I loved that Andy mentions HIMYM, since you all know that I really like that show. Not as much as The Office; but I do try and make it appointment television on Monday nights. The joke of the talking head was that Andy says that the first date is the one your kids will beg you to tell them about years later. But really, the kids on the show are not that interested in sitting there listening to their father tell them all about how he met their mother. They always look bored and they want him to get on with it already. So far they’ve been sitting on that couch for 4 yrs. They probably won’t get up until the show ends. I think you’d really enjoy it; it’s very funny.

Thank you for your letter.

You really do want me to watch “The Office.”

I would rather not, but thank you for your good-natured responses to my letters and your good humour.

I wish you and Suri a Blessed Easter.

Sincerely yours,
CALEB BOONE.

Now I wish you would get brother Caleb an “Office” T-shirt, and make HIM a fan of the show. Draw “brother Caleb” into the fold, like “Cousin Mose.”

Caleb, thanks again for sharing your opinions of what’s funny and such. Take the time to watch an Office episode with your sister, and maybe it will grow on you.

I just realized that you are “Bob” as well as “Robert.”

One is your informal self (Bob) and the other your formal self (Robert).

Have a Dovely.

Sincerely yours,
Caleb (Jalapeno Popcorn Boy) Boone.

P.S.: Whoops.

Whither your reply to the letter in which I dissected an entire episode of “The Office”?

Have a Dovely.

Sincerely yours,
Caleb Boone.

My favourite television shows for entertainment and educational purposes) are:

The Dick Van Dyke Show (Starring Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam and Carl Reiner)

Car 54, Where Are You? (Starring Joe E. Ross, Fred Gwynne and for a time Al Lewis, and many other very funny people)

Leave It To Beaver (Starring Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow and many others)

The Andy Griffith Show (The early 1960s black and white episodes when Opie was seven and under, Starring Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Francis Bavier and many others)

The George Burns Show (Starring George Burns, Gracie Allen, Harry Von Zell, Bea Benaderet, Hal March and many others)

The Jack Benny Show (Starring Jack Benny, Eddie Anderson, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Mary Livingstone, Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson, Sheldon Leonard, James Stewart and many others)

The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis (Starring Dwayne Hickman, Frank Faylen, Florida Friebus, Bob Denver, Tuesday Weld, Warren Beatty, Sheila James Kuehl, Steven Franken, Doris Packer and others)

Seinfeld (Starring Jerry Seinfeld)

Frazier (Starring Kelsey Grammer)

Prime Minister’s Question Time (Sunday evening on C-SPAN)

Q & A (Formerly “Booknotes” Sunday evening on C-SPAN)

Supreme Court Report (Saturday evenings on C-SPAN)

Good Eats (Starring Alton Brown on The Food Channel)

Various Morning Exercise Programs (On Fit TV)

My favourite movies are:

Mary Poppins (Starring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Karen Dotrice, Matthew Garber, Arthur Treacher, Ed Wynne and Jane Darwell, among many others)

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Starring Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams and Henry Jones, among others)

The Fortune Cookie (Starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich and Judy West, among many others)

How Green Was My Valley (Starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, Roddy MacDowall, Morton Lowry, Arthur Shields and Sara Allgood, among many others). In my opinion, this is the best movie ever made.

How To Steal A Million (Starring Peter O’Toole, Audrey Hepburn, Hugh Griffith, Eli Wallach and Charles Boyer, among others)

State Fair (Starring Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine and Charles Winninger, among others)

The Late George Apley (Starring Ronald Colman, Vanessa Broan, Richard Haydn, Richard Ney and Percy Warram, among others)

Mr. Belvedere Rings The Bell (Starring Clifton Webb, Zero Mostel, Joanne Dru and Hugh Marlowe, among others)

Cluny Brown (Starring Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lawford, Helen Walker, Reginald Gardiner and Richard Haydn, among others)

Pride and Prejudice (Starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfayden, Talulah Riley, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Carey Mulligan, Donald Sutherland and Simon Woods, among many others)

Breaker Morant (Starring Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Jack Thompson, John Waters, Terence Donovan and others)

Chariots of Fire (Starring Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nicholas Farrell, Nigel Havers and Sir John Gielgud, among many others)

Uncle Buck (Starring John Candy, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macaulay Culkin, Gaby Hoffman and Amy Madigan, among others)

You’ve Got Mail (Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton and Dabney Coleman, among others)

Enchanted (Starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon and Julie Andrews, among others)

Beverly Hills Ninja (Starring Chris Farley, Nicollette Sheridan, Soon Tex Oh and Chris Rock, among others)

Muppet Treasure Island (Starring Kevin Bishop, Tim Curry, Steve Whitmire and Frank Oz, among others)

and

Bridget Jones’ Diary (Starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, among many others).

Robert, I disagree with you, all in lighthearted good fun of course, about your characterization of the humour of “The Office” as true-to-life. The characters are dead-pan. Constant dead-pan delivery of every word spoken in real life would require mental health treatment. The characters are dead-pan because their every line is infused with sarcasm. Of course, as good actors and actresses, they are compelled to play their roles in dead-pan fashion, so as to properly convey the sarcastic irony with which every line is written. But of course real people, in real life, are not dead-pan. Some people try to act that way to be “in style.” We call them adolescents.

I tire of such dead-pan sarcasm and the air of superiority it carries with it. I wearied of it in Wayne’s World, the Lampoon movies, and I cannot abide it in such other television shows as ER, Gray’s Anatomy, The House, and a whole host of others which are in the same vein (pun intended). I don’t watch any of those shows. There are many other movies which fall into this category, but there is not time to list them all.

I realize this dead-pan, sarcastic humour is in fashion.

As you can see, I like straightforward humour.

And, in that spirit, let me invoke to my aid the names of Mel Blanc, Carl Reiner, George Burns and Jack Benny.

Long may they wave.

Have a Dovely.

Sincerely yours,
CALEB (Bugs Bunny Boy) BOONE.

P.S.: Let me tell you three jokes I have written:

The first is very apropos of our television-discussion. It is entitled:

I’ll Take Paul Lynde To Block!

Kelly Ripa is not Elizabeth Montgomery.

Alec Baldwin is not Robert Morley.

But Jerry Seinfeld is Charles Nelson Riley.

Here is my second joke:

President George Bush (The Younger — let us pretend he is still on the throne) awakens in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He calls Senator Harry Reid and says: “Harry, we’ve got to cancel the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. We must reconvene the Senate and start the process all over again.” Senator Harry Reid replies: “But, Mr. President, why would you want to do that? Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed by a large historic vote. Why do you want to undo such a great victory for the Republican Party?” President Bush answers: “Harry, you don’t understand. I didn’t mean to nominate John Roberts. I meant to nominate Oral Roberts.”

And now my third joke:

Hillary Clinton is not the Golda Meir of our time.

Barak Obama is not Albert Schweitzer.

Al Franken is not Hubert Humphrey.

But Joe Biden is John Nance Garner.

Let me add one fourth, bonus joke, which can be told in only three words:

Paula Abdul Jabbar.

Rather than “sarcastic,” or “sadistic,” I would characterize The Office’s humor as “awkward.” Which is pretty much true-to-life.

I think it is our natural sense-of-humor that gets us through life’s awkward moments, of which there is no shortage!

Darrien, thanks so much for commenting! I hope you will join us over on the forum boards to discuss “St. Patrick’s Day” in more detail. It was a fun episode! http://www.lifeintheoffice.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3244

I have to agree with Suri. If you’ve given birth, you have some stories to tell! I’ve been lucky in my life that my first stay in the hospital was during the birth of my children. So, it was all new to me. I’m not an overly modest person, but having nurses/doctors manhandle my breasts, sit in the bathroom with me, poke & prod just about every part of me was a bit much. The one manhandling nurse I am grateful for was the one who helped me feed my firstborn in the middle of the night. I was so exhausted from the birth and the baby wouldn’t latch (like little Cecelia). I was a weepy, emotional wreck (not at all like me normally). This nurse showed me how to get the baby to open-wide and shoved him onto my breast. I would have never thought to be so “rough” with a newborn. But if she hadn’t shown me that, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to nurse him properly.

A few weeks after his birth, I got together with a friend who had just recently given birth to her own child. By that point, she had quit nursing. She told me that her midwife had told her to place the baby on her breast and let her “find her way”. Well, the baby never did find her own way and the result was alot of frustration and tears for my friend, who eventually decided nursing wasn’t an option for her. This was such the complete opposite of my experience that I was immediately grateful to my midnight nurse!

Again, great job Suri! Hope your husband’s doing well.

Apparently my comments have been ignored, in the wake of my sister Becky’s letter.

Bob, initially, you indicated the most interest in replying to what I might say about a specific episode.

So, Bob, what do you think?

I see Suri and Becky dancing off together into the sunset, oblivious to my comments.

Have a Dovely.

Sincerely yours,
Caleb Boone.