United We Stand, Together We Fall

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Dearest Samuel,

I never know what to say to you on this day. It’s by no means a birthday, just the opposite. I guess it’s an anniversary, though not nearly as celebratory; “happy” belongs nowhere near this sentiment.

Yet, here is today. It’s hard to believe we’ve been together 18 years. We’re legal! Well, to vote and crack skulls in the name of country. We’ll have to wait another three to commemorate our skull crackery with a beer.

It’s been a helluva year, but I’m glad to report your kidney and pancreas remain in the dutiful service of Life, the only religion I know.

Every time I go to the doctors, they’re impressed with our union. One told me that medicine didn’t really begin pancreas transplants in earnest until 2008! That makes us guinea pigs of sorts. They even have trouble finding the scar.

I don’t.

I met a man on Christmas Day that made me think of you. Not in appearance or lifestyle: He kept all of his belongings in a shopping cart, which was amiably guarded by the thickest pit bull you’ve ever seen. The man, too, was thick as a sequoia.

But, like his companion, he wasn’t nearly as fearsome as he appeared. In fact, we shared a brief Christmas Day conversation. He barely spoke English, but I could at least make out that he was fatigued. The real world had clearly gotten to him.

Like you.

The more we tried to communicate, the more I saw the weight of Things on his shoulders, like the faded gray and orange backpack he carried. Even though the day was cloudy, he never took off his cheap Ray-Bans, dollar store shades with neon orange temples (he must like that color).  But when I gave him some money, he reached under the glasses to wipe his tears. Then he began to sob.

Then I did. So there we were, weeping outside a 7-Eleven like 12-year-olds who’d just seen The Beatles but were trying to play it cool. Where’s Hallmark when you need them?

We shook hands, and he and his buddy trundled on, shaken but unbroken.

Like you.

We had a brief scare with sepsis this year. Confession: I haven’t been that nervous on the gurney since we met. Yet, every time I go in, every time a doc tells me what we’ll undergo, the thought of you brings me a peace. I know that two will face This, not one. There’s gotta be strength in numbers, right?

In fact (confession #2), I even use our tandem to bullshit. Whenever someone asks me whether I’m nervous or frightened about something, I love to respond, “Motherfucker, I carry the dead.”

Yet other than that first word, every one that follows is a lie. Including the bravado: I probably am nervous or frightened about something.

But I find sure footing. Because you carry the living.

Thank you.

See you tomorrow.

 

 

The Arithmetic of News

 

The Pew Research Center just released a study that must awaken newspaperpeople in cold sweats, or urine: 81% of Americans get their news from a screen —  either online outlets or social media (a putrid redundancy) sites. That doesn’t even include TV. Of the stragglers left over who get their news from papers or magazines, more than 60% are 65 and older.

So newspapers are literally dying.

That’s hardly new, news or surprising. I’m in the business, and can’t say I really support the concept of newspapers in a modern era. One day, historians will look back at our cultural institutions and think it quaint that we used to get our news from day-old parchment. That living things needed to be killed, shredded and delivered manually for  mankind to learn who won yesterday’s game shows.

Still, the death of papers is not like the death of coal. There has been little evidence that news coverage contributes to global warming (unless you count Trump as a carbon  emissions threat). In fact, consumption of news is at a record high.

So there are elements of newspapers that could still flourish, if not most newspapers themselves. The New York Times and Washington Post have seen a revival of scoops and influence unmatched since the Nixon years. So, they’re likely safe, if Jeff Sessions doesn’t equate reading news to heroin.

But, for the few who have little access to or interest in the Post or Times, the question over what constitutes news becomes as gray as uncertainty.

Our preeminent TV news outlets aren’t helping things any. Every MSNBC segment is simply asking a commentator, ‘Don’t you think Donald Trump is a nincompoop?’ The answer — and endless supply of examples — make for great comedy.  Just ask Alec Baldwin. And it soothes the confirmation biases of two-thirds of the country.

CNN is entering similarly shark-infested waters, accentuating sermonizers over strategists. Still, they’re the only network that gets A-list commentators Woodward, Bernstein and the NYT’s Maggie Haberman, the Three Musketeers of the White House. But they are three in a house of neophytes — who make enough errors to provide the administration defensive mortars.

That leaves the short-bus student, Fox News. For the first time, the network is losing regularly to MSNBC, once unthinkable. The state news agency is learning the limited punditry appeal of columnists from obscure outlets like Axios and The Washington Examiner, whoever the fuck they are now (I worked in DC for six years and never saw a copy). Hint: the outlet is the only measure of a commentator, who are interchangeably uniform.

So who to watch? When does news actually occur? Who to watch when it does?

There may be a simple but pretty accurate algorithm to measure the issue, and perhaps an answer that won’t even require you listen to a single word from the blowhards. Plus, it’s color-coded, so Alabamans can understand it.

It works this way. If possible, put CNN, FOX and MSNBC next to each other on the TV guide, so you can quickly flip up just two clicks for the world pulse.

Don’t bother listening, or even making out he pictures on the screen. Just look at the bottom of the screen: There will be a blue strip or a red one emblazoned across the bottom. Marketing research must dictate those colors — only.

Now click quickly twice, noting the color bands on the bottom.

If you see three red bands splashing fourfold BREAKING NEWS, you know that something real happened. An example of this would be the hurricanes or the Vegas shootings, incidents that demanded attention across all manner political spectrum.

If there are two red banners and one blue banner, the news will be negative against trump. The alleged Bannon-Trump split, for instance, dominated the broadcasts of CNN and MSNBC for an interminable span. Fox’s lead stories on the day of Fire and Fury’s release were the cold temperatures in the Northeast, and Jeff Sessions consideration of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s role into Russian meddling.

If there’s one red banner, the news is good for Trump. Trump’s strike on Syria. His choice of Gorsuch. Stock news.

Finally, if all the banners are all screaming in blue, there is no real news that day. Turn off the TV. Step outside. Forget the Gnash.

We’ve come to measure our world in analytics. Why not the news that dictates it?

 

 

 

The Beauty — and Plagiarism — of The Shape of Water

 

It’s either a sign of Guillero del Toro’s genius or the lackluster slate of films (or both, of course) that Shape of Water has become the film du jour in Hollywood’s pre-Oscar hysteria.

The odd fairy tale has already racked up seven Golden Globe nominations, a raft of other nods, and it’s expected to be among the titans when the contenders for the Academy Awards are announced are announced January 23. After seeing the film’s trailer, Kevin Smith tweeted he was embarrassed to call himself a director. It even received what is surely del Toro’s proudest honor, a HollywoodBowles Oughttabe for The Most Beautiful Film of 2017.

But in all fairness (despite what President Orangutan tweets, most media prefer truth), we must admit: As beautiful and worthy as Water is, it’s still the most blatant ripoff in Oscar’s history since Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture.

That’s not to say Water doesn’t deserve the praise — or the laurels —  it will inevitably garner. Being derivative doesn’t make entertainment any less worthy. If anything, it’s more remarkable, for it’s elevating a genre whose path has already been cut.

And del Toro, an avid and open nerdboy (he owns more action figures than I do, somehow), is absolutely blunt about his love of The Creature of the Black Lagoon, the 1954 film that he concedes was the inspiration for the monster in his own movie.

What he failed to mention was that its sequel the next year, The Revenge of the Creature, laid the foundation for everything else, from aesthetic to attitude.

I wouldn’t have noticed it myself, had I not been such a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the 10-year series that made fun of awful films (in some ways, the boys at MST3K were the snarky harbingers of social media).

MST3K is my Ultraman, my TV American cheese food, the crap that slops over my entertainment nachos. Confession: If given the choice between a documentary on the universe’s creation or a rerun of MST3K, I’ll often choose the latter. Frighteningly often.

And it was in that embarrassing choice the realization came. The guys were riffing on Creature one evening when two epiphanies struck:

  1. This actually isn’t a bad movie (it features Clint Eastwood in his big-screen debut).
  2. This is The Shape of Water, with but a single plot twist.

The twist, of course, is something of a whopper (spoiler alert): The creature and the beauty want to be together.

Aside from that, though, there is frightening little that separates the two movies. They monsters look near identical. The creature in both films wears an oversized, near-comical chain preventing love. Creature and beauty have  the same meet-cute, through the pane glass of a makeshift aquarium, both are allegories for a Cold War paranoia.

And it’s easy to see how go del Toro got the inspiration; with a simple question of movie logic:  What if King Kong and Fay Wray liked each other? We all know twas beauty that killed the beast. But what if they just wanted to get it on?

What if, indeed? Screw originality. We live in a nation that wants to reverse the old-fashioned, outdated principles of overthought and inner debate.

Long live the beautiful heist.