“Who is Debbie Gibson?!”
I yelled at the television in my living room, but it didn’t do any good. Alas, none of the three Jeopardy! contestants could hear me and nary a one even ventured to make a guess.
What’s wrong with people these days? Host Ken Jennings was surprised no one knew the answer.
I was terribly offended. All three of them should have had to forfeit and leave the Alex Trebek Stage wearing dunce hats.
The lovely Debbie Gibson was probably my first teenage crush as I maneuvered through that awkward stage from junior high to high school and from boyhood to manhood.
The music and lyrics she wrote, produced and performed are probably best described as bubble gum pop rock, but they were number one hits back in the day.
They are still catchy. Which brings me to my next point: did you understand a single, solitary thing Kendrick Lamar sang at the Super Bowl half time show? No? Me, either.
Who makes decisions about who gets selected for these performances.
If we are going to do classic pop rock, why not just ask Debbie Gibson?
Or, there are many other suitable choices. In addition to Celine Dion from the so-called 51st state of Canada and to the lovely Sara Evans, who now lives in Alabama, which has shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America or whatever it is now. Since there are no rules and order has gone out the window, I am going to start calling it the Gulf of Jason. Who says I can’t? Anyway, that trio of crushes remain just that, and here I am with Valentines Day coming up day after tomorrow and I don't have one again this year.
Of course, as it has been correctly and wisely pointed out, I didn't have a groundhog on Groundhog Day and I survived that without any problem.
I think I might have saw my shadow, which means six more weeks of something, tariffs, budget cuts, chicken gizzards—I can't remember.
From Jeopardy!, I flipped over to Nickelodeon to watch Jennifer Anniston, who portrayed Rachel Green on Friends. She was another crush, though I was just passed my teenage years when the sitcom debuted.
As sleep snuck up on me, I dragged myself to bed to hook up my Darth Vader machine in a futile attempt to combat my 16 year battle with sleep apnea.
“Self,” I said to myself. “If you would stop watching so much television and stop staying at the newspaper office so long and get out and actually hunt a Valentine, you might actually find one.”
Hooking up the contraption, I noticed a long-ago Valentine card my nephew gave me when he was about three.
It is Princess Jasmine from Aladdin. Benjamin was a little fellow then, but he told me he picked her out especially for me.
It is still hanging in my bedroom. Maybe I do have all these Valentines, even if they are “only in my dreams.”
