EPISODE 623: JUST BREATHE
Adventure is out there.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Ed Asner died today. He was 91 and he had been in pretty much everything.
I’m just a little bit too young to have appreciated The Mary Tyler Moore Show when it was on. I vaguely remember it and Lou Grant, too.
But it’s funny, there’s something about Asner that just stays with you. The word that comes to mind is “solid”. The way he behaved, whether in public or onscreen, always seemed touched by a great straightforwardness—which in a way sounds like a terrible quality for an actor. You want performances that are layered.
But in a sense the genius of Asner—whose IMDB page is by the way insane; he did 131 projects in the last ten years alone, some of them involving multiple episodes, and had another 20 still to come, a little less than half of which have been filmed—was not in diving into a character but in allowing some aspect of himself to be revealed, again and again. He’s very much in the Harrison Ford/George Clooney/Clint Eastwood mold.
Asner once gave a description of his Lou Grant character (cited in the LA Times obit) that really captures everything I love about Asner himself.
“Asner described the rumpled Grant, with his rolled-up shirt-sleeves and perpetually loosened tie, as an ‘everyman.’
‘He radiates warmth, generosity and caring, someone who reflects a toughness over a mound of Jell-O, a nice degree of intelligence but a working intelligence as opposed to an arrogant one,’ he told The Times in 1977.
Just two weeks ago The Hollywood Reporter ran a new interview with him. It captures in so many ways why he was so loved.
Rest in Peace, Ed. And thanks for the adventures.
It’s late August, so of course everything has gone to hell.
Have you ever noticed that pretty much as soon as Congress goes out of session and the President is on holiday, everything seems to get a little more terrible? This year we’ve got not only delta variant but the horrifying situation in Afghanistan, a hurricane hitting New Orleans, the neverending fires in California.
I don’t know how you roll with it when things get like this. I tend to turtle—it’s like ostritching but even more self-insulated. Kick my shell all you want, I’ll be in here waiting until you’re done.
Honestly, I just feel overwhelmed. The whole thing seems like a call to silence, really. A call to try and listen, understand and learn.
I’m really feeling this song these days.
Maybe I’m thinking of all the kids going back to school these days.
I have a piece coming this week about parents’ feelings right now as they send their kids back to school. I spoke to about a dozen parents last week. The common denominator among most is that parents are worried and frustrated. I bet their kids must be feeling a lot of the same.
You can to do it, everybody! You got this! Just remember to breathe.
Also wrote this piece about preaching tips for America that people seem to be enjoying. My boss Ashley McKinness, who asked me to write it, had pretty much the best line of all about it: “It only took you 5 points and 2400 words!”
THREE TWEETS
So proud of these guys.
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Nosferatu, Prince of Cuddly Things.
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Jean Grey, Age 70.
BONUS: One Tweet Thread To Rule Them All.
As happy and challenged as I’ve been to see Monica Lewinsky’s treatment in the 1990s receive a radical reconsideration in recent years, I have had zero interest in rehashing that era. But this article about the new season of American Crime Story really turned my head.
Showrunner Sarah Burgess on the project:
I realized it was really a story about these sort of invisible office ladies — the people whose desks you walk by to see the person who actually matters,” she says, having homed in on Tripp and Lewinsky, both White House exiles who bonded as employees at the Pentagon, where Burgess’ own mom once worked. “Then I started to write in that voice, and it just came natural.
Similarly, this L.A. Times profile on Molly Shannon was tremendous. She talks about losing her mom, sister and cousin in an accident when she was 4, and how it affected her.
Her famous SNL character Mary Katherine Gallagher, she said, “was really based on me, how I felt after the accident — really nervous, accident-prone, wanting to please, f— up but full of hope,” she says. “I just exaggerated everything I felt as a little girl and turned it into a character.”
(That piece also has a link to this piece about Shannon finding out her father was gay shortly before he died, and how it affected her. I found it really moving.
All stories about people being gay and coming out, I’m just so attracted to," she said. "It was my whole childhood. My whole life. I was the child of somebody who had to keep that secret. So anything I can do to let that out and tell all those stories is the most important thing to me.
We love you, Molly Shannon!
The NYT did an interesting black and white photo piece today too consisting of shots of their abandoned offices. There was a whole subgenre of pieces like this early in the pandemic, but this one has a wild noir feel to it.
Lastly there’s this, which starts out sounding like it’s going to get very steamy and ends up pretty much describing my entire life.
Well, that’s it for this week. Look after yourself. Be gentle.
There’s adventures out there waiting for you.
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