Shards

Michael Jackson's personal physician was charged today with involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death. Over the years, I have not spent a lot of time considering Michael Jackson's work. I remember being astonished at the stunning performance of "Billy Jean," on Motown 25. And I have, of course, enjoyed a lot of his music. But as he burrowed himself into the consciousness of the supermarket news rack brain trust, I just didn't waste a lot of time thinking about him.

Then I watched THIS IS IT the other day.

Man. That would have been one hell of a show.

And man, that was a guy who has no business being dead.

The drug administered by the recently-hired private physician is dubbed "milk of amnesia."

Enough said.
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Saw Jeff Bridges in CRAZY HEART yesterday. Yeah. He's damn good. The movie, not so much. And, truth be told, Jeff's work, while terrific, is not all that astounding, mainly because the character doesn't have a lot of depth or dimension, and where he goes in the movie is on a journey that has been filmed time and time and time again. Particularly, it was filmed in the eighties as TENDER MERCIES and it featured the brilliant performance of Robert Duvall, who is also in CRAZY HEART, and is also one of CRAZY HEART's producers. Duvall's story in TM is far more complicated, and Duvall's performance is memorable. This is not to take anything away from Bridges, who is pretty much always watchable anytime he's on screen in anything he does. I'm just sayin'. I'm just sayin' this movie didn't seem to be much of a challenge. And, I'm sorry, the pretty, plucky, young, intelligent Maggie Gyllenhaal character would never fall so quickly for the aging, boozed up singer Jeff brings to the screen. I mean, his cigarette breath alone would scare her away.

So, for my money, at least at this point, I opt for George Clooney in UP IN THE AIR as my Oscar pick for Best Actor. He won't win, but I think Clooney risked more, and found more in his character than was written for Bridges.
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I want to see AVATAR, but I just don't know if I can deal with the glasses. However, I don't want to see it 2D. What a dilemma. And there's no way I luck into one of my famous 4:30 pm private viewings with this one.
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I have a female friend who doesn't understand what all the hoopla is about Rose Byrne, who stars with Glenn Close on TV's DAMAGES. She doesn't see what I see in the actress. I chalk this up to the fact that my friend is, as noted, a female friend.
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I watched Elia Kazan's PANIC IN THE STREETS the other night, streamed in on my Netflix account through the new HD DVR. Here is a movie about the possibility of the plague sweeping into 1950's New Orleans, directed by the man who brought ON THE WATERFRONT to the screen. Sheesh. Rarely have I seen such a ham-handed film in my life, with poor Richard Widmark, as the doctor nobody will listen to, screaming his medical head off from frame to frame, scaring his poor (probably now deaf) wife Barbara Bel Geddes in the process. WATERFRONT came after PANIC. Guess Elia learned something about the movies. Like they have microphones and cameras. Sheesh again.
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Now that I'm totally enamored of stadium seating at the movies, any time I have to look upwards at a screen it just feels so wrong.
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This is one of those days, clearly, when I am forcing myself to write a blog entry. Thank you for your patience.

Whoever you are.

His Outside Voice

So here I am again, at Barnes and Noble, in Peabody, on a Saturday afternoon, trying to write a ten-minute play for this year's Boston Theatre Marathon. Ten-minute plays usually run about ten pages. I'm on page six. But I have to stop.

(Okay, you're right, if I want quiet I should stay at home. No argument. But there's quiet and there's quiet, and home quiet, for me, is too quiet. I like the murmur/mumble quiet of Barnes and Noble. I like being able to take my face out of my computer, look up, and see human beings, some of them attractive women, milling about, enjoying the ambiance of literature and glossy magazines. Most of the time, I'm able to concentrate.)

But right now, the cafe is crowded, I'm near an electrical outlet and my computer is plugged in, and can't really move anywhere, and at the table next to me...

...is this guy.

He's one of these guys who can't just talk. He has to proclaim. He has to announce. He has to bullhorn everything he says. He walked up to this table, where another guy was waiting, and the first thing he starts to do is talk about somebody--I'm assuming it was his father or his uncle or some older relative--who is newly in a nursing home. Today, I--and everybody east of Wilmington--has learned that Nursing Home Guy is comfortable today, relaxing reading a magazine. Glad to hear it. And, boy, did I hear it. But not only that--Nursing Home Guy has a doctor appointment this week. He can't close one of his eyes. His eye just stays open all the time and he has to have some kind of procedure to remedy this situation. I'm hoping Talking Guy goes along with Nursing Home Guy to the appointment and gets the same procedure done on his own MOUTH.

Anyway, usually at B&N, folks sit down for, maybe, fifteen or twenty minutes, shoot the breeze, finish their latte, and go away. This is what I was hoping for with this guy.

However, after he completed his now world renowned report on Nursing Home Guy, he pulled out a deck of cards, and began teaching the other guy at the table, WHO HAS NOT SAID A WORD SINCE TALKING GUY SAT DOWN--how to play some kind of card game. It is "Card School at Barnes and Noble Day," and this human sound system is the instructor.

So, I guess I'll just have to wait until Quiet Guy learns how to play the game and they go home. I suppose I can walk around the store and not spend money, but that's such a waste of time.

Speaking of waste, I can't believe I'm wasting this electrical outlet. Electrical outlets, in these days of Wi-Fi, are so hard to find. And I found one. And I can't work.

Because this guy WON'T SHUT UP.

This post, perhaps, will not make it to the Bloggers Hall of Fame in Radford, Virginia, but I needed to get this off my chest.

And, yes, I made up the Bloggers Hall of Fame.

I did not make up Radford, Virginia.

Bully!

No, this is not a blog entry extolling the life and times of Teddy Roosevelt.

I just felt like chiming in with my two cents regarding the sad story last week out of South Hadley, Massachusetts, where high school student Phoebe Prince committed suicide, allegedly as a result of bullying from her schoolmates.

Okay, sure...Phoebe may have, could have had, probably did have, ...emotional issues unrelated to bullying that contributed to her state of mind as she contemplated being no more. That's not the point.

The point is, bullies, and you know who you are, need to be identified and stopped. I wanted to say bullies need to stop but...I just don't think bullies are smart enough to understand that they are who they are and therefore they are not smart enough to know to stop. In fact, a bully, by nature, outrageous as it may seem, might even increase his or her bullying energies in the wake of something like Phoebe's death, to prove to others (really, to prove to themselves) that what they do is harmless, that what they do is not responsible for the failure to continue to live of the people they target, that what they do is...really nothing. If it's anything, it's entertainment.

Entertainment never moved anybody to suicide.

And what is a bully, really, in his or her own eyes, but an entertainer?

I'm not sure about this, but does a bully bully in a vacuum? Does a bully bully for his or her own gratification? Or must there be a middle-man, or -men, or-women? Must there be an audience? There must be, right? The bully must have a way to take a curtain call for the relentless humiliation he or she imposes on the target. There has to be people laughing; there has to be people patting the bully's back, reporting the bully's achievement to the world, usually the middle- or high school world at large. Otherwise, what's the point? Where else is the bully going to be embraced as a success? In the classroom? No. On the athletic field? Maybe, but not likely. In the debating society? Please.

The word is a problem. Bully. It's become a buzzword. A lightning rod. In a way, it's losing its potency. Bullying. Bullyism. It's a thing that happens. Not a big thing. A thing that happens in schools. Just the kids being kids, most of the time. Plus, it doesn't SOUND like a word that describes a crime. Bullyism. It sounds like what Bluto did to Popeye. And Popeye always, always ended up beating the bejesus out of Bluto.

I found myself in trouble a year or so ago because of the word. I had written an article for a Catholic magazine, the St. Anthony Messenger, detailing my high school friendship with John Ogonowski, Captain of the first plane to fly into the WTC on September 11, 2001. The point of the article was that I was a shy, quiet kid as a freshman in high school, and, as a shy and quiet kid, I was the target of a few geniuses who took it upon themselves to entertain their entourages by making the first few months of my high school career a living hell. Not that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things. I would have survived on my own. But John, a great kid who became a great man, took me under his wing, and the idiots went on to bother someone else. The word "bully" appeared in the article, though bullyism was not the article's focus. When the Lowell Sun interviewed me about the article, bullyism again was mentioned, but, again, my friendship with John is what gave birth to the interview.

Still, for a month or so after the newspaper article appeared, I heard from friends that a few of my high school classmates were upset about my implication that there was bullying when I was there. One brave individual cornered me at a neighborhood party and identified me to his friends as the guy who "bloviated" in the Sun about bullying at my (and his) high school. None of these people, to my knowledge, ever read the original St. Anthony's article.

So I'm wondering...just wondering...if the guys who were upset about the article, might just have been...

Never mind.

My point is, the callous, careless, relentless psychological abuse of the quieter, the smaller, the less popular of kids in schools is a real thing. And the perpetrators of the abuse are just not intelligent enough to realize the harm they are doing.

Sure, it's been going on forever. Sure, it's just kids being kids.

But it's really all about arrogance. Arrogance born of stupidity and insecurity. And arrogance very often sticks to a person's character into adulthood. I hate arrogance.

I don't know what schools should do to the offenders, if and when they might be discovered. Suspend 'em? Expel 'em? I pretty much don't think that will do anything but provide them with impetus to become even worse human beings than they already are.

I say confront 'em, tell them what they are doing, show them how it hurts, and why it hurts, and then watch them to see if they change. If they don't, then confront 'em again. Give them the opportunity to show they have a brain. It's a longshot, but it's worth a try.

What they need to learn is that they are in no way entertaining.

Lower the curtain.

Kindle-ing

I've had my Amazon Kindle for about six months now. Purchased it about six minutes before they lowered the price from $350 to $250. With timing onstage as an actor and director, I'm pretty good. With timing when it comes to buying new gadgets--not so good. I'm the guy who buys things first, tells other people about the things, and then watches as the other people buy the things at vastly reduced prices.

You're welcome. All of you.

Immediately after I bought the Kindle, I did what the Amazon people expected I would do. I bought a large number of books for the little device. I loved the damn thing. I still do. But for the first few weeks, I LOVED IT. Seemed to me there was no more economical way to purchase recently-published books, no quicker way to get them into my hot little hands, no easier way to sit and read them. Prop it up in front of your face, place the thumbs where they can most efficiently "turn" the "pages," and you're off to the races.

All of that is true.

Now, however, six months into my Kindlelife, I realize that there is definitely a place on my bookshelf for...yes, I'll admit it...books.

So, for those of you who have eschewed Kindleism because you cannot imagine yourself curled up beside the fire with an electronic doohickey whose textured pages you can neither riffle nor smell, I'm here to tell you that you can be both a Kindle owner and a real book reader.

It just takes about six months for the Kindle (or Nook or Sony Reader) newness to wear off.

I am now reading real books from my bookshelf, and electronic books on my Kindle, and enjoying all the reading. My Kindle no longer lifts its cybernose to the books, the books no longer turn envious leafs to the Kindle. We're all living in peaceful harmony.

It's just that, instead of walking through Barnes and Noble and looking at all those brand new, exciting best sellers and checking the calendar to anticipate when they'll be out in paperback, now I can zip them onto my Kindle for ten bucks in a matter of about sixty seconds. This is the major Kindle advantage. That, and if you play your cards right, you can actually find many classics for virtually no cost at all. All you sacrifice is the (admittedly important) self- promotional aspect of displaying the classics on your bookshelf. So, instead of displaying books so that your friends THINK you read them, you'll actually have to READ THEM in order to discuss them with your friends. It's a small (but time-consuming) price to pay for paying such a small price.

So, those of you on the Kindle/Nook/Sony Reader diving board, dipping your toe in the pool, trying to decide whether or not to do it, DO IT! Dive in!

Someday when you're sitting in an airport and your flight's delayed by three hours, you will thank me.

You're welcome.

A Professional At Work

One of the most frightening aspects of last night's Golden Globe awards ceremony was the decided lack of gray hair in the audience and on the heads of presenters. Oh, sure, John Lithgow and William Hurt were there to balance the age curve. James Cameron, again on top of the world with AVATAR, looked a lot older than he did when he took the Oscar for TITANIC. But, by and large, everybody else was twelve. And, as is often the case these days, I didn't know who some of them were. I imagine many of them played vampires in those TWILIGHT movies or slutty suburbanites on some CW TV show. One look at them and all I could think was: I just don't care.

But on Friday night, I hauled myself into Boston (which I hate to do) to see the great Richard Lewis. Gray hair and all. And he didn't let me down.

I had booked tickets for Lewis last year, at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton. But he cancelled. I suspect, because nobody was coming to see him. He should have known better than to book that place. Nobody in Northampton has a sense of humor. I mean, not really. Something about wearing Birkenstocks saps the wit out of a person. So, while I was disappointed, I was not surprised when he bailed.

But there he was on Friday, at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, converted into a half club, half theatre, half arena. (Okay, you do the math, I don't have time.)

First, though, there was JB Smoove, to open.

Now, one thing you become aware of very quickly as you look at the electronically changing marquee outside the Wilbur, is that Larry David's CURB YOUR EHTHUSIASM is a hit TV show, because no fewer than four cast members are booked to play the Wilbur this season. Susie Essman and Jeff Garlin will be in town later in the winter. Tonight, it was Lewis and Smoove. (Patton Oswalt, not a CURBIE, but who I think is damn funny, is also coming to the Wilbur. Check it out. And check out his superb performance in the film nobody saw, BIG FAN.)

JB plays "Leon," Larry's live-in-and-won't-leave foil on the show, and, on the show, he is brilliant. There is a control to his insanity, and his ad-libs (it's all pretty much ad-lib on CURB) are exquisite. I still can't read or hear the word "ejaculate" without thinking of Smoove's line reading. Anyway, JB is a funny dude, and his stand-up has moments of wonderful lunacy--like when he portrays a stage coach driver getting juiced by listening to a hip hop tune while he races from the bad guys. But a lot of his act is repetitive, and you can tell that it's going to be a while before he has a true handle on this aspect of the business. His act is as raunchy as, say, Louis CK, but LCK has it under control. JB, not quite. Still, some funny stuff.

Richard Lewis, though, is a man who has been doing stand-up for forty years, which he tells you more than once in the course of his act, and you can tell that this is true--in a good way. I remember Lewis used to bring an almost infinite scroll of notes onstage with him, and went back and forth from the scroll as he threaded his act together. Now, at 62, he has abandoned the scroll, and trusts his manic brain to bring him from one bit to the next. And when his manic brain lets him down, he uses the loss of memory to transition from riff to riff, and he's as funny transitioning as he is riffing.

His act, like everybody's these days, has sex as its core. He's a man who seems to have been a serial womanizer for years, who is now married, and that late life alteration has provided him with a perspective that fuels his comedy.

And his energy is ceaseless. If you've watched him on CURB, you've wondered if his frail body was going to make it from frame to frame. Onstage at the Wilbur, you get the impression he could have gone on for a month.

I waited years to see Lewis onstage and he did not let me down.

When you commit to your art, and you work at it, and you believe in it, it shows.

Long Live Lewis.

The Original F-Word

See...this is the problem...

There's a full page ad in this week's Entertainment Weekly magazine. (Yes, I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly. I follow the world of entertainment and I like to be updated weekly. So I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly.)

So, this ad.

It's for a new CW Network show, entitled Life Unexpected. I don't know what to expect of life and I don't intend to watch so I don't care about the show. This is not about the show.

Well, it is, and it isn't.

First of all, the tag line at the top of the ad is:

"Juno meets Gilmore Girls."

That's nice, I guess. But I don't care. I saw Juno and it was okay but I've never seen Gilmore Girls. So I don't care.

Then there's a photo of the three stars in their character costumes.

I don't know the three stars and their character costumes are so SELECTED and PRECISE and HIP and CALCULATED with their emblem-ed T-shirts and leather jackets and half-laced boots and faded jeans and the characters are so PERFECTLY HAIR-ED that I don't want to have anything to do with the show.

But that's not the point.

The point is the second tagline, the show's catchphrase, attached to the bottom of the ad.

You ready?

"Family is the new F-word."

I'll pause a moment here for you to let that sink in.

"Family is the new F-word."

Here's my problem:

The 20-something studio executive who came up with that line probably got a raise. When he or she brought it up at the sales meeting, there was probably a rhapsody of oohs and aahs in the room and pencils and styrofoam coffee cups were probably tossed in the air in amazement at the unbridled brilliance and cleverness of that line.

To me, it's just so damned glib and cynical that I can't stand it.

First of all, you 20-something studio exec, what do you think is the first word that comes to mind when anybody reads that tagline?

"Family?" No.

"The original F-word?" Yes!

So you don't think about family. You don't think about warmth. You don't think about caring or loving or humanity or even the perfect hair of the actors in the show. You think about the original F-word.

Is that what you set out to do?

You will say "NO!" I will say "YES!" That IS what you set out to do. You did not want the world to say, "Oh, yes, I want to watch this family show." You wanted the world to say, "Oooh! How clever to remind us of the original F-word in the context of this family show!"

What you have done, in essence, is, you have connected the word "family" to the original "F-word" so that when we think of the former, we think of the latter. Inevitably. Inexorably.

You jerk, whoever you are.

I will not watch your show, because I don't like your costumes or your hair.

But mainly I will not watch your show because I despise your smug manipulation of the language under the guise of cleverness.

The original F-word you.

Probably Best to Skip This Entry

So...public rest rooms. For guys. (Sorry, this is the only kind I'm qualified to address.)

Question.

If you're a guy, and you walk into a public rest room, and there are three empty urinals staring at you, which one do you use?

Better question, which one DON'T you use?

Why, the one in the middle, of course.

Because, by using either the one on the right or the one on the left, there is AT LEAST the possibility that the next guy into the rest room will not be standing directly next to you. Why is it a good thing to not have a guy standing directly next to you?

Well, it just is, that's all.

And if you're a guy, using the urinal, please do not sing. Or hum. Or whistle.

I've been in rest rooms where this happens.

My first question to you songbirds is this: What, really, is there to hum about? Sure, it's a relieving, pleasant thing you are doing. We who are in the rest room with you already know that. By definition, we are happy for you. We do not need you to serenade us while you are taking a leak. Because, truth be told, all your little concert is doing for us is holding up our progress, if you know what I mean. We cannot concentrate while you are warbling to your...whatever. And, look, if you do feel it's necessary to sing or hum or whistle while you're addressing the urinal, please, for the love of God, sing or hum or whistle something that is not familiar to us. I mean, if you sing or hum or whistle "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree" while you're whizzing away, even when you leave, the damn tune is gonna be in our brains, and we STILL will not be able to concentrate on the task at hand. A friend of mine once told me that when you get a tune stuck in your head, the only way to eliminate it is to replace it with "The Girl From Ipanema." He never told me how to get rid of "The Girl From Ipanema," however.

And, say you're in a rest room situation where a number of guys are waiting to use, as it were. Say you get to the urinal before your buddy, who is behind you in line. Don't, please, keep your conversation with your buddy going while you're going. "Yeah, I think they're gonna have a good infield, but they're not gonna be able to hit." "You think so?" "Oh, yeah, they got a lot of trouble in the middle of the order!" Again, it's all about concentration. For one thing, I may want to join in the conversation, because I just may think the middle of the order is okay, but how can I keep my mind on my business when I'm thinking about the Red Sox OBP? Plus, add to that the intimidation factor. With your oh, so casual conversation, here's what you're telling the rest of us mutes: "Hey, look what I can do! I can pee and talk at the same time!" It makes a guy just want to zip up and go back to the table.

One more thing for anybody still with me here...

You young dads who are instructing your kids on how to use the public rest room. I know--it's an important part of the dad-son teaching process, and I respect it. But...before you embark upon the training session, take the little tyke aside and tell him this:

"Billy, now we're going to go in here and we're going to go to the bathroom like grownups. Pretty soon, you'll be able to do this all by yourself. Now...the only thing you really need to know before you go in there, is this: Do not talk to the other fellas while they are using the rest room. Do not ask them what they are doing. Do not point to them and say, "Look, Daddy, that man didn't wash his hands like he's supposed to." And also, please, tell them not to sing. It's good to train them early for stuff like that.

Oh, yes...and for you sign-makers out there. It took me a good long time before I was able to understand precisely what "Baby Changing Station" meant when it's plastered on the outside of a men's room door. For a split second, yes, I'll admit it, I thought this might be a room where you could exchange your baby for another one. Rewrite, please.