Episode 111: Hotels in Alternate Dimensions

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

(Before we get started, a useful FYI: you can go to the archive for PCSW here and find today's ep with the images not cut off. No idea why they get sliced in the email form. Life is hard.)

I’m writing tonight from a cheap hotel in San Diego, where I’m spending a few days researching...something -- an article? an Instagram photo essay? -- on the vast numbers of people here who live on the streets in tents or in their cars. (It’s in the hundreds, if not the thousands. Truly brutal to see.)

It’s funny how the idea of spending a night in a hotel triggers such deep-seeded childhood programming. Hotel=vacation=hooky from obligations=fun. I didn’t jump on the bed when I got into my room, but if I stop to think about it, that was definitely floating through my imagination, along with leaping knees-bent into a swimming pool and foraging in vending machines for junk food to slather all over my face while watching cable.

As an adult, though, a hotel room is such a different place, isn’t it? Less a cheap child-friendly substitute for Disneyland than a sort of weird nether space that wipes you clean of any trace of your identity. It’s like moving to a new school and combing your hair the other way or telling people “Everybody calls me Rudy”. Walk into a hotel room and suddenly you can be anyone you want to be, do anything you want to do.

This is not a story that ends with “and then the priest called his hero Joss Whedon and things got crazy” (although fan fiction is always welcome here, particularly in the form of minor key musical numbers). The few chances I have to stay in hotel rooms, I’m just so excited to sleep on a big bed, I usually leap in as quickly as I can and sprawl out while watching iTunes. (On tonight’s playlist – the season finale of Mr. Robot. DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME SAM ESMAIL. I’VE BEEN PATIENT.)

But it is fascinating to experience that sudden sense of total anonymity. It’s like hotels exist on a border between realities, and each room is an entrance into some other strange, still-to-be-discovered/created world.

Hotels are usually the fodder for horror and/or pathetic drama. But it seems to me there’s a great science fiction concept in there somewhere, too.

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And speaking of death –

(Even without that photo, this is a segue that always makes sense to the Irish) –

The American playwright Edward Albee died on Friday. He was one of the most important American playwrights of the last century; he won not only three Tonys but three Pulitzers for his work (and probably would have won a fourth, for his most famous play – “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” – except that some on the nominating committee found it far too racy. (“A filthy play,” one was purported to have said.)) The only writers I can find who have won four are Eugene O’Neill and Robert Frost.

I’ve spent too much time writing newsletter entries about wonderful famous people dying. (Seriously, if I were an aging celebrity or artist right now, I would be taking vitamins and demanding others check on me hourly. I don’t know which one of them did what to the Grim Reaper, but he is seriously not having it.)

(Also, Imma need someone to look in on Billy Joel, STAT.)

In the running for the most perfect internet meme ever.

But let me just say, for me Albee is a great inspiration. He recognized that we humans, we’re all afraid of things – most especially that we’ve made very bad choices early on and are now truly living lives of quiet desperation. (He told the New York Times in 1991, “All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. I find most people spend too much time living as if they’re never going to die.”)

He recognized that these are our fears, and that we’re also so afraid of having those fears that we run like hell to avoid recognizing their possibility.

And he wrote beautiful, often playful stories that exposed us to our fearful states. And in showing us those truths, he tried to set us free.

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Honestly, it’s the kind of goal I’m always wrestling with when I preach.

It’s also the sort of thing that many great comedians do. Louis C.K., for example – both in his television work and his stand up, that guy is always trying to show us something about life that we see all the time and have never thought about. (Seriously, there are Sunday mornings I just do his routines. He’s that good.)

And speaking of Louie C.K. – the Emmys were on Sunday. I didn’t watch them. Some years I just can’t get into the whole “Some great art is better than other great art” vibe. It really is an honor just to be nominated, and most of the time I think they should leave it at that and turn the Emmys into some sort of variety show.

Like, for instance, have “Mad Men”’s Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss switch roles with “Breaking Bad”’s Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul and do one another’s best scenes. Or give each of the late night hosts three minutes to roast one another. (Or they could have Samantha Bee do it.)

(Warning: That video is amazing. And not appropriate for children. Even if it is about Jimmy Fallon.)

This year, probably my favorite show was a little comedy I discovered called “Please Like Me”, which played on Pivot and is now on iTunes.

“Please Like Me” is the semi autobiographical story of 20-something creator and star Josh Thomas dealing with coming out of the closet while also trying to help his mentally-ill mother – who attempts suicide in the pilot.

I know, only a plane crash could make this sound funnier. But it is quite funny, actually, in the way that real life actually often is, even in the midst of the pain. (Hmm – strange unexpected theme emerging this week. The truth is so much better than we think it will be....) It also features a wonderful set of breakfasts, and a new choreographed cooking-dance sequence at the start of every episode.

Here are the openings for the six episodes of the first season. They will take you three minutes in total to watch in total and they will make you happy.

The first season is currently $4.99. What are you waiting for?

The other show that knocked me down this year – actually, no, more accurately, it puzzled me, then intrigued me, then suddenly grabbed me by the collar, ripped out my heart and wrung it out until I absolutely couldn’t take any more – was an episode of Louie C.K.’s show “Horace and Pete”.

If you don’t know “H&P”, basically it’s “Sad Cheers”, with Alan Alda as Depressed Coach.

I know, sounds like another winner. (It's also Alda's best performance since M*A*S*H.)

Horace and Pete (CK and Steve Buscemi) are brothers who co-own a bar, the latest in a whole line of Horace and Petes to own the bar. Neither of them is really in a great place; nor is their sister (Edie Falco), who wants to sell the place, or most of the people who spend their days talking about Trump and Black Lives Matter at the bar. (CK, who distributed the episodes weekly on his website, was writing topical material seemingly up to the minute it got shot each week. One of the great surprises each week was to hear the characters talking about stuff we had all been thinking about just yesterday.)

I don’t want to say too much about the episode I would love to see you watch. (The whole show is better watched without too much information, actually.) I will tell you it guest stars Laurie Metcalf, of “Rosanne" and many other things.

Here she is in a scene from HBO's "Getting On", in which she's also fantastic.

I'll also say, even though it was only available on CK’s website, she was nominated for an Emmy for her performance. And you don’t need to have seen the prior two episodes to understand it – not in the slightest.

Here’s the link. It’s $3.00. I hope you watch it. It’s really everything I said before about Louis C.K., Edward Albee, even hotels.

There's a whole page of these. Because of course there are.

++ LINKS ++

Apparently the new iPhone hisses at you when it’s under stress. For some reason I find that fact very reassuring.

Did you know the San Francisco Chronicle rates movies and other things not in terms of stars but the reaction of a character known as “The Little Man”? I did not, but this piece on it is fascinating.

This is maybe the most-entertainingly-worst-titled song ever. (And it only gets better from there.)

I try to avoid getting into the politics too much here. I feel like there’s too much of that everywhere else, and only makes the atmosphere way more toxic. (Soul pollution is the worst pollution.)

Still, this letter from Garrison Keillor to Donald Trump is kind of amazing. (And in its own way, very Albee-esque.)

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Regina Small – one of the four amazing people who let me pepper them with questions about Superman last week (weren’t they amazing? Thank you so much to each of them, and especially Kumail Rizvi) – and I had an idea a while back to do a podcast about pop culture.

This week, we taped our very first episode. The show is called “Ready to Grumble”, and it’s all about things going on in pop culture land (plus, a rant from me about how some Catholics think about divorce). It’s definitely a work in progress – let me correct that, the McDermott end of things is definitely a work in progress; Regina is amazing – but we had a lot of fun.

Celebrity divorces, Mr. Robot, and a rant from a priest – what more do you want, really?

You can find it here. It’s not on iTunes yet; hopefully this weekend. (SO MUCH TO LEARN.) But if you scroll down just a tiny bit on the right you’ll find the way to download it as an mp3.

(By the way, Imperious Skeleton is our image for the show.)

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Warren Ellis ended his newsletter last week this way, and I love it:

I'm just going to leave this here. I hope you found something of use, or at least amusement, in the above, and I hope you find a place of peace this week, or at least start to work on it, because that's what's going to help keep you alive when winter comes for you and the world gets crazy. Sit down with me and have a drink. Everything's going to be all right.

It’s starting to get darker, and it may get cold soon, but that’s okay; we can still make a pillow fort and watch John Hughes movies all night together.