Types of Writer

   In an interview for Jon Winokur's Advice to Writers, the late Harlan Ellison said this:  

   "I try to stay in possession of my faculties because I’m already completely crazy. I think you have to be something to be a writer. I’m astonished by writers who are quiet people, who speak softly, who are rational. I look at them and I say, “What the fuck is this creature?” You have to be mad to write. If you’re not mad in one way or another, what you’re writing is boring."

 I'm that type of writer, the type who would puzzle Harlan. I don't often drink to excess, my admittedly thorough experimentation with mind altering chemicals and processes lasted only a couple of years.   

 Because, in the end, very little of that was interesting. Beyond observing other people- which I found that I could not do as well when I was as fucked up as they were, anyway. 

 Additionally, I am not a big yeller or stomper around. I have a couple of friends who also write, and who wear their eccentricity with bold pride, who stride across rooms and launch themselves into conversation as if the were the prettiest, mostest interesting thing within earshot. 

 Now, I can do all of that, and I have, in the past, done a lot of it. But for most of my time as a creative sort, I have been the composed guy in the corner, with a gleam in his eye, happily and quietly watching the show thrown by everyone else.

 It's not that I am any less mad. But- as I would have said to Harlan- we quiet fuckers are the infiltrators. We're not the bomb throwers, but the poisoners. We aren't painting little airplane silhouettes on the sides of our fighters,  but we have spots in our gardens where you'd best beware of the plants. Which not to eat, and which will eat you. 

  And so it goes.  

  

A Few Minutes With Dad

"The Jeep is America's true sports car" - Enzo Ferrari. 

"Go fuck yourself"- The Chevrolet Corvette.

 There is no proof that Ferrari ever said that- likely it was Luigi Chinetti, who ran Ferrari's North American racing program. It sounds like something he would say, and he did kinda look like Enzo. Ferrari would not have been quite so nakedly dismissive of American sports cars. 

 But it's a terrific quote, and, when I was younger, a properly irritating, burr under the saddle sort of thing. 

 Because Corvette. 

 The love of which I inherited from my dad. 

 It's not that I didn't admire Ferrari's tempramental beauty. Or the gorgeous and potent Jaguar XKE. Or the original Datsun 240Z, the winking Lamborghini Miura- and on and on. 

 But Corvette. That was my car, the only American sports car. Thunderbird. AMX? Camaro, Mustang? Uh. Are those rear passenger seats I see? 

 Sorry. 

 There have been good and bad years, but for generations, the US has only had one mass produced, big auto sports car. 

 And in my junior year of High School, my dad bought one. A powder blue 1977 Corvette. 

 Dad loved that car. We went for long rides around town, T Tops off, enjoying the sound of the engine. Occasionally taking to the interstate to blow a little carbon from the pipes. 

 I loved that car. Taking advantage of my dad's job travel and my mom's schedule to sneak it out for more energetic drives. I mean... it was just sitting there. 

 It also became the focal point for one of my most intense memories of my dad. 

 During the eighties, dad and his brother Gary were estranged. Gary didn't get along with my mother or brother. Gary didn't really get along with dad. 

 The problem was that Gary was immature, and had some Vietnam related PTSD.

  Me? I got along just fine with Gary. He pulled the same shit on me as he did with them. But, from my perspective? He wasn't around that often, and he made for an interesting bug in my collection of human oddities. An insecure narcissist might be the label now. Then? Gary was just an asshole.  

  Over the years, this made me the family go between. If Gary called, the phone was handed to me, or I was instructed to call back. If Gary turned up, my dad and I were the ones that dealt with him. 

 When Gary showed up, warm spring morning, to try and thaw the ice, he managed to talk dad into letting him take the Corvette for a drive. He kept it for several hours. And it came back filthy and spattered with road tar. 

 Gary left. My dad stared at the car for a long time. He went into the garage, got two buckets of soapy water and a little hand basket of cleaning stuff. Together, in silence, we took care of our baby. Washing off the dirt, the tar. Hand drying it and rubbing on a couple coats of Turtle Wax. Cleaning the seats and dash and windows. 

 As the sky purpled into twilight, car back to it's usual gleaming self, we dumped out our water and put the chammy cloths and Armor All and the rest of it back. 

Then stood and stared at the car for a while. Together.

 I remember every second of that. The tension and anger on his face- which gradually eased as he worked. My growing rage as I worked along side. How DARE Gary. How DARE he treat dad's car, hell, MY car like this. Such casual, arrogant disrespect. 

 Kinda funny. Dad ended up calm, relaxed even. I was ready to beat his brother to death. 

 In neither case were our reactions really about the Corvette. 

 Dad was upset, yet again, with his brother's bullshit attitude. I was upset at his having made my dad suffer. And, standing side by side, looking at the now immaculate car, we understood all of that without comment. 

 He didn't thank me, put a fatherly arm around my shoulders. I knew, when he came out with two buckets of water, what was expected. And why. He was my dad. The Corvette was our car. And we both had to handle the disrespect. 

 Decades later, dad and Gary reconciled. Gary got help. Grew up a lot. Repaired his relationship with dad and with mom. Which, as both men neared their ends, gave me a warm feeling. 

 But I have never forgotten picking tar off the flanks of that powder blue Corvette. How it felt to have dad acknowledge our mutual connection to the thing.

 Years later, I realized that dad had known I was sneaking the car out for private adventures. Taking it, bringing it back in one piece and cleaning it before putting it back to sleep in the garage. And I think that any initial reaction he might have had was tempered by the cleaning. I think that helped him understand that there were nights, when he was gone and I could not sleep, that I could feel the car sitting cold in the garage. That I could hear it calling to me, screaming at me. Get me out, get me out, lets go for a ride...  

 Which was exactly the call he could not resist when he saw it in the prior owner's driveway. Get me out, get me out, let's go for a ride.

 We never spoke about that. 

 But through all of it... it was really about those few minutes together, washing a dirty car. Sharing an understanding. 

 Oh, dad. I do miss you.

 

 

 

 

This

This is a link, an article on US Army general who won the US Medal of Honor for serious bravery. 

https://www.cmohs.org/news-events/medal-of-honor-recipient-profile/charles-calvin-rogers/

Long story short, his firebase in Vietnam was attacked, several waves of soldiers and howitzer fire. Then Lt Colonel Rogers rallied his troops through all of it, at one point manning the guns himself and suffering nasty wounds as he moved throughout the base. 

Frankly, the only reason he got that medal is because this country has nothing higher to give. No ultimate bad ass clusters or knighthood with property.

So. 

Quite properly, the government and the military are proud of these people. You can find information about MOH winners all over the place. 

Including the Department of Defense website.

Here's a link showing many pages devoted to them. 

And here's what you get when you try to find General Rogers. 

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

The url leads to a page not found error. 

Look at the url again. Rather than /medal-of-honor etc?

/deimedal-of-honor etc. A page that doesn't exist. 

Trump's administration has knocked him off the site by labelling this medal of honor winner a diversity equality and inclusion winner. 

Or, to be as clear as possible, he's been cut because he's a nigger. 

Doesn't matter what sambo does, y'all. We can't have people setting them up as equal, let alone better than whites. 

Deny it if you want, realllly. Offer a better explanation. This is real, this is something this administration is doing.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. This is a bunch of racist autocrats, for whom the electorate is eagerly turning back time. 

I'm in a frothing rage. Lots of people are over this, and there are many other similar examples... Of this government actively erasing the multicultural, multi national history of this nation.

I've thought that this administration would end in blood. I'm sure of it, now. They're trying to push too many people back into the shadows and their closets. Trying to take their health and their savings. Trying to take their parks and freedom of speech and movement. 

Gunfire is coming. Bombs are coming. It's going to be violent and ugly. And as was the case in the 1960's and the 1860's, all the wrong people will get the blame. And no one will learn shit. 

A Yellow Melamine Dansk Mixing Bowl

My mother likely bought the bowl in the early 1970's. Fairly certain we've had it since we lived in Sioux Falls.

Extremely useful bowl, in the then popular Danish modern style. In the fifty years its been in the family, it mixed innumerable cake batters and doughs, dips and crusts. Lots of bowls of buttered popcorn, and played utility for cleaning messes. 

It's held floor mop water, animal wastes and a fair amount of vomit. 

It's done sponge baths and cleaning water and, most recently, drinking water for dogs. 

Took it all in cheerful stride. Always available for a job. Always under the sink or up in a cupboard. 

Cleaning out my dead parent's house, the family home since 1973, it's one of the very few things that I sought out. 

That first year I made everyone fruitcake. Staying up for a couple of days straight to bake and mix and wrap the little bastards in cheese cloth before their month long brandy soak... They were mixed there. The cheese cakes mom baked, lots of chex mix. All my memories of cooking, really, are part of the goddamned bowl.

Which, today, started to leak. 

It's gone utility senile. Not at all fit for what it was designed and made for. Or for any of the thousands of things that it has done, for so long, for my family. 

Throw it out? It's just a broken tool, a bowl that cannot be used. 

I'll drink your favourite child's blood before that happens. 

I'll use it to hold my kitchen tools, I think. Replacing the various cannisters. I'll probably do it tonight, a suitable retirement. 

Not yet. For a little while, it can just rest. With the gratitude of a lifetime's use embodied. 

It Goes

 

From George Takei, today. I could not write about this better. 

"On this day 82 years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the height of insanity of racism after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, signed Executive Order 9066.

It ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be summarily rounded up and imprisoned within 10 barbed wire prison camps, with no charges, no trial, no due process.

One day, a few months later, we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway, carrying rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stopped up the porch right in front of our window and banged on the front door. My father answered, and one of the soldiers pointed the rifle at him, right in front of us, and ordered us out of our home. I had just turned five in April; it was May when they came to take us away. 

My father gave my brother Henry and me two heavy suitcases. And we brought them out onto the driveway and waited for our mother to come out. When she did, she had our baby sister in one arm, a huge duffel bag in the other, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

That is one morning that is seared into my memory. I will never be able to forget all the innocent people, my family included, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, most of who were law abiding U.S. citizens, who were suddenly categorized as ‘enemy aliens.’

Today, I hear terrifying words from political leaders today that once more raise the specter of what happened before, right here in America. 

Donald Trump and his allies are talking about rounding up 11 million people and putting them into mass detention camps before deporting them. 

There won’t be time for due process, to sort out who is documented and who is not. Homes will be lost. Businesses, too. Families will be torn apart. Lives will be ruined, over fear and ignorance, all to serve the ambitions and agendas of politicians.

I know, because I lived through it.

I say, never again. Not while I have one ounce of fight still left in me. 

Join me. Fight this madness. Help keep America from repeating the mistakes of its past."

***

Me, again.

 Any time, ANY TIME, any goddamned time someone tells you that some horror- any horror- cannot happen here, cannot happen in the United States?

 Not only can it. It probably already _has_.

  Any time someone tells you that the good and just people of the United States simply would not, could not tolerate something, go along with something, approve or put up with something?

 Not only can they. They probably already have. 

 History, as has been said by too many people to cite, in too many ways to remember, is a cycle. Peacetime and war, plenty and famine, profit and loss, growth and decline. Personal histories, national histories, global history and very likely universal history- fill with things that come and go and come again- and go. 

 I shudder to think it, but our nation- and our world- are cycling back toward a harsher reality.  One where we are bound together not by the dream but by The Fear of The Other. 

 I would love to believe that _this_ time, having learned our lessons, having remembered our history_this_ time, we will avoid the worst of it. That we will manage to keep a step or three away from the real muck. Before we cycle back, before, once again, we lean foreward and progress. That we can, having taken our two steps forward, avoid taking that one step back. 

 I often end these things, whatever the hell you want to call them, with a phrase: "And so it goes."  I have been on the fence about this. I like it, but it's not original, and I had been bothered, as it was, I believed, original to Kurt Vonnegut. 

 It is not. "So it goes" is Vonnegut.  "And so it goes" is the late newsman Lloyd Dobbins. Who did the original swiping and updating from Vonnegut. And I got it from Linda Ellerbee, who swiped it from him. So. The hell with guilt, this is now a _tradition_.

 And so it goes.

There Has To Be A Better Way

 Sitting on top of the grandfather clock that dad and I built together, a triangle boxed US flag. Given to him on his retirement from the Veteran's Administration. There was a ceremony. He took it home and put it on the shelf, and as far as I know, never looked at it again. 

 My father worked from his fifteenth year straight through to his seventieth. He mowed lawns, drove a cab, packed meat. He helped support his parents and brother and helped put himself and his brother through college and dental school. When he married and started a family, he added mom and us kids to his responsibilities. When his work took him away from Omaha, he sent money and we drove down to visit his parents regularly. 

 I was proud of my father.  He seemed to be proud of the quality of his work, and he was- as far as I could ever tell- well respected. He went from odd jobs through college to his own practice and then the VA, and worked his way up into management and then executive management. He also became a college professor. I am still hearing from co-workers and former students, who want me to know how much he meant to them. 

 Thing is, he almost never spoke about work. As a kid, I would go into the VA and hang out- having lunch with him, shooting around the office. It was all very impressive to me. He had the lab coat with name and title stitched on, a collection of staff working with him and then reporting to him, and as he moved up in responsibility, he got into larger and larger offices. Moved from having an assistant to having secretaries.  When I overheard him talking with other doctors- some dentists, some other specialists- the terms and the dedication to fixing and curing, to patching up and healing seemed thick enough to bottle. 

 His standard response to questions about it all- was to deflect. Hard work, but necessary. Glad to be done for the day and home. 

 It wasn't until we had moved back to Omaha that I got a better answer. A less "Just happy to be part of the team" answer. Caught him in a reflective mood and pounced. 

 Looking that that flag, what he told me, then. Sitting next to his glowing HAM rig, playing with one of our dogs... resonates strongly with me. Makes me wish he were still alive to talk about it, to add my own perspective. 

 Dad liked what he did well enough. But he hated having to do it.  The reason he was so closed mouthed about it was that he was determined to keep work separated from his home life. Work was what you did to earn money and gain resources to support your life. That's it. You should do your best at it- so you can earn more. You should be proud of your ability. But it had nothing to do with the life it helped you build. 

 A consequence, I am certain, of being made to _get_ work as a young man. To help feed his parents and brother, and to afford schooling. Of watching friends and others going out to do things, when he had to work. Of missing time with his wife and his kids, to work. 

 When my dad did retire, first from the VA and from teaching a few years later... he dedicated himself to travelling with my mom. To seeing places they had always wanted to see, to having experiences they wanted to share. Things that they'd deferred to raise a family. Things that he defered because of work. 

 So. I am approaching retirement age. I have worked from about fifteen- odd jobs and summer jobs and so forth. I, like my father, have rarely taken days off, time off, sick time. At my current job, I have started each of my work years at- or nearly at- the maximum time off accrual. And I have largely treated these jobs as what I did to afford everything else. Same as my dad. Tried not to get into it at home, tried to leave it on the desk when I left. 

 Less successful than he was at that. But it's still my default. How was my day? People brought me problems, I tried to fix them. Some people are jackasses, some are not- everyone is over worked and stressed and snappish. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever. Was. 

 And it's bullshit. 

 Working through your entire life, to afford to do things on the weekends and evenings, to afford things that you haven't the time or energy left to enjoy- it's all so rushed and harried and puts so much stress on moods. Working at a job when you don't particularly enjoy it, because you need to pay the bills and want to afford the occasional good day out.

 It's decades of deferment, in the hopes that, in the end, you can have a few relatively healthy years to fuck around with. 

  There has got to be a better way.  Go to school, get a job, learn a trade- that's all good. Education is good, skills are good, being useful, to yourself and to others? Good. But nose to the grindstone and hop off to Disneyland once a year is bullshit. 

 More We're gonna have to find another way for most people to live _anyway_. Technological advances are eliminating whole categories of jobs. Before too much longer, call center jobs will vanish. Customer service jobs will vanish. The coffee you get from the drive through- as well as the food- will have been made by machinery. Most of it already was, it's just that last step, the finishing touch, the delivery, that needs replacing. Machines don't get sick, need personal days, need a break to use the john. Technology is working on eliminating taxi drivers, pilots- all sorts of factory jobs. 

 How are people going to earn their livings, moving forward, when jobs like these are no longer available? How are they going to pay their bills? My former profession- cooking. Every restaurant owner or chef out there already knows this, but the entire front line of cooks could be replaced by machines, and the food would be _fine_. You don't want or need finesse or artistry from a line cook. You need robot like repetition and the ability to adjust to changes while being faithful to instruction. 

 Every steak, every chop, every appetizer- it's supposed to go out exactly as every other. All the steaks cut to the same weight, all the cheese portioned to the same size, every fish finished to the same standard. 

A good line cook is part robot _anyway_. When I worked the line, the goal was to put out things out, regardless, to the same damned standard. Any artistry in the creation of the food was done long before it got to me. The chef had figured out how to make it, what it had to taste like and look like. 

 Being clever with it was not my job. 

 Going full robot would only help the chef, and the restaurant. And your meals would be the same. 

 Once the robots get good enough to take over, that entire category is gone, overnight. 

 So what do the cooks do? Can't all be chefs, and without the ability to learn- by working that line, by getting that training- a lot of cooks won't have any way _to_ learn how to be a chef. 

 Since we are looking down the barrels of this... why not see how we can reshape the concept of work at the same time? 

 My proposition? A guaranteed stipend for everyone in the US. Lots of parts to it, but basically- everyone gets enough calories and nutrition for their day. Gets enough water. Meal packs, essentially. Probably not fancy, but decent variety, decent nutrition, a guarantee that everyone will survive, and not get malnutrition diseases. That people will be able to concentrate.  National health care, with a bias toward preventative care. Regular checkups and maintenance. Birth control and prenatal care. Child care assistance. Greatly expanded public transportation and housing. 

 How is this going to be paid for? There's plenty of money. We just have to decide to change how we use it and where we get it. What kind of society we want

 Think about this. How much do _you_ make in a year? If I took _half_ of it, but you didn't have to pay for meals, doctor's visits, babysitters and such? If you didn't have to pay a mortgage or rent- how much of that would you actually use? You don't get to use fifty percent of what you make as you might want to _now_. 

 And think about yourself, your parents. Think about what life could be like if you didn't devote a third or more of your time to trying to afford to live the _reast_ of the time. 

Res Ipsa Loqutor. 

 

 

 

 

 

Northern Exposure Rewatch/Review

 "Pilot"

 Written by Joshua Brand and John Falsey, directed by Joshua Brand. Starring Rob Morrow, Barry Corbin, Janine Turner, John Cullum, Darren E. Burrows, John Corbett, Cynthia Geary, Elaine Miles and Peg Phillips.

 The main reason I'm doing this is practice. Practice writing reviews, practice making them interesting. 

 Why a TV show thirty years off the air?

 Because I loved it, when it was on the air, and I love it still. The only time I've been up to Seattle- to visit my brother- I dragged his family off to the small town fictionalized in the series as Cicely, Alaska. I visited the locations that served as the main character's office, the village grocery, the Brick tavern, and ate at the restaurant behind the sign featured in the title. I peered into the window at the KBHR set. All decades too late- things were more memory of location than location- but I did it. 

 Which isn't the sort of thing I do. I don't really need to see filming locations, I've seen plenty of sets before, and frankly? They usually aren't all that damned interesting. 

 But Cicely, Alaska?  Somehow, in9 watching the series all those years ago, Cicely became very real to me. Not real in the sense that I thought- or think- that I could go there. Real in the sense that it felt real. Fully imagined, and oddly familiar. And it is a show that I tend to revisit, when I feel at odds with myself. 

 I've said, more than once, that nostalgia is a trap, that memories of our halycon days are flawed- as our memories make things all seem better and grander than they actually were.  But for me- Northern Exposure presents a very homey and familiar place. Someplace that feels to me as if I might have been there. As if, had I turned one way, rather than the other, I'd have turned up at The Brick, rather than the Dundee Dell. 

 So.

 Pilots are not like regular episodes of an intended series. They're meant to prove to the financers who are meant to pay for everything and the network or studio meant to show it that it can actually be made. That the production team can build sets, cast the right actors, hire the right writers and tell a decent story. One that will interest viewers and the advertisers who want to sell to those viewers. 

 And, in addition to telling that story, they have to introduce the characters and set up the ongoing series. 

 Some pilots never air- made more to sell the show than actually function as an episode. Others are scrapped- the process of production having revealed a need for changes. 

 Northern Exposure's pilot aired- and it does a fabulous job setting up the leads, the town and the general character of the show. 

 The premise is... After finishing his residency,  M.D. Joel Fleischman lands in Anchorage, Alaska, where he is meant to practice for several years- in exchange for the state paying off his medical school debt. 

 Anchorage doesn't need him, so he's bundled off to Cicely. A small town out in the back of beyond. One of these places surrounded by wilderness, with one of everything- church, bar, restaurant, rich bully trying to run everything, etc. 

 Joel hates it. The residents who aren't strange seem ignorant and hostile. The town handyman seems to have siezed upon him as an entertainment, his landlord as a frustration, and the food is inedible. 

 Of course, none of that is true, exactly. The residents aren't strange so much as they are strange to him. Cicely is better appointed than it appears, and a sizeable number of the locals are Native Americans, who's cultural norms make more sense the more he's around them. 

  The pleasure comes from watching Joel acclimate- largely against his will- and watching the other characters bloom from sketches into paintings. Between the writing, directing and acting, they turn into very real seeming people, with personality, strengths and weaknesses, flaws and delights. 

 Maurice, the rich bully- is nursing a broken heart and feuding with his best friend, who stole away the woman Maurice intended to marry. Holling, the best friend, is a from a long line of awful, awful people and intended never to marry- to let the family line die off. And now he's in love, in his late sixties- with a woman barely into her twenties. Joel's landlord, who's as frustrating as he is, is an unintentional black widow. Her boyfriends don't break up with her so much as drop dead. All accidents, all strange accidents, but she's built a miniature graveyard/shrine to them in her living room. 

 And so on and so forth. No one stays a cipher, native beliefs are respected, modern US beliefs are disrespected, and it all grows into an ensemble show about an accidental family. 

  The plot? Joel arrives, gets shuttled off to Cicely, hates it, and spends the entire episode learning that he has no legal way to break his contract. In the process meeting and mingling with the other characters who'll pop up regularly. 

 That's kinda nothing. Just a bunch of vignettes, really. But it all holds together. The writing and acting, it's all set up, but it's setting up a pleasant place, with interesting people, who it might be nice to drop in on for an hour every week. 

 Errata.

 None of the characters, in the pilot, are quite who they become. They are very close, but not quite there- sort of playing things larger. Rob Morrow plays Fleischman at such a level of strident hectoring that it's a wonder no one just cocks him one in the nose. Janine Turner plays Maggie- obvious eventual love interest- as if she wants to bite someone.  But. John Cullum as Holling and Barry Corbin - while, again, not quite where they get with their characters, later on, are a lot of fun to watch in these rougher versions. Corbin has a lot of fun with Maurice's emotional volatility- flinty one moment, sad and teary eyed literally the next. Cullum displays a mastery of the reaction take. 

 The actual town- Roslyn, Washington- is a lot larger than fictional Cicely. Cicely is basically one street to one side of Roslyn. The series production team does a pretty good job making it look isolated and small- a main street, with some side streets and a few blocks of housing. But it's not perfect here- it never is, really. And you start to get a sense that a town as small as Cicely is meant to be, and as isolated, could not actually survive. Where's the service station for the trucks and cars? The garage? How does Holling get his beer and food? How does Ruth Ann get her store resupplied? Where the hell do all these people in Cicely work? 

 Having set foot in the location set for Dr. Fleischman's office- the studio set is laid out exactly the same way, but it's about five times larger. Which was weird at the time. It's a clothing and mercandise shop now, and- over by those tables is where Marilyn sat, past that door is Joel's private office, etc. But rather than being several feet apart, it is all right to hand.  Made me appreciate the wizardry of cinematography. Joel arges with Maggie in his office, she storms out, he follows her, stomping through his little hall, past Marilyn, and catches her by the door. You can see people moving around outside, the real streets of Roslyn, so that shot is at the location, but you cannot tell that it is so much smaller. 

7 of 10. See you next episode. 

Doctor Who "The Church on Ruby Road. Spoiler Free Review.

 The Church on Ruby Road. Written by Russell Davies, directed by Mark Tonderai. Starring Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, Davina McCall.

 The story, for once, is not an end of a city, end of a world, end of a universe thing. It's not a massive invasion of monsters or aliens bent on world domination or obliteration or whatever the hell. Daleks do not roam, Cyber boots do not stomp, and there's nary an ancient prophesy or apokyclypse in sight. 

 The Doctor, upbeat and out to have a good time for himself on Christmas- taking in the sights on his favorite planet and amongst his favorite species- takes notice of something. And from that builds the plot, introducing the new companion and setting the tone for this incarnation of character and series. 

 Russell T Davies has, I can report, for good or ill, not settled this thing down into a specific genre. He still takes Clarke's Law- any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable by the less advanced from magic- dead to heart. 

 I don't want to spoil anything that the preview hasn't so... if you caught whiff of either Gremlins or Labyrinth in the previews- you're not wrong. Not quite _right_, mind you, but the plot  has clearly seen these movies. 

 Yup. 

 Goblins.

 They make a good villain- not so much evil and bent on worse, but nasty and not entirely compatible with what most of us would find a good night out. 

 It all works out- in the typical way. Though not in a typically Doctorish way. Ncuti's Doctor- due to some handwavium in the last Tennant/Tate special- is, probably for the first time we have _ever_ seen the character, in the entire history of the show... not in a mood. He's not running from anything, to anything, or obsessed with issues from his past.  

 He's not so much over all of that as... accepting of it all. Shit happened, in his _thousands_ of years of life. Lot of it bad, lot of it he could not make better. But rather than this placing a hole in his heart or a bleak tinge to his character, this Doctor has perspective on it all. He is not distant, not emotionally blocked up. not secretly anything. He's a young man, out to have a good time, willing to help out if and when needed. Very much, in this version, a cheerful sort. 

 There was a lot of chatter about the Doctor's sexuality when Ncuti was cast- in that the showrunner and actor are openly gay- a phrase I loathe but which still bears. 

 Wrong worry, fanbase. 

 What's going to be harder to deal with, I think, for long term fans, is the Doctor as happy. A little of Bugs Bunny's love of mischief to him. a little flash of temper here and there, but basically, a happy rascal. 

 The moodiness, the broodiness, the Doctor literally withdrawing from everything to live in isolation in a cloud, or peevish because of what's been done or what's happened... Poof. Now, he does _react_ to what happens, but it's not flashing out of an endless puddle of gloom.

 There will be comparisons to other versions of the Doctor, in the show's 60 year history. Inevitable, I think.  Some will see the dash of the Third, or the goofiness of the Fourth. Others might see a lot of the Tenth and Eleventh in this. 

 All wrong. This is someting new. The sunny Doctor, the basically happy Doctor, the young and in love with life Doctor. 

 I like it. I like it a lot.

 Millie Gibson's companion, Ruby Sunday, is actually more like the general version of the Doctor than the Doctor. She's moody, broody about her life and circumstance, looking to figure out her own history and commanding.  

 There is a late in the episode twist- remember Davies now, do you, as a writer?- that I very much enjoyed. It's something Steven Moffat might have pulled, actually- a serious yank on the crank that may or not mean anything serious, but which is certainly going to wind up the fanbase and build speculation, the clear intent of the thing. When I say it reminds me of Moffat- prior showrunner and head writer, two back from Davies- I mean that it's a decreasing radius of a turn sort of thing, getting spookier as it rattles along- that reminds me of Moffat's work on the Hyde mini series, from many years back. 

 Or- for my friend Sean- I might better put it as a stinger right of of the EC playbook. Heh. Heh. Heh., 

 9.5 of 10. Did what I wanted, with style, enjoyed myself. 

Errata:

That half a point deduction is for the latest incarnation of the goddamned sonic screwdriver. Which- this time- looks more Star Trek than Doctor Who and less like a screw driver than ever. This tool has grown so far from original intent that I suppose I ought to be grateful they didn't just go with the wind on this and make it a full on wizard's wand, but even _that_ would have been more interesting and less annoyingly designed. Thought 13's was janky, did you? Thought 12's a bit over the top. Wait. 

 Just in case, Ncuti's name is pronounced Shootie. Shootie GATwa, in full. I'd been saying it wrong for a year, so. 

 Once again, the budget is clearly pretty high. Full scale sets where there used to be corridors and doors, practical effects blended well with computer stuff. The goblins looked good, and I wouldn't mind seeing them come back, either. Give me a hungry villain with a propensity for practical jokes any day. 

 Love the new TARDIS peek inside the door effect. When they started this,way back in 2005, it was generally a photo stand up applied to the interior back wall of the police box prop. Careful lighting and angles and all. This time, it accounts for movement and changes in angle. It looks much better. Much more like you are actually seeing into the console room. 

 By the by. that's the proper term. Not control room, not bridge. Console room. 

 He doesn't get a chance, here, but Ncuti, if they ever get around to it, is gonna make a brilliant shouty speechifier, in the grand tradition. Better than Tennant, not quite as good as either Tom Baker or Peter Capaldi. 

 

 

MAGA Mike Johnson

 Trump's choice for Speaker of The House has been granted the imperial nick name. MAGA Mike Johnson.

Of course.

Speaker Johnson was and is an election denier and was one of the architects of the plan to overturn the election of President Biden. Johnson is against LGTBQ Rights, Civil Rights and is apparently a christian dominionist.

Take a moment, if you have not, Go read Agenda 47. Trump's published plan- sorry, really, "plan" for his final term. Granted, most such "plans" rarely survive, like battle plans, engagement with the opposition. But it is well worth your time. There are videos, but there is also text.

It's basically about rolling back every social change in this nation since the fifties. Stop Green policies, forget about climate change, destroy public education and "agendize" the Bowdlerization of our history in favor of the heroified history as mis-taught by people who were afraid of an educated US electorate pushing back against the right wing agenda of that time. Slavery? Wasn't that _good_ for black people? Got them out of Africa, taught them skills? Women? Shouldn't they be working at home, raising a strong family, not working and interfering in politics. There's also union busting and concentration camps for the homeless and other undesirables.

And the Speaker of The House, who controls the sort of legislation that Congress creates- he's a supporter. The Speaker of The House can also manipulate the certification of the next presidential election, he's a supporter.

So. Centrist, are you? Both sider? Think that politics should be about compromise, and the US should be a _global_ partner in things?

We agree. Democrats and republicans, pro and re gressives ought to work together. Maybe WE don't get an assault weapons ban, but maybe THEY don't get their goddamned concentration camps.

And let's be perfectly fucking clear. Dedicating swaths of cheap land across the nation for camps for homeless people- no matter what kinda support you pledge?

Can they leave?

When they want to?

Camp. Open air prison.

The thing to be wary of, here? Two things, actually.

One. The people who seem to be ascendant in our government, local, state and federal? They're not compromisers. They're my way or the highway, I'm right, you're wrong, burn it all down, scorch the earth and salt the ground so nothing ever grows types. Most believe that their version of god favors it. Most believe that they are on the verge of being exterminated if they falter in pushing for it.

Two. The political powers that were, the pundits- everyone underestimated the MAGA movement. They belittled it and they cast scorn on it. There was a lot of "people can't be this stupid" denial thrown around, and a lot of "they can't" sprinkled on top.

Some of these people are, in fact, dumber than a post pounded into cow shit. Watch Jordan Klepper's Daily Show segments, where he goes out and asks fairly simple questions at MAGA rallies, Trump rallies.

Holy mother of GOD, he finds some winners.

But they aren't _all_ dumb. Not at all. I have friends who support MAGA, and they aren't morons. They're just wrong. And they've bought into a belief system that supports what they feel has gone wrong in our society. That provides what are, to them, acceptable solutions.

Same as you and me, Spanky. Same as you and me.

The problem isn't so much what they believe as it is the inflexibility of that belief.

And they are not going to be easily defeated or pushed back against or handled.

Okay, then. What's a reasonable sort of lefty/progressive/centrist to do?

I'm not going to give you a plan here. I am sure there are plans floating around all over the place, find one you like.

But I do want you to be aware of what you're up against when you do plan. And I do want you to take these people seriously. They want what they want, and they look at you as an enemy to be crushed and driven into the nearest sea.

Creative Obligations Versus Creative Rights

 I have what I believe to be a pretty good story, sitting in my head. I know the plot, the characters and most of the scenes. I have the dialogue.

 Action, adventure, romance, comedy. This story has it all. Opening scene? Could go in several different directions: A call girl, at a bachelor party, trying to explain to the drunken groom why she's worth more than the hookers giving blow-jobs in the bathrooms.  A small plane, daredevil pilot and drunken passengers, flying under a rural bridge, very late at night. Two men, sitting at a bar, drinking beer, waiting for the blotter acid to kick in. A naked man, standing on a balcony, yelling down at a room full of partiers, telling a man to get up into the bedroom and fuck his wife.  Because she wants him as much as he wants her, and he's tired of pretending it's not true. A cab driver, parking beside a tent in a field, a wedding party assembled, swinging his meter off, and telling his fare he'll wait to either take two people the hell away from there in a hurry, or to take the man off someplace to get drunk. 

 Each could kick it off well. Each supports the overall story. 

 I have not committed a line of it to paper. Have not opened a file. I think about it a couple times a year. I think about chopping it up, using the bits as parts of other stories. As jumping off points. I think - what the hell, just get it out get it down, get it out of my head. See if it is as good as I think it will be. 

 Never have. Not sure I ever will. 

 Because parts of it are based on the lives of real people. People who might be damaged by the story. Even if no one but them recognized the truth in it. And thinking about any one of them, sitting with the knowledge that this story is out in public. People laughing at the funny bits, tearing up at the sad bits, cheering at the adventurous bits- and them thinking... "That's not the way it really happened. That's not what I really said." Or did or thought or felt. 

 Sitting there with the results of all the decisions I made without their input, in telling stories of their lives. 

 Sitting there with my decision to use their lives to tell the story I wanted to tell. 

 It bothers me. It worries me. It concerns me, in the most serious version of each phrase. 

 This is the awesome, the terrifying reality of being a writer. If you are telling stories or using characters that are in any way based on reality- touching on real people and their real lives?

 You can change what happened to suit what you want to have happened.  Higgins and Eliza, in your story, will end up together. The well qualified candidate will win the office. The lost race will be won, the sad romance made happy, the losers victorious. 

 The question is- should you? 

 To me, a writer always has the obligation, fact or fiction, to get the story right. If working from a basis in reality, that reality must be respected. If working with people's lives, those lives must be respected. 

Your version of that person, of that sequence of events, may not, in the end, have more than a cursory resemblance to the actuality. But that semblance must be honest.  

 I can do that. But if I do, I have to do it with clean hands. And in the case of this story, that means telling things that will almost certainly hurt people to see or read. 

 So the story sits in my head. Waiting until such a time as I believe that I can tell it well enough and honest enough that anyone who sees themselves in it will accept that it was respectfully done. That, even if events in the story do not start, stop or end as they did in real life, the echo of real life is there. 

 But man, oh man, is it tempting.

 Thoughts, please?

 

The Cheeseburger- more reaction to The Menu

 Featured in the 2022 movie "The Menu" is a request for a simple, well made cheeseburger. The preparation of which is shown in the glossiest style imagined by any pornographer. 

 If you've never seen it, search for clips from "Nigella Bites" for plentiful examples of the style. Dramatic lighting, lingering shots of oily food moving languidly, etcetera. 

 Food porn is not a new phrase, but I want you to understand my meaning. It's a series of techniques that render food- on the screen- as almost unbearably appealing. You can practically smell it, taste it. 

 In the case of this cheeseburger, I've read lusty, desirous reactions from confirmed vegetarians- it looks that good. 

 It ignited a craving in me, so last night I made one. And it tasted as good as it looked. 

 The "Well made cheeseburger" from "The Menu":

It's not complicated. To make 2: A pound of decent ground beef, separated into 4 equally sized balls, kept cold until cooked. Good quality hamburger buns, about a quarter of a small white onion, thinly sliced, and 4 slices of Kraft Deli Deluxe American Cheese. Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. 2-4 pickle slices per burger. 

You need a pan- not non stick- with a thick bottom, one that can take high heat. Cast iron or carbon steel would be good, and you will need a sturdy spatula- thin, metal- and possibly a paint scraper. A burger or bacon press would be good here, but you can get by. Also, a folded bit of parchment paper.

Toast your buns. You can put them in a toaster, spread with butter and pop them in the oven, or be all "I'm a professional" and toast the insides in melted butter in a pan. Top the bottom bun with pickles. If you like a sauce, like mayonnaise or mustard and ketchup- whatever- put that on the top bun. Set aside.

For the burgers:

Heat the pan until a water drop squirted on the surface skitters. Then slam the balls of meat down, and, putting the parchment paper on top of each beforehand- so the spatula does not stick-smash them- hard- with the sturdy spatula. Depending on your pan, you may be able to put in all four balls, but I would start with _two_.  Two patties = 1 cheeseburger.

Season the top of the patties with salt and pepper. Don't coat them, don't make it look like the salt snowed down. But, a good amount.

Spread about a tablespoon of thin sliced onion on each.

By this time, they should be almost done. Red in the center, greyish around the sides. Carefully, flip. If it seems to stick, use the paint scraper to get the crust off with it. Flip so that the onions are under the patty.

Let them cook for a minute or two, then drape the cheese on top.

When it melts to drippy, even looks like it is getting crusty around the edges, put one patty on top of the other-careful to get all the onions- then put them on the bun.

That's really it. Use mayonnaise or ketchup, mustard- whatever you favor- on the top bun, if you like a dressed burger. If you like bacon, you could cook some, and put the bacon between the patties when you finish. 

I would advise against lettuce, tomato, all of that- but you do you.

Delicious, basic stuff.

My issue here is that I cannot get my glass cooktop hot enough to make this quite as I would like. So my burgers lack the precise crust that I want. But if you have nice loopy metal burners or a gas stove, this is gonna go well. 

 

The Menu- Now Streaming. A Reaction, As Much As A Review.

 The Menu, a 2022 movie, now streaming. Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy. Directed by Mark Mylod. With Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, John Lequizamo, Nicholas Hoult.

 Bear with me. A little detour. 

 Atelier Crenn. A restaurant run by chef Dominique Crenn. San Francisco, currently awarded three Michelin stars. 

 Basically- they do French seafood, using molecular gastronomy and a whole bunch of other preparation tricks. You get a menu of poetry that allegedly describes each dish, and you eat what turns up. 

 Obviously, the food is good- Michelin does not give out stars easily, and three are almost unheard of. 

 But the whole approach is enraging. 

 From the pretentious website- which features not one, but two ballet dancers moving around a rocky shore, but which deigns to give little useful information save a link to the reservation requesting site- to the carefully deconstructed food served- essences of this, with foams and bubbles and so on- it's had my teeth clenched since I first read of Crenn and her restaurant. 

 I didn't understand why. I was fascinated by the pretension- this is food assembled on custom made plates with tweezers. Food where you can expect sea water slush to melt around your scallop and slightly flavor the barely steamed, locally sourced, hand picked bits of vegetable, clinging to the rock- from a local beach- on which it is all served.  All meant to evoke something- a memory, a moment, a sense of money leaving your wallet, having paid for nonsense. Annoying, certainly. Over the top, over done. But enraging? Infuriating?  My own reaction seemed as over the top as Crenn. 

 Then, The Menu. And I got it. 

  The Menu features Ralph Fiennes as the executive chef of the ultimate Crenn-ish restaurant, Hawthorn. Hawthorn exists - by itself- on a small coastal island.

 The movie features a lot of artistically prepared and plated food. The restaurant looks very real- from the high end open kitchen to the uniforms worn by the staff to the architecture of the dining room. Fiennes moves through all exactly like the sort of chef he plays, by turns self effacing and dictatorial. The actors playing his staff act and react exactly as you would expect. 

 All of which is blue grey and cold. Distant and abstracted. The menu is filled with foams and gels and tiny bits of stuff here and there. Very little of it actually looks like food. It's more like paintings and sculpture than food. The military precision of the cooks and staff are immediately menacing.

 Which is part of the point of The Menu. 

 The Menu is about what happens when food- and people- are deconstructed. When it all starts to lose its purpose- and becomes self referential. Hawthorn serves food that is disconnected from eating. From nourishment. It's there only for the aesthetic. As are the diners. 

 It's dark stuff. I think it was meant to be a dark comedy, but, like the food and the people, it's a bit too refined to land with purpose. Top notch production- everything is well done. But it sort of, in the end, seems like a joke that's missing a punch line.

 I am not implying that the story is incomplete. But the last scene tries to invoke the feeling of the last panel of an old EC Comic. That piss shiver of morbid delight. When what's got fits what's been coming, and Karma blows a kiss from her Rustoleum black new Barbie Dreamhouse. 

And it doesn't quite manage. 

 Because something in the movie just does not set that up. 

 To me?

 It's a sense of fun. This sort of story cries out for some snark, some snicker, for someone in this mess, as things move along into conflict, to have a twinkle in their eye. No one does. Which lets things dip into maudlin, into drear. The story wants an in for the audience, a sympathetic character with whom we can relate. Humor would help define that character- and that character is there, I am trying to avoid spoilers- but is as sere and humorless as everyone else. 

 In other words- it takes itself too seriously.

  Once it was over, I looked at the production credits. All the beautiful numb food-?

  Dominque Crenn.

  Oh, of course. 

  THAT, for me, is a better ending than what is in the movie. Finding out that the food, hell, the overall experience of Hawthorn, was crafted by exactly the sort of people whom the movie wants to stab with a fondue fork. 

 I think the movie was created by and for people who are utterly sick of the foodie bullshit. Of people stopping to photograph and catalog their food before taking a fork to it. Of people deconstructing everything into little abstract shapes and blobs that tell _stories_ and evoke memories. Of _experience_ dining. Of having a score of courses served to you and leaving the restaurant hungry. 

 That they got one of the leading practitioners of that kind of thing to set up their version of it? Had there been a way to work that into things, it would have been just the right note of droll humor. 

 Ah well.

5 of 10 points for the well observed, exacting recreation of Foodie Heaven, in Hawthorne. And another 3 for both Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy's performances. Final score, 8 of 10.

Errata:

The supporting cast in this is superbly chosen. It's a pity that they aren't given more to do, and that their back stories not more clearly indicated. Would have helped. We're meant to empathize with their plight, but the lack of character details- and one late in the game revelation- makes that extremely difficult. 

A marriage is in trouble? An investment group is in trouble? The rich and famous actor is a bit desperate? One woman who turned up is not who was supposed to turn up?

Fine. But we need more information to care. And we don't really get it. 

The old lady, sitting by herself through dinner service- just drinking. We find out who she is, late in the game. But we get no reaction from her- and as things move along, I think there should be a reaction. That really seems a waste to me. Because she- as is revealed- should absolutely understand where things are headed. And she could have some agency.  Be able to gin up some conflict, some opposition.

I wonder if all of that - which, to me, seems clearly called for- is absent due to a desire to streamline the script? 

 

Wither Trump

  As a guess, right now, via some unobserved channel, a feeler has been sent out to someone who knows someone, who knows someone else, who has the ear of someone in authority at the US Department Of Justice.

 "If Donald Trump ended his campaign for the presidency in 2024, and pledged to stop the shit stirring that led to the attempted insurrection and that has helped divide the nation- would any potential federal charges against him... go away?

 Not by pardon. That's unattainable unless a particular type of Republican takes the presidency. But by the simple expedience of not actually pressing these charges?

 Hey, Binky, it's a win-win. Trump gets off the national political stage, and doesn't spend the next couple years fighting in court- and whatever administration is in office next does not have to deal with the political ramifications of Trump's not facing charges.

 Just, you know, think it over. Word to the wise, and all. "

 Assume Biden retains the presidency- four more years. That gives us until January 2029 before a pardon might be issued for any Federal crimes. Best part of a decade- during which all kinds of things can happen, if charges are filed- and even if they are simply left hanging over head.

 During which Trump, in office or not- can stir up a lot of cess, what hey?

 Why not just... kick this away, now? Trump is closing in on his eighties, he's already slowing down- clearly slowing down- what are the odds that he'll become more reasonable, more responsible, more sane?

 This is the... Doug and Dinsdale Piranha approach. Nice country you have there, squire. Shame if something were to... happen to it. 

  I can even imagine Biden- the ever reasonable man who seems to believe in the Siegel and Shuster version of the US- working his way toward this kind of thinking. 

 "Pardon? HELL no. But if we could just make him go away... let the country get over him. get past him? Make the deal"

 This is- of course- exactly the wrong thing to do. 

 Because?

 Because things keep getting worse. Nixon? Watergate only got investigated at all because of massive bad luck and incompetence. And even then, once the nation got a taste for Sam Irvin chewing thoughtfully on his vowels, what was the result? Congress sent representatives to the Oval Office with a 45 caliber automatic, with one bullet in the chamber; resign, or we impeach, and we convict.  

 Then Reagan ignored Congress, as well as the Constitution, traded arms with Iran and used what sure seems to have been illegally raised cash to run a private war. Then George HW Bush lied us into a war with Iraq, first telling Saddam Hussein's government that the US would not interfere in their dispute with Kuwait-  they invaded a week later- and then crying to anyone who listened about this illegal and evil invasion. Then fabricating evidence of a non existent military build up as justification for sending in troops. Thousands died, thousands injured. Including a great many civilians when the US targeted infrastructure for leverage. 

 And then his son, after ignoring warnings specifically related to a potential attack on the World Trade Center- warnings which specifically mentioned Osama Bin Laden, lied us into an even bigger war in the Middle East. 

 Had Nixon faced serious consequences for his actions, I would argue that none of these things would have taken place- because each president would have been aware of the perils of running afoul of Congress. Of pissing off the people who can take you right the hell out of office and throw you into prison. 

 But nothing happened then. And nothing happened again, and again, and again. Some exciting theatrics, to interest the factions, but nothing else.

 What, then, dissuades a man like Trump from saying and doing whatever the hell he pleases? What dissuades him- when common sense won't- from stirring up an attempt to overthrow the government of the US when he loses an election?

 Not a goddamned thing. 

 We have gone from a man trying to game an election through three men who ran illegal wars in other countries, and now to a man who tried to start a war in this country.

What's next? If we don't demonstrate that there are limits to our tolerance, if we don't have one of the three Constitutional authorities following through on what is their job- oversight and if necessary, punishment- when whomever gets into that office has no fear- not of the people or of his government- what next?

 Think about this. Trump didn't actually get away with overturning the election. If you have been following the J6 hearings, it is pretty clear that the big stop for them was massive incompetence: Bad advice, lots of bad judgement and really terrible follow through. Marked by a clear lack of true belief in what they were trying to do.

 Trump didn't want to stay in office because of the work, because of the things he thought his administration had to get done for this country. Trump wanted to stay there because the thing- which I am certain he never either expected to win or wanted to win- turned out to be a pretty good gig.  Lots of ego-boo. Lots of knob polishing. People who formerly wouldn't let him or any of his greasy ilk through the front door- and certainly not in daylight- had to lay out the red carpet. People spent money- and a lot of it- to curry favor. 

 It also kept him away from prosecution.

 His staff, his lawyers, his advisers didn't want to stay in power for any better reason. 

 So. What if the next president is smarter? Is more interested in their agenda, and surrounds themselves with whip smart true believers, true idealists?

 If Trump doesn't get a serious taste of the lash for his actions- this latest escalation in presidential middle finger waving? This still theoretical smart and competent president will get away with far more, and to my thinking, far worse. 

 The J6 committee are done. The new Congress, seated in January, are not going to be interested in much other than either keeping Biden's plans going or stopping Biden cold. Referrals for charges have been made.

 There is still time left for the DOJ to act. For this administration to act. 

  And they should. Trump should be tried, and if the evidence supports it, found guilty and sentenced.

 Jail?

 Never happen. Throwing an 80ish year old man- and former president- into jail? Never happen. 

 But there are other punishments to consider. Forbidding him from holding office, closing down his finances, restricting the amount of trouble he can cause. 

 Sending a message down through time to the next president.

 

 

Stan Lee

 Today would have been Stan Lee's 100th birthday. I would be stunned if anyone reading this had no idea who he was, as his name has been synonymous with US popular culture since the middle of the last century.

 The Spectacular Spider-Man. The Invincible Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk- and a great many other cultural icons, spanning TV, movies, literature- and comic books.

 There were- and are- other creative minds at work on these. Have been from the start. But the guiding mind behind those minds- for decades- was Stan Lee.

 Who, despite my overwhelming love for a couple of characters run by a competing company? Made Mine Marvel, every time.

 Stan's success- often studied, often imitated, never equaled in such things? I think it came down to two reasons. Two not at all secrets.

 One? His characters dealt with the sort of problems his readership faced- though writ large, often during a large, world or worlds threatening crisis. Iron Man was a drunk with a bad heart and a worse conscience. Spider-Man was a kid who felt enormous guilt over the deaths of his uncle and first love. Trying to balance adult responsibilities on some narrow shoulders. The Hulk? Jeezus, where to begin with the problems dumped on Bruce Banner- but foremost? How do I deal with the rage I feel at being treated like shit? How- more to the point- at being treated like a big, dumb kid?

 Two? Stan knew the value of marketing an image. When you think of DC, or Image or what have you, other big players? You think of characters. But for Marvel- for my entire life? Stan Lee. Stan Lee the creator, Stan Lee the snappy epigramist and commenter. Stan Lee, the big, enthusiastic kid. The big kid who somehow got control of the candy store, and ran it like we would. Was that image true? Not always. Not entirely. Poke and prod and you'll find bruised egos, stepped on toes, all of the stuff you find in any life.

 Except for that last bit. The bit about being a big kid.

 And for me- as well as all of us who grew up with Stan Lee's Marvel?

 That was the sale.

 I might not have been sure about the character, the writers, the artists. But if Stan Lee thought it was worth a look?

 I looked. And more often than not, I bought. Here's to you, Stan. Excelsior!

A Little Chat About Characterization: Villains And Heroes

 I've been cranking through a rewatch of the old TV series "ER".

 Most of you, reading this, probably remember it. Incredibly popular. Ran 15 years from 1994. Known for a clever mix of relatively accurate medical horror and staff soap operatics. 

 Thing is... it's incredibly well written, at least as far as I've gotten, which is season 5. Sometimes they go too far into the soap operatics, sometimes the medicine is less accurate than it ought to be- yes, another thing for which I stickle- but even when it's not a top ten episode, the writing is to a high standard. 

 In particular, the characterization. 

 I want to talk about two characters. Lead, Doctor Mark Green, played by Anthony Edwards, and supporting character Robert Romano, played by Paul McCrane.

 Green is THE hero of the show. He's the one who, despite varying titles and responsibilities, runs the emergency room at the fictional Chicago Loop hospital. He's the one who sets the tone and the pace. The one everyone turns to for validation- if not always answers. As introduced, he is a balanced sort of guy, reacting to stress with abundant humor.  His best friend, a pediatric resident, shows up blind drunk, looking to get treated for alcohol poisoning after a night on the town- he gets him treatment, keeps him away from the staff until he recovers, and once he does, puts him right to work. Edwards' handling of the material is deft. Green is tired, Green is more than a little sick of his friend's self destructive bullshit, and Green is overwhelmed with his own responsibilities. Edwards plays it straight- with a lovely undertone of wry, self amused exhaustion.  You can tell that he loves his job, his family, his friend- but that, just once, just fucking once, he'd like a little space.

 This is part of what makes Green relatable, rather than a saintly Medical Center or MASH style doctor*- one who staggers from extreme to extreme. Green is just a normal guy, with a difficult job, trying to wade through his days- and not be an asshole. 

 The other part is that Green is _never_ presented as blameless or perfect. Dedicated to his work, he screws up his marriage and his relationship with his daughter- he's never home, and when he is, he's still processing things that happened at work. He blows up relationships with friends- the same reason- and he's often less flexible than advertised, taking a stark position, in the end, and forcing it onto a situation just to get it resolved. Might not be the resolution that others want, but it gets things moving past a situational stall. He does not like to explain, past a certain point, he's short tempered under stress and he's got massive issues with his parents. 

 All of which are developed inside the episodes. ER does, on occasion, dedicate an entire episode to character development. And, as the lead, Green gets his share of these. But the development is earned, built toward. 

 More, Green learns- as do other characters in their lives. Green learns from his experiences, and changes, for good or ill.

 As the series progresses, the "hero", as a result, gets to do some damned unheroic things, which are absolutely not presented with moral or ethical ambiguity or shading. With justification. The audience may or may not empathize with Green, but we damned well understand how he got there. 

 The single most shocking scene- designed to be shocking, meant to be shocking- is when the good Doctor Green, the hero, the father figure, kills a guy in very, very cold blood. 

 The man went on a rampage, blaming Green and the ER's social worker for turning his son against him. He killed people, paralyzed the social worker, and went looking to kill Green. The man turns up in the ER, and Green ends up alone with him in an elevator, taking him to surgery, when the killer has a heart attack. 

 The man's reactions, seen prior, were not unsympathetic. The writing never justifies him, but it does kinda sorta explain him. The expectation, in this scene, is that Green will do his job, according to his oath, and keep the guy alive. That he will understand that they share an odd bond- both driven into emotional extremes by concern for their families, by a need to do what they see as right when others do not see it. Green, according to expectations, is the other half of the coin to the man. 

 This man went off track, blamed others for his own problems, eventually driven to kill in a sort of madness. Green, on the other hand, has learned to take responsibility for himself. To understand that life, despite what we want it to be, what we try to force it to be, and hope that it will be, is not fair at all. 

 What actually happens, is that Green puts electrical conductant gel on the man's chest, charges the shock paddles, and then holds them in the air and releases the charges. While looking straight into the man's eyes, as he realizes that Green? The dedicated doctor that even he, in the end, trusts?

 Is withholding treatment. That Green is killing him. In fact, that Green has premeditated this. When the post mortem is done, when the staff holds the mortality and morbidity hearing about this death, all the steps Green ought to have done- will be in evidence. The gel was spread, the paddles were charged and discharged. The data will reflect his story- that he did what he could, but there was no reaction. As sometimes happens. Green's eyes, as he watches all this hit- the man understanding that he is being murdered, and why, and that Green is going to get away with it- are cold. Not dead, not holding some sort of killer aspect, the thousand yard stare or whatever. 

 Just cold. Yep. Life's unfair, pal. You did what you did expecting to get away with it, and the universe put me here to insure that you don't. In fact, that you didn't.

 It's shocking, in the end, for the audience because of the realization that it's not at all out of character for Mark Green to do this.  That the prior five seasons have made Green into the sort of man who can do this, and our shock is that- holy mother of god, we didn't see this clearly until just this moment. 

 Heh-heh-heh. 

 Brilliant. I doubt it was plotted out, long term, that Green would do this. It was probably a combination of things. The actor leaving the series chief amongst them, wanting to give him a strong send off and all of that sponsoring someone to take a good, long look at the character- into what he'd gone through and grown through. And figured... you know? Just once, this guy isn't going to make it home. 

 Mark Green, as written, directed and acted, is as powerful an example of character as I have seen. 

 Which brings me to Robert Romano. The character is a weasel. An antagonist who manipulates and lies and pushes himself into a position of authority at the hospital. No one likes him. No one wants to be around him. He's a very good doctor and surgeon. But the penalty for being in his orbit- unending, sarcastic criticism, no respect shown. Unless the other character is in a position of authority over him - in which case Romano is a stunningly straight ahead kiss-ass.  Paul McCrane seems to be having a wonderful time playing this. He delivers cold stares, snotty smiles, and vicious put downs with style. 

 But, again, the writing.

 He's not Frank Burns to Mark Green's Hawkeye. Or Wo Fat to McGarrett. 

 As the character progresses through the seasons, the writers put a lot of windage into Romano. He's a sexist, even a misogynist. But he also protects and mentors those whom he would seem to oppose. When one accidentally comes out as a lesbian to him, he never thinks about using that, somehow, to his advantage. When another develops doubts about her surgical skills, he pushes her to her limits- no explanation given- to see if she can recover. At one point not responding to her desperate pages for his assistance in a surgery, letting he flail around. What she does not know- but the audience sees- is that Romano is actually scrubbed up and ready to step in to help. But holding back, watching to see whether or not she, stimulated by this stress, finally pulls it together. 

 More, as irritating as the weasel can be, he's almost always got an acceptable ulterior motive. 

 He wants to be head of X department because he is aware of someone else's legitimate short comings and - no small ego- genuinely believes that he is the better candidate. He wants to get rid of a staff psychologist because he genuinely believes that she's a future liability. 

 The audience gets to see this stuff- but the other characters do not. We see that Romano is not a villain so much as a man with no social skills whatever, a huge- but justified- professional ego and a pathological desire for excellence. In staff, in administration, in surgery. 

 Evidenced, again and again, when ER staff square off with him, expecting him to be an asshole about something, and, once they explain their need, their decision, their dilemma, Romano nods and walks away.

 Not agreeing, necessarily, with the decision or the choice, but seeing it was made out of that drive for excellence, for doing the job at a high level... and knowing that the person needs to deal with the consequences in order to learn and grow.

 If Green is the father figure, Romano is the boss that turns out not to be an opponent but more of a professional adversary, trying to get you to take control of your own damned life.

 The writing and acting are almost hysterically good. The audience ends up enjoying the character, understanding him, and still thinking he's a dick. 

 ER's writing and acting are what kept it on the air for a remarkable fifteen years. And whether or not the thing is taught in writing classes, it ought to be. 

 

 

 

* Bullshit, man. Hawkeye and Trapper, BJ, Margaret, Charles- all very well drawn characters, hardly saints. Uh, no. No. Because even when they made poor choices, wrong choices, MASH made those choices seem morally or at least situationally right. All justified. ER does not do that with Greene. When Greene screws up, he screws  up- and deals with the consequences. The characters on ER have, as a rule, to deal with the consequences of screwing up, when they do. 

Show, not Tell.

 Stage and screenplays require different writing muscles from other texts. Novels, short stories- you take whatever point of view that you favor, you dip into and out of character's heads, you can, if you choose, take a godly perspective on all that you detail. 

 Writing for the stage and the screen requires one _serious_ change. Since you cannot go into the minds of your characters, or assume an omniscient view in the narrative... you have to show everything. 

 Easy example. In another format I could go into any level of detail I wanted, to indicate that my character was getting hungry. I could say that they were hungry. I could talk about a gnawing sensation in their stomach. I could go into an anecdote about their growling stomach in church, or about a food daydream spoiling their concentration in a meeting, or, or, or. 

 In a stage or screenplay- which I am just going to call a play, for the rest of this- I have to show that. I have to write some playable instruction for the performer so that they can indicate this. 

 Problem is? Most writers take the short cut.

INT. BUICK: STAKEOUT- NIGHT.

                                                            BOB

                                       I dunno, man. But I'm getting kinda hungry. You?

                                                            NEAL

                                         I could eat.

 Simple and direct, but this is _tell_,  It works- the audience knows that Bob is hungry, and the Neal is, as well. I could add in some dialogue about them choosing a restaurant, debating fast food or sit down, and so on. Or just cut to the two of them eating.

 All of which would be, really, tell. Not show. 

 Which robs the audience of an opportunity to _see_something_happen and leads to a static play.  It is efficient in terms of dialogue, but not great in terms of audience engagement. Nor does it tell the audience much about the characters.

 So.

INT. BUICK: STAKEOUT- NIGHT.

 Bob is restless behind the big Buick's wheel. Looking left and right.

                                                                NEAL

                                   What are you looking for?

                                         

                                                                BOB

                                     Ain't you hungry? Jesus, I'm starvin'.

 Two lines. Establishing Bob's hunger with action- his looking around while he drives. Better. But still more talk than show. Still not revealing much about the characters.

 And it should. In any play, you have a limited amount of time to get the audience's attention and give them details about the characters. Too much at once, it comes across like an exposition dump. Too little, and your characters are impenetrable cyphers- with which no one can identify.  Neither helps the story.

Third try.

INT. BUICK: STAKEOUT- NIGHT.

 Bob is restless behind the big Buick's wheel. Looking left and right. Slowing slightly as they drive. Clearly looking for something specific- but what? 

                                                                NEAL

                                        What are you looking for?

As they pass storefront after store front. Clothing, liquor, many restaurants. Bob's stomach growls. Loudly. Dramatically. It is, in the history of growling stomachs, an epic. Easily on par with a priest, farting during mass, in terms of stertorous surprise. Or a pussy fart. It takes Neal completely out of the moment. 

He laughs. Starts as snicker, then, off Bob's embarrassment, grows into a belly laugh, a guffaw. 

                                                               BOB

                                        Ain't you hungry?

Neal gives Bob side eye. Clearly timing his reaction for maximum burn. Nuclear burn. 

                                                              NEAL

                                        Not anymore. 

A moment of tension. Are they colleagues, friends- is their relationship such where a little gentle shit giving is welcomed or tolerated, or a potential call for a thrashing?

                                                             NEAL (CONT)

                                        I mean, Jeeeesus, that was pretty fucking filling.

The moment breaks, both men laughing. That kind of relationship.

                                                            BOB

                                                   (Bouncing his hands on the wheel)

                                      We gotta stop anyway.

                                                          NEAL

                                       No kidding. Someplace that sells underwear and what, a burger?

                                                          BOB

                                       Long as they have a men's.(beat) and onion rings. 

Laughing as they go in search of just such a place, they drive on. 

Better. Funny and indicative. But notice that most of that is... me telling you in the stuff that doesn't get to the audience. This is me, seeing the moment in my head and writing down exactly what I see. 

It works- but it is me directing on the page. And a little of that goes a long, long way. Actors have their own ideas, as do directors and producers. The more specific a writer gets on the page, the more constrained they feel. 

This is not a bad example of that, as far is it goes. I have done and read much worse. But the important thing here- it goes _too_far_ in that direction. A script is not meant to be the writer telling the production what to do as much as it is the writer telling a story and indicating possible ways for it to be told on stage or screen. It is not meant to be _this_ specific. I once got a note on a script, telling me that the best writing was in the notes, the asides, the action line comments. 

A good note for a potential novelist. Not for a script. You have to strike a line between telling enough to get the ideas across and telling too much. 

I should also point out that this is still more tell than show. 

Fourth try. 

INT. BUICK: STAKEOUT- NIGHT.

Bob is restless behind the big Buick's wheel, looking left, then right, then centering his gaze on-

CLOSE UP: PIZZA JOINT sign. Neon, red and white checked pattern, perhaps with an extravagantly mustachioed guy in a chef's hat kissing his fingers. Does everything but scream in a terrible fake Italian accent. 

Bob is eyeing the thing like it's promising him sex. Or money.

                                                               NEAL (off Bob)

                                               Uh. You okay there, Bob?

Bob pulls up to the restaurant, stops the car and, as he gets out:

                                                                BOB

                                                Many possible answers.

Bob walks toward the restaurant. 

 Better. Bob no longer talks about his hunger, but visibly experiences it and acts. Neal notices and reacts with concern- which indicates a level of interest and possible affection for his partner in this. Bob sort of blows him off as he acts- which could indicate he's an all action, few words sort. But he blows him off with a smart-ass answer. Which indicates that he is either kind of an asshole- I was aiming for Harry Callahan with that- or that he is kind of an asshole, but within the bounds of his relationship with his partner, it's acceptable. 

It gets you to the same place as the third try- and good actors and direction could make all of these work. But as an actor and a director- I'd vastly prefer the fourth take on the scene. It gets you to much the same place, but allows for the production team to get there in their own way. And it's short. 

A Little More On Writing.

 I read a lot. Novels. biographies, news, reviews, box backs. I'm a reflexive reader- put some print in front of me, and by gum, I'll give it a shot. Doesn't even have to be in a recognizable- to me- language. Whazzat, Sanskrit? Lemme see.

 I also write a lot.

 Though- heh- not so much here.

 Which sends me reading- a lot- about writers. I am very interested in how other people do this. In general, looking for a better way to do what I am trying to do. 

 Outlining, dealing with themes big and small. Where do people write, when, how?

 Something I haven't read about- although I am sure it's out there- music.

 What sort of thing do people play when, as, they write?

 So. Here you go. 

 I find that if I listen to something strong, dramatic- classical, in my case, is always a temptation, but this applies to pop music as well- I get sucked into the music and stop working. Just sort of let my thoughts drift along. Relaxing. But not writing. 

 If, on the other hand, I go for musical wall paper? Background white noise, non invasive stuff- new agey blends of drums and digeridoos and such- it so annoys me that all I write are terse, annoyed clips. 

 I once found that I had written "This music fucking sucks" right into a script. 

 I like to tailor what I am listening to to the type of thing I am working on. 

 Currently- as I blog, and I will restart it once I get into the writing, the soundtrack to the late, great TV series "Thirtysomething".

 There is a clip of the theme composer- and the man who wrote a lot of the music for the series- W.G. Walden- talking about how he came up with the now iconic main theme. 

 On YouTube if you want to search for it. 

 Long story short- nothing was working. They were deep enough into producing episodes that he was writing incidental music. As the producers were considering using a melody from a Broadway show, he started noodling with a piece he wrote for a scene where two of the leads are working out a bump in their sex lives.  They liked it, and asked for an expansion, and had plans to orchestrate it, but they ran out of time. So they sped it up slightly, and that was that. 

 Lots of creative stuff comes in to being like that. Someone was trying for something else, just goofing around, and whammo. 

 Applies to writing, too. 

 The Thirtysomething soundtrack, tonight, because I am writing a Thirtysomething episode.

 Not an actual episode. A story that would have been a perfect episode of the series, though. If you ever watched it, that combination of closely observed life moments dramatized with humor and a lot of, well, indulgence. 

 I was a huge fan of the series, when it aired. Because I was at about that age- when shit starts to get real. You've gotten through your schooling- or at least anything short of graduate school. You've been working for a while, been through dating, relationships, break ups. And things are starting to close the fuck in.

 The job has turned into a career, the casual relationship has turned into a marriage, the marriage is turning into kids, nine to five, and a living room filled with Legos and baby toys and detritus that never seems to actually get _cleaned_.

 You're hardly ever alone, hardly ever seem to have time to yourself, and there is always something stressing. A bill to be paid, a debt you have to get into, etc. Things that you _swear_ that you did not mean to come out that way seem to _always_ come out that way.  You're in fights - serious, with stomping and yelling and crying- with no idea how the hell they started. 

 The cute little apartment has turned into a cute little house with dry rot on the deck- and when you moved in, you discovered that the prior owner's kid had jammed something into every lower plug receptacle in every outlet in the house.  Oh, and they took the goddamn water heater with them, which left you with a slow gas leak. Which you did not discover for a year, when you had to replace the water heater.

 Oh. 

 And you now know why it is _called_ a hot water heater.

 Anyway.

 You spend a lot of time thinking... what. The. Actual. Fuck.

 What the actual fuck is all this shit?

 Your default mood is now... exactly what you never expected. Vaguely pissy, with occasional showers of fun. 

 You start to appreciate friendships more than ever- and some of them are surprising. That asshole from the office next to yours is suddenly in your living room every weekend, or you are in his. Movie nights and game nights- the sort of thing you may have scoffed at, when you were younger- now very important stress relieving events. 

 And you start to think back on earlier parts of your life with nostalgia.

 This period in a life is- I think- probably the first time you get a taste of that. Younger- you're looking back on things you did as a kid, and you are still close enough to most of that to see it... if not clearly, certainly without a lot of fog. 

 Now, you're far enough away from first crushes and shit that happened in study hall and all of those people. And long enough way from living under your parent's roof, or at least so heavily under their thumb, that all of that starts to become very hazy. 

 And nostalgia tells you that life was _so_much better back then. Free of all the responsibility. 

 Nostalgia is a trap. It sucks you into an illusory, mis-remembered past, and tempts you into living your life in the past. Which cannot work. 

 Thirtysomething is when you figure that out.

 That long lost love. That halcyon time when you were young and poor and living hand to mouth together?  You smile about it, privately. Use the memories as a balm. For when the dishwasher dies, or something goes down the toilet that ought not to have.  When you're facing the fact that your puppy is now 10 years old, and not as mobile as he once was. 

 You start to think that this was, maybe, something more than you thought it was. 

 There is always a reason for that love having been lost. A good reason. Nostalgia makes you forget about that stuff, and makes you take your eye off the current ball. 

 The series dealt with all of that, and it echoed. One of the characters, Elliot Weston. God, I hated Elliot when the show started. Terrible man child goof. Had a nice wife, two young kids. He and his best friend had started a business together. And I watched him fuck it all up. 

 Nostalgia. Led to him having affairs, getting separated from his wife, losing his family and crashing his business. 

 Elliot drifted a lot. 

 And then? 

 He figured it out.  Who was important, what was important. And Elliot- without seeming to change a jot- blossomed into the best character on the show. 

 He romanced his wife- having realized that she was _the_ love of his life. He patched things up with his friends. And he figured out that he fucking hated his job. He was _great_ at it. Even as he was screwing up, his bosses loved what he did. But he didn't. So, just as it seemed like he was back on his game, he walked away from it.

  Because he _was_ back on his game. Just not that game. 

  Sure the show was indulgent. Whiney. Well off white people, as my friend Nancy used to say. Bitching about the dry cleaning and the takeout and the brakes on the Volvo. Ermigod. 

 But kids? At that age- best appreciated once we've gone through it- we're all that whiney, all that self involved. 

 Doesn't matter whether you are rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, what have you. 

 Part of the maturation process. 

 Which, once I get done writing this- and listening to the music for the fun of it. Because, as it turns out, I can remember the episodes that these tracks cued and layed under- I am going to get back to my story. 

 The story?

 I'll get into that later. But the story is a page right out of Thirtysomething. People with their heads turned so far backward that they cannot see where they are going. Armand, retired, and missing his late wife, sitting around doing nothing. Laverne, thinking her best years are behind her. Carrie, so focused on the fuck ups in her past that she cannot plan for the future. I've written a stupidly expansive outline- which I think I have written about before, the more extensive my outlines, the greater the chance that I will never actually write the story. I get sort of bored, writing it after all of that.  But I think I can peel this off the outline and into an actual script.

 Mostly because I have fallen for my characters. A good sign. I _want_ to write cranky, arthritic Armand. I want to write sassy and affectionate Laverne and sweet but uncertain Carrie. 

 This has drifted, as usual. From the importance of music in writing, to the importance of the music I am actually listening to.

 Typical. 

 Let me wrestle this thing back to the ground and come up with a stirring conclusion.

 The reason music is important when I write- and I think every writer has something like this- is because it obliterates the background. 

 The AC running. The toilet that runs a bit once flushed. The snoring from the next room. What have you. 

 It obliterates the background and replaces it with an aural carpet. If carefully chosen, one which underlines and supports the writing. Not too powerful so as to suck you away from the task at hand. not so weak as to lose purpose. 

 It lets me slide into the world I am creating, the story I am telling, and get it out of my head. 

 The soundtrack has finished the first run. I enjoyed listening to it as a thing unto itself. 

 Now it goes into the work at hand. 

 Be seeing you.