Zone La-Dee-Da

Steve and I splurged and flew first class to Fort Lauderdale. I had never flown first class before but I was surprised how fast I copped a bit of an attitude about it.

First of all (sigh), there was all this rabble in our way when we got in line to board. We were in Zone 1 but they should really have called it Zone La-Dee-Da because that’s how we felt. I was just annoyed because (God) all these people in the steerage of Zones 5 and 6 (ugh) were in the way. It was going to be 10 or 15 minutes before they got on so I don’t know why they didn’t hang back and let us through.

The stewardess offered us a drink before those in coach were even in their seats. I later got a second drink: ginger ale served in a real glass. And Reader, they left me the rest of the can. They left me the rest of the can.

We even had our choice of snacks, presented to us in a cute little basket. I had the pretzels. It was between breakfast and lunch so I really didn’t need anything but they were free and when someone offers you free stuff, you take it.

So we got to stretch out and watch the peasants trudge past us. Some guy was walking by and said to his friend, “There’s first class. We’re not allowed to talk to them. He sounded like he was kidding but I could have assured him he was closer to the truth than he knew. There’s a reason a curtain separates our castes, buddy.

I should have worn a sleep mask to look like a real douchebag to everyone who walked by. We would have been outclassed in the douchebag department by the couple in row 1. They each had their own fancy pillow in a special plastic bag. Now, I don’t mind a little high-maintenance in the friendly skies so I could have given them a pass on the pillows but the plastic cases were a little much. If there’s ever a major disaster that disrupts society and forces us to scrounge to survive, these people have a very remote chance of survival.  

We flew home coach, all the way back down to Earth.

Mad Men S7 E7: Waterloo

Bert Cooper dies with a whimper and then with a bang. Peggy pitches Burger Chef with a bang. The Draper marriage ends with a whimper. Sterling Cooper and Partners ends with a whimper. The partners cash in with a bang. Man lands on the moon. Mad Men hits pause until 2015.

Cooper’s death was poignant, coming as he was sitting on the couch watching the moon landing and saying “Bravo” to Neil Armstrong’s famous words. It reminded me of the moment in season 4 when his former lover Ida Blankenship died and he eulogized her as an astronaut. The show handled the whole scene gracefully, with Roger removing his friend’s name from the door as the wordless indication of death. But the moment doesn’t last and immediately, Jim Cutler swoops in and plots divvying up Bert’s clients. As Roger notes, the man hadn’t even been dead an hour.

In a vision of Don’s, Cooper gets to eulogize himself, tap dancing in his stocking feet to a little musical number called “The Best Things in Life Are Free.” I’m not sure what to make of that. It caused Don to show as much emotion as he ever has on the show. Maybe it was simply mourning his friend or maybe Bert’s lyric that “the moon is meant for everyone/the best things in life are free” pricked at Don’s conscience and was a counterpoint to the partners’ money-grubbing attitude, a reminder that they may have just cashed in on the agency’s sale to McCann Erickson but in the end, it won’t mean much.

I will miss Robert Morse as Bert Cooper. He was nothing if not incisive, cutting through the chatter with some pointed wisdom. He was always good for showing up briefly and dropping a few words of Zen here and there. His death leaves the biggest void Mad Men has ever had. Who will anchor the agency as it moves into its bold new era and leaves the past behind?

There were a few relatively smaller moments in “Waterloo” that may impact the show in the long run. Harry Crane again gets the short end of the stick, getting a partnership but not in time to cash in on the agency’s sale. Sally kisses the younger son of her mother’s friend but I think she has an eye on the older son, given the way she reverses her position and echoes his belief that the moon landing cost too much money. Her unconscious imitation of Betty’s smoking stance was the clearest indication yet that she is becoming her mother. Megan ends her marriage with a pregnant pause and a subtle, gentle invocation “Don.” It was clear the bond between them had withered but I liked how the official end of the marriage was almost wordless and more implied than anything.

Peggy seems to have surpassed or at least equaled Don’s pitching abilities. She was magnificent at the Burger Chef meeting, drawing on lessons from her own life (the heartbreaking goodbye to Julio) and world events (the moon landing) to sell a product. She noted that so many people had connected by watching the first men on the moon and it was a connection they were starving for and she’s absolutely right.

Back after Kennedy died, Don noted that nobody else could see that something fundamental about the country had changed but Peggy could see it and they needed her vision. The successful pitch to Burger Chef, somehow tying in fast food with the communal events of July 1969, was Peggy coming to fruition.

The stage is set for the end.

Where were you?

You always remember where you were when you heard the really big news, the truly monumental event. Political assassination. Space shuttle disaster. Terrorist attack. Controversial tweet from a game show host.

I vividly remember we were on vacation having dinner when I looked up at the TV and saw the name Pat Sajak flash across CNN. He had said something controversial about climate change on Twitter. My heart stopped. This was major, major news. Like, titanic news.

Why? Do I really need to spell it out for you? Pat Sajak spoke. The host of Wheel of Fortune opined on a subject. The portent of the moment should be self-evident.

I can’t overstate the importance of the opinion of the host of a well-worn syndicated game show about a subject that is not even remotely in his field of expertise. Decades from now, school children will be able to recite his tweet from memory, like the Gettysburg Address. I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends, they’ll all recite.

That’s why I was so heartened to see the coverage on CNN. That network only covers epoch-defining events like the travails of a dysfunctional cruise ship so it was the perfect venue to put Sajak’s tweet in the proper perspective. This news is so monumental that CNN even stopped staring blankly at the Indian Ocean, hoping that Malaysian plane would suddenly float to the surface.

Underscoring the gravity of Sajak’s comments, CNN brought in the erudite, highly respected Ann Coulter to dissect everything and try to make sense of it. In a time of crisis, the viewers were craving level-headed analysis and as always, Coulter brought it. If there’s anything more newsworthy than interviewing Ann Coulter about what Pat Sajak said on Twitter about climate change, I can’t think of it.

After the whirlwind of the last few days, we could all use a break from major controversies. I just hope Vanna White doesn’t say anything about vaccines and autism. The Internet might short circuit.

Mad Men S7 E6: The Strategy

Confrontations! Accusations of undermining! Burger Chef carside surveys! The recrudescence of marital bliss! A beer bottle slammed into a child’s birthday cake! And the return of Bob Benson!

This was one of those episodes of Mad Men that makes me glad I didn’t come of age in the ‘60s. Back then, so many gay men ended up like Bob, wearing a rainbow plaid suit and proposing to a woman to act as a beard since his workplace required a “certain kind of executive.” He was understandably freaked out by having to bail out a friend who got beaten up for offering oral sex to an undercover cop, on the eve of Stonewall. Good thing Joan was wise enough to let him down and tell him he shouldn’t be with a woman. The arrangement might have worked for Joan, as it would have opened her world up beyond the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her son and mother.

An arrangement like that certainly can’t work like that in the long term, however. Bob and Joan might have security and look like the perfect couple to the outside world but they would both end up miserable and never get what they really wanted. “I want love and I’d rather die hoping that happens than make some arrangement and you should too,” Joan told Bob and she was right. Still, in 1969, it wouldn’t be easy for Bob to live as a gay man.

Peggy found out that while her ideas for Burger Chef are effective (I liked that pitch), the rest of the firm would rather have Don selling it. It was a relief to see the two of them work past their overdue confrontation and work together to come up with a new pitch after a boozy night in the office and a slow dance to “My Way.” It was definitely a callback to the all-nighter in the fourth season episode “The Suitcase” but this time Peggy was a supervisor and not a subordinate. She had one more thing to learn from Don: When he needs a pitch, he “abuses the people he needs and then takes a nap.” The whole scene was lovely and paid dividends for the people who have been following Mad Men all along, building on the history of the characters.

I feel for Peggy. She is exhausted, having traveled the country to survey the Burger Chef restaurants, and wondering what she did wrong. Having just turned 30, she feels the depression of age that comes when your odometer turns over another zero (I can relate). She is in full Don Draper mode, given her meaty line of “What do I know about being a mother?” The question is whether Peggy is being self-aware about the child she gave up or if she really did take Don’s advice and forget it ever happened.

The scene at the end was cute, with the show’s three core characters, Don, Peggy and Pete, sharing dinner at Burger Chef, where they note every table is the family table. Their personal lives are in limbo, with Pete on the outs with new girlfriend Bonnie and completely alienated with Trudy and Tammy; Don’s marriage with Megan still dicey; and Peggy just sort of lost. On a show where most of the characters have personal lives that are in the crapper, the scene had a feel of the three of them finding a simple peace and getting ready to team up to win the account. In a season with an overwhelming fatalism, it was a needed message of hope.

Lordy, Lordy, look who's ...

... shit.

Mad Men S7 E5: The Runaways

If anybody missed Michael Ginsberg’s previous throwaway comments about signals invading his brain as a sign of his growing mental problems, the severed nipple he offered to Peggy was a definite confirmation.

The signs were all right there but I guess nobody at Sterling Cooper and Partners saw it. When Ginsberg was railing about the computers taking over and upset about the hum of the machinery, maybe it was easy for everyone to tune him out as just a goofball. But cutting off a body part a la Van Gogh is not. I wish he’d received some help sooner. I liked the slow burn that built to the psychotic break. This dates back to the fifth season of Mad Men when Ginsberg told Peggy he was born in a concentration camp. The information was upsetting in itself but the way he told it, likening himself to an alien because he was the only one he knew with his origin, was haunting and poetic and dreamlike. That scene always stayed with me but I had no idea it would come to fruition like this.

After opening that box with the nipple, Peggy could use a new job or at the very least, a vacation. After Ginsberg left on a stretcher, she cast a furious look at the monolithic computer that was driving her co-worker insane. Is that rage at what the creatives feel is pushing them aside or something different?

With Ginsberg out as the agency’s rising creative force, this may clear the way for Don Draper to return and save the day. He tries a risky gambit, crashing a meeting with Phillip Morris, trying to thwart plans by Jim and Lou to have a Draper-free company. It was thrilling in the moment to see Don appear to again become the Don of old, presenting compelling pitches to clients. The fear for Don is that it’s too late and that the new people from Cutler Gleason Chaough have taken over Sterling Cooper from within and there is no more place for the old guard.

Don did seem much more eager to repair his relationship with work than to repair his marriage. Initially he and Megan seemed to be in a good place but of course only the reappearance of a homeless and pregnant Stephanie could bring him out to California a weekend earlier. Her presence, and her deeper knowledge of Dick Whitman, perturbed Megan enough for her to offer the pregnant woman a check for $1,000 to be on her way. Megan is only playing the role of the bohemian so was she just discomfited by the appearance of an actual bohemian woman?

All Megan’s scenes in this episode were a performance, the more blatant of which was the flirty dance with the other guy at the party. (Am I the only one who pictures the Laurel Canyon apartment in a treehouse? I kept expecting it to crash down to earth with the footfalls of all the dancing.) There was also a subtlety to what Megan was doing, despite the steamy three-way, and I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make Don jealous to draw him back into her life or push him away. I enjoyed Megan’s pissy dish-rattling when Stephanie called.

Also not getting along on the marriage front are the Francises. As usual, Betty is being an asshole toward her kids, threatening to break Sally’s arm and causing Bobby constant stomach troubles. This episode brings a new wrinkle to her character: a rift with Henry. The writing of this was a little obvious, as Henry telling Betty not to think was cartoon-villainish and Betty’s defense of her intelligence and fluency in Italian seemed like a viewer speaking through the screen at Henry.

Betty’s not wrong, though. She’s an educated woman and should not have to abide having her husband tell her to look pretty and keep her mouth shut during a progressive dinner. She did that enough when she was married to Don. Is her second marriage following some of the same patterns?  

How Dreadfully Common

What do you take me for: some kind of commoner? There are certain things that are beneath me and that I simply will not deign to do.

At a local marketplace recently, I paid for my purchases (which included vegetable oil, bananas and Butterfingers) but developed a serious care of the butterfingers and dropped several silver and copper coins on the floor. The checkout maiden pointed out my error and inquired whether I would stoop to retrieve my change.

Madam, I chortle at your suggestion. I shall not exert my kneecaps by bending them and I shall certainly not dirty my dainty fingertips by brushing the floor. Heaven forfend. The coins are simply not worth my efforts at retrieval. Were it a few $100 bills or some spare Krugerrands, I might consider picking them off the floor (or at least delegating the duty to someone else).

But for spare change? It is to laugh. I am not one of the hoi polloi, grubbing for petty cash. Leave it that some wretch in some dire workhouse might discover it.

Furthermore, you must know that I simply will not turn my head to see something. I can hardly strain my neck so everything presented to me must be in my immediate field of vision or it cannot expect to be scene.

You cannot imagine how many times I’ve been seated at an inaugural ball or coronation and been expected to whip my head around or, God forbid, move my chair like some common gutter trash, just because the presentation is going on behind me. The indignity is staggering. If you simply must present something behind my back, like a sunset or a rare bird, do not expect me to view it.

I mean, honestly. Turning around? How dreadfully common. 

Major Themes, Rich Subtext and Thought Provoking Questions

There is a recent commercial for Wells Fargo, featuring a girl bringing home her first paycheck, that I think has Major Themes, is rich with Subtext, and provokes Thought Provoking Questions. This blog will attempt to explicate and unpack all of those.

To edify you, the commercial features a teenage girl returning home for dinner after receiving her first paycheck. Her mother congratulates her but cautions her that her studies come first. This represents the theme of education being more important than making money, particularly at such a young age.

The girl uses her smart phone to take a picture of her check and deposit it into her Wells Fargo account. Her grandmother sees this and says, “I want a framed copy of that picture, OK?” This is an allusion to the time-tested ritual of framing one’s first paycheck or first dollar, which serves as nostalgia for a first job, pride in having earned money, and humility as one looks back upon youth and realizes how one started out small and made oneself into something.

But is there more going on here? That little exchange between grandmother and granddaughter was loaded with subtext and I’d like to explore that.

Why did the grandmother ask for a framed picture of the check? Usually people will frame their own first paychecks and I have my first check somewhere in storage. But I can’t imagine framing someone else’s, no matter how proud of them I was. It was easier to romanticize the first dollar you made when people got paid in cash but it’s less romantic now when paychecks are direct deposit. Who romanticizes a stub or a screen shot of a bank statement?

Is this woman really going to hang a frame in her living room and gaze at a copy of this check? I think the grandmother can buy her own frame because the girl’s paycheck can’t be too much money and I’m sure the cost of the frame would eat into it too much. Let the kid spend it on apps or whatever they buy these days.

Maybe it’s all just a ruse. Maybe the grandmother is being snarky and subversive about how all the kids have to take selfies and pictures of everything that happens to them. Maybe she’s subtly mocking this kind of narcissism and the idea that every picayune thing that happens to us needs to be “framed.”

Anyway, food for thought.