JUST SITTING HERE DOING TIME

Walking down the corridors of a hospital at night, the thing that immediately stands out is the blue TV light shining from patient rooms, and the sounds of different channels wafting into the halls.

The mix is always pretty mainstream.  Sports.  Religious broadcasts.  Sitcoms, both old and new.  Shitty Ben Stiller movies that would have been comfortably forgotten had they not been repurposed into basic cable staples.  Nothing really demanding of anyone's time or attention.

That's the point, of course.  People in a hospital, whether patients or visitors, are a captive audience, but they tune into these shows for the same reason people at home do: Because they're there, and there's nothing else to do.

This sort of TV is often described as the audio-visual equivalent of comfort food, but that's not quite true.  A meatloaf and mashed potato dinner may be full of calories and starches, but it will still provide some form of nourishment.  This sort of TV doesn't do that--quite the opposite.  It deadens the mind and senses.

Sometimes that's needed.  There are times in our lives when there is literally nothing else to do, and all that's left is to kill some time.  That's the job of most TV, and it does it well.

THE NAMES HAVE ALL CHANGED SINCE YOU HUNG AROUND

Since this will only be my fourth post for the month, it doesn't seem possible that I could become less prolific around here, but enormous changes in my work schedule are likely to have some sort of trickle-down effect on my writing time. 

What this means, I can't really say.  It's going to take some time to readjust all the other patterns of my life, and quite honestly, writing isn't as much of a priority as it used to be.  I'll presumably pop back here from time to time, but it may take some time before that happens. 

For now, let me just note the passing of Robert Hegyes, Juan Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter, my favorite sitcom when I was eleven.  It's funny how the clips of Brooklyn street life in the opening credits look vaguely hellish today, but when I was a kid, I longed desperately to go there, to be anywhere away from the isolation of the country.  Now, of course, I'd give anything to go back to the life I once had, the life I once hated, the life that is gone forever. 

Sorry, did I say "funny"?  That may not have been the word I meant...

IS THIS SAD? YES. YES, IT IS...

The thing is, I get up absurdly early every day in order to give myself time to write.  And great googly moogly, it's not as though there's nothing to write about. 

The baffling persistence of Newt Gingrich, for instance, and the stunning hypocrisy of the Republican party.  The post-death treatment of Joe Paterno by the press, which may make a few concessions to his "tarnished legacy" but still insists that the greatness of being a winning football coach somehow trumps looking the other way as his assistant fucked little boys.  Or even the Oscar nominations, which...seriously?  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close?  Did anybody like that?

But, as always, I find something--anything--to do with my time to avoid writing.  Playmate Of The Apes was on cable, and who can resist the lure of fake tits and bad puns?  That was followed by The Pope Of Greenwich Village, the movie that by itself derailed the career momentum of Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke.  Neither of these movies are remotely worth watching, despite either abundant nudity or a fine cast that includes Geraldine Page, Kenneth McMillan and M. Emmet Walsh, and yet I sat through them anyway.

Then sat down and knocked this thing out in a couple of minutes, just to reassure myself that, yes, I'm still writing.  Sort of.

OH LOOK, CHILDREN, IT SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THOSE RANDOM THOUGHTS POSTS WE'VE HEARD TELL OF

1) I really don't want to turn this space into a series of musings over songs heard on my cable company's "Seventies Gold" music service, but once again I had it on in the background this morning while I was doing other things (by "other things" I mean reading the Wikipedia entry on Mamie Van Doren), and this came on in the background.



And the thing is, it took me awhile to realize what it was.  It sounded like just another sensitive singer/songwriter from an era loaded with 'em, and as such, it didn't really seem, you know, bad.  Then at some point I realized, "Oh my God, it's David Soul," and I remembered I was supposed to treat this song with the sneering condescension I regularly bring to clips of Lynda Carter variety specials and whatnot, but honestly, it really isn't bad.

Also, honestly?  David Soul's a pretty good actor.

2) So I'm wandering around a department store today and I keep running into the same little kid, who is being chased everywhere by his mom, who keeps calling him by name: "Xander!  Come back here!"  "Xander!  Put that down!"  "Xander!  This isn't a playground!"

Though I realize there are any number of reasons why she might have named her kid Xander, I prefer to conclude that she's a big fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  Because it makes me happy.

3) Janie's dozing in the other room, the TV tuned to back-to-back showings of Young Guns and Young Guns 2.  Periodically I feel the need to try watching these things, to see if time has been kind to them, as programmer Westerns from the fifties starring the pretty boy likes of Rock Hudson and Robert Wagner have aged better than might have seemed possible at the time.

Of course, those fifties movies had the advantage of the occasional Douglas Sirk or Nick Ray directing, whereas the Young Guns movies were helmed by the auteurs of Gone Fishin' and Freejack.  And even though Emilio Estevez's stock has risen in recent years by simply not being as awful as Martin Sheen's other kid, he's still absolutely terrible in this movie, as are his fellow "guns"--Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christian Slater.  Also, dropping in better actors (Alan Ruck, Jenny Wright) or authentic cinematic icons (Terence Stamp, Jack Palance) does its stars no favors.

And seriously, Young Guns 2--you really want to throw a cameo from James Coburn into your crappy Billy The Kid movie?  Because anything that makes a viewer think how they could be watching Sam Peckinpah's magnificent Pat Garret & Billy The Kid instead of this piece of shit would seem to be a thing to avoid.  But what do I know?  It's not like I directed Freejack.

4) To be fair, it's not that basic cable perennial Freejack is a bad movie (though it is) so much as the single laziest, most unnecessary thing ever projected on a screen.  Literally every single aspect of this thing had been done before, and better.  As bad as movies are now, I sometimes forget just how bad things were in the late eighties and early nineties.  (Newsies--enough said.)  Next time I'm sitting through the trailer for the latest Resident Evil sequel, I'll try to remember there was once a time when Hollywood thought we all wanted more Emilio Estevez or singin' and dancin' Christian Bale, and be, for lack of a better word, grateful.

5) Cats and dog.  Are they adorable?  Of course!

EVERYTHING WE ARE WILL NEVER DIE

Janie's sleeping in the other room, cats gathered all around her.  The dog is at my feet, and music plays softly in the background.

Specifically, Music Choice, courtesy of my local cable channel.  The choices are broken down according to genres and moods or, in this case, eras--I've got Seventies Gold playing, for no better reason than the hope some song will unexpectedly pop up that sparks a frisson of recognition, conjures a memory so vivid that it can't be shaken.

Because I haven't been having any of those lately.  Last Saturday, for instance, was the seventeenth anniversary of my wedding day.  The fact that the marriage has been dead for years is beside the point--it was still a milestone in my life, and you'd think, given my nature, I'd spend time ruminating over loss, impermanence, regret, what have you--that's what I do here, after all, to the extent I do anything at all.

Instead, it flashed through my mind once as I sat down to watch New Year's Rockin' Eve and that was that.  A good thing, I suppose, moving on and all that, but again, it just doesn't seem like me.  I obsess over things that were that will never be again.  A passing shrug?  Is that all I've got?  Really?

I'm eating Fudge Rounds and drinking Sprite for breakfast (because what's the point of living to adulthood if you can't do everything you wanted when you were six?) and when I finish, I take my empty glass to the kitchen.  Suddenly the mellow horn intro to the Bee Gees' Too Much Heaven wafts from the TV, and it happens.  I have a vivid memory of this song drifting from the radio as my brother John and I drove down 141 heading from the farm to Des Moines on yet another record-buying spree.  I'd just seen Brian DePalma's Obsession on TV, with its great, brooding Bernard Herrmann score, and I knew Music Den in Merle Hay Mall had the soundtrack, because I knew everything they had in regular stock, and where everything was, the details assembling in my head with remarkable clarity...

...Until CLANG!  Isabella has used her front paw to flip her water dish upside down, and it hits the linoleum with a reverie-shattering sound.  She looks at me, head tilted, tail wagging, big brown eyes in full-out soulful mode.  "You're in the kitchen," she seems to say.  "That means snacks, right?  I love snacks.  Also, I seem to have spilled my water.  Can you do something about that?"

As I get out a biscuit, refill the water and give the dog a big hug, the Bee Gees fade to background noise, and I realize any vivid memories of thirteen-year-old me are...well, only memories.  They matter, sure, but they don't--can't--define me.  Isabella scampers off, perfectly satisfied, briefly chasing Delmar and Staley, who'd come to the kitchen to see what all the noise was about.  I move quietly back to the bedroom and rest my head next to Janie, glad that I've learned to live in the here and now.

COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY

My brother and sister had vague plans.  They had sodas and snacks, and they planned to stay up until midnight.  Why, I asked Mom, were they doing this?

"They want to celebrate the new year."

Why?

"Because that's what people do."

I was six, my brother and sister thirteen and eleven--enough older than me that I figured this must be some vaguely grown-up thing.  I never stayed up until midnight, but I saw the footage on TV every year of people who did, people crowded together in cold weather, wearing fancy clothes and silly hats, raising glasses in honor of...something.

To me, the new year only represented the end of Christmas vacation.  In a couple days I'd be back in school, my brief, glorious period of freedom ended.  It wasn't a new beginning, it was an ending.  The good times were winding down.

Guess I've always been that way.  I've never put much stock into the promise of a bright and shiny new year.  Arbitrary markings of time aside, it's just another day.  Sure, as I got older, my brother and I took to ironically watching New Year's Rockin' Eve, an act of condescension that eventually became a full-blown ritual, so maybe the joke was on us all along.

Also, of course, I got married on New Year's Eve, and we joked that we picked that date so we could remember our anniversary, but five years later, we'd have no more anniversaries to mark.  And for some time after that, I'd try to pretend the evening had no significance, just another night, not a reminder of failure and regret.

But hey, don't let my sourness ruin your mood.  I'm doing okay as this year draws to a close.  I have to work, so no midnight celebrations here, but let's face it, I probably wouldn't stay up anyway.  Still, let me offer wishes to anyone who happens to read this:

Happy New Year.

SUBSTITUTE "BEAGLE" FOR "GUN", AND "BOUNCE AROUND ADORABLY" FOR "FIRE IT"--IT'S JUST LIKE THAT CHEKHOV QUOTE!

Ordinarily I wouldn't go see a family-friendly crowd-pleaser like We Bought A Zoo, but hey, it was Christmas, Janie and I wanted to go out and, frankly, if you're looking for a relaxing good time at the movies, there aren't many choices.

And really, it's not bad at all.  You can sense writer-director Cameron Crowe trying to put a more personal spin on the original script, by Aline Brosh McKenna, author of such by-the-numbers claptrap as Morning Glory and (ugh) 27 Dresses.  There are formulaic elements, but Crowe does his best to ignore them, aided immeasurably by Matt Damon's fine performance as a grieving widower trying to do right by his kids while still trying to sort out his own emotions.

So things happen--you might be surprised to learn that Damon buys a zoo--and the whole thing glides along nicely thanks to likeable actors and Rodrigo Prieto's shimmering cinematography.  There is, however, one serious flaw that makes the whole movie unwatchable, in my opinion.

The family owns a beagle.  There's an early, pre-zoo-buying scene in which Damon's adorable daughter is fixing a sandwich at the kitchen table while the dog just sleeps pleasantly in the other room.  I'm not saying that's impossible, but in my experience, any self-respecting beagle is going to be right there at the kid's feet, just in case any food drops onto the floor.

But where the movie just turns into some sort of alternate-universe science fiction crap is when they get to the zoo.  And the dog, again, just kind of sits on the porch, or otherwise completely ignores his surroundings.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't possible.  This is a scenting dog!  In a zoo!  He's going to be going nuts, chasing down all the assorted animal smells.  For crying out loud, there are foxes at this zoo, and he's a hunting dog.  That's a plot point just waiting to happen, and the movie inexplicably ignores it in favor of a wandering bear, a dying tiger and some manufactured fake suspense over whether or not the zoo can be brought up to code.

I realize the vast majority of people could care less about this sort of thing--when I ranted about this to my brother, he said, "I didn't realize beagle owners were even more self-righteous than Mac users"--but I think it should be a good rule of thumb for all filmmakers: If you're going to bring a beagle onscreen, you'd better find something for it to do.

Or at least give it a few more close-ups.

AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

I take Isabella out for her morning walk, my mind racing through the list of things I have to do before I even go to work: Finish the laundry, wash dishes, plan the week's breakfasts and lunches.  Then there are things for later, like deciding which bills to pay first.

It's the day after Christmas, and life goes on.

Whether we mean to or not, we all invest too much in this particular holiday.  We carry some ideal of what it should be, or memories of a perfect past that can never be recaptured, and on some level, there is always disappointment.  But that feeling of melancholy--is that the right word?--never fully kicks in until the day after.

That's when we shuffle back to work, or return the disappointing gifts, or otherwise realize that our dreams once again didn't quite come true.  Nice things happen, good things, yes, but that elusive magic we recall from childhood just never quite reappears.  And it will be a whole year before we can reach for it again.

Ah, but we become more aware of our own mortality with each passing year, and more aware, too, that the perfection we seek will never happen.  Things are put in better perspective, a hard-won wisdom that tells us that our dreams and disappointments are both equally fleeting.  Things don't mean what they once did because they simply can't, there's no time to dwell on what might have been or what once was.  Life goes on regardless.

Isabella picks up a scent and pulls on the leash.  For her, there is only here and now.  That should be enough for anyone.

I HAVEN'T LONG TO STAY

Back in the day--as recently as the mid-seventies--this thing used to pop up on local stations whenever their programming would run a couple minutes short.  And...well, yeah, okay, even as a kid I was prone to depression.  But honestly, is there any mood to be conjured by this other than overwhelming despair?



Is it the unaccompanied voices of the Norman Luboff Choir, apparently recorded in a public restroom?  Is it the cheap design and animation, which tries to conjure visions of an enchanted wonderland while suggesting nothing so much as a Christmas pageant performed by the residents of an underfunded mental hospital?

Or is it the song itself?  Specifically, Suzy's reminder that she hasn't long to stay?  "I'll be your best friend," she says, "but don't get too accustomed to me, don't let messy emotions get involved, don't love me, dear God, no, because soon I'll be gone, like a dream before the breaking dawn."

Why was this even produced?  Surely it was conceived with one purpose in mind: to introduce kids to the concept of mortality, as a plodding reminder that our time is brief, that all the wonders of creation are ultimately impermanent.

That's what they were going for, right?

NO ADULTS ADMITTED WITHOUT CHILDREN

Sure, this is depressing on so many levels.



Made in 1964, this thing was still being played in theaters at least until the late seventies, these ads playing during every commercial break on local afternoon kids' shows. (I remember my brother and I trying to work the word "funtastic" into everyday conversation.) And even when I was a kid, I thought this thing looked like crap, and some part of me resented how the huckster creators of this thing used the goodwill of the holiday season as an excuse to peddle their shoddy goods, to take money from audiences while giving them absolutely nothing in return.

That was then, this is now.



And though this, too, seeks to exploit the good feelings of this time of year for a quick buck, it maybe seems at first to be a little less vile in intent. The audience being fleeced by this movie is at least made up of adults.

Except...the economy is still in the toilet. The vast majority of the country must think twice before spending their money. Sure, it's fun to go out to the movies, but if you're going to pony up the dough for not only the price of tickets, but also snacks, dinner before or after, parking, a baby sitter...well, you're talking a substantial investment. Which is fine, if the movie's any good. But come on...there's no way anybody involved in this thing thought they were making a good movie. They simply wanted to separate you from your money, money that could have been spent buying presents for loved ones or giving to charity. This movie is the work of millionaires who feel they aren't rich enough.

MARVELOUS, MAGICAL...AAUUGGHH!!!

Haven't been around here much.  Life goes on, and sometimes gets in the way.  I gave some thought to posting a recollection of a particularly vivid dream I had the other night--it involved a right-wing cabal reanimating Bill Cullen's corpse to spearhead an incredibly misconceived bid for world dominance--but whenever I'd sit down to actually write, some distraction would raise its head.  (Those Wikipedia entries on Patrick Hernandez and Jeff Altman won't read themselves, y'know.)

So, um, yeah...I've got nothing.  Thus, lacking any real entertainment here, let me present an ad for what has to be the worst imaginable Christmas present.  Enjoy, I guess.

WARMTH

Mom's here, so I know it's a dream.  Still, I follow her as we go wherever it is we're going.  She moves quickly and without a walker through masses of people standing around or sitting at cheap tables--Is this Ryan's Steakhouse?--until we find a place in a corner.  "Finally," she says, sitting down.  "We have a few minutes to talk."

My eyes snap open.  Again.

I don't believe in messages from the other side or crap like that, but it's become a disturbing pattern that Mom will appear to me in dreams, announcing she has something to tell me, and I wake up before she gets a chance to talk.  It's the same every damn time, and the return to the waking world always comes with a tightness in my chest, a sense of loss so overpowering it seems nothing could heal it.

Right on cue, Staley appears. 

When she first came into my life, Staley seemed odd and a bit reserved, the exact opposite of a pet me-pet me cat.  She'd hide a lot, only occasionally appearing in corners of rooms, then venturing up onto the foot of the bed, or maybe sitting in chairs for a few minutes, only to disappear to whatever secret hiding place she'd chosen.

Lately, though, she seems to sense my moods, and is always there when I need her.  As I wake from this dream with a sense of emptiness, she burrows in close to my chest, purring loudly.  "You're not alone," she seems to be saying.  "I'm always here."  She stretches a front leg, the white toes on her otherwise gray paw gently stroke my open hand.

Most nights, I go to bed before Janie does, and Staley bounces in with me.  She's always wherever I go.  Cats aren't allowed up on my desk, but Staley is.  She follows me to the door when I leave for work, and Janie says she frequently yowls for a few minutes after I leave.

The tightness in my chest is gone.  I'm relaxed and feel myself drifting back to sleep, comforted to know that I have a fuzzy gray protector, that Staley's soul is here to give comfort to mine.

I HOPE THAT SOMETHING BETTER COMES ALONG

I really, really wanted to love The Muppets, the new big-screen attempt to bring Jim Henson's beloved characters some current pop culture cachet, and...well, I just couldn't.

Not that I hated it, mind you.  This isn't a shameful misunderstanding of everything that makes the characters great, the Space Jam of the Muppet world.  If anything, it's too reverent, tries too hard to evoke warm and fuzzy memories, attempting to coast on a sentiment it simply hasn't earned.  It's made by fans, obviously--the primary fan, in this case, being co-writer and star Jason Segel, who has publicly stated over and over how much the Muppets meant to him--but as a result, it feels like glorified fan fiction.  The real Muppet crew would never have made this.

That crew is scattered to the winds, of course.  Jim Henson, Richard Hunt and writer Jerry Juhl are dead, Jerry Nelson has largely retired and Frank Oz...honestly, it's kind of hard to know what's up with Oz these days.  Of the old guard, only Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire are involved, and too many of the characters lack their old spark.  Henson, Nelson and especially Oz were renowned for their ability to give their characters distinctive physical mannerisms, odd bits of business that brought them to life, but all too often, the characters now just seem to move from Point A to Point B without any real sense of life.

Then again, there's not much life to the script by Segel and Nicholas Stoller.  It cleverly riffs on many beloved Muppet tropes and gags, and has some genuinely funny moments--the sight of Wayne and Wanda making out gave me great delight--but it just tries too hard.  Most disastrously, the catalyst for the story is a new Muppet named Walter, who is blessed with not a single interesting feature.  Favorites like Gonzo and Rowlf are given nothing to do so this character can go through a Screenwriting 101 Character Arc, and why?  It's like making a new Peanuts movie and sidelining Charlie Brown and Lucy in favor of Shermy.

The most exasperating thing about Walter is that he's not remotely funny, but you know who else doesn't have a single decent laugh line in this movie?  Kermit The Frog.  Sure, he's the starry-eyed dreamer and all that, but Kermit's always gotten some of the best gags.  But he spends the entire running time of The Muppets (that is, when he's not reminding the audience what an awesome new character Walter is) being mopey.  And when he finally breaks into The Rainbow Connection...

Look, if you've spent any time at this site at all, you've seen countless vintage Muppet clips posted, you've read all sorts of stories about how my Mom cried for days on end when Jim Henson died, how Bein' Green was the one song she stipulated had to be played at her funeral, and, for crying out loud, I went through a period there where most of the titles of my posts were taken from Muppet Movie lyrics.  All I have to do is hear the banjo-plucking intro to The Rainbow Connection and I immediately tear up.

And yet, its performance here did nothing for me.  Instead of an Applause sign, it felt like the filmmakers were using a Sentimental Tears sign.  The honest emotions that Jim Henson and company could evoke effortlessly just isn't there anymore.  I wouldn't presume to say that the time of The Muppets passed with Henson, but it's been twenty-one years since the man's death, and the characters still seem trapped, unsure where to go.  Despite the brilliant efforts of his fellow puppeteers, designers, scriptwriters and songwriters, maybe the only person who truly understood what made The Muppets work was Henson.  We know it was probably magic.

The Muppets is an honest attempt to bring back that magic, but a failed attempt just the same.  Still, if nothing else, it proves that audiences still have great love for these characters, and maybe next time they'll get where they're going.  Or, as Gonzo so eloquently put it, they're going to go back there someday.

IT'S JUST A SHOW

Thanksgiving, right?  I should list all the things I'm thankful for (my health, my home, my friends, the cats, beloved beagle and, of course, Janie), I could reminisce about holidays past, I could do any number of things.

Or I could tell a story I've told before.

Because this is November 24th, the day when, twenty-three years ago, a scrappy UHF station in Minneapolis first broadcast a crudely-produced program entitled Mystery Science Theater 3000, a vehicle for local comedian made good Joel Hodgson.  The premise was simple: Hodgson played a guy trapped in space, forced by his evil overlords to watch terrible movies.  He did, with the help of his two robot pals, and the three of them would crack wise all through the movie.



Simple, and potentially awful.  But somehow, MST3K (which got a lot better than that original intro would suggest)transcended its simple premise, ultimately running for ten seasons on two different cable channels, and bearing a profound influence on the world of comedy.  It has provided its fans with an alternate way of looking at the world, has encouraged, in its small way, its viewers to never accept what is given to them, to talk back, to question.  And it has provided comfort.

As on that Wednesday night, when I stumbled home dead tired from working late.  When I got to my apartment, I found numerous messages on my answering machine from my sister Ann, informing me that Mom was in the hospital.  Finally, a message from Mom herself, assuring me that she was okay, I could call her or stop by to see her, but she understood if I was busy.

I went up to see her.  She'd fallen, and had...never mind.  You don't need to know the details.  The point is, she looked so small, so fragile, so...mortal.  But she was still Mom, and we talked, though her voice was weak.  "Have you eaten yet?" she asked, always more concerned about others than herself.  No, I said, I'd probably just go home and have a pizza.  "Oh, yes, it's Wednesday, isn't it?  Are you going to watch an MST?"  (She was, obviously, aware of my weekly ritual.)  Yeah, maybe, I said, but I can stay here.  "No," she said.  "I have to watch Lost."

So I went home, fired up the pizza and the VCR and chose an episode of MST to watch.  I hadn't seen the episode where they mock Roger Corman's Gunslinger in awhile, so that's what I picked, completely at random.  Halfway through the show, there's this sketch:



I thought nothing of it, or any of the other odd reminders of mortality in this particular episode.  Why would I?  It's not like Mom was dying or anything.  I enjoyed the episode, laughed myself silly, and went to bed.

The next morning, Ann called early.  Someone from the hospital had let her know it would be a good idea to get up there and see Mom.  Wait, what?  She just fell.  How could that lead to...to...Dear God, no.

If you've spent any time at this site, you know what happened, since this space was originally conceived as a way of working through my grief.  The days after her death were spent dealing with the usual things, but it was funny.  She died on a Thursday, the funeral was the following Monday...but by Tuesday, I felt cried out.  I didn't want to be sad anymore.

So I turned again to MST3K, and it did the trick.  I laughed, and it was as though my whole world hadn't changed, as if things would be okay again.  It reminded me that there was still joy in the world, and that life, not unlike Celine Dion's heart, would go on. 

When I think of my favorite TV shows of all time, I think of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or Columbo, or Wiseguy or Batman: The Animated Series or The Simpsons or so many more.  But I never think to include Mystery Science Theater 3000 on that list, because, no matter what the theme song says, it's never been just a show.  It's part of my life.

THEN THAT ELEVATOR STARTS ITS RIDE

Isabella pulls on her leash, the same walk we take every morning.  Down the sidewalk, across the street, through the parking lot of the neighboring restaurant.  It's closed, but even at 3 AM, there's music coming from within--Louis Prima and Keely Smith, That Old Black Magic.  We stop for a minute, Isabella's nose snuffling the ground, me listening to the music.

I try to remember.

My ex-wife loved Louis Prima.  This song makes me think of her, but only in the abstract.  When I try to conjure details of our time together, there's often nothing there.  I remember, for instance, her love of Prima, and I remember buying her a documentary about him, and that we watched it together.  I know we did that, but I don't remember how it felt.

She and I still talk, usually once a week, and we remain as close as two people who profoundly hurt each other can possibly be.  She fills me in on the broad details of her life, and I do the same.  On occasions, these conversations spark a certain detail, a shared inside joke, a memory only the two of us would share.

Mostly, though, I don't recall specifics.  When I think of our time together, mostly what comes to mind is the anxiety, the sense that it was all somehow going to end.  I can't even remember the no doubt terrible arguments and incidents that produced this mindset, just the general feeling, the state of flux. 

The wind picks up, frustrating Isabella.  The breeze carries so many different scents, too many for her to pick out.  She skitters about, wanting to follow her nose in all directions at once.

I pull on her leash, leading her back home.  My life with Janie is different from the life I once led, different from anything I ever imagined.  For maybe the first time in my adult life, I've learned to accept things as they come, and I finally know contentment.  Isabella's pace quickens as we approach the house, and she bounds up the steps happily.  Because, you know, we're home.

IS THE CALLER THERE?

1) Wow--an authentic Random Thoughts post.  Formerly one of my regular go-to pieces (along with clips of Lynda Carter singing) when I didn't feel like doing any actual writing and just started knocking out whatever crap popped into my head at the moment.

In the present case, however, there's slightly more thought put into this effort--mostly these are scattered premises, things I wanted to write about in a little more depth, but just never had the time.  Or energy.  Or will power...

2) I'm pretty sure I claimed somewhere along the line that I wasn't going to say anything more about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, and well, I tried, but our old friend Julie Taymor has been at it again, and I just can't resist.

Taymor has been exceptionally busy, what with filing a lawsuit against the show's producers and giving a monumentally self-pitying interview to Esquire in which she claimed to be shocked, shocked I tell you, at her dismissal from the show, which she thought was just swell.

Of course, the terrible reviews for Taymor's version of the show, and the fact that she refused to even consider dropping elements that clearly weren't working, and her increasingly incoherent public statements about the show, which suggested she considered the whole thing to be some sort of workshop for her private vision, even though the thing was bleeding investors dry to the tune of almost a million bucks a week--none of these things had any bearing on the decision of the producers to fire her.  They were just philistines who didn't care about Art.

As for the lawsuit, Taymor is demanding a share of profits (which, despite the fact that the show sells out nightly, it still hasn't earned a dime, mostly because Taymor burned through SIXTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS while in the process of finding her "vision") and, more amusingly, claiming copyright infringement for using elements she created in the show.

Obviously, I don't know the details of her contract, but that's pretty much how big Broadway musicals work--nobody is irreplaceable.  Creative personnel are constantly brought in and let go, but they're doing for-hire jobs--producers have every right to use elements of their work, because that's why they were hired in the first place.  More talented people than Taymor have been fired off shows, only to see work they did used on stage, often without credit.

In the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark--have I mentioned that's the worst title for anything in history?--Taymor is actually listed in the credits.  If anything, the producers indulged her for way too long.  Is she actually trying to get people to feel sorry for her?  Because I'm pretty sure it's not working.

3) Alexander Payne's new film The Descendants opens this week, a mere seven years since his last feature, Sideways, which opened two years after About Schmidt.  He's not terribly prolific, is what I'm saying.

I'm a big fan--Sideways hit me where I lived--but it's not like he's Stanley Kubrick.  He makes humanist comedies somewhat in the manner of Paul Mazursky, only Mazursky could really crank 'em out.  (Have I mentioned Harry And Tonto is one of my favorite movies ever?)  But Payne, like Paul Thomas Anderson and David O. Russell, is a major filmmaker with a disappointingly thin filmography.  All three cite the great directors of the seventies as inspiration, but they seem to not realize that those guys worked constantly.

Sure, studios aren't keen to produce odd personal efforts these days, but the financing is obviously out there--Joel and Ethan Coen are able to make whatever pops into their head, and they were managing the Woody Allen trick of knocking out a movie a year for awhile there.  Payne, Anderson and Russell seem to only want to work when the muse strikes, but even Robert Altman made Quintet.  It's okay to fail--just keep working.

What I'm basically saying is, I love these guys' stuff, and I selfishly want more than they've given me.

4) Hey, are there any long-time readers of this thing still around?  Remember when I used to go off on long-winded political screeds?  No, I don't miss those things either, but still...Occupy Wall Street, Rick Perry's memory lapse, the whole Penn State thing...you'd think I'd have something to say.  Sometimes this space seems a little hermetically sealed, cut off from the real world, like late period Woody Allen.  (Zing!)  I kind of regret that, and kind of not.  Maybe I'll reengage with the real world soon.

5) Ordinarily, I'd say something about all the critters here, about Cookie's continued reluctance to play nice with the beagle, or about Staley's odd habit of head-butting me in the middle of the night.  Certainly I don't need to say anything about Delmar, because I'm always going on about him here.

Except yesterday morning, Del was sitting in my lap as I read the funnies when he suddenly, for no reason, reached up and slashed my nose.  Blood poured everywhere, including into my eyes, leading me to temporarily think he'd blinded me.  And, needless to say, it hurt like hell.

And yet, he's back on my lap as I write this.  I'll never learn.

THESE MEMORIES LOSE THEIR MEANING

Not a lot of snow, but enough: Branches down, and others cracked, hanging dangerously low over some wires.

Oh Lord, has it come to this?  Am I really using snow-covered branches as some sort of metaphor for my emotional state?  Isn't that the most tired literary device imaginable?  Has my writing become this trite?

Still.  It's not a cheap use of a tired trope when it's actually true.  The branches really are hanging, and so is my mood.

Some back story might be helpful at this point, yes?  I got an email from my brother John the other day informing me of the death of our uncle, Ronald Dean Hegstrom.  John was quite sad, remembering the last family reunion (which--ominous chord--I did not attend), and how Uncle Deanie, in John's words, "looked like Dad, only different."

But this news didn't make me feel sad, just numb.  For so long, I associated Uncle Deanie and Aunt LeDora with the family reunions I actively hated as a kid, which were attended by people so much older than me, and there was never anyone for me to hang out with, so I'd just sit there, isolated and lonely.  It never occurred to me to, you know, talk to anyone.  They all seemed to know each other so well.

So I never got to know Uncle Deanie, and reading his obit, how he served in the military in Greenland and worked as a repair man, things I knew but didn't know, or didn't appreciate, because I never took the time, but damn, I was just a kid, what do you want from me?  Yeah, I could've taken the time as I got older, but, well...I didn't, and...

Look, that's not even what has me feeling so numb.  It's John's description of our uncle as looking kind of like Dad--because even my memories of Dad are starting to fade.  There are fleeting images, things I remember, still these become less concrete with each passing year, with each passing minute.

How can this happen?  Not just dad, but Mom, too, and everything about my childhood.  I can remember specific things, doing this and that, but the details of the faces that accompanied these activities, the sounds of voices, the smells and colors--all are going, all are past.

But I do remember the summer I turned seven, before I had my own room.  I slept on the couch in the living room, and when I went to bed, Dad would come over and kiss me goodnight. His breath smelled like Grain Belt and he barely said a word, but it was a small gesture of love that meant the world to me.  Maybe it's why I make a point of saying goodbye to the dog and all the cats whenever I go somewhere. 

So I have that to hang onto.  Maybe I'm not as numb as I think.  Maybe the branches can be easily trimmed.  Maybe there's nothing broken that can't be fixed.

KEEP A PENCIL HANDY

Ah, I should never have posted that Bert Parks clip yesterday.  It served as a virtual portal to hell, a hell long-time readers of this site (both of you!) know all too well: The seventies variety show.

It seems utterly inconceivable that in 1976, the year the Sex Pistols recorded Anarchy In The UK, the year Taxi Driver was released to theaters, a year in a decade in which everything changed at tremendous speed, TV executives still held so tenaciously to what had worked before.  Except it didn't work anymore; the variety format was obviously dead if the best it could muster was Telly Savalas.  It's a terrible idea even in theory.  Did they really need to produce this thing--and worse, put it on the air?--to realize this?  Did they think anyone could possibly enjoy this?



'76 must have been the year TV executives just collectively decided to throw anything on to see what would happen. If Telly Savalas could have a variety special, why not Paul Lynde? Sure, and why not feature musical guests KISS and--the horror! the horror!--Florence Henderson? People will watch, won't they? Won't they?



Also in '76, The Captain And Tenille got their own regular series! So they could do things like this, thus scarring an entire nation.



And it's not like this celebration of sub-mediocrity was limited to variety shows. You could be innocently watching your favorite large-breasted action heroine when suddenly you're forced to ask yourself, "Why is Wonder Woman singing? And how can I make it stop?"



And then the horror would escalate, because if she could sing as Wonder Woman, suddenly someone thought it would be a good idea to give Lynda Carter her own variety special. And then they gave her another, and another, like she was good, like they were entertaining, when it should have been obvious that, Lordy, no, this was not entertaining in the least.

THE DRUMS ARE IN THE DAWN, AND ALL THE VOICES GONE

Go to Blogger Dashboard, hit New Post, tap out a few words, delete them, tap out a few different words, delete them, pause and idly wonder if the topic I've picked to write about is even all that interesting...which means I'm second-guessing myself...which means I no longer have the confidence that what I'm doing is worthwhile...which means...what?

No idea.  That whole paralyzing writer's block thing, which inconveniently struck once before just as I was starting to actually get stuff published and, you know, earn money, and which decided to hang around for a decade or so--has it returned?  Have I run out of things to say, or interesting ways to say them?  Are there no more tortured Star Wars analogies for me to make?

Again, no idea.  But hey, in the interest of (barely) fulfilling the minimum daily amount of entertainment one can expect from this site, here's a clip of Bert Parks performing a Paul McCartney song during the 1976 Miss America pageant.  Regarding this, for lack of a better word, performance, I would note two things: 1) Those background dancers are staging what Crow T. Robot once referred to as a "mince-off" and 2) Back in '76, people watched this sort of thing in huge numbers, and mostly not ironically.  Even at the time, I couldn't understand.

OH GOOD, I LIKE BUSTLING!

Paul had already seen this dreadful-looking new Three Musketeers, and wanted to see it again.  "Nothing you'd rather see?" I asked, figuring literally anything would be better.

"No.  You'll like it.  It's really good."

OK, fine, but I demanded a price: Before going to this thing, he'd first watch Richard Lester's absolutely peerless 1973 adaptation of Musketeers.  I explained that it's one of my favorite movies, which is usually a good way to get Paul reasonably intrigued.  (He trusts my opinions, except about James Bond.)  I started the movie and...

...He loved it.  Well, why wouldn't he?  Between an absolutely perfect cast (Charlton Heston's splendidly villainous Cardinal Richelieu is like a miniature acting class in itself), George MacDonald Fraser's witty script and some truly sumptuous settings, Lester is given free reign to make this material his own, and the result is not only a first-rate adventure tale, but one of the greatest comedies ever made. 

I don't know how Lester did it: Hackneyed bits of physical comedy become gaspingly funny purely through his staging and cutting.  That sort of thing almost never works; usually when a director fusses over a gag, it becomes notably less amusing.  (The sheer visual invention Steven Spielberg brought to 1941 is admirable, but it won't make you laugh.)  But here Lester repeatedly stages a scene in a seemingly deadpan manner, then cuts to a reverse angle which reveals its absurdity, and damned if it isn't funny every single time.  And he knows just how long to hold a shot, just when to cut, just when o move the camera.  He's just really good is what I'm saying, and The Three Musketeers (like its equally vital sequel, The Four Musketeers) is a world-class work of cinema.

Which is a pretty good thing o introduce a twelve-year-old to, don't you think?  We went to the new Three Musketeers the next day--and just an aside here, but boy do I wish contemporary moviemakers would stop ending their movies with setups for sequels nobody will ever want to see--and Paul still claims to like this one better.  That's understandable--it's pitched to contemporary kids, with explosions, wirework and whatnot.  (Also some of the phoniest looking CGI you'll ever see.)  It's all about immediate sensation.

But as for which one he'll actually remember, well, I have a feeling I know.