Oh, wow – I’d completely forgotten about this MCI parody of an AT&T commercial:

And one 1982 television commercial parodied AT&T’s “reach out and touch someone” spots. In it, a man confronts his sobbing wife: “Have you been talking to our son on long distance again? Did he tell you how much he loves you? Why on earth are you crying?” The woman replies, “Have you seen our long-distance bill?”

Actually, I thought it was “Have you seen the bill?”, but close enough. And I seem to remember that the MCI commercial used the same couple as the AT&T commercial, but I could be wrong.

Matt and I have been working our way through the “Wonderfalls” DVDs. “Wonderfalls,” if you’re not familiar, is an incredibly funny one-hour TV series that premiered on Fox last March about a 20something slacker girl (played with a perfect mix of cynicism and vulnerability by Caroline Dhavernas) who works at a gift shop at Niagara Falls and believes that inanimate animal-like objects are talking to her – a wax lion, a lawn flamingo, a cow creamer, etc. Despite critical raves, it was unjustly cancelled after four episodes due to low ratings. Nine remaining episodes were never aired, but now all 13 are out on DVD. What did we ever do before DVD?

We’ve watched six episodes so far – the four that we first saw on TV plus the first two of the unaired ones – and I’m sad that we’re nearly halfway through. Each episode is so wonderful and unpredictable. The plot begins to develop further in the unaired episodes; I’ve been studiously avoiding spoilers (unlike some people), but I do know that the 13 episodes reach some sort of conclusion, which is good to know.

And two of the joys of watching the series are hotties Tyron Leitso and Lee Pace. Tyron Leitso is just too cute for words, and I saw the brilliant Lee Pace last year in Small Tragedy and “Soldier’s Girl.”

Yesterday we went to Central Park to see The Gates. I’m having difficulty writing about them.

How do you write about something that has no meaning? About something that’s just pretty? I wonder if that’s the point of the Gates – that they mock our need to find meaning. It’s okay merely to describe how the Gates look and what they make you feel or think. There’s no prescribed way. Meaning isn’t important. It’s all very Zennish.

With that preamble – the Gates are pretty cool. I like how a gust of wind will rush through a row of them, making some of them billow while inexplicably leaving others alone.

I was surprised that the Gates are not all the same width. Each Gate is as wide as the pathway it’s on. A Gate is not expandable – its width cannot be adjusted – so it’s as if it can be only at that one spot and no other. I wonder if each Gate had an assigned location.

At one point yesterday I turned to Matt and said in this mock-Valley-Girl/mock-stoned voice, “I think, that, like, each of the Gates? Has its own personality?”

We spent nearly two hours walking through the park, starting at 81st and Central Park West. We walked up to Summit Rock, over to the Great Lawn, up to the southern edge of the Reservoir, back down around the Lawn, up to Belvedere Castle (the crowds on the stairway leading up to it got backed up), down through the Rambles (which were gateless), past the lake, over to Bethesda Fountain, then over to Columbus Circle. As we reached the southwestern corner of the park, we saw a bunch of people taking photos of one particular Gate. We wondered what was going on, and then we looked up and saw a hawk devouring a squirrel on a tree branch. Gross. I guess the Gates can’t divert attention from everything.

Here are a ton of Flickr photos. And I particularly like Matt Pecori’s photos.

It’s too bad we didn’t go on Saturday, or maybe we could have gotten one of the free fabric swatches. Jake Dobkin appears to have found particularly good use for one; I think this is my favorite Gates photo of all.