EPISODE 423: I’M ABOUT TO POUNCE
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
There is a tiny fly on my computer screen as I start to write today. It stopped for a moment above the white rectangle of the a .doc at the right hand top of my computer screen, cleaning its feelers. Then it zigzags on down the deep blues of the painting of Sydney Harbor that is background image before stopping once again.
Can it see any of those colors, I wonder? What would it be like if instead of black and grey paving our streets were multicolored or paintings so massive you could only comprehend the whole from above? Maybe in the future I generally don’t like where everyone is driven around in self-driving cars we can change the way we think about roads entirely, the pavement a new canvas for art or story, each block a strip or page of comic, or a narrative that branches in different directions depending on which way you turn -- or a city mile like a flip book whose movement we can only see when our car agrees to our desire to go fast.
Imagine traveling a bridge over the city, the roads and buildings below painted to form some kind of wild Escher creation.
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Hello from Portland, where I have been attending the ordinations of five young Jesuits to the priesthood. At least they look young to me.
I’ve only been to Portland a couple times in my life, and the last time was 14 years ago, so it all seems pretty new and mysterious. Mostly I keep expecting to stumble across a massive comic book shop wonderland, as Portland is the home of literally dozens of the best comic book writers and artists in the business. The guy responsible for the Netflix take on all its Marvel characters, and a lot of what’s to be found in Marvel movies lives here. So does the woman who made Captain Marvel such an outstanding character. And so many others.
So far though I’ve just found myself driving and walking through what seem like small town neighborhoods, lots of leafy trees and narrow streets and people looking you in the eye and smiling and saying hello as they pass you – which is deeply unsettling behavior coming from pretty much every big city I’ve ever lived in, and more than once I’ve looked back as they passed me just to make sure I was not about to be the subject of a future Netflix miniseries (or maybe the object – it’s almost always about the serial killer, isn’t it?).
Every place I go here seems to have the best playlist I’ve ever heard, and all of it new, and all of it pleasantly mellow like a rainy Saturday afternoon in college. I have seen no landmarks to nail down this strange place, maybe I’m actually in the Bermuda Triangle or 1987 or Purgatory for priests we don’t really know what to do with, but for the moment I am floating along nicely.
As I finished this sentence I look down and there is the fly again, now between two keys, lying on its side. I tap it a couple times, somehow hoping its situation is not what I think. Sometimes flies need a rest, don’t they? But the results are not good. Apparently Lame Priest Purgatory is not a place where can insects can flourish either.
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Have you heard about HBO’s Chernobyl five-hour miniseries? Guys in my house kept talking about it, but I couldn’t quite work myself up to checking it out for the longest time. Then I gave in and tried Episode 1, “1:23:45”, which focuses just on the night of the accident, and oh my Jesus it was impossible to turn away from.
Each episode you think, okay, this is the worst of it, and wow is it bad. Then the next episode has three more terrible things about the next day, and the next month and on and on.
Over and over it’s the story of ordinary people agreeing basically to give up years and/or all of their lives so that Europe (and probably you and I) can go out and sit at computers and cafes without checking our wearable Geiger counters, and usually in the face of a government that quite clearly did not care about any of them personally.
For each episode there’s also a really interesting podcast with the creator, in which he talks about what’s true and what’s heightened or made up in each episode. His thinking: in a story about a government repeatedly lying to its people and the world about what happened, it only makes sense to lay out the truths of their series as best they can.
The best drama I’ve watched on TV this year, by a pretty large margin.
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Speaking of great drama, Big Little Lies begins its second season tonight.
MOOD:
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About a week ago I deleted everything I had written on Twitter. I wasn’t exactly worried about anything I had posted; mostly it was filled with endless posts about Game of Thrones which I’m quite confident got me muted by many of my friends. I just felt like I wanted a fresh start.
But now honestly I’m not even sure what that means. I’d long ago stopped posting about anything political, and I try to stay away from church stuff too, although man alive that is hard sometimes. So maybe just desperate-to-be-funny pop culture stuff, with the occasionally insight comment I probably got from someone else?
The people I follow are not exactly helping me figure things out. I have curated lists for comic creators, comedians, writers and pop culture commentary, and I go to them hoping for stuff on those topics. Turns out many of them are often pretty interested in tweeting their rage, because they are not content bots but human beings.
Maybe I want to be a content bot. But then what is my content? And oh God is it me or is that an existential staring into the abyss question meant to drive me insane.
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You have to believe Lovecraft would have loved Twitter.
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Maybe I’ll post my favorite comic book panels. Or recipes in the form of GIFs. Or Star Wars Episode IX fan fiction, written as though it was being retold by contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Or dogs dressed like Steven Spielberg. Or conspiracy theories about This Is Us. (Jack is absolutely not dead you guys.)
Or unusual allergies: red pepper flakes; graffiti with sexual innuendo; words used in place of cursing; period costumes from TV shows about alternate realities; Sissy Spacek action figures; pop stars singing at the Grand Ole Opry; pineapples, but only when eaten with cheese.
It would be safe to say I am still a work in progress. Be advised: based on historical research this trend seems likely to continue indefinitely.
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Social Media, Summarized
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Star Wars Land is ridiculously expensive and kind of like a drug deal and apparently I don’t care as I’ve spent every waking moment since daydreaming about meeting with a Jedi Master to build my lightsaber.
I thought this was actually an art lesson, but it turns out it’s the cartoon equivalent of a short film I wish I had written.
Also, I’m probably supposed to be worried about this Weekend-at-Bernie’s story of two kids running a presidential campaign for a retired senator and kind of winning the internet in the process, but I wonder if they don’t have an insight into the Way Things Are Now that the rest of us could use.
This week in Stories about People Everyone Forgets That Made the World Better: the closeted gay psychiatrists who led the American Psychiatric Association to reconsider its designation of homosexuality as a mental illness. (The opening segment about the family of one of those psychiatrists is itself a fantastic story.)
And song of the week, a Hungarian song that became an anthem for freedom after its failed revolution against the Soviets in 1956. It’s unexpectedly upbeat, but you can hear the pining in every syllable.
In an interview with Rolling Stone Timothy Olyphant told this amazing story about working with David Milch on Deadwood.
I remember so many things that he did in terms of direction. The scene where Bullock is beating the shit out of Jack McCall in the mud, and Garret [Dillahunt, who played McCall] is trying to get the fuck out — Milch told us the story about him being in an alleyway and these guys are walking towards him, and he keeps thinking, “Oh, I’m going to beat the shit out of these guys.” And now they’re kicking the shit out of him, and he’s like, “I’m about to pounce because I’m like a leopard. These guys have no idea.” And he goes, “Now they’ve taken all my things and they’ve set my clothes on fire. Now they’re walking away.” They’re turning down the alley and they’re leaving him there. And he says, “These guys have no idea how lucky they are.” He tells Garret that story, and he’s like, “That’s how you would play the scene.” And that was so genius.
Whatever this week holds, don’t let anybody convince you to quit on yourself. You’ve made it this far. And these guys have no *@#%!#% idea.