Thoughts while rocking Hannah to sleep

Today I was listening to the first part of a podcast between ESPN's Bill Simmons and essayist Chuck Klosterman. They spoke of Michael Jackson's passing, gave their opinions on the resultant media lovefest, and how people (who otherwise might have condemned Jackson as a weirdo child molester . . . allegedly) were now embracing him as the "soundtrack of their lives" and expounding on how sad they were to be without him now.

I found a different part of the podcast interesting, in which Klosterman pointedly asked Simmons about the recent verbal dustup between him and L.A. Clippers basketball coach Mike Dunleavy.

(NOTE: I realize that you might not have any idea what I'm talking about here, especially if you aren't a basketball fan. But stick with me and maybe I'll go somewhere with this.)

A Bit of Background: Simmons currently lives in L.A. and has been a dedicated fan of the NBA since he was a child, attending Celtics games with his dad during the Bird Era. He studied journalism in college, tried to get in as a sports journalist in the Boston area, failed, and started a blog exclusively on Boston Sports and pop culture ephemera. Around 2000, he was picked up by ESPN.com and his national popularity as a regular columnist has skyrocketed him into sports media "fame." (It certainly helped that in the last five to eight years, Boston sports became hugely successful and he became the defacto "common guy/fan voice" outside of the MainStreamMedia for this success. And it also helps that Simmons liberally comments on things other than sports, such as movies, celebrity, and television.) Simmons has described himself as someone who represents the fan's perspective and this allows him to think about and write about stuff that regular sports journalists don't write about. Now, back to the story . . .

Klosterman brought up the fact that on a recent radio interview, Coach Dunleavy dismissed Simmons as a "joke writer." Simmons tweeted back with several different jokes about Dunleavy's skill as a coach and as a dresser. Klosterman asked Simmons "Why did you publicly respond?"

Simmons said that he was just responding as a fan (and as a Clippers season ticket holder) would have done, given the opportunity. And Klosterman said, in more polite words, "Bullshit." He pointed out that Simmons isn't a fan in the normal sense, precisely because a.) he has hundreds of thousands of readers, b.) Dunleavy called Simmons out specifically for the constant criticism of Dunleavy's coaching performance.

Simmons tried to justify himself with his belief that he does have a strong background in basketball--he's intensely watched every important NBA game since the early 1980s AND he's made a career out of investigating the minutiae of that game (among others) AND he just wrote and published a big book on NBA basketball. So, yeah, he's qualified to criticize Dunleavy publicly . . . and (maybe?) accurately.

But Klosterman's unease was with Simmon's hiding behind the idea that he is also a fan. Even from the small bits I've given you here, I think you might agree with me that Bill Simmons is more than a fan. Maybe he's not a journalist but he is a media force. And his force has impact.

*****

So, my point is (I think) that we are so skilled at deluding ourselves and are unclear about how we portray ourselves to others. In my head, I am the star of my own story. I see my life as I live it. I narrate events and thoughts within my brain to justify how I think and feel. But how do I avoid extreme narcissism, I wonder as I spend about an hour writing on a blog that is almost entirely about me and my view of things?

I am guilty of this on a daily basis.

At work there is a poster that is put up in the coffee room every month or so, profiling a different member of the department. It hits all the highlights: years with company, family info, musical tastes, media tastes, significant news about ____, etc. There is also a picture.

This picture has caused me endless hours of narcissistic daydreaming.

How shall I portray myself when the time comes, I think? A typical head on shot? Absolutely not. Too boring. Something funny, then? Yeah, but what? Costumery? Hmmm. That could go really wrong and make you look really stupid, though. Oh, but I don't mind looking stupid. I've certainly looked stupid in public before. But, WHY did you do that, hmmm? Was it because you just wanted people to look at you? Isn't it because you don't want to be ordinary but would like to be exceptional that makes you do those things, or write on your blog, or check your Facebook page, or write on Twitter? Doesn't that say something about the immaturity of your inner self?

Probably . . .

. . . so, what to do about it?

Well, just keep my mouth shut and do an ordinary picture and just go about my life I guess. My kids don't care about my status at this point in their maturity. I'm sure that I'll embarrass them later in life, so I should try to do a better job of just being myself and not inserting myself into everything--kind of like that guy from college that always ended up in every party photo? You know that guy? Nothing is more pathetic (so says John Hughes movies anyway) than an adult who won't get the fact that kids have moved on. They are somewhere else, not talking about you and the stuff you think about. So, don't try to talk to them "at their level." They will only ridicule you for it behind your back. Be an adult.

Man, I'm really just rambling around here. If there is a point to all of this, it's probably that I'm deeply insecure and need to work on getting over myself a bit more. I even had a really good ending for this that I concocted while trying to rock Hannah to sleep, but I can't quite nail down the specifics anymore. I think it went something like this:

The good thing about being a parent is that your young kids take you at face value. They aren't cynical enough or world-wise enough to recognize the posturing that is so common among adults in public. So, no matter how insecure you might feel about yourself, they are looking to you for comfort and reassurance and a steady place to secure themselves. And that was a great way to end things just as I was calming Hannah down and she was resting her sleepy head on my shoulder and I felt in control of something. But then, it all fell apart when I actually put her down in the crib and she cried and cried and shattered my nicely constructed mental scene.

You see? Kids aren't interested in playing along to your preconceptions. They may not even be aware of the elaborate games and movies we narrate in our heads. And they certainly don't want to be a pawn in the world of your self-justification. They tell you exactly what they want. No filter. No spin. Just desire and the Truth as they can express it.

*****

And that gets us to the other part of this Ramblefest, a review of Special Topics in Calamity Physics. This kind of works into the theme and in the hands of a skilled writer who spent time on it, it could be deftly woven in. The novel is the story of Blue Van Meer, a prodigy of a girl raised by her narcissistic father, a professor who has a very dim view of the rest of the world and thinks everything and everyone is very thin gruel indeed.

Blue thinks the world of her dad and has clearly been shaped by him. But during her last year of high school, set in a exclusive prep school in the South, Blue confronts disturbing truths about herself and the people around her. That sounds pretty conventional but what if I took this paragraph and stretched it out three times in length, tossing in numerous asides that compared other character motivations to books and biographies I've read (complete with bibliography references). It feels like the style of the book sometimes overwhelmed the story. It was, of course, a way to portray the inner dialogue of the Blue character in ways beyond her spoken word.

It just came across as sometimes tedious and obstructionary. I wonder if the book would have been reduced from 400 pages to 150 pages if you stripped out the style and only kept the plot.

So much for the awesome power of orange oil

Well Tom, no one said you weren't clever.

You'd have to be to avoid detection this long. I'm sure you figured out that the death of Michael Jackson would provide suitable cover for your latest act of celebriticide. And you are right. MTV and VH1 have been running videos all weekend.

What was it that set you off this time Tom?

Has Suri been making lots of messes around the house? Believe me, Tom, I know how messy kids can be. Did you hear Katie complaining that the Oxi Clean wasn't getting the grass stains out of Suri's dress hose? Was the OrangeGlo not keeping the wood furniture dust-free? Or was it simply Billy's excessive pointing and shouting that gave Suri nightmares all the time?

Tom, we were all a bit uncomfortable with Billy's pitch style. And we've all had to face the disappointment of exaggerated expectations (like, um "Valkyrie" or maybe "The Last Samurai"). But you can afford to buy new clothes for Suri if they don't come clean. And you can hire maids to dust every day if need be.

Murder isn't the answer to ALL of your problems, Tom.

Take a rest please. Ron Popiel can't get a food night's sleep anymore.

-- Posted From My iPhone (so, I apologize in advance for any typos I missed)

Constant updates

Tonight Sarah is having a birthday party sleepover with three of her friends. Naturally Grace is also participating.

I'm tracking the ups and downs, twists and turns on my Twitter feed. You can go to www. Twitter.com/dtm1971 for each entry. Or kee coming back here to WWYG?! and watch my Twitter feed column over on the right side of this page.

*****

Also, the happiest of sixth birthdays to Grace today. She gets more amazing every year.

And she doesn't know how to take a bad picture.




-- Posted From My iPhone (so, I apologize in advance for any typos I missed)

Tom, Ed, Farrah, and Michael

Image via Wikipedia

Normally when celebrities die, I take a few days to try and make connections. (Really, I do.) And they aren't often obvious or easy to see. You see, as I've argued before, Tom Cruise is crafty when he gets in one of his murderin' moods. It's rare that one of Tom's acts of aggression displays an easy connection between the person passing on and the reason for Mr. Cruise's anger.

But, today is not a day to indulge in careful evidence turning. For today, Mr. Cruise unleashed his fury on two of American celebrity royalty. I'm not--of course--suggesting that Cruise went out and dispatched these two today. He's far too practiced at this sort of thing to be that sloppy. Certainly his plans were set in motion a while back and I'm quite confident that he didn't WANT both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson to die on the same day. For doing so would naturally raise more questions that he wanted raised.

But he slipped up, and so we must search for the clues that incriminate him. We must understand why his dormant anger was unleashed upon the Grande Dame of 70s sex and the 80s King of Pop.

What do we know about Farrah? Well, I know that my next door neighbor had that poster. And we know that she was battling "cancer" for a while now. Those are obvious facts. But what you might NOT know is that Farrah made two critical mistakes. 1) She was the owner of one of Celebrity's Greatest Smiles (see that poster link again). And 2) she starred in a TV movie called Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story. Tom Cruise is also the owner of an impressive smile--all enormous teeth and vibrant commitment to the happiness. And only one such smile can survive in Celebrity Land at any one time. Additionally, when Cruise's latest movie Valkyrie (in which he plays his own brand of Nazi hunter, leading a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler) performed poorly in the domestic box office . . . well, you can connect those quite obvious dots as well as I, can't you?

It's a shame that Tom had to blame Farrah for his career downfalls. She just wanted to find away to live her own life at this point, trying in her own way to find a way out of the shadow of Charlie's Angels.

Now, what about Michael Jackson? His death came as a much greater shock. He has been battling legal issues for years and even moved his family out of the country to find some peace. But what could he have done to anger Tom? Was Tom planning a Beatles movie, featuring himself as John Lennon perhaps? Was he not aware that Jacko had lost his control over the Beatles music? Did Tom make a mistake?

Unlikely.

Rather, I think Tom felt that Micheal's many years of plastic surgery was threatening a filmic niche that Cruise had carved out for himself. Did he feel that Jacko's more publicized facial alterations were upstaging his own? Perhaps. Who can truly understand the mind of a mad man?

The forgotten man in all of this is Ed McMahon. They say that Hollywood deaths always occur in threes, so naturally we can assume that Tom Cruise operates in a similar fashion. Can we figure out why Mr. Cruise wanted to off the Ultimate Second Banana? Maybe Tom wanted to turn some of his gold into cash . . . or maybe he thinks Suri is a talented singer, but McMahon refused to revive Star Search to satisfy the unbalanced Cruise's desire to turn his daughter into a pop sensation.

All I can say is that Hollywood sleeps uneasily tonight.

Tom is back with a vengeance. And this time--as it is each and every time--it's personal. (You've just got to figure out why it's personal to him.)

We want information! (You won't get it.)

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to the kindness of The Friendly Stranger I have been watching the seventeen episode 1968 British series The Prisoner on DVD.

I first encountered the show (though I didn't know it at the time) in a random episode of The Simpsons many years ago. I can't recall all of the details of the show, but the imagery that stuck in my mind were these:

a. technicolor costumes

b. a very odd community of people that acted quite bizarrely

c. people only being referred to by a designated number--no names

d. constant gassings and unconsciousness

As it turns out, now that I've watched the show, three out of four of the elements of the Simpsons episode were spot on. Only the constant gassings were exagerated. (I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed by this as I got into the series. Homer was being knocked out by gas every five minutes in an increasingly odd way. First it was through a doorknob, then from a telephone receiver, then out of a bird in a tree, then out of Marge's mouth. It was absurd. The show only did it in the title sequence.)

I remember being intrigued by the plot of The Simpsons episode, but didn't investigate and then promptly forgot. But when the original show's creator, main actor Patrick McGoohan died earlier this year, the obituaries describing the show jogged my memory and I had some context. Learning that this show's bizarre mystery plot has also inspired the creators of LOST sealed the deal for me. I had to watch this show.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!

The show's plot focused on McGoohan's character. The title sequence sketches his backstory--a British government agent (a spy?) abruptly resigns his job and wants to leave it all behind. He is gassed (through the keyhole!) and wakes up in the mysterious Village. He doesn't know where the Village is, who runs the "prison," or why he has been taken. Eventually you learn that the abductors want "information," i.e. they want to know why McGoohan's character (known as No. 6 in the Village) resigned and what secrets he holds.

In the context of the time period that the show was created, McGoohan is warning the audience about Cold War fears. Who runs the Village? The enemy? Or (even worse) Our Side? And if it is Our Side, they are willing to submit their prisoners to brainwashing, double crosses, subterfuge, and anything else they can think of to get the information that keeps the nation safe and gives them a leg up on their Cold War opponents. Personal liberty is of little importance in the face of overwhelming and unchecked government power.

Throw in a bizarre cast of multi-colored characters in Sixties style costumes, a nemesis that change weekly (No. 2), the mystery of "Who is No. 1?," and--at least in the early episodes, the frequent appearance of the mysterious security device--often referred to as Rover these days on the Internets--that seemed sentient even though it was nothing more than a big balloon shaped thing that bounced around, scared the shit out of out-of-line prisoners, and suffocated those that had it coming to them . . . well, you can see the appeal, can't you?

I have learned that the show was quite the phenomenon in Britain during its seventeen episode run. The stylized show with its mind games, double-crosses, non-linear story lines, and last minute plot twists were water cooler talk similar to the stuff I've gone through the last many years with LOST.

Also of interest is the fact that they build-up to the finale was very tense and the resultant finale (which I won't spoil . . . even if I could begin to make sense of it) divided the viewing public into two outraged camps. One side was terribly confused by the unresolved questions and difficult to understand outcome. The other half was angry that McGoohan's politics were too critical of the status quo and dangerous.

I think it an interesting--if dated and culturally specific--test case for what LOST fans will be going through during LOST's final season hysterics in 2010. If the final episodes don't satisfy people (and I can assure you, for many people, there is NO WAY to achieve satisfaction) you'll hear the anguish. But I'd rather they make an honest effort to tell the story in a straightforward way.

I think where McGoohan went wrong is that he let his Art get in the way of his Story. The final two hours were confusing and obtuse and (probably intentionally) difficult to interpret. I seen enough foreign films over the years to accept the fact that many stories aren't tied up in a neat bow at the end. But I think a way to an answer should be found in there somewhere.

*****

If you want to watch the show, click on this link to watch online episodes courtesy of AMC Network.

If this intrigues you, remember that a few days ago I noted that AMC is working on a new Prisoner series starring Jim Caviezal and Ian McKellan.

The parody episode of The Simpsons that I mentioned above was entitled "The Computer Who Wore Menace Shoes." Naturally, Fox won't allow video clips played on the Internet, but here's a detailed Wikipedia article about it.