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).

This Time I Am Determined to Finish!

I am moonlighting (or daylighting, as David Foster Wallace calls it) a bit on Infinite Jest . . . and I know the last time I did this I ended up quitting the novel -- but it's four years later and I have learned my lesson, this time I am committed, but I just need a little break to read Brett Martin's new book with this double-coloned mouthful of a title: Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad . . . his thesis is that TV has entered a "third Golden Age" and that these new high quality cable shows are like nothing before -- they are neither episodic nor mini-series -- instead they resemble Victorian serialized fiction, like Dickens, and because of this format, they are much more beholden to the writers and creators -- rather than the actors and producers -- than any TV before, and these writer/creator folks happen to be moody, flawed, ambitious and brilliant men, and this personality type reflected in the "heroes" of these shows . . . characters such as Vic Mackey and Walter White and Don Draper and Tony Soprano and Jimmy McNulty.

Deacon King Kong: Read It!

Deacon King Kong is the 51st book I read this year-- 2020 was good for something-- and it is the best piece of fiction I've run into in a long while; I'm not going to write a long review-- just read the thing-- but I will post up my Kindle notes . . . my favorite sentences from this fever dream that's exploded from James McBride's brain-- a fictionalized account of the Brooklyn housing project in which he grew up . . . the year is 1969 and it's all going down in this book, which is about urban decay and revitalization, baseball, drugs, race, language and tall tales . . . it is so much fun, even when it gets dark-- and there's some romance and a mystery to keep the plot cooking . . . the book begins with Sportcoat-- the old drunk church deacon, walking up to a young heroin dealer (who he coached as a child) and shooting him in the ear . . . but really the book begins with the mystery of the free cheese:

“Look who’s talking. The cheese thief!” That last crack stung him. For years, the New York City Housing Authority, a Highlight hotbed of grift, graft, games, payola bums, deadbeat dads, payoff racketeers, and old-time political appointees who lorded over the Cause Houses and every other one of New York’s forty-five housing projects with arrogant inefficiency, had inexplicably belched forth a phenomenal gem of a gift to the Cause Houses: free cheese. 

and then there's some backstory on Sportcoat:

When he was slapped to life back in Possum Point, South Carolina, seventy-one years before, the midwife who delivered him watched in horror as a bird flew through an open window and fluttered over the baby’s head, then flew out again, a bad sign. She announced, “He’s gonna be an idiot,” 

At age three, when a young local pastor came by to bless the baby, the child barfed green matter all over the pastor’s clean white shirt. The pastor announced, “He’s got the devil’s understanding,” and departed for Chicago, where he quit the gospel Highlight and became a blues singer named Tampa Red and recorded the monster hit song “Devil’s Understanding,” before dying in anonymity flat broke and crawling into history, immortalized in music studies and rock-and-roll college courses the world over, idolized by white writers and music intellectuals for his classic blues hit that was the bedrock of the forty-million-dollar Gospel Stam Music Publishing empire, from which neither he nor Sportcoat ever received a dime. 

At age five, Baby Sportcoat crawled to a mirror and spit at his reflection, a call sign to the devil, and as a result didn’t grow back teeth until he was nine. 

Sportcoat was a walking genius, a human disaster, a sod, a medical miracle, and the greatest baseball umpire that the Cause Houses had ever seen, in addition to serving as coach and founder of the All-Cause Boys Baseball Team. 

and then-- in contrast to old school Sportcoat-- you've got the corrupted youth:

you've got the Clemens was the New Breed of colored in the Cause. Deems wasn’t some poor colored boy from down south or Puerto Rico or Barbados who arrived in New York with empty pockets and a Bible and a dream. He wasn’t humbled by a life of slinging cotton in North Carolina, or hauling sugarcane in San Juan. None of the old ways meant a penny to him. He was a child of Cause, young, smart, and making money hand over fist slinging dope at a level never before seen in the Cause Houses. 

and the requisite Italian mobsters . . . this is Brooklyn in the late '60s:

Everything you are, everything you will be in this cruel world, depends on your word. A man who cannot keep his word, Guido said, is worthless. 

and various kind of crime:

“A warrant ain’t nothing, Sausage,” Sportcoat said. “The police gives ’em out all over. Rufus over at the Watch Houses got a warrant on him too. Back in South Carolina.”  

“He does?” Sausage brightened immediately. “For what?” 

“He stole a cat from the circus, except it wasn’t no cat. It got big, whatever it was, so he shot it.” 

Where’s the box?” “The church got plenty money.” “You mean the box in the church?” “No, honey. It’s in God’s hands. In the palm of His hand, actually.” “Where’s it at, woman?!” 

“You ought to trade your ears in for some bananas,” she said, irritated now. 

and superstition:

His wife put a nag on him, see, like Hettie done to you.” 

“How you know Hettie done it?” 

“It don’t matter who done it. You got to break it. Uncle Gus broke his by taking a churchyard snail and soaking it in vinegar for seven days. You could try that.” 

“That’s the Alabama way of breaking mojos,” Sportcoat said. “That’s old. In South Carolina, you put a fork under your pillow and some buckets water around your kitchen. That’ll drive any witch off.” 

“Naw,” Sausage said. “Roll a hound’s tooth in cornmeal and wear it about your neck.” 

“Naw. Walk up a hill with your hands behind your head.”  

“Stick your hand in a jar of maple syrup.” 

“Sprinkle seed corn and butter bean hulls outside the door.” 

“Step backward over a pole ten times.” 

“Swallow three pebbles . . .” 

They were off like that for several minutes, each topping the other with his list of ways to keep witches out, talking mojo as the modern life of the world’s greatest metropolis bustled about them. 

“Never turn your head to the side while a horse is passing . . .” 

“Drop a dead mouse on a red rag.” 

“Give your sweetheart an umbrella on a Thursday.” 

“Blow on a mirror and walk it around a tree ten times . . .” 

They had reached the remedy of putting a gas lamp in every window of every second house on the fourth Thursday of every month when the generator, as if on its own, roared up wildly, sputtered miserably, coughed, and died. 

and there's a shooter in the vein of The Wire's Brother Mouzone:

He wanted to say, “He’s a killer and I don’t want him near you.” But he had no idea what her reaction would be. He didn’t even know what Harold Dean looked like. He had no information other than an FBI report with no Highlight photo, only the vaguest description that he was a Negro who was “armed and extremely dangerous.” 

and a romance between an Irish cop and an African-American church sister:

“I’ll be happy,” he said, more to the ground than to her, “to come back and bring what news I can.” 

“I’ll be waiting,” Sister Gee said. But she might as well have been speaking to the wind. 

the dark side of the drugs: 

Men who made their girlfriends do horrible things, servicing four or five or eight men a night, who made their women do push-ups over piles of dogshit for a hit of heroin until, exhausted, the girls dropped into the shit so the men could get a laugh. 

and, finally, a clash of values that is epic and poetic:

"I’m in the last Octobers of life, boy. I ain’t got many more Aprils left. It’s a right end for an old drunk like me, and a right end for you too that you die as a good boy, strong and handsome and smart, like I remembers you. Best pitcher in the world. Boy who could pitch his way outta the shithole we all has to live in. Better to remember you that way than as the sewer you has become. That’s a good dream. That’s a dream an old drunk like me deserves at the end of his days. For I done wasted every penny I had in the ways of goodness so long ago, I can’t remember ’em no more.” 

He released Deems and flung him back against the bed so hard Deems’s head hit Highlight the headboard and he nearly passed out again. “Don’t ever come near me again,” Sportcoat said. “If you do, I’ll deaden you where you stand.”  

Dave is Empathetic About His Wife's Shortcomings (and she should reciprocate)

My wife moves fast and gets things done. A downside of this is that she sometimes misplaces her stuff.  The very first blog post I wrote on Sentence of Dave addressed this:

I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.

I'm proud to say that I'm always supportive and understanding if she loses something. She has her fingers in a lot of pies. No time for serene transitions. She doesn't always have time to fully think through where she's putting her stuff down.

We were already having a wild week-- my car was in the shop getting a new crankshaft position sensor (a big job) and so we were down to one car: our Honda CRV. At some point on Wednesday-- a day we had off for Yom Kippur-- my wife lost her keys. She realized this Wednesday afternoon, but in a casual sort of way. She didn't think anything of it until Thursday morning.

Since my car was at the shop, I drove her car to work. My school is farther away. Her school is only two miles from our house, so she planned on biking there. I leave much earlier than her for work, and once I arrived, I started receiving frantic texts.

Apparently, she had really lost her keys-- the whole set. The house keys, the keys to both cars, the keys to her classroom . . . everything. She had looked everywhere. In the dark. In her pajamas. In the garden. In the garden compost. In our garbage. Yuck.

She assumed someone stole them.

This is what she surmised: she had left the keys on the ping-pong table in our driveway. She had been running around, from Zumba to yard work to acupuncture and then back to yard work. Unlike a normal person-- myself, for instance--she didn't take any breaks between these activities. No snack or cup of coffee or moment to put her feet up and read a magazine. Just one thing to the next. And she was sure that someone had filched the keys right off the ping-pong table and this light-fingered scuzzbag was planning on breaking into our house AND stealing both our cars. There had been a few robberies around town recently, so her thoughts weren't completely unfounded.

When she got home from acupuncture, she put her purse on the hook just inside the door, and then went outside for a moment to pick up the weeds and piles of brush from her garden. She had the keys in her hand, but then put them down so she could put on a pair of gardening gloves.

She also complained that lack of sleep from ear pain may have contributed to her miscue.

I tried to make her feel better about the whole thing. We all make mistakes.

But things went from bad to worse.

It was hard for me to imagine. I was at work, teaching class. I had a working car in the parking lot. I had keys, all kinds of keys. But I could feel it, like a splinter in my mind. My wife was in some weird circle of Hell.

What a morning is right.My wife does too many things! She has too many responsibilities! The horror! The least I could do was figure out a way to make her afternoon easier. I put some deep thought into it and came up with a plan.

A heroic plan.

My wife was appreciative about my solution. She told me that she loved me, and I felt good about supporting her in her time of need. She doesn't screw up very often, and when she does she always feels awful about it (unlike me, I've become inured to it).

So I left school early, drove home and unpacked the soccer gear from the car-- as I would have to lug it down to the field on foot-- then went into the crawl space and got the bike rack. On my way out, I smashed my shoulder on the low ceiling. It hurt, but sometimes heroes have to suffer some pain. I strapped the rack on the car and put my bike on the back of the CRV.

Before going to my wife's school, I dropped off the dry-cleaning. I was running some serious errands. Taking care fo business. Getting it done.

I drove the CRV to her school, parked it in the staff lot, dropped the keys off in the office, took my bike off the rack, and rode home. Now she had the car, which would make it so much easier for her to get to the allergist after gardening club. Mission accomplished!

I got home and dragged the soccer equipment down the hill and ran practice.

What a day.

When I got home from practice, I did a thorough search around the house. If I found the keys, this I would increase my hero status exponentially. It got dark. I took out a flashlight and looked all around the front yard. I hoped to see the glint of metal.

No luck.

Over dinner, we discussed changing our locks and purchasing a couple of Club brand steering wheel anti-theft devices. And the cost of fixing the mini-van.

Yuck.

Then Catherine had to run yet another errand-- she had to pick up Ian's allergy prescription at Rite Aid. On the way, she had a thought. In her brain. A thought about me, her loving heroic husband.

She remembered that I like gum.

And that on Wednesday, right before I went running with the dog, I asked if there was any gum in her car. And she said, "Yes. There is gum in my car." And I grabbed her keys, to get the gum. And I had the dog.

And I never came back inside.

She checked the CRV's center console storage compartment-- the place where she stores her gum-- and she found her keys.

I had hidden them. Subconsciously.

It was all my fault (aside from the bike chain, which was such an easy fix-- I can understand that she was in her work clothes and didn't want to get greasy, but still).

I was the cause of all the stress. My wife didn't have her finger in too many pies. My wife was fine. I had fucked up. I had lost the keys. I had caused her all the stress. It was all on me.

My only saving grace was the fact that I had been so kind and compassionate when she had lost the keys (even though she had never lost the keys). When we thought she lost the keys. I had been calm and levelheaded and empathetic. We all make mistakes.

All I could ask is that she reciprocate.

P.S. I remembered about the water bottles this morning, and kept Lola from licking them! A heroic act of remembering, if there ever was one.

Tony Luke's is Better Than Jim's (and Other Notes for Future Trips to Philly)

Catherine and I spent the weekend in Philly (sans kids) and I'd like to note some highs and lows for both my readers and my future self:

1) Not only is the roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and long hots at Tony Luke's better than the same offering at DiNic's-- but (though it's comparing apples to oranges . . . or pigs to cows) it's also better than a cheesesteak at Jim's-- and as an added bonus, the staff is actually cordial at Tony Luke's-- the woman taking my order didn't seem to mind at all that I had a question-- while Jim's has a "soup Nazi" feel to the ordering process . . . who do I order from? . . . the guy with the metal thingie? . . . did he make eye contact with me? . . . does that mean I need to say something? . . . I'm pretty far along in the line . . . am I too far in line? . . . should I have said something? . . . is it too late? . . . did I miss my chance?. . . do they have provolone? . . . do I have to say "wit wiz"? . . .. how do you spell "whiz"? . . . should I say "wit prov"? and after all the hazing, we were still underwhelmed by the cheesesteaks from Jim's this time around (although I must admit, that past times they were delicious);

2) our next trip to Philadelphia, I am going to get a cheesesteak from Tony Luke's and see if it is as good as the roast pork sandwich (because quite a few people were eating cheesesteaks there);

3) the Good Dog and La Locanda Del Ghiottone are great places to eat;

4) the tour of the Physick House is worth doing: the guy who does the tour is the great-great grandson of Dr. Physick-- "The Father of American Surgery"-- and while he's an eccentric man, who seems to be living his life both in the 18th Century and the present, simultaneously, there is no question that he knows a buttload about the house and the history of the area, which he gets across in passionate anecdotal fashion, with loads of bad puns, and -- odd as he is, and history buffs are usually quite odd-- at least he doesn't dress in period garb, which is a big plus . . . but be warned, the good Doctor's surgical tools are rather primitive and the accompanying diagrams made me light-headed and also, I'm pretty sure he explained to us, while discussing the family tree on the wall in the room with all the surgical tools, that he's seriously inbred;

5) The Hop Sing Laundromat has a lot of rules, so I put the kibosh on going there;

6) listening to the podcast Serial while driving is dangerous stuff . . . Lynn and Connell were so engrossed that they missed the exit . . . by thirty miles (but Lynn did get an A+ on the Episode 10 quiz that Catherine and I created for my class);

7) Connel got the perfect mojito at lunch at Cuba Libre, but then couldn't get the diner bartender to replicate it . . . but he does claim that the best drinks in the world are served at the awkwardly named Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company (but Catherine and I didn't go over there, as you have to mortgage your house to afford the drinks, which run fifteen dollars a piece-- but Lynn and Connel say it was well worth it, so next time I will suck it up and pay);

8) if you want to go to Farmicia, you need a reservation; same with Howl at the Moon, and McGillin's was a madhouse at 10 PM on a Saturday night, far too young a crowd (we walked in while the bouncers were breaking up a fight . . . the place was a giant frat party-- if you want to visit Philly's oldest bar, try the afternoon);

9) it's a long walk from the Old City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, especially when it's pouring rain and you're only wearing a sweatshirt because your wife didn't emphasize the weather forecast (she told me, but she didn't TELL me);

10) the Thomas Bond House keeps the heat too high, so you have to break the rules and open the windows-- which have no screens because it's a restored historical house.