The Cheers Diaries

and is using the surname "Lopez" to throw us off.

Norm Lopez is entitled to wash himself in the middle of the street.

The Sacramento, California cat has a fervent, almost cult-like following in the community.

Local bands have put his image on T-shirts, light rail commuters stop just to say hello and his Facebook page, as of this morning, has more than 2000 friends.

Norm's popularity skyrocketed following a heart-warming reunion between Norm and his owner, Tyler Lopez, earlier this week.

Last Friday, a stranger mistook Norm for a pregnant cat in distress and took him to the Front Street Animal Shelter where staff recognised him from his Facebook page.

Norm: Hey Cliffy... Take away that beard, and you know who I'd swear that is? Cliff: Oh yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth, Normy -- Mr. D. B. Cooper himself. I've been tracking him for twenty years now. Now he's found me, the supreme irony.

Carla: Sammy, would you just tell me one thing? What do you see in her?

Sam: Who?

Fun activity of last night, FINDING PICTURES OF THE CHEERS CAST WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG. My thoughts on this important endeavor:

Sam -- brooding hunk in training

Diane -- aaawwwwwwwww

Carla -- looks like my grandma

Rebecca -- looks like my dad (she's a little androgynous but THAT SMIRK!!!)

Cliff -- is Cliff is Cliff is Cliff

Norm -- doing exactly what we all expected

Woody -- PUPPY!!!!

Lilith -- She is so freaking pretty, you can almost never tell in Cheers!

From "Showdown", season 1 episode 22

Norm: Carla, let me get this straight... You're really not going back to Cheers?

Carla: I know it's a lousy job, Norm, but for the amount of money they're throwin' at me, there's nothing I can't take.

from "The Beer Is Always Greener", season 11 episode 2

from Cheerio, Cheers

I have a hunch that quite a few of you are like me — that is, REALLY, REALLY INVESTED in Sam and Diane’s relationship — and possibly haven’t watched the later seasons as much as the earlier ones. This is definitely true in my case, though recently I’ve been making my way through the second half of the show again, and I’m really enjoying it — both because Rebecca is the patron saint of loserdom and a goddess, and because I like to twistedly zero in on Sam’s emotional/moral/physical collapse. I think this becomes especially apparent towards the end of season eight onward: he’s arriving at a conscious realization that he’s really lonely and there isn’t much he can do about it, and it's so sad. Anyway, I watched “Days of Wine and Neuroses" today, and there’s a scene that just makes my Sam-and-Diane-dar (like a gaydar but less catchy and more useful) go beserk. I spent like an hour figuring out how to torrent photoshop just so I could gif this shit. The moment in question is when Frasier sings “Isn’t It Romantic" at Rebecca’s wedding shower. LOOK AT SAM’S FACE.

DO YOU SEE THE FREAKIN’ WISTFULNESS AND ANGST? It’s not just me, right? Whaaaaaaaat could he possibly be remembering???

Waaaahhhhhh. It's either that, or he's secretly become a really hardcore Robin/Rebecca shipper. Leaning towards the former, personally.

For whatever reason I mull over this a lot. In case you're not aware, Cheers is a REALLY GOOD SHOW and I've always thought it would translate well to more "serious" formats. Anyway, I am imagining this as a clunky 1500 page novel and in the style of John Dos Passos's USA Trilogy, it will be nonlinear and various narrative forms will be employed. Here's what I got so far.

Malone's Complaint -- modeled after Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, this will be a neurotic, sex-crazed monologue from our doomed hero as he clambers gracelessly into old age, addressed to Frasier.

Tropic of CapriPORN -- Okay, I just made that title up right now. This is going to be a really raw, Henry-Miller-esque bildungsroman, also about Sam and told in first person.

Cliff and Norm Are Dead -- a recurring theatrical interlude, featuring Mssrs. Clavin and Peterson, styled after Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

The Collected Works of D. Chambers -- Diane's terrible poems and stories will be interspersed at thematically relevant intervals.

The Sound and the Fury -- Diane is the sound, Carla is the fury, but Woody is the Benjy Compson-esque hero of this section: "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing."

The Scientific Journals of Doctor L. Sternin-Crane -- I think here I will have Lilith secretly documenting the psychiatric well-being of the various barflies -- a case study, if you will.

THIS WOULD BE A GOOD FREAKIN BOOK, RIGHT????

The latest from Diane Chambers (@Diane_Chamberz). very intellectual, very well educated, perhaps even over-educated if there is such a thing. blonde, blue-eyed, with a byron-like innocence. Los Angeles