I'm a huge fan of The Wire, still mourning the fact that the series ended. If, like me, you need a fix of gritty reality, tune in to the Sundance Channel next week for the documentary mini-series Brick City (it airs M-F at 10 PM). It's probably unfair to compare the two, as The Wire was realistic fiction while Brick City is reality without fiction, but the focus on lives large and small and on the ways various people struggle to find meaning in the middle of crushing poverty, racism, and crime, and the ways these same people must function within and against institutions while they carry on this struggle, is the thematic center of both series. If you loved one, you'll love the other.
Brick City presents approximately six months in the life of Newark, NJ. We watch first-term mayor Cory Booker cheerlead, exhort, and politically manipulate. We watch Booker's new Director of Police attempt to reform the department, focus on Comstat in attempting to reduce the murder rate, and battle against the old school Chief of Police for control of the men. We watch Jayda, an ex-Blood, and her boyfriend Creep, an ex-Crip, attempt to make a life together and raise a family despite the odds. We watch the residents of Newark's Central Ward fight to get a new high school opened, and we watch the principal and vice-principal of that school fight to keep their students in the classroom and off the streets.
Because this is reality rather than fiction, small plot arcs structure the individual episodes, while the series begins and ends in medias res. Solutions to the failure of the American city are in short supply, and wouldn't be found in six months at any rate. If the series has a failing, however, it's the fact that it feels truncated; five hours is just enough to make you want to see more. All in all, it's worth watching, and undoubtedly better than whatever else is on weeknights at 10 PM. I recommend it.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Goodbye, Taste Buds
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.
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.
Friday, September 11, 2009
September 11
I'm not sure there's anything more to say about it. It shocked us, it saddened us, it happened. For months after we were all freaked out and scared and so we plastered flags all over the country. Where did all the flags go, I often wonder? I guess the basements of America are now filled with flags. In my basement, I have the commemorative 9/11 box of tissues I purchased at a mini-mart a couple of weeks later. Part of me couldn't believe that the event was being milked to sell tissues, and part of me knew that only in this country could an act of terrorism be turned into a marketing strategy.
How could we know, in the middle of shock and grief, the ways that event would change our world? At the time we couldn't see the wars to follow, one necessary and one useless. We couldn't see the ways a Presidency would be transformed, our government hardened. We couldn't see thousands of our servicepeople killed, thousands more returning home with PTSD, couldn't see that our relationship with a distant part of the world was damaged in ways armed might can't combat and probably still can't see that, even eight years later when war feels perpetual.
We said we'd never forget - the tissue box proclaims that in large type - but then except for this one day a year we did forget. Our President told us to go shopping, so we all took out subprime mortgages and bought houses in exurbs. We all went on with our lives, as survivors do. The world has changed not only because years have passed but because the events of that day helped to change it. It's important to take a minute to remember what happened and those who perished not only to honor them but to see clearly, even if just for a moment, where we are and how we got here.
The 21st century began eight years ago today.
How could we know, in the middle of shock and grief, the ways that event would change our world? At the time we couldn't see the wars to follow, one necessary and one useless. We couldn't see the ways a Presidency would be transformed, our government hardened. We couldn't see thousands of our servicepeople killed, thousands more returning home with PTSD, couldn't see that our relationship with a distant part of the world was damaged in ways armed might can't combat and probably still can't see that, even eight years later when war feels perpetual.
We said we'd never forget - the tissue box proclaims that in large type - but then except for this one day a year we did forget. Our President told us to go shopping, so we all took out subprime mortgages and bought houses in exurbs. We all went on with our lives, as survivors do. The world has changed not only because years have passed but because the events of that day helped to change it. It's important to take a minute to remember what happened and those who perished not only to honor them but to see clearly, even if just for a moment, where we are and how we got here.
The 21st century began eight years ago today.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
As Always, It's All About Protein
When I look at my dog sleeping happily at my feet I don't wonder why he chooses to live with me rather than in the wild. He wouldn't survive a day in the wild, to be honest. He has absolutely no prey instinct, he refuses to be rained on, he hates cold, and he won't lie even on the floor without a pillow. He was born thoroughly domesticated, as dogs are these days.
The question of how wolves came be dogs has been pondered by researchers over and over again. Where were they domesticated, how, why? I've always figured that a couple of brave and friendly wolves were attracted by a fire and started spending nights sleeping by some of our ancestors, who started feeding them scraps. Then they started hunting together and hanging out 24/7, and before you know it the wolves were sleeping next to rather than near the humans, protecting the humans, helping out by pulling and carrying things for the humans, and a relationship that has lasted thousands of years was born. This is a happy story of codependency, but according to a story in yesterday's NY Times, it's bunk.
Using genetics, dogs have been traced back to one place of origin, a remote province of China. The disturbing thing is that this is one of those Chinese provinces where historically dogs are food, not pets. Thousands of years ago, once man had the ability to build cages and trap, wolves were caught and kept in pens, fattening up for the slaughter. Wolves came to live in proximity to humans not because wolves saw anything fortuitous in the relationship - what's good about being meat, after all - but because humans looked at wolves and saw lunch. Thus wolves began to be raised in captivity.
Travelers passing through this province then saw the wolves in cages, and instead of seeing lunch saw an animal that could be of some use for warmth, protection, hunting, hauling. They traded for these domesticated wolves and carried them off, dispersing them eventually throughout the known world. 10,000 or so years later you have Brody, shedding all over my pillow while he watches me type.
It's somewhat disturbing to rethink the whole human/canine relationship this way, but it also explains why, if wolves wanted to be domesticated, you never hear stories of humans camping and meeting some friendly wolves out in the wild. It also explains why dogs are so willing to be housebroken. It's not because they love us and want to please us, but because they don't want to be fileted.
The question of how wolves came be dogs has been pondered by researchers over and over again. Where were they domesticated, how, why? I've always figured that a couple of brave and friendly wolves were attracted by a fire and started spending nights sleeping by some of our ancestors, who started feeding them scraps. Then they started hunting together and hanging out 24/7, and before you know it the wolves were sleeping next to rather than near the humans, protecting the humans, helping out by pulling and carrying things for the humans, and a relationship that has lasted thousands of years was born. This is a happy story of codependency, but according to a story in yesterday's NY Times, it's bunk.
Using genetics, dogs have been traced back to one place of origin, a remote province of China. The disturbing thing is that this is one of those Chinese provinces where historically dogs are food, not pets. Thousands of years ago, once man had the ability to build cages and trap, wolves were caught and kept in pens, fattening up for the slaughter. Wolves came to live in proximity to humans not because wolves saw anything fortuitous in the relationship - what's good about being meat, after all - but because humans looked at wolves and saw lunch. Thus wolves began to be raised in captivity.
Travelers passing through this province then saw the wolves in cages, and instead of seeing lunch saw an animal that could be of some use for warmth, protection, hunting, hauling. They traded for these domesticated wolves and carried them off, dispersing them eventually throughout the known world. 10,000 or so years later you have Brody, shedding all over my pillow while he watches me type.
It's somewhat disturbing to rethink the whole human/canine relationship this way, but it also explains why, if wolves wanted to be domesticated, you never hear stories of humans camping and meeting some friendly wolves out in the wild. It also explains why dogs are so willing to be housebroken. It's not because they love us and want to please us, but because they don't want to be fileted.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Working on My Resume
I really should get a job. For a year I've been living on air, freelance work, and savings, and I'm tired of the schedule of no schedule. Of course, in order to get a job one has to look for a job, and in order to look for a job one has to update one's resume. I don't think there's any task more boring, more horrid, than writing a resume. In my last job I had to read plenty of resumes, so I can say with some authority that reading them is no more fun than writing them. Resumes suck.
I've always changed things on the resume around depending on the job to which I am applying, so that whatever aspects of my experience seems most relevant are brought to the foreground. What this means, practically, is hours spent reliving all the ridiculous and often boring tasks I've mastered at one point or another. Budgeting, for example. I was good with my budget in that I spent all of it every year. If you don't spend it all, it gets cut the next year. So every September I ordered office supplies, computer bags, crap I didn't need just to protect that particular budget line. Budget management means I'm good at spending money I don't have to.
"Managing support staff." That one means that I spent a year trying to get my assistant to show up for work one hour late rather than her preferred two hours late. This would work for about a week at a time. She'd arrive promptly at 10, then it would become 10:25, then 10:47, then we'd be back to two hours late, have a talk that would leave her mad at me, and begin the cycle all over again. I wonder if her resume features her experience "Managing Managers."
I was in charge of our company's crisis communications plan and in making sure that all of our offices had crisis communications plans of their own. This was mainly about PR crises, and was mainly about ensuring that only certain staff would talk to the press and controlling what would be said to the press, but the plan also had to include our potential response to various disasters. What would nuclear annihilation mean to our company? What statement do we make in the event of invasion by space aliens? If California drops into the Pacific, who is our spokesperson? I left the company before Katrina and was saddened to see that we somehow didn't make it into any of the press coverage since my planning had included responses to government indifference and incompetence (although I called that situation "acts of God").
Depending on the position my resume could also include planning and leading conference calls. Some days all I did was go from one conference call to another. Usually this was small groups, but sometimes I had to lead calls with 30 or so participants. Being on the phone with 30 people is a skill, believe me, particularly when you consider that 80% of those people were eating their lunch. At least it sounded that way. How do you compete with lunch? You can't, although on your resume you list your experience in "staff motivation."
Of course all work is cyclical. Some days and weeks I'd be incredibly busy, and then there would be days when I really didn't have that much to do. No one can know about any of this down time, however, or else you'll be given more work that you then have to delegate and oversee to completion. "Time management" becomes an essential skill. How do you make surfing the Web look like a work-related task? How many hours of solitaire can you play while pretending to write press releases? Without effective time management, you might end up actually busy all day, every day, and that's just not the desired measurable outcome.
The process of writing this post and thinking about my resume makes me see why I'd rather continue working for myself. If it weren't for paychecks and health insurance, would any of us go to an office five days a week? But the time has come, and I need to manage it. My resume awaits.
I've always changed things on the resume around depending on the job to which I am applying, so that whatever aspects of my experience seems most relevant are brought to the foreground. What this means, practically, is hours spent reliving all the ridiculous and often boring tasks I've mastered at one point or another. Budgeting, for example. I was good with my budget in that I spent all of it every year. If you don't spend it all, it gets cut the next year. So every September I ordered office supplies, computer bags, crap I didn't need just to protect that particular budget line. Budget management means I'm good at spending money I don't have to.
"Managing support staff." That one means that I spent a year trying to get my assistant to show up for work one hour late rather than her preferred two hours late. This would work for about a week at a time. She'd arrive promptly at 10, then it would become 10:25, then 10:47, then we'd be back to two hours late, have a talk that would leave her mad at me, and begin the cycle all over again. I wonder if her resume features her experience "Managing Managers."
I was in charge of our company's crisis communications plan and in making sure that all of our offices had crisis communications plans of their own. This was mainly about PR crises, and was mainly about ensuring that only certain staff would talk to the press and controlling what would be said to the press, but the plan also had to include our potential response to various disasters. What would nuclear annihilation mean to our company? What statement do we make in the event of invasion by space aliens? If California drops into the Pacific, who is our spokesperson? I left the company before Katrina and was saddened to see that we somehow didn't make it into any of the press coverage since my planning had included responses to government indifference and incompetence (although I called that situation "acts of God").
Depending on the position my resume could also include planning and leading conference calls. Some days all I did was go from one conference call to another. Usually this was small groups, but sometimes I had to lead calls with 30 or so participants. Being on the phone with 30 people is a skill, believe me, particularly when you consider that 80% of those people were eating their lunch. At least it sounded that way. How do you compete with lunch? You can't, although on your resume you list your experience in "staff motivation."
Of course all work is cyclical. Some days and weeks I'd be incredibly busy, and then there would be days when I really didn't have that much to do. No one can know about any of this down time, however, or else you'll be given more work that you then have to delegate and oversee to completion. "Time management" becomes an essential skill. How do you make surfing the Web look like a work-related task? How many hours of solitaire can you play while pretending to write press releases? Without effective time management, you might end up actually busy all day, every day, and that's just not the desired measurable outcome.
The process of writing this post and thinking about my resume makes me see why I'd rather continue working for myself. If it weren't for paychecks and health insurance, would any of us go to an office five days a week? But the time has come, and I need to manage it. My resume awaits.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Holiday, Celebrate
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Labor Day was originally intended to celebrate the social and economic contributions of the labor movement to American society. So thank you, labor movement, for getting everyone a day off of work. Thank you, labor movement, for a long weekend of back-to-school sales at which underpaid workers with no benefits must labor while the rest of us grill hot dogs. Thanks, labor movement, for either lengthening or shortening summer, depending when the first Monday in September falls. I'm celebrating American labor the best way I know how this weekend: by doing absolutely nothing at all. I'm watching some tennis, I'm reading a book, and I'm bidding summer adieu with the sloth I didn't have time, this summer, to enjoy.
Have a great holiday weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday.
Have a great holiday weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Let's Hear It for 1987
The time has arrived to break out the shoulder pads and high-waisted jeans, pour some Chardonnay, give your dog a pretentious literary name, and settle in to an evening of thirtysomething. perhaps i should compose this post entirely in the lower-case? I won't do that, but I will express my happiness that at long last the series is being released on DVD. In the late 80s I religiously sat before the TV every Tuesday night at 10 to witness the trials and tribulations of this group of Philly yuppies.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
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