Best TV of 2019

I saw a lot of good TV in 2019 and it was hard to rank some shows (the top two on this list are virtually tied). There were plenty of good shows not on this list that I really enjoyed, but don’t have much to say about, like Good Girls, The Boys, Legion, Steven Universe, The Gifted, etc. A few shows are not on this list because we’re not caught up yet, like Succession, The Good Place, Killing Eve, Grace and Frankie, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Here’s the unscientific countdown:

12. Stranger Things. Not too much to say about this. I just really enjoyed the pool and the mall, which completely encapsulated the summer of 1985.

11. GLOW. I liked that the setting shifted to Las Vegas. I also liked Debbie’s power moves in negotiating a piece of the show. Not sure about the aborted romance between Ruth and Sam.

10. Game of Thrones. I’ve said enough about this in my weekly recaps and don’t really feel like talking about it anymore.

9. The Handmaid’s Tale. Was it good this season? I don’t know. I liked it better than season two. I’m still not sure what to make of June (Elisabeth Moss). She proves herself a capable leader, organizing to get dozens of children out of Gilead. But the show sometimes tips too far into ignoring the contributions of the (mostly of color) Marthas, equally capable women who could have evacuated the children themselves. June also has a reckless side, getting one of the Marthas killed just so she can stand outside the walls of a school and hear her daughter’s voice among a crowd of children playing. Was it worth someone’s life? That’s the question the show has to answer. I almost think it would be more interesting to leave June and focus on another part of Gilead, or show more of those who resettled in Canada. Also, the Washington handmaids who were gagged and had steel rings in their mouths really nauseated me.

8. Veep. In the end, Selina Meyer faces a floor fight at the convention, gets re-elected president for one term, goes down in history with a shrug, and her funeral is upstaged by the death of Tom Hanks. In its last season, Veep matched the madcap speed of our political world, where Meyer almost got referred to the World Court for war crimes, and then the whole thing just disappeared. The casual glance Meyer gives loyal aid Gary during her convention speech, as he is hauled off by the FBI for taking a fall for something she did, is one of the coldest things I’ve ever seen on TV. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a national treasure who deserved every Emmy she got for this role.

7. The Crown. We’re not caught up yet but I’m enjoying Olivia Colman’s turn as Queen Elizabeth II and Helena Bonham-Carter as Princess Margaret. The former lets emotions play out all over her face without letting them bubble over, while the latter is vivacious but frustrated. The episodes we saw had some good character studies of Prince Charles and Prince Philip, as well as a spirited appearance by Princess Anne. I also never thought I’d be interested in the fate of King Edward VIII (who I had little sympathy for in earlier seasons), but his story was a neat exploration of the idea of duty and the crown going to the right person.

6. Years and Years. I’m a sucker for alternate future stories so I enjoyed this, which focused on all the changes endured by a British family going 15 years into the future. A charming despot, Vivian Rook, becomes prime minister and secretly herds immigrants into camps. At the end of his second term, Trump nukes China. The economy collapses, governments fall, the environment degrades, and all sorts of other stuff happens. It’s both horrific (the sight of the one son washed up dead on a beach after trying to help his immigrant partner escape to safety) and hopeful (when the cast exposes the evils of Rook at the end).

5. Mr. Robot. This review is a little late so I could see how the series ended. I’m still evaluating the last episode and the reveal that Elliot had locked a real part of his personality in a fantasy world so he could take down E Corp, but I really liked the basic plot of the season, showing the downfall of the Deus Group, mostly set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In season four, Mr. Robot continued to be formally daring, with a dialogue-free episode, an episode staged like a play, and a rom-com episode. I liked the focus on Darlene as the heart of the show and Elliot’s anchor to reality.

4. Chernobyl. How is something so feel-bad so popular? This was a stunning indictment of the 1986 nuclear meltdown as the fault of not just human error but bureaucratic incompetence. The performances were particularly strong, with an anguished Jared Harris, a determined Emily Watson and a subtly powerful Stellan Skarsgard. There were so many horrific scenes, such as the workmen cleaning up radioactive material for only 90 seconds each before the fallout can kill them, a helicopter dropping over the reactor like a puppet with its strings cut, and the heartbreaking but gorgeous shot of concrete sealing the mass grave of those who died, the concrete moving over them like an ocean. I don’t think I’ll ever hear the word “graphite” again without getting goosebumps.

3. Russian Doll. I’m not sure exactly how to describe Russian Doll, which we burned through in a weekend. It’s the story of a woman who keeps dying after experiencing a time loop at her birthday party, but it’s much more than that: a look at human connections with deep empathy for its characters. Natasha Lyonne is vivid, unique and fantastic.

2. Watchmen. I loved this even more than I expected. It’s not quite a sequel to the Watchmen comic but an extrapolation of the comic’s themes. As Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons subverted the superhero genre, this show subverted some of the story in the comics. In an astonishing episode of TV, which almost by itself earned the show this high spot on my list, we learn that Hooded Justice was not white as assumed but was a black man who wore a hood to conceal his race to fight crime. This was a smart exploration of race and whitewashing history, with one character noting that a white man in a mask is a hero while a black man is a criminal. Partially set during the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, the show tackled how the pain of black people in the past is inherited by the future, crystallized in one shot—a black-and-white modern police car pulling corpses of black people behind it and trailing their red blood—that took my breath away. The performances were magnificent, with Jean Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., Jeremy Irons and especially, presumed Emmy winner Regina King.

1. The Americ— Sorry. Force of habit.

1. The Deuce. This was such a great show that nobody watched, showing the evolving sex trade in Times Square from the early ‘70s to the mid-‘80s. In its third and final season, set in 1985, the prostitutes are being pushed out of midtown, the massage parlors are closing, and porn is moving from New York theaters to videotape in California. While the city is gentrifying, pushing out sex workers and others deemed undesirable, the population also faces the slow-motion horror show of the AIDS crisis. The Deuce was a deft exploration of how women are exploited. As prostitute/porn star/porn director Candy Renee says, “What men want—no, what they’ll pay for—that becomes the world.” Candy is one of the women who survived the brutal world of sex work, eventually becoming a respected movie director. Maggie Gyllenhaal was brilliant in this role (if you pause in just the right spot her monologue about her father taking her to get a back-alley abortion as a teen and then driving off without her, you can actually see the spot where she should earn an Emmy nomination). Lori Madison (a great Emily Meade) wasn’t so lucky. She moved from prostitution to porn to stripping and after trying unsuccessfully to start a music career, realized that the world would never see her as anything other than a porn star. Out of options after turning one last trick, she matter-of-factly shoots herself in a hotel room. None of the cast mentions her again. What was really striking about The Deuce was its sense of community. When one person got sick, it seemed like everybody got sick. These people moved in the same circles for 15 years, and it’s sad to see how they got shuffled aside as the city changed.

Uh, Dishwashers

A poem

By the Leader of the Free World

Sinks, uh, showers, all of this stuff,

I did a lot of it.

No water comes out.

You have areas

where there's so much water

you don't know what to do with it.

You turn on the shower,

you're not

allowed

to have any water anymore.

I mean, we do a lot of it.

Uh, dishwashers.

You did the dishwasher, right?

You press it.

Remember the dishwasher,

you press it?

Boom,

there'd be like an explosion,

five minutes later,

you open it,

the steam

pours out,

the dishes.

Now you press it 12 times.

Women tell me. Again.

You know, they give you

four

drops of water.

And they're in places

where there's so much

water

they don't know what to do with it.

So we just came out with a reg

on dishwashers.

We're going back to you.

Ten times, right?

Ten times.

Not me of course,

not me,

but

you.

You.

But I never mention that.

Because one time I mentioned all three.

I said, sinks, showers,

and toilets.

The headline was,

“Trump with the toilets, toilets.”

That's all they want.

They don't even mention the,

so I didn't mention that,

okay?

I go off the record.

But you know what, it's

terrible.

You wanna wash your hands,

you turn on the sink,

no water comes out.

So you leave the water,

go ten times as long,

it's same thing.

You have a shower.

Drip.

It's no good for me,

for me.

A Mid-'90s Story

When I was in college, in about 1995, I was taking a film class. One of the movies we had to watch was Dreams by Akira Kurosawa. Apparently there was only one copy available at Blockbuster or West Coast Video, so the class had to pass around the tape so people could watch it at home on their VCRs. So I had to arrange to exchange the videotape with one of my classmates. I was going to call her from our landline from home but my Mom was on the phone for awhile and I couldn’t use it. I think I may have finally gone to a payphone to call my classmate and arrange to meet her. We met in the parking lot of Houlihan’s and exchanged the videotape.

Videotapes, landlines and Houlihan’s—it’s not an interesting story but it’s the most mid-‘90s thing I can think of.

Madonna's Close Up

In 26 years, I’ve seen Madonna do quite a variety of things live in concert. I’ve seen her suspended on a catwalk not far above my head, leaning over and giving the crowd the peace sign. I’ve seen her make a grand entrance by emerging from a giant disco ball. I’ve seen her wearing a Phillies jersey, regaling a screaming crowd while the team played in the World Series just across the street.

But I’ve never seen Madonna quite like I did for two shows at the Met this week. I’m used to seeing her in huge venues and only being able to get so close, mostly only seeing her on the video screens. But this time, Steve, Jeanine and I—partners in Madonna concertgoing for 26 years—were fifth row of the pit, about 20 feet from our longtime idol as she tore through “Like a Prayer” and many others. We were close enough to see the blue of her eyes.

It’s overwhelming to be that close to her and every time Madonna walked to the edge of the stage, I couldn’t stop smiling giddily. She walked right past us down the aisle, the closest we’ll ever get to her. At one point, she pointed to our raucous section and said something about how much she appreciated having her fan club there. (No, we don’t have photos. Everyone had to put their phones in little pouches before the show. I didn’t mind. I can’t blame her for insisting on no phones. In a theater that small, she would have only seen phones in front of her and she wanted to see our faces.)

Madonna was chatty all through the two-and-a-half-hour show. She told stories and raunchy jokes. She teased the Philly crowd about putting Cheese Whiz on cheese steaks, saying, “Can’t you afford real cheese?” She auctioned off a Polaroid of her for charity. She sat with a guy in the crowd and bantered with him. And she walked right by us. Madonna sounded great and was relaxed, happy and warm all night.

The opener, “God Control,” from new album Madame X, is the best thing she’s done in years, one of those songs that shows—and I mean this as a compliment—that Madonna is batshit insane. It’s a lamentation of mass shootings set to a relentless disco beat, with lush strings endlessly ascending and descending in the background but never quite resolving, like unanswerable questions. Madonna and her dancers, dressed in glammed-up Revolutionary War costumes for a night at some demented club, dance and protest and get beaten up by riot police. At first I thought it was weird to be singing along and dancing to the powerful grooves of a song with the backdrop of gun massacres. But then I realized that’s Madonna’s point: that people are dying in mass shootings and most of us are just continuing to dance mindlessly. “We need to wake up,” she sings repeatedly. It’s a call to action and an infernally danceable song.

In the show intro and throughout, there was a motif of Madonna typing out quotes such as “Artists are here to disturb the peace” by James Baldwin, quotes displayed on the giant screen. The sound of the manual typewriter boomed out like gunshots, taking the place of the percussion in some songs.

“Vogue” found Madonna dressed in a trenchcoat as identically dressed dancers skulked around her, like decoys in a film noir spy movie. This segued into Madame X’s sublime slice of ‘90s house music, “I Don’t Search I Find,” as detectives interrogated her under harsh lighting, finally gaining her confession as the detectives typed it up, the sound of the typewriter taking the place of the song’s finger snaps. This is another album highlight, with the cool spoken word section contrasting her joyous exclamations of “Finally, enough love.”

This was no greatest hits show, with only a handful of older songs. Most of the show was new material from Madame X, and it helped that it’s her strongest album in almost 15 years. The album sprung from her move to Lisbon to become a soccer mom for her son. Without a lot of friends in her new country, she started going to fado clubs, and the album has an influence of that Portuguese style. Before the show, some of the musicians played instrumental versions of her hits in a fado style, which was fun.

I liked the new songs even more than I expected. “Medellin” was a ton of fun, featuring the aforementioned parade down the aisle past us. “Come Alive” had a Moroccan flair, with her and her dancers in brightly colored dresses with Moroccan tiles projected onto the walls of the set. A fun remix of “Crave” (Madonna’s 49^th number 1 on Billboard’s dance chart) saw everyone dancing around and dressed for a night at a disco. This included Madonna’s adorable young daughters, who were strutting around in feather boas like they owned the place. “Batuka,” with a rousing call-and-response vocal, mournful yet joyful, featured a group of women, the Batukadeiras, from Cape Verde. For a spectacular, intense performance of “Future,” Madonna played piano (!). That song has one of my favorites of her lyrics: “Not everybody’s coming to the future/ Not everyone is learning from the past.” The closer, “I Rise,” was stirring, with Madonna closing by walking down the aisles of the Met and singing a cappella.

There were some nice notes of women’s empowerment throughout the show. After a pleasantly jazzy “Human Nature,” Madonna roused the crowd by repeating the song’s chorus, “I’m not your bitch/ Don’t hang your shit on me,” flanked by the women of color in the cast. She then sang a truncated “Express Yourself” a cappella, which brought roars from the crowd (although I would have preferred hearing the entire song). Madonna pointedly changed the lyrics of “Papa Don’t Preach” to “I’m not keeping my baby” and decried the endangerment of reproductive freedom. I liked “American Life” more than I thought I would. “Rescue Me” was a dance interlude, with dancers doing this rhythmic breathing while the spoken word lyrics of the song played, which I really liked.

Then, near the end of the show, the big guns came out: “Frozen” and “Like a Prayer.” A video during “Frozen” showed Madonna’s daughter Lourdes doing a sinuous dance while Madonna sang the song behind the partially transparent screen, making her seem both behind and within the video, mother and daughter seeming to interact with each other. This transformed the song from one of romantic love to one of maternal love and guidance and pain, and the emotion was powerful. I was stunned into silence by it and it almost made me cry. It just got to me.

Madonna dropped the big atom bomb in her back catalogue, “Like a Prayer.” Everyone sang and danced and pumped their fists as she wailed “Let the choir sing!” Everyone gave into the cathartic undertow of the song. She sang this 20 feet from us before ascending onto steps with her choir. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Like I said, this was no greatest hits show. Madonna doesn’t really do those. While I wouldn’t turn down hearing nothing but the hits, I’m glad her tours have never become rote recitations of the past. I’m glad she can turn out a great new album and take a left turn like this tour, doing something she’s never done before.

And I’m very glad I have the best of friends with me to see Madonna perform for the last 26 years and counting.

How hard will I cry?

The scene is a coffee shop, where several people are discussing the Mr. Rogers biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

David: I haven’t seen it yet. How hard will I cry?

Jonathan: Oh God, Tom Hanks just walks onto the Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood set and tosses his shoe and I’m already sobbing. Sobbing. Like Toni-Braxton-in-the-shower bawling my head off.

Joanne: You will cry. If you are human, you will cry. If you do not cry at this movie, I do not want anything to do with you.

David: Wow. Sounds emotional.

Jonathan: Tom Hanks. That’s (choking up) … that’s all.

Joanne (choking up): Yeah. Tom Hanks. That scene on the subway, I just …

Jonathan (mumbles incoherently through tears):

Joanne: … when they all start singing “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” I was wailing. Just thinking about my own life. I was on my second box of tissues by then.

David: Wow. Two boxes.

Jonathan: That’s nothing. I attended a special screening in a Kleenex factory just so I wouldn’t run out of tissues. My mascara ran, and I don’t even wear mascara.

Joanne: You think you were emotional? I can’t even deal with the sound (starts crying again) of a trolley anymore. That clanging, I just (breaks down in sobs) …

Jonathan: I know. I was even worse. I saw a cardigan sweater in Target the other day and I got so emotional, I almost hyperventilated. Fred (sniffles) … Fred …

David: That’s … a lot.

Jonathan: And don’t get me started on the Emmys.

Joanne: The 1997 Emmys? When Mr. Rogers told people to (unable to go on) …

Jonathan (weeping openly): To take a moment to think about the people (voice rises two octaves due to emotion) in their lives? I can’t take it.

Joanne: I re-watched it on YouTube recently … (pauses to blow nose) and I just … well, let’s just say I make an emergency therapy appointment.

David: So I guess I’ll prepare myself for a lot of tears?

Jonathan (wailing angrily): Tears? Tears? I cried so hard, I still need this IV to keep myself hydrated. (Pulls out an IV bag from under the table.) You will cry. As God is my witness, if a soul lies within you, the tears will flow.

Everyone in the coffee shop stands and applauds the performance.

Way Too Late

This time of year, we Americans sit down together to debate the eternal question: Is it too early to start celebrating Christmas? Should Black Friday fall before Thanksgiving? When do you put up lights and a tree? Are we ready to hear Christmas songs yet? Most people say it can be too early to start. But in the spirit of contrarianism, I’m going to argue that it’s not too early. It’s too late—way too late to start Christmas.

I mean, seriously—there’s only a month until Christmas, and you haven’t been celebrating it outwardly for months? What’s your problem? You should have had your Christmas tree up by Halloween at the latest. At the latest. And yet your home is free of pine needles and stray tinsel? Come on. Your house must have looked ridiculous decked out in pumpkins and scarecrows in October, like someone wearing tight-rolled jeans in 2002.

The sounds of “Christmas Wrapping” and “Let It Snow” should have been playing in your car and home since at least the summer. There are thousands of Christmas songs so late November is simply fatally late to start playing all of them. You should have turned down the AC in your car last July to be able to hear the synthesized sleigh bells better while the sweat rolls down your face.

I know I spent the summer getting ready, shut away at home and racing to get yuletide preparations underway in time for a September reveal. What’s that? You wanted to spend Labor Day weekend enjoying the last rays of summer sunshine? Amateur. I was barricaded at home with the shades pulled down, wrapping presents over the sound of the pool filter.

Forget summer: Christmas needs to start even earlier than that. I have been done my shopping since May. If a new game comes out that my son wants, or there’s a new record that my husband might want, they’re just out of luck, because they missed the deadline. Maybe next year, since while I resume shopping again on Dec. 15, those gifts are for next Christmas.

We’ve already left out some cookies for Santa. We haven’t left out the milk yet, of course—that happens on Dec. 20.

Thursday is Thanksgiving and I’ve had several blissful months of staring at the colored lights outside our house and the meaningful family decorations inside. I feel bad for people who don’t have that. They’re going to spend next month gearing up for Christmas, and that’s very sad.

Pizzazz!

As you know, I have strong feelings about the Trump administration. I used to write about this a lot but I realized I was commenting on a lot of little scandals that turned out not to matter in the grand scheme of things. I figured I would hold my fire until something really big happened and then comment on that.

Impeachment hearings, only the fourth in 230 years of American history, seem like a big deal (and bursting with PIZZAZZ! like a Busby Berkeley production), so here’s what I think.

I’ve been listening to the hearings in the background at work and following all the news and analysis, and after two weeks of testimony, it is clear to me that the House must impeach President Trump and the Senate must remove him.

If you take the testimonies as a whole, they paint a damning picture of a president who subverted foreign policy to benefit his presidential campaign. He clearly conditioned $391 of foreign aid to Ukraine upon the president’s announcement of investigations into his political rival, Joe Biden. This is a blatant abuse of power that makes Watergate look like a tan suit. Those taxpayer dollars had been appropriated by Congress under Article I of the Constitution and it is not in the president’s power to withhold that. It is vital that Ukraine receive this money so Russia does not get a further foothold into its former republic, which would be very dangerous and cost a lot of lives. Withholding this aid, or threatening to do so, sends a message to other heads of state that they can manipulate us if they carry out the domestic political errands of the president.  

This incident is Trump acting in his own interests and not in the interests of the United States, and that cannot stand.

Call it a bribe or a quid pro quo or whatever synonym you want but it is clear that a bribe is what this was. Trump’s response has been to repeat “I want nothing” or “no quid pro quo.” (I guess this is like when Nixon said “I am not a crook,” after which everyone was convinced and let the matter drop.) The summary of the July 25 call to Zelensky, the testimony of multiple witnesses and common sense have borne this out. The president and his chief of staff have admitted that they were asking other countries to illegally intervene in our election. Most damning of all was Gordon Sondland’s testimony, which confirmed that multiple white house officials were involved, including the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of energy and president’s lawyer. Sondland said everybody was in on it, and I haven’t seen anything to dispute that.

From what I’ve seen, the Democrats have made their case very effectively. What do the Republicans have? Not much. Devin Nunes moos out some conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, which Fiona Hill debunked yesterday, and also repeats “Steele dossier, Hillary Clinton” and all the other wingnut greatest hits. Jim Jordan yells and whines. The Trump administration and State Department obstruct justice by barring witnesses from testifying. They’re doing this because this is all they have—the Republicans can’t defend Trump’s behavior, so they don’t even try. Instead, Trump smears Marie Yovanovich during her testimony, which is witness intimidation. The Republicans insinuate that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, has (((dual loyalties))). This is disgraceful.

The president must be held accountable and impeachment and removal is the only way to do so, especially when he refuses to be held accountable and sees himself as above the law or other oversight. The alternative to impeachment is to sit there and take it, and that is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the Democrats are outraged by what the president did, while the Republicans are only outraged that he got caught.

I would hope that the Senate also votes to remove the president. I know: LOL. But I still hold out hope. Stranger things have happened in the last four years. Just because the Republicans are not going to fulfill their Article I responsibilities and act as a check on the executive branch, that does not absolve the Democrats of doing the right thing and impeaching.

Last-Name Basis

I had a number of professors in the English department in college for multiple classes and most of them allowed students to call them by their first names. But there was this one student who one of the teachers insisted not use her first name. I don’t remember the student’s name but I got the impression some of the teachers were annoyed by him. In a writing class once, he forgot to bring a pen (this was back when you wrote and took notes on paper pretty much all the time). The professor lent him her pen, sort of flicking it at him with an expression of disdain on her face. Another professor asked everyone how far they’d gotten in the assigned book. The student said, “Getting ready to begin.” The teacher said, “At this point you should be further than that,” with a tone of annoyance (this was in a class where we read a book per week). Anyway, this one professor let all the students call her by her first name. She was a great teacher and a really nice person. So this student answers a question using her first name one day: “So, Carol, the semiotic hallmarks of deconstructionism …” blah blah blah. The professor stops him and says, “Dr. Jones.” Later in the same class, he calls her Carol again. She again helpfully suggests, “Dr. Jones,” nodding her head firmly. She had a smile on her face as usual but it did not meet her eyes, and I could swear I felt a hint of icy air in the climate-controlled classroom. I guess even the nicest people have little tolerance for people who annoy them.

Baby, It's Stupid Outside

Christmas is fast approaching in a whirlwind of garland and consumer debt, which means it’s time once again to engage in America’s least vital debate: What We as a Society do with “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” I am Switzerland in this discussion—an annoyed Switzerland, since I don’t think many questions matter less than this one. I just think every position on this song is not worth taking.

The new thing is that John Legend and Kelly Clarkson have released a new version of this song with less roofie content. I haven’t heard the whole thing but boy are some people outraged about changing the song’s lyrics.

I’m sorry: Is this the “Star-Spangled Banner” that we’re rewriting? No, it’s just some dumb song from 73 years ago. We can delete it from our national playlist and nothing of value will be lost. Why are we dying on this hill?

If radio stations stop playing the original “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” or play the new version, we’ll all live. I guess this thing is a beloved Christmas classic for people but there are plenty of beloved Christmas songs out there so we can always listen to those. As I said, I haven’t heard the new version but I can’t imagine being passionate enough about it to engage in a debate. I don’t think I’d even heard the damn thing until a few years ago when people started bitching about whether or not we should listen to it, as if the song itself were some crucial moral signifier.

On the other side of it, I don’t think society will collapse if people listen to the original. We need to promote women’s autonomy but there are more important fronts on that battle than some Dean Martin song.

Also, it’s not “censorship” if radio stations don’t play the original. The First Amendment protects the people from the government, not from radio programmers. We’ve been over this.

In conclusion, can we not do this stupid Kabuki theater debate of What We As a Society Should Do about this dumb song? Play “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in its original form or its remade form. Or don’t play the old one. Or don’t play the new one. Or burn the song in effigy. But let’s not waste our time on this idiotic debate for another Christmas because nothing about this song matters. And I realize that by writing this, I’ve just wasted further time with a debate, but that’s kind of what I do here.

REBRAND

In the spirit of rebranding, I’ve decided to REBRAND. Much like Facebook has rebranded as FACEBOOK, this blog will now be known as RANTS AND RUMINATIONS.

Why am I YELLING? I’m NOT. It’s just that an ALL-CAPS logo is FRESH and EXCITING and will turn everything AROUND for me and gain me scores OF readers for both my RANTS and my RUMINATIONS. As FACEBOOK (formerly Facebook) has SHOWN us, why DO market research to find out WHAT your USERS want when you can HIGHLIGHT the name of your COMPANY and click on “UPPERCASE”?

Companies CAPITALIZE non-acronyms all the TIME and it’s successful AS hell. It’s like, sure, you’ll buy Oreos because they’re TASTY. But if the company insists in press releases that THE cookies be known as OREOS, you’ll rush out to BUY them FASTER.

This REBRAND will help me in other WAYS. Like FACEBOOK, I often lose all the DATA of my USERS (both of YOU). This ALL-caps approach will help me KEEP data SAFER and make for a BETTER user experience. I have also been ACCUSED, like FACEBOOK, of abetting a RUSSIAN disinformation program to INFLUENCE the result of a federal ELECTION. Holding down the SHIFT key will solve this problem PERMANENTLY, and I hope I never have to TESTIFY before Congress AGAIN.

IN CONCLUSION: UPPERCASE = INSTANT TURNAROUND.

Bleeding Beyond the Gutters

You call them graphic novels now. They were comic books when I knew them, stumbled across with planning or serendipity before being chased out of a 7-Eleven. I can still tell you what combination of Marvel or DC I could buy for $2. I still see every cover date pointing three months into the past.

These days, the books come from Amazon, their CMYK gradations smoothed and finessed, and yet bled out. I saw the Kirby Crackle rendered in the rough technology of Ben-Day Dots. I haunted spinner racks every month to get another chapter of a story without seeing its end in sight. You get the story all at once in a budgeted diet. Long ago, everybody weighed in on the quality, but now it comes in cover blurbs and not a letter column.

Now you call them graphic novels as if you need some elevated word to describe better what critics have decided all of a sudden approaches art. As if you are new money ashamed of the backwoods accent you started with.

But there are some like me who saw the art bleeding beyond the gutters of lowly comics on common spinner racks, even when few saw it yet.

The Year a Rubik's Cube Defeated Me

This had to have been 1982 or 1983. I was in the Mummers Parade as a child and won second place in a juvenile category (it was a category for juveniles, not that the category itself was juvenile). The first-place winner was some kid who was dressed as a Rubik’s Cube. I was so disappointed because everyone loved my costume. I wore a big backpiece and the whole thing was sequined and feathered within an inch of its life. I walked all the way up Broad Street wearing it. And then I lose to some piker wearing a cardboard box with colored squares on each side. Was the puzzle even solved? This detail is lost to history. Oh, I’m sure the colors were real pretty and had sequins and everything. But it was still just a Rubik’s Cube. Even at age 7 or 8, I knew the Mummers judges were just jumping on the bandwagon of the hot Christmas toy and didn’t appreciate the intricacy of the well-made costume I wore. It was a lesson to a young child that some people will always hitch themselves to the latest trend and look dated, while some things are timeless. How livid I was that New Year’s Day. This undoubtedly started my whole year off under a shadow, and you could argue that I have been living under the cruel shadow of the sequined Rubik’s Cube ever since.

Let's Get Physical

Physical media has its advantages if that’s the only place you can find the artwork in question. Our house is crammed with records, CDs, books, comic books and DVDs that we’ve collected over the years and decades. Much of this we’ve digitized but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come in handy when there’s a glitch in the matrix and you lose access to the digital world.

The latest glitch is in my ancient car, in which the auxiliary jack for the stereo no longer works. I’ve tried different cables but none of them work, so it’s a problem with the stereo, and it’s not worth getting the stereo fixed because the car is on its way out. This means I can’t listen to music on my iPod or iPhone, so I’m stuck with CDs and the radio.

It hasn’t been all bad, since I dug out some old mix CDs and such and have been able to listen to some songs I never digitized. I’m glad I kept these since the car is where I listen to most of my music and without anything to listen to, I would only hear my aggravated profanity and the bile coursing through my system during my hateful commute. The radio is OK but it gets old. I listen to Oldies 98 now since I’m old and the station has finally caught up to the ‘80s music I loved. This is a deep irony since I was livid in 1987 when 98 stopped playing top 40 music. Another irony is that the station is just as repetitive as it was in the ‘80s, which I don’t understand. They used to be bound to play whatever was popular but now they have a whole decade-plus to work from, and they still play the same stuff way too often for no reason.

I experienced another good reason to keep CDs when Prince died. At the time, his music was only on certain streaming services and I don’t think you could download it everywhere. None of his albums had been remastered so only the originals were available to buy. So there was a scramble for people to play his music but I already had it all so I only had to push play. We keep all our records, of course, but records have aesthetic pleasures and better sound quality so there are reasons for keeping those beyond just access. This is why I’m not interested in streaming unless everything breaks down and I have no choice: I already painstakingly collected and paid for all this music so I don’t want to do it all again. 

I think it’s also important to hang onto DVDs and blu-rays if you can because TV and movies could disappear from streaming services, and that’s outside of our control. I was just reading an article saying that since Disney bought Fox, Disney has been putting old Fox movies into a vault, so people won’t have access to a lot of horror and classic movies. Netflix isn’t great about carrying older movies so many will be inaccessible without physical media. We have a lot of TV shows on DVD and I’m hanging onto them. I like to rewatch quality TV and you never know when they’ll stop streaming.

If your home doesn’t have much storage space, I can understand getting rid of stuff. We’re lucky enough to have room, so what’s the harm in hanging onto physical media in case we need it?

U-Turn

In your hurry to dart in front of my car and do your sudden 180º, it was probably lost on you that the “no U-turn” sign is there because of people like you. People who are in too big a hurry to “get somewhere” (as if we all aren’t trying to do that) to notice me slamming on my brakes behind you. I saw the eyes and headlights behind me, close enough to have sent us right back in a chain reaction to the hospital from which we just wheeled out of.

After all, why should the rules apply to you?

I strive, as do we all, for charity for those who have made mistakes. But with one more soul to take care of—one who wakes up from anesthesia haze and strains up against his seatbelt because you could not be bothered to follow the rules and undertake the herculean task of going half a mile to make a legal U-turn—perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking you are just a dimwitted, thoughtless POS.

I'd totally vote for a woman for president—just not one of these women

I mean, I’d totally vote for Elizabeth Warren but there’s something about her that turns me off. She just … talks about stuff and explains stuff. It’s just like with Hillary Clinton and her shrill pantsuits, and the way she didn’t smile enough but laughed too much. I’m all for voting for women, but not them. They remind me of the ex-wives I never had.

Kamala Harris turns me off twice as much as Warren or Clinton. I can’t put my finger on why. I’m also not too hot on Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristen Gillibrand or Marianne Williamson, for various vague reasons. I’m a huge fan of hypothetical women but these are just not the right women for the Oval Office.

While I’ve always been a massive feminist, I also wouldn’t have voted for Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Pat Schroeder, Carol Moseley Braun, Michele Bachmann, Elizabeth Dole, Jill Stein, Carly Fiorina, Alyson Kennedy, Carrie Chapman Catt, Helen Halyard, Cathy Gordon Brown, Caroline Killeen, Marsha Feinland, Elaine Brown, Ellen McCormack, Lorna Salzman, or Margaret Chase Smith. True, I was either not alive or not old enough to vote when these women ran, but I wouldn’t have voted for any of them for president. They just turn me off, even based on a brief perusal of their Wikipedia pages. It just wasn’t their time.

There are a lot of other women currently in Congress who could potentially make a run for president someday but I don’t know if I’m feeling it: Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Liz Cheney, Ilhan Omar, Susan Collins, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Lisa Murkowski, Katherine Clark, Martha Roby, Mary Gay Scanlon, Ayanna Pressley, Terri, Sewell, Ann Kirkpatrick, Rashida Tlaib, Debbie Lesko, Doris Matsui, Dianne Feinstein, Jackie Speier, Sharice Davids, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Suzanne DelBene, Katie Hill, Judy Chu, Julia Brownley, Joni Ernst, Barbara Lee, Grace Napolitano, Norma Torres, Karen Bass, Linda Sanchez, Yvette Clark, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Maxine Waters, Nanette Barragan, Katie Porter, Abigail Spanberger, Susan Davis, Sylvia Garcia, Diana DeGette, Rosa DeLauro, Jahana Hayes, Chellie Pingree, Stephanie Murphy, Val Demings, Kathy Castor, Chrissy Houlahan, Mikie Sherrill, Jacky Rosen, Betty McCollum, Lois Frankel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Susie Lee, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Donna Shalala, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Kyrsten Sinema, Lucy McBath, Robin Kelly, Jan Schakowsky, Lauren Underwood, Cheri Bustos, Susan Brooks, Abby Finkenauer, Debbie Stabenow, Mazie Hirono, Cindy Axne, Lori Trahan, Elissa Slotkin, Haley Stevens, Tammy Duckworth, Brenda Lawrence, Angie Craig, Ann Wagner, Vicky Hartzler, Dina Titus, Ann McLane Kuster, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Martha McSally, Deb Haaland, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Xochitl Torres Small, Kathleen Rice, Grace Meng, Nydia Velazquez, Frederica Wilson, Deb Fischer, Carolyn Maloney, Tian Smith, Maggie Hassan, Nita Lowey, Elise Stefanik, Virginia Foxx, Alma Adams, Joyce Beatty, Marcy Kaptur, Marcia Fudge, Kendra Horn, Suzanne Bonamici, Madeleine Dean, Susan Wild, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, Kay Granger, Veronica Escobar, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Jackie Walorski, Elaine Luria, Jennifer Wexton, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Pramila Jayapal, Kim Schrier, Carol Miller, Gwen Moore, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jeanne Shaheen, Marsha Blackburn, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Shelley Moore Capito, Tammy Baldwin or Debbie Dingell. I’m sure all these gals are lovely, but I just don’t know if I’d vote for one of them for president.

Look, nobody is a bigger feminist than me. Nobody. I can’t say I’m the father of daughters, but as the son of a mother, I’d love to see a woman in the White House. Someday. But I’m just going to pass on all the aforementioned women.

Forgiveness

Whether or not Brandt Jean should have hugged and forgiven Amber Guyger, who murdered his brother Botham, is not for me to say. I have no idea what I would do in that situation because it’s impossible for me to put myself in his shoes. I won’t judge what he did or speculate why he did it.

But it did make me uncomfortable when I saw Jean hug Guyger in the courtroom. It’s hard to articulate why, but it has to do with the public’s reaction to what happened and the risk of taking the wrong lesson from this. Right away I could hear a public chorus of feel-good “aww”s at that hug. I could see people calling this “inspiring,” a word people apply for phenomena ranging from forgiveness for murder to crafting projects on Pinterest. I could see the Good Morning America-zation of this, simplifying something complex into something no deeper than a hashtag. #inspiring

I think the problem with people turning this hug into a heartwarming moment is that it can let us off the hook, let us believe that everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow and there’s no longer anything to see here. I worry that white people will see this hug as some kind of absolution for systemic racism; that we can change our racist society if wronged people just forgive, rather than actually taking steps to correct injustice. Meanwhile, Botham Jean is still dead, this bloodshed will happen again, and people who look like me will get better treatment from the legal system than people who look like him.

If there’s anything this should inspire, it’s that we should care more about these issues, and not think everything’s OK because of an excruciatingly personal forgiveness that is in danger of being extrapolated to society at large.

Much smarter people than me have written about this and I will defer to them. I still can’t fully articulate why the reaction to this bothers me, but when I saw it, I did have a visceral reaction, and it wasn’t because it warmed my heart.