Couch Potato 2017

I watch a bit of TV but not all of it; I don’t have as much free time as the president. This is a loose ranking of what I watched this year. If this list missing a big critical hit, it’s probably because I haven’t seen it yet.

71. House of Cards. I just have to put it out there that it’s not sour grapes to say that even without Kevin Spacey’s disgrace, this was just not a good show this year. It started well, with the presidential election thrown into chaos, but then the show glossed over the minutiae of the Constitution, which I find fascinating, and that sorely disappointed me. What did the show delve into instead? Claire’s affair with Tom, a badly written character played badly. That sad sack sucked the air out of every scene he was in and I was thrilled when Claire killed him. House of Cards will continue next year with Robin Wright and without Spacey, which will make dramatic sense and won’t lose much without the former president.

12. American Gods. I like the introduction of the various gods and exploring their worlds and how they manifest on Earth.

11. Veep. This was good but not as much as previous seasons with Selina in office. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is still a national treasure.

10. Feud: Bette and Joan. This ended up being more compelling than I expected, adding potent commentary on how we treat aging actresses and aging women onto the story of the fight between these two actresses. The fight stuff is fun too, particularly a dazzling episode showing the 1963 Oscars. Susan Sarandon was good as Bette Davis (a little wooden in the Baby Jane scenes) and Jessica Lange was wonderful as Joan Crawford. I sympathized with both of them. 

9. GLOW. Who remembers the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling from the ‘80s? I do! This was a fun look at the women wrestlers behind the TV show. I liked the exploration of the process of casting but if the show continues, I’m hoping for a little more actual televised wrestling, as that happened only late in season one.

8. Gifted. This show is just a fun megamix of all the concepts of the X-Men mythos, involving creations from Stan Lee, Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison. I’m enjoying how it uses characters from the rich 50-year history of the comics: Polaris from the ‘60s, Thunderbird from the ‘70s, Fenris from the ‘80s, Blink from the ‘90s and the Stepford Cuckoos from the ‘00s. My favorite is Mrs. Strucker (don’t know her full name), one of the smart, level-headed people on the show, smartly written.

7. Stranger Things. This show really lucked out getting a cast this good, especially the kids. I was just as amused by the second season as the first (except that pointless episode with Eleven and the punk kids).

6. Legion. This series comes pretty close to the spirit of the original Legion story in New Mutants comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, with visits to the beautiful, bizarre, reality in David Haller’s mind. Aubrey Plaza was fantastic as the longtime X-Men villain Amahl Farouk/the Shadow King.

5. Mr. Robot. Elliott and Darlene try to undo the Five/Nine financial shenanigans, even as the next phase of the plan gets thousands of people killed as 71 Ecorp buildings explode. This was a great look at how those with true power manipulate the world stage. The one-take episode was a ton of fun, especially that overhead shot of the office and the rioting crowd outside that emphasized that Angela, despite her consequential actions, is still just a cog in a machine.

4. Game of Thrones. Everything is set for the last season, which apparently will feature an ice zombie dragon and the incestuous pairing of Jon Snow and Daenerys. This season wasn’t as entertaining as the last few but it was memorable.

3. The Deuce. This was a sometimes subtle, always compelling look at the prostitution industry in 1971 New York City, as the sex scene turned from street corners to massage parlors and eventually to legal porn. It was an implicit critique of capitalism, as the only people making real money were the pimps and corrupt men behind the scenes, not the women walking the streets. Maggie Gyllenhall gave a standout performance as the prostitute eager to turn to porn—not as a performer but a director. She looks like she can do it, too. The show optimistically showed she’s going to make it, and I loved how the scene where Eileen attended the Deep Throat premier had an almost biopic feeling, like we were looking at a crucial moment for someone who later became important. They can engrave Gyllenhall’s Emmy now.

2. The Americans. Just because it a slower year than the amazing season four, I don’t want to penalize season five (pretty much anything would pale in comparison to season four). This year, it was all about the slow process of the USSR, and the Jenningses’ trust in it, falling apart. It was a very slow burn this year but there were still some scenes that haunted me. Elizabeth and Phillip killed fewer people but those murders they committed (or were adjacent to) resonated, like the innocent guy in the lab, the Nazi sympathizer and that poor kid Tuan convinced to slit his wrists. The Jenningses really had to take a hard look this year and see the destruction they’ve caused, with Pastor Tim pegging them as monsters for their treatment of Paige. It looks like Elizabeth will be going on one last mission, and I can’t wait. This was not the best season of the show, but a lot of moments stayed with me. Plus, they went to Benningan’s.

1. Better Call Saul. In its third and best season, Better Call Saul has become a worthy prequel/successor to Breaking Bad. The drug cartel stuff is fun, especially the plot last year to poison Hector Salamanca, but I am really invested in the courtroom chicanery, the relationship between Jimmy and Kim, the fate of Kim’s legal practice, and Jimmy’s turn toward Saul Goodman. The stakes are smaller here but they’re riveting. The real jewel of this season was the destruction of the brotherly relationship between Jimmy and Chuck. Jimmy’s courtroom examination of Chuck, where he proved his brother’s allergy to electromagnetism was all in his head, was brilliant and cruel. Chuck’s subsequent brief recovery from his mental problems, followed by his slide into full insanity and suicide, was completely devastating. Michael McKean gave the TV performance of the year and it was a disgrace that the Emmys passed him over.

Best Music of 2017 From My Admittedly Limited Perspective

There were a number of albums that I liked in 2017. I’m by no means a connoisseur of music, at least not on the level of a professional reviewer, and I have permanently written off entire genres of music. So this is by no means comprehensive but it’s what I liked this year.

Honorable mention. Prince, Purple Rain (remaster). Why is a 1984 album in the 2017 countdown? Not much more praise needs to be offered on the titanic original album or B-sides, all of which had been in desperate need of a remaster for years. But the new-to-me outtakes on the bonus disc were up there with the best of the year’s new music. “The Dance Electric” is an 11-minute ‘80s dance workout that should have been a single and “Possessed” is slinky and weird. Best of all is the “Hallway Speech Version” of Purple Rain track “Computer Blue.” It’s expanded into a 12-minute suite here and it’s astounding, all fiery guitar solos and intricate synths. It’s the bridge between the erotic spoken word fever dream of 1999 and the more polished rock of Purple Rain. I thought I was used to Prince’s brilliance but it shocked me how great this was.

8. Depeche Mode, Spirit. It’s frustrating that album cycles are so long nowadays that a band can take four years to make something disappointing. Some of the music was good but it’s such a negative album. It’s supposedly protesting Brexit and Trump but not giving people much to inspire them to rebel. I don’t care for the tone of the single “Where’s the Revolution?” David Gahan sings “Where’s the revolution?/ Come on, people, you’re letting me down.” Oh, sorry if you don’t approve of how we’re handling things.

7. Tori Amos, Native Invaders. I love “Up the Creek” and its feel of a wild ride through the woods, and “Reindeer King” is OK. But there’s just not much passion on this album. “Benjamin” is embarrassing. It will inevitably work my way into my rotation, since it’s Tori, but I don’t have too much desire to revisit it.

6. Beck, Colors. It seems like we’re a critical minority but I’m one of the people who likes Happy Beck better than Sad Beck. So I loved Midnite Vultures and hated Sea Change. This album is fine. I will probably often turn to upbeat tracks like “Up All Nite” and “Dreams” and the oddly melancholy “Wow.”

5. !!!, Shake the Shudder. It’s just a really fun, danceable album, with highlights including “Dancing Is the Best Revenge.” To sum up—!!!: !!!.

4. LCD Soundsystem, American Dream. It doesn’t really bother me that LCD Soundsystem went back on its claims of retirement to release American Dream. People were disappointed that they had that big farewell concert and then came back anyway but I just thought, “I could go for some more music again.” There’s nothing revolutionary here but it’s a solid album, with highlights being the sweeping “Call the Police” and the creepy “How Do You Sleep?” which sounds like the Cure from the early ‘80s. I did think the 12-minute Bowie eulogy “Black Screen” was a little indulgent and ridiculous.

3. Goldfrapp, Silver Eye. This is a fun album full of electronic sleaze, which is my favorite mode for Goldfrapp. It starts with the heavy, trashy “Anymore” and “Systemagic” and ends with the introspective “Ocean.” The solid, pulsing sounds are welcome after the quieter Tales of Us.

2. Grizzly Bear, Painted Ruins. Grizzly Bear is, for me, the sound of a lazy, serene summer day, of lying outside and watching the clouds shift over the sky. Painted Ruins is a little more charged, with a bit of an edge to songs like “Mourning Sound,” “Three Rings,” “Losing All Sense” and the flirty, sighing “Neighbors.” I don’t have much insight to offer than that I really enjoy this album.

1. St. Vincent, MASSEDUCTION. I like this album so much that I will forgive its incorrect capitalization of a word that is not an acronym. This album is a riot of rock guitars and new wave and synthesizers, criticizing shallowness and plasticity. It’s a fun album with lyrics that can sometimes be raw. Some of the tracks are peppy on the surface but have a darkness, as “Pills” criticizes our tendency to overmedicate and the title track has Annie Clark singing “I can’t turn off what turns me on.” “New York” has a definite sadness, with Clark mourning a lost loved one. When she sings “You’re the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me,” it sounds like the funny anecdote in the eulogy where the mourners laugh through their tears. My favorite is the back-to-back “Surgarboy” and “Los Ageless.” The former is a chaotic attack of sound celebrating the sweet and superficial, like “Boys Keep Swinging” mixed with “I Feel Love” with a hefty dollop of Prince thrown in. The synthesizer motif slows down and transitions into “Los Ageless,” as Clark jadedly criticizes a city where nobody seems to age, then breaks into an anguished call of “How can anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind?” MASSEDUCTION is Annie Clark’s power move: She knew what she wanted, she went for it, and she got it.  

Moments I Will Not Get Back

That 4 seconds looking at your cart in the rice/mayo/stuffing aisle not moving quickly enough for me, interrupting my balletic sprint to eggs and cheese.

Those 2 minutes behind your bumper sticker stalled at the last light before the temporary bliss of the highway because you could not find the gas pedal.

Those 6 moments lingering at checkout as you fumble for your wallet like you were unsure you'd have to pay until the cashier asked you.

These are moments I will not get back. I add them all up in my head as the total looks like an outrage, like an unconscionable theft of time. But I get home and it's all just moments in between car commercials, waiting for the exact hour snacking can begin and when I can recline deeper and deeper. I would not know what to do with that time if they ever refunded me.

I'm done messing around

I have had it. The lightbulb in the lamppost on our front lawn has burned out again. I just changed it less than a month ago.

It’s one of those floodlights and I just used a regular incandescent lightbulb. Even with the long December nights, it shouldn’t have burned out that fast. I remember when you could at least count on a few months from a lightbulb. You bought one knowing you would have a little time to spare. Now nothing lasts. Is this the state of American manufacturing?

Our neighborhood is dark, not having streetlights, so I don’t like not having the light lit. So I had to trudge out, in the middle of Christmas shopping, to buy yet another light. Usually I just buy one light, and it’s the cheapest one I can find. I figure I’ll just pick the cheap option for now, just so I can get by. This is human nature: We put Band Aids on everything and expect to solve the problem permanently at some later date, but we never do.

Well, this time I was smart. I picked up a pack of two lightbulbs. And they’re LEDs, which the package says should last two years. It cost something like $15.99, but I threw caution to the wind and swiped my card. Now I can rest easy. The second bulb will be waiting for me when the first bulb burns out, hopefully in late 2019, and I can just replace it immediately, having already invested two years prior.

I’m done messing around with lightbulbs.

Keep 'Mas' in 'Christmas'

This Christmas season, with the elevation to president of Donald “l’état, c’est moi” Trump, the War on Christmas is finally over after eight long years and we can finally celebrate the holiday as it was meant to be.

Americans speak only in whispers of those Christmases from 2009 to 2016, dark years when the only joy allowed was nondenominational “holiday” joy. We all know someone who was persecuted by the government in those days—the clerk at the Wal-Mart who wished her first and last customer a “Merry Christmas,” the suburban dad who tried to erect a glow-mold nativity set on the lawn, or the office worker who wore a Christmas sweater to a work holiday party—and was never seen again, vanquished by the forces of the Obama administration’s PC police.

Yes, those Christmases, the houses were dark, stripped of their holy LED or incandescent glory. You looked in the windows of houses and saw not a family basking in the glow of a Christmas tree, but several unrelated adults watching Lena Dunham and calling everything “problematic.” The streets were stygian and secular, and department stores in December were indistinguishable from department stores in March. Even shades of red and green clothing got the side-eye. Only the truly daring political dissidents would whisper a furtive “Merry Christmas” to their likeminded neighbors—and even then, in fear of the gulag.  

Formerly-cowed Christians throughout the nation can finally drag their Christmas trees, covered with eight years of heathen Democratic dust, out of the attic. This will be the year or reacquainting ourselves with the sight of things like nativity sets and wholesome ornaments. The other day, I heard “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and barely recognized the melody at first because I hadn’t heard it since the Reagan administration.

The War on Christmas is finally over. If only Bill O’Reilly had lived to see this.

In conclusion, let’s keep the “mas” in “Christmas.”

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Didn't Fit

There’s a (very) short story that, in its entirety, goes “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s attributed to Ernest Hemingway, although his authorship is disputed. A lot of people interpret this as meaning the baby died before he or she could wear the shoes that somebody bought. That’s a horrible story, telling of a life that ended before it could really begin, and so much potential and joy snuffed out. But there could be a less morbid explanation for that fictional want ad. What if the shoes didn’t fit, like if the baby’s feet were abnormally wide or something? What if the parents were vegetarians or vegans who got leather shoes and objected and had to sell the shoes? What if the parents got some shoes that were just ugly and they didn’t have the receipt (or felt awkward asking for the receipt from the domineering grandparent who bought them and who, if she found out the parents returned the shoes, would make passive-aggressive comments about the shoes until her child and spouse finally put her in a home for dementia) and had to sell the shoes on Craigslist? What if the shoes were in some weird material or color that the parents hated, or had some ugly design feature like clashing patterns or a weird ruffle? What if the shoes were pink or or blue and the parents did not want to reinforce stereotypical gender norms for their kids and sold them for black or beige shoes? So there could be a perfectly innocent, non-dead-baby explanation for those shoes for sale and maybe we shouldn’t automatically jump to the most morbid explanation possible. God, stop being so negative all the time.

St. Vincent: Fear the Future Tour

Annie Clark, the singer and guitarist who performs under the moniker St. Vincent, is absolutely riveting to see live. She was the only performer on stage the other night at the Electric Factory and was completely engrossing. Clark is a surgeon on the guitar. Her Fear the Future Tour, from musicality to visuals to overall concept, was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.

Clark opened under a single stark spotlight, dressed in a hot-pink leotard and thigh-high boots, singing “Marry Me” on the edge of the stage with the curtain opened just slightly. There was a huge cheer at the end of the song when an assistant handed Clark her first electric guitar of the night. The curtain opened a little after each song to reveal more and more of the stage as she went chronologically through St. Vincent’s first four albums, shredding songs such as “Actor Out of Work” and “Cheerleader.”

A trio of the best of the songs from the St. Vincent album came next as the stage opened up a little more to reveal a backdrop of a woman’s face stylized to look like a vampire. “Digital Witness” and “Rattlesnake” were intense, while the can’t-sit-still “Birth in Reverse,” sounding like a lost track from Prince’s Dirty Mind or Controversy, was apocalyptic.

Everybody figured out pretty fast where the set list was going, so it wasn’t a surprise when after a short intermission, Clark performed the recently released St. Vincent album, the simply fantastic MASSEDUCTION, in its entirety. At this point, the simple but effective stage exploded into Technicolor, with a unique video playing behind Clark for almost every song. (The concert also was preceded by a short film directed by Clark, The Birthday Party, involving a woman whose husband drops dead shortly before her child’s birthday party and she dresses him in a panda suit to keep the girl from finding out about it. It was a comedy.)

There was a lot to unpack in the videos (which were more like repeating loops of images than a coherent story) but in them, Clark appears as some sort of model inspecting the odd world around her almost like an alien, with a distinct ‘60s primary-color vibe. You could read her facial expression as bored or detached or thoughtful, and I’m not sure what to make of it, but it was very compelling.

The videos added much to the performance, depicting Clark as a comment on sexiness while being sexy at the same time. This worked for the more fun tracks on MASSEDUCTION, like the title track, “Pills” and the Bowie-influenced “Sugarboy” but also worked for the more introspective songs. There was some detachment and artifice in the images, a contrast to the sometimes raw lyrics of songs like “New York,” “Happy Birthday, Johnny,” “Smoking Section” and “Los Ageless” (“How can anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind too?”).

Throughout the show, the crew kept taking away used guitars and bringing Clark fresh color-coded guitars, almost after every song. I assumed this was to retune the instruments from being banged up from a performance. But every time someone took a used guitar away from Clark, it seemed more like she was done with it forever, like she broke it through sheer exuberance and skill, and nobody could use it again. Like each guitar was just another body she ravaged with her intensity.

It's Spending Wednesday!

You braved the crowds for deals on Black Friday. You popped down to the local artisan mayo shop for Small Business Saturday. You sought great online deals on Cyber Monday. You opened your wallet and your heart on Giving Tuesday. But are you ready for … Spending Wednesday?

That’s right, today is now Spending Wednesday. I’ve declared an arbitrary day for everyone to just spend money on things.

Here’s the idea: You just go out and spend. Pick the closest businesses to you and just pay for whatever they have. Doesn’t matter what it is or if you even have a use for it. Just hand over your cash or plastic to pay for the first few things you see. Just keep buying things. Do it until you max out every credit card you have, and take advantage of the special Spending Wednesday credit card offers by opening a new card to max out (and smart shoppers get 5% off purchases). Do it until your wallet is full of crickets and tumbleweeds.

The best part of Spending Wednesday is that you can double your donations to for-profit companies just by spending double today.

So get out there! Buy! Pay! SPEND!

Carnage

There’d better be carnage by the time I get up there.

It is unforgivable enough for my field of vision to fill with the angry red of brake lights. There had better be something to see, some reason for this inconvenience. I had better see frantic red and blue flashes highlighting the catalytic convertor melted to slag, or the door twisted to modern sculpture, or the windshield divvied into engagement rings.

Make it worth my while to have lost the length of a pop single grumbling as if my dashboard could hear me.

But (since everything bad always happens to me) I get to the head of the line and it’s nothing. Whatever disaster there may have been vanished in a puff of less than smoke. Or maybe there was never anything more than a cascade of brake tapping by the cautious or incompetent that slowed the whole thing down.

Moments I will never get back and it was all for nothing.

Come on in, Amazon!

Christmas shopping season is starting and I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m chomping at the bit to give Amazon delivery people access to our house with the Amazon Key program! Come on in, stranger!

With this new program, all I have to do is buy a combination smart camera and smart lock for just $250. Then I don’t have to worry about someone swiping my stuff from the front step while I’m not home. I can just let a delivery person unlock my door and leave the package inside. Goodbye, potential for theft!

I just don’t see any downside to this or any way that this could backfire. I assume the people delivering my packages have been vetted with a thoroughness that the CIA would envy, and there’s no risk of anybody poking around my things or casing my possessions for later theft. This is a brilliant plan on the part of Amazon. I no longer have to risk somebody stealing my $10 CD from between my doors, which is good, because the company absolutely and famously refuses to replace any lost or broken item for any reason.

No, the idea of someone breaking in doesn’t bother me in the slightest because I was raised on the set of The Andy Griffith Show. We didn’t actually have a word in out language for “crime” back then. You never locked your door! We didn’t even have locks on our doors. Or even keys or actual doors.

Where can I send my $250 to get started? Black Friday is a few days away but I’d like strangers to have access to my home now.

Judge

It serves Roy Moore right that people are judging him on those accusations of sexual assault from those women who were teenagers in the late ‘70s. After all, he’s spent a career judging entire groups of people.

Moore has consistently judged gay people, Muslims and black people. He has said Muslims should not serve in Congress and made wacky claims that there is sharia law in parts of the United States. He has said Obergefell v. Hodges is a worse Supreme Court decision than Dred Scott, meaning he thinks gay marriage is worse than the dehumanization of black people, which is insulting to gay people and black people.

Now Moore wants the benefit of the doubt? When it comes to other people, Roy Moore wants Old Testament fire and brimstone but when it comes to himself, he only wants New Testament forgiveness. Sorry, Roy—you sowed the wind and now you’re reaping the whirlwind.  

Then you have people in Alabama defending this guy. “Oh, it’s terrible to judge him.” This is a man who called homosexuality, “a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it.” You have 30 people accusing someone of child molestation and people call for a lack of judgment but Moore’s hateful blanket statements, against people accused of no crime, got a pass? Where were all these “judge not lest ye be judged” people when Roy Moore was spewing this trash?

And then there’s that yahoo in Alabama who gave Moore a pass because the Virgin Mary was 14 when Joseph married her. So the reasoning is molesting a 14-year-old girl is OK because Bible? Or “’70s”? How many people would be OK with a 30-something guy hitting on their teenage daughters?

More to the point, how many people are OK with giving this guy the ability to make federal laws? He’s already been kicked off the bench twice for not being able to follow the law. Does anybody really think the third time in office will be the charm?

Mitt Romney made a good point, saying something like, “‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is a standard in criminal trials, not elections,” calling Moore to drop out. We’ve rejected politicians for far less than this. We don’t have to hang Moore in the town square but I think it’s perfectly reasonable not to give him a promotion. If people do have questions about the allegations, why not err on the side of not electing an accused child molester to the Senate?

Thoughts & Prayers & Snark

Some people offer thoughts and prayers after the mass shootings that seem to happen monthly now. It’s true that thinking and praying can’t bring about the change we need to prevent the next atrocity in America, but I think prayers can be very comforting for some people. It doesn’t work for everyone, of course, but it can make some people feel less alone in a time of tragedy to know people wish you well. I don't think there’s anything wrong with offering a prayer because it can be a reaction to a situation for which you don’t have any answers.

The problem, of course, is that politicians who actually are in a position to get answers to prevent gun violence do nothing more than pray. Many religious people believe that prayers don’t mean much without action and prayer can be a spur to that action.

So it makes some sense to call out “thoughts are prayers” but I think everyone, me included, needs to take a look at what we actually are doing to prevent gun massacres. You know what’s just as useless as “thoughts and prayers” in solving this problem? Snark over thoughts and prayers.

Prayers and posting snarky memes following a tragedy effect the same change: Absolutely none. Here are some other things that do nothing following a massacre: Liking shit on Facebook, watching a tearful Jimmy Kimmel or Seth Meyers monologue about guns and nodding vigorously in agreement, condescension, blogging and complaining about politicians but not bothering to vote.

If that’s all we’re doing, then it’s not much. Many some people are doing actual things to prevent these mass murders but I imagine a lot of the people snarking about prayer haven't exactly worked for decades as community organizers with the Committee to Prevent Gun Violence. Most of us, me included, are armchair commenters on Facebook and elsewhere, doing very little other than bitch. And I don’t know what the average person can really do but it’s got to be more than what we're doing.

Double Dipping Pension Padder

Thank God this is the last day I’ll have to hear about a double dipping pension padder and all the other politicians I can’t vote for anyway.

We don’t have an election in Delaware today. Yet because we live so close to Philadelphia, we are in the same media market and have to hear all the commercials about the people running for office in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So we get all the annoyance of campaign commercials without the benefit of choice.

What have I learned while having the TV on first thing in the morning and while doing the dishes? Oh, a whole lot about neighboring candidates. I’ve learned that Steve Sweeney pads his pension twice and wants people with Down syndrome to have jobs. (This seems like a pretty non-controversial position. Like, is the other guy opposed?) I learned that liberal (GASP!) Phil Murphy wears a tuxedo and wants to raise everyone’s taxes to expand the government like a bloated tick, I assume just for the hell of it and not to provide more services or anything. I learned that Suzanne Fizzano Cannon (or whoever) is related to the family whose cement factory I drive past occasionally. I learned that that judge in the snazzy purple and yellow judge’s collar is not a typical Republican. I learned that Kim Guadagno is forever linked to the closure of both a bridge and a beach.

I know political ads use sleight of hand to bend the truth a little but some of these ads really don’t pass the smell test. One ad said that a politician had voted to RAISE YOUR TAXES something like 154 times. This seems impossible to have happened literally. Over a four-year term, was there really a vote on taxes an average of every nine days?

I wish there were a way for Delaware viewers to opt out of these on the ground that we don’t care and can’t affect the political process in our neighboring states. We have two senators and one congresswoman here. We have three counties, one congressional district and one area code. Leave us alone.

Damn You, Dorothy Hamill

We started watching the second season of Stranger Things and it reminded me of the long-lasting evil of Dorothy Hamill’s haircut.

One of the kids in the show has that bob/shag/bowl cut/whatever hairstyle that Hamill had in the 1976 Olympics (I hope for the actor’s sake that it’s some kind of wig). This reminds me that anybody around my age had that hairstyle as a child. Go through any photos of kids in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and it’s there: that upside-down bowl with the edges turned slightly inward.

That haircut was everywhere. It must have been compulsory to parents, like a draft for follicles: You found out you were 1A and either sent your child to the barber or fled to Canada as fast as your heel spurs would permit you. It seemed like the Hamill hair lasted so much longer than it should have. She had probably moved onto French braids while a nation of toddlers was still cosplaying as her.

I bet that hair looked good to parents back then, snowed in with a pot of fondue during a few weeks in February 1976, watching Hamill on their Zenith color TV sets as she dazzled the world in Innsbruck with her “Hamill camel” move, thinking idly of their toddlers’ need for a haircut while trying to hide their disgust for President Ford’s pardon of Nixon and nursing a grasshopper cocktail in a Quaalude haze. But after the madness faded as the last of the Bicentennial fireworks fizzled out and the tall ships sailed over the horizon, who realized what they had done to their children?

Now we have to live not only with the photos of ourselves with those structurally dubious haircuts but they also creep up in every fictional period piece as a time signifier. Damn you, Dorothy Hamill. Damn you and your haircut to hell.

A defensive what class?

I’ve been dissatisfied lately to discover that the premium for my car insurance has increased by $25 a month in the last two years. It’s an industry-wide phenomenon, my insurance company tells me. We discussed some solutions and one of the things they recommended was something about a defensive driving class.

I’m sorry: a defensive what class? I’ve been driving for long enough. What will I learn from this class that could make me a better, safer driver? I should teach this class.

You know what, let me tell you something about driving (steps up to pulpit). I’ve been driving for 26 years and have had the same insurance company all that time. In that time, knock on wood, I’ve never been at fault in an accident. I haven’t even filed a claim in 11 years and that was when I was sitting at a red light and the car in front of me backed into me. I drive a lot. My commute is one hour each way, over a mix of highways and winding rural roads. I’ve put 190,000 miles on my car in 10 years, and my previous car had about 176,000 miles on it or something. I’ve driven all over the East Coast and Midwest, through cities, suburbs and country. I’m unintimidated by traffic, weather conditions, road surfaces or big scary trucks. I hate driving so much but I’m really good at it. 

My point is that I have a long enough driving history that my safe record cannot be chalked up simply to luck, as the sample size is way too big. My 26 years of driving skills and safety should speak for themselves and should entitle me to some sort of discount. Call it the “Competency Discount” or the “Knowing What You’re Doing Discount.” A lot of us should get this.

Yeah, I guess a class would just be something I can snooze through online, but that’s not the point. Is America no longer a meritocracy? Does my record entitle me to nothing? What have we as a society become?

Tell me to take a defensive driving class. Come on.

Good person?

I disagree that someone who shoots up his office is a “good person.” You hear this type of thing a lot after someone commits some awful crime: Reporters will interview a person close to the perpetrator, who will vouch (with qualifications) for the person’s character.

This happened again after that guy from Delaware killed his coworkers in Maryland. On the news, they had someone who knew the guy and she said something to the effect of “he’s a good person who did a bad thing.”

I’m sure she was in shock and trying to work her way through it, and I don’t know how I’d deal with it if someone I knew, and thought was a good person, did something like this. I just disagree. Isn’t a mass shooting enough to tell us that this guy is a bad person? He might be good in other areas, but on the scale of life, murder weighs that scale down pretty low in the direction of “bad.”

I’m not going to delve too deeply into human nature in something I dashed off during five idle minutes at work, but I don’t believe you judge people’s character by what’s in their hearts. Nobody knows what’s in their hearts. All we know is what they do, and that’s a better indicator of character. If you murder a bunch of people, you forfeit your right to be seen as a good person. I think what you do makes you a good or bad person, not the other way around.

If it’s unfair for me to think this way of this shooter, oh well. There are several families in Maryland planning funerals this week that we can talk to about fairness.

Robot

“The bag goes in the bin. The bag goes in the bin. The bag goes in the bin. The bag goes in the bin. The bag goes in the bin.”

The O’Hare TSA agent repeats it like a mantra. His eyes are weary. Obviously he’s said this so many times before and nobody listens and he’s had to repeat it rote as the only way to get through his day at the security checkpoint.

I stare dumbly at him. Bag goes in the what? I start placing the bag on the conveyor belt but they stop me. Suddenly I see that the bins are much larger than at PHL and my roller board will actually fit into it. I feel like an idiot for not knowing but it’s been awhile since I’ve been to Chicago so I didn’t realize they have a different system at ORD.

Very different. At home, I would take off my shoes, take my laptop out of the bag and take out my toiletries. Here, I can leave them all in their bags. Everything goes through the X-ray machine, quick and efficient. I am through the line at top speed and making my way to the gate.

The man keeps telling people to put the bag in the bin. On the other side of the room, another agent tells everyone to keep their shoes on and their laptops in their bags. Her voice is loud and monotone.

When will their shifts end? When can they stop repeating themselves? When will the robot tourists actually listen to what they’re saying? Maybe their answer is to become a robot themselves.

Apollo's Terrible Glare

Sometimes you hit the wall sooner than you expect to. Mornings like these, it starts miles out from where it used to. The drivers decide, as if they’d planned it ahead of time, to make the highway into a parking lot.

So you crawl toward your exit, a Sisyphean commute becoming even worse. What was the point of adding that new lane if this is what’s going to happen?

You hate to say it but it would almost be a relief to see a fender-bender up ahead because that would make this traffic a one-time deal, passed and quickly forgotten. This time it’s not. This is the new normal, at least temporarily, and the culprit is the autumnal angle of the sun.

Ahead of you, drivers slow to a numb trudge, their cars impotent as Apollo’s terrible glare moves across the sky and completely blinds them. Better safe than sorry. Better to add 10 minutes onto my daily commute than actually try for mass competence.

For there is no solution to this. If only someone would invent some sort of device we could use to shield our eyes from the sun. Slouching toward the office, I dream of this perfect future.

Pat, Vanna and Alex

I really think that someday when Pat Sajak and Vanna White retire from Wheel of Fortune, and Alex Trebek retires from Jeopardy, it will destabilize America.

These two shows have been an institution for over 30 years, the perfect shows to watch casually in that hour between finishing the dinner dishes and the start of prime time. We usually have them on unless we’re doing something else. I’m usually reading or doing something else at the same time but it’s still fun to watch both.

It’s amusing to watch Wheel of Fortune and see contestants try to guess “Thing” from “____D_L_.” It’s fun to see people win the $30,000 at the end and dream about what we’d do with it. It’s fun to see people miss solving the puzzle while getting one letter wrong. And tell me Vanna White does not have the sweetest gig in all of showbiz. (Wheel of Fortune is an institution so I don’t understand why the cable guide describes it as something like “Merv Griffin’s version of hangman.” You don’t know what Wheel of Fortune is, a show that airs in some form in dozens of countries and languages, but you get the references to Merv Griffin and hangman?)

It’s also entertaining to watch Jeopardy and feel smart when you get a question and stupid when you have no idea what they’re talking about. Both games are like a crossword puzzle; they keep your mind active. Like a lot of people, I think about auditioning for Jeopardy, just to see how much I could win. I get some of the questions at home but I’m sure it’s harder to do when you’re on that stage. I don’t have the personality for a game show and like Dorothy Zbornak, I don’t know that America would root for me.

Eventually, these shows will end and then what? They could continue with new hosts but that doesn’t always work. The Price Is Right went on without Bob Barker, Janice and Holly, but what’s the point? They were the whole show. What would the point of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy be without the hosts? Who’s going to banter with contestants and turn those letters besides Pat and Vanna? And can you imagine anybody besides Alex Trebek quizzing people on 18^th century French literature?

Let's go earthing

Wait a minute: Don’t tell me you don’t know about earthing. You must live in a cave on the moon. I guess I’ll deign to explain the concept.

Earthing, you ignorant slut, is the practice of walking barefoot on the ground, which will raise your spirits or grant you wellness or whatever. It comes to us courtesy of Academy Award winner and noted Google-educated scientist Gwyneth Paltrow. On her Goop website, she explains a former cable TV technician recognized the practice of walking without shoes, giving a catchy name (and monetization potential) to something humans have done for uncounted ages. As an article explains about earthing:

“What he seemed to draw from his experience in cable systems was that, not unlike live wires, humans’ electrical charges could be neutralized through contact with the earth. Doing so, he explained, “prevents inflammation-related health disorders: ‘It’s intuitive that—like in a cable system—grounding would neutralize any charge in the body. After grounding myself, and a few friends who had arthritic-type health disorders, I became convinced that grounding could reduce chronic pain.’”

Would you like to join the healthy set in earthing? Then Paltrow has a deal for you. Goop links to these bedsheets and mats you can buy. You plug them in and get the same “grounding” effect you would get by walking on the ground for free. The sheets and mats, in contrast, cost $200. (Maybe they're decorative.)

If you pay $200 for some sheets to walk on, man, they saw you coming.

This is just … so dumb. You know why you might feel better if you walk on the ground barefoot? Because you’re probably doing something pleasurable anyway, like walking in a park on a beautiful sunny day, or playing with your kids in the yard. Of course you’re going to feel better in that situation than walking around in dress shoes from one meeting to another in your fluorescent-lit office.

Oh, but people who read Goop swear by those $200 sheets! They say they'll relieve everything from arthritis to depression! There’s no way that could be misleading, because I assume when they say “swear by,” it means people are testifying under oath and not just offering anonymous internet testimonial. Who would exaggerate to sell a product?

I don’t understand the interest in Goop and all these weird products. Paltrow is always telling people to shove special jewels in their groins or walk on expensive sheets. It’s not some revolutionary science. It’s just people making a ton of money off other people who can’t tell shit from Shinola.

I also don't understand people who search a few scientific papers on PubMed and all of the sudden think they have the knowledge to challenge the rigorous conclusions of multiple trained scientists. I’ve been editing a podiatry magazine for 16 years. I write multiple times a month on research in the field, edit a large volume of clinical research written by others, have attended countless hours of scientific lectures, and have socialized with the top people in the field. If I can do all that and still not claim to be an expert in comparison to the actual podiatrists, how can people claim to be experts in other scientific fields after spending a few hours of free time at Google University?