AS I PLEASE, AGAIN

Christmas is here, and with it the time for traditions of all sorts. I like to think that everyone has two sets of traditions, the ones we follow publicly, such as putting up the tree, hanging the stockings over the fireplace, writing cards, and so on, and the private ones, which we celebrate either alone or with only our nearest and dearest. In this latest installment of the "As I Please" column of this blog, I will discuss some of my own traditions that hit me around holiday-time, as well as any and every other goddamn thing rattling around in my skull. T'is the season for giving, so I'm gonna give you pieces of my mind.

* Today I was sitting in a diner in Toluca Lake, when I heard the man next to me exclaim to his friend, “I paid $4,250 in rent per month for that place in West Hollywood and had homeless people shitting on my doorstep.” There is a very definite moral in there if you care to look for it: suffice to say I am looking with increasing seriousness at shaking the dust of Los Angeles from my feet and finding another state in which to hang my shingle. Of course there are many benefits to living here, including some which are totally unique to this city, but we also get earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, the highest taxes in the Union, smog, terrible traffic, and, as this gentleman discovered, enormous rents which in no way guarantee that you won't step in something highly unpleasant when you leave your home.

* I have finally got round to watching DEADWOOD, the HBO series which ran for three years back in the mid-00's. I was reluctant for many years to engage with this series because, like ROME, it was prematurely canceled by that network and I was angry enough at the “fall of ROME” not to want to get my heart broken again by getting invested in something so soon doomed to die. However, the release of the DEADWOOD movie this year finally spurred me to watch, and I'm glad I did. This is terrific television. It rips all the gilding away from the Old West and presents it as it very likely was: dirty, disgusting, vulgar, disease-ridden, amoral, casually violent, brutally racist. I am particularly impressed with the performance of Ian McShane as the saloon-proprieter-gangster-pimp Al Swearegen. McShane is no stranger to me: I first noticed him in the 80s on several appearances of MAGNUM, P.I., and later as the cynical, dissolute reporter Phil Rule on the two epic mini-series THE WINDS OF WAR and WAR & REMEMBRANCE. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does cynical and dissolute like Ian McShane. I look forward to finishing the series and watching the movie.

* In 1977, my father took me to the Uptown Theater in Northwest D.C. to see a movie called STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE. In 2019, I accompanied my mother, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew to the Arclight Cinema in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles to see a movie called STAR WARS EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. I don't know what feelings I have about the film just yet, except to say that it is much better, or much less awful, than its two predecessors, but I think it only fair I take some notice of the fact that seeing this particular movie, which supposedly brings the entire story to a close (it doesn't: Disney will kick that fucking pinata until there are no more coins), also brings to a kind of close a chapter of my life that began when I was an awestruck five year-old, watching Darth Vader emerge through the smoke.

* With Christmas nearly upon us, it's time for me to do the things I always do at Christmastime just for myself. The first is to watch the George C. Scott version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1985), which is not only the best of all the Scrooge movies I have ever seen, but in my estimation one of the greatest movies ever made. After this comes Bob Clark's “A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983), a film that hardly needs an introduction. I then watch the “Silent Night” episode of MAGNUM, P.I. and the two episodes of M*A*S*H that have the most moving Christmas themes: “Dear Sis” (7x15) and “Death Takes a Holiday” (9x5) [“Twas the Day After Christmas” (10 x 10) and “Dear Dad (1 x 12) also qualify.] The BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER episode “Amends” (3 x 10) is also very good Christmastime viewing.

* This particular Yuletide is also the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. It's very difficult for modern Americans to grasp the immensity or the savagery of that battle, so I'll try to put this in perspective. In the Iraq War, the United States lost 4,497 killed over a period of 8 ¾ years. In the Afghanistan War, we lost 2,216 over a period of 18 years. In the Battle of the Bulge, the we lost 19,000 dead in one month. Another 23,000 were reported “missing” (presumed dead or captured) and 47,500 more were wounded. Thus, approximately 89,500 men were killed, wounded or captured between December 16, 1944 and January 16, 1945. Some of the heaviest fighting occurred between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

* Speaking of Christmas, I have just completed watching the brooding, beautifully shot, darkly unpredictable Chris Carter show MILLENNIUM, which ran from 1996 – 1999. This series featured two Christmas-themed episodes of surprising beauty: “Midnight of the Century,” in which the show's hero, Frank Black, tries to mend fences with his estranged father, played by Darrin McGavin (“A Christmas Story”). The other is “Omerta,” in which Frank and his daughter Jordan deal with a repentant mobster played by John Polito (“Miller's Crossing”). It's very difficult to “do” Christmas without sinking into a swamp of saccharine emotions and Hallmark-channel pathos, but MILLENNIUM pulls it off with imagination and flair.

* One nation which knows how to do Christmas right is Great Britain. Just about every television show on the BBC turns out a Christmas special each year, but it was only in 2019 that I realized one of my all-time favorite television programs, SHERLOCK HOLMES (1984 – 1994) had produced such a special. It's a silly little thing, hardly worth mentioning, but it led me to a second, greater discovery, not Christmas-relayed directly but a kind of Christmas present. In 1992, the British channel ITV debuted a special program called “The Four Oaks Mystery” which featured “a four-part sequence of stories featuring the stars of four ITV detective shows of the time all separately working to solve the same mystery.” One of those four shows was SHERLOCK HOLMES. I had never even heard of this “sequence of stories,” but courtesy of YouTube, I was able to catch a “new” episode of a show that had been off the air for 23 years.

* I forgot to mention that the SHERLOCK HOLMES episode "The Blue Carbuncle" is another staple of my Christmas-themed TV watching. It's a terrific, touching tale that has the normally ice-blooded detective working overtime to save both a former jewel thief wrongfully accused of stealing a precious stone...and the bumbling amateur thief who really did nick it.

* One of the first things I noticed when I moved to California, in November of 2007, was the gung-ho, balls-out attitude everyone seemed to have toward Christmas and the holidays generally. Every other house was decked in lights, festooned with decorations and in some cases, with elaborate displays both traditional (the manger) and silly (enormous lighted blow-up dolls of Snoopy in a Santa hat). Jewish families often did “Kosher Christmas” by putting up trees festooned with dradels, Stars of David and blue tinsel and decorating their houses in blue and white lights with manorahs in the window. It took some getting used to, seeing “snow” made of cotton on front lawns, plastic icicles, and palm trees strung with Xmas lights, but I soon began to realize that the very climate here, which precludes most of what people think of as “winter weather,” also forces people to improvise. And while some dismiss it as another facet of the make-believe atmosphere which pervades this town, I admire the spirit: if you don't have it, fake it.

* I was planning a separate blog for this subject, but what the hell: my novel KNUCKLE DOWN: A CAGE LIFE MYSTERY was given Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Awards for 2019. The review of the book is excellent and I will be sharing it here, but for now, I just want to crow a little, and remind y'all that it would make a great Christmas gift, as would its x3 award-winning predecessor, CAGE LIFE.

And that, my friends, just about empties the bucket for this evening. No marbles left, except the one that says, “Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.”