Fuhgeddaboutit

I've been binge-watching "The Sopranos," which has resulted in the subliminal effect that whenever someone says something I disagree with now, my mind whispers "Fuhgeddaboutit." 

At the risk of eliciting the kind of gapes one gets when confessing they have never seen "Harry Potter," I had never watched "The Sopranos." Didn't have cable. Heard great things. Never caught up with it until streaming, and the HBO Now app. 

I am probably 20 years late to a lot of things. If we went down that list, you would most likely un-friend me just on general pop-cultural grounds. 

Side note: "Un-friend" is the best compound word since Shakespeare's "Un-sex." 

"The Sopranos" is actually very Shakespearean. You have the flawed hero and his lieutenants, his hangers-on, and the women they keep inventing new ways to disappoint. It's like Greek tragedy, even. The hero is pre-destined to destroy himself and all he holds dear. Humans have always loved watching some other schmuck do this. It makes us feel better about ourselves. 

Side-note: If you never saw it, and you didn't, go find, at a library or on streaming, the James Gandolfini/Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie "Enough Said." It's that rare thing, an adult comedy for and about middle-aged adults, warts and all. It will make you want to go put flowers on Gandolfini's grave.

The World Trade Center's twin towers appear in "The Sopranos" opening credits. Bill Clinton was president. There are references to the Lewinski scandal. Computers in the show are the size of dorm refrigerators. You have to pull up the antenna on your cell phone to take a call. 

Corrupt and violent as they are, the mobsters, raised in the Catholic church, live by very defined rules. In one episode they even take a jab against "moral relativism," against the idea that good and bad can be more than just black and white. Mobsters don't like shades of grey. Audiences love them. Ask Aristophanes. Dig him up. Go ahead, I'll wait. 

I love the mob lexicon. You can ice a guy, or burn him, or even clip him, and he's still just as dead. 

Butt-legging is bootlegging untaxed cigarettes. 

To "come heavy" is to pack heat. 

I had long heard of being "on the lam," but I never knew it was a verb, that you could "lam it," most typically to Boca Raton. 

"Spring cleaning" means getting rid of evidence.

A jamook is a loser, an idiot, who may even be

Oobatz: crazy.

I am only one season in, and of course I know about the iconic final moment of the series, since that was so widely discussed at the time it even reached a non-viewer like me. Knowing I have 60 more hours to watch, many weeks or months, is daunting. How many bees will have been killed by pesticides in that time? How many glaciers melted? Couldn't I spend that time more productively for the world? 

Maybe one season is enough. I got the flavor of the thing. Sixty hours is probably oobatz. Besides, it's summertime, and I never did get around to "Outlander." 

How "Game of Thrones" will end

Many of my readers watch "Game of Thrones," and many don't, because they hate America. It's fine. It's a free country. You can totally boycott popular culture and look good doing it, because the founders only allowed attractive people in. 

For those of you who DID watch all seven seasons and are only awaiting the final episodes of number eight, this is for you. You have proven you will put up with a LOT of nonsense. Good thing, because I am backing up a truckload of it. I'm going to lay out, based on seven years of subtle clues, how this whole wolf-and-zombie show will end:

Jon Snow, recently un-bastarded and renamed Aegon Targaryen, will hold his hot Aunt Dany in his arms as she dies, having valiantly taken a throwing-star meant for him. She will whisper, and he will lean closer, and we will not hear her, but we will see her lips move, clearly saying to Aegon, "Earn this. Earn it." But having been born several thousand years before "Saving Private Ryan," he will not get the reference. He will rise with a look of confused resolve on his face, just as he has in every single shot of every season.

Thor and Wonder Woman will appear out of the mist, along with Spider-man and Bitchslap, a new character Marvel is hoping to spin off. They will immediately be slain by those giant dragon-killer harpoons. We will hear the ghostly, schadenfreude-tinged laughter of Ned Stark in the distance. Black Panther and Captain America will arrive and begin to fight Tony Soprano and Big Pussy, as clearly a rift in time/space has opened. Paulie and Silvio, inexplicably wearing matching gymnast outfits, will join the fray. At this point, things will begin to get weird. 

Cersei will lock herself in a tower with the Mountain as insurance. If you never watched the show, trust me, that last sentence makes sense. Arya will show her allies secret sewer tunnels into Kings Landing, sewer tunnels she accidentally found in Season Two while deciding whether or not to fire her agent. Jaime Lannister will arrive at the castle and finally, after making us wait for eight seasons, rearrange the freaking letters in his first name so that they're right. 

Fighting inside the ramparts will ensue, with things looking grim for the northmen until Archie Bunker, Hoss Cartwright and Little Joe arrive to show Cersei's paid armies how to "boost the ratings, old school." At this point, the castle will run out of ravens to send, and will resort to renting owls from Hogwarts. This cross-pollination of studios will render everything very hard to see on screen, unless you bought the glasses from either the Warner Bros. or the HBO store online.

The Hound will show up to kill his sadistic brother, only to lose the stomach for it entirely when he spies Hoss making out with Arya, who is evidently going through a seriously experimental phase. An epic level of bloodletting will occur when Sam, Norm and most of the gang from "Cheers" arrives to challenge Gary's Olde Town Tavern to a game of darts, realizing, too late, the whole time rift thing. 

Jamie (see, it's so much nicer) and Tyrion will somehow fight or bribe their way into the chamber outside Cersei's room at the exact same moment. They will argue so loudly over who gets to kill her that she will escape out a window on the Mountain's back, riding him down rooftops and downspouts like something from a very naughty nursery rhyme. They will open a Bed & Breakfast in Dorn. 

With nobody to kill, Tyrion and Jamie and Aegon will rule the Seven Kingdoms together, alternating on the Iron Throne like city councils do. The series will end with a shot from Winterfell, as Bran, in his wheelchair, his face frosted with falling snow, sees a vision of Westeros thousands of years earlier, the very first Long Night, White Walkers wreaking havoc, and above it all, hovering, hard to make out, three letters...H...B...O. Through the blizzard he will see studio executives standing in front of a firehose of money. All will finally become clear.