Seth Kupchick's Blog: Bet on the Beaten, page 9
July 7, 2015
Josh Wilker, my doppleganger
The best advice my mentor gave me when I was a lost weary soul, which I still am, but younger and burning with ambition, he told me I had to find people my own age and somehow see myself through my generation. What a gift that he ever said to me, since my mentor thought most artists were awful, and was mostly ashamed at being an artist, in spite of his commitment to art, and I'm sure would've rather been a great athlete like many of us, but there you have it, the divide between the artist and the athlete, yin and yang. Josh Wilker is my doppelganger, and the only artist of my generation who I HAVEN'T met, that I really admire, though that's not true, if you count musicians (Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan, Courtney Love, etc.). But Wilker is the only WRITER from my generation that I've really looked up to as a guiding light, and it saddens me how unknown he is, in spite of his greatness. Wilker's real gift is that he had a vision of what it meant to be brought up by hippies, and left on the abandoned shores of America in the ultra conservative Eighties, when America changed course.
I just read "Cardboard Gods" and it shook me to my core. I'm not sure I liked it as much as "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," because that was the most brilliant book on a worthless piece of crap movie that I've ever read, but one of my favorite movies. It made Wilker a God to me, in the same way that he, the author, fantasized about Ogilvie from the "Bears" franchise needing to be anointed for some kind of gifted crown (how right you are, Wilker!) You are Ogilvie, Wilker, but so am I, and only a few people will understand what that means!
Cardboard Gods is a great book, but I'll put on my publisher's hat, and really review it. Wilker uses baseball cards as a kind of memory releast/tarot card/mystical keepsake, to tap into his memories. On an intuitive level, this makes sense, and I loved how Wilker didn't only choose the famous players, or the best cards, but a real splash of humanity, and how he was able to paint the baseball world as a replica of human life, and thus understanding the great metaphor of sports, and why they mean anything to us, but a metaphor so subtle it's lost on the average sports fan (weird). We are the games we play and players we worship, but not only the heroes. In the words of Ray Davies, "You can see the stars when you're walking down Hollywood Blvd., some that you recognize, some that you've never even heard of," and so it is with major leaguers. Wilker is brilliant enough to see that the losers and winners both reflect us, and why (I guess) he wrote a memoir about fatherhood called "Benchwarmers" (I'm fearing this one a little, sorry Wilker), but "Cardboard Gods," and the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," are both top notch (and maybe Benchwarmers will be too!)
The Gen X hippie childhood story has a few grand mutations, but will most likely be forgotten by future generations as a failed social experiment. I'm not sure I've read anyone who has felt the failure of the social experiment more intimately than Wilker. I believe this is partly because he's such a naturally gifted writer, and partly because he had an exceptionally weird childhood, yet not so weird that I don't have friends who have similar stories. I actually think Wilker tapped into something universal about being born in the late Sixties and growing up in the Seventies, before anyone could imagine the Eighties. The great social experiments that came and went with little documentation. Hell, I wrote a high school paper on communes with books I checked out from the high school library, and remember thinking how little I found. The back to nature movement of the Seventies ate itself and its young and this is what Wilker gets since he was eaten, and came out the other end a poet.
I suppose the obvious point of Wilker is that he uses baseball, with a little bit of basketball, as a filter to understand American culture. Artistically, I think this is great and have tried to do the same thing myself but mostly as a literary experiment. Wilker has taken the literary experiment idea and expanded it tenfold so that his books are now epics in the baseball genre, and I'd say are stand outs, but...... (sorry, Wilker) it is a 'genre.' I'm not sure how many people who read baseball want poetry, or how many people who read poetry want baseball. Don't get me wrong, in a very personal, deep, and intense way, I like the two books I've read by you so much that I'm forever thankful the Gods put them into my hands. I really feel like you are my brother, so please take my criticism with a grain of sand. I'm envious that you had the courage to write any of your 'fandom' trilogy.
"Cardboard Gods" was far more accessible than the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," but art is personal and I liked the "Bad News Bears" poetry much much more. I think of your passages about Kelly Leak renting out cheap apartments when he's older, or running from his dad because that's all he can do, or of "Little Children," and how he became a creepy pervert by the 2000's. The "Cardboard Gods" is a real memory book, and is a beautiful portrait of Wilker and his brother, who he was enamored of, and almost reminds me of Kerouac's "Visions of Gerard," a story of his dead saintly brother, but that may just be Wilker's writing. I was especially haunted by his portraits of himself as a liquor store clerk in his early twenties living with his brother in the Big Apple. It was a beautiful portrait of poetic poverty that echoed my own memories of my life in San Francisco living in the Tenderloin, where I thought I was "Joe Buck" from "Midnight Cowboy," even though I would've scoffed at the idea of male hustling.
I read a review on goodreads that appreciated Wilker's prose but questioned where he got off writing a 'memoir.' In a way, I think Wilker would understand where the critic was coming from, and tried to filter the memoir through his baseball cards, so that it wasn't strictly memoir, but a generational meditation through a kind of mystical collection the author had taken up at a young age, and was a link to his past. For my money, Wilker has such a deep socio/political/historical understanding of America, that he naturally contextualized his life story so that it literally became my own, as I was reading it, or a best friend I had, or a friend I wanted to read it to, even though I grew up in Los Angeles. His story was mine, and I knew it like the back of my hand, but..... I was also a baseball fan as a kid, and had my own card collection, even if it didn't mean as much to me as Wilker through the years, though it may have at the time. And that gets back to the idea of a young man who is no "Lawrence of Arabia" and on his blog admitted to 'denying life,' having any qualifications to write a memoir. The answer is 'no,' but it's really a brothers story, and Wilker is focused. But it's a brother's story through the filter of baseball, and this just isn't everyone's cup of tea.
"The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," can only appeal to avid fans of that movie, that struck a deep Neptunean chord in 1977, when it was released. I was changed by Jackie Earle Haley's performance of Kelly Leak, and what an anti hero he was for us, who were too young to 'dig' Travis Bickel, or Captain America from "Easy Rider." He was a Gen X Seventies outcast, and only captured as well in "Over the Edge," and maybe "Foxes" for those Gen X babes! The greatness of the book was that it broke down the divide between art and criticism, but Wilker took the movie personally, since he saw it as a kid, and cheered the Bears on. But he sees in the movie a kind of aesthetic explanation of the end of the Seventies dream of changing the world, and what divorce had done to the family, which took real poetic imagination. It's weird but "The Breaking Training" book read much more as a story to me, than "Cardboard Gods," that was a story, so maybe Wilker has turned the tables, turning criticism into art.
7/12 My doppleganger has been truer to me than even I predicted. I just read my first mediocre Wilker book, "Benchwarmers." It was so bad I couldn't believe he wrote it. I had to look deep inside myself, not only to the artist lurking within, but the critic. The artist forgives Wilker for trying though I fear he wrote "Benchwarmers" because a publisher expected him to, and that he wanted it to be family friendly. I wouldn't be surprised if it's his best selling book, but again I doubt it was a best seller. It's just too obscure.
The critic in me wants to rage against "Benchwarmers." Creatively, it is nothing more than a watered down "Cardboard Gods," his masterpiece, but instead of being about childhood, it's about the NOW, Wilker's life as a forty something Dad. He lapses into memories of baseball players, or games, in an attempt to understand his life like he did in "Cardboard Gods." The difference is "Cardboard Gods" was free of a traditional narrative and Wilker used ACTUAL baseball cards as anchors to recall his childhood, and early twenties, giving the book a mystical feel. "Benchwarmers" has NO voodoo and the critic in me wants to say that Wilker isn't really deserving of a memoir. He's best at remembering the distant past like he admits in "Cardboard Gods," and he's not really remembering anything in "Benchwarmers," making it like lukewarm beer on a Sunday afternoon at the park, with the wife and kids. Not what we want from this astutely observant soul.
The artist in me forgives, but the critic lashes. The artist in me knows that you have to write bad books before you ever get to anything good, so I forgive Wilker for coming down with "Benchwarmers." He's already given the artist in me more than enough for a lifetime, so here's to bad art! The question becomes was it bad in the name of experimentation, or redundant, with not even a glimmer of something new lurking beneath the surface of the page. The critic in me would say "Benchwarmers" offers nothing new, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day it will be seen as a great transitional work full of blemishes that offered a new way. I'm pretty much convinced Wilker is one of the great writers of my generation, or at least the year I was born, so I'll let the artist kiss the critic goodnight, and hope "Benchwarmers" was an aberration, and that Wilker will get off the bench for one more great season.
Later meditation: I shouldn't put my shit on Josh Wilker. He's free of me but by writing became a public figure I had a reflection on, but I'm me. I don't have a doppelganger, just an eternal soul, passing through this life.
I just read "Cardboard Gods" and it shook me to my core. I'm not sure I liked it as much as "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," because that was the most brilliant book on a worthless piece of crap movie that I've ever read, but one of my favorite movies. It made Wilker a God to me, in the same way that he, the author, fantasized about Ogilvie from the "Bears" franchise needing to be anointed for some kind of gifted crown (how right you are, Wilker!) You are Ogilvie, Wilker, but so am I, and only a few people will understand what that means!
Cardboard Gods is a great book, but I'll put on my publisher's hat, and really review it. Wilker uses baseball cards as a kind of memory releast/tarot card/mystical keepsake, to tap into his memories. On an intuitive level, this makes sense, and I loved how Wilker didn't only choose the famous players, or the best cards, but a real splash of humanity, and how he was able to paint the baseball world as a replica of human life, and thus understanding the great metaphor of sports, and why they mean anything to us, but a metaphor so subtle it's lost on the average sports fan (weird). We are the games we play and players we worship, but not only the heroes. In the words of Ray Davies, "You can see the stars when you're walking down Hollywood Blvd., some that you recognize, some that you've never even heard of," and so it is with major leaguers. Wilker is brilliant enough to see that the losers and winners both reflect us, and why (I guess) he wrote a memoir about fatherhood called "Benchwarmers" (I'm fearing this one a little, sorry Wilker), but "Cardboard Gods," and the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," are both top notch (and maybe Benchwarmers will be too!)
The Gen X hippie childhood story has a few grand mutations, but will most likely be forgotten by future generations as a failed social experiment. I'm not sure I've read anyone who has felt the failure of the social experiment more intimately than Wilker. I believe this is partly because he's such a naturally gifted writer, and partly because he had an exceptionally weird childhood, yet not so weird that I don't have friends who have similar stories. I actually think Wilker tapped into something universal about being born in the late Sixties and growing up in the Seventies, before anyone could imagine the Eighties. The great social experiments that came and went with little documentation. Hell, I wrote a high school paper on communes with books I checked out from the high school library, and remember thinking how little I found. The back to nature movement of the Seventies ate itself and its young and this is what Wilker gets since he was eaten, and came out the other end a poet.
I suppose the obvious point of Wilker is that he uses baseball, with a little bit of basketball, as a filter to understand American culture. Artistically, I think this is great and have tried to do the same thing myself but mostly as a literary experiment. Wilker has taken the literary experiment idea and expanded it tenfold so that his books are now epics in the baseball genre, and I'd say are stand outs, but...... (sorry, Wilker) it is a 'genre.' I'm not sure how many people who read baseball want poetry, or how many people who read poetry want baseball. Don't get me wrong, in a very personal, deep, and intense way, I like the two books I've read by you so much that I'm forever thankful the Gods put them into my hands. I really feel like you are my brother, so please take my criticism with a grain of sand. I'm envious that you had the courage to write any of your 'fandom' trilogy.
"Cardboard Gods" was far more accessible than the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," but art is personal and I liked the "Bad News Bears" poetry much much more. I think of your passages about Kelly Leak renting out cheap apartments when he's older, or running from his dad because that's all he can do, or of "Little Children," and how he became a creepy pervert by the 2000's. The "Cardboard Gods" is a real memory book, and is a beautiful portrait of Wilker and his brother, who he was enamored of, and almost reminds me of Kerouac's "Visions of Gerard," a story of his dead saintly brother, but that may just be Wilker's writing. I was especially haunted by his portraits of himself as a liquor store clerk in his early twenties living with his brother in the Big Apple. It was a beautiful portrait of poetic poverty that echoed my own memories of my life in San Francisco living in the Tenderloin, where I thought I was "Joe Buck" from "Midnight Cowboy," even though I would've scoffed at the idea of male hustling.
I read a review on goodreads that appreciated Wilker's prose but questioned where he got off writing a 'memoir.' In a way, I think Wilker would understand where the critic was coming from, and tried to filter the memoir through his baseball cards, so that it wasn't strictly memoir, but a generational meditation through a kind of mystical collection the author had taken up at a young age, and was a link to his past. For my money, Wilker has such a deep socio/political/historical understanding of America, that he naturally contextualized his life story so that it literally became my own, as I was reading it, or a best friend I had, or a friend I wanted to read it to, even though I grew up in Los Angeles. His story was mine, and I knew it like the back of my hand, but..... I was also a baseball fan as a kid, and had my own card collection, even if it didn't mean as much to me as Wilker through the years, though it may have at the time. And that gets back to the idea of a young man who is no "Lawrence of Arabia" and on his blog admitted to 'denying life,' having any qualifications to write a memoir. The answer is 'no,' but it's really a brothers story, and Wilker is focused. But it's a brother's story through the filter of baseball, and this just isn't everyone's cup of tea.
"The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," can only appeal to avid fans of that movie, that struck a deep Neptunean chord in 1977, when it was released. I was changed by Jackie Earle Haley's performance of Kelly Leak, and what an anti hero he was for us, who were too young to 'dig' Travis Bickel, or Captain America from "Easy Rider." He was a Gen X Seventies outcast, and only captured as well in "Over the Edge," and maybe "Foxes" for those Gen X babes! The greatness of the book was that it broke down the divide between art and criticism, but Wilker took the movie personally, since he saw it as a kid, and cheered the Bears on. But he sees in the movie a kind of aesthetic explanation of the end of the Seventies dream of changing the world, and what divorce had done to the family, which took real poetic imagination. It's weird but "The Breaking Training" book read much more as a story to me, than "Cardboard Gods," that was a story, so maybe Wilker has turned the tables, turning criticism into art.
7/12 My doppleganger has been truer to me than even I predicted. I just read my first mediocre Wilker book, "Benchwarmers." It was so bad I couldn't believe he wrote it. I had to look deep inside myself, not only to the artist lurking within, but the critic. The artist forgives Wilker for trying though I fear he wrote "Benchwarmers" because a publisher expected him to, and that he wanted it to be family friendly. I wouldn't be surprised if it's his best selling book, but again I doubt it was a best seller. It's just too obscure.
The critic in me wants to rage against "Benchwarmers." Creatively, it is nothing more than a watered down "Cardboard Gods," his masterpiece, but instead of being about childhood, it's about the NOW, Wilker's life as a forty something Dad. He lapses into memories of baseball players, or games, in an attempt to understand his life like he did in "Cardboard Gods." The difference is "Cardboard Gods" was free of a traditional narrative and Wilker used ACTUAL baseball cards as anchors to recall his childhood, and early twenties, giving the book a mystical feel. "Benchwarmers" has NO voodoo and the critic in me wants to say that Wilker isn't really deserving of a memoir. He's best at remembering the distant past like he admits in "Cardboard Gods," and he's not really remembering anything in "Benchwarmers," making it like lukewarm beer on a Sunday afternoon at the park, with the wife and kids. Not what we want from this astutely observant soul.
The artist in me forgives, but the critic lashes. The artist in me knows that you have to write bad books before you ever get to anything good, so I forgive Wilker for coming down with "Benchwarmers." He's already given the artist in me more than enough for a lifetime, so here's to bad art! The question becomes was it bad in the name of experimentation, or redundant, with not even a glimmer of something new lurking beneath the surface of the page. The critic in me would say "Benchwarmers" offers nothing new, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day it will be seen as a great transitional work full of blemishes that offered a new way. I'm pretty much convinced Wilker is one of the great writers of my generation, or at least the year I was born, so I'll let the artist kiss the critic goodnight, and hope "Benchwarmers" was an aberration, and that Wilker will get off the bench for one more great season.
Later meditation: I shouldn't put my shit on Josh Wilker. He's free of me but by writing became a public figure I had a reflection on, but I'm me. I don't have a doppelganger, just an eternal soul, passing through this life.
June 13, 2015
Get into the bombast M's fans, this is going to be a bumpy ride
Tragedy turns into comedy and a good bad movie can either be art or bombast. The M's have all of these qualities in one, but don't expect a World Series, or a good review, for this ball club, because they are very bad, nor will they live in the memory of the fans as a bright shiny good moment that only an M's fan could appreciate, because there is nothing of that spirit in this team, absolutely no fire or love. If anything, they seem like a bunch of individuals either whining individually, or just kind of looking out for their own skin.
There are different kinds of bad movies, or seasons, and I'd say the M's are closer to "Showgirls" than "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," both bad movies, that only a sliver of society would appreciate, and yet bad for different reasons. The "Bears" may have lacked fundamentals, but something beautiful bloomed out that piece of repackaged shit, and the story became about Kelly Leak and his fractured relationship to his father. Jackie Earle Haley gave a James Dean/Montgomery Clift worthy performance, and more than carried what could have been a forgettable piece of schlock into something truly moving, but I don't see that coming out of these M's. They have no heart, and there is no story, but they sure are excitng to watch lose.
I guess bad movies turn good, like baseball seasons, and that may be what happened to the M's in the 2014 season. I compared them to the Bad News Bears last year, or the Eighties Mets, before they won the series, because the M's clearly lacked talent, and yet they made up for it in heart, and super human performances by a bunch of unknowns, especially in the bull pen. It was hard to tell if it was Lloyd McClendon, the new skipper, or Robinson Cano, perhaps bringing some moxie and style to a bunch of extras, but whatever the equation they were a fun team to like, but not these M's. They are underperformers, and what's worse is that for the last week or so, the beginning of the second act, they have taken out their inevitably bad season in a series of lopsided wins or losses that feel like a real beating, both internally and externally. I do think bad movies do one of two things, they either bore you to death, or they are SO BAD that they are good. Hopefully, the M's may be so bad they are good but it would take a true baseball aesthete to appreciate it, and something that will be lost on the average fan.
The 2015 M's are bombast, and are more like watching "Showgirls" or some over the top piece of shit, that makes you wonder what went wrong, even if your analytical mind can intrude on your subconscious, and put the pieces together. I just read Josh Wilker's book about "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," and while he's more of a man than me to write it, the scenes he brought back to life of Kelly leak peering out of the blinds at the Astrodome, or Tanner watching 'the Gipper' alone in a motel room, are etched in my mind forever. I'm pretty sure all of my friends loved "Breaking Training" as much as the first film because it really was its own movie, with its own heart and soul, and while it couldn't have existed without the first film, it was really just as good deep down, just a different story with a lot more flaws, so I'd call it a good movie, or a uniquely personal bad movie, or something between good and bad, that only movies know how to do, but it wasn't bombast. These M's are a "Showgirls" and are moving so fast at the speed of bad the fabric of daily life can't keep up with them.
6/20 the solstice: I just saw Taijuan Walker pitch for the first time and he was fantastic, a shining star. The M's have played really good baseball the last two nights against the division leader, and though I wrote this team off less than a week ago, I may go back on that, or at least hedge. I was brought up when the American League and National League had two divisions, and you had to win your division to make it to the playoffs. Now there are three divisions, and a couple of wild cards, so the masters of baseball, the owners and commissioner, made it much easier for slightly above average clubs to advance, and watered down the game.
Rick Rizzs marked the date last night, and I have to admit the M's I saw tonight looked like winners. Taijuan gave up a couple of early solo home runs, but you knew when he settled into his rhythm the Astros were going to have a hard time. The M's also showed some real shots of offense with the long ball, and knew how to get runs without hitting when they took pitches wisely and got a couple of runs walked in early on.
The other big bright spot is they have a new closer, and that could make a big difference. I mean this kid shut down the Astros in 1 and 1/3 innings, something Rodney could never do.
Cano is having a sub-par year, and the best I can say for him is that he looked hurt. Either that, or he was lazy, and I don't want to think of that. Hell, I gave the Moose a high five so things must be looking up!
7/6 The M's played the Tigers tonight in a 7 game homestand bleeding into the all star game. They got destroyed 12-7 as Iwakuma made his return to the mound, but he's no General MacArthur (ha!) and he shall not return. In all seriousness, I really like Iwakuma but I'm afraid his career is over, and that was only one of the rude surprises tonight. The other was just how mediocre a club this is and how there is no coming back from it. If only the MLB hadn't created the wild card NO ONE would be talking about how this club stood a chance of achieving anything, but now that nearly EVERY club is in the running for the wild card at least until August, I'm going to have to listen to the hyper partisan M's announcers talk about how if these guys can only get hot, who knows what glory awaits them!
The best thing that can be said about the 2015 M's is the bombast, and it's thick. I'd say no game could exemplify it more than tonight. The old wounded star comes back to pitch one last time, and he's shellacked. The M's come back in the bottom of the 5th inning to erase a 3-0 deficit to go ahead 5-3, a lead that would have easily won them many games in 2013 and 2014, but not now. The bombast is so thick that I knew a 5-3 come from behind lead couldn't hold, and that say's a lot about a team. These M's are really mediocre, but I'm sure there are worse teams without any of the bombast, and I'll admit it makes them interesting to listen to. Everyone knows they are not good and yet you have to marvel at how bad they are, which can almost convince you they are good, because they don't lose in normal ways, that define a dull loser, so here's to schmaltz, in all of its hideous drama! I can almost imagine this team losing a no-hitter, or something unfathomable like that. There really is no end to how strangely awful they are, a trait that always leaves one guessing, in sports and life.
7/7 Robinson Canoe drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning, to give the M's a dramatic 7-6 victory against the Tigers, and turned this 3 game set into a classic (do I hear rivalry?). Taijuan Walker was on the mound, my favorite M, and he didn't pitch great, but like a great defense in football, Taijuan bent but he did not break, and survived long enough on the rubber to give the M's a victory. He's not immortal yet, but I really think Taijuan has it in him given his youth (I'm not sure he's 22.) The M's were up 5-3 around the 5th inning, and it struck me as a strange that the score was the same as last night before the Tigers broke out for 9 unanswered runs. Like last night, I didn't have any hope the M's could win and indeed the Tigers came back and all but proved the disbelievers right (the disbelievers, ha! The M's are seven or six games below %500!) But tonight the M's overcame their mediocrity for a dramatic victory, and God bless them. There is hope in Mudsville, and hold onto that beer, the bumpy ride continues!
7/10 The M's lost to the Angels ignobly tonight. Boy, is the season in the refrigerator, but the kids and the lovers get into every game, so fuck the critics to kingdom come! I would've been hugging Robinson Canoe too a couple of nights ago. Every game is an eternity!
7/12 I hate to toot my own horn, but boy is this team bombastic! I don't even have to look in the box score anymore. If the M's won on Tuesday, they lost on Wednesday, and if they lost on Thursday, they won on Friday. The M's have absolutely no consistency except for King Felix, but even he isn't having a banner year, and no one is talking Cy Young. The team is getting the fans into the stadium because of all the pre-season hype, and the sheer bombast they bring to the diamond, but gaudiness should never be mistaken for quality, and this team is sincerely lackluster, maybe the only thing they are sincere about.
7/20 The M's were up 5-4 in the 8th and I delivered a pizza to a guy saying they were winning but that I never had faith they'd hold onto a lead. Sure enough, I got into my car and heard someone from the Tigers hit a two run shot to put Detroit ahead in the bottom of the 8th. The M's are so dead on their feet that you knew they wouldn't tie, or God forbid, retake the lead in the top of the 9th, and indeed they went down 1, 2, 3, and left their fans with one of the more stinging defeats of the season. The M's are so bad that every game is a must win, or if that's too dramatic they got to play about %.700 baseball for a few months, but not these losers. I don't know how many times a season can unofficially end, but this one may hold the record.
8/15 The 2015 season is a horrible bloody epic of a B movie, but not even I could have predicted how bombastic things would get. On Wednesday, Iwakuma, a pitcher who I thought was washed up, throws a no hitter in the afternoon, and gives the fans a reason to wake up. The next two games in Boston they give up 15 runs, and then 22 runs, numbers that aren't even possible in baseball.
10/3 It's the last day of the season and the M's suck. They made ripples in early September after a five game winning streak, because in this era of baseball almost ANY team that gets hot in September has a chance of being a wild card, but the M's didn't fail me, and they floundered the second a few sports writers started scribbling something good about them. They are a truly bad team, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly why the season went south, save the obvious like how the bullpen went from one of the best in the league last season, to one of the worst this season, or how the starting rotation was besieged with injuries, but these kinds of stats don't begin to describe the soul of a team, a soul that was sucked out. The Rangers didn't have their ace all year, and they are going to the playoffs so why not the Mariners?
The M's got a new GM and I'm sure he's going to be analyzing questions like this for the next few months, trying to figure out where to begin with a club that showed so little spirit it was odd listening to them. I'm pretty sure good and bad teams are measured by their spirit as much as anything else, because to think the Mariners were plagued by bad luck this season would be folly, considering they got a super human performance by Nelson Cruz, and the ace Felix Hernandez put in another strong season. They petered out in June and only die hard's clinging to pre-season predictions had any reason to hang on after the All Star break, capping another mediocre season in a near history-less franchise, playing a sport based on history. If I have to hear one more time about the momentous day that Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. hit back to back home runs in a meaningless game back in the '90's I'm going to puke.
Well, I just read an interview with Jerry Dipoto the M's new GM, and heard about the great Mariners offense the second half of the season, but I think that's a joke. Anyone at the major league level can play well when NOTHING is on the line, and I listened to nearly 2/3 of the games this season and I don't remember a speck of clutch hitting in the first half or the second half of the season, just bombast one way or the other. This team needs more than a tweak at a position or two, but the baseball Gods will do what they will with the mediocre and maybe the M's will rise next season, but it's going to take a new spirit to fill in those teal blue Friday night suits. Maybe a return to the old suits will do it, the classic Neptunean trident.
There are different kinds of bad movies, or seasons, and I'd say the M's are closer to "Showgirls" than "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," both bad movies, that only a sliver of society would appreciate, and yet bad for different reasons. The "Bears" may have lacked fundamentals, but something beautiful bloomed out that piece of repackaged shit, and the story became about Kelly Leak and his fractured relationship to his father. Jackie Earle Haley gave a James Dean/Montgomery Clift worthy performance, and more than carried what could have been a forgettable piece of schlock into something truly moving, but I don't see that coming out of these M's. They have no heart, and there is no story, but they sure are excitng to watch lose.
I guess bad movies turn good, like baseball seasons, and that may be what happened to the M's in the 2014 season. I compared them to the Bad News Bears last year, or the Eighties Mets, before they won the series, because the M's clearly lacked talent, and yet they made up for it in heart, and super human performances by a bunch of unknowns, especially in the bull pen. It was hard to tell if it was Lloyd McClendon, the new skipper, or Robinson Cano, perhaps bringing some moxie and style to a bunch of extras, but whatever the equation they were a fun team to like, but not these M's. They are underperformers, and what's worse is that for the last week or so, the beginning of the second act, they have taken out their inevitably bad season in a series of lopsided wins or losses that feel like a real beating, both internally and externally. I do think bad movies do one of two things, they either bore you to death, or they are SO BAD that they are good. Hopefully, the M's may be so bad they are good but it would take a true baseball aesthete to appreciate it, and something that will be lost on the average fan.
The 2015 M's are bombast, and are more like watching "Showgirls" or some over the top piece of shit, that makes you wonder what went wrong, even if your analytical mind can intrude on your subconscious, and put the pieces together. I just read Josh Wilker's book about "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," and while he's more of a man than me to write it, the scenes he brought back to life of Kelly leak peering out of the blinds at the Astrodome, or Tanner watching 'the Gipper' alone in a motel room, are etched in my mind forever. I'm pretty sure all of my friends loved "Breaking Training" as much as the first film because it really was its own movie, with its own heart and soul, and while it couldn't have existed without the first film, it was really just as good deep down, just a different story with a lot more flaws, so I'd call it a good movie, or a uniquely personal bad movie, or something between good and bad, that only movies know how to do, but it wasn't bombast. These M's are a "Showgirls" and are moving so fast at the speed of bad the fabric of daily life can't keep up with them.
6/20 the solstice: I just saw Taijuan Walker pitch for the first time and he was fantastic, a shining star. The M's have played really good baseball the last two nights against the division leader, and though I wrote this team off less than a week ago, I may go back on that, or at least hedge. I was brought up when the American League and National League had two divisions, and you had to win your division to make it to the playoffs. Now there are three divisions, and a couple of wild cards, so the masters of baseball, the owners and commissioner, made it much easier for slightly above average clubs to advance, and watered down the game.
Rick Rizzs marked the date last night, and I have to admit the M's I saw tonight looked like winners. Taijuan gave up a couple of early solo home runs, but you knew when he settled into his rhythm the Astros were going to have a hard time. The M's also showed some real shots of offense with the long ball, and knew how to get runs without hitting when they took pitches wisely and got a couple of runs walked in early on.
The other big bright spot is they have a new closer, and that could make a big difference. I mean this kid shut down the Astros in 1 and 1/3 innings, something Rodney could never do.
Cano is having a sub-par year, and the best I can say for him is that he looked hurt. Either that, or he was lazy, and I don't want to think of that. Hell, I gave the Moose a high five so things must be looking up!
7/6 The M's played the Tigers tonight in a 7 game homestand bleeding into the all star game. They got destroyed 12-7 as Iwakuma made his return to the mound, but he's no General MacArthur (ha!) and he shall not return. In all seriousness, I really like Iwakuma but I'm afraid his career is over, and that was only one of the rude surprises tonight. The other was just how mediocre a club this is and how there is no coming back from it. If only the MLB hadn't created the wild card NO ONE would be talking about how this club stood a chance of achieving anything, but now that nearly EVERY club is in the running for the wild card at least until August, I'm going to have to listen to the hyper partisan M's announcers talk about how if these guys can only get hot, who knows what glory awaits them!
The best thing that can be said about the 2015 M's is the bombast, and it's thick. I'd say no game could exemplify it more than tonight. The old wounded star comes back to pitch one last time, and he's shellacked. The M's come back in the bottom of the 5th inning to erase a 3-0 deficit to go ahead 5-3, a lead that would have easily won them many games in 2013 and 2014, but not now. The bombast is so thick that I knew a 5-3 come from behind lead couldn't hold, and that say's a lot about a team. These M's are really mediocre, but I'm sure there are worse teams without any of the bombast, and I'll admit it makes them interesting to listen to. Everyone knows they are not good and yet you have to marvel at how bad they are, which can almost convince you they are good, because they don't lose in normal ways, that define a dull loser, so here's to schmaltz, in all of its hideous drama! I can almost imagine this team losing a no-hitter, or something unfathomable like that. There really is no end to how strangely awful they are, a trait that always leaves one guessing, in sports and life.
7/7 Robinson Canoe drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning, to give the M's a dramatic 7-6 victory against the Tigers, and turned this 3 game set into a classic (do I hear rivalry?). Taijuan Walker was on the mound, my favorite M, and he didn't pitch great, but like a great defense in football, Taijuan bent but he did not break, and survived long enough on the rubber to give the M's a victory. He's not immortal yet, but I really think Taijuan has it in him given his youth (I'm not sure he's 22.) The M's were up 5-3 around the 5th inning, and it struck me as a strange that the score was the same as last night before the Tigers broke out for 9 unanswered runs. Like last night, I didn't have any hope the M's could win and indeed the Tigers came back and all but proved the disbelievers right (the disbelievers, ha! The M's are seven or six games below %500!) But tonight the M's overcame their mediocrity for a dramatic victory, and God bless them. There is hope in Mudsville, and hold onto that beer, the bumpy ride continues!
7/10 The M's lost to the Angels ignobly tonight. Boy, is the season in the refrigerator, but the kids and the lovers get into every game, so fuck the critics to kingdom come! I would've been hugging Robinson Canoe too a couple of nights ago. Every game is an eternity!
7/12 I hate to toot my own horn, but boy is this team bombastic! I don't even have to look in the box score anymore. If the M's won on Tuesday, they lost on Wednesday, and if they lost on Thursday, they won on Friday. The M's have absolutely no consistency except for King Felix, but even he isn't having a banner year, and no one is talking Cy Young. The team is getting the fans into the stadium because of all the pre-season hype, and the sheer bombast they bring to the diamond, but gaudiness should never be mistaken for quality, and this team is sincerely lackluster, maybe the only thing they are sincere about.
7/20 The M's were up 5-4 in the 8th and I delivered a pizza to a guy saying they were winning but that I never had faith they'd hold onto a lead. Sure enough, I got into my car and heard someone from the Tigers hit a two run shot to put Detroit ahead in the bottom of the 8th. The M's are so dead on their feet that you knew they wouldn't tie, or God forbid, retake the lead in the top of the 9th, and indeed they went down 1, 2, 3, and left their fans with one of the more stinging defeats of the season. The M's are so bad that every game is a must win, or if that's too dramatic they got to play about %.700 baseball for a few months, but not these losers. I don't know how many times a season can unofficially end, but this one may hold the record.
8/15 The 2015 season is a horrible bloody epic of a B movie, but not even I could have predicted how bombastic things would get. On Wednesday, Iwakuma, a pitcher who I thought was washed up, throws a no hitter in the afternoon, and gives the fans a reason to wake up. The next two games in Boston they give up 15 runs, and then 22 runs, numbers that aren't even possible in baseball.
10/3 It's the last day of the season and the M's suck. They made ripples in early September after a five game winning streak, because in this era of baseball almost ANY team that gets hot in September has a chance of being a wild card, but the M's didn't fail me, and they floundered the second a few sports writers started scribbling something good about them. They are a truly bad team, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly why the season went south, save the obvious like how the bullpen went from one of the best in the league last season, to one of the worst this season, or how the starting rotation was besieged with injuries, but these kinds of stats don't begin to describe the soul of a team, a soul that was sucked out. The Rangers didn't have their ace all year, and they are going to the playoffs so why not the Mariners?
The M's got a new GM and I'm sure he's going to be analyzing questions like this for the next few months, trying to figure out where to begin with a club that showed so little spirit it was odd listening to them. I'm pretty sure good and bad teams are measured by their spirit as much as anything else, because to think the Mariners were plagued by bad luck this season would be folly, considering they got a super human performance by Nelson Cruz, and the ace Felix Hernandez put in another strong season. They petered out in June and only die hard's clinging to pre-season predictions had any reason to hang on after the All Star break, capping another mediocre season in a near history-less franchise, playing a sport based on history. If I have to hear one more time about the momentous day that Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. hit back to back home runs in a meaningless game back in the '90's I'm going to puke.
Well, I just read an interview with Jerry Dipoto the M's new GM, and heard about the great Mariners offense the second half of the season, but I think that's a joke. Anyone at the major league level can play well when NOTHING is on the line, and I listened to nearly 2/3 of the games this season and I don't remember a speck of clutch hitting in the first half or the second half of the season, just bombast one way or the other. This team needs more than a tweak at a position or two, but the baseball Gods will do what they will with the mediocre and maybe the M's will rise next season, but it's going to take a new spirit to fill in those teal blue Friday night suits. Maybe a return to the old suits will do it, the classic Neptunean trident.
June 4, 2015
The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (the astrodome!)
I woke up insane today and needed a book to get me through the sleepy hours before work, because I wanted nothing more than to hide under the covers like my cat. Yesterday, I got a book from the library about "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," an obscure piece of criticism, that I stumbled upon searching for the movie, but was intrigued. "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," was probably one of my favorite movies of all time, or right up there, and I think a lot of people from my generation would think that born in 1968. There were three Josh's in my class, and the author's name is also Josh (Wilker), and I had a gut feeling I'd be able to relate to his vision, but more than anything was impressed that someone out there in kicksville devoted his life to writing about a movie that most serious critics would laugh off as inferior to the original, that may or may not have been great, and B movie schlock, but the movie is really more than that, and like Josh I saw it when it came out in August '77 during the baseball season, right after the King had died, and was changed. But that didn't mean I was going to like the book, and to be honest I considered immediately returning it when I got it on hold. Well, thank God I didn't, because I read almost the whole 124 small pages today, and felt changed, so thank you Josh Wilker, whoever you are. You really are some kind of kindred spirit on the astral plane.
I feared the book was going to be eggy like so many Gen X critics who've had way too much schooling and are too postmodern to create anything new, but it was pure poetry disguised as criticism, the best kind. Then, I was scared that the book, part of the Deep Focus series put out by Soft Skull press, with the byline "A Novel Approach to Cinema," was going to get too personal, because there were a few sections where Josh drifted into a first person kind of narrative, and while I liked the writing, it wasn't as meaty as the big ideas this brilliant brother of mine, who I've never met, was starting to tap into about MY generation!!!! I mean this guy from Chicago ended up writing about my generation better than I ever have and through criticism, or what the series aptly called "A Novel Approach to Cinema" because it really read like a short novel, or an epic poem, or the best dissertation of all time, or something so perfect, I wished I had written it, but I'm not jealous (I swear I'm not!!!!). I'm just happy someone wrote it.
I think the best art I always find is by accident, and this book is no different. I just read "Ball Four" another great poetic work, but from another generation, when it was in vogue to turn journals into books, and the binding structural conceit would be that the days would be like chapters, but that has been done to death. In many ways, I've thought the novel has been dead for a while, and Wilker lucidly explains how the late Seventies were the end of American economic expansion and everything has been shrinking ever since, or folding in on itself, like all Countries or people in decline, and I really think we've entered the era of the novella, or the mini novel, a form the boomers and their predecessors abhorred, and refused to publish. So, the first thing I like about "The Bad News in Breaking Training" is that it is readable in a day, but a big day, not a small one, when one's life is touched by art.
I'm a BIG Pauline Kael fan and spent years reading her movie reviews that are the best written in the English language, as interpreted by Americans, but Kael was writing for newspapers or magazines, and posed as a critic, though she was often accused of writing about anything but the movie she was reviewing, and this is the point I want to hit with Wilker. He took Pauline Kael's passion, vision, and poetry, but personalized it in his 'novel approach' much more than she ever did, and therefore I see this book as a crucial link in the evolution of American film criticism, and the first I've read since the Sixties! (Siskel and Ebert were great but mainstream!) In true Kael tradition, Wilker chose a B movie, a sequel, a franchise, and one that most people taking them seriously would ignore, but at their own ignorance. Kael was famous for hating the word film (one of my least favorite words in the English language), an no one in their right mind would ever call "The Bad News in Breaking Training" a film (ha!). It was the movie to end all movies, or like Wilker points out a road movie, a coming of age movie, and a sports movie, all wrapped up in one neat ball (meatball!). Like a Kael piece, or any film criticism, it's more fun if you've seen the movie, and I've seen the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" so many times it would make an owl's head spin off! But I haven't seen it in years (and I mean years), so reading through the book was like reliving the movie, and what a great one to relive! It was like reliving the '68 season in "Ball Four," but way more personal, because it wasn't a tale of the year I was born, like Bouton's book, but the decade I inherited, shadowed by the decade to come, the Eighties, when America turned conservative on a dime. The free living lifestyle symbolized by Leak behind the wheel of the van with his shades on was to be never more, so the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" was one of those unconscious tributes to what was and what was to be, a rare work of art, but like all great works of art, unconscious of itself, and Wilker makes this clear through the prism of "The Bad News in Breaking Training," and explains a generation in an almost novel like way, that poetically frees itself from criticism, while being grounded in criticism. A work of genius.
Wilker was right and "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" really was like "Over the Edge," another favorite of mine, that I may have seen more times than the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," but they were equal (Kurt Cobain used "Over the Edge" as an inspiration for "The Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, that my friend Josh Mills was at and Shawn Yanez made them leave!!!!! ("I bore so easily," Yanez wrote in an FB comment, before leaving the social network). I guess the novel approach to cinema is that the review is super long, so it has to become personal at a certain point, or a reflection on America, especially since we know that the author/critic chose the movie out of a deep place in his heart, and by the end bleeds the essence of the celluloid, all cut up in his mind. This is as great a poem to America as any I've read, and that would include Hart Crane's paeon to the Brooklyn Bridge at the turn of the century, simply called "The Bridge," but not simple at all. There's also nothing simple about what Wilker along with Soft Skull press has done here, really remarkable. Together (?), they've realized that a movie can represent something as great as a bridge to a generation born a century later, and can inspire something truly poetic, even if it isn't exactly a novel or criticism, but that's good. Nothing definable is ever threatening but this little book is a bomb, a cherry bomb! I'd literally direct anyone who wanted to understand what it felt like to be born in '68, the year Kennedy and King were assassinated, to read this thin wispy work of solemn grace, because it say's everything I ever could sanely say, and better than I could. Maybe I wrote an actual story that says as much, but not something this opaque, or refracted. "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" eclipses even the slightest germ of this blog, but that's not fair to Wilker. He has done something important for me, by publishing this, and I hope to repay the favor one day, but I haven't finished the book!
I feared the book was going to be eggy like so many Gen X critics who've had way too much schooling and are too postmodern to create anything new, but it was pure poetry disguised as criticism, the best kind. Then, I was scared that the book, part of the Deep Focus series put out by Soft Skull press, with the byline "A Novel Approach to Cinema," was going to get too personal, because there were a few sections where Josh drifted into a first person kind of narrative, and while I liked the writing, it wasn't as meaty as the big ideas this brilliant brother of mine, who I've never met, was starting to tap into about MY generation!!!! I mean this guy from Chicago ended up writing about my generation better than I ever have and through criticism, or what the series aptly called "A Novel Approach to Cinema" because it really read like a short novel, or an epic poem, or the best dissertation of all time, or something so perfect, I wished I had written it, but I'm not jealous (I swear I'm not!!!!). I'm just happy someone wrote it.
I think the best art I always find is by accident, and this book is no different. I just read "Ball Four" another great poetic work, but from another generation, when it was in vogue to turn journals into books, and the binding structural conceit would be that the days would be like chapters, but that has been done to death. In many ways, I've thought the novel has been dead for a while, and Wilker lucidly explains how the late Seventies were the end of American economic expansion and everything has been shrinking ever since, or folding in on itself, like all Countries or people in decline, and I really think we've entered the era of the novella, or the mini novel, a form the boomers and their predecessors abhorred, and refused to publish. So, the first thing I like about "The Bad News in Breaking Training" is that it is readable in a day, but a big day, not a small one, when one's life is touched by art.
I'm a BIG Pauline Kael fan and spent years reading her movie reviews that are the best written in the English language, as interpreted by Americans, but Kael was writing for newspapers or magazines, and posed as a critic, though she was often accused of writing about anything but the movie she was reviewing, and this is the point I want to hit with Wilker. He took Pauline Kael's passion, vision, and poetry, but personalized it in his 'novel approach' much more than she ever did, and therefore I see this book as a crucial link in the evolution of American film criticism, and the first I've read since the Sixties! (Siskel and Ebert were great but mainstream!) In true Kael tradition, Wilker chose a B movie, a sequel, a franchise, and one that most people taking them seriously would ignore, but at their own ignorance. Kael was famous for hating the word film (one of my least favorite words in the English language), an no one in their right mind would ever call "The Bad News in Breaking Training" a film (ha!). It was the movie to end all movies, or like Wilker points out a road movie, a coming of age movie, and a sports movie, all wrapped up in one neat ball (meatball!). Like a Kael piece, or any film criticism, it's more fun if you've seen the movie, and I've seen the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" so many times it would make an owl's head spin off! But I haven't seen it in years (and I mean years), so reading through the book was like reliving the movie, and what a great one to relive! It was like reliving the '68 season in "Ball Four," but way more personal, because it wasn't a tale of the year I was born, like Bouton's book, but the decade I inherited, shadowed by the decade to come, the Eighties, when America turned conservative on a dime. The free living lifestyle symbolized by Leak behind the wheel of the van with his shades on was to be never more, so the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" was one of those unconscious tributes to what was and what was to be, a rare work of art, but like all great works of art, unconscious of itself, and Wilker makes this clear through the prism of "The Bad News in Breaking Training," and explains a generation in an almost novel like way, that poetically frees itself from criticism, while being grounded in criticism. A work of genius.
Wilker was right and "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" really was like "Over the Edge," another favorite of mine, that I may have seen more times than the "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," but they were equal (Kurt Cobain used "Over the Edge" as an inspiration for "The Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, that my friend Josh Mills was at and Shawn Yanez made them leave!!!!! ("I bore so easily," Yanez wrote in an FB comment, before leaving the social network). I guess the novel approach to cinema is that the review is super long, so it has to become personal at a certain point, or a reflection on America, especially since we know that the author/critic chose the movie out of a deep place in his heart, and by the end bleeds the essence of the celluloid, all cut up in his mind. This is as great a poem to America as any I've read, and that would include Hart Crane's paeon to the Brooklyn Bridge at the turn of the century, simply called "The Bridge," but not simple at all. There's also nothing simple about what Wilker along with Soft Skull press has done here, really remarkable. Together (?), they've realized that a movie can represent something as great as a bridge to a generation born a century later, and can inspire something truly poetic, even if it isn't exactly a novel or criticism, but that's good. Nothing definable is ever threatening but this little book is a bomb, a cherry bomb! I'd literally direct anyone who wanted to understand what it felt like to be born in '68, the year Kennedy and King were assassinated, to read this thin wispy work of solemn grace, because it say's everything I ever could sanely say, and better than I could. Maybe I wrote an actual story that says as much, but not something this opaque, or refracted. "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" eclipses even the slightest germ of this blog, but that's not fair to Wilker. He has done something important for me, by publishing this, and I hope to repay the favor one day, but I haven't finished the book!
June 1, 2015
The M's first act, or my hands are going numb and it's not even the bottom of the third inning
I tend to look at life in three act structure, and wrote a blog about a year ago how the baseball season lent itself perfectly to this: the first act runs from April through May, the second from June through August, and the third act from September through October. The first act unofficially ended yesterday, on May 31st, and it has been an exciting one for the Mariners, but not for all the right reasons. The stars of the production have been awesome with Nelson Cruz doing so much better than even an optimist would have thought that it is a wonder to watch, and King Felix is, well, King Felix, on his way to a 20 win season. I'd say the biggest problem the M's had in a sub %.500 opening was with the secondary cast, or what I'll call last year's team. Aside from Cano and Felix, the Mariners were a bunch of no ones last year, who played over their heads, but not too over their heads to have a real sense of reality to them. Last year's squad got hits when they needed to, and the relievers were out of this world, the best in baseball, though I can barely remember a name, and helped win or hold onto marginal leads night after night.
I could be a boring stats man and rattle off all the differences between this year and last year, but that's not writing. This year's team feels like a movie with a big cast and quite frankly it seems to have dwarfed the smaller or less significant members of the team down to nothing, so it's not a good movie, but a fun messy one kind of like the "Cannonball Run" series. The M's lose a lot of games by one run but they are not often 1-0 affairs, or 2-1, so the exciting part is they lose in new ways that promise greatness, but don't seem able to deliver it. Personally, I've gone up and down with this club, and have simultaneously thought they have no chance of winning a pennant to if they could only get their shit together they could win the World Series (the World Serious). The truth probably runs somewhere in the middle, and might be closer to the "Cannonball Run."
This is a fun team, but not for all the right reasons. They rarely play boring games, and though listening isn't exactly a pleasure, it is hard to figure out what team is going to show up from day to day, though they seem to play up or down depending on the opponent. I have no faith they are going to win or lose any game, and like many fans here hope they just hang on long enough at about %.500 to make it to the middle of the second act, the all star break, and then maybe the lesser known actors on the team will gel with the stars, who are all having banner years, and will make this a team, rather than a hodgepodge of stellar individuals, but that's hoping for a lot. I was ready to write this piece on Friday night after listening to Taijuan Walker pitch a great game, a key to the M's success, and thought for sure they'd survived a tumulut opening, and were on their way to being the team they promised to be at the outset of the year, when hope bloomed in March, like the daffodils and the cherry blossom trees in Seattle. Today, I looked at the box score and saw the M's lost the next two games over the weekend, and my heart sank again, realizing this club just doesn't have what it takes.
The hardest part to all of this is that the M's seem so right on paper, that it is hard to know what to pinpoint as the problem, and the announcers have no idea, either. The most obvious point is that the bullpen isn't that good, and yet the feeling seems to sink deeper than this, to something very intangible, that is hard to put a finger on. It's almost like they have no leadership, or no core to the team. The stars don't seem like leaders nor does anyone from the 'no-name' set from last year, and if someone from the 'no name' set was a leader, than he has taken a seat in the blazing light of Cano, Felix, and Cruz, who seem to have teamed up together, and taken it upon themselves to carry the M's to the pennant, but ultimate victory is going to take more than three players. Obviously, this is all speculation because I've never spent a day in the clubhouse, but it is a feeling I get from listening to game after game on the radio, with the neverending season pounding into my brain like a song until every word has been memorized. I wish I could say the 2015 M's were bipolar like last year, but I really don't think the psychological stigma applies, because they are never up for long enough, or down for long enough, to fill one with hope. They've got way more talent on this club than last years team, and I'm afraid that has taken away some of the bipolar magic of last year, that took a unified squad to maintain, because there was a real group sync. This is just a discombulated blockbuster, that may or may not come together, and may show at midnight for years to come if Nelson Cruz sets some records, or Felix wins the Cy Young award.
*Just listened to King Felix give up a grand salami to the Bronx Bombers, and Rick Riz was too terrified to tell grandma to get the rye bread and the mustard out of the cupboards. What a hypocrisy, what a lie the 2015 Mariners have been. This team sucks!!!!!!
** I'm sorry Iwakuma's career may have ended this season. He may have been the spiritual center of the Neptunean M's, and I'm glad I got to see him pitch, when he still blanked the opponent. A coworker pointed out that it was a cruel irony that Iwakuma's first big promotion, bear claw hat night, occurred a few games after he went on the DL, perhaps never to return.
*** 6/2 It's the next night, and a sense of defeat was sinking into everyone, including Ric Rizzs and Aaron Goldsmith, not to mention Shannon Drayer in the post game, analyzing the fuck out of every nuance in an attempt to give the educated fan a ray of hope, but it never works, like a bad politician unable to get a vote. The M's have little to no history as a ball club, and what little they do has to do with defeating the Yankee's in the playoffs of '96, their greatest moment as an organization, and when they became Yankee killers. The rivalry sustained until 2001 when the M's played the Yank's for the AL championship, and even though the M's had beaten the ALL-TIME record for most wins in a season from what I want to say were the '27 Yanks, the Neptunean wonders flailed in the post-season, when the chips were down, and America was under attack. The Yankees came in to save the day.
History wasn't so momentous on June 2nd, 2015, but it was a weird game that the Yankee's either stole from the M's, or that the M's gave to them, and it's getting hard to tell. Rodney could have saved it in the top of the 9th but walked the lead off batter and gave up a run. The Yankee's capitalized in the top of the 11th with 3 runs and put the M's to sleep. Not even Lloyd McClendon's insane theatrics in the 3rd when he got kicked out of the game for protesting a check swing, could ignite the team. These M's are dead, and the sharks can smell blood.
The faltering first act looks like it's going to lead to a complete collapse in the second act, when a movie defines itself. This season is a joke.
**** 6/5/15 The joke continues, or the 'jokus,' as my great baseball friend Jonathan MacKinnon dubbed it. The great J. Huff was pitching for the M's, their only positive surprise, and I'd throw Nelson Cruz into that category except that he was already a star and was expected to excel, and he has up to now, but I see him cooling off, and as frustrated as many before him who give their all to the Mariners only to succumb to mediocrity, and ripped of all hope, or that's how I feel, like the hide ripped off a baseball, with the stitching unraveled.
I was listening to the game tonight, and my car died in the sixth or seventh inning, with the game tied 0-0, and I knew the M's would lose. The feeling was worse though because I really knew the season was over in early June, way earlier than the analysts, pundits, and observers predicted. I shouldn't be surprised since the Mariners are one of the most pathetic major league teams in the history of baseball, one of only two to have never made the world series, and yet the fan base is ravenous. It could be that there is nothing else to do in Seattle since grunge is dead, and Amazon rules. Whatever the reason, this club just can't get their shit together, and even though the M's did something great 'for once in their life' according to Courtney Love, and had the most victories of any time ever (including the '27 Yankees), but they couldn't do the obvious and win the Series, or even get to it. The Yank's beat them in a post 9-11 world and when W. called for baseball to save the Nation, and how fitting for an ex-owner of the Texas Rangers.
The M's buckled under the pressure of leading the Country through a post 9-11 malaise, and I really think this is a point EVERYONE in the city refuses to recognize, and why I'm starting to hate living here like an exile gone to the great Northwest, where there are no Jews, but worse the white supremacist compound Hayden Lake is not far away in beautiful (no joke) Couer D'Elane, Idaho, and you can feel the bad vibrations out until Elliot Bay overlooking the Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound. At the same time, Seattle is a city with a proud labor tradition, and Sawant and the socialists are starting to take over the city, and I hope to go to Town Hall tomorrow to hear Jill Stein, who ran as the Green Party presidential nominee, four years ago, and Kashama Sawant, maybe the most successful socialist in America, wreaking havoc on the city council.
These Mariners are neither revolutionary socialists, or stodgy conservatives. They are a team without an identity, or a house whose structure proved to be faulty a year after some poor fuck went into debt buying it. I don't know who this team is but I know the unbelievable performance they got from the superstar Nelson Cruz in the month of April when he was homering every eighth at bat is over. Don't get me wrong, he should be considered for the MVP just for that, but unfortunately he's not a team leader. What did the cursed M's do with Cruz's super human performance? They played under %.500 baseball (ouch.)
Guess what, Cruz doesn't give a fuck anymore, and 'Robbie' Robinson Cano, the Dominican named after Jackie Robinson, can't handle the Hayden Lake vibe of Seattle, nor can he articulate it, being to new to the city, and is losing his mind. That became clear to me early in the season against the Dodger's in what's now seeming like a pivotal inter-league series (I don't like those), against the L.A. Dodgers in Chavez Ravine. The M's were swept in extra innings two of the three games (if memory serves me well), and in one of them Cano walked home on a walk even though the bases WEREN'T loaded, and was out at home, costing the Mariners the game. I know we all make mistakes and life is not perfect, but I've watched a lot of baseball in my life and something this boneheaded only happens once in a life, like Jim Marshall for the Vikings running a touchdown the wrong way, and giving the opposition a TD.
My car died tonight, and so did the M's. I looked at the box score and they lost 1-0, and are on a five game skid. I'm sorry dear Mariner's fans and my heart bleeds royal blue and gold for you. I know it's a long season, and things can always turn around, but this has been a motherfuckin' bummer. To be more intellectual about it, I'd say the M's had a surprisingly bad first act, that may have gotten some laughs from the audience, but not for the right reasons, and now the second act is coming into focus, and I hate it. I'm afraid the fun is over and Cruz's home runs will let him arbitrate for more money, but his spirit is gone, and so is this teams. They are truly lost, and Lloyd McClendon knows it. He thought he was going to be the next Lou Pinniela.
I could be a boring stats man and rattle off all the differences between this year and last year, but that's not writing. This year's team feels like a movie with a big cast and quite frankly it seems to have dwarfed the smaller or less significant members of the team down to nothing, so it's not a good movie, but a fun messy one kind of like the "Cannonball Run" series. The M's lose a lot of games by one run but they are not often 1-0 affairs, or 2-1, so the exciting part is they lose in new ways that promise greatness, but don't seem able to deliver it. Personally, I've gone up and down with this club, and have simultaneously thought they have no chance of winning a pennant to if they could only get their shit together they could win the World Series (the World Serious). The truth probably runs somewhere in the middle, and might be closer to the "Cannonball Run."
This is a fun team, but not for all the right reasons. They rarely play boring games, and though listening isn't exactly a pleasure, it is hard to figure out what team is going to show up from day to day, though they seem to play up or down depending on the opponent. I have no faith they are going to win or lose any game, and like many fans here hope they just hang on long enough at about %.500 to make it to the middle of the second act, the all star break, and then maybe the lesser known actors on the team will gel with the stars, who are all having banner years, and will make this a team, rather than a hodgepodge of stellar individuals, but that's hoping for a lot. I was ready to write this piece on Friday night after listening to Taijuan Walker pitch a great game, a key to the M's success, and thought for sure they'd survived a tumulut opening, and were on their way to being the team they promised to be at the outset of the year, when hope bloomed in March, like the daffodils and the cherry blossom trees in Seattle. Today, I looked at the box score and saw the M's lost the next two games over the weekend, and my heart sank again, realizing this club just doesn't have what it takes.
The hardest part to all of this is that the M's seem so right on paper, that it is hard to know what to pinpoint as the problem, and the announcers have no idea, either. The most obvious point is that the bullpen isn't that good, and yet the feeling seems to sink deeper than this, to something very intangible, that is hard to put a finger on. It's almost like they have no leadership, or no core to the team. The stars don't seem like leaders nor does anyone from the 'no-name' set from last year, and if someone from the 'no name' set was a leader, than he has taken a seat in the blazing light of Cano, Felix, and Cruz, who seem to have teamed up together, and taken it upon themselves to carry the M's to the pennant, but ultimate victory is going to take more than three players. Obviously, this is all speculation because I've never spent a day in the clubhouse, but it is a feeling I get from listening to game after game on the radio, with the neverending season pounding into my brain like a song until every word has been memorized. I wish I could say the 2015 M's were bipolar like last year, but I really don't think the psychological stigma applies, because they are never up for long enough, or down for long enough, to fill one with hope. They've got way more talent on this club than last years team, and I'm afraid that has taken away some of the bipolar magic of last year, that took a unified squad to maintain, because there was a real group sync. This is just a discombulated blockbuster, that may or may not come together, and may show at midnight for years to come if Nelson Cruz sets some records, or Felix wins the Cy Young award.
*Just listened to King Felix give up a grand salami to the Bronx Bombers, and Rick Riz was too terrified to tell grandma to get the rye bread and the mustard out of the cupboards. What a hypocrisy, what a lie the 2015 Mariners have been. This team sucks!!!!!!
** I'm sorry Iwakuma's career may have ended this season. He may have been the spiritual center of the Neptunean M's, and I'm glad I got to see him pitch, when he still blanked the opponent. A coworker pointed out that it was a cruel irony that Iwakuma's first big promotion, bear claw hat night, occurred a few games after he went on the DL, perhaps never to return.
*** 6/2 It's the next night, and a sense of defeat was sinking into everyone, including Ric Rizzs and Aaron Goldsmith, not to mention Shannon Drayer in the post game, analyzing the fuck out of every nuance in an attempt to give the educated fan a ray of hope, but it never works, like a bad politician unable to get a vote. The M's have little to no history as a ball club, and what little they do has to do with defeating the Yankee's in the playoffs of '96, their greatest moment as an organization, and when they became Yankee killers. The rivalry sustained until 2001 when the M's played the Yank's for the AL championship, and even though the M's had beaten the ALL-TIME record for most wins in a season from what I want to say were the '27 Yanks, the Neptunean wonders flailed in the post-season, when the chips were down, and America was under attack. The Yankees came in to save the day.
History wasn't so momentous on June 2nd, 2015, but it was a weird game that the Yankee's either stole from the M's, or that the M's gave to them, and it's getting hard to tell. Rodney could have saved it in the top of the 9th but walked the lead off batter and gave up a run. The Yankee's capitalized in the top of the 11th with 3 runs and put the M's to sleep. Not even Lloyd McClendon's insane theatrics in the 3rd when he got kicked out of the game for protesting a check swing, could ignite the team. These M's are dead, and the sharks can smell blood.
The faltering first act looks like it's going to lead to a complete collapse in the second act, when a movie defines itself. This season is a joke.
**** 6/5/15 The joke continues, or the 'jokus,' as my great baseball friend Jonathan MacKinnon dubbed it. The great J. Huff was pitching for the M's, their only positive surprise, and I'd throw Nelson Cruz into that category except that he was already a star and was expected to excel, and he has up to now, but I see him cooling off, and as frustrated as many before him who give their all to the Mariners only to succumb to mediocrity, and ripped of all hope, or that's how I feel, like the hide ripped off a baseball, with the stitching unraveled.
I was listening to the game tonight, and my car died in the sixth or seventh inning, with the game tied 0-0, and I knew the M's would lose. The feeling was worse though because I really knew the season was over in early June, way earlier than the analysts, pundits, and observers predicted. I shouldn't be surprised since the Mariners are one of the most pathetic major league teams in the history of baseball, one of only two to have never made the world series, and yet the fan base is ravenous. It could be that there is nothing else to do in Seattle since grunge is dead, and Amazon rules. Whatever the reason, this club just can't get their shit together, and even though the M's did something great 'for once in their life' according to Courtney Love, and had the most victories of any time ever (including the '27 Yankees), but they couldn't do the obvious and win the Series, or even get to it. The Yank's beat them in a post 9-11 world and when W. called for baseball to save the Nation, and how fitting for an ex-owner of the Texas Rangers.
The M's buckled under the pressure of leading the Country through a post 9-11 malaise, and I really think this is a point EVERYONE in the city refuses to recognize, and why I'm starting to hate living here like an exile gone to the great Northwest, where there are no Jews, but worse the white supremacist compound Hayden Lake is not far away in beautiful (no joke) Couer D'Elane, Idaho, and you can feel the bad vibrations out until Elliot Bay overlooking the Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound. At the same time, Seattle is a city with a proud labor tradition, and Sawant and the socialists are starting to take over the city, and I hope to go to Town Hall tomorrow to hear Jill Stein, who ran as the Green Party presidential nominee, four years ago, and Kashama Sawant, maybe the most successful socialist in America, wreaking havoc on the city council.
These Mariners are neither revolutionary socialists, or stodgy conservatives. They are a team without an identity, or a house whose structure proved to be faulty a year after some poor fuck went into debt buying it. I don't know who this team is but I know the unbelievable performance they got from the superstar Nelson Cruz in the month of April when he was homering every eighth at bat is over. Don't get me wrong, he should be considered for the MVP just for that, but unfortunately he's not a team leader. What did the cursed M's do with Cruz's super human performance? They played under %.500 baseball (ouch.)
Guess what, Cruz doesn't give a fuck anymore, and 'Robbie' Robinson Cano, the Dominican named after Jackie Robinson, can't handle the Hayden Lake vibe of Seattle, nor can he articulate it, being to new to the city, and is losing his mind. That became clear to me early in the season against the Dodger's in what's now seeming like a pivotal inter-league series (I don't like those), against the L.A. Dodgers in Chavez Ravine. The M's were swept in extra innings two of the three games (if memory serves me well), and in one of them Cano walked home on a walk even though the bases WEREN'T loaded, and was out at home, costing the Mariners the game. I know we all make mistakes and life is not perfect, but I've watched a lot of baseball in my life and something this boneheaded only happens once in a life, like Jim Marshall for the Vikings running a touchdown the wrong way, and giving the opposition a TD.
My car died tonight, and so did the M's. I looked at the box score and they lost 1-0, and are on a five game skid. I'm sorry dear Mariner's fans and my heart bleeds royal blue and gold for you. I know it's a long season, and things can always turn around, but this has been a motherfuckin' bummer. To be more intellectual about it, I'd say the M's had a surprisingly bad first act, that may have gotten some laughs from the audience, but not for the right reasons, and now the second act is coming into focus, and I hate it. I'm afraid the fun is over and Cruz's home runs will let him arbitrate for more money, but his spirit is gone, and so is this teams. They are truly lost, and Lloyd McClendon knows it. He thought he was going to be the next Lou Pinniela.
May 27, 2015
Bouton's blunders
Ball Four by Jim BoutonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I want to rewrite this whole blog.
I'm not sure how to explain what Bouton did but he made a book that everyone was too scared to tell, and it mirrored both the youthful exuberance of the Sixties, and the sense that the culture had come unhinged, and that our Gods weren't who they seemed, but this wasn't Bouton's fault. I read the intro and I'm not sure who got him to write "Ball Four" but I can imagine an exuberant publisher came up with the day in the days before cable, when people still read, and the market potential must've been incredible, but what the publisher and America got was much more. "Ball Four" is a poetic tale of a natural born outsider who burst onto the American scene like a lightning bolt and disappeared just as quickly, but for a few spare moments had the audacity to do what no ball player had done before him - talk about beaver shooting, drinking, and all the juvenile pranks.
Aesthetically, Bouton's biggest move aside from being a hilarious storyteller, a real baseball clown, was to keep everyone's real name, so in a way his journey with the Pilots for the '68 season can really be read as an ethnography as America at a fixed point in history, in one of the more critically significant historical years in recent times, and not just because I was born in '68!
"Ball Four" was famous for being scandalous in its day, because Biden (woops, that's the Vice President's name, also famous for being a clown) went the distance, and named names, thus making "Ball Four" a work of non fiction, or creative non fiction. But Bouton doesn't do a hatchet job on anyone, and actually infuses almost every player in the story with such love, even when they are 'beaver shooting,' or popping 'greenies' in the pen, that we just fall in love with them. Somehow, "Ball Four" is really about 1968 more than anything through the metaphor of baseball, the greatest metaphor of all. Bouton is the rebellious outsider class clown, but also confronting racism within himself and his fellow players. I once read a Bobby Kennedy oral biography where the interviewees remembered his funeral and how it was so 1968, and how that political way of being was literally dying with Kennedy, and I'd say it died with Bouton in "Ball Four" and he all but summed up the "Big Hair Plastic Grass" era that was to come, while mostly living in the era that was. I understand that the book was just too poetic for baseball to handle, and after reading a few of the add-on pieces that Bouton did to add to his legacy, I'd say he was a one hit wonder, or a great pinch hitter. He is the great example of a man who had one book in him but if I understood the editor's notes correctly, he didn't even write the book. He recited it into a dicta-phone and had a secretary transcribe it, but I wonder how much of a secretary she was, and how much of a writer. Either way, he was a great story teller.
You might have to love baseball to read this book, or want to love baseball, but I think it's a great history lesson, and a useful one from a socio/political/economic view. Bouton basically reveals how the owners did what they wanted with you back in the day, and everyone was so innocent, or unable to challenge them, that the legends played for less than nothing even by today's standards. I loved losing myself in 1968, but my conscious political mind couldn't help but marvel at how major leaguers had no agents or negotiating power at all. You had to be a loud mouth intellectual clown like Bouton to negotiate.... NO AGENTS?!?!? It really was another time and Bouton, of course, is rebelling against the established order, but the rebellion has a very 1968 feel to it of the individual against 'the man.' At the same time, hindsight shows that no matter how selfish and greedy the owners were, baseball would never be that free again. It made me miss the America I was born into.
Part of the greatness to "Ball Four" was that Bouton wasn't allowed to write it, or tell it into a dictaphone, but he had the courage to share his love, even though he knew OB (organized baseball) would hate it. Bouton knew he was going to alienate some friends and create enemies where he never had them before by telling the truth of his travails in the major leagues. Bouton was treading on sacred ground the second he decided to embark on the project, and admits it once or twice in the manuscript, because he was well aware of his political importance, at least for a season, and what a season for the Pilots it was, the most memorable of Bouton's career, and a bust. For most of "Ball Four" Bouton is wondering why the manager won't put him on the mound, and though he's not pissed about it, it's clear he's seen better days as a pitcher, but is really emerging as a voice. Like most great works of art, Bouton was challenging a taboo by writing "Ball Four" and had reason to fear that there would be real retribution for publishing a story so full of life.
The other thing that is so hard to describe about "Ball Four" is how subtle it is. It'll get at big political ideas in an entry and what stands out in my mind now is the one where Bouton told about how no Yankee was supposed to talk about what he was getting paid, and though there was no law stopping anyone from doing it, the implicit threat of management, made everyone shut the fuck up. Always the rebel, or outsider, or both, Bouton made an agreement with a handful of players to buck tradition and always talk about their contracts, and only a couple of guys had the balls to keep the deal. To me, this perfectly explained the stranglehold management and corporate America now has over the working man, and how Bouton was able to interpret the major leaguers as working men, even though they were well paid in their day, but as he put it not much different than if he had gone into real estate, or sold mutual funds, or life insurance.
Nowadays the contracts of great athletes playing one of the three major sports are so out in the open that they are debated on sports radio for some of the most boring and confusing segments of time I've ever experienced. In "Ball Four" Bouton was so old school he'd ask a couple of the guys to share what they were making as a way of unionizing and organizing, because the tables had turned. In the era we're in the contracts of all the players are out in the open because they are able to negotiate freely, but unfortunately have abused this freedom by becoming the greedy owners they hated, like all revolutions do. I'm glad Bouton didn't see this coming, and was pitching free of such thoughts. The modern sports fan sees himself as an indefinably wealthy owner who can throw ten million a year at a so-so shortstop who might never make the hall of fame. I doubt Bouton would have been happy with this because the fun he was having most likely would be impossible now, with how closely watched all of the teams are.
The Mariners announcers admitted the years of the baseball clown were gone and this was sad, but an inevitable fate of acceptability, or rather desirability. Bouton was arguing that the life of a ball player was as good as a regular Joe, but that Bouton would feel compelled to argue this point seems insane. Pitchers are Gods in 2015, plain and simple, and arms are insured like gold rings, not only with money, but the guarantee they'll almost never have to pitch a complete game, an absurd notion even in the Seventies. Being a big league player is the penultimate of success, but "Ball Four" was written before it was ordinary for poor black children in the ghetto to dream in mass of making it in the NFL, NBA, or MLB (NOT the NHL, where there were almost no black people). Sports were a way of getting even with America, through Ma, baseball, and apple pie.
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May 18, 2015
Portrait of a splintered identity: the first season of the Twilight Zone
I had the good fortune of stumbling into a "Twilight Zone" marathon this weekend. They were going in sequential order, from the first episode to the last, all five seasons, or so I think, though it's always up for debate if they are going to show the 4th season with the hour long episodes, but we'll see. I should add that I had Marc Scott Zicree's "Twilight Zone Companion" as a 13 or 14 year old, and it was my favorite book. I all but treated it like a Bible, referencing it and re-referencing it endlessly, so that the spine was worn down, and the pages were creased. Basically, the "Companion" broke down the series episode by episode, with Serling's opening and ending narration in italics, and a brief synopsis of each episode, with commentaries after the episode, that varied in length. Some had anecdotes from the stars on the episode, the director, or the writer, and Zicree would note it for its achievments within the series, giving it some kind of rank though not categorically. I'm pretty sure I caught every episode because I'd mentally mark them off in my book and this was quite an achievment in the days before video, but KTLA did play it from noon to 1, and then from midnight to 1, for most of my childhood, and then miraculously put it on at four in the afternoon when I got home from school for a year or two, and I'd pop a quesadilla in the toaster oven, and settle in. It was my show.
Watching the series last night was like watching it for the first time, and I'm not sure I ever thought I'd have that feeling again. I rented the "Twilight Zone" from the library once or twice, but this made me feel like an archivist, or worse a pop culture guru, who lived for the "Twilight Zone." But having the series magically appear on TV like it used to for me (and for EVERYONE), added to the magic of it. I also came in early enough in the first season to watch about 10 in a row, and I was overwhelmed with a general feeling of the ambience and mood of Serling's vision as if for the first time and it was a revelation. I don't know how to say it or put it but it's almost like the kernel of Serling's immediate vision was to plumb the depths of what it mean to lose your identity and have no idea who you are, a feeling often accompanied by a nervous breakdown, or nervous exhaustion, and set in Eisenhower's America, when the Country was presumbably at the peak of its power and strength. The magical elements of the show, only gave the nervous breakdowns, accompanied by an identity crisis, a deeper feel, because the mind of someone losing their mind is slippery at best, so why not enter the "Twilight Zone" the "land between fact and fiction, shadow and substance, that lies at the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge."
The question of blending identities has never been more lucidly explored in American pop culture, and seeing episode after episode really made this clear like seeing a one man show of Rothko, DeKooning, Bacon, or Pollock, and just being swarmed by the paintings. It made me think that almost the entire oeuvure of David Lynch was an afterthought after the "Twilight Zonce" cracked America's consciousness, two years before J.F.K. This is not to put David Lynch down, but I saw him more clearly as part of a chain, or an evolution, that is often missed. Most aesthetes see Lynch as the beginning and the end about people mysteriously switching identies ("Mulholland Drive," "Lost Highway"), and while Lynch may be the end, he is not the beginningh, not by a long shot. The great victory of the "Twilight Zone" is that through the conceit Serling was able to make clear sense of impossible to describe phenomena in a way a Fifties man could understand, even if the show was for kids and weirdos. They made narrative sense, whereas Lynch asks the audience to make sense of his movies for him, so he must be the necessary link from Serling, but the point shouldn't be lost. I'd almost tell anyone interested in the subject of the mind and how blurry one's sense of reality is to watch the first season of "The Twilight Zone" and stop there, because the show was never more sublime, or haunting. Serling really said all he had to say, I think, in about 30 episodes, but the show went on sometimes majestically, and sometimes forgettably, for four more seasons.
An irony to the beauty and wonder of the first season is that the opening didn't use the iconic guitar lick that will be repeated forever to signify the weird, nor did Serling appear in any of the episodes like he did for the next four seasons with an opening scene and then a camera pan to the narrator, Serling, usually smoking a cigarette, and dressed sharply. Serling's body or face didn't appear at all in the first season, and the murky music that opened the show, was more of a lush background to an opening poem (quoted above), that they took out a lot of the poetry from in the following seasons, even if the song was great. Don't get me wrong, I love the branding of the "Twilight Zone" and think they did a great job, and yet it is inferior to the initial magic of the show that could never be recaptured.
Watching the marathon I could literally see the "Twilight Zone" moving from something indefinable and artistically eternal to something iconic. I should add that the "Twilight Zone" has always lent itself well to marathons, and they were famous when I was a kid, and me and my friends would talk about all the episodes we saw. I partly think this is because the shows don't rely on the same cast, or set, so there is enough variety to keep you interested or like they kept plugging on the Countdown to Decades station it was on (a new station on my TV), 'you wouldn't want to stop binging, you might miss your favorite episode. "The "Twilight Zone" has always been great nostalgia and trivia for people to sit around and remember their favorite episodes, and what they meant to them. I missed most of the second season (probably sleeping and walking), so I should hold my judgment, but I came in to season 3 and little of the magic was there. "The Twilight Zone" ceased being so personal, and relied more on the gimmickry of the conceit than the actual characters or story.
I always knew the first season was the best because Marc Scott Zicree made a case for it, and going through the episodes it was hard to disagree with him. I'm not sure Zicree linked Serling's anxiety up with PTSD from his service in WWII as a paratrooper, but watching the episodes I couldn't help but think that was the case. It was a similar point a recent Salinger biographer made about "The Catcher in the Rye" another story about a nervous breakdown, and the biographer made the claim that Salinger never got over D-Day and that Holden's "Lost Weekend" in New York City, where he loses his mind, was a metaphor for Salinger's return to the States. In the first season of the "Twilight Zone" there was sensitive episode after sensitive episode of a seemingly successful Fifties men absolutely cracking, and either going back to a sweet soft place in their mind, or going off on flights of fancy to take them away from the pressures and strains of the world, where no one understood them.
I know the pop historians would say that the "Twilight Zone" was showing the cracks in the veneer of a seemingly perfect culture, that was actually inhabited by wounded men from the war, knowing everything was not quite right, but I'm not even sure this gets at how subtle Serling was able to show HIS OWN identity crises/nervous breakdown, through a host of different characters or personalities, male and female, week after week, confronting their minds, and finding almost no solution. Sure, Serling as the narrator would watch over these helpless tragic victims, commenting on their story, but he really may as well have been commenting on his own story, for at the least he was like a Mr. Roark of the "Twilight Zone," running his own "Fantasy Island," but at the most was actually living through the breakdowns his characters were suffering in beautiful black and white thirty minute vignettes. (Mr. Roark of "Fantasy Island" was living through the idol worship of his dwarf servant Tattoo.)
I should also add there are plenty of good episodes in the next four seasons, so I don't want this essay to discourage anyone from watching them, but they don't have the same flavor as the early ones. They tended to be morality plays more than mini portraits of identity confusion, and had a staunch very post War message about the rights and needs of justice and law for everyone. They are very noble, but in some ways you could almost argue that these episodes show the split that happens to many artists who start off with a purely aesthetic vision, reach an audience, and then feel they have to say something, or do something, to better the race. I can't blame Serling for this, or Bono for that matter, or Michael Stipe, but usually this phase of an artist's career is not his best, because politics and art don't easily mix. In the artist's defense, I'm not sure Serling could have done much more artistically than the first season, but I fear that he missed this and thought he let everyone down. I know Serling lamented in his later years that he hadn't done enough, or wasn't a good enough writer, but that's not true, and yet I see what he was saying. The brand of "The Twilight Zone" is not the "Twilight Zone," or rather Serling's very personal vision, and the brand took over. It is hard for an artist to admit his best work is behind him, or that he achieved what he set out to do, but Rod Serling may have entered his very own "Twilight Zone" around 1959, and never returned even if he did write the screenplay for the "Planet of the Apes." (ha!) Serling became a sci-fi joke but that too is an afterthought to a brilliant career.
Watching the series last night was like watching it for the first time, and I'm not sure I ever thought I'd have that feeling again. I rented the "Twilight Zone" from the library once or twice, but this made me feel like an archivist, or worse a pop culture guru, who lived for the "Twilight Zone." But having the series magically appear on TV like it used to for me (and for EVERYONE), added to the magic of it. I also came in early enough in the first season to watch about 10 in a row, and I was overwhelmed with a general feeling of the ambience and mood of Serling's vision as if for the first time and it was a revelation. I don't know how to say it or put it but it's almost like the kernel of Serling's immediate vision was to plumb the depths of what it mean to lose your identity and have no idea who you are, a feeling often accompanied by a nervous breakdown, or nervous exhaustion, and set in Eisenhower's America, when the Country was presumbably at the peak of its power and strength. The magical elements of the show, only gave the nervous breakdowns, accompanied by an identity crisis, a deeper feel, because the mind of someone losing their mind is slippery at best, so why not enter the "Twilight Zone" the "land between fact and fiction, shadow and substance, that lies at the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge."
The question of blending identities has never been more lucidly explored in American pop culture, and seeing episode after episode really made this clear like seeing a one man show of Rothko, DeKooning, Bacon, or Pollock, and just being swarmed by the paintings. It made me think that almost the entire oeuvure of David Lynch was an afterthought after the "Twilight Zonce" cracked America's consciousness, two years before J.F.K. This is not to put David Lynch down, but I saw him more clearly as part of a chain, or an evolution, that is often missed. Most aesthetes see Lynch as the beginning and the end about people mysteriously switching identies ("Mulholland Drive," "Lost Highway"), and while Lynch may be the end, he is not the beginningh, not by a long shot. The great victory of the "Twilight Zone" is that through the conceit Serling was able to make clear sense of impossible to describe phenomena in a way a Fifties man could understand, even if the show was for kids and weirdos. They made narrative sense, whereas Lynch asks the audience to make sense of his movies for him, so he must be the necessary link from Serling, but the point shouldn't be lost. I'd almost tell anyone interested in the subject of the mind and how blurry one's sense of reality is to watch the first season of "The Twilight Zone" and stop there, because the show was never more sublime, or haunting. Serling really said all he had to say, I think, in about 30 episodes, but the show went on sometimes majestically, and sometimes forgettably, for four more seasons.
An irony to the beauty and wonder of the first season is that the opening didn't use the iconic guitar lick that will be repeated forever to signify the weird, nor did Serling appear in any of the episodes like he did for the next four seasons with an opening scene and then a camera pan to the narrator, Serling, usually smoking a cigarette, and dressed sharply. Serling's body or face didn't appear at all in the first season, and the murky music that opened the show, was more of a lush background to an opening poem (quoted above), that they took out a lot of the poetry from in the following seasons, even if the song was great. Don't get me wrong, I love the branding of the "Twilight Zone" and think they did a great job, and yet it is inferior to the initial magic of the show that could never be recaptured.
Watching the marathon I could literally see the "Twilight Zone" moving from something indefinable and artistically eternal to something iconic. I should add that the "Twilight Zone" has always lent itself well to marathons, and they were famous when I was a kid, and me and my friends would talk about all the episodes we saw. I partly think this is because the shows don't rely on the same cast, or set, so there is enough variety to keep you interested or like they kept plugging on the Countdown to Decades station it was on (a new station on my TV), 'you wouldn't want to stop binging, you might miss your favorite episode. "The "Twilight Zone" has always been great nostalgia and trivia for people to sit around and remember their favorite episodes, and what they meant to them. I missed most of the second season (probably sleeping and walking), so I should hold my judgment, but I came in to season 3 and little of the magic was there. "The Twilight Zone" ceased being so personal, and relied more on the gimmickry of the conceit than the actual characters or story.
I always knew the first season was the best because Marc Scott Zicree made a case for it, and going through the episodes it was hard to disagree with him. I'm not sure Zicree linked Serling's anxiety up with PTSD from his service in WWII as a paratrooper, but watching the episodes I couldn't help but think that was the case. It was a similar point a recent Salinger biographer made about "The Catcher in the Rye" another story about a nervous breakdown, and the biographer made the claim that Salinger never got over D-Day and that Holden's "Lost Weekend" in New York City, where he loses his mind, was a metaphor for Salinger's return to the States. In the first season of the "Twilight Zone" there was sensitive episode after sensitive episode of a seemingly successful Fifties men absolutely cracking, and either going back to a sweet soft place in their mind, or going off on flights of fancy to take them away from the pressures and strains of the world, where no one understood them.
I know the pop historians would say that the "Twilight Zone" was showing the cracks in the veneer of a seemingly perfect culture, that was actually inhabited by wounded men from the war, knowing everything was not quite right, but I'm not even sure this gets at how subtle Serling was able to show HIS OWN identity crises/nervous breakdown, through a host of different characters or personalities, male and female, week after week, confronting their minds, and finding almost no solution. Sure, Serling as the narrator would watch over these helpless tragic victims, commenting on their story, but he really may as well have been commenting on his own story, for at the least he was like a Mr. Roark of the "Twilight Zone," running his own "Fantasy Island," but at the most was actually living through the breakdowns his characters were suffering in beautiful black and white thirty minute vignettes. (Mr. Roark of "Fantasy Island" was living through the idol worship of his dwarf servant Tattoo.)
I should also add there are plenty of good episodes in the next four seasons, so I don't want this essay to discourage anyone from watching them, but they don't have the same flavor as the early ones. They tended to be morality plays more than mini portraits of identity confusion, and had a staunch very post War message about the rights and needs of justice and law for everyone. They are very noble, but in some ways you could almost argue that these episodes show the split that happens to many artists who start off with a purely aesthetic vision, reach an audience, and then feel they have to say something, or do something, to better the race. I can't blame Serling for this, or Bono for that matter, or Michael Stipe, but usually this phase of an artist's career is not his best, because politics and art don't easily mix. In the artist's defense, I'm not sure Serling could have done much more artistically than the first season, but I fear that he missed this and thought he let everyone down. I know Serling lamented in his later years that he hadn't done enough, or wasn't a good enough writer, but that's not true, and yet I see what he was saying. The brand of "The Twilight Zone" is not the "Twilight Zone," or rather Serling's very personal vision, and the brand took over. It is hard for an artist to admit his best work is behind him, or that he achieved what he set out to do, but Rod Serling may have entered his very own "Twilight Zone" around 1959, and never returned even if he did write the screenplay for the "Planet of the Apes." (ha!) Serling became a sci-fi joke but that too is an afterthought to a brilliant career.
April 14, 2015
Robert Altman through the eyes of Noah Bombast as Seth Kupchick
I've written a lot about movies but have barely mentioned, Robert Altman, my favorite director. I haven't known whether to focus on one of his movies or his career in general, and to make it worse I'm not sure ANY of his movies make it to my top ten film fan list, though "Nashville" might, but even that doesn't beat something as cheesy as "The Way We Were," "The Graduate," "Five Easy Pieces," "The Heartbreak Kid," or a slew of movies from the late Sixties and early Seventies. But what Altman had was something bigger than a great movie, he had great movie after great movie, and each seemed like a piece in a bigger puzzle. Lots of people talk about his big ensemble casts, and how he'd interweave four or five stories at once, or the improvisational nature of a script, that may or may not have existed, and how he let the actors create and be. I know something about the way he looped audio, and gave us a million seemingly small but important snippets of conversation, letting the viewer eavesdrop on the movie the way the characters were doing on screen and erasing all bounds between the viewer and the actors. I'm also not sure any of this really gets at how much I loved the guy's movies and how they gave me a reason for living.
I first saw "Nashville" when I was 21 and though I'd accidentally seen some Altman movies before that (MASH), I didn't identify him as a director worth studying, maybe because the Boomers I knew didn't really worship at his throne. From the old school, Stanley Kubrick was considered the greatest filmmaker of his time, and from the new school they were really into Woody Allen, Scorsese, and Coppola, but Altman was a litttle out there, and didn't get mentioned much, save for MASH, and maybe because it was a hit TV show. I do remember them religiously showing "MASH" once a year after a Monday Night Football game, because the movie ended with one of the great football sequences ever, along with "The Longest Yard" (a great early Burt Reynolds flick), but Altman was more part of the landscape than the landscape, and most of his movies slipped under my radar. VCR's came out around the time I was in high school (take that Hipsters!), and by the time I turned 21 I finally saw "Nashville," a film I'd heard about for years, as being Altman's best, but had never seen. I still remember watching it in my parents living room with the lights out and hadn't felt that changed by a movie in my life. I'd loved thousands and in a couple of my favorites like "The Graduate," or "Easy Rider," I'd even seen parts of myself that I was looking for desperately in the film, but this had more to do with a search for identity, and the aesthetics carried me along. I'm not sure I saw myself in any of the 20 or so characters in "Nashville" but more importantly I saw what was possible in MOVIES, and that's why I wrote Robert Altman gave me a reason to live.
I was very lost as a young man but wanted to be an artist and the art I loved best was the movies because I was from L.A. and had a natural feeling for them in a way I didn't music. Movies were my art, but I actually thought they were everyone's art, because I was taught movies were for the masses, like a poor man's theater, and the real theater that you paid big money for was for snobs, but that was another time and now I feel like an aesthete for liking movies, something I would have never believed as a kid. "Nashville" appealed to the aesthete in me in a way I doubt a movie ever will again, and while that makes me sad, it also makes me happy with wonder that I was ever able to feel something so deeply, or truly, because my love for him wasn't mere idolatry like it was for Benjamin Braddock or Captain America, meaning I didn't want to be Altman, I just felt his overwhelming comic/absurd/ballet like vision of America wash over me in celluloid strips that were like a collage vision I had in my mind, splicing up reality every day driving through L.A., and the palm trees. I don't really have words to describe it but "Nashville" made me feel I could be an artist and make it in Hollywood with all my ideals intact.
Robert Altman had a revival in the early Nineties with "The Player" and "Short Cuts," the first a classic of an era, and the second a classic of any era. It lodged him into the popular consciousness in a way he wasn't in the Seventies, at least for my generation, and Altman was rightly coronated as one of the great filmmakers of an era, if not the one, but for my money he is THE great filmmaker of any era. I don't have it in me to do one of those laundry lists films critics are famous for and what idiots have tried to copy, but his influence can be seen in many movies of the Nineties ("Boogie Nights"). The reason I started thinking about him today was the movie "Greenberg," which to me had a lot of Altman in it. In some ways, Noah Baumbach (Bombast!), may be the equivalent of what I dreamed of for myself in the early Nineties in my parents downstairs living room watching "Nashville" and thinking anything was possible, but Baumbach is hardly a clone. He also has a lot of Allen/Mazursky/Ashby running through him also from an era many consider one of the best in American cinema. I saw Altman in Greta Gerwig's eyes and Henry's Taco T-Shirt driving through a Southern California afternoon with the radio on.
"Greenberg" has almost no plot, and one of Altman's great contributions to me was the way he freed movies from plot, and really let them breathe. I know that this trend may have been done to death by now, and we may be at a point where we need plot again like in a 40's Noir, but the freedom from it in the early Seventies was never more crystallized than in the work of Altman. His plotless movies were as fascinating as the most tightly wound script with tricks and surprises every other page, and at the worst they were 'flascinating' (a combination of fascinating and flat). People loved the way he used overlapping voices to get the feel of a restaurant, because in some ways Altman was the biggest movie fan of all and he was eavesdropping in on his own creations like he was the ultimate viewer, and managed to erase himself from the story almost completely, except as the ultimate voyeur, and this was his point of view, and also why people weren't inclined to think of him as the greatest director until later in his life, because he barely existed on the screen, bringing very little of his ego into the ensembles, but orchestrating them like a symphony conductor in control of every nuance. Altman epitomized 'negative capability' as a filmmaker in a way that none of his peers did, maybe because he was a decade or so older, making him from a different generation, or it may have been his God given character, but Altman's ego was never the centerpiece of his movies like it was for many of the greats, and this is why he's my favorite and not a favorite, like Scorsese/Allen/Coppola, or a couple of others I'm forgetting. Altman possessed a real negative capability that Noah Bombast doesn't in the least, and why the comparison is ultimately aesthetic. I'm afraid I haven't reached Altman's negative capability in my own writing so I'm in the same boat as Noah Bombast, but our spiritual father, Robert Altman, taught us both how to free up a story.
Part of the negative capability that Altman gave to cinema had to do with cinema verite (Godard), and the popularity of documentary filmmaking in the early Seventies, epitomized by the great PBS series "An American Family," that I wrote a blog about by the same name. The documentarians of the day were involved with capturing real life and I'd guess were influenced by the theory of cultural relativism that had taken over anthropology, and the humanities in general. I was a creative writing major, as I also testified to in a blog (Oh the shame...), so I don't know much about anthropology, but my guess would be that the norms of every culture were relative to that culture and even the purest scientific investigation distorted the norm. This was a struggle the documentarians of "An American Family," acted out for us, and why the couple who filmed them were mad at Craig Gilbert for tampering with the purity of the experiment by having dinner with Pat Loud, the matriarch of the family. They felt this was a breach of trust and ruining the good faith they were trying to build with the Loud's by living in their Santa Barbara house and blending with the family as much as possible for people with characters and cameras trying to capture real life.
"Greenberg" was definitely an attempt to recreate this cinema verite documentary filmmaking technique, albeit with a seemingly autobiographical character in Roger Greenberg, putting the film somewhere between Woody Allen and Robert Altman. "While We're Young," the unofficial sequel to "Greenberg," actually relied on an almost Noir like plot that made the viewer go back through the story at the end to unravel a hustle, nothing Altman would have ever done, or if he did he would have subverted the intent. "While We're Young" was a plot heavy movie about a documentarian full of the ideals that spurred on "An American Family," in a movie that had nothing to do with cinema verite. It may have been Baumbach's Gen X ironic statement, considering his last great movie "Frances Ha" was almost a modern day Sixties Godard piece. To make it crazier, "While We're Young" ends with a speech about film and truth that you could imagine Robert Altman giving, even if the speaker is disingenuous, and the whole plot revolves around this eternal theme.
8/18 Bombast has a new movie coming out with his screen/siren Greta Gerwig, and I can't blame him for falling for her, nor can I blame him for falling in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh, the guy has good taste. I'm sure I'll like this movie because like a goofy guy with a stupid crush I like Greta Gerwig, and find her acting enough to keep me interested, even if the movie sucks. "While we're Young," didn't have Gerwig, so maybe I just like Gerwig/Baumbach together, even if it meant breaking Jennifer Jason Leigh's heart, who I feel sorry for, but not too sorry, since I had a secret crush on her like many teenage boys who saw "Fast Times," even more than Phoebe Cates, even though Phoebe was sexier. I give Baumbach credit for being more accessible than Wes Anderson, his buddy, while at the same time being more memorable, a hard feat in movies, or any popular art.
I first saw "Nashville" when I was 21 and though I'd accidentally seen some Altman movies before that (MASH), I didn't identify him as a director worth studying, maybe because the Boomers I knew didn't really worship at his throne. From the old school, Stanley Kubrick was considered the greatest filmmaker of his time, and from the new school they were really into Woody Allen, Scorsese, and Coppola, but Altman was a litttle out there, and didn't get mentioned much, save for MASH, and maybe because it was a hit TV show. I do remember them religiously showing "MASH" once a year after a Monday Night Football game, because the movie ended with one of the great football sequences ever, along with "The Longest Yard" (a great early Burt Reynolds flick), but Altman was more part of the landscape than the landscape, and most of his movies slipped under my radar. VCR's came out around the time I was in high school (take that Hipsters!), and by the time I turned 21 I finally saw "Nashville," a film I'd heard about for years, as being Altman's best, but had never seen. I still remember watching it in my parents living room with the lights out and hadn't felt that changed by a movie in my life. I'd loved thousands and in a couple of my favorites like "The Graduate," or "Easy Rider," I'd even seen parts of myself that I was looking for desperately in the film, but this had more to do with a search for identity, and the aesthetics carried me along. I'm not sure I saw myself in any of the 20 or so characters in "Nashville" but more importantly I saw what was possible in MOVIES, and that's why I wrote Robert Altman gave me a reason to live.
I was very lost as a young man but wanted to be an artist and the art I loved best was the movies because I was from L.A. and had a natural feeling for them in a way I didn't music. Movies were my art, but I actually thought they were everyone's art, because I was taught movies were for the masses, like a poor man's theater, and the real theater that you paid big money for was for snobs, but that was another time and now I feel like an aesthete for liking movies, something I would have never believed as a kid. "Nashville" appealed to the aesthete in me in a way I doubt a movie ever will again, and while that makes me sad, it also makes me happy with wonder that I was ever able to feel something so deeply, or truly, because my love for him wasn't mere idolatry like it was for Benjamin Braddock or Captain America, meaning I didn't want to be Altman, I just felt his overwhelming comic/absurd/ballet like vision of America wash over me in celluloid strips that were like a collage vision I had in my mind, splicing up reality every day driving through L.A., and the palm trees. I don't really have words to describe it but "Nashville" made me feel I could be an artist and make it in Hollywood with all my ideals intact.
Robert Altman had a revival in the early Nineties with "The Player" and "Short Cuts," the first a classic of an era, and the second a classic of any era. It lodged him into the popular consciousness in a way he wasn't in the Seventies, at least for my generation, and Altman was rightly coronated as one of the great filmmakers of an era, if not the one, but for my money he is THE great filmmaker of any era. I don't have it in me to do one of those laundry lists films critics are famous for and what idiots have tried to copy, but his influence can be seen in many movies of the Nineties ("Boogie Nights"). The reason I started thinking about him today was the movie "Greenberg," which to me had a lot of Altman in it. In some ways, Noah Baumbach (Bombast!), may be the equivalent of what I dreamed of for myself in the early Nineties in my parents downstairs living room watching "Nashville" and thinking anything was possible, but Baumbach is hardly a clone. He also has a lot of Allen/Mazursky/Ashby running through him also from an era many consider one of the best in American cinema. I saw Altman in Greta Gerwig's eyes and Henry's Taco T-Shirt driving through a Southern California afternoon with the radio on.
"Greenberg" has almost no plot, and one of Altman's great contributions to me was the way he freed movies from plot, and really let them breathe. I know that this trend may have been done to death by now, and we may be at a point where we need plot again like in a 40's Noir, but the freedom from it in the early Seventies was never more crystallized than in the work of Altman. His plotless movies were as fascinating as the most tightly wound script with tricks and surprises every other page, and at the worst they were 'flascinating' (a combination of fascinating and flat). People loved the way he used overlapping voices to get the feel of a restaurant, because in some ways Altman was the biggest movie fan of all and he was eavesdropping in on his own creations like he was the ultimate viewer, and managed to erase himself from the story almost completely, except as the ultimate voyeur, and this was his point of view, and also why people weren't inclined to think of him as the greatest director until later in his life, because he barely existed on the screen, bringing very little of his ego into the ensembles, but orchestrating them like a symphony conductor in control of every nuance. Altman epitomized 'negative capability' as a filmmaker in a way that none of his peers did, maybe because he was a decade or so older, making him from a different generation, or it may have been his God given character, but Altman's ego was never the centerpiece of his movies like it was for many of the greats, and this is why he's my favorite and not a favorite, like Scorsese/Allen/Coppola, or a couple of others I'm forgetting. Altman possessed a real negative capability that Noah Bombast doesn't in the least, and why the comparison is ultimately aesthetic. I'm afraid I haven't reached Altman's negative capability in my own writing so I'm in the same boat as Noah Bombast, but our spiritual father, Robert Altman, taught us both how to free up a story.
Part of the negative capability that Altman gave to cinema had to do with cinema verite (Godard), and the popularity of documentary filmmaking in the early Seventies, epitomized by the great PBS series "An American Family," that I wrote a blog about by the same name. The documentarians of the day were involved with capturing real life and I'd guess were influenced by the theory of cultural relativism that had taken over anthropology, and the humanities in general. I was a creative writing major, as I also testified to in a blog (Oh the shame...), so I don't know much about anthropology, but my guess would be that the norms of every culture were relative to that culture and even the purest scientific investigation distorted the norm. This was a struggle the documentarians of "An American Family," acted out for us, and why the couple who filmed them were mad at Craig Gilbert for tampering with the purity of the experiment by having dinner with Pat Loud, the matriarch of the family. They felt this was a breach of trust and ruining the good faith they were trying to build with the Loud's by living in their Santa Barbara house and blending with the family as much as possible for people with characters and cameras trying to capture real life.
"Greenberg" was definitely an attempt to recreate this cinema verite documentary filmmaking technique, albeit with a seemingly autobiographical character in Roger Greenberg, putting the film somewhere between Woody Allen and Robert Altman. "While We're Young," the unofficial sequel to "Greenberg," actually relied on an almost Noir like plot that made the viewer go back through the story at the end to unravel a hustle, nothing Altman would have ever done, or if he did he would have subverted the intent. "While We're Young" was a plot heavy movie about a documentarian full of the ideals that spurred on "An American Family," in a movie that had nothing to do with cinema verite. It may have been Baumbach's Gen X ironic statement, considering his last great movie "Frances Ha" was almost a modern day Sixties Godard piece. To make it crazier, "While We're Young" ends with a speech about film and truth that you could imagine Robert Altman giving, even if the speaker is disingenuous, and the whole plot revolves around this eternal theme.
8/18 Bombast has a new movie coming out with his screen/siren Greta Gerwig, and I can't blame him for falling for her, nor can I blame him for falling in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh, the guy has good taste. I'm sure I'll like this movie because like a goofy guy with a stupid crush I like Greta Gerwig, and find her acting enough to keep me interested, even if the movie sucks. "While we're Young," didn't have Gerwig, so maybe I just like Gerwig/Baumbach together, even if it meant breaking Jennifer Jason Leigh's heart, who I feel sorry for, but not too sorry, since I had a secret crush on her like many teenage boys who saw "Fast Times," even more than Phoebe Cates, even though Phoebe was sexier. I give Baumbach credit for being more accessible than Wes Anderson, his buddy, while at the same time being more memorable, a hard feat in movies, or any popular art.
April 11, 2015
The M's first act
I realize we're in the first act of the baseball season, but that almost makes it sound like the movie has really begun, or the season, as the case may be. The M's are four games into their season, starting their second series, so I'd guess the theatergoers have sat down with their popcorn, and the stragglers (me!) are finding their seats, but the coming attractions have come and gone, and we're at the point where it's rude to still be talking when the opening credits roll, but you're allowed to do that in movies, or certain people accept it. I always thought it was fair to talk at the very beginning of movies, because they really didn't pretend to be high art, and only became so accidentally. If you wanted the stuffy old theater or opera then you'd go to that, but the movies were fun, and you could talk in them, without disturbing the actors, only the moviegoers around you.
The Mariner's have been the equivalent of a B movie for so long, that it would seem perfectly natural to talk through the beginning of a game, or maybe even a season. They are truly one of the worst teams in sports, and have let down the fans here year in and year out, so that most Seattleites barely get excited for opening day, but this year was supposed to be different. We were supposed to hold our breath, and watch this team jump out of the gate like a thoroughbred on the inside post certain of victory, and opening day was optimistic. King Felix pitched well and the team got some runs, but they've hit a three game losing streak early on, and all the old problems of last year, and the year before, and the year before, are sinking in. Most notably, the hitting sucks and that has been their problem for this installment of the M's, the post Griffey/Ichiro/Edgar/Buhner era. I knew I should be worried when several friends told me the M's had been getting good pre-season press, and this worried them unduly, but maybe they are bigger Mariners fans than I will ever be.
I'm a pizza driver and I've taken the M's on because the games are little symphonies to me when I drive around, but some years are better than others. Last year, was very fun to listen to because the M's had no expectations, and were better in spots than they were the previous year, when they were awful, but more so were exciting to listen to, and that's a hard thing to describe. The best words I have are that you knew that they felt they could win every time they went out to the diamond, and this was an unbelievable feeling for a ball team crushed by history, in a sport based on history more than the others, the national pastime. They weren't my favorite team of all time, but like I wrote they had the feeling of the early Eighties Mets before they went to the series, and this was refreshing. They had a new skipper, a 'cool cat' in the words of Shannon Drayer, Lloyd McClendon, and the M's felt free of a mediocre history throughout the season, even though they missed the playoffs by a game. When they looked like they were about to falter in late August, they bounced back, and a baseball season really is grueling, so like a movie they kept the fans attention, leaving us wanting more. The 2015 season is the sequel to the exciting 2014 season and they are either going to go to the playoffs or bomb, because given the expectations put on them they can't repeat a performance like last year, as fun as it was. They've either got to top it, or sink low.
I moved to Seattle in '96 when the M's were on fire and arguably had their greatest season ever when they unexpectedly beat the Yankees in the playoff, and then had the best winning record in a regular season five years later making them THE Seattle team not the Seahawks, but boy do times change. Mariners fans have almost become ashamed to admit it, and it strikes me that this must be how it was growing up an M's fan in the Eighties and early Nineties, when they were a terrible franchise who never got their shit together. In the last five or six years the M's have slipped back into the mediocrity they sprung from, making only die hard's remember that SAFECO field, a great baseball park, was the house that Griffey built. Oh yeah, the taxpayers really built it after SAFECO was voted down on a ballot initiative, but that's another story for another day, and say's more about sports dominance in the society than any pithy remark.
Structurally, the season is very young, and the announcers are reveling in it. They are discounting the terrible opening scene of the 2015 season as an anomaly to an otherwise great picture we've yet to see, but I wonder if that's how it's going to go down. I want to laugh along with them at how silly it is to write off a season after 5 games, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you this was a horrible harbinger, and they are lying to, or obscuring the truth, because they are salesmen and women for the Mariners organization, and they can't let on that all is not right, especially given the hoopla and the better attendance. Shit, I listened to Shannon Drayer talk about how the M's are happier on the road than at home because they are not weighed down by the routine of life, and can really concentrate. It was the weirdest reason I ever heard especially since I was taught and the very rules agree that home field advantage, is an 'advantage.' You win it at the end of the season by having the BEST record, not the second best, and only a team as historically hapless as the Mariners would take excuses like that to heart. I know the announcers are M's fans and to be fair are exerting some wisdom, because this opening stumble will be forgotten if the M's end up in a pennant race, or God forbid the World Series. But a fall from grace really took shape tonight with a 12-0 drubbing by the Oakland A's, a division rival, and it felt really monumental. The offense was terrible save for Austin Jackson who got a couple of singles, but not one of my favorite acquisitions (he's boring).
I'm going to put on my pessimist's suit now and tell my loyal Mariner fans who I love and want to succeed, my dark vision of the season. Last year's M's were exciting but a lot of this had to do with them being under the radar and exceeding expectation, and would take a real fan in the bleachers to spot. Late in the first act of the season, or maybe into the second act, a transition from May to June, I recall listening to many Mariners post game shows, with Shannon Drayer et al., talking about how on paper the M's shouldn't have been doing as well as they were, and that there was something special about the club. Sure, they had the same problems with the offense as the 2013 squad when they must have lost a thousand games 1-0, or 2-1, making it one of the most maddening seasons ever, but the offense also showed brilliant flashes of light when they'd break out with a 12 run ball game, or more impressively, come from behind late in the game and score a few runs when it mattered. Not to analyze it too much but their timing was very good last year, and this can't be calculated or gauged by the men in the front office. I'm not a big baseball fan outside of the Mariners because I don't have cable and see very little but I fear Nelson Cruz, the acquisition who was really supposed to put the offense over the top is over the hill at 36 years old. Rick Riz calls him 'Nellie' and while this may have been Nelson Cruz's nickname for his whole career it troubles me, and only adds to my fear that Ol' Nellie has seen his best days like many veterans who come to the Mariners to die. Aside from Nellie, I'm not sure what the M's have done to trigger the offense and after listening to the new DH strike out in a comeback attempt in the bottom of the 8th against the Angels, I fear another mediocre season, but the season is young and as the announcers keep reminding me this team will come alive, right?
As a disclaimer, these sports pieces are hard to write (I wrote right, and that scares me some more, thinking I must be subconsciously right). If I was working for a legitimate online magazine or publication, I would be held accountable for my hunches. What if the 2015 M's turn it around in May, or by mid April, and end up winning the World Series. I'd be out of a job, but thankfully I don't have one, and don't have to think about such things.
*it's April 22nd, deeper into the first act, and my piece was pretty much right, except for the comments on Nelson Cruz, 'Ol Nellie.' He has been tremendous and if he was here last year for the pennant run the Mariners timing would be perfect.
*On May 6th, the M's lost two games to the Angels in the bottom of the 9th or 10th. They remind me of that quote about a beauty having all the right parts in all the wrong places.
The Mariner's have been the equivalent of a B movie for so long, that it would seem perfectly natural to talk through the beginning of a game, or maybe even a season. They are truly one of the worst teams in sports, and have let down the fans here year in and year out, so that most Seattleites barely get excited for opening day, but this year was supposed to be different. We were supposed to hold our breath, and watch this team jump out of the gate like a thoroughbred on the inside post certain of victory, and opening day was optimistic. King Felix pitched well and the team got some runs, but they've hit a three game losing streak early on, and all the old problems of last year, and the year before, and the year before, are sinking in. Most notably, the hitting sucks and that has been their problem for this installment of the M's, the post Griffey/Ichiro/Edgar/Buhner era. I knew I should be worried when several friends told me the M's had been getting good pre-season press, and this worried them unduly, but maybe they are bigger Mariners fans than I will ever be.
I'm a pizza driver and I've taken the M's on because the games are little symphonies to me when I drive around, but some years are better than others. Last year, was very fun to listen to because the M's had no expectations, and were better in spots than they were the previous year, when they were awful, but more so were exciting to listen to, and that's a hard thing to describe. The best words I have are that you knew that they felt they could win every time they went out to the diamond, and this was an unbelievable feeling for a ball team crushed by history, in a sport based on history more than the others, the national pastime. They weren't my favorite team of all time, but like I wrote they had the feeling of the early Eighties Mets before they went to the series, and this was refreshing. They had a new skipper, a 'cool cat' in the words of Shannon Drayer, Lloyd McClendon, and the M's felt free of a mediocre history throughout the season, even though they missed the playoffs by a game. When they looked like they were about to falter in late August, they bounced back, and a baseball season really is grueling, so like a movie they kept the fans attention, leaving us wanting more. The 2015 season is the sequel to the exciting 2014 season and they are either going to go to the playoffs or bomb, because given the expectations put on them they can't repeat a performance like last year, as fun as it was. They've either got to top it, or sink low.
I moved to Seattle in '96 when the M's were on fire and arguably had their greatest season ever when they unexpectedly beat the Yankees in the playoff, and then had the best winning record in a regular season five years later making them THE Seattle team not the Seahawks, but boy do times change. Mariners fans have almost become ashamed to admit it, and it strikes me that this must be how it was growing up an M's fan in the Eighties and early Nineties, when they were a terrible franchise who never got their shit together. In the last five or six years the M's have slipped back into the mediocrity they sprung from, making only die hard's remember that SAFECO field, a great baseball park, was the house that Griffey built. Oh yeah, the taxpayers really built it after SAFECO was voted down on a ballot initiative, but that's another story for another day, and say's more about sports dominance in the society than any pithy remark.
Structurally, the season is very young, and the announcers are reveling in it. They are discounting the terrible opening scene of the 2015 season as an anomaly to an otherwise great picture we've yet to see, but I wonder if that's how it's going to go down. I want to laugh along with them at how silly it is to write off a season after 5 games, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you this was a horrible harbinger, and they are lying to, or obscuring the truth, because they are salesmen and women for the Mariners organization, and they can't let on that all is not right, especially given the hoopla and the better attendance. Shit, I listened to Shannon Drayer talk about how the M's are happier on the road than at home because they are not weighed down by the routine of life, and can really concentrate. It was the weirdest reason I ever heard especially since I was taught and the very rules agree that home field advantage, is an 'advantage.' You win it at the end of the season by having the BEST record, not the second best, and only a team as historically hapless as the Mariners would take excuses like that to heart. I know the announcers are M's fans and to be fair are exerting some wisdom, because this opening stumble will be forgotten if the M's end up in a pennant race, or God forbid the World Series. But a fall from grace really took shape tonight with a 12-0 drubbing by the Oakland A's, a division rival, and it felt really monumental. The offense was terrible save for Austin Jackson who got a couple of singles, but not one of my favorite acquisitions (he's boring).
I'm going to put on my pessimist's suit now and tell my loyal Mariner fans who I love and want to succeed, my dark vision of the season. Last year's M's were exciting but a lot of this had to do with them being under the radar and exceeding expectation, and would take a real fan in the bleachers to spot. Late in the first act of the season, or maybe into the second act, a transition from May to June, I recall listening to many Mariners post game shows, with Shannon Drayer et al., talking about how on paper the M's shouldn't have been doing as well as they were, and that there was something special about the club. Sure, they had the same problems with the offense as the 2013 squad when they must have lost a thousand games 1-0, or 2-1, making it one of the most maddening seasons ever, but the offense also showed brilliant flashes of light when they'd break out with a 12 run ball game, or more impressively, come from behind late in the game and score a few runs when it mattered. Not to analyze it too much but their timing was very good last year, and this can't be calculated or gauged by the men in the front office. I'm not a big baseball fan outside of the Mariners because I don't have cable and see very little but I fear Nelson Cruz, the acquisition who was really supposed to put the offense over the top is over the hill at 36 years old. Rick Riz calls him 'Nellie' and while this may have been Nelson Cruz's nickname for his whole career it troubles me, and only adds to my fear that Ol' Nellie has seen his best days like many veterans who come to the Mariners to die. Aside from Nellie, I'm not sure what the M's have done to trigger the offense and after listening to the new DH strike out in a comeback attempt in the bottom of the 8th against the Angels, I fear another mediocre season, but the season is young and as the announcers keep reminding me this team will come alive, right?
As a disclaimer, these sports pieces are hard to write (I wrote right, and that scares me some more, thinking I must be subconsciously right). If I was working for a legitimate online magazine or publication, I would be held accountable for my hunches. What if the 2015 M's turn it around in May, or by mid April, and end up winning the World Series. I'd be out of a job, but thankfully I don't have one, and don't have to think about such things.
*it's April 22nd, deeper into the first act, and my piece was pretty much right, except for the comments on Nelson Cruz, 'Ol Nellie.' He has been tremendous and if he was here last year for the pennant run the Mariners timing would be perfect.
*On May 6th, the M's lost two games to the Angels in the bottom of the 9th or 10th. They remind me of that quote about a beauty having all the right parts in all the wrong places.
April 6, 2015
Oh the shame, I was a creative writing major
I've only really been ashamed of two biographical truths in my life to the point where I've lied about them, or obfuscated the truth. I had middle class shame for being from Beverly Hills, even though I wasn't even from Beverly Hills, but I was close enough, and there is the shame.... I'm still lying about it! The second is being a creative writing major from the University of California at Santa Cruz, but the school really deserves the acronym it gets 'U.C.S.C.' I always felt the words 'creative writing major' painted me as the flakiest person alive, but this isn't fair, because I was sweating bullets to get into the program at least partly founded by Raymond Carver, the great fiction writer of his generation. You had to apply to get into the major, and my self esteem was so low that I really worried I wasn't going to get in, and my college education would be ruined. I was returning to U.C.S.C. with a goal other than dropping out, which I did after my sophomore year like Bob Dylan (he actually dropped out after his freshman year, but not before rushing for a frat!). I really wanted to do something bold when I was 18 and I'm sure this is because I wanted to go to the military deep down, like all young men with balls, but that had been denied us by the boomers, who fought to end the draft like a man would a death sentence.
My favorite movie was "Taps" and I saw myself as Timothy Hutton in that movie, a leader of a revolutionary militia inspired by George C. Scott (he played Patton), a member of the WW II generation, who had the insight to see the Country was being taken over by real estate moguls, both killing the homesteader gentleman farmer vision of the Country, while simultaneously creating a caste system. I tried living out this dream in the 8th grade when I created the Spanish Union, and had us strike for the hell of it. I hadn't read Abbie Hoffman's book "Revolution For The Hell Of It," but that was my goal. A generation that had taught me to stand up to the man had capitulated by the time I went to college, and I wasn't allowed to think of myself as a 'drop out,' or a 'sophomore': 'drop out' was specific to the Sixties, and somehow the academic industrial complex had become too thick a web by the Eighties to even give the students this freedom, so that 'drop outs' were 'slackers,' a slang word with none of the weight or action implied by dropping out. As for the word 'sophomore' it reeked of academic tradition, something Santa Cruz was shedding itself from through the filter of feminist theory that leaked (ha!) into psychology, art history, biology, chemistry, and anything in between. I'm sure something about the word 'sophomore' would be synonymous with patriarchal hierarchy, not the most poetic sensibility but I was too young to get it.
I quickly failed at being the next Bob Dylan. (I accidentally wrote Boy Dylan, and this would capture it, since he was a symbol of youth to me like James Dean, making it at 19 years old in Greenwich Village!) I didn't like performing, and I'd lost my passion for the guitar, but I didn't lose my passion for art, and like all talentless dilettantes I decided to be a writer, but I didn't want to be a creative writing major. I didn't even know they existed. My idea of being a writer was a recluse like Salinger, or a Beatnik outsider like Kerouac , or a mystic like Hesse, or a Parisian bohemian like Hemingway. I didn't have an academic focus my first two years of college, because I was mostly focused on dropping out, but had to work up the energy to get there, and officially had no major. I became a creative writing major because a good friend at a book store where I worked, had a father who was a big shot in American letters, and this impressed me a lot. I'd just decided to be a writer and already had an impressive contact without really trying, and this only confirmed my feelings of being destined for being a writer, a feeling I really needed to get me through the day. My friend got me to apply to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, because he'd gone there for a decade or so as his Father's right hand man, and he was in with the 'in crowd.' Bread Loaf was in the countryside of Vermont, and a very romantic magical looking place, that the conference atendees used to their advantage, and the prestige of the conference.
I was so young and innoncent when I applied that I didn't really consider the political dimensions of the conference so much, only the artistic ones, and getting in was like getting published, one of the most affirming moments I've ever had in my professional life. Bread Loaf gave me a brief direction, but it also short circuited my idea of being a 'drop out,' in the traditional sense, especially when I learned at Bread Loaf that all the teachers were creative writing professors around America. I didn't laugh at the 'creative writing' major like a true fuck up would have, and had such a good experience at Bread Loaf I thought I could take the energy outside of the conference into the real world, through a creative writing program. In some ways, my decision really was coming from a mature place, because I wanted to be the best writer I could, and thought this would be the best way to do it. I had to admit I wasn't educated enough in anything, and needed to really beef up if I wanted to be in a position to tell anyone anything. I actually became a creative writing major out of humility, but I believed in the program in a way that I find unbelievable right now, but not just now over twenty years later, because I found it unbelievable after a quarter or two, and all but opted out of the major. I couldn't think of a more useless thing for someone to study in college, except that it gave me some encouragement to carry on as a writer, because I got some good feedback in the workshops, but I'm not sure what else it did for me. I took as few workshops as I could to graduate and the best thing about the major was that it gave me the freedom to study a lot of other things that I was interested in, like civil war history, and I was more proud of my minor in history, than my major in creative writing, but that's putting it mildly. I didn't admit to people that I majored in creative writing, and said I studied American history under my breath, thinking it more dignified.
I just watched season 3 of "Girls" and may have written my review of Dunham and company a little too early, or maybe not, but I enjoyed the season, even if it was trash. It ends with Hannah (Dunham), getting into the Iowa MFA program, which is (was) the gold standard, even in my day, and it brought my destiny, or lack thereof, back to me like a slap of cold water in the face. I saw her excitement when she was accepted and remembered myself being told I'd gotten into Bread Loaf, and felt like her when she hugged the acceptance letter to her chest, one of the best moments she'll ever know in her life. I got the feeling and I don't think anyone is allowed it very much in life, if at all, and that's what actors try to tell you when they win an oscar, and what I felt when my mentor loved my story, a feeling I'll never get over. Now I'm not sure Lena Dunham meant to make any big statement on Iowa, or creative writing majors, but she was on the verge of making it as a writer in New York, and that meant very little to her in comparison to simply being accepted to Iowa for a life in letters. I mean she got a young publisher to champion her work, and when he died, she went to a publishing house also run by her peers, and was told that they were going to publish a hard back cover of her book, and without going too much into the plot, one of the weaknesses of "Girls," she's not nearly as excited as she is when she receives her acceptance letter.
Hannah is 25 years old on "Girls," the same age I was when I lived my story, "If So Carried by the Wind, Become the Wind," and I can say for me that acceptance from my elders was very important for my development. The support Hannah is getting on the show is from her peers, but she doesn't really dissect this too much in the script. Either way, Iowa represents a greater success in the literary world than getting published, and this is a huge flip of the equation I was working on when I decided to take the plunge and be a creative writing major. I didn't see the major as an end in itself, but a way to get published and get my voice out into the world like a real man of destiny, but this may be where I screwed up, and missed the bigger picture. The creative writing major is a gateway to an MFA at Iowa, the highest honor, but even lesser programs promise a professorship, not a readership, which guarantees a living wage, but I wanted to be a writer, not a teacher, and by a writer I meant an artist, a gift the program promised, since it wasn't a literature course. We've reached the point where the man of destiny is in the ivory tower, and the student is in the streets, where he's always been, but the goal isn't getting published it is to keep the world shut out in Iowa.
Lena Dunham may go to Iowa in season 4, or maybe she already has, since I'm always a season behind on my HBO shows, and check them out from the library. "Girls" may turn the MFA program on its head and reveal it for a piece of shit, albeit I'm sure Hannah will sleep with a professor or two in the process, because one of her endearing traits is that she is willing to drag herself into the mud with everyone else, but the poet in her may scream out bloody murder, and I'd love it if she did. Maybe she's setting us up because how could Iowa compare to New York City, the home of publishing, and the world the program was supposed to set you up for at least in theory. The irony is too thick and I really don't think enough has been done in the popular arts to shine a light on the baby boomer phenomena in academia that sucked up my generation in a fish net, myself included, and set us up not for publication in New York, where the people lived, but in Iowa and all the small towns around it,w here the professors are hiding, writing their poems. Like everything else in life, the creative writing program at U.C.S.C. shaped me, and I'm sure it wasn't all bad. I got to sit in a room with other writers work-shopping stories, and if nothing else met my peers. I gained a foothold in a world and an identity I wouldn't have had if I wasn't a creative writing major, so it was with a sense of irony I mumbled 'I studied American history.' If I had only been an American history major, I would have never thought of myself as a poet, but at what price? The future of art is not in academia nor will it ever be as long as art is a reflection of life. Society is shut out in academia, a place for scholarly monk types, and there are only so many stories of professors sleeping with their students that are interesting, and those ended in the late Eighties! The rebuttal I have in my mind is that the idea of the artist reflecting his times and being read by the people implies the people can read and are educated, a dream I grew up on, and a reality I thought I'd be facing as I grew older in America, but maybe this was wishful thinking. In a society, where the masses are shut out of learning, maybe the only place for art to go is academia, our modern day equivalent of the court. Sure, the oil painters of the day put in touches for each other that advanced art, but within a narrow frame. Maybe the artist has been condemned to academia by his own selfishness at getting tenure at a University, and publishing poems no one reads. "Girls" would seem to be saying that if you want to reach the people go into theater like Adam Driver, or join a band like Marnie, but don't be a writer, and I'd agree.
My favorite movie was "Taps" and I saw myself as Timothy Hutton in that movie, a leader of a revolutionary militia inspired by George C. Scott (he played Patton), a member of the WW II generation, who had the insight to see the Country was being taken over by real estate moguls, both killing the homesteader gentleman farmer vision of the Country, while simultaneously creating a caste system. I tried living out this dream in the 8th grade when I created the Spanish Union, and had us strike for the hell of it. I hadn't read Abbie Hoffman's book "Revolution For The Hell Of It," but that was my goal. A generation that had taught me to stand up to the man had capitulated by the time I went to college, and I wasn't allowed to think of myself as a 'drop out,' or a 'sophomore': 'drop out' was specific to the Sixties, and somehow the academic industrial complex had become too thick a web by the Eighties to even give the students this freedom, so that 'drop outs' were 'slackers,' a slang word with none of the weight or action implied by dropping out. As for the word 'sophomore' it reeked of academic tradition, something Santa Cruz was shedding itself from through the filter of feminist theory that leaked (ha!) into psychology, art history, biology, chemistry, and anything in between. I'm sure something about the word 'sophomore' would be synonymous with patriarchal hierarchy, not the most poetic sensibility but I was too young to get it.
I quickly failed at being the next Bob Dylan. (I accidentally wrote Boy Dylan, and this would capture it, since he was a symbol of youth to me like James Dean, making it at 19 years old in Greenwich Village!) I didn't like performing, and I'd lost my passion for the guitar, but I didn't lose my passion for art, and like all talentless dilettantes I decided to be a writer, but I didn't want to be a creative writing major. I didn't even know they existed. My idea of being a writer was a recluse like Salinger, or a Beatnik outsider like Kerouac , or a mystic like Hesse, or a Parisian bohemian like Hemingway. I didn't have an academic focus my first two years of college, because I was mostly focused on dropping out, but had to work up the energy to get there, and officially had no major. I became a creative writing major because a good friend at a book store where I worked, had a father who was a big shot in American letters, and this impressed me a lot. I'd just decided to be a writer and already had an impressive contact without really trying, and this only confirmed my feelings of being destined for being a writer, a feeling I really needed to get me through the day. My friend got me to apply to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, because he'd gone there for a decade or so as his Father's right hand man, and he was in with the 'in crowd.' Bread Loaf was in the countryside of Vermont, and a very romantic magical looking place, that the conference atendees used to their advantage, and the prestige of the conference.
I was so young and innoncent when I applied that I didn't really consider the political dimensions of the conference so much, only the artistic ones, and getting in was like getting published, one of the most affirming moments I've ever had in my professional life. Bread Loaf gave me a brief direction, but it also short circuited my idea of being a 'drop out,' in the traditional sense, especially when I learned at Bread Loaf that all the teachers were creative writing professors around America. I didn't laugh at the 'creative writing' major like a true fuck up would have, and had such a good experience at Bread Loaf I thought I could take the energy outside of the conference into the real world, through a creative writing program. In some ways, my decision really was coming from a mature place, because I wanted to be the best writer I could, and thought this would be the best way to do it. I had to admit I wasn't educated enough in anything, and needed to really beef up if I wanted to be in a position to tell anyone anything. I actually became a creative writing major out of humility, but I believed in the program in a way that I find unbelievable right now, but not just now over twenty years later, because I found it unbelievable after a quarter or two, and all but opted out of the major. I couldn't think of a more useless thing for someone to study in college, except that it gave me some encouragement to carry on as a writer, because I got some good feedback in the workshops, but I'm not sure what else it did for me. I took as few workshops as I could to graduate and the best thing about the major was that it gave me the freedom to study a lot of other things that I was interested in, like civil war history, and I was more proud of my minor in history, than my major in creative writing, but that's putting it mildly. I didn't admit to people that I majored in creative writing, and said I studied American history under my breath, thinking it more dignified.
I just watched season 3 of "Girls" and may have written my review of Dunham and company a little too early, or maybe not, but I enjoyed the season, even if it was trash. It ends with Hannah (Dunham), getting into the Iowa MFA program, which is (was) the gold standard, even in my day, and it brought my destiny, or lack thereof, back to me like a slap of cold water in the face. I saw her excitement when she was accepted and remembered myself being told I'd gotten into Bread Loaf, and felt like her when she hugged the acceptance letter to her chest, one of the best moments she'll ever know in her life. I got the feeling and I don't think anyone is allowed it very much in life, if at all, and that's what actors try to tell you when they win an oscar, and what I felt when my mentor loved my story, a feeling I'll never get over. Now I'm not sure Lena Dunham meant to make any big statement on Iowa, or creative writing majors, but she was on the verge of making it as a writer in New York, and that meant very little to her in comparison to simply being accepted to Iowa for a life in letters. I mean she got a young publisher to champion her work, and when he died, she went to a publishing house also run by her peers, and was told that they were going to publish a hard back cover of her book, and without going too much into the plot, one of the weaknesses of "Girls," she's not nearly as excited as she is when she receives her acceptance letter.
Hannah is 25 years old on "Girls," the same age I was when I lived my story, "If So Carried by the Wind, Become the Wind," and I can say for me that acceptance from my elders was very important for my development. The support Hannah is getting on the show is from her peers, but she doesn't really dissect this too much in the script. Either way, Iowa represents a greater success in the literary world than getting published, and this is a huge flip of the equation I was working on when I decided to take the plunge and be a creative writing major. I didn't see the major as an end in itself, but a way to get published and get my voice out into the world like a real man of destiny, but this may be where I screwed up, and missed the bigger picture. The creative writing major is a gateway to an MFA at Iowa, the highest honor, but even lesser programs promise a professorship, not a readership, which guarantees a living wage, but I wanted to be a writer, not a teacher, and by a writer I meant an artist, a gift the program promised, since it wasn't a literature course. We've reached the point where the man of destiny is in the ivory tower, and the student is in the streets, where he's always been, but the goal isn't getting published it is to keep the world shut out in Iowa.
Lena Dunham may go to Iowa in season 4, or maybe she already has, since I'm always a season behind on my HBO shows, and check them out from the library. "Girls" may turn the MFA program on its head and reveal it for a piece of shit, albeit I'm sure Hannah will sleep with a professor or two in the process, because one of her endearing traits is that she is willing to drag herself into the mud with everyone else, but the poet in her may scream out bloody murder, and I'd love it if she did. Maybe she's setting us up because how could Iowa compare to New York City, the home of publishing, and the world the program was supposed to set you up for at least in theory. The irony is too thick and I really don't think enough has been done in the popular arts to shine a light on the baby boomer phenomena in academia that sucked up my generation in a fish net, myself included, and set us up not for publication in New York, where the people lived, but in Iowa and all the small towns around it,w here the professors are hiding, writing their poems. Like everything else in life, the creative writing program at U.C.S.C. shaped me, and I'm sure it wasn't all bad. I got to sit in a room with other writers work-shopping stories, and if nothing else met my peers. I gained a foothold in a world and an identity I wouldn't have had if I wasn't a creative writing major, so it was with a sense of irony I mumbled 'I studied American history.' If I had only been an American history major, I would have never thought of myself as a poet, but at what price? The future of art is not in academia nor will it ever be as long as art is a reflection of life. Society is shut out in academia, a place for scholarly monk types, and there are only so many stories of professors sleeping with their students that are interesting, and those ended in the late Eighties! The rebuttal I have in my mind is that the idea of the artist reflecting his times and being read by the people implies the people can read and are educated, a dream I grew up on, and a reality I thought I'd be facing as I grew older in America, but maybe this was wishful thinking. In a society, where the masses are shut out of learning, maybe the only place for art to go is academia, our modern day equivalent of the court. Sure, the oil painters of the day put in touches for each other that advanced art, but within a narrow frame. Maybe the artist has been condemned to academia by his own selfishness at getting tenure at a University, and publishing poems no one reads. "Girls" would seem to be saying that if you want to reach the people go into theater like Adam Driver, or join a band like Marnie, but don't be a writer, and I'd agree.
March 31, 2015
The Gurls
I don't want to hate "Girls." I liked "Tiny Furniture," Dunham's breakthrough minor movie gem, that wowed the critics, and got her a show, winning the likes of Judd Apatow to her side. The coming attraction for HBO said, "I don't want to be the voice of my generation, but a voice of a generation," and the switch was clever. Lena Dunham is clever, actually, and a new "That Girl," though this show has none of the pizzazz. Perhaps, the critics made too much of "Tiny Furniture," hoping they'd all discovered the true voice of Gen Y, since every generation 'throws a hero at the pop charts,' in the words of Paul Simon. Dunham was a Gen Y hero, and I got into her career as a voyeur, trying to understand my times.
I agreed with the critics (Schrader, and Ephron, on the special features), that "Tiny Furniture" was a strangely exciting piece, but why? Well, it mixed the best of 'mumblecore' (long drawn out scenes, with lots of dialogue, like the French New Wave, or at least "Breathless"). It also wasn't 'mumblecore' and this excited the critics thinking they'd found a hybrid in Dunham, and for that movie they may have, but "Tine Furniture" was a gem, like Miranda July's "Me, You, and Everyone We Know."
It wasn't a hard hitting movie trying to be the best of all time, and so light it would be hard to go there, but it was well written and conceived, a creative movie. I enjoyed it but I wasn't sure what I was receiving from Gen Y except that the main character, Dunham, was naked through lots of the movie with graphic sex scenes for an 'R' rated movie, and this was a surprise, especially since she didn't have a traditionally good figure, fit for a woman's magazine. From a feminist point of view, it was clear she was challenging body image issues, but the quality of the script, made you forget this as secondary, or more importantly integral to the plot, like gratuitous sex scenes must always be to have a place in a good movie, or a TV episode (will be discussed later).
I wasn't a pure critic with Dunham and this tainted me. I wanted to believe in her myth as much as the next guy, and just because she made a good minor movie, I wanted to think she was the real deal. In the Seventies, a minor gem would've gotten you another movie and then you'd prove yourself, but it made Dunham a legend before the first episode of Girls aired on HBO. Judd Apatow, of the 'Apatow Dream Factory,' got his hands on the overweight Dunham, and they formed a team. Right off the bat, I was dubious since Apatow is the bard of my generation, Gen X, and I don't think his fingerprints should be on "Girls." I also think that Dunham is something of a whore and wanted Apatow's name on her show, but that gets to my current frustration with her, and maybe what taints the project from the outset.
I don't think there's an episode of "Girls" that really outdoes "Tiny Furniture," which stars Dunham's Mother, and really gets into a hard parental relationship, that the show all but obliterates, making parents very secondary, like all sitcoms about sexy young or middle age people. Dunham did a minor work of art with "Tiny Furniture," and turned it into a full blown melodrama of a sitcom with "Girls," a larger than life flamboyant mess. There are parts of "Girls" that are great, and parts that are awful, but I'm on season 3 and it is very boring, way too boring. I'm not even sure it's awful, and that makes it worse, but even if the show is a failure, it had a good couple of years, and I should be happy for Dunham entering my life, but am I?
Right now, I hate her. The bar was set very high for "Girls" and there aren't many shows so brazenly about women. Ironically, the star of the show is Adam Driver, Hana's boyfriend (Dunham's character), and he has a real danger to him, much more than any other character on the show. He's the most memorable character on the show and while it's great for the girls to have a memorable boyfriend (think 'Mr. Big' on Sex and the City), it's not good when that character accidentally eclipses everyone else in the script, but such is the way of fame. Dunham has made herself almost irrelevant by season 3, and it's hard to say why, except she's too self consciously trying to create her character, and the writer's mind gets in the way of the script.
"Girls" mostly fails because the show is about four female friends like "Sex and the City" but none of them have any chemistry with each other, and this is a gaping wound. Dunham's Hana is saved because she has (had?) great chemistry with Adam Driver, and they pushed the show forward. Two of the characters, Jessa and Marnie, drown in the waters of oblivion every week, and in the case of Jessa this is peculiarly troubling, because her character is the only one directly taken over from "Tiny Furniture," a movie where she all but stole the show with the insouciance of an L'Enfant terrible, but she has none of this in "Girls." She's a horribly written junkie that has become unreal by season 3. Marnie, the pretty girl, is so boring and sexless, it's hard to remember she even exists, even though she's cute enough. She's the Charlotte, but without any of the former's charm. The indisputably best girl aside from Hana, is Shoshanna, played by the playwright David Mamet's daughter. She's the real zinger of the show, the real Uranian energy, and she's saved an episode or two from being a complete waste of time. She is one of those great TV characters, but I'd say it has little to do with the script, and everything to do with her delivery, that is simultaneously angsty and innocent, leaving the mind bewildered.
There is nothing exceptional about "Girls" except the promise to show you THE significant show of a generation, and that is exceptional. The bar has been set very high for these "Girls" and i'm not sure they are up to the task. I like trashy television that borders on brilliant, and 'Girls' has a lot of this, especially in the first season or two, and lots of good episodes. Dunham may have not needed to go into utter bombast after "Tiny Furniture" but she did and the result is something much more Roman than she would've otherwise left behind, and why I think people are becoming uncomfortable championing her, unless they are sycophants in the art world, amazed at her success.
Critically, I can't tell if this bombast has been good or bad for her. If Dunham's career had ended after "Tiny Furniture" she would've gone down as a one hit wonder, but a one hit mostly among critics from the older generation, who those of the younger generation always look towards for approval, and she got it in spades. Boomer and Gen X critics hailed "Tiny Furniture" as a God send, but I wonder if they weren't doing what I was doing and looking for the next big thing, not feeling it. Dunham certainly feels like the next 'big thing' (wink... wink), because she is a larger than life talent, but talent isn't necessarily genius, and this may be where the equation falls apart. I'm not convinced "Girls" is brilliant in the least. It's trashy fun, and better than most shows, but that doesn't make it one for the ages. It may be one for the ages because of the hype around it and how like "Gidget" it explained the new generation, but I don't feel like it explains much, except for Dunhma's 'Botero' body, that smashes pre judgments on beauty, but that's old by season 3, and has become decadent.
These are a critic's outpourings, not a feminist or anyone with a socio/political agenda. I like "Girls" but less and less. It mixes soap with sitcom, but doesn't really achieve either.
* I really should've written more about Dunham's nude Botero body since that is what she will be remembered for. She was audacious to be so free with her body, and if there is a defining body weight characteristic of Gen Y it's that they aren't ashamed to be fat like my generation was. It's almost like they are admitting the empty hole in their lives needs to be filled with junk.
Obviously, Dunham is an exhibitionist but a very artistic one. I'd argue the only real new inroad she has made artistically is her nudity, and it is what she will be remembered for. She makes the audience confront its own expectations of the female body in a new way, and that's not easy. Sure, there's a love of soft porn in it, but it's this lighthearted play that makes it so funny, or repulsive, to look at her, depending on your taste. Somehow, the nudity doesn't come off as desperate but more comical than anything, and this may be her great gift, her body!
* I do love the joke in the third season of Marnie singing that Edie Brickel song "what I am." I love it when she sings the lines 'philosophy is on a cereal box,' making her sound so pseudo intellectual it's off the charts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsFEa...
I agreed with the critics (Schrader, and Ephron, on the special features), that "Tiny Furniture" was a strangely exciting piece, but why? Well, it mixed the best of 'mumblecore' (long drawn out scenes, with lots of dialogue, like the French New Wave, or at least "Breathless"). It also wasn't 'mumblecore' and this excited the critics thinking they'd found a hybrid in Dunham, and for that movie they may have, but "Tine Furniture" was a gem, like Miranda July's "Me, You, and Everyone We Know."
It wasn't a hard hitting movie trying to be the best of all time, and so light it would be hard to go there, but it was well written and conceived, a creative movie. I enjoyed it but I wasn't sure what I was receiving from Gen Y except that the main character, Dunham, was naked through lots of the movie with graphic sex scenes for an 'R' rated movie, and this was a surprise, especially since she didn't have a traditionally good figure, fit for a woman's magazine. From a feminist point of view, it was clear she was challenging body image issues, but the quality of the script, made you forget this as secondary, or more importantly integral to the plot, like gratuitous sex scenes must always be to have a place in a good movie, or a TV episode (will be discussed later).
I wasn't a pure critic with Dunham and this tainted me. I wanted to believe in her myth as much as the next guy, and just because she made a good minor movie, I wanted to think she was the real deal. In the Seventies, a minor gem would've gotten you another movie and then you'd prove yourself, but it made Dunham a legend before the first episode of Girls aired on HBO. Judd Apatow, of the 'Apatow Dream Factory,' got his hands on the overweight Dunham, and they formed a team. Right off the bat, I was dubious since Apatow is the bard of my generation, Gen X, and I don't think his fingerprints should be on "Girls." I also think that Dunham is something of a whore and wanted Apatow's name on her show, but that gets to my current frustration with her, and maybe what taints the project from the outset.
I don't think there's an episode of "Girls" that really outdoes "Tiny Furniture," which stars Dunham's Mother, and really gets into a hard parental relationship, that the show all but obliterates, making parents very secondary, like all sitcoms about sexy young or middle age people. Dunham did a minor work of art with "Tiny Furniture," and turned it into a full blown melodrama of a sitcom with "Girls," a larger than life flamboyant mess. There are parts of "Girls" that are great, and parts that are awful, but I'm on season 3 and it is very boring, way too boring. I'm not even sure it's awful, and that makes it worse, but even if the show is a failure, it had a good couple of years, and I should be happy for Dunham entering my life, but am I?
Right now, I hate her. The bar was set very high for "Girls" and there aren't many shows so brazenly about women. Ironically, the star of the show is Adam Driver, Hana's boyfriend (Dunham's character), and he has a real danger to him, much more than any other character on the show. He's the most memorable character on the show and while it's great for the girls to have a memorable boyfriend (think 'Mr. Big' on Sex and the City), it's not good when that character accidentally eclipses everyone else in the script, but such is the way of fame. Dunham has made herself almost irrelevant by season 3, and it's hard to say why, except she's too self consciously trying to create her character, and the writer's mind gets in the way of the script.
"Girls" mostly fails because the show is about four female friends like "Sex and the City" but none of them have any chemistry with each other, and this is a gaping wound. Dunham's Hana is saved because she has (had?) great chemistry with Adam Driver, and they pushed the show forward. Two of the characters, Jessa and Marnie, drown in the waters of oblivion every week, and in the case of Jessa this is peculiarly troubling, because her character is the only one directly taken over from "Tiny Furniture," a movie where she all but stole the show with the insouciance of an L'Enfant terrible, but she has none of this in "Girls." She's a horribly written junkie that has become unreal by season 3. Marnie, the pretty girl, is so boring and sexless, it's hard to remember she even exists, even though she's cute enough. She's the Charlotte, but without any of the former's charm. The indisputably best girl aside from Hana, is Shoshanna, played by the playwright David Mamet's daughter. She's the real zinger of the show, the real Uranian energy, and she's saved an episode or two from being a complete waste of time. She is one of those great TV characters, but I'd say it has little to do with the script, and everything to do with her delivery, that is simultaneously angsty and innocent, leaving the mind bewildered.
There is nothing exceptional about "Girls" except the promise to show you THE significant show of a generation, and that is exceptional. The bar has been set very high for these "Girls" and i'm not sure they are up to the task. I like trashy television that borders on brilliant, and 'Girls' has a lot of this, especially in the first season or two, and lots of good episodes. Dunham may have not needed to go into utter bombast after "Tiny Furniture" but she did and the result is something much more Roman than she would've otherwise left behind, and why I think people are becoming uncomfortable championing her, unless they are sycophants in the art world, amazed at her success.
Critically, I can't tell if this bombast has been good or bad for her. If Dunham's career had ended after "Tiny Furniture" she would've gone down as a one hit wonder, but a one hit mostly among critics from the older generation, who those of the younger generation always look towards for approval, and she got it in spades. Boomer and Gen X critics hailed "Tiny Furniture" as a God send, but I wonder if they weren't doing what I was doing and looking for the next big thing, not feeling it. Dunham certainly feels like the next 'big thing' (wink... wink), because she is a larger than life talent, but talent isn't necessarily genius, and this may be where the equation falls apart. I'm not convinced "Girls" is brilliant in the least. It's trashy fun, and better than most shows, but that doesn't make it one for the ages. It may be one for the ages because of the hype around it and how like "Gidget" it explained the new generation, but I don't feel like it explains much, except for Dunhma's 'Botero' body, that smashes pre judgments on beauty, but that's old by season 3, and has become decadent.
These are a critic's outpourings, not a feminist or anyone with a socio/political agenda. I like "Girls" but less and less. It mixes soap with sitcom, but doesn't really achieve either.
* I really should've written more about Dunham's nude Botero body since that is what she will be remembered for. She was audacious to be so free with her body, and if there is a defining body weight characteristic of Gen Y it's that they aren't ashamed to be fat like my generation was. It's almost like they are admitting the empty hole in their lives needs to be filled with junk.
Obviously, Dunham is an exhibitionist but a very artistic one. I'd argue the only real new inroad she has made artistically is her nudity, and it is what she will be remembered for. She makes the audience confront its own expectations of the female body in a new way, and that's not easy. Sure, there's a love of soft porn in it, but it's this lighthearted play that makes it so funny, or repulsive, to look at her, depending on your taste. Somehow, the nudity doesn't come off as desperate but more comical than anything, and this may be her great gift, her body!
* I do love the joke in the third season of Marnie singing that Edie Brickel song "what I am." I love it when she sings the lines 'philosophy is on a cereal box,' making her sound so pseudo intellectual it's off the charts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsFEa...
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