, December 3rd.

I hope you enjoy watching it.

But not as much as I’m hoping my daughter enjoys watching it with me.

Writing

*Friday was November 30th, which is when I take stock of the month in order to fill out the ol’ invoice. So this week was a flurry of getting some work done to make sure it made the November invoice. As I mentioned last week, it’s been a good year in general for the writing, this has been a good month, I have no complaints. I really like writing these education-related blogs. Someday soon I’ll probably share them with you.

Comedy

*Not a ton of comedy on stage this week, but a quick reminder that I’ll be at The Comedy Studio on Thursday night - if you’re even remotely interested, that’s my last scheduled date there for 2018 and I’d love to see you there. It’s always a good time.

But…I certainly hope I’ve made you laugh with my Facebook venture this week. Which brings us to…

What I Hope You’re Enjoying

*A little something different here today, since I’m experimenting with something new over on the Facebook page: Which I hope you’re enjoying. Let me tell you a little of the backstory:

Recently we were in Target and the girls saw an adult-sized Elf onesie and insisted I get it. (Seriously. They insisted.) I was too embarrassed to walk through the store carrying it, but immediately my mind raced to how I could use it to make people laugh. I figured I could pop out wearing it for my family over Thanksgiving weekend and it would be funny…and I did…and it was.

But ever since “25 Rejected Christmas Cards” (parts I and II), I’ve wanted to do some kind of living Advent calendar-type countdown to Christmas. So I thought these PJs would be the thing that would spur that idea forward. It didn’t quite work as an Advent calendar, but it did as a Christmas countdown. (And I loooove countdowns.) So I brainstormed 25 visual gags and roped my daughters in to helping out a bit and now we’re telling the story of an elf living in my mailbox through sight gags.

I think it’ll be a fun few weeks. I hope you do too.

Notes

*Saw an old friend this week and while looking for a recent picture of my kids to show him I uttered the sentence, “Let me just scroll through all of these videos of me pretending to be an elf.” No regrets.

*Well, no regrets for me, anyway. I think I’ve finally found the line drawn from my ever-supportive mom. “What is it supposed to be, elf on the shelf?” she asked. “No, Mom, it’s not elf on the shelf. It’s just a silly little thing.”

“Yeah, it’s silly.” Oh well. We had a good run of support.

*One last note about the elf videos: You may remember on the ‘40th Birthday Countdown’ that I posted two on Saturday so as not to interfere with the Sunday Paper. I won’t be doing that with these videos…I’ll just post the video later on Sunday, I think. Today’s in particular is evening-oriented, so that works.

*We’ve had some work done on the house recently, which I think I’ll write about at some point, but it really has prevented me from being able to put up the Christmas lights the way I usually do it, when I usually do it. Not great for ol’ routine-oriented John. (I did put the lights up on Saturday, but with some changes…and a couple of the lights are dying. So maybe it’s for the best that - since I didn’t put them up right after Thanksgiving - this is a shorter length of time for the outdoor lights than usual here. I have a feeling a lot of these lights are spending their last year on the Sucich house and we’ll have to get some new ones for next year.)

*Been spending a bit of time enjoying the holiday season lately: Saturday afternoon we spent some time in Faneuil Hall, which I always love doing around this time of year…and for the past couple of weeks I’ve been drinking way too much of the Caramel Brûlée Latte at Starbucks. It’s my favorite seasonal drink and I’ve been going there way too often.

*Thanks to those of you who have Liked the Facebook page recently. I hope the Elf videos don't scare you off. If you don’t already, I’d love it if you gave the Facebook page John Sucich a Like here, and of course you can follow on Twitter @jsucich. (Again, maybe I’ll get better with Instagram - that’s @jsucich too.)