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Song Info (from Beatlesongs):”I’m Down” is on the Beatles For Sale album, and was 90%  McCartney, 10% Lennon. It was released as a single in the States on July 19, 1965, and didn’t crack the Hot 100. The Beatles used it in their live sets in ’65 and ’66, and it was the very first song Aerosmith ever recorded – they used it as a demo.

It wasn’t too long after I got married that I fell down the stairs into the basement.  No, that isn’t some way of saying my wife hits me – I actually fell down the stairs.

Technically it was only one stair, the last one.  I had left the light off because I didn’t think I needed it.  I hadn’t needed it the previous 200 times I’d gone downstairs.  This time, though, the dimness, the light color of the carpet on the stairs, and the light color of the linoleum in the basement joined forces like a malevolent Voltron bent on destroying me.

I don’t remember how I landed, I just remember that it hurt. I’d like to think I spun effortlessly and quickly in the air to land on my back, but I doubt that happened. Not even my penchant for exaggeration will let me get away with that one. I landed unceremoniously and stayed there for a while, lamenting my lack of grace, my stupidity, and my inability to turn the experience into a good story.

I fell. That was it.  I didn’t even do it with any style. I wasn’t hurt in any long-lasting way, and I wasn’t bleeding. I went on about my business after a few minutes of lying on the basement floor, and that was that.

Except…

Every time I go down those stairs now, I get nervous.  I’ve been using stairs for over 30 years now, mostly incident-free.  But this one little tumble has messed me all up.  There’ve been days when I get to the bottom of the stairs and I feel with my foot for the next step, just to make sure.

It’s been six months.  I’m not sure how to stop thinking about that last step.

Song Info (from Beatlesongs):”Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is on the Abbey Road album, and was 100% written by McCartney, he called it “the corny one.”  The term “pataphysical” came from a Parisian club called the Pataphysical Society, which was actually a drinking club.

I don’t know that I’ve ever “discovered” a TV show on my own – you know, just stumbled onto it and found out it was great.  Most shows I love I started watching them because of a friend’s suggestion.  I didn’t start watching Seinfeld until its third or fourth season (thanks, Dave!), and I never saw an episode of Firefly until it was off the air and on DVD.  I sorta picked up Scrubs and Arrested Development on my own, I guess, but for the most part I find shows because I hear enough people say enough good things about them.

I tend towards sitcoms and sci-fi and not much toward dramas, whether courtroom or otherwise.  I did make it through three or four seasons of Smallville, which was more drama than sci-fi, so maybe that counts.

I tried the original CSI for a while, but didn’t stick with it.  I kind of liked the technical aspects (even though I knew they were ridiculously sped up for the sake of the show), but it was pretty gross and the characters didn’t really stick with me.  I took my failure to stick with it as a sign that procedurals weren’t really for me.

When Megan and I started dating, she told me she really liked Bones and wanted me to watch it with her.  I didn’t know anything about it at all, but agreed to watch an episode with her, of course.  It turned out to be a procedural and it also turned out to have some really gross after-death medical stuff in it… but I was surprised to find out I liked it.  A lot.  The characters really resonated with me, and I wanted to see what would happen to them.  Megan and I started on Season 1, Episode 1 and kept on from there.  We started with Netflix, but pretty soon I just bought her the seasons as we got ready for the next one.  We finished Season 5 in time to start watching Season 6, airing currently.  (Note: Bones is the tie-in to the title of this entry, as the crew could easily discern Maxwell’s use of a silver hammer in killing his victims.)

I hate waiting a week (or two, or five) for the next episode.  In some ways it’s so much better to have a finished product – there’s a lot to enjoy, you can watch at your own pace, and you can see the storyline from start to finish.  It’s like a really long movie.  Of course, if the show is really good, it can be sad that it’s over, knowing there won’t be any more episodes (the aforementioned Firefly, Arrested Development, Wonderfalls…), but it can also be sort of a good thing.

One of the few shows I was allowed to watch growing up was ALF. For years afterwards I had fond memories of the cat-eating alien.  A couple of years ago I bought the entire run of ALF on DVD. The first two seasons were as great as I remembered. The third season was… just okay. The fourth season? Awful. Just awful.  There’s an instance of a show that should have stopped after two seasons, apparently.  So, yeah, more Arrested Development is a thing most fans want, me included.  But there’s a part of me that is sort of glad it ended when it did.  As it is, there’s this almost perfect package of the show.  If it had gone on longer, it might have gotten lousy, like so many shows do (you are required by law at this point to mention The Simpsons, and how it isn’t as good as it used to be, and about how the fourth season was the pinnacle).  Jerry Seinfeld famously decided to end the show while it was still wildly popular and very good.  There’s debate on whether or not that was a good thing, but I tend to agree with him.

It’s probably safest for me to only find good shows once they’re off the air.  That way I can enjoy them for what they are and don’t have to worry about them messing it up in the future.  The downside is that once I start liking a show, I want to devour it.  Megan and I would watch an episode or two of Bones a week, whereas on my own I probably would have watched a season in two weeks or less.

So what are some of your favorite shows?

If there’s something that will always draw me back to blogging, it’s Beatles Week.  This year has been my lousiest year blogging ever, numbers-wise.  It was barely over 6 months ago that I finally finished the last Beatles Week, even.

Anyway, I’m going to give it another try.  My goal this time around is to have it finished before my birthday in May.  Aim high, right?

Here’s the original explanation of Beatles Week:

I declare next week to be Beatles Week here on MadMup.com. Basically what that means is that my next week’s worth of posts will be inspired by the titles of Beatles songs. This doesn’t mean that the posts will be about The Beatles, just that the song title will guide the post.

Since I know I haven’t been the most faithful of bloggers recently, I’m going to stretch the definition of “week” a bit and say that my next week’s worth of blogging will follow this theme. Since the blogging week is like the work week, that means the next five entries will fall under the “Beatles Week” heading.

If you have a blog and are interested in joining in, here is a list of song titles (with lyrics) and there’s also the Wikipedia version. Leave a link in the comments if you’re planning to join in!

Beatles Week 2 brought about the change that a “week’s worth” in this case would mean eight entries, based on the Beatles song “Eight Days a Week.”