Smoking Puppets?

My family has enjoyed the first few episodes of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance-- the sets are intricate and awe-inspiring, the plot is epic, and while the characters are a little difficult to differentiate, the show is pretty intense-- considering it is enacted by puppets-- but I was surprised the the Netflix warning at the start: "fear, gore, smoking"-- I could see the fear and the gore, although it's fairly cartoony fear and gore, but it's certainly no Madmen.

The Queen's Gambit is a Classed-up Cheesy Sports Movie

I thoroughly enjoyed the Netflix mini-series "The Queen's Gambit," even as I recognized sports trope after sports trope; it's a Cinderella story and this scene pretty much summarizes the film:

the protagonist, an orphan named Beth, learns to play chess in the basement of the orphanage with her first mentor of many-- the janitor Mr. Shaibel-- so you get the Rocky-style gritty determinism and training, but, of course, Beth is an intuitive player-- her brain is so active she sees the pieces move on the ceiling . . . she has to resort to tranquilizers and alcohol to calm her busy mind . . . and she passes through many obstacles, suffers setbacks, and finally-- with a sequence of mentors (including the archetypal wise Black lady) she finally learns the Russians' secrets-- they are collaborative-- they study games together and everyone plays-- they advance in chess as a nation . . . but, in the nick of time, her scrappy American friends come to her aid and though she once suffered abysmal defeat, it seems that her brilliance-- which she could only summon with tranquilizers-- can also be bolstered by cooperation and friendship and coaching . . . it's a heartwarming feminist underdog tale that made me weep like I was watching "Hoosiers"-- the acting and imagery is first rate, and the color palette almost feels like "Madmen," it's just as much fun to look at the outfits as it is to root for Beth . . . the writers decided NOT to explain very much about chess at all, and this works-- if you know the game, you might think the speed of play is unrealistic (and it would be good to revisit Jim Belushi's SNL Chess Coach skit) but to watch people actually play chess is laborious, and as an added bonus, now my kids want to play some chess (I destroyed Alex last night, just crushed him right through the middle).

Baking Is Insanely Difficult

I heard an advertisement on a Hidden Brain podcast for some veggie crackers made in a "nut free bakery" but I'm more interested in the rival bakery, across the road, that is run by madmen and lunatics.

The End of an Era . . . The End of Madmen

I'm very sleepy this morning because we watched the final episode of Mad Men last night, and while I won't reveal any spoilers to those of you who haven't finished the series (although I thought the ending would be more tragic, because of the ominous animated sequence during the opening credits, where Don flails about in an infinite dream-like fall . . . it's not like the end is a barrel of laughs, but there is plenty of joy mixed with the pathos-- it's more like the opening is a symbolic fall for the archetypal '50's stone-jawed businessman and I think the weird hug in the penultimate scene is about the shifting gender roles happening in America in the early '70's . . . although if you've got to hug a weird crying stranger in a therapy group to usher in a new era, then I might want to get left behind) but more importantly, it took me seven seasons to learn that the title of the show is Mad Men . . . not Madmen . . . and I'm surprised that the grammar Nazis who visit this place never caught the error . . . perhaps they never watched the show, or perhaps they were letting me slide because everyone pronounces it as one word.

Moonrise Kingdom > The Life Aquatic

I thought I would hate this movie . . . but I loved it, and I thought it would be cheesy, but it's actually clever and zany and visually engaging, and-- like Madmen-- some of the allure is purely aesthetic, the props and the colors and the two-dimensional nature of the sets, and I know all this sounds ridiculous and absurd and vague and unsubstantiated, but if you watch the movie, you'll know what I mean-- it's a whimsical story and whimsical (almost fey) universe but Harvey Keitel and Ed Norton and Bill Murray and Bruce Willis and Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton are not whimsical actors, which makes the movie understated and funny instead of mawkish and nostalgic . . . give it a shot, it's a lot better than The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Dave Almost Loses a Nipple

The night after I watched Michael Ginsberg of Madmen cut off his own nipple and present it to Peggy in a jewelry box, because the humming of the office's new IBM computer drove him insane, the very next morning, I was pushed to the brink of sanity by a chirping noise in our kitchen . . . but luckily my wife and I found the source before I had to slice off any body parts . . . the basement fire alarm needed new batteries.

Platinum Fatigue

Sometimes, I get so tired and I don't think I can keep it up-- the pace is too fast and I want to close my eyes and just sleep, like forever . . . but then I rise to the challenge and keep on swimming . . . but somewhere, buried deep in my subconsciousness, like a splinter in my mind, there's a niggling thought: I can't do it . . . it's impossible . . . there are too many . . . it's a fool's game . . . there's no way out . . . there are too many good shows!  . . . there's no way to keep up! but then I dispel the negativity and think to myself: I am doing it . . . I've watched The Wire and Madmen and The Sopranos and The Shield, Luther and Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad and Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Return and Top of the Lake and Portlandia and Deadwood and Orphan Black and The Walking Dead and Sherlock and Louie and Friday Night Lights and The Guild and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I acknowledge that these are the best shows ever made and that we are living in the Platinum Age of Television, and that these shows are better than movies, better than books, better than music, almost better than fornication, and certainly better than any form of entertainment ever created in the entire history of humanity, and I bow down to the show-runners and the show-writers, I applaud everyone for the effort, and I express my admiration and appreciation (and I also wonder how this many different good shows can all make money) but I think I've finally hit the wall, I can't do it any longer-- I grew up on Night Court and Real People . . . I patiently waited all week for a new episode of Cheers-- so this is quality overload-- there's too many choices, something has to give; I've learned to quit fairly good shows (Orange is the New Black and American Horror Story) and while I'm trying to do Broadchurch and Fargo and Black Mirror, it's never enough--  people keep recommending new things: The Fall and The Affair and The Missing and The Return and True Detectives and The Americans and Happy Valley and a bunch more that I've forgotten . . . so I guess I've got to accept the fact that I can't watch them all, and be happy that I'll have something to do when I retire (which doesn't seem likely, considering what's a happening with my pension fund).

I Finally Understand Madmen

It took me a while to get it, but I have a good excuse-- I was distracted by all the outfits: Meghan's beautiful outfits and Peggy's atrocious outfits and Pete's silly outfits, Joan's voluptuous outfits and Betty's evolving outfits-- ironically, I share the same blindness as the men on the show . . . but I can't be blamed because of the "curse of testosterone"; anyway, better late than never, and so here it is: the show's theme is essentially the title of Hanna Rosin's candid book The End of Men and the Rise of Women; Don's infinite fall during the theme song is more than a tragic symbol of his own career arc . . . it's a symbol of the decline of all men in America; as the show grinds to a close, the women are gaining power and thinking for themselves-- Joan as a partner and Peggy as a talented executive and Meghan as an actress and Betty as an assertive and intelligent housewife who realizes her talents were wasted-- while the men are dinosaurs (Lou) or hipsters (Roger doing acid, Stan and his beard) or insane (Michael cuts his nipple off!)-- and when Don and Harry Crane leave the hip L.A. party and head out to sip whiskey at the old man restaurant with the paneled decor and a stone hearth, you can sense that the good times are over . . . maybe Don will regain some tiny shred of relevance, or achieve sobriety, but that's hardly a happy ending to the show, and I'm assuming it will end far worse than that.

Phones Have Little Screens

Here are two e-mails from my friend Connell, after I asked him to check out a place on Airbnb:

1) This one looks really tiny to me . . . I'm looking on my phone so that shouldn't be surprising; 


2) I just looked at the place from my computer . . . the place looks fine and the location looks great;

and so I think we can learn a valuable lesson here; Marshall McLuhan was right, the medium does embed itself within the message-- if you look at an apartment on your phone, it looks claustrophobic and tiny, but if you view it on a 27 inch monitor, it looks spacious and inviting . . . and this brings me to my actual message: the youngster at my workplace that watches Madmen on her laptop is NOT watching the same television show that I am watching; she is watching a show about what happens to Don Draper (Richard Whitman) while I am just gawking at props and sets and furniture.

A Good Movie to Watch

The purpose of Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel is to remind you how funny it is to watch people run around . . .  the situation doesn't matter, as long as the camera is far enough away and someone is running away from someone else on a colorful, lavish set (the secondary purpose of the film is simply to look at the sets . . . the colors and details are even better than an episode of Madmen).

Maybe The Soviets Were on to Something (Sort of)

I went to dinner with several couples on Saturday night and I was bombarded with TV recommendations -- because we are living in the Platinum Age of Television -- and so apparently I need to watch Key and Peele and Vikings and Ray Donovan and Banshee and Spartacus and Downton Abbey and new episodes of Eastbound & Down and some other shows that I have forgotten (and this doesn't even include the shows that I'm trying to keep up with: Madmen and The Walking Dead and Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Homeland and Portlandia and American Horror Story and Justified and the first season of 24) and it's all too overwhelming for me, and so I think I'm going to have to take a sabbatical from television, but really what I think I want is a simpler time, when everybody watched the same thing; I recently listened to a 99% Invisible podcast called "Unsung Icons of Soviet Design" and while the Russians didn't have much choice -- everyone played the same arcade games, used the same cassette player, programmed the same awful personal computer and knew the same bedtime song . . . and they all knew this song because they all watched the same program every night at 8:00 PM, and saw the same puppets sing the same lullaby . . . and while I don't think it's necessary that we have a Soviet-style oppressive government that designs all culture and technology, it certainly was nice when you could rely on the fact that everyone you knew watched Seinfeld on Thursday night (and discussed it Friday at work).

I am the Victim of Ironic Netflix Adultery

In Orange is the New Black (Jenji Kohan's new Netflix show) educated white girl Piper Chapman goes to federal prison for a year, and she makes her fiance promise not to watch Madmen while she is doing her time, so that they can watch it together when she is released, but he can't resist . . . and, ironically, the show is so good that my wife couldn't resist watching two episodes without me (but I wasn't in jail, I was at a Red Bulls game, so I guess it's not exactly the same thing).

Elisabeth Moss Is Not a Kiwi

I am enjoying Top of the Lake, a moody crime-drama set in the wilds of New Zealand -- the tone and structure of the series is similar to The Killing . . . a troubled female detective obsessively investigates one crime over the course of an entire season, and while there is some comic relief . . . Holly Hunter plays a bizarre empowered wild-woman named GJ and the small town folk of Glenorchy are creepy and amusing, but what really threw me for a loop is that Elisabeth Moss -- who plays Peggy Olson on Madmen -- is not a New Zealander, she's only pretending to be a New Zealander . . . and she fooled me (for more on this, watch the video . . . Sir Ian explains it quite well).

A Sentence in Which I Make Too Many Comparisons

John O'Hara's novel Appointment in Samarra is a classic that is actually fun to read -- it contains the dry humor and tragic inevitability of Madmen . . . Julian English especially reminds me of Pete Campbell; it has the drinking and parties and class commentary of The Great Gatsby, but without Fitzgerald's flowery and pretentious prose; it has drunken and picaresque adventures reminiscent of Jerome "Corky" Corcoran from Joyce Carol Oates' excellent novel What I Lived For . . . and while most of these folks need to follow Robert Littell's advice for young men and learn how to drink, that would remove the plot and conflict from all of these works of fiction . . . and while you can run from your appointment in Samarra, you can't hide -- like the dentist, the Grim Reaper will have his due . . . and like I am due for a cleaning, and that receptionist just keeps calling and calling, so too will Death, and just when you think you have avoided him, he shows up at your door, whether you live in Manhattan or West Egg or Gibbsville.

Cooking Strike Day 13

Due to unappreciative children and an empathetic spouse, my wife went on a two week "cooking strike" -- and the first night was a wonderful reverse of the typical: I slaved away in the kitchen, making portobello mushrooms stuffed with shrimp and diced peppers, baked with cheese on them; and then felt like January Jones in an episode of Madmen when Catherine called and said she was going to be late for dinner because she was at happy hour with some friends -- she's damn lucky that nothing got burned -- but as the days wore on, I lost my appetite for exciting meals, especially because of the planning that cooking entails -- and so in a manner of days my cooking became perfunctory (including this incident, when I simply defrosted some soup that Catherine made weeks ago) and I am looking forward to when the strike finally ends, and I can enjoy my wife's cooking again . . . and I want to state -- for the record -- that I have learned my lesson: though I was a picky eater when I was a child and know what it's like to have to eat something that you can't stomach, I will never side with my children again on one of these issues because I don't want to suffer a labor dispute like this ever again.

Who Would You Rather Not Be Sleeping With?

Season 3 of Breaking Bad and Season 4 of Madmen both use the same conceit to add tension, pain, and drama: an ex-wife that stays in the picture . . . but I'd prefer Skyler White as my ex, rather than Betty Draper . . . they're both cold, and they're both disappointed with their respective husbands, but at least Skyler is helping out with Walter's business (and if you've never seen Breaking Bad, you have time to catch up before the new seasons starts . . . the show is so good it's making me contemplate getting cable television).

The Carousel is a Merry-Go-Round

After watching the first season of Madmen, I made the claim that the scene when Don Draper renames the Kodak wheel slide projector the "carousel" is the greatest moment in TV history-- but I am prone to hyperbole-- so it was a pleasant surprise when my friend who called me "insane" when I originally made the claim, said that he recently heard Dennis Miller interview Jon Hamm, and Miller expressed the same sentiment about that carousel moment . . . but I think Dennis Miller is kind of annoying . . . so I'm changing my greatest moment in TV history to when the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did a live performance of "The Nightman Cometh."

Copulation > Assassination

A great moment on Madmen: ad-man Duck Phillips is meeting an ad-woman Peggy Olsen in a hotel for a "nooner," and Duck is watching TV while he waits for Peggy at their trysting place and he sees a news flash that President Kennedy has been shot and injured, but he knows his Peggy is just about to show up, and there's no way he's going to let a little thing like this ruin the romantic moment, and so he unplugs the television, and when she walks in moments later she is none the wiser, and then once they are post-coital, smoking cigarettes in bed, he says, "Do you mind if I turn on the TV . . . there's this news story that's bothering me," and then they learn that J.F.K has been killed . . . and I certainly can't blame Duck-- you can't let a national tragedy get in the way of copulation.

5/21/10

I bought a kid's electric guitar for Ian at a garage sale, and put two coated strings on it-- my theory being, when you teach kids chess you just use a couple pieces at a time, and when you teach kids soccer, you start small sided-- so I would start slow with the guitar, and I put a strap on it and gave him a guitar stand so that it is his guitar, up in his room, and I showed him how to alternate pick and told him if he practiced for a month, I would get him a little amplifier (which is a terrible idea, considering he's going to be five in a month and still doesn't know how to tell time, so he'll be waking us up at 5:15 with it) and he put it on and practiced several times, which was impressive, and then we put them to bed and watched an episode of Madmen and when we went upstairs, Catherine called me into his room-- he was sleeping with his guitar.

Klosterman and I Agree About Madmen

It took me a day and a half to ingest Chuck Klosterman's new book Eating the Dinosaur, and though there were some new ideas for me to devour-- on Kurt Kobain vs. David Koresh and ABBA and Ralph Sampson and Garth Brooks and laugh tracks and the inability of Ralph Nader to lie and why this is a problem in politics and the paradoxical identity of football (which appears to be the most conservative sport-- think Brett Favre and Vince Lombardi-- but is actually the most dynamic and liberal in nature . . . as it has evolved from the forward pass to radios in quarterbacks helmets, from rugby-esque to the read option and the spread offense, etc.) but the scary and entrancing and ultimately annoying bulk of the book is about things that I already love, such as the time travel movie Primer and Werner Herzog and Erroll Morris and the Unabomber Manifesto and Stephen King and Arrested Development and David Foster Wallace and Weezer and Madmen and this is ultimately annoying because he feels the same way as me about these things (and many more) but his ideas about them are more clever than mine and they are better articulated, because he's a professional pop-culture critic, so while on the one hand I am fascinated by what he is saying, on the other, I'm annoyed that I didn't think of it myself-- it's about Weezer, for Christ's sake, not the human genome!-- and for me this was most acute in his essay entitled "It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened" where he dissects a press release from Pepsi and then makes some comparisons to Don Draper and Madmen and he transcribes and analyzes Don's monologue about the Kodak carousel and nostalgia-- and this is my favorite moment in TV history . . . it's the end of season one of the show, and no one else appreciated it at my workplace, but at least Klosterman did-- but then it made me wonder about this whole other idea, which is: is Klosterman just predicting what the faux cool nerdy hipster types who also like athletics like to read and watch and listen to, and are we that easy to predict and thus he writes about those things because he knows this is what will sell?-- it crossed my mind for an instant, but if that's so then the joke is on him, because he has embraced these things so fully and thought about them so deeply that whether he's joking or not, he is sincere.