I understand that I'm getting older every day, but so far aging hasn't really been anything I've noticed. Sure, I've got some more gray in my hair and my metabolism has definitely changed, but my health has been good and I don't generally feel differently than I did, say, 20 years ago. With one small exception.
It started with sour mix. One day I was enjoying margaritas with impunity and the next two sips gave me heartburn. There's plenty of other alcoholic beverages in the world, though, so I simply stopped ordering margaritas. Then one day the heartburn after two sips started to apply to those "malt beverages" as well. Goodbye, Smirnoff Ice, farewell, Mike's Hard Lemonade. Not the biggest loss, but a loss nonetheless.
And now, suddenly, I can't eat garlic without being kept up all night chugging water, tasting it on my lips, feeling generally uncomfortable. Garlic powder is still fine, but I just can no longer do fresh garlic. This is a loss, but more important this is an event that makes me fear that I've taken the first step in a descent down the slippery slope that leads to an entirely bland diet. I'm now afraid that I'll wake up one day and will have turned into my grandmother, subsisting on a diet of boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy. Or that I'll wake up one day and after eating boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy will look through my pockets and discover them filled with emery boards, rain bonnets, and travel packs of tissues.
I don't like having to admit that I'm slowly aging, but who does? Yes, I'm still a long way from being restricted to soft food, but still. Garlic-free pesto? Tragic.
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
How Can I Not Write about Mad Men?
...what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B Yeats, "The Second Coming"
By 1967 Joan Didion would use Yeats' evocation of the apocalypse to anchor her reporting on the Haight during the Summer of Love, but these lines strongly came to mind when thinking about the Season 3 premier of Mad Men. Yes, the episode is literally about births, and the anxiety surrounding births: we begin with a flashback to Dick Whitman's birth, Betty and Don are awaiting the birth of their third child, the episode takes place on Dick's birthday, and the episode ends with Don and Betty telling Sally the story of her birth. Beyond the literal, though, the themes of the season hinted at in the episode are all about changes that are being born, the anxieties attendant to those changes, and how one reacts to change when one is in the middle of it.
From the first scene of the pilot episode the audience has known what the characters can't know: that the complacency and seeming hegemony of the immediate postwar years is about to explode into chaos. Everything that happens to these characters takes place on the cusp of a great cultural shift that they can't predict because they are living through it. In 2007, would any of us have predicted the events of 2008, the extent of the financial meltdown, the depth of our national anxiety, the result of the Presidential election? Although those living through a period of cultural shift might have glimmers that a change is gonna come, the nature of that change and its repercussions are fully understood only in hindsight, which is precisely what Mad Men's characters lack. They are simply adults living their lives.
It's sometime around April, 1963; the Beatles recorded their first album in March, but the British have already invaded Sterling Cooper, thanks to Duck's ambition and Roger's libido. The anxiety of the characters has a very literal cause, as we know that about a third of the staff has been let go. Beyond British control, advertising itself is changing. Harry's position as head of the TV department has clearly given him more power within the agency, since he himself points out that TV brings in 42% of their revenue. Pete and Ken are pitted against one another for a promotion; the arrival of a male British secretary who sees his role as something much more grandiose than Joan has ever imagined challenges her supremacy over the support staff; Roger and Bert seem to have a symbolic "advisory" role at the agency with no real authority.
Much of the episode focuses on Don and Sal's jaunt to Baltimore to placate London Fog. "Out of Town," as the episode title suggests, is the episode's theme. To be out of town is to have the ability to rebirth yourself, to pretend to be anything and anyone you want to be because no one knows you. Don Draper is an expert at rebirthing, at changing identities, and is quick to make up a backstory for himself and Sal for their night carousing with the stewardesses. The real birthing that takes place though is of Sal's true identity; being out of town allows him to let the bellboy kiss him and to acknowledge his true desires. It's Dick's birthday, but in this sense it's also the day Sal is birthed into a new way of conceiving of his life.
The new doesn't fully replace the old because the new is born from it. Dick Whitman lies just under the surface of Don Draper just as the Beatles lie just under the surface of Perry Como. Change isn't coming so much as it's slowly and inexorably happening all around, every minute. In the next few months of 1963 the Draper's baby will be born, TaB and ZIP codes will be introduced, JFK will call for passage of a Civil Rights Act, the SCLC's Birmingham campaign will grip the nation, MLK will be jailed and pen his famous Letter and a few months later deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech while James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss, Kenya and Uganda will free themselves from British domination, and in a little country called Vietnam Diem will be assassinated by US-backed military coup. Joan will deal with the repercussions of her marriage, Don will try to remain committed to his family, Pete or Ken will be promoted, Peggy will try to force her secretary to respect her, all the adults living in this world will continue to live in it even as the ground underneath them keeps shifting.
How we deal with the change we live inside of is the theme of all our lives.
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B Yeats, "The Second Coming"
By 1967 Joan Didion would use Yeats' evocation of the apocalypse to anchor her reporting on the Haight during the Summer of Love, but these lines strongly came to mind when thinking about the Season 3 premier of Mad Men. Yes, the episode is literally about births, and the anxiety surrounding births: we begin with a flashback to Dick Whitman's birth, Betty and Don are awaiting the birth of their third child, the episode takes place on Dick's birthday, and the episode ends with Don and Betty telling Sally the story of her birth. Beyond the literal, though, the themes of the season hinted at in the episode are all about changes that are being born, the anxieties attendant to those changes, and how one reacts to change when one is in the middle of it.
From the first scene of the pilot episode the audience has known what the characters can't know: that the complacency and seeming hegemony of the immediate postwar years is about to explode into chaos. Everything that happens to these characters takes place on the cusp of a great cultural shift that they can't predict because they are living through it. In 2007, would any of us have predicted the events of 2008, the extent of the financial meltdown, the depth of our national anxiety, the result of the Presidential election? Although those living through a period of cultural shift might have glimmers that a change is gonna come, the nature of that change and its repercussions are fully understood only in hindsight, which is precisely what Mad Men's characters lack. They are simply adults living their lives.
It's sometime around April, 1963; the Beatles recorded their first album in March, but the British have already invaded Sterling Cooper, thanks to Duck's ambition and Roger's libido. The anxiety of the characters has a very literal cause, as we know that about a third of the staff has been let go. Beyond British control, advertising itself is changing. Harry's position as head of the TV department has clearly given him more power within the agency, since he himself points out that TV brings in 42% of their revenue. Pete and Ken are pitted against one another for a promotion; the arrival of a male British secretary who sees his role as something much more grandiose than Joan has ever imagined challenges her supremacy over the support staff; Roger and Bert seem to have a symbolic "advisory" role at the agency with no real authority.
Much of the episode focuses on Don and Sal's jaunt to Baltimore to placate London Fog. "Out of Town," as the episode title suggests, is the episode's theme. To be out of town is to have the ability to rebirth yourself, to pretend to be anything and anyone you want to be because no one knows you. Don Draper is an expert at rebirthing, at changing identities, and is quick to make up a backstory for himself and Sal for their night carousing with the stewardesses. The real birthing that takes place though is of Sal's true identity; being out of town allows him to let the bellboy kiss him and to acknowledge his true desires. It's Dick's birthday, but in this sense it's also the day Sal is birthed into a new way of conceiving of his life.
The new doesn't fully replace the old because the new is born from it. Dick Whitman lies just under the surface of Don Draper just as the Beatles lie just under the surface of Perry Como. Change isn't coming so much as it's slowly and inexorably happening all around, every minute. In the next few months of 1963 the Draper's baby will be born, TaB and ZIP codes will be introduced, JFK will call for passage of a Civil Rights Act, the SCLC's Birmingham campaign will grip the nation, MLK will be jailed and pen his famous Letter and a few months later deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech while James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss, Kenya and Uganda will free themselves from British domination, and in a little country called Vietnam Diem will be assassinated by US-backed military coup. Joan will deal with the repercussions of her marriage, Don will try to remain committed to his family, Pete or Ken will be promoted, Peggy will try to force her secretary to respect her, all the adults living in this world will continue to live in it even as the ground underneath them keeps shifting.
How we deal with the change we live inside of is the theme of all our lives.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Add Another Casualty to the List
Farewell, birch tree. You are older than me, and your time has come. When you were planted, Eisenhower was President, my house was brand new, and you were just a pretty thing, standing amid a sea of oak and hemlock. Now you're 50 feet tall, barely clinging to life. I'm sorry to euthanize you, but although you shade my porch you also threaten it. You look like you want to fall. I don't want you to fall. I'm felling you.
It's all good, birch tree, I promise. The tree people will chip you up and haul you off someplace, where you will be chemically treated and turned into mulch. By next spring, you'll be spread all over the shrubs of some suburbia, helping to keep the weeds at bay. And look on the bright side: no one will pee on you once you're mulch, or at least Brody won't pee on you anymore.
None of this is your fault. You didn't ask to be planted too close to the house, and you didn't ask for that twister to come through last summer, damaging you beyond repair. All you ever did was grow and shed leaves, year after year, and get taller and taller, as trees are wont to do. You were a good tree, maybe even a great tree, and I'll miss you and your white bark.
I know you've overheard me talking about the Japanese maple I'll be planting in September. It's no offense to you or to white birches in general; I just need to have a shorter tree so close to the house. You're not being replaced, exactly. Think of the maple as a reminder of the post-war feeling of optimism and expansion from whence you sprang, and a reminder of how our ambitions are now just a little bit smaller.
It's been a tough month for all of us, birch tree. First Farrah, then Michael, then Karl, then McNamara, and now you. There will be no memorial service at a civic center, no special issue of Time or People, no tributes from Quincy Jones, but still you will be missed, perhaps more than all of those others. RIP, overgrown birch.
It's all good, birch tree, I promise. The tree people will chip you up and haul you off someplace, where you will be chemically treated and turned into mulch. By next spring, you'll be spread all over the shrubs of some suburbia, helping to keep the weeds at bay. And look on the bright side: no one will pee on you once you're mulch, or at least Brody won't pee on you anymore.
None of this is your fault. You didn't ask to be planted too close to the house, and you didn't ask for that twister to come through last summer, damaging you beyond repair. All you ever did was grow and shed leaves, year after year, and get taller and taller, as trees are wont to do. You were a good tree, maybe even a great tree, and I'll miss you and your white bark.
I know you've overheard me talking about the Japanese maple I'll be planting in September. It's no offense to you or to white birches in general; I just need to have a shorter tree so close to the house. You're not being replaced, exactly. Think of the maple as a reminder of the post-war feeling of optimism and expansion from whence you sprang, and a reminder of how our ambitions are now just a little bit smaller.
It's been a tough month for all of us, birch tree. First Farrah, then Michael, then Karl, then McNamara, and now you. There will be no memorial service at a civic center, no special issue of Time or People, no tributes from Quincy Jones, but still you will be missed, perhaps more than all of those others. RIP, overgrown birch.
Monday, June 8, 2009
The Lost World of Beaten Biscuits
Our recent cultural obsession with fresh, local foods might naturally lead to an interest in the ways Americans used to cook and eat, before the supremacy of frozen and fast foods, before the reign of agribusiness was complete. Mark Kurlansky's recently published Food of a Younger Land, a collection of food writings produced by the WPA Writer's Project, provides some insight into the simpler days, when neighbors would gather to let maple sap run into the snow and then eat it, when clam bakes involved digging a fire pit on the beach, when squirrel was a viable ingredient in the dinner menu.
Because I have a tendency to buy old cookbooks at thrift stores and flea markets I found this collection more interesting for what it said about American culture during the 1930s than for what it said about our foodways. I already knew, for example, that any recipes to be found aren't standardized in terms of measurements, or even ingredients; before WWII, recipes were comprised more of guides and suggestions than instructions. I also knew that most recipes would begin with something along the lines of "Kill a chicken and bleed it good, then cut it up." Like vintage cookbooks, Kurlansky's tome is more useful as a glimpse into a mindset and way of life than as a tool for the modern kitchen.
Here's one example. Most pre-war cookbooks contain a section on "invalid cooking," to help produce not inedible meals or food that is not valid but to produce meals for the sick or elderly. This was needed for a culture before vaccines and antibiotics and over-the-counter medicines, where children were often sick, and for a culture before geriatric medicine and assisted living and nursing homes, where the generations lived together. I've also found several cookbooks that contain sections on "trailer cooking," with hints about how to prepare meals in the field, on the road, in the outdoors. This wasn't aimed at jolly seniors crossing the Sun Belt in RVs, but instead at those who lived itinerantly. A mass produced cookbook indicates a good number of Americans living this way.
The WPA food project was written by hundreds of writers in every state. Some participants were published professional authors, some were just people who needed a job, and the resulting prose is uneven. Kurlansky reproduces selections exactly as written, giving the text an authentic feel, and giving us a glimpse regional idiom and vernacular. The most notable thing about this book, though, the thing that ties together all the selections and resonates most in the contemporary world, is the nostalgia, the mourning for a world already lost. Again and again the anonymous WPA authors describe the way gatherings "used to be," the food mothers "once made," lament the customs that are "all but lost."
In the late 30s the interstate highway system had not been built. Packaged food was available, but not ubiquitous. Most people lived without a refrigerator, although a good number had an ice box. Frozen food was virtually unheard of. But already, the golden past was but a dream. Already lost were the meals of childhood. Begun in 1939, abandoned the week after Pearl Harbor, the WPA food project unltimately depicts a culture on the cusp of rapid change, and a culture that felt the tremblings of that change. Kurlansky's book is in a sense the last document of a world about to disappear. Read it: it's fascinating.
Because I have a tendency to buy old cookbooks at thrift stores and flea markets I found this collection more interesting for what it said about American culture during the 1930s than for what it said about our foodways. I already knew, for example, that any recipes to be found aren't standardized in terms of measurements, or even ingredients; before WWII, recipes were comprised more of guides and suggestions than instructions. I also knew that most recipes would begin with something along the lines of "Kill a chicken and bleed it good, then cut it up." Like vintage cookbooks, Kurlansky's tome is more useful as a glimpse into a mindset and way of life than as a tool for the modern kitchen.
Here's one example. Most pre-war cookbooks contain a section on "invalid cooking," to help produce not inedible meals or food that is not valid but to produce meals for the sick or elderly. This was needed for a culture before vaccines and antibiotics and over-the-counter medicines, where children were often sick, and for a culture before geriatric medicine and assisted living and nursing homes, where the generations lived together. I've also found several cookbooks that contain sections on "trailer cooking," with hints about how to prepare meals in the field, on the road, in the outdoors. This wasn't aimed at jolly seniors crossing the Sun Belt in RVs, but instead at those who lived itinerantly. A mass produced cookbook indicates a good number of Americans living this way.
The WPA food project was written by hundreds of writers in every state. Some participants were published professional authors, some were just people who needed a job, and the resulting prose is uneven. Kurlansky reproduces selections exactly as written, giving the text an authentic feel, and giving us a glimpse regional idiom and vernacular. The most notable thing about this book, though, the thing that ties together all the selections and resonates most in the contemporary world, is the nostalgia, the mourning for a world already lost. Again and again the anonymous WPA authors describe the way gatherings "used to be," the food mothers "once made," lament the customs that are "all but lost."
In the late 30s the interstate highway system had not been built. Packaged food was available, but not ubiquitous. Most people lived without a refrigerator, although a good number had an ice box. Frozen food was virtually unheard of. But already, the golden past was but a dream. Already lost were the meals of childhood. Begun in 1939, abandoned the week after Pearl Harbor, the WPA food project unltimately depicts a culture on the cusp of rapid change, and a culture that felt the tremblings of that change. Kurlansky's book is in a sense the last document of a world about to disappear. Read it: it's fascinating.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Notes from the Electoral Preschool
Another election day has ended, and with it my month of popularity. I will miss the hourly phone calls from my new friends. How will I get through the day without hearing their tinny voices droning, "This is Doobie Frankenwaller reminding you to vote for me for County District Circuit Court Constable"? I will also miss my new friends' mothers, who checked in with me regularly to intone, "Please vote for my gorgeous little boy for Township Sewer Checker, he's such a good little boy." But like everyone I shall soldier on, taking with me the political lessons learned from this political season.
For example, I've realized that there really are only two possible platforms, no matter what office is being sought. The upstart, the candidate seeking office for the first time, will say, "Change. Change. Change. New leadership. Throw out the bums, we can do better!" Once the upstart has been in office, his or her relection platform will be, "Experience! What we need now is experience! I have experience and my opponent is just an upstart."
No one ever seems to notice the falseness of this dichotomy. If the main qualification for being elected to office is having previously held office then we could just cancel elections and allow incumbents to stay in place for life. On the other hand, changing the person holding office does not change the nature of the office itself, nor does it change the political system nor the power structure. "Change" is just shorthand for "Me, not the other guy." We can vote out each and every incumbent member of the US Congress and would still wake up the next day with the US Congress. Only the nameplates would change.
I also learned that there really is no convincing people of the importance of municipal primaries. Without Congressional, Senatorial, or Presidential candidates on the ballot, very few will take two minutes out of their day in order to vote. Although this says something sad about the state of participatory democracy, it does turn a visit to the polls into a party. I'm guessing that about 250 people voted in my entire ward. I probably know 245 of them, and got to catch up with many of my neighbors after casting my ballot. A low turnout also turns district races into nail biters, where a 10-vote lead with one precinct reporting can be insurrmountable.
When it's all said and done, it's all said and done. My irises are about to bloom, which means it's time for everyone to pack up their yard signs and stick them in the basement until November, and, most importantly, it's safe to answer my phone.
For example, I've realized that there really are only two possible platforms, no matter what office is being sought. The upstart, the candidate seeking office for the first time, will say, "Change. Change. Change. New leadership. Throw out the bums, we can do better!" Once the upstart has been in office, his or her relection platform will be, "Experience! What we need now is experience! I have experience and my opponent is just an upstart."
No one ever seems to notice the falseness of this dichotomy. If the main qualification for being elected to office is having previously held office then we could just cancel elections and allow incumbents to stay in place for life. On the other hand, changing the person holding office does not change the nature of the office itself, nor does it change the political system nor the power structure. "Change" is just shorthand for "Me, not the other guy." We can vote out each and every incumbent member of the US Congress and would still wake up the next day with the US Congress. Only the nameplates would change.
I also learned that there really is no convincing people of the importance of municipal primaries. Without Congressional, Senatorial, or Presidential candidates on the ballot, very few will take two minutes out of their day in order to vote. Although this says something sad about the state of participatory democracy, it does turn a visit to the polls into a party. I'm guessing that about 250 people voted in my entire ward. I probably know 245 of them, and got to catch up with many of my neighbors after casting my ballot. A low turnout also turns district races into nail biters, where a 10-vote lead with one precinct reporting can be insurrmountable.
When it's all said and done, it's all said and done. My irises are about to bloom, which means it's time for everyone to pack up their yard signs and stick them in the basement until November, and, most importantly, it's safe to answer my phone.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Over and Done With
Of course I couldn't help myself last night and I gave another 14 minutes of my life to the Bush presidency, watching his weird smirky face say farewell to the nation. His speech was exactly as I expected. What I find off is the number of pundits and commentators who are annoyed if not downright angry that the guy has spent that last couple of weeks spinning his time in office as a success when we all know it was an abject failure. What on earth did anyone expect?
Should Bush have said, "I tricked the nation into a war it didn't need, at tremendous human and monetary cost. I was wrong"? Should he have said, "My policies let the rich prosper and wrecked the economy. Oh well"? And should he have concluded with, "I have successfully destroyed the environment as well as scientific research, or at least have removed the role of the government in the promotion of scientific and rational thought"? No way he was going to say any of that.
We got the guy we elected, and he behaved the way we should have expected him to behave. More than that, we elect presidents to lead, to be certain, to be calm, to give us direction. Bush may have led in the wrong direction, but it was his direction, and he did lead us there. When he says that he's proudest of "making the tough decisions" I think this is exactly what he means. At this point very few agree with him, but he remained who he was. He did what he set out to do, no matter how disastrous the outcome. Good riddance to him, but I don't see why we should expect an apology. He's only ever been himself.
History will judge the past eight years. I have little doubt history will not vindicate him, but the one way he's right is in leaving the judgement to the future. In the meantime, we're thankfully moving on, and it's time to get ready for Tuesday. Time to break out the Obama yo-yos, commemorative thongs, onesies, Franklin Mint coins, and plates decorated with the Electoral College vote. If nothing else, at least the kitsch-fueled sector of our economy is working again.
Should Bush have said, "I tricked the nation into a war it didn't need, at tremendous human and monetary cost. I was wrong"? Should he have said, "My policies let the rich prosper and wrecked the economy. Oh well"? And should he have concluded with, "I have successfully destroyed the environment as well as scientific research, or at least have removed the role of the government in the promotion of scientific and rational thought"? No way he was going to say any of that.
We got the guy we elected, and he behaved the way we should have expected him to behave. More than that, we elect presidents to lead, to be certain, to be calm, to give us direction. Bush may have led in the wrong direction, but it was his direction, and he did lead us there. When he says that he's proudest of "making the tough decisions" I think this is exactly what he means. At this point very few agree with him, but he remained who he was. He did what he set out to do, no matter how disastrous the outcome. Good riddance to him, but I don't see why we should expect an apology. He's only ever been himself.
History will judge the past eight years. I have little doubt history will not vindicate him, but the one way he's right is in leaving the judgement to the future. In the meantime, we're thankfully moving on, and it's time to get ready for Tuesday. Time to break out the Obama yo-yos, commemorative thongs, onesies, Franklin Mint coins, and plates decorated with the Electoral College vote. If nothing else, at least the kitsch-fueled sector of our economy is working again.
Monday, January 12, 2009
For Every Winner, a Loser
Well, a week and a half of sleep and more sleep has left me healthy, wealthy, and wise. OK, OK, but one out of three ain't bad, right? I finally saw Milk yesterday, a film that features some terrific performances and that is very well-made, and a film that I recommend, although I didn't learn anything new about Milk's life or his times. I did leave the theater thinking the same thing I thought after reading The Mayor of Castro Street and watching The Times of Harvey Milk, which was what the story would look like told from Dan White's point of view.
Something clearly happened that left White deeply disturbed. Although the notion that Twinkies made him do it remains laughable, whether the murders were premeditated or not they would seem to have resulted from some sort of derangement that one would think wasn't apparent during the election. White (and Milk) had been elected just a little over a year before the murders, and White was popular during the campaign. He came into office with a bright political future ahead of him. How did he go from that to depressed and homicidaly angry? Milk hints that White may have been gay himself but repressed and closeted; other treatments of the story paint him as simply homophobic and racist. I don't think either simplification explains things.
It's interesting to note that White represented a district that was mainly white and working-class, but that also included San Francisco's largest and most notorious housing project. White was the only candidate in his district who campaigned in the project, befriending many of the residents and garnering the support of the local gang. Yes, he was the candidate of the police and firemen's unions, but he was also the candidate of a large black underclass.
When he first took office, White befriended Milk. Milk was one of only three city hall colleagues invited to the christening of White's child. Before White's resignation, the San Francisco supervisers were split ideologically, with six conservative and five liberal members. White often voted with the liberals his first months in office, thereby shifting the balance of power. White was willing to vote with Milk and other liberals in exchange for getting their votes for his legislation, and the undoing of this loose coalition was a large part of White's undoing.
The city wanted to open a youth treatment center in White's neighborhood, and one of his campaign promises was to block this, claiming that the treatment center would make the streets of his district less safe. Natrually collecting the necessary votes was difficult in part because no one wants to vote against "youth" and in part because if the center wasn't in White's neighborhood, well, where would it be located? No one wanted in in their district, of course. White did find four votes besides his own. After a conversation with Milk, he believed that Milk would vote with him. On the day of the vote, he invited a number of constituents and neighborhood leaders to witness the defeat of the center. Instead, Milk voted against White, claiming that White had misunderstood him. White was humiliated before the supervisors, the press, and his constituents. He never got over this, and at this point began opposing anything Milk proposed, speaking out in the press against the gay community and liberals in general.
In the meantime, Milk's profile and legislative influence was growing, in part because of his visibility in the fight against Proposition 6, which would have barred gays not only from teaching but from holding any job in the California public school system. This story got national attention, as did Milk. While White felt more and more ineffectual, Milk seemed to be more and more powerful. Milk's defining piece of legislation was a civil rights ordinance stating that the city would not discriminate based on sexual preference. It passed with only one dissenting vote: White's. Not only did White feel betrayed by Milk, he felt betrayed by what he thought was his conservative coalition.
In the meantime, White had been required by city law to quit his position as a firefighter once elected. At that time supervisors were considered part-time employees, and White found that he could no longer support his family on the part-time salary. He opened a fast-food restaurant on the newly-constructed Pier 39, but that venture proved backbreaking and was failing. He tried to garner support for a pay raise for supervisors, but no one would introduce or second such legislation.
Feelings of failure as a husband, father, and legislator led White to resign his post at supervisor. We all know what happened next: he reconsidered, asked Moscone to appoint him to the seat he'd just resigned, was rebuffed in part because Milk and other liberals saw the opportunity to get another liberal vote out of the seat, snuck into city hall, killed Moscone and Milk.
To me, his story isn't just of latent homosexuality or of intolerance but also of failure and frustration, and of being on the wrong side of history. It's a tragedy as much as Milk's life ended in tragedy. Milk's story, and Milk the biopic, is history as told from the other, brighter end, where principles we all now believe in have triumphed (or mainly triumphed, considering the success of Proposition 8). White's story, on the other hand, is history as seen by a confused but well-meaning person trying but unable to live through change successfully. I don't defend him, but do try to understand him.
Something clearly happened that left White deeply disturbed. Although the notion that Twinkies made him do it remains laughable, whether the murders were premeditated or not they would seem to have resulted from some sort of derangement that one would think wasn't apparent during the election. White (and Milk) had been elected just a little over a year before the murders, and White was popular during the campaign. He came into office with a bright political future ahead of him. How did he go from that to depressed and homicidaly angry? Milk hints that White may have been gay himself but repressed and closeted; other treatments of the story paint him as simply homophobic and racist. I don't think either simplification explains things.
It's interesting to note that White represented a district that was mainly white and working-class, but that also included San Francisco's largest and most notorious housing project. White was the only candidate in his district who campaigned in the project, befriending many of the residents and garnering the support of the local gang. Yes, he was the candidate of the police and firemen's unions, but he was also the candidate of a large black underclass.
When he first took office, White befriended Milk. Milk was one of only three city hall colleagues invited to the christening of White's child. Before White's resignation, the San Francisco supervisers were split ideologically, with six conservative and five liberal members. White often voted with the liberals his first months in office, thereby shifting the balance of power. White was willing to vote with Milk and other liberals in exchange for getting their votes for his legislation, and the undoing of this loose coalition was a large part of White's undoing.
The city wanted to open a youth treatment center in White's neighborhood, and one of his campaign promises was to block this, claiming that the treatment center would make the streets of his district less safe. Natrually collecting the necessary votes was difficult in part because no one wants to vote against "youth" and in part because if the center wasn't in White's neighborhood, well, where would it be located? No one wanted in in their district, of course. White did find four votes besides his own. After a conversation with Milk, he believed that Milk would vote with him. On the day of the vote, he invited a number of constituents and neighborhood leaders to witness the defeat of the center. Instead, Milk voted against White, claiming that White had misunderstood him. White was humiliated before the supervisors, the press, and his constituents. He never got over this, and at this point began opposing anything Milk proposed, speaking out in the press against the gay community and liberals in general.
In the meantime, Milk's profile and legislative influence was growing, in part because of his visibility in the fight against Proposition 6, which would have barred gays not only from teaching but from holding any job in the California public school system. This story got national attention, as did Milk. While White felt more and more ineffectual, Milk seemed to be more and more powerful. Milk's defining piece of legislation was a civil rights ordinance stating that the city would not discriminate based on sexual preference. It passed with only one dissenting vote: White's. Not only did White feel betrayed by Milk, he felt betrayed by what he thought was his conservative coalition.
In the meantime, White had been required by city law to quit his position as a firefighter once elected. At that time supervisors were considered part-time employees, and White found that he could no longer support his family on the part-time salary. He opened a fast-food restaurant on the newly-constructed Pier 39, but that venture proved backbreaking and was failing. He tried to garner support for a pay raise for supervisors, but no one would introduce or second such legislation.
Feelings of failure as a husband, father, and legislator led White to resign his post at supervisor. We all know what happened next: he reconsidered, asked Moscone to appoint him to the seat he'd just resigned, was rebuffed in part because Milk and other liberals saw the opportunity to get another liberal vote out of the seat, snuck into city hall, killed Moscone and Milk.
To me, his story isn't just of latent homosexuality or of intolerance but also of failure and frustration, and of being on the wrong side of history. It's a tragedy as much as Milk's life ended in tragedy. Milk's story, and Milk the biopic, is history as told from the other, brighter end, where principles we all now believe in have triumphed (or mainly triumphed, considering the success of Proposition 8). White's story, on the other hand, is history as seen by a confused but well-meaning person trying but unable to live through change successfully. I don't defend him, but do try to understand him.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Good Riddance 2008
It's the time for all sorts of year-end contemplations, and I'll get to various changes I hope for in 2009 tomorrow. This morning, I've been instead trying to find the good in the past year. Was there really any good? It felt like one catastrophe after another. Last spring, stocks began falling, nothing like the autumn, but it began in the spring nonetheless. That's around the time that prices steeply rose - fuel and other commodities. Remember that? Then the whole second half of the year was about calamity, layoffs, the evaporation of "wealth," if by "wealth" one means the savings and retirement accounts of every single American. But surely something good happened in 2008, right?
Well, we had a fascinating and, for me anyway, satisfying Presidential election. But that wasn't good because I liked the outcome. It was good because so many people cared about it, and because so many people got involved and then voted. Democracy demands participation, and this was one participatory election.
The summer wasn't too hot, so we didn't have to spend too much on air conditioning. Then, after the not-too-hot summer, commodity prices began to fall. Sure, no one has any money to spend and things are a mess, but gas is cheaper than it's been in years. You can theoretically spend less for the trips you aren't taking and on the commutes you aren't making to the job you don't have.
We started daylight savings almost a month early, as we'll do again in 2009. Standard time is now used only four months of the year. So, it was light later in the evenings in 2008 than it's ever been. And now that the winter solstice is over, it's already getting lighter every day. This might have been a bad year for almost everything else, but it was a good year for daylight.
With the launch of Hulu, more television and movies are available online and for free. Hulu is, without a doubt, probably the best thing about 2008. Network television might be in decline, but that's just because we have more viewing options than several years ago.
Sadly, that's all I've got. Yeah, 2008 sucked. We've got a lot to celebrate Wednesday night. It's finally over.
Well, we had a fascinating and, for me anyway, satisfying Presidential election. But that wasn't good because I liked the outcome. It was good because so many people cared about it, and because so many people got involved and then voted. Democracy demands participation, and this was one participatory election.
The summer wasn't too hot, so we didn't have to spend too much on air conditioning. Then, after the not-too-hot summer, commodity prices began to fall. Sure, no one has any money to spend and things are a mess, but gas is cheaper than it's been in years. You can theoretically spend less for the trips you aren't taking and on the commutes you aren't making to the job you don't have.
We started daylight savings almost a month early, as we'll do again in 2009. Standard time is now used only four months of the year. So, it was light later in the evenings in 2008 than it's ever been. And now that the winter solstice is over, it's already getting lighter every day. This might have been a bad year for almost everything else, but it was a good year for daylight.
With the launch of Hulu, more television and movies are available online and for free. Hulu is, without a doubt, probably the best thing about 2008. Network television might be in decline, but that's just because we have more viewing options than several years ago.
Sadly, that's all I've got. Yeah, 2008 sucked. We've got a lot to celebrate Wednesday night. It's finally over.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
New Media 2,956, Old Media 1
What made Tuesday's election truly unprecedented? It's not what you think. Not only did Obama's victory shatter racial barriers, close the book on Rovian Republicanism, and signal a change in American politics, culture, and values, it also showed that print is far from dead. Yesterday morning, in virtually every city, town, and village across the country, newspapers were in short supply, grabbed up immediately to be kept as mementos.
I live in an area where I can't get home delivery of the NY Times on weekdays, so I set out as usual around 8:30 yesterday morning to pick up a copy. My neighborhood Wawa was already sold out. Around the corner, my neighborhood coffee shop was also sold out. On to the neighboring neighborhood, whose Wawa was also sold out. I finally found what might have been the last remaining copy in eastern Pennsylvania two townships away, left over probably because the front page was somewhat tattered and therefore not suitable for framing. I didn't care; I actually wanted to read the paper, and I like getting newsprint on my hands, an experience the Internet cannot deliver, at least not yet.
We might go online more and more for information, but we clearly don't go online for keepsakes. What would a screen capture of the Times' online edition saved to disk mean, anyway? The print edition featured the simple word "Obama" in 96-point type, with a color photo of the man himself taking up the rest of the space above the fold. The online edition contained its usual collection of links to the right and left of the screen, with three lead storied vying for the rest of the space on the front page. For visual, and visceral, impact, print wins.
There's no doubt that in order to remain competetive newspapers have to figure out a way for their print editions to become something more than mementos. On Wednesday, November 5, though, for one historic day, newspapers were once again Americans media of choice.
I live in an area where I can't get home delivery of the NY Times on weekdays, so I set out as usual around 8:30 yesterday morning to pick up a copy. My neighborhood Wawa was already sold out. Around the corner, my neighborhood coffee shop was also sold out. On to the neighboring neighborhood, whose Wawa was also sold out. I finally found what might have been the last remaining copy in eastern Pennsylvania two townships away, left over probably because the front page was somewhat tattered and therefore not suitable for framing. I didn't care; I actually wanted to read the paper, and I like getting newsprint on my hands, an experience the Internet cannot deliver, at least not yet.
We might go online more and more for information, but we clearly don't go online for keepsakes. What would a screen capture of the Times' online edition saved to disk mean, anyway? The print edition featured the simple word "Obama" in 96-point type, with a color photo of the man himself taking up the rest of the space above the fold. The online edition contained its usual collection of links to the right and left of the screen, with three lead storied vying for the rest of the space on the front page. For visual, and visceral, impact, print wins.
There's no doubt that in order to remain competetive newspapers have to figure out a way for their print editions to become something more than mementos. On Wednesday, November 5, though, for one historic day, newspapers were once again Americans media of choice.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Another Day, Another Dollar Lost
I'm beginning to wonder why I read the paper every morning. The fact that there's no good news is both cliche and, well, a fact. I suppose I read the paper because it's hard to believe just how bad things have gotten and I need a daily reminder of all the bad news. Six months ago my main worry was the price of grain, while these days I worry that we'll all end up in one bread line or another.
I no longer open my monthly statements sent from the places that are tending to my net worth. I don't know if I have any net worth anymore, come to think of it. I'm no economist, but I do know that something is "worth" only the amount someone will give you for it. It doesn't matter what my car is worth on paper; if someone will give me $20K that's what it's worth, and if I can only get $9K for it, then that's its value.
So, if investors are scared of the market and are selling, rather than buying, stocks, what are my stocks worth? What happens, in other words, if we get to the point where no one wants to buy my holdings? Do they then become worthless? Can the Dow reach zero? If nothing is "worth" anything, what happens? These are honest questions. I hope to never have practical answers to them, but every day the paper makes me worry just a little bit more.
I no longer open my monthly statements sent from the places that are tending to my net worth. I don't know if I have any net worth anymore, come to think of it. I'm no economist, but I do know that something is "worth" only the amount someone will give you for it. It doesn't matter what my car is worth on paper; if someone will give me $20K that's what it's worth, and if I can only get $9K for it, then that's its value.
So, if investors are scared of the market and are selling, rather than buying, stocks, what are my stocks worth? What happens, in other words, if we get to the point where no one wants to buy my holdings? Do they then become worthless? Can the Dow reach zero? If nothing is "worth" anything, what happens? These are honest questions. I hope to never have practical answers to them, but every day the paper makes me worry just a little bit more.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Party Like It's 1959
Enough of politics (although I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night's debate). The most exciting news I've had in a while is the fact that Revolutionary Road has finally been made into a movie, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Leo and Kate Winslet, no less. Yates' is, I think, the best novel of the 1950s, of suburbia and conformity; it out-Cheever's Cheever. It's filled with bleakness, drunken-ness, and all around bad behavior, which perhaps explains why it's taken 45 years for it to be adapted for the screen. My assumption is that the success of Mad Men led the studios to think the time was right for this particular period film.
If you're not familiar with Richard Yates, he served in WWII, had TB, wrote a couple of great, minimalist novels and some of the best short stories of the 20th century, was an accomplished creative writing instructor, and drank himself to death. Read his collected stories and see that Raymond Carver didn't come out of left field. In fact, just read his collected stories; many of them are truly wonderful, ultimately better than any of his novels.
Revolutionary Road is the story of April and Frank Wheeler. Frank works in PR; he and April meet at a party in the Village, fall in love, marry. Despite their "artistic" leanings they move to the suburbs. They are predictably unhappy. They talk and talk to each other, drunkenly and manicly trying "communicate," to work through their angst. They decide that if they move to Paris everything will be different. They never make it to Paris. I'm not giving away the ending, just read the book for yourself. The title is, of course, ironic.
In times of trouble we long for the safety and certainty of the past, or yearn toward the better times of the future. We watch period dramas secure in our hindsight; we know better than the Wheelers, we know their plot has nowhere to go but to grief, we feel definite that we're smarter now. But are we? How many dreams were sublimated into mortgages during the past decade, how many aspirations swallowed by consumerist desires? We still want what everyone else has, we still need at the same time to feel different.
The Wheelers' story unfolds on the cusp of cultural, political, and generational change, a cusp we are today similarly balanced upon. We smoke and drink less, we no longer wear fedoras or girdles, we believe we are more enlightened about sexual and racial politics, but underneath the song remains the same: the more we strive, the more we compromise.
If you're not familiar with Richard Yates, he served in WWII, had TB, wrote a couple of great, minimalist novels and some of the best short stories of the 20th century, was an accomplished creative writing instructor, and drank himself to death. Read his collected stories and see that Raymond Carver didn't come out of left field. In fact, just read his collected stories; many of them are truly wonderful, ultimately better than any of his novels.
Revolutionary Road is the story of April and Frank Wheeler. Frank works in PR; he and April meet at a party in the Village, fall in love, marry. Despite their "artistic" leanings they move to the suburbs. They are predictably unhappy. They talk and talk to each other, drunkenly and manicly trying "communicate," to work through their angst. They decide that if they move to Paris everything will be different. They never make it to Paris. I'm not giving away the ending, just read the book for yourself. The title is, of course, ironic.
In times of trouble we long for the safety and certainty of the past, or yearn toward the better times of the future. We watch period dramas secure in our hindsight; we know better than the Wheelers, we know their plot has nowhere to go but to grief, we feel definite that we're smarter now. But are we? How many dreams were sublimated into mortgages during the past decade, how many aspirations swallowed by consumerist desires? We still want what everyone else has, we still need at the same time to feel different.
The Wheelers' story unfolds on the cusp of cultural, political, and generational change, a cusp we are today similarly balanced upon. We smoke and drink less, we no longer wear fedoras or girdles, we believe we are more enlightened about sexual and racial politics, but underneath the song remains the same: the more we strive, the more we compromise.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
At Least I Wasn't Naked
School always started the Wednesday after Labor Day. I think my college even began its term after Labor Day because we had 12.5-week semesters, rather than the more common 14-week terms, but I honestly don't completely remember. I really liked college and always looked forward to going back, so we could have started the middle of August and I would have been fine with that. Something's changed, though; my friends who are teachers or guidance counselors all go back to school the end of this week, with the students starting class Monday, a full week before Labor Day. Where did the summer go?
During times of transition I have dreams where past and present are confused. This happens to many of us, and the shape of my dreams also follows the predictable: I have to return to college or high school because someone has discovered I was missing credits for graduation, and I can no longer keep up with the classes. Or I'm back in college or high school and ready to graduate but it turns out there's one class I was registered for that I'd completely forgotten about, and I have to take a final exam in Chemistry V or something like that when I've never been to one class. Or I'm in college and it's my college but I don't know anyone. Or I'm naked and have to give an oral report.
Last night I dreamed that I was a senior in college, although I was my current age. The dream was populated with my real college classmates, all of us fortysomethings. The campus had been moved so some urban center, though, when in actuality my alma mater comprises thousands of acres in central Virginia. We are about to graduate, and are all bar-hopping. I find out that I'm going to receive some sort of award and will have to make a speech at graduation, and although I realize I should call it a night and go home to prepare I stay out with my friends. Suddenly it's the next day, after the ceremony, and I have no recollection of my speech, what I said, how it went. I don't think my lapse has to do with being drunk, because in the dream I'm not drunk. It was just some sort of blackout.
Everyone acts like I did well, that my speech was great. I'm upset because I can't recall any of it, and I rush around the town looking for someone who has recorded the ceremony. During my search I run into various friends' parents, not just college friends but parents of friends from as far back as elementary school. All ask me what I'm looking for, and when I tell them it's documentary evidence of my speech, they sigh and tell me they can't help me.
I gave myself until the end of the summer to decide what I'm going to do now that my business has been sold. I still have no idea. Clearly, the past can't help me. At least, not in my dreams.
During times of transition I have dreams where past and present are confused. This happens to many of us, and the shape of my dreams also follows the predictable: I have to return to college or high school because someone has discovered I was missing credits for graduation, and I can no longer keep up with the classes. Or I'm back in college or high school and ready to graduate but it turns out there's one class I was registered for that I'd completely forgotten about, and I have to take a final exam in Chemistry V or something like that when I've never been to one class. Or I'm in college and it's my college but I don't know anyone. Or I'm naked and have to give an oral report.
Last night I dreamed that I was a senior in college, although I was my current age. The dream was populated with my real college classmates, all of us fortysomethings. The campus had been moved so some urban center, though, when in actuality my alma mater comprises thousands of acres in central Virginia. We are about to graduate, and are all bar-hopping. I find out that I'm going to receive some sort of award and will have to make a speech at graduation, and although I realize I should call it a night and go home to prepare I stay out with my friends. Suddenly it's the next day, after the ceremony, and I have no recollection of my speech, what I said, how it went. I don't think my lapse has to do with being drunk, because in the dream I'm not drunk. It was just some sort of blackout.
Everyone acts like I did well, that my speech was great. I'm upset because I can't recall any of it, and I rush around the town looking for someone who has recorded the ceremony. During my search I run into various friends' parents, not just college friends but parents of friends from as far back as elementary school. All ask me what I'm looking for, and when I tell them it's documentary evidence of my speech, they sigh and tell me they can't help me.
I gave myself until the end of the summer to decide what I'm going to do now that my business has been sold. I still have no idea. Clearly, the past can't help me. At least, not in my dreams.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Here Comes the Future
If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1960 and awakened in 1970, he’d be a confused man indeed. “What happened?” he’d ask himself. “Men are walking around looking like women, women are acting like men, and what’s with this loud music? Plus, everyone’s dressed like a six year-old on a play date or a circus clown. What’s with the marijuana? Doesn’t anyone drink rye whiskey anymore?”
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
From the Archives
We might be lurching toward paperlessness, but I came of age in a world full of paper. My house is full of paper: notes from when I was teaching, journals I've kept since the age of 12, notes from papers I wrote in grad school plus the papers themselves, poems I've written since the age of 13. It's a lot of paper. I spent some time last weekend trying to weed out some of it, but it's hard to let go. It feels akin to tossing out my past, and I'm not ready to toss out my past.
Then, of course, rather than weeding I started reading. The weirdness of experiencing a journal kept by my 14 year-old self is fodder for a different post, but I will say that if you ever want a weird experience, spend some time with yourself as a young teenager. In looking through a folder, I found this poem. I was 21 when I wrote it. I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but I think I still like it. At least, I still like it today. Meet the 21 year-old me:
neon light
drops from the bar
like petals tonight,
the radio only plays
songs we can sing to,
and the world
has become a home
and at the bar
the bikers
are taking off their beards
and the pool players
are humming a tune
they call Friday night
that everyone is singing
and even if it rains
the puddles will sit there,
wanting to shine
the bikers’ faces will gleam
like polished chrome
and they’ll waltz
spinning around the bar,
buying each other rounds
and the players will tell you,
Each of these balls
is a man
who didn’t kill me,
and they’ll pocket them,
laughing, one by one
while the city packs away
its parking meters
and a janitor swings his broom
like a date at Roseland,
knowing it isn’t his life
he’s been collecting
and when an old woman
enters the bar
she’ll throw aside her hat
and bags and say,
Call me work
with no payday,
footless dancer,
cup without wine
and the janitor
will let her sleep
in his building
and under our clothes
our bodies will glisten
as we move like dancers,
all of us,
as we become a shot glass
that never empties,
a street with no noise
and children won’t cry
in upstairs rooms
and the food
on every menu
will come without asking
and when the bar closes
we’ll enter the night together
and it will be soft
as a breast,
and we’ll go down on it
without fear,
this world
falling from our mouths
like kisses
Then, of course, rather than weeding I started reading. The weirdness of experiencing a journal kept by my 14 year-old self is fodder for a different post, but I will say that if you ever want a weird experience, spend some time with yourself as a young teenager. In looking through a folder, I found this poem. I was 21 when I wrote it. I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but I think I still like it. At least, I still like it today. Meet the 21 year-old me:
Night Falls at Sam’s Place
neon light
drops from the bar
like petals tonight,
the radio only plays
songs we can sing to,
and the world
has become a home
and at the bar
the bikers
are taking off their beards
and the pool players
are humming a tune
they call Friday night
that everyone is singing
and even if it rains
the puddles will sit there,
wanting to shine
the bikers’ faces will gleam
like polished chrome
and they’ll waltz
spinning around the bar,
buying each other rounds
and the players will tell you,
Each of these balls
is a man
who didn’t kill me,
and they’ll pocket them,
laughing, one by one
while the city packs away
its parking meters
and a janitor swings his broom
like a date at Roseland,
knowing it isn’t his life
he’s been collecting
and when an old woman
enters the bar
she’ll throw aside her hat
and bags and say,
Call me work
with no payday,
footless dancer,
cup without wine
and the janitor
will let her sleep
in his building
and under our clothes
our bodies will glisten
as we move like dancers,
all of us,
as we become a shot glass
that never empties,
a street with no noise
and children won’t cry
in upstairs rooms
and the food
on every menu
will come without asking
and when the bar closes
we’ll enter the night together
and it will be soft
as a breast,
and we’ll go down on it
without fear,
this world
falling from our mouths
like kisses
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Time's Not on My Side (or yours)
Have you ever completely lost a day of your life? I lost yesterday. The entirety of it, from 9:30 in the morning until after 7 PM, was spent in a discussion/argument over something I'm not even going to explain because I'm sick of thinking about the subject. The point isn't what made me lose a day, but the fact that it was lost. Time just goes; I wake up in the morning, have some coffee, run my dog, blink and suddenly it's the middle of the afternoon.
I vividly remember childhood weeks spent in anticipation of something: Christmas, a vacation, the end of the school year. Time felt so excruciatingly slow. The days just dragged on. What I anticipated would never arrive. Now I book a vacation a couple of months in advance and suddenly find myself needing to pack my bag the night before, out of travel-sized toothpaste and shampoo. I understand that some of this might be due to the fact that I've had years of vacations, of holidays, of birthdays, and that the thrill is gone, that I'm jaded. I think there's something more at work than just the loss of the new, though.
I read once that we experience time opposite our metabolic rate. This means that when we are young, with a high metabolic rate, time appears slow to us. As we age and our metabolism slows, time is experienced as passing more and more quickly. This certainly makes as much sense as anything else. Time, after all, is a consistently measured quantity. If time itself doesn't change it must be something in us that's different.
I used to make fun of my mother for all sorts of reasons, but one reason was that if I asked her what she was up to, she'd frequently say, "Oh my, I have such a busy week. I go to the doctor Monday, and I play cards Tuesday, and on Wednesday I go to Walgreen's." What was unimaginable to me a few years ago is today a reality: I understand where she was coming from. I understand how having one thing to do can feel like a day's worth of activity, when days disappear so quickly. I understand what time really is. I understand my (and our) mortality.
I vividly remember childhood weeks spent in anticipation of something: Christmas, a vacation, the end of the school year. Time felt so excruciatingly slow. The days just dragged on. What I anticipated would never arrive. Now I book a vacation a couple of months in advance and suddenly find myself needing to pack my bag the night before, out of travel-sized toothpaste and shampoo. I understand that some of this might be due to the fact that I've had years of vacations, of holidays, of birthdays, and that the thrill is gone, that I'm jaded. I think there's something more at work than just the loss of the new, though.
I read once that we experience time opposite our metabolic rate. This means that when we are young, with a high metabolic rate, time appears slow to us. As we age and our metabolism slows, time is experienced as passing more and more quickly. This certainly makes as much sense as anything else. Time, after all, is a consistently measured quantity. If time itself doesn't change it must be something in us that's different.
I used to make fun of my mother for all sorts of reasons, but one reason was that if I asked her what she was up to, she'd frequently say, "Oh my, I have such a busy week. I go to the doctor Monday, and I play cards Tuesday, and on Wednesday I go to Walgreen's." What was unimaginable to me a few years ago is today a reality: I understand where she was coming from. I understand how having one thing to do can feel like a day's worth of activity, when days disappear so quickly. I understand what time really is. I understand my (and our) mortality.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Dream of My Mother Shopping
I haven't been using this blog as a personal journal, but that's what this entry will be, because the main thing on my mind this weekend (besides the assembly of porch furniture) has been a dream I had Friday night.
I'm in a the central business district of a small town. The town is surrounded by pristine mountains and fields, and all the buildings are either new or perfectly restored. In fact, I don't see any power or phone lines, and the seeming newness of the buildings combined with the lack of modern clutter makes me think that perhaps I've somehow entered the early 20th century. There is no vehicular traffic; the streets are closed off for some sort of parade or celebration, and in fact are teeming with people wandering about.
I follow the flow of people through the streets and run into my mother; she's walking arm in arm with a much younger friend I've never seen before. The friend appears to be about my age, and for a moment I'm jealous and feel somewhat replaced. "What are you doing here?" I ask. "I didn't expect to see you." My mother replies that she's doing well, and tells me that I really should get myself some pants that fit me. This is how I know it really is my mother. Literally on her deathbed she complained that I never buy pants that fit me correctly.
I tell her I've been worried about her and want to know how she's doing. Even as I'm dreaming I'm not clear whether or not the me in the dream knows that my mother is dead, and so part of the dream is watching the me in the dream interact with my mother, wondering whether or not I know she's dead. "I'm fine where I am," she tells me. "Don't worry about me." I ask her where she's been living, and she points vaguely down the street and says, "Really, we're both fine here. Don't worry about me, Elinor." We become separated from one another and I search the same few blocks for her over and over again, but she's gone and the dream ends.
She died almost a year ago, and this is the first time I've dreamed of her. I'm pretty certain I don't believe in an afterlife, so I'm pretty certain I was simply telling myself that what is, is, and that I'm the one who is doing fine. But if there is anything to the notion that loved one can reach out from beyond, I'm glad that she's in the world of her childhood, shopping.
I'm in a the central business district of a small town. The town is surrounded by pristine mountains and fields, and all the buildings are either new or perfectly restored. In fact, I don't see any power or phone lines, and the seeming newness of the buildings combined with the lack of modern clutter makes me think that perhaps I've somehow entered the early 20th century. There is no vehicular traffic; the streets are closed off for some sort of parade or celebration, and in fact are teeming with people wandering about.
I follow the flow of people through the streets and run into my mother; she's walking arm in arm with a much younger friend I've never seen before. The friend appears to be about my age, and for a moment I'm jealous and feel somewhat replaced. "What are you doing here?" I ask. "I didn't expect to see you." My mother replies that she's doing well, and tells me that I really should get myself some pants that fit me. This is how I know it really is my mother. Literally on her deathbed she complained that I never buy pants that fit me correctly.
I tell her I've been worried about her and want to know how she's doing. Even as I'm dreaming I'm not clear whether or not the me in the dream knows that my mother is dead, and so part of the dream is watching the me in the dream interact with my mother, wondering whether or not I know she's dead. "I'm fine where I am," she tells me. "Don't worry about me." I ask her where she's been living, and she points vaguely down the street and says, "Really, we're both fine here. Don't worry about me, Elinor." We become separated from one another and I search the same few blocks for her over and over again, but she's gone and the dream ends.
She died almost a year ago, and this is the first time I've dreamed of her. I'm pretty certain I don't believe in an afterlife, so I'm pretty certain I was simply telling myself that what is, is, and that I'm the one who is doing fine. But if there is anything to the notion that loved one can reach out from beyond, I'm glad that she's in the world of her childhood, shopping.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Employment Journal, Part III
Joan Crawford needs a job. Her name is Mildred Pierce; she's left her husband, and she can't bake enough pies to keep her bratty daughter Veda in piano lessons and expensive frocks. So Joan goes out to pound the pavements of Los Angeles, ending the day with only sore ankles to show for it. Four-inch pumps will do that to you. Joan does the only sensible thing, which is to go to a restaurant for a cup of tea. Spending money is the only remedy for feeling broke, after all. In the restaurant, waitresses are bickering. The place is so understaffed not even Eve Arden can control the chaos. "Can I have a job," Joan Crawford asks. No, she doesn't have any experience, but yes, she'll learn. And learn she does. After a short montage and voice-over she's made enough money to open Mildred's and hire Eve Arden to be her manager.
There are too many ways this could never happen today to enumerate, but most laughable is the thought of being hired to waitress in middle-age without any previous experience.
Although I knew I would get nowhere because I've never tended bar or waitstaffed, I decided to see what restaurant jobs might be available. For me, none. I decided not to lie, and was told everywhere I went that only the experienced need apply. This was as much the case at a diner as it was at a finer restaurant. After my fourth stop I decided to stop the ruse and began just going into places and telling managers that I'm a freelance journalist writing about the local economy and wondering how the downturn has effected staffing. Has turnover decreased? Have applications increased?
The good news is that, for those who are unemployed but who have restaurant experience, there are jobs to be had. About half of the ten places I visited yesterday are either hiring or taking applications. The bad news is that none of those positions would have paid particularly well, since all were in mid to low-priced places, all were for lunch shifts, and none were for more than a couple of shifts a week. Maybe a job like that would bring out the Mildred Pierce in some of us. I'm just glad that I don't have to spend 20 hours a week on my feet dealing with people and end up unable to pay my mortgage.
Turnover has decreased at finer establishments, according to my unscientific study. Those who have dinner shifts, frequent shifts, and who work at places where the tips are high are not switching jobs with the frequency that was seen until about a year ago. I was told applications are up at the higher-end restaurants, and that they were about the same everywhere else, except that those looking for work in the mid and lower priced places were coming in with more experience than is the norm. Make of all that what you will. I take it to mean that I'd lose my house before I'd find anything other than dishwasher or busperson.
By the way, I ended up staying for something to eat or drink at the last four places I visited. There's no better way to feel well-off than to spend money, after all.
There are too many ways this could never happen today to enumerate, but most laughable is the thought of being hired to waitress in middle-age without any previous experience.
Although I knew I would get nowhere because I've never tended bar or waitstaffed, I decided to see what restaurant jobs might be available. For me, none. I decided not to lie, and was told everywhere I went that only the experienced need apply. This was as much the case at a diner as it was at a finer restaurant. After my fourth stop I decided to stop the ruse and began just going into places and telling managers that I'm a freelance journalist writing about the local economy and wondering how the downturn has effected staffing. Has turnover decreased? Have applications increased?
The good news is that, for those who are unemployed but who have restaurant experience, there are jobs to be had. About half of the ten places I visited yesterday are either hiring or taking applications. The bad news is that none of those positions would have paid particularly well, since all were in mid to low-priced places, all were for lunch shifts, and none were for more than a couple of shifts a week. Maybe a job like that would bring out the Mildred Pierce in some of us. I'm just glad that I don't have to spend 20 hours a week on my feet dealing with people and end up unable to pay my mortgage.
Turnover has decreased at finer establishments, according to my unscientific study. Those who have dinner shifts, frequent shifts, and who work at places where the tips are high are not switching jobs with the frequency that was seen until about a year ago. I was told applications are up at the higher-end restaurants, and that they were about the same everywhere else, except that those looking for work in the mid and lower priced places were coming in with more experience than is the norm. Make of all that what you will. I take it to mean that I'd lose my house before I'd find anything other than dishwasher or busperson.
By the way, I ended up staying for something to eat or drink at the last four places I visited. There's no better way to feel well-off than to spend money, after all.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Acts of Daily Journalism
If, like me, you're a big fan of David Simon and every word he's ever written (which means you're a big fan of The Wire, The Corner - book and series, and Homicide - book and series) then you'll want to pick up the March issue of Esquire, which features Simon's essay about his years at the Baltimore Sun and the decline of the daily newspaper. You can follow the link to Esquire's website to read part of the essay, but you'll have to buy the print version to read it all, which is a business model to keep in mind when thinking about the decline of the newspaper.
I spent my first two years of college thinking that I would graduate, go to j-school, and become a reporter. Simon is just five years older than I am, and he entered the profession at this same time, the early 80s, when newspapers were still wearing their post-Watergate glow. The daily paper wasn't only a source of news, but a source of reform and change. That statement isn't just a reflection of the idealism of the young; 25 years ago, newspapers were still flush with advertising revenue and could afford the kind of staff needed for investigative reporting. 25 years ago 24-hour news channels and the internet were just a dream.
To say that the newspaper has fallen victim to increased competition is to only tell part of the story. Simon concentrates on consolidation and how the cutbacks in staff enacted by conglomerates have made reporting of the real stories important to a city impossible, and I can see that this is true. The consolidation happened because newspapers were losing money, though, and they were losing money primarily because of the decline of the department store. Department store circulars, as well as department store multi-page spreads, are the lifeblood of the daily paper. As regional department stores failed or were consolidated, so went the regional and smaller-market dailies.
Newspapers also didn't adapt well to the internet. Most of them were late in developing web content and are now trying to survive with a business model where they charge for what they should be giving away (the print version) and not selling ads where they should be (for the web version). My hometown daily is incredibly cheap, only 50 cents, but I almost always just read it online, for free, without an ad in sight. No wonder that paper was eaten up by a larger chain; consolidation is the only way the paper can survive economically.
Of course, the decline of the daily can be seen as a tragedy, or as an opportunity. For Simon, who loved his work at the Sun, the daily's loss of significance is a personal loss. However, the inability of short-staffed dailies to report on the specifics of the lives of a city's residents simply makes room for alternative media to take up the slack. The monopoly of the daily has been broken, and there's more room for the free weekly or monthly, and for the blogger, to join in the conversation.
I hope the newspaper as we know it will continue. I hope to always have the opportunity to get ink on my fingers while I drink my morning coffee. But I also hope that the shrinking of the daily leads to the proliferation of other media, other voices.
I spent my first two years of college thinking that I would graduate, go to j-school, and become a reporter. Simon is just five years older than I am, and he entered the profession at this same time, the early 80s, when newspapers were still wearing their post-Watergate glow. The daily paper wasn't only a source of news, but a source of reform and change. That statement isn't just a reflection of the idealism of the young; 25 years ago, newspapers were still flush with advertising revenue and could afford the kind of staff needed for investigative reporting. 25 years ago 24-hour news channels and the internet were just a dream.
To say that the newspaper has fallen victim to increased competition is to only tell part of the story. Simon concentrates on consolidation and how the cutbacks in staff enacted by conglomerates have made reporting of the real stories important to a city impossible, and I can see that this is true. The consolidation happened because newspapers were losing money, though, and they were losing money primarily because of the decline of the department store. Department store circulars, as well as department store multi-page spreads, are the lifeblood of the daily paper. As regional department stores failed or were consolidated, so went the regional and smaller-market dailies.
Newspapers also didn't adapt well to the internet. Most of them were late in developing web content and are now trying to survive with a business model where they charge for what they should be giving away (the print version) and not selling ads where they should be (for the web version). My hometown daily is incredibly cheap, only 50 cents, but I almost always just read it online, for free, without an ad in sight. No wonder that paper was eaten up by a larger chain; consolidation is the only way the paper can survive economically.
Of course, the decline of the daily can be seen as a tragedy, or as an opportunity. For Simon, who loved his work at the Sun, the daily's loss of significance is a personal loss. However, the inability of short-staffed dailies to report on the specifics of the lives of a city's residents simply makes room for alternative media to take up the slack. The monopoly of the daily has been broken, and there's more room for the free weekly or monthly, and for the blogger, to join in the conversation.
I hope the newspaper as we know it will continue. I hope to always have the opportunity to get ink on my fingers while I drink my morning coffee. But I also hope that the shrinking of the daily leads to the proliferation of other media, other voices.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
