Via Sullivan…a handy little snapshot of the state of the Union…
As the GOP declines in popularity, Fox News gains audience. Or in other words, as reality presses closer in, that subset of the American population who never saw a fact they couldn’t look right in the face and deny, is cocooning. Surprise, surprise.
What was once a cultural divide has become a chasm, bigger, and vastly more dangerous then anything the "generation gap" of the 1960s could have produced. Again, from Sullivan…
A reader writes:
I just want to share a sad story with you. Tonight I was at my regular Friday night AA meeting in LA that I have been attending for 18 years – I am a 48 year old woman. One of my oldest friends, a male with 30 years sobriety, is a Republican. I am a Democrat. Every week he talks politics with another like-minded friend. Tonight he arrived a bit later than usual, so as I gave him a hug, I said, "Thank goodness you arrived because I am sure Betty* (name changed) did not want to discuss politics with me!"
He then turned around and started screaming at me. I was so taken aback, I didn’t even know what he was screaming about at first. When I finally tuned in, he was yelling that Obama "sent the SEIU thugs to beat up the senior citizens" protesting at the health-care town hall meetings and that Obama had instructed the SEIU "if they come at you, you go at them twice as hard."
When I tried to reasonably protest this statement, he just spewed forth a tirade of vile invectives.
We were outside and there were about 30 people milling about. I was shocked, embarrassed and literally frozen in place. I managed to turn and walk away. This is a man I have known and respected for the entire length of my sobriety. I am fairly certain this friendship is over. Reasonable discourse is over. The lies and hate spread by the right-wing have won. As a side note, his wife, who is one of my best friends would not talk to me for over a month after the election in November. I am just heartbroken. Sorry, I know this is not the most well-written account, but I am so shaken, I can barely wrap my head around it.
I have an acquaintance…someone I used to call "friend" but simply cannot anymore…who nonetheless calls periodically. I wrote of my frustrations about that Here. Last time he called I ended the conversation when he started going on about how the new supreme court justice Sotomayor was a racist. Next time he calls I’ll have a simple question ready for him…
Do you think President Obama was born here in the United States?
End of story. Life is short. The American Dream is still beautiful and I believe in it and you don’t anymore. There is are lot of things Americans need to discuss with one another and hash out together and the politics of life in a democracy is you have to have those discussions and maybe even a few major arguments and in the end you compromise and you hold a vote and you get on with it. But you’re not there anymore. You’re somewhere on the dark side of the moon where not even light can penetrate. We can’t talk anymore, and to have an America Americans need to be able to talk with each other and you want to shut down the talking so everyone can listen to you scream about nothing for as long as you have the breath to scream about it. Fine. The conversation is shut down…with you. I’ll talk it out with anyone who has a gripe about what I think or what I believe, no matter how angry they are…but not with a Fox News crack addict. You drag yourself out of that gutter and maybe I will. But not before.
Harder than some might think. I, for one, will never forgive Dominic West for McNulty.
That’s okay…I can’t bear to listen to Dick Van Dyke’s Bert. I never watched The Wire (I actually live in Baltimore…I don’t need to watch it on TV too…), but West couldn’t have been that bad.
It gets worse for actors with the global media these days. You watch British television on cable. You watch British movies. You watch ordinary English folk doing this and that on YouTube. And then you listen to American actors trying to get it right and maybe the best of them, or the ones who’ve lived in England most of their lives are convincing, but mostly it’s an embarrassment. Let it be said a lot of actors don’t do different American accents very well either (southern…deep southern…New England…Western…). That’s something you really notice the more you travel within the U.S.
Bawlmer, hon? Yeah…everyone here in my neighborhood knows I didn’t grow up here. J.K. Rowling was absolutely right to insist on a British cast.
Every time I see this headline scan across my gay news lists I think maybe I’m still asleep and just dreaming that I’m awake and Monday hasn’t really started yet…
If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.
According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.
Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.
“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.
Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.
You know what else can leave you with a negative body image? Friends. The kind that just drop chances for you to meet people on the floor because you’re not good looking enough to be boyfriend material.
Thanks to the Internet, YouTube, Amazon and iTunes, my iPod’s "TV Theme" playlist is starting to hold a bunch of kidhood memories…
The Cisco Kid – Ending
The Outer Limits – Ending (First Season)
Burke’s Law
Twilight Zone – Ending (Herrmann)
Cimarron Strip
The Green Hornet
Route 66 – Ending
Mysterious Universe
I Spy
The Avengers – 1968
Lassie – Ending (1966)
Ranger Hal
Captain Kangaroo
Courageous Cat
And much more…
I was able to snag a copy of the Green Hornet theme with Al Hirt’s fantastic trumpet playing, and without the hokey voiceover, off of some fan’s web site. Same for the really nice copy of the end music to Route 66. I got the end music to Lassie off of YouTube, where I was pleased to see other fans were just as taken by its simple and beautiful sentimentality as I was long ago. From YouTube I also got the end title music for The Cisco Kid. It was music that promised a kid way more adventure then TV back then could deliver unfortunately. It’s amazing looking back on it, how low budget TV was in those days, and yet how good some of the music was. When I was a kid I’d try to record some of this stuff and always had to contend with the local TV station blaring something over the music as it played. It was frustrating. Now I’m finding tons of this music on YouTube. Amazingly, I’m also finding clips from the local morning and afternoon kid’s shows I used to watch once upon a time.
I found clips from Ranger Hal and set about trying to locate the happy-go-lucky title music they used for that show. I figured it was some easy listening song and I was right. Some YouTube poster identified it for me as an old Mitch Miller song, Whistle Stop. It wasn’t available on Amazon or iTunes but Googling around I found an mp3 of it on another fan site and I’ve been grooving to it for the past couple of days, letting it take me back to a time when life stretched out in front of me wide open and so very very large.
The clip Mysterious Universe, was used as background music to The Space Explorers, which I used to watch raptly on Ranger Hal’s show. Long after Ranger Hal went off the air, and The Space Explorers faded into distant memory, I would hear that music whenever I looked up at the stars. I found out a couple years ago that it’s actually from a library of canned music and not available for sale anywhere. How I got my copy I am not at liberty to say, and I made a promise not to pass it around, but I will be forever in that person’s debt.
I would pay serious money for a copy of the background music they used in the Courageous Cat cartoon series. It was composed by Johnny Holiday and it’s serious 1950s detective show jazz…the kind of thing you’d more likely expect to hear on a show like Peter Gunn or 77 Sunset Strip then a kid’s cartoon. Holiday and his orchestra were Smoking when they recorded that music! Why he didn’t do more stuff like that I’ll never know.
We Didn’t Say “Heterosexual Couples Only” Because That Would Be Obvious
Via Good As You… It’s not that Hollywood can’t come up with any new ideas, it’s that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them. Thus, the "reality" shows. But on MTV’s pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other. Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show. And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years.
But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows. From Good As You I read that they’re now making The Newlywed Game once more. Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules…?
Eligibility Requirements
The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:
A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.
B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.
C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.
D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).
E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.
F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.
Here…let me help you with it: "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
It’s a safe bet that clause wasn’t in the old rules. You see…same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California’s same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry. So in order to keep the homos off the set you can’t just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore.
The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration. Way back when I was a kid I’d watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show). It was a memory game…you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed. I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked. That thing just fascinated me. It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to…although these days I’ll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it. I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it.
Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn’t appeal to me. And for each couple that won, three others lost. Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show. It was horrible. Even the Roman Circuses weren’t that gratuitously cruel. I’ve often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show.
So, in a sense, I’m not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity. A couple’s love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings. And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country. But on the other hand, here’s how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end. Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it’s taint out of our lives. And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with. Okay…so now you can be legally married….Ha!…but Not In All Fifty States…! Got you There didn’t we!
If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they’d find some other way to cull out the homos. Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders…er…Birth Genders…who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also. As I said, I’m not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show. But I emphatically object to the name. It is not The Newlywed Game. There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal. Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them. Our relationships exist. Our households exist. Our unions exist. We exist. It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants. It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.
At the same time I’m reading this…I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years…
The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won’t feel awkward.
"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.
The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.
Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.
The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.
A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour
I’m a tad surprised they didn’t already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch. But never mind. Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples. And this was such an easy one. Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name". That works too, and doesn’t deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse’s name if that’s what they want. Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
When television is good, nothing – not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers – nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you – and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
-Newton Minnow, FCC Chairman, 1961.
I really don’t much care for gangster movies and TV shows, but if I’m reading the howls of anger from the couch potato crowd right then I am truly sorry now that I missed watching The Sopranos after all. It looks to me like its creator, David Chase, has worked one of TVs rare moments of absolutely pure gold, taking the medium that Newton Minnow once called a "vast wasteland" and proving him right when he said that when it is good, nothing is better. I’m sorry to say that the howling anger also proves that the audience mostly wants the nothing-is-worse bad. But it’s not because Chase didn’t give them the satisfying final shoot-out they were hungry for. What he gave them, unforgivably, was a head on collision with their own ticking clock, their own little patient shadow of death just waiting to tap them on the shoulder when they least expect it. And they didn’t much like it.
On this Slashdot thread, one commenter puts the pieces together for the slower ones…
The ending left a lot open to speculation, but one thing that it didn’t leave open (IMO) is Tony’s fate.
Tony is dead – if you watch episode #78 "Soprano Home Movies," while Tony and Bobby are on the lake they are talking about what happens to people like them, and specifically about what it’s like to get killed. Tony says something along the lines of "you don’t hear the one that gets you," and Bobby asks "what do you tin happens when you die," to which Tony replies "nothing, everything just goes black."
Then, in last week’s episode, "#85 The Blue Comet," Tony flashes back to this scene while he is lying in bed "everything just goes black."
Even David Chase said in an interview that the key to how it ends is in that first episode (Soprano Home Movies), and to make sure people would remember this he put Tony flashing back to that moment at the end of "#85 The Blue Comet."
It’s something we all wonder about. What happens when you die? In a nation that claims to be overwhelmingly Christian (at least, in theory), you have to think that most folks are counting on seeing the pearly gates, or some acceptable substitute when the moment comes. That final curtain really isn’t final after all. Perhaps, a merging of one’s soul with that airy Cosmic All. Perhaps a rebirth into an entirely new life. But what if this is it. What if death is simply and finally the end of consciousness?
For most folks, myself included, that is a deeply horrifying thing to consider. Who among us doesn’t want consciousness to endure, in some form, even in some completely disembodied existence, even at last, to spend an eternity in Hell. Better that even, then simply…nothing. Emotionally it’s the great despair. And even intellectually and dispassionately it’s difficult to grasp. How do you visualize nothing? David Chase tells us how, and in the ultimate irony, puts the words into the mouth of a cold blooded killer.
"Nothing. Everything just goes black."
So there’s Tony Soprano, mobster, murderer, king of his own little corner of the gutter, family man, sitting down to a plate of onion rings. We nervously glance here and there, perhaps just as Tony does…to the man walking into the bathroom…to the guys over at the jukebox…to Meadow just walking in the door. And Tony’s eyes rise to look at Meadow. And then…nothing. Just…nothing.
Nothing. A fitting end perhaps, to the nothing he’d made of his own life, except that it’s the end we all get. Maybe.
Digby of course got it, and quotes "one of the 100 most dangerous academics in the country"…
Now, the fact that Chase didn’t even give us a gunshot to go on, no clue that Tony really dies — well, so what? Are there really ghosts in The Turn of the Screw, or is the governess mad? (That debate has been going on for more than a century now.) We’re left to wonder whether we’ve been duped into thinking that Tony dies because all the staging in that final scene — the brief shots of each of the restaurant patrons, the focus on the guy going to the men’s room, the closeups of Meadow having trouble parking the car — feels like the generic suspense-creatin’ mechanisms that precede a catastrophe. We stop and ask ourselves how much of our reaction depends on those narrative mechanisms. And so the ending becomes, in a meta- way, not Chase’s "final fuck you" to the viewers (as so many pissed-off viewers have said) but, rather, a form of what did you expect? — except that it’s a real question, not a rhetorical one.
What did you expect? Good question. Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything. Maybe we should pay a little more attention to the life we know we have, right now. Maybe we should get off the goddamned sofa. Maybe, the next time we get a chance to do something we always wanted to do, or to make our little corner of the world a little brighter, or bring a little more happiness into it, we shouldn’t let it slide on by thinking that we can always get to it later. Because later may not even be there. And when it’s over, when that cut to black happens, what you made of your life, your mark on the world, and the reputation you left behind, is all there will ever be of you. What did you expect?
I’m going to date myself here, and also place myself firmly in the context of my generation. I read raptly the books of Carlos Castaneda back in those days, and still find some of it very worthwhile. Knowledge of The Four Foes being one, and how your death is actually an ally, keeping you on the Path With Heart. And what came to mind while I was reading the howls of viewer outrage about how The Sopranos finally ended, were these words of Don Juan’s…
"Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm’s length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he’s about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.’"
Okay…it’s a metaphor. But a good one. Every now and then you need to turn around quickly to your left, and look your death right square in the eye and not flinch away…and wonder. Why? Because if you don’t, you’ll fritter the life you know you have, and everything you could have become, away. Tony Soprano was a gangster, and in the end his life didn’t amount to anything. But on the other hand, what have you made of yours? At least Tony knew enough to look over his shoulder from time to time. It’s the most subversive thing your TV can say to you, and the absolute horror of its corporate masters: Put the remote control down and get off the goddamned sofa. Because someday, in an instant, maybe in the next instant, while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing at that moment, everything will just go black. And that will be that. You won’t even get to see the credits rolling.
Bored with your life? Save your boredom for the Big Nothing. Instead of living vicariously though the lives of TV characters, why not live your own life for a change. It might get a little less boring then after all. Your life stinks? If can know it, then you can do something about it. Don’t like what you are? Then be something else, something better, something you really want to be. Come the fade to black, the world will never know what you kept inside all to yourself. Is that what you want?
Live. Now. Make something better of yourself. While you still Are.
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