SOMETHING'S GONNA HAPPEN

I forget sometimes.  To me, it's Sunday morning, and I have to leave for work before long.  But to the rest of the world, it's still Saturday night.  The bars have all closed, but the traffic still flows, a steady stream of cars making their way down my street as I walk my dog.

The faces can't be seen as they speed by in darkness, but I know them.  Some are young and some are old, most are male, black, white, Latino, all of them chasing the promise of the night, hoping that one more drink, one more bar, one more visit to wherever they're going, one more anything will be the magic bullet, the elusive and indescribable something that will make everything better, at least for the moment and maybe beyond.

There's an appeal to it, maybe, and I almost feel like jumping in one of these cars as it passes, to go where it will take me, to live in a moment utterly unconcerned with the future, to live, however briefly, in a world in which consequences are never considered.

But no car, no drink, no nothing could ever take me to such a place.  I'm always thinking ahead, I'm always aware of the fallout to my actions, I'm never able to just relax and enjoy the moment for whatever it is.  Sure, the Saturday night crowd sometimes only find happiness in superficial ways, and it may be fleeting, but at least it's there.  They know a bliss not attainable to me, not quite, not really.  What am I missing, and how can I find it?

Isabella pulls at her leash.  She's caught a scent of something and means to follow it.  She turns to me, wondering why I simply stand, why I don't run with her to track down her prey.  She tilts her head as she regards me, one ear flopping inside out, her nose quivering.

Oh, I think as I bend down to hug her.  This is what happiness feels like.

WHILE THE POOR PEOPLE SLEEPIN' WITH THE SHADE ON THE LIGHT

Thanks to a link provided by The Huffington Post (the only news source you'll ever need if you're vaguely liberal and kind of shallow), I found myself at People magazine's website, where I learned that Jenny McCarthy is determined to be totally honest with her new boyfriend.

Honest?  As in, "It will be creepy to watch my plasticized face and tits stay firm and unyielding even as the rest of my body inevitably decays"?  Or, "My theories about autism have more in common with the writings of Joe Mengele than reporters for infotainment-related websites are quite willing to admit"?  Because, yeah, if she was willing to come right out and say either of those things, she'd deserve credit for honesty, if nothing else.

But no, it's all about the little things, according to Jenny: "If he wants Chinese food and I don't, I say it."

Ah.  Thanks for the insight, which is the sort of profundity one might expect from somebody who is, as near as I can tell, still famous primarily for an MTV dating show from a decade-and-a-half ago.  But really, I'm not here to bash McCarthy so much as note that her new Chinese-food-loving boyfriend, Jason Toohey is, according to People's breathlessly bland prose, a "Las Vegas-based pirate performer." 

I'd make a joke about that, except a) a joke would be redundant and b) Toohey will almost certainly parlay his brief semi-fame as a guy who is fucking a has-been publicity whore into some sort of career, a reality show, a book deal, something.

Once Toohey inevitably dumps her, McCarthy will make more sad faces--to the extent that her plastic surgery allows her to register any emotion at all--and People will be there to write about it, The Huffington Post will link to it.

And yeah, I'll probably click on the link.

THIS SITE HAS MORE UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCES THAN A PINTER PLAY

Things happen, life continues.  Milestones and mundane things.  Lennon's birthday, passings of well-loved public figures.  No comments appearing in this space. 

Don't know what to say.  I don't have an iPhone or a laptop or any kind of mobile device that would allow me to post thoughts here when inspiration strikes.  I still just have my clunky old home computer, and I find myself spending less time in front of it than I used to.

Why?  Well, probably because much of my time is focused on Janie.  I should be writing about her, or composing odes to the transformative powers of love, or some damned thing, but when I'm with her, I'm happy just to be with her, and when I'm not with her...well, I'm just kind of here.

Not that, you know, this space will remain a void forever.  I've been struck into silence before, and I always come back.  Sooner or later the Associated Press will run yet another brain-dead interview with Pete Wentz, and I'll go on and on about it at needless length. 

Because, hey, that's what I do.

STILL I REMAIN TIED TO THE MAST

Again, it's been awhile--hasn't it?--since new content appeared in this space.  Heaven knows, it's not like there's been a shortage of things to discuss.  There were, for instance, the deaths of the brilliant film editor Sally Menke, the great director Arthur Penn, astonishingly prolific TV genius Stephen J. Cannell (who created everything from the legitimately great The Rockford Files and Wiseguy to guilty pleasure favorites like Hardcastle And McCormick, as well as the entirely forgotten Broken Badges, and for those of you who never had the pleasure of hearing my mom go on and on about the transcendent stupidity of that last one, I pity you), not to mention Tony Fucking Curtis.  There's the nation's stunned disbelief that Christine O'Donnell can even remember to breathe, much less be nominated to high office.  There was a health scare involving my beloved puppy Isabella, who apparently has epilepsy.  Oh, and there's Janie, the current (and hopefully future) love of my life.

I really intend to go on and on about here sometime, especially since women I've barely dated or merely slept with have received more space here than seems necessary.  But for now, let me just say she is probably the main reason there have been fewer postings here lately.  With her, I'm finally learning to--what's the word?--relax.  I'm finding some measure of calm and, if I may, contentment.  And I'm finding that much of my writing in the past was fueled by melancholy, or anger, or feelings other than joy.  Not always, of course, but often enough.

So if I'm entering some sort of mellow phase here, the obvious challenge to my writing life is to figure out how to balance happiness--and by happiness I mean the lack of crippling depression--with creativity.  I'm not used to feeling more good than bad, and who knows how long the feeling will last, but for now it's a whole new journey.  Hopefully, I'll file reports along the way.

YOU MIGHT THINK I'M CRAZY

Even classic rock stations don't play The Cars' You Might Think as often as they used to, and that's good.  Not for aesthetic reasons, but because as soon as I hear the very eighties keyboard riff that kicks it off, I'm immediately transported to the day room of the psych ward at University Hospitals in Iowa City, where I half-glimpsed the video for the song in one of my few forays out to mingle with my fellow inmates.

I couldn't even tell you when this was, exactly.  '85, I remember, probably late summer or early fall.  You Might Think was no longer a new song, it had been released much earlier, probably around the time of my first suicide attempt.  Evidently it was still popular enough to see airplay on MTV, because it is the only concrete memory I have of my time there. 

Oh, there are other memories, but they've become so vague.  There was a cute girl who actually tried to talk to me a few times, though I was too messed up to respond, but I don't remember her name, or what she looked like, or anything about her, really.  There was a brooding Sean Penn-in-Bad Boys type, who seemed to have been there awhile.  There was my assigned counselor, most likely a grad student, who was so fucking earnest I found myself making  stuff up just to get more sympathy from her.

And there were windows, which offered views of not much, but beyond the trees and institutional buildings of the immediate area there was much more out there, I just knew it.  I didn't know Iowa City, had never been there, but as Mom drove me to the hospital I caught glimpses of restaurants and book stores and record stores, and I thought if I could just move into one of those, if I could stay there and never leave, I wouldn't have to be making this trip.  My life would be magically better somehow, somehow.

Those windows were temptations, a possible exit, a way out.  And if instead I cut myself on the glass, if I bled and died, well, hey, that would have been okay, too.  I didn't want to be there, in the hospital or in my skin, or anywhere, really.

I was utterly, unbearably miserable, and yet when I heard You Might Think on the radio the other day, I found myself overwhelmed with nostalgia for a time I barely remember.  It seemed at the time that life was a constant downward drift, misery endured only to be ultimately, blessedly ended.  But now it seems my lost years were some sort of necessary crucible, forming me into the whatever-it-is I'd become.  I didn't know it then, but a future awaited, experiences wonderful and terrible, and very soon I'd learn to live.

OR MAYBE THIS IS IT

Uh, yeah, new content is becoming increasingly rare around here, innit?  I'm hoping that will change here soon--I have ideas!  Honest!--but first, for regular readers (both of you!), a bit of an explanation for the silence.

First of all, there's Janie, who really deserves to be mentioned in more than passing, but for now I'll just say that when there's a sweet, warm presence sharing time with you, it makes it harder to excuse slipping away to a keyboard to tap out a few hundred words on whatever the hell it is I usually write about.  So there's that.

Also, beloved puppy Isabella is suffering from a not entirely diagnosed medical condition.  She's mostly fine (and adorable, of course), but trying to get to the bottom of it will involve spending money I don't really have, which brings on financial stress, which is already triggering something vaguely resembling depression, an old friend I'd hoped to never again encounter, but there you go.

Anyway, posting will presumably resume on a more regular basis at some unspecified point in the future.  Or, you know, not.  That's about as solid a promise as can be made right now, and hey, you can hold me to it.  Or, again, not.

DON'T YOU CRY NO MORE

You don't think I enjoy this sort of thing, do you?  You don't think I have nothing better to do than monitor the Associated Press' entertainment news wire, waiting for goofy stories that are easily mocked?  Don't I have better things to do?  Don't I have a life?

To answer these questions: No, kind of, sadly, no and...I'm sorry, what was the question?

Anyway, the Pulitzer=chasing scribes at the AP have done it again, this time with a story imaginatively headlined Rockers Kansas Carry on, Play With College Groups.  (I have no idea why the good folks at the AP failed to capitalize "on" but there it is.)  And it is indeed about Kansas, regarded by decent people everywhere as one of the worst bands ever, and their pathetic attempt to stay down with the kids by playing with college orchestras. 

There's a Noble Cause at the heart of all this--the concerts raise money for the schools' music programs--which is all well and good, but who gives a sweet shit?  I mean, this is Kansas.  The highlight of their miserable existence was Carry On, Wayward Son, which--I've mentioned this before, right?--is simply the worst song of the rock era.  I realize it has plenty of heavy-duty competition, what with the entire songbooks of Journey and Panic! At The Disco and whatnot, but between the idiotic lyrics, preening vocals, cheeseball keyboards and THE worst guitar solo ever recorded, its crown will likely remain in place forever and ever.

Anyway, now they're back.  Well, not so much back as still around, and willing to pander to anyone who will play their music.  And the Associated Press, which didn't spend a whole lot of time getting to the bottom of that whole Weapons Of Mass Destruction thing, did assign a reporter to cover this story. 

Who says journalism is dead?

WHAT A SHAME ABOUT ME

Randy Quaid Arrested For Squatting In Old Home reads the somewhat inelegantly phrased headline Reuters has chosen for this story, and viewers who know Quaid primarily as Cousin Eddie, his character from the National lampoon's Vacation series, would be forgiven for assuming Quaid was squatting to take a dump.

But no, he and his wife were arrested for squatting like hobos in a bad thirties social realist play, living in a house they no longer own, claiming they belong there despite all evidence to the contrary.  It's the latest in a string of bizarre incidents involving Quaid, who seems to be working to erase all memories of the great actor he used to be.  He was the sad, sad heart of Hal Ashby's magnificent The Last Detail, a member of Peter Bogdanovich's stock company back when that meant something, and a welcome player in such cult favorites as The Long Riders, Quick Change and The Ice Harvest.  

Unfortunately, his dickish real-life behavior and apparent readiness to accept any script he's offered (Balls Out?  Seriously?) threaten to infect his career like a virus, making his very presence a cause for groaning, and retroactively making even his best previous work seem lesser in stature.  He's turning into latter-day Dennis Hopper, only at least Hopper's history of self-immolation was spectacular, whereas Quaid's is just kind of pathetic.

Still, The Last Detail--man, that's a great movie.

STOP THE PRESSES! WE'VE GOT AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SPENCER PRATT!

I've saluted the excellent entertainment reporting from the gutsy journalists of the Associated Press before, but somehow, they always manage to top themselves.  Sure the obits they ran over the weekend for the great filmmaker Claude Chabrol and wonderful character actor Kevin McCarthy were short and seemingly uninformed, in their brevity almost dismissive of each man's considerable accomplishments.

But yesterday they came through like champs, taking the time to let us know the really important stuff.  First, they broke the story that John Mayer has shut down his Twitter account--well, not so much his Twitter account as an account set up exclusively to promote his new album, which has apparently run its course, commercially--and then came the really big news, a breathless interview with fast-fading reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who spoke excitedly about a possible reunion with his soon-to-be-ex, pop culture footnote Heidi Montag, after they were both detained in Costa Rica for possession of firearms and...oh hell, you know what?  I just read the story, and I can't remember the details.

Well, of course I can't, because who gives a sweet shit about Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag?  The Hills was precisely the type of show destined to be forgotten as soon as it left the air, and while it's perfectly understandable that Pratt and Montag may have a hard time dealing with their sudden, crushing drop to obscurity, it is wholly inexplicable that a supposedly respectable news gathering organization like the AP would do anything to prolong their moment in the sun.  Just because a chucklehead like Pratt calls a news conference doesn't mean you need to cover it, folks.

Besides, the AP needs to get back to covering real news: What's Pete Wentz up to these days?

THEY ARE ALL THAT'S UNCHANGED

What the world would come to call 9/11 happened, as nearly everyone remembers, on a Tuesday.  I can recall that day, that evening, the next morning as everyone else can, as a continuous loop of time spent trying to make sense of something that seemed utterly incomprehensible.  But it's funny--I don't remember how the rest of the day after played out, or the day after that, or the day after.

I mean, I lived in the D.C. area, so the next few days were certainly infused with an increased sense of paranoia, a feeling that the other shoe could drop anytime.  But that feeling lingered for months, especially with the anthrax scare that followed so soon after.  But the actual specifics of the days that followed The Day That Changed Everything...no, I can't recall those at all.

My memory is gone, until the following Sunday.  My wife and I were newcomers to the area, had in fact only lived there a little over three months when the attacks occurred.  But we had carved out our little place in the world, and certain rituals had evolved.  And one of those rituals involved me rising much earlier than her, and carrying out some of the day-to day necessities of life.  I'd do laundry while she still slept.  Or wash dishes.

Or shop for groceries.  Heading out to the market on those dark, slightly chilly mornings of early autumn meant choosing between the Food Lion a few blocks away, or the Safeway just down the street.  Food Lion had more varieties of frozen pizza--always an important consideration!--and the prices were slightly cheaper, but Safeway had the advantage of being closer.  I'd usually alternate.  On the morning of September 16th, I chose Safeway.

Not many people out that early, and the aisles were piled with merchandise waiting to be stocked.  I shopped according to the usual script, picking up the same items I always picked up, and one I only occasionally bought: The Sunday Washington Post.

The tired-looking woman at the register scanned the items, and the clerk bagged them.  He was the same guy who usually worked there on Sunday mornings, a doughy, shapeless middle-aged guy with thinning white hair.  He looked like he might have come from a fairly rough-and-tumble background, but he was always unfailingly polite and talkative.

This morning, though, he paused briefly to examine the cover of The Post, which inevitably featured a photo of the rubble that had once been the Twin Towers.  "3000 people," he said softly, as though to himself.  "3000 people.  Christ.  In America.  We..."  He shook his head, as if snapping out of a dream, and rolled the paper and placed it in a bag.  His eyes glistened as they peered into mine, as if searching for answers he'd never find.  "How could that happen?  How...here?"

I just shrugged, and said something non-committal.  I took my bags and headed to the car, where I sat for several minutes, crying so hard it seemed the tears would never stop.

INSERT OBSCURE LYRICS HERE, THEN CALL IT A TITLE

According to the calender, it's been--zoinks!--two weeks or so since any kind of new content appeared in this space.  There are reasons for this, the most prominent among them being named Janey, who is occupying a lot of my time, and about whom I'll no doubt be writing in the future.  Then there are various little hiccups involving Blogger, which sometimes makes even attempting to post here a pain in the ass, and the slowness of my computer, which...eh, I don't even wanna get started on that.

And then there's the other reason I haven't been doing much here, the real reason, which is that I seem to be having a paralyzing bout of writer's block.  It's happened a few times since I started this site, but the feeling this time is different.  I can't even get words down without growing disgusted with the tone and wiping them all away.  There have been aborted posts here that I deleted in draft phase, consisting of no more than a paragraph or two, which is all the further I could get before I deleted them from memory.  More than likely, they will never be missed, but who knows?  Writing doesn't seem to agree with me now.

But, you know, that's just for now.  Presumably this will pass, and I'll be back to...whatever the hell it is I do around here.  And if this site still has any readers at all, my sincere thanks for sticking with it, even when nothing is going on.   I'll try to make it more interesting soon.  Honest!

IF YOU LIVE IN THIS WORLD, YOU'RE FEELIN' THE CHANGE OF THE GUARD

The passing of writer Jackson Gillis at the age of 93 could be viewed, if one were prone to overwrought metaphors, as symbolic of the death of a whole era of television.

His list of credits is astonishing.  He wrote for more prestigious shows like Perry Mason and Columbo, but he also contributed scripts to Lost In Space, Longstreet and, for God's sake, Jason Of Star Command.  He penned many episodes of the old George Reeves Superman series, as well as a script for its snarky modern update, Lois & Clark.  In a way, he was TV history.

But now, it seems, ancient history.  Though Gillis occasionally landed regular gigs on particular shows--he was a story editor on Perry Mason--he mostly made his living as a freelancer.  Until sometime in the eighties, most programs depended on freelance writers for scripts, particularly one-hour dramas.  (Sitcoms were more likely to be written in-house, but even then, most of them would routinely feature a few episodes per season written by outsiders.)  Then as now, the vast majority of programming was formulaic--cop shows, medical shows, lawyer shows, westerns.  The regular characters were pretty much set in stone, unchanging from episode to episode, there only to drive this week's storyline. 

That's where somebody like Gillis came in.  Unlike some of the more densely-packed series of today, when even the relentlessly disposable likes of CSI: Miami comes complete with a ton of backstory to its characters, it didn't really matter to a freelancer if they weren't up on the show's bible.  If Gillis sold a spec script to Barnaby Jones, but producer Quinn Martin was short on storylines for Cannon that season, eh, no problem, it was easily retooled.

If Gillis could devise an airtight plot, producers were interested--that's what their shows were about.  It was the story that kept a viewer hooked.  Nowadays, almost every TV drama is primarily character-driven--not just the good ones, like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but shows like House and the Law & Order franchise, which spend way too much time on the ongoing personal lives of not very interesting characters, and give short shrift to the stories they presumably mean to tell.  Almost all of these shows are scripted by staff writers, and then filtered through the sensibilities of whatever powerful writer-producer is in charge.

Which is fine, for shows where it makes sense.  The Sopranos and Deadwood, or to go back farther, Wiseguy and Homicide: Life On The Streets, were mostly written by a small staff who knew the characters intimately, and produced some of the best dramas ever.  But when the same approach is taken to what should be fun junk food, something's wrong.  A program like Criminal Minds has pretensions it hasn't earned, and its undernourished storylines, buried under a mountain of character details, are grindingly predictable.

Which is why producers use to wisely depend on Jackson Gillis.  If nothing else, he knew how to tell a story.

IT BRINGS ON MANY CHANGES

Noel Murray's A Very Special Episode series at The AV Club has been indispensable from the get-go, but the latest installment, on the history and influence of MASH, is less interesting for the article itself than the response of its readers.

Murray's article has generated over 400 comments as I write this, and the big surprise is how obviously familiar with the show the readership of The AV Club appears to be.  Though it is popular with people of all ages (hey, I'm a regular!), the site is geared largely to people in the early twenties to late thirties demographic.  Many of its readers would not even have been born when MASH was in production.  They would have to come to it through syndication, or DVD.  And evidently it struck a chord in many people.  Which is a surprise to me, because this show is a prime example of a once-revered program that simply doesn't hold up..

When it originally aired, MASH was regarded as an example of "Quality Television", one of the few bastions of quality writing and acting to be found in the vast Wasteland of primetime TV.  But it was always a bit of a mongrel, aspiring to innovation while remaining thoroughly conventional, straining for pathos while relying on punchlines.

Early in its run, it tried for a looser, more free-form vibe, somewhat akin to the Robert Altman film that inspired it.  But the show's developer, Larry Gelbart, while a certified comedy genius (and I'd like to take this moment to heap mountains of praise on his script for Stanley Donen's Movie Movie, one of the greatest comedies of the seventies), had the instincts of a Catskills tummler, always ready with a snappy quip or pun.  Thus the show always felt self-consciously written, which tended to clash with its more serious war-is-hell attitude.  The best early episodes have the feel of a more acerbic Sgt. Bilko, only not as good.

Because Bilko, after all, had no particular pretense to realism--it was shot in front of a studio audience.  MASH was shot one camera-style, on locations or on relatively detailed sets, and seemed to be striving for...what?  Authenticity?  No, that can't be right--the very seventies hairstyles of most of the actors undermine any such notions.  And the performances were anything but subtle, with the actors braying the dialogue as if trying to project to the back rows.

In a way, MASH most closely resembled the work of Gelbart's old writer's room cohort from the Sid Caesar days, Neil Simon.  His plays--wildly popular in the seventies, almost completely forgotten now--were similarly machine-tooled for laughs and pathos, with the comedic and dramatic beats arriving at exactly the expected times.  It could be effective, but it was inorganic by nature.  Gelbart's jokes were funnier than Simon's, but his show felt similarly forced--characters were constantly having dramatic revelations that would be completely forgotten about by the next episode.

Of course, that was the convention of the time.  TV shows in the seventies lacked the continuity of even the least distinguished shows today.  There were no continuing storylines or callbacks to previous incidents.  Every episode was self-contained.  Or at least, that's what many TV historians claim.  But it's not entirely true.

For instance, there was episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where perpetually wisecracking loser Murray risks everything--his marriage, his job, his happiness--by openly declaring his crush on Mary, his co-worker.  She's flattered and embarrassed, doesn't know how to deal with it, and the whole episode is kind of squirmy and uncomfortable.  And, in true seventies sitcom fashion, after that installment, it's never spoken of again.  BUT...if you saw that episode, you could never look at Murray and Mary, sitting side-by-side at their work desks, the same way again.  It was a character revelation that continued to resonate and didn't need to be stressed.

On the other hand, MASH would have its characters have some sort of epiphany just because it made for a nice dramatic storyline.  They'd remember a childhood trauma, or become obsessed with death, or have a crisis of faith--the type of thing that, in anything resembling the real world, would pretty much define your very existence--then have a little speech at the end of the episode (perfect for an Emmy highlight reel) and be ready for next week's episode.  Nothing ever resonated, nothing ever mattered.

After Gelbart's departure, MASH became much, much worse, limping along year after year in a neverending loop of static camera set-ups, mechanical wisecracks and high school play-level dramatics.  The last three or four seasons--with the actors visibly much older, and situations often repeated from earlier episodes--were and are actually painful to watch.  Yet the show's acclaim seemed to grow exponentially.  Why?

Seventies TV was much maligned at the time, and still is now, sometimes unfairly.  The best shows of the era--just off the top of my head, Mary Tyler Moore, Columbo, The Rockford Files, WKRP In Cincinnati--stand up to even the very best of what's being done now.  But yeah, there was a lot of crap, and in particular, there were a lot of shows essentially designed to be nothing but time-killers.  And as sometimes happens, in a sea of mediocrity, something that aspires to better things stands out.  In concept and execution, MASH wasn't really significantly better than anything else, but it claimed to be, and once upon a time, good intentions really were enough.

NOT QUEEN, NOT DUKE, NOT PRINCE

So I made an offhand comment on my Facebook page last night suggesting that anyone who uses the word "chillax" deserves to be taken out and shot.  A number of friends responded with what I'm going to hope was mock indignation, and I offered a half-assed apology, and that was that.  Still, as close as I've come to being involved in one of those exciting internet dust-ups the kids seem so fond of these days.

But it also got me thinking--if use of meaningless slang terms could be punishable by death, what other Draconian laws would be enacted if I were in charge of things?  Obviously, Marc Cohn and Jason Mraz would be subjected to slow, exquisite punishment--they'd be forced to listen to their own music.  Other grave offenses would include use of Ke$ha songs as ring tones, wearing flip-flops to work and of course, cleaning your gutters at 5 AM.  (That last one would only apply to my neighbors.)

But I wouldn't be wholly despotic.  Many would benefit from my rule.  Joe Dante, Brad Bird and Paul Thomas Anderson would be given unlimited funding to make whatever the hell movies they want.  Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would be hustled into a recording studio on a regular basis, thus assuring new Steely Dan albums would appear more frequently than every decade or so.  (There would, however, be a bylaw mandating Becker play every bass and guitar part himself, and forbidding him from ever singing.)  TV would be full of however many shows Jay Tarses wants to create.  Best of all, a team of scientists would work around the clock trying to figure out how to bring Kurt Vonnegut back to life, because I can't stand living in a world without him.  Also, though polygamy would be illegal for the general public, it would certainly be allowed for me, thus freeing me up to marry Lauren Graham, Thora Birch and Neko Case simultaneously.  (They'd all be cool with it, I'm sure.)

Cracks would eventually appear.  I'd become hated, my regime despised.  An underground resistance would materialize, and Walking In Memphis would become a song of defiance.  Jason Mraz, his dead eyes betraying the emotional scars of someone who has spent years in a dungeon listening to an endless loop of I'm Yours, would appear in the palace (I'd have a palace, right?) with vengeance on his mind, and not even my personal bodyguard--Kurt Russell, of course--would be able to stop him.  It would be a thuddingly obvious twist ending, like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Of course, there'd be none of those in my personal world, either.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY

Presumably his spiritual heirs have been too busy protesting gay marriage and spreading lies about Islam to note the death of James J. Kilpatrick at the age of 89.

A long-time spokesman for the lunatic right, he spent the forties and fifties toiling at various newspapers in the segregated south.  When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown vs. The Board Of education, Kilpatrick thrust himself onto the national stage, becoming a go-to spokesman for segregation.  As late as 1963, when it must have been obvious to Kilpatrick that the tides of time and common sense were turning against him, he submitted an article to The Saturday Evening Post arguing that, in his words, "the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race."

That piece never ran, but the fact that a blandly mainstream publication like The Post even considered it proves that the hijacking of the media by right-wing extremists is nothing new.  Indeed, Kilpatrick parlayed his noxious celebrity into a sweet gig on 60 Minutes, on which he and the supposedly liberal Shana Alexander indulged in pointlessly argumentative back and forth of the exact kind so favored by news networks today.

60 Minutes producer Don Hewett would no doubt have claimed that he used Kilpatrick as a way of proving that his show had no agenda, that it aired all points of view.  But do all points of view need to be aired on a network forum, especially when those views are hateful and ill-informed?  Kilpatrick's run on CBS was an inspiration for CNN's Crossfire, which gave Pat Buchanan a forum for launching his hateful bile, which led, inevitably, to Fox News--ideology presented as fact.

And we are living with the results of all this.  When the views of hate-minded lunatics are given the patina of legitimacy by the mainstream press, they become part of the mainstream debate, and open hatred of other religions and races is made acceptable.

I FEEL LIKE A JEWISH GUY IN A RED LEATHER JACKET

1) Another Larry King quote, another Random Thoughts post.  This particular Larry utterance comes from an interview he did with Harper's Bazaar, focusing on The Great Man's fashion sense.  Because after all, when I think of all things cool and stylish, I think of Larry King.

2) I live in Iowa, so there's no way to avoid it: Floods.  The rain has seemed almost endless since the spring, and the ground has been saturated the whole time.  At its most benign, water is seeping into people's basements because where else can it go?  The ground can't hold anymore.

At its most malignant, of course, water leaps the banks of rivers, cascading down streets, wiping out homes and businesses, short-circuiting power grids and poisoning water supplies.  These are replays of actions that happened all over the midwest only two years ago, and which devastated most of Iowa fifteen years before that. 

Flooding happens, of course, but not generally on this scale, not this often.  The floods of '93 were a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime happening, but it seems the unthinkable is becoming routine.  And humans will react as they always do, by gritting their teeth, soldiering on and refusing to admit that nature is in charge.

3) Any TV news show that includes regular comments from a right-wing pundit--which is to say, any TV news show--will feature the right-winger saying something along the lines of, "Oh, it's so offensive that people think Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists.  That's offensive!  That's reverse racism!"

At which point, the host of Generic News Show will back off, perhaps feebly suggesting that there may be some people sympathetic to the Tea Party cause who are perhaps a bit less than racially sensitive, and the right-winger will say something like, "What are you, the NAACP?" and everyone will laugh. 

Because, yes, darn it, the Tea Party types are totally NOT racist.  Oh, sure, they'll refer to Obama as the "coon-mander in chief" and yeah, they might email each other hilarious doctored photos of the president eating watermelon or rolling dice, and they might glower at the number of interracial couples around them and mutter, "Time was, you could lynch a boy for doing that to a white woman"--but they're not racist!

And in case you're wondering, yes, I've encountered all these things in person.

4) Geez, this has been a pretty depressing post so far.  So let's talk about something cheerful and upbeat.  Specifically--Beagles!  More to the point, let's talk about Bella, who consistently brightens my day with the near-maniacal exuberance she brings to something as simple as jumping up on a chair.  Between her insane leaping, desire for attention and endless energy--not to mention the fact that her antics often reduce me to helpless laughter--it's like living with a furry, four-legged Jerry Lewis.  (Which presumably casts me in the Dean Martin role.  I'd better learn how to sing.)

So I was walking Bella the other morning, and she caught a scent of something or other, as she often does, but her reaction to this particular odor was unusually intense--it caused her to rear up on her hind legs.  And then--she just started trotting along on her hind legs, as if it was the most natural thing in the world!  She stopped, eventually, turned and and looked at me, as if seeking approval.  Or more like, she was saying, "See?  Here's another cute thing I can do!  Is there no limit to how adorable I can be?  Could you possibly love me any more?"

And no, of course, I couldn't.  I couldn't imagine how it would be possible to love anyone or anything more than I love Bella.

5) But then there's poor Delmar.  He nuzzles Bella occasionally, and tries to show some sort of affection for her, but he just can't.  If I had any other cat in the world, it would probably have bonded with Bella by now, and they'd curl up together in the recliner, or at least peaceably co-exist, each in their own little world. 

But any other cat wouldn't be Del, my furry little malcontent, a black-and-white bundle of neuroses.  I couldn't love him any more than I do, either, but he'd never believe me if I told him that.

6) This post was originally going to be all about the new CGI/live-action Bugs Bunny film that the soulless suits at Warner Bros. intend to put into production.  But when I tried to actually say something about it, I found myself speechless.  Some ideas are so transparently awful, they can't even be properly mocked.

GREEN CAN BE COOL AND FRIENDLY-LIKE

It doesn't happen much anymore.  In a way, that makes it worse: Something is seen on TV, something is read somewhere, a joke is heard, and I think, "I'll have to tell Mom about that."

What follows is even more terrible, as that minor blip in my brain is immediately followed by another, that says, "No, you can't.  She's dead."  Simple as that.  No sobbing moment of remembrance, no flood of grief, just a calm, sober reminder.

That is, I guess, the way of the world.  People die.  We grieve, then move on.  It's a process we all must endure in order to continue to make our way in the world.  If we continued to mourn, if we spent every waking moment missing the people we loved, we'd never be able to function.  We would spend all our lives in darkened rooms, weeping uncontrollably.

But sometimes that very process of moving on is itself the source of despair.  For me, that usually comes a few moments later.  "I have to tell Mom about that," "Oh, right, she's dead," followed by the realization that I had just casually dismissed the passing of one of the most important people in my life, as indifferently as if I'd noticed it was a rerun of a favorite show, or the computer was running slow, or the neighbor's dog was barking.  I'd treated a major turning point in my life as a minor nuisance.  How dare I?  How dare I?

And then, at last, comes the flood of grief, and with it, the oddly comforting realization that I haven't moved on, and never will, that as long as I continue to grieve, her memory is still honored, and she still lives in my heart.

REHEARSALS FOR RETIREMENT

Without question, the death of actress Patricia Neal is occasion for sadness, due in no small part to the impression that she was never fully allowed to give us as much as she might have.  True, she was cut down by a stroke in the prime of her life, which robbed her of some productive time, but let's face it: How many great roles did she really get on screen?  Hud.  The Subject Was Roses.  You could throw in The Day The Earth Stood Still, probably her most famous film, but it doesn't require her to do much heavy lifting in the performance department.  Then again, maybe it didn't need to: She managed to convey great intelligence even when just standing there, and that, combined with a certain remote quality she projected, made her endlessly fascinating to watch.  Even when the movies weren't worthy of her, she was still there, and that was enough.

Neal's death is the latest in a terrible run of recent deaths of people who had a lot to do with some of the best or most influential movies ever made.  They weren't actors, they weren't famous to the general public, but their work mattered.

Take Robert Boyle, for instance.  The term "production designer" sounds more industrial than creative, but Boyle's magnificent collaborations on some of Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic films marked him as a true artist.  Consider James Mason's weird house situated somewhere atop Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest, or the ironic facade of a welcoming small town in Shadow Of A Doubt.  Consider, too, his work with other great directors: For Joe Dante's Explorers, Boyle had to design an alien spacecraft that would be convincingly otherworldly and effectively ominous, all while still seeming reminiscent of something from a fifties sci-fi cheapie.  Lord knows how he pulled it off, but he certainly did.

Suso Checchi D'Amico worked as a screenwriter with many of the best Italian filmmakers--Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio DeSica.  Her most frequent collaborator was Luchino Visconti, with whom she wrote several films, including The Leopard.  She wrote a lot of lesser films, too, of course, as a working writer must, but even if her voice is not the dominant one in the great films she worked on, it is still in the mix.

Nobody would ever confuse the films Tom Mankiewicz wrote with The Leopard, but the fact remains that one of those movies--Superman or Superman II, or one of the lesser Bonds like Diamonds Are Forever or Live And Let Die--are always being watched somewhere.  They're the work of a competent journeyman, and nothing to be sneezed at.  The fact that they are so popular means they have meaning to people on some level.

That's what unites all the people on this list.  The size and quality of their contributions may vary, but they've all been part of our dreamworlds as lived on screen, and for that, they can't be thanked enough.

SEE, I'M TOO DISTRACTED TO EVEN DREAM UP A TITLE

Thing is, as I'll be dog-sitting for a week or so, my attention will be elsewhere.  Writing is easy enough, but staying focused...yeah, probably not.

For instance, I thought I'd simply write about the current canine situation.  The dog being sat is Brody, Tabbatha's rat terrier, whose unfailing awesomeness I've gone on about before.  But the first few times he was here, I had no dog of my own.

But now Bella is here, and her pack-dog mentality initially required her to prove her dominance over poor Brody, which she did by humping him constantly.  The image of a spayed female riding a neutured male is like something from Female Trouble-era John Waters, but eventually Brody started fighting back, and the result has been endless good-natured roughhousing.  (At least, I think it's good-natured.)  They wrestle endlessly, then pause, heading to the kitchen to lap up some water, then BOOM, right back to it.  So it's basically like this classic scene from John Carpenter's They Live:



See, but this is where my attention wanders.  I'm ostensibly writing about the dogs, but I can't let that clip pass without commenting on the greatness of John Carpenter.  This scene was fairly notorious back in '88, when They Live was released, as almost comically pointless, an excuse to let the movie's star, pro wrestler Roddy Piper, do his thing.

But taking the scene on its own terms, it's a small masterpiece of staging, with Carpenter's casually elegant wide-screen framing and precise editing a textbook example of how to block and shoot an action scene, an example more of today's directors, with their addiction to shaky-cams and whiplash editing, would be wise to study.  Less is always more.

All well and good, but then the other thing is, I also can't let a mention of They Live pass without mentioning the fact that it remains one of the few mainstream American movies to even acknowledge class divisions in this country.  This goofy, lowbrow sci-fi epic about alien invasion is also a bracing portrait of a world in which the human race has been enslaved by capitalism run wild, one vast, ecumenical system...well, let's let Ned Beatty explain, in this terrifying speech from 1976's Network, brilliantly crafted by Paddy Chayefsky.



But here again, my attention wanders.  I post this scene because I think it makes an important point, but watching it, I mostly focus on Beatty's perfectly modulated performance.  This is his only scene in the whole film, and like a high-priced hitman, he just comes in, totally nails it, then leaves.

And why not?  Beatty is one of those actors incapable of giving a bad performance, which gets me to thinking about other actors who are always great, which...but what does any of this have to do with the dogs? 

Nothing, I'm afraid, which is why posting will likely be light this week.  When rasslin' puppies are nearby, it's hard to focus on anything else.

Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

How did this happen, America?  We have been lazy, we have been indifferent, we have failed to pay attention.  And during this time, there have been forces, pernicious forces within our own borders, that have managed to do what bin Laden himself couldn't do: They've given Marc Cohn the highest-charting album of his career.

Did we learn nothing from the nineties?  Though his debut album charted modestly back in '91, its debut single, the truly awful Walking In Memphis, acted like a bland, piano-driven pod placed under the nation's collective bed, and the next morning we woke up to a world that just wasn't quite the same.

Oh, we still went to doctor's offices, sat in line waiting for driver's licenses and shopped at mid-price retail chains.  But suddenly all these unexciting yet essentially painless activities were constantly accompanied by a piano bar keyboard riff and a nondescript voice straining to sound scruffy and world-weary.  Incredibly trite lyrics--referencing Elvis, W.C. Handy and Al Green, which conjure Memphis about as evocatively as mentioning the Empire State Building and Central Park when discussing New York--filled the air, and as much as we tried to ignore the problem, it never went away.  Walking In Memphis was exactly the sort of personality-free song that would continue to be played in public areas for years and years.

As dreadful as a Michael Buble or a Jason Mraz might be, they've at least tied up the kind of "light listening" music services favored by restaurants and reception areas, and it was easy to become complacent, to think, "Well, at least we won't have to worry about hearing that Walking In Memphis guy anymore."  But we were wrong to think that, very, very wrong.  Despite having been shot in the head in 2005--bullets killed John Lennon, but they only made Marc Cohn stronger!--it seems he can't be stopped.  His new covers album, Listening Booth: 1970 (and, by the way, is there anything less creative than an album of cover songs?), drags Van Morrison and Alex Chilton down to his level, but far more ominously, it features a version of Bread's Make It With You.  Imagine the horror: an already lugubrious, desperately uninteresting David Gates ballad as run through the Marc Cohn blanderizer.  It would be formless aural mass, a musical version of The Nothing from The Neverending Story, sweeping away all memories of joy, or pain, or any human emotion whatsoever.

It happened before, America.  We survived it once, but we were stronger then.  Will we be able to survive it again?