Jazz has been one of the great loves of my life. I know, I get it. Jazz is not popular music. Jazz appeals to musicians and people with unusual tastes. It can’t be forced on anyone. It’s pointless (as I learned painfully) to throw it into the mix at a party. It’s a good way to get thrown out of a party.
It’s possible that you know nothing about Jazz. You might have seen films like “Bird” or “Round Midnight”. In spite of its relative obscurity, Jazz has nonetheless crept into our Pop Culture like the ink from a cephalopod. That is…an octopus or a squid.
Jazz has been for me a lifelong experience. I first heard Louis Armstrong when I was twelve. I was in the sixth grade! I had joined the Capitol Records Club, and ticked Jazz as my favorite category. I don’t know why. I had been listening to classical music, especially that of Richard Wagner, and I was getting a bit bored. Thank you, Capitol Records Club, for sending me this LP in the mail. I eagerly withdrew the vinyl record from its sleeve and put it on my blue and white Zenith Portable Stereo Record Player. This rig was built like a suitcase. There were snap-locks on each side and those opened up to become speakers that deployed to the left and the right. For a kid in the early sixties it wasn’t a bad place to start with regard to sound systems. The MacIntosh and Dynaco amps and pre-amps were cool as hell, but I could wait. In a couple of years I would be all over amps and pre-amps until my basement began to look like a used electronics warehouse.
I put on the Louis Armstrong record and held my breath. The music began with a blare of brass. At first it sounded like some kind of Asiatic music, it was alien and incomprehensible. I heard charging rhythm and thickets of notes. My confusion lasted about half a minute. Then, as if someone had rotated my brain, I started to hear that shining trumpet of Satchmo and it started making sense. I’d been playing trumpet in the school band since I was in the fifth grade. Okay, that’s only a year. I hated practicing and did as little work as possible. I was a Natural and I could coast on my good ear. I could play a little bit.
The Atomic Mr. Basie
The next album I acquired was recorded by Count Basie And His Orchestra. The album cover was a photo of a mushroom cloud, all scarlet shades and orange flame. It was called, of course, Count Basie Explodes! I put that on the record player. I oh so carefully lowered the tone arm with its precious cartridge transducer until the needle hit and the speakers went “hissssssss” for a second or two before the wildest most confusing outburst of twenty two instruments raged forth and I thought, “Aww shit. Asiatic music only bigger.” Again, it took a little while for the music to come around and reach my precocious ears.
The mail man drives down the street in his little cart. He’s bringing another record from Capitol Records Club. Miles Davis’ “Birth Of The Cool”. This is one of the most important jazz records ever recorded. Miles had organized a curious group, an eight piece band otherwise known as an octet.
I didn’t have many friends in the fifth and sixth grades. I had Jay, who was a fellow musician and jazz fan. His mother was a jazz fan. This was in suburban St. Louis in 1962. It was rare but it happened.
My mom, on the other hand, wasn’t gonna support this shit at all! If I had to play the goddam trumpet, she often screamed; at least I would play respectable music like Mantovani or Andy Williams.
No mom. No. Not happening. I’m going my merry way and you can screw yourself.
My bedroom was at the far end of the house. I had some distance. Some. I could play what I wanted while my mom popped Seconal and slept away her life.
By this time I’m fourteen and I’ve moved into Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly and…ultimately…John Coltrane. If there is a magnificent Ganesh-Guru Hindu Monster Elephant Deity of Jazz Music it is John Coltrane. He was doing the impossible. His ideas were so deep and complex that they became equal to the founding of a neo-Buddhist philosophy. A School. A dynastic lineage of Consciousness.
Coltrane became my teacher. He became thousands of musicians’ teacher and remains so to this day. Get on Youtube and join the session. It’s alive and well. The young musicians, the ones who are serious, want to study and learn. And music’s everywhere. It’s in the air. Then it’s gone. That’s what Eric Dolphy, one of the unsung monsters of Jazz, said at the end of one of his precious recordings. Both Trane and Dolphy passed in the sixties. They were young. We don’t really know what happened. How did these magnificent musicians leave the scene so suddenly? It was shocking and it knocked me off my feet. I had yet to understand how dangerous was the jazz life, how stressful it was to make a living play Jazz.
Fortunately, we were left with other dynamic musicians. We had Charles Mingus and his epochal release of the album “The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady.” This is some of the most sensual music ever recorded. It outrages church goers, it shocks listeners who aren’t prepared for music so graphic as to be well….erotic.
I developed new Jazz heroes. Ornette Coleman was sawing his way through musical tradition and his ideas caused fights on the Lower East Side. Imagine that: ideological fistfights over varying philosophies of Jazz. Strange but true. Jackie McLean kept the tonal orthodoxy but added intensity and adventure. I was pushing sixteen at this time and my world was filled with all this musical color, all these vibrant creative characters who courted addiction and death to get through the pressures of the jazz life.
By the age of sixteen I had acquired a set of drums and my instrumental voyages took on the nature of a student: a dedicated student of a peculiar art form. That was my jazz. That was my passion and I was about to leave home in the summer of ’65. I was determined to meet the by-now world famous Ornette Coleman. And so I did…but that’s another story. It’s in another book.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.hn
Suicides are complex events. They can be acts of rage, despair, even noble sacrifice. There’s no way to generalize suicide. I spent six years as a hotline volunteer, counseling those who were thinking of ending their lives. I was trained to never be judgmental. I was trained to listen. Sometimes that’s what it takes: someone who listens.
Thirty years ago I discovered my mother’s lifeless body lying sideways across her bed. Her lips were blue, her face the color of a bruise. There were two empty bottles of Nembutal on her night table. She had taken her own life.
I reveal these personal experiences because I’ve just finished watching the Netflix release of “13 Reasons Why.” It’s a dramatic series about suicide, adolescent bullying and rape. I have a familiar relationship with suicide. Watching the series, based on the book by Jay Asher, shook some bones in my own closet of secrets. It made me realize that secrets can be dangerous.
The TV series is not only powerful, but it occupies a unique niche as entertainment. The episodes are never repellant, though they can be brutally heavy and painful. I was glued to the story as it dealt with traumatic issues without getting preachy or sentimental. I am aware that people are upset about the series. They fear ‘copycat’ suicides, they fear that opening the subject will encourage more adolescent suicides.
I worry that we’ll lose more of our children if we don’t engage in discussion about bullying, rape and suicide.
The book/TV series involves the suicide of fifteen year old Hannah Baker. Before taking her life Hannah leaves a box of cassette tapes. This is her legacy, her suicide note. On these tapes she describes the people and events that lead to her death. These tapes are narrated in Hannah’s voice as the series proceeds. They single out key people who betray, misunderstand or criminally abuse Hannah. By the end of the series we have heard and witnessed her story.
The teenagers in this series are portrayed as emotionally isolated. Each character inhabits a solipsistic landscape full of intense but unexpressed feelings. These kids can’t or won’t talk to their parents. Their parents may as well be from another universe. The kids can barely talk to each other. It seems as if American teens are the loneliest people in the world. The stress on them piles up. They’re supposed to be preparing for college, right? Then what? The job market? There are huge demands made on adolescents to prepare for the world’s chaos, for a job market that may change beyond recognition by the time they’re ready to look for work. Sprinkle in a ton of sexual angst. Are these kids depressed? Hell yes, they’re depressed! Where does an adolescent get help for such lethal depression?
The French have a pithy folk saying. “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. This is true at a basic level, but things HAVE changed and changed profoundly. When I compare my experience of high school with today’s high school, I have to wonder: what happened?
The Internet happened. Smartphones, laptops, and tablets happened. The effect of having these tools and toys is that gossip travels with the speed of light. It travels fast and it travels far. Gossip is a staple of interaction among high school age people. Girls gossip ferociously. Boys lie shamelessly. Digital media can transform an ordinary event into a ruinous assault on one’s reputation. An adolescent’s reputation is crucially important. Reputations are built on perceived sexual behavior. Sex is now everywhere. Children have sex younger and they have it more promiscuously. They are oblivious to the emotional consequences of sex until they’re embroiled, confused, deeply hurt and maybe pregnant.
Adolescents face a different world today. In my time at high school the great threat was nuclear annihilation. Today such threats are multiplied. The teenage imagination must deal with a world where politics is so rotten it’s seen as a futile joke. An atmosphere of threat is pervasive. We face unpredictable, but real disaster from climate change, terrorism, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues natural and plagues man-made. The earth is moving under our feet. How does a young person come to grips with the future if the future is so uncertain? The pace of change is dizzying. The nature of the future is beyond imagination. How does anyone think rationally in such an irrational world?
THESE ARE IMPORTANT ISSUES! We need to talk to our kids. We need to be available to our kids and we need to train people to help our kids. We’re not doing any of these things. The funding for counseling in school is vanishing along with funding for band and arts programs. Parents are so busy coping with economic pressures that they have no time or energy for their children. This is tragic and points to a fundamental flaw in our culture. Time is money and money is time spent away from our kids. I don’t know what to do. Circle the wagons. Slow down. Pay attention. Now I’m guilty of being preachy and I apologize. Watching “13 Reasons Why” scared me.
I fear that in our short-attention span culture, these issues will reach a media peak, the fuss over “13 Reasons Why” will reach a crescendo and then disappear. We can’t afford to let that happen.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
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When Breaking Bad appeared on television it became a peak moment in the history of the medium.
The world may be fucked up but television has never been better. If you use your remote with discernment, you will find incredible things to watch through your three hundred channel cable box. In its seventy year reign over the American psyche, there has never been more or better television. Nor has the human race been closer to mass tragedy. The importance of television expands as we get quarantined in our homes. TV’s always been important. Now it’s running a close second to Survival itself. I’m not sure we wouldn’t go insane as we wait for the stay-at-home orders to lift. We need TV. Desperately.
The Arts often flourish in times of decadence and turmoil. When a civilization becomes ill, a host of artists arise to attempt its healing. When Breaking Bad ascended to the pinnacle of great art, it created a new space for the production of yet more great TV.
I refer to the spin-off of Breaking Bad, the superb series, Better Call Saul.
We first met Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad. He turned up as the criminal defense attorney for Walter White and his confederates. His character was somewhat clownish. I made the unconscious surmise that series creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould did not take Saul Goodman seriously.
I was wrong. When Breaking Badwas seen and done I grieved because there was nothing as great to continue watching. Then Better Call Saul appeared and once again I was taken into the wry, dark, ironic world of Gilligan and Gould.
Better Call Saul has just completed its fifth season and may be ramping up for the sixth. Saul Goodman is the sly pseudonym taken by attorney Jimmy McGill. “It’s all good, man.” Jimmy himself explains the pun of his name. He’s a bit of a wild man, an outsider in his profession. Some would call him a shyster or ambulance chaser. He gives himself to the lost souls of the streets. He represents clients who are too dirty to be touched by more principled attorneys. For “principled” read snobbish. Saul doesn’t mind getting grubby.
The story arc of Better Call Saul is one that exposes the inner workings of two distinct worlds. One is the world of the drug cartel. The other is the world of middle class America. It is Saul Goodman who provides the bridge between these two worlds. In Breaking Bad it was Walter White who played the fulcrum character who bridged those worlds. Walter was a high school chemistry teacher who, when diagnosed with terminal cancer, turned to the manufacture of methamphetamine to provide for his family when he’s gone.
Saul is pressured into representing a Cartel lieutenant, a terrifying character named Lalo Salamanca. It is the Salamanca Cartel that is at war with other cartels for control of the drug trade in the Southwest. The series takes place in Albuquerque and the scenery is full of vast desert tracts. Out there, in the desert, dead bodies routinely disappear.
Albuquerque is a pleasant city, but its location makes it a prime route for drugs smuggled through Mexico. It’s home to the drug barons who maintain operations on both sides of the border. Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, is drawn inexorably into the cartel’s workings. In the first few seasons the conflict centers around Jimmy’s relationship with his brother, Charles “Chuck” McGill. Chuck is a famous and powerful corporate lawyer who is afflicted with a bizarre form of OCD. He’s allergic to electricity.
Jimmy takes care of Chuck when his allergies render him completely helpless. Jimmy wants to emulate his big brother. He’s put himself through law school and waits to pass the Bar Exam. Chuck does everything to sabotage Jimmy. From Chuck’s lofty position in the world of the courts there is no place for a clown like Jimmy McGill. Chuck’s brother is an embarrassment. Jimmy is hurt and bewildered by Chuck’s hatred and malice.
Lucky for Jimmy, he forms a relationship with attorney Kim Wexler. It’s Kim who keeps Jimmy grounded. Without her steadying influence he might spin off into some outer limits of legal brinksmanship. It is in fact Jimmy’s “edge” that attracts Kim. Behind her business suit and neatly wrapped pony tail is a wild child who savors the antidote to boredom that Jimmy provides.
Like Jimmy, the relationship itself often flirts with disaster. In spite of Jimmy’s ‘danse macabre’ the couple survives with their love intact. This love, this loyalty and unconditional regard, is the glue of the series. As long as Jimmy and Kim love each other, things will be all right.
Things will work out.
Tune in to Part Two of my review of Better Call Saul on the last Friday in May.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
I am preparing a review of “Better Call Saul” but I’m not finished. Instead I will relate an experience that I had with a cell phone provider, I.E. Tracfone. Consider it a public service:
Nightmare With Tracfone
“God damn it!” I shouted into the cell phone. “I’m done with you, asshole, done done done! Go Fuck yourself, you motherfucker!” My wife stared at me in total shock. I hadn’t blown up like that in decades. If ever: in fact, I don’t remember the last time I lost my temper. Well, yes I do but that was fifty years ago and I was enraged with a particular girl. That’s a long time to go without blowing my cool. I did not, however, keep my head this week. Not after dealing with my cell phone carrier, i.e: Tracfone.. It may be that their service people are coached to present a hostile front to customers asking for refunds. After three days of agony dealing with Tracfone employees I ended the encounter screaming into my phone,
I can’t remember being as angry as I was now with this asshole fuck-turd Tracfone employee who was probably twenty six, living in a shitty condo somewhere in Reseda or Toluca Park. I don’t really assign blame to this hapless cubicle worker. I have compassion. I know I’m living a better life than he is. This essay is my revenge on Tracfone and a cautionary tale to anyone who has a mishap with a cell phone carrier.
I’ve used Tracfone for years without problems and the advantage of Tracfone is that they’re cheap. Like 90- days- with -unlimited -calls – for thirty – bucks cheap. I could keep going for months at ten bucks a month, and so I did, for seven years. Then I lost my phone. It was gone. No searching could retrieve it. The finder-app said it was on Third Street in Santa Rosa. I did a couple of drive-by searches. Alas, the phone was gone. I needed a new one. Everyone needs a cell phone. What if there’s an emergency in your 1998 Jeep Cherokee with the rattling fan belt? What if you can’t text your lover, your spouse, your kids, your granma? Phones possess dramatic intensity. This is the twenty first century! Phones are highly charged emotional extensions. They carry family, friendship, love, sex, money….all kinds of drama.
And I had lost mine. I needed a new one, quickly. I got on the Tracfone website and ordered a modest but decently cool phone costing $131.09. Then I waited. I expected delivery in no more than two days. Everything comes immediately these days. Drones drop your shit on your porch five minutes after you order. UPS robots open your back door and leave it on the couch by five o’clock. Things really move! But the phone didn’t arrive. And I waited yet another two days, still there was no phone. I needed a phone. Doesn’t everyone? Does life proceed without cell phones? Clearly it doesn’t. So, I tried again with Tracfone. I needed a phone, asap. I ordered a hundred dollar phone and asked Tracfone to expedite the shipping. I tried to order the drone service but Tracfone isn’t up to speed in that way. I did the next best thing: overnight shipping. I received that phone the next day. Where was the first phone? The one that costs $131.09. No one knew. I had never received a confirmation e-mail, a fact that should have raised a red flag. Of course, in this world we walk through a forest of red flags daily, so it meant nothing. Three weeks later there was a knock on the door, and a Fedex driver handed me a box. I accepted the box. I shouldn’t have. But I did, and therein lies this whole agonizing tale. It was, of course, the missing phone. I didn’t need a phone anymore. I took it down to the post office, paid fifteen bucks to ship it back to Tracfone. It was received by Tracfone in two days and I asked for a refund of $131.09. According to the phone agent, I should receive my refund within three to five work days.
I used the new phone for a while. Let’s give it a name. Call it Stylo 4. Then one morning I awoke to a seemingly normal day. It turned abnormal as soon as I tried to make a call with Stylo 4. I dialed a number and a neutral female voice said “Your device has been de-activated. If you wish to speak to Tracfone, please stay on the line.” So I held, and shortly had the Tracfone robot and went through three sets of identifications and options until I finally said that word, “Other”, which means that non of my problems were addressed by the previous robot. So I got another, more senior, robot. Again, after enduring the list of options, I uttered that loaded word, “Other”. I waited another ten minutes, then, finally, I got an agent.
Why has my phone been de-activated? The agent asked for the ID number or the EIMI identification code for the phone. I read it off the little red booklet, then I double checked the phone itself. The numbers matched.The Tracfone employee stated, quite simply, “That’s the phone that you returned to us.”
Huh? I’m holding this phone in my hand, I explained. I’m reading the EIMI number from this phone.
“We’re sorry, sir, but that’s the phone you returned to us.”
“No,” I said calmly, “it’s clearly not the phone I sent to you. I never opened the box on the other phone, the one you sent to me, the one that took three weeks to arrive, the one that cost $131.09 and is slated for refund directly into my bank account. I already had another phone, that I bought from you, Tracfone, for about a hundred bucks.”
“Would you please read the number again, sir.” I did so.
“Sir, that is the phone that you returned to us, according to the EIMI number.”
“There’s some mistake here. Can I speak to your supervisor?” Then I made a random hand movement, accidentally touched a number on the dial pad, and was disconnected. I had to start over again. I began with the first robot, then the senior robot, punching number after number. I asked for an agent, then a supervisor, and I arrived at the same deadlock at which I had arrived before. Tracfone is telling me that I returned the very phone upon which I was presently speaking.
“Does it occur to you that this is flagrantly impossible and that perhaps there’s been a mistake at your end?”
“Sir, your refund will be deposited in your account within thirty days.”
“Thirty days? I thought it was three to five days.”
“Your account has been marked and referred to our dispute department. Are you trying to obtain a free phone?”
I was shocked. “Of course not. Forget the refund for now, OK?. Please, just re-activate my phone number because I’m an elderly man suffering from Recalcitrant Plebny, Mono-Amine Insufficiency and a serious case of Portofino.”
Must I continue? I don’t want to. I spent nearly three days on the phone with Tracfone (the only number with which I could connect) and got nothing, no re-activation, a delayed refund and a black mark against my name. I think the black mark happened because after so many hours of going around and around I lost my temper and shouted “I’m sick of you assholes, I’m done I’m done, so Fuck You!”
Then I went to Walmart and purchased a Samsung A10e, a nice little phone. I’m signed up with Sprint and I’m paying $45 a month for the privilege of no longer dealing with the morons at Tracfone. I call them morons but I think that they’re just following company policy, to whit: Obfuscate, delay, confuse, deny, denigrate, de-activate.
That’s my cautionary Tracfone tale. Does any of this sound familiar? Is the world crazy? Of course it is.
For a further take on the basic humor and craziness of cell phones, go to my essay, “Total Cell Phone Ban” Click here: Complete Cell Phone Ban Coming Soon
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He hearkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
Showtime’s National-Security thriller, “Homeland”, is a Monster. It’s intense, cerebral, nerve-wracking, absorbing and addictive. It’s just the kind of stuff we like. Claire Danes is either a genius or the world’s most egregious over-actor since Adolph Hitler. Her eyes bug out of her head. She gives Bipolar Disorder a new public face. Her gaze darts everywhere in fits of paranoia. Claire is sensing the facts as they are: everyone is out to get her. Playing CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, she’s in disgrace. The agency to which she is devoted, the CIA, is also in disgrace, thanks to flubs, fumbles, the 9/11 disaster and political turf wars. Carrie’s the scapegoat. Everyone in the Intelligence community knows she’s a nut case. The thing is, she’s a nut case who is RIGHT. It takes a crazy person to identify the deeper reality. It takes a slobbering paranoid to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together in ways that no sane person would dare. This is a new era, a new paradigm. The Cold War is over. Hawkish right-wingers have spent the last decade enhancing the power of the Presidency, ditching congressional oversight and accountability. There is political and moral turmoil. A real President is never mentioned; there is just “The President” and he is kept out of the picture. How do we handle such issues as torture, assassination, domestic surveillance and murder-by-drone? The gloves are off. We do the expedient thing. If we have to kill people to save an intelligence operation, we do the killing. The operation is all-important.
There isn’t much ideology in “Homeland”. The characters are mostly driven by ambition, greed and ego. Carrie has given up trusting anyone. She’s fallen in love with Nick Brody (played by Damian Lewis). She doesn’t trust Brody, she’s “playing” him, but still she loves him. She suspects that he’s an agent of Iranian Intelligence, and she’s right. Nick Brody has endured eight years of torture by the Taliban. Now he’s a secret Jihadist. He’s been “turned” by his captors. He prays to Allah in his garage, out of sight of his family. He’s the Trojan Horse who’s going to wear a suicide vest. He’s going to blow up the political leaders of the U.S.A. in a single fiendish blast. He’s been elected as a Congressman on the basis of his heroic persona and is now being touted as the Vice Presidential nominee for the next general election.
“Allahu Akbar” he mutters reverently, bowing into his garage-floor prayer rug. His sixteen year old daughter, Dana, catches him in the act.
Oops.
She doesn’t say or do anything. She’s confused. She’s scared. She wants to love her father, the father who’s been gone since she was eight, who was declared dead before his dramatic recovery from the Taliban.
What do I know? Mandy Patinkin shrugs.
.
Shouldn’t everyone be suspicious of Nick Brody? But..but…he was a Marine, he survived eight years of captivity and didn’t break! He looks damn good in that uniform! Why shouldn’t he run for Congress? CIA sub-chief Saul Berenson is plenty suspicious. He’s played by a wooly faced Mandy Patinkin. He looks like the rabbi who presided over my Bar Mitzvah. I want him to embrace me in a bear hug, I want him to smell like cigars as his beard scratches my boyhood cheeks. He seems to be the only CIA officer who believes in Carrie’s crazed perceptions. He’s her mentor and protector. We, the audience, want to believe in his integrity. When he (apparently) succumbs to external pressure and betrays Carrie, it looks like he’s been lost as the story’s only honest character. Well, Carrie’s honest to a fault but she’s loop-dee-loo manic when she’s off her medications, which is most of the time. She’s a dedicated operative, her life and her family are the CIA. She’s on/again off/again with the CIA because she kept her Bipolar Disease a secret. Yet she’s so valuable, her results so palpable that she’s allowed to remain a kind of house pet with access to most of the deep secrets. In time she herself becomes one of the CIA’s secrets. She doesn’t know that she’s a secret, maybe the most important secret of them all. Well, I told you, she’s crazy!
Damian Lewis looks like Steve McQueen. His pursy little mouth is so McQueen. I know, it’s irrelevant, but it drives me crazy. I don’t know if he’s that good an actor. I just don’t know. The important thing is that he’s good enough. If he’s confused as Nick Brody, he damn well ought to be confused. He went to war as a gung-ho Marine and was taken prisoner and thrown into a hole. He spent five years in the hole and then was let out to be manipulated by arch-terrorist Abu Nazir. It was Stockholm Syndrome with full maple syrup. Devil-faced Abu Nazir played Good Cop on Nicholas Brody and converted him to Islam.
How confusing would it be if you came home to a wife, two kids and a nice suburban house, masquerading as a war hero while plotting to become a Martyr to the cause of global Jihad? Pretty damned confusing. Damian Lewis plays confused to the point of impenetrability. We don’t know who he is. His aberrations are written off to PTSD. As Congressman Brody he has access to all kinds of people and places. How lovely for terror chief Abu Nazir, who employs a full-time suicide vest maker: the little tailor who runs a small shop in Gettysburg with a sideline in explosives.
Nick Brody before cleaning up
“Homeland” is scary because we live in a scary world. An all-pervasive war is being fought everywhere, invisibly. It’s a war of computer hackers, Special Ops raids, spies, spooks, moles, rats, safe houses, cover identities, drone strikes, satellite imagery, surveillance at every traffic light and Seven Eleven. Nothing is too far fetched in today’s world. By creating a lead character who suffers from Bipolar Disorder, Showtime has pulled the band-aid off the wound. Ow! That hurts! It’s disturbing to contemplate Carrie Mathison running around, defying orders, blowing covers, making extremely risky decisions while her “handlers” in the communications van chew the ends of their fingers with anger and frustration. “Carrie, stop! Get back under cover!” Carrie doesn’t stop. She’s off her meds. Her judgment is impaired. This is the kind of spook in whom our trust resides, the spook who holds the safety of our nation in her agile but deeply warped mind.
I don’t recommend watching “Homeland” before bed time. We do it anyway. We dream freaky dreams.
Actor Tim Roth is an odd creature. He can divide his face into zones and create two or three expressions simultaneously. He can be smiling and tender with his eyes while his lips and teeth express a feral snarl. It’s unsettling. In the TV series “Lie To Me” it’s supposed to be unsettling. Roth plays psychologist Cal Lightman. The character is a knock off of Dr. Paul Ekman, the innovative explorer of human body language. Dr. Ekman is the shrink who can read every tiny twitch of a person’s face. Termed Micro-Expressions, these muscle movements can be revealing of a subject’s inner state.
In Jungian psychology the mask that people wear for social interaction is called The Persona. It is just that, a mask. It’s essentially false, a place in which to hide our true anguish, guilt, depression and fear. It is a Lie, and we put it on our faces without knowing what we do.
In the series “Lie To Me” Dr. Cal Lightman is often dubbed “the human lie detector.” He sees through the Persona to the core emotions. This is a great device upon which to build a crime thriller series. It’s got enough of the cerebral to be interesting. It’s virtually shorn of physical violence. There are no car chases or fist fights, and guns are drawn only occasionally. It nearly makes me sigh with relief.
In short, there’s none of the usual crap.
Dr. Ekman was a consultant for the show. Nothing happened without his approval, including the casting of Tim Roth as his alter ego. Tim Roth bears no resemblance to Dr. Paul Ekman. Casting an Ekman lookalike would have been a dismal failure. Roth plays a feral, slouching, Cockney hoodlum with a lot of Phd’s behind his name. He works closely with the FBI and local police. He goes wherever he wants, barges through crime scene tapes, gets in people’s faces and stares into their eyes. Though Roth is guilty of many excesses (what actors call ‘carpet chewing’), these excesses work to keep the viewer fascinated. After a couple dozen episodes his mannerisms can get wearying. But Roth and the cast were having so much fun making the show that no director stepped in and said, “Tim, ease up on the ball scratching, eh? ‘Nuff sliding off couches in the conference rooms of posh developers eh?”
There’s method to Cal Lightman’s madness. He wants to push people out of their comfort zones. He wants them to get angry, to flip out and reveal the TRUTH, that they’re murderous scheming bastards. His mannerisms are a technique to break down the Persona.
Actress Kelli Williams (The Practice) plays Dr. Gillian Foster, Lightman’s business partner and possible love interest. Do they? Or don’t they? Will they or won’t they? Kelli Williams is a fine actress who looks like one of CNN’s high-end newscasters: model-perfect, every hair in place, always simmering with understated sexuality. She has a wonderfully kind face and is the perfect foil for Tim Roth. Chemistry makes for a good production and this is a cast that’s loaded with chemistry.
“Lie To Me” uses standard police procedural plots, but skews them just enough so that the detective (Dr. Lightman and his staff) work these cases using a different set of tools. Their skills may be exaggerated, but that’s TV, innit? Footnote: the “innit” I just used is an emulation of Roth’s cockney accent. That’s his back story. He is a one-time thug and petty criminal who lifted himself out of that scene to become the world’s foremost body-language theorist and human lie detector.
Dr. Lightman and his staff are called The Lightman Group. They catch serial murderers, thwart abusive psychiatrists, forestall assassinations, bombings and biological attacks. The stories are pretty good. The work of Brendan Hines as Eli Loker and Monica Raymund as Ria Torres keeps the ensemble small and tight. Cal Lightman has a teenaged daughter, Emily, played by Hayley McFarland. Emily’s presence helps to humanize the abrasive Dr. Lightman. Emily gives as good as she gets. To Emily the almighty Dr. Lightman is just her dad. She can mock him, annoy him and tease him. with hints at sexual liaisons. As the father of a teenaged daughter, Cal Lightman is hovering, hyper-protective and infuriatingly paranoid. Little Em knows how to drive her dad nuts.
The three seasons of “Lie To Me” satisfy like a good burger. They are sturdy and hold up well over time. Tim Roth shows that you don’t have to be good looking to be a leading man. You don’t have to be a Kung Fu master, you just need a healthy dose of confidence and aggression. You must be ready to wade into a brawl even if you’re really intending to sneak away from it at the first opportunity. When push comes to shove, Cal Lightman displays abundant courage. ‘E just ain’t stewpid, oi?
I enjoyed “Lie To Me”. I give it four and a half muskrats.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’sVisual Media Reviews? You can catch them the last Friday of every month or subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
Looking back, I can remember when I first started this blog, back in 2010. I really had no idea what I was doing, or even what blogging was all about, but I knew I wanted to write andWriting to be Read offered a platform where someone might actually read what I wrote. Back then, I really struggled with what to write. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would care to read what I had to say.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot. Acquiring an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, along with my experience as The Southern Colorado Literature Examiner, gave me the knowledge, skills and confidence to imagine that I could create content that people would want to read. I write about what I know. My passion has always been writing, thus that is what I write about.
In 2016, I decided that there was no way that I could produce enough quality content to keep fresh content and keep readers visiting the blog, so I began recruiting other talent. My knowledge was limited to my own writing experience and I wanted to expand the scope of the content. With the help of others who knew more about areas which I wasn’t versed in, I was able to do this.
My first team member was Robin Conley, and her “Writing Memos” are still bringing viewers to the blog, although she is no longer an active team member. Next, Jeff Bowles was added to the team, with two segments. Although he no longer does his “God Complex” segment, you can find “Jeff’s Pep Talk” on the first Wednesday of every month, and “Jeff’s Movie Reviews” posts on the third Friday. Jeff is great at writing motivational posts and he writes killer movie reviews, so if you haven’t checked out his segments, I recommend that you do.
This year, Art Rosch joined the team with his “The Many Faces of Poetry” segments the last Wednesday of each month, and he recently began posting for “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” on the last Friday. Both segments cover subject matter Art was versed in and his reviews are both interesting and entertaining. Also, joining the team in 2019 are Jordan Elizabeth, with her “Writing for a Y.A. Audience” segment on the third Wednesday of each month, which explores Jordan’s inspirations and writing experiences, and Robbie Cheadle with her “Growing Bookworms”, which emphasize the importance of reading for children and explores children’s literature.
In 2018, I ran two twelve week segments of “Ask the Authors”, which was quite popular, where I interviewed an author panel on the various aspects of writing. Although it was fairly successful, it was also a lot of work, and it required a lot of time from each of the authors on the panel in order to respond to my questions with depth and knowledge. The compilation of those segments is currently in process for the Ask the Authors anthology, to be published by WordCrafter Press.
In 2019, we’ve seen a little more structure as I added monthly genre themes to focus on specific genres, and added my “Chatting with the Pros” segment in coincidence with those. We also saw the first “WordCrafter Paranormal Story Contest”, which will result in the publication of the Whispers of the Past paranormal anthology, also by WordCrafter Press. (Jeff Bowles was the winner of the contest for his short story, “A Peaceful Life I’ve Never Known”. He received a $25 Amazon gift card and his story will be featured in the anthology.)
Writing to be Read is growing, and recently had its 500th post. View numbers are up, as well as followers, and I attribute it to the quality content posted by both myself and my team members. Of those 500 posts, 100 of them were made by Writing to be Read team members and I want to take time now to acknowledge and thank them for the quality contributions that they each make to the blog. Writing to be Read is a labor of love and team members don’t receive compensation for the time and dedication they put into their segments, so they really do deserve kudos for the content they provide. To show my appreciation and bring them and the blog segments each one contributes, I’ve created a “Meet the Writing to be Read Team Members” page, and I hope all of you will check it out and learn more about those who provide such great content.
This new page comes along with other new changes as I prepare to launch WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. I’m happy to say that although some parts are still under construction, the website is now live. Write it Right Quality Editing Services, which used to be found here on this site, is now housed on the WordCrafter site, so if you are looking for it, you can now find it there. Other changes you may notice in the near future include the migration of my “Copywriting and P.A. Services” to the WordCrafter site, where it will become WordCrafter Social Media Copywriting and Book Promotions.
These are the most immediate changes which have taken place or are expected to before the end of the year on Writing to be Read. Closer to that time, I’ll be posting another update that will tell you what you can expect in 2020. Can you believe it? It’s just around the corner. So until then…
In early October, 2005 my partner and I were driving our new 38 foot motorhome from Ft. Lauderdale to Petaluma,CA. It was going to be a four thousand mile drive on I-10, the southernmost of our nation’s interstate highway system. As we drew into the outskirts of Pensacola we noted the ravaged condition of the trees, fences, billboard signs and the Interstate itself. The campgrounds were jam packed. We only found a site because someone had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital twenty minutes before we pulled into the Pensacola KOA.
We were in the zone of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath and the next four hundred miles would be like driving through a poorly kept secret. Along the highway were big plywood signs done in red magic marker: FEMA, they said, and sometimes an arrow pointed the way down a dirt road. These signs were emblematic of the slipshod management of a terrible disaster. Imagine, plywood planks with red magic marker: this way to the internment camp of white trailers.
Ahead of us lay New Orleans. We saw the city only a few weeks after it was submerged and torn all to hell. When we began watching the TV series Treme (trem-may), we had a visceral sense of connection to the experiences of the characters.
TREME is producer/director David Simon’s series about post-Katrina New Orleans. Simon is the creator of crime masterworks like HOMICIDE and THE WIRE. TREME is something different. It is a filmic mural that depicts conditions in a ravaged community. Suspense is not what draws the viewer into the show. It’s the characters that keep us watching.
One of the major characters of the series is New Orleans itself. There is a depth of culture in this city that is unmatched by any other American city. Treme is one of the neighborhoods in this town, an area where musicians live and form their community. They play at one another’s gigs. They do funerals, following wheeled black carriages in stately slow-march. They play at nightclubs where the patrons and musicians alike are having so much fun that it seems almost unreal, as if there can’t possibly be so much joy in this troubled world. But there it is: real music, dancing, carrying-on and everyone is having a freaking great time.
There’s nothing strident about Simon’s portrait of New Orleans. It’s a town trying to bounce back, but the bounce is a little flat. People want to rebuild their homes but the promised insurance checks and subsidies keep getting lost in bureaucracy. A man has spent three years rebuilding his home with his own money and his own skills. Suddenly a city inspector appears and cuts off his water and power. “The City” wants to see the original deed on the property. It’s a document whose origins go back two hundred years. It’s lost in history, lost in the flood. Can he PROVE that his family has occupied this parcel of land since 1824?
Photo by Art Rosch
He forgot a payoff to someone. He’s lost track of the fifties and hundreds he’s hemorrhaged to fees and penalties.
New Orleans has become a scene where politicians and developers gather like ghouls to create a theme park where there was once a city. If they have things their way, it will be resurrected as NewOrleansLand or Cajun-O-Rama. The citizens of New Orleans are fighting back. They know their city will never be the same. But the disaster has made them aware of themselves as an extended family. There is something special about being a New Orleans native. There’s a terminology, a language, a history and a lot of blood that goes into the making of a citizen of New Orleans.
TREME is strangely relaxing to watch. Real-life characters like musicians Carla Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and Allen Toussaint thread through the plot playing themselves, providing a sound track of amazing skill and vivacity. TREME is loaded with top of the line music.
“Let the good times roll”, or “Laissez le bon temps roulez” is the unofficial motto of Mardi Gras. The good times may roll but a new motto is emerging from the frustrated natives of New Orleans.
I will paraphrase the words of Sofia, the sixteen year old daughter of civil rights lawyer Toni Bernette, played by the fantastic Melissa Leo. Every day Sofia retreats to her bedroom, closes the door, aims the laptop camera at her face and uploads to YouTube a monologue of rage and bitterness.
“Fuck you, man, fuck you!” she says. “If you’re not going to help us, at least don’t hinder us. Just get the fuck out of our way!” THAT is the new motto of New Orleans.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
This lament has been uttered by every generation since Adam and Eve discovered they were pregnant a second time.
So….what IS wrong with kids these days?
They feel as if they have no future. The last few extant generations simply don’t. Futures come in handy when you feel as though the world will be unrecognizable before you’ve grown up. As a child of The Mushroom Cloud I know what that feels like, that amputation of the future. It made me really angry. My friends and I were more likely to commit petty crimes and indulge in drugs. Without a future, why bother? Why work hard in school? Why cultivate disciplines, interests, social connections? The oceans are rising and will drown your block or your whole neighborhood. The coolest animals will be extinct. No elephants, no polar bears. What kind of future is that?
Then I discovered a TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance”. You can knock me over with what these kids are doing! Their bodies must be INCREDIBLY strong and flexible. These kids are doing the impossible! Has the human race mutated? Do we have extra joints, super-human muscle memory? Who ARE these people?
They’re just kids. Their secret is that they found a passion, something that interested them so much that they said “fuck it” to the absence of the future and decided to live for this thing called Dance. It was better than being a thug. Thugs are mean, WAY mean and being mean doesn’t feel very good. Not as good as practicing B-moves, Krumping, flapping, sapping, tapping, robot-twitching, water-waving, learning your body’s capabilities and stretching them further, further, further!
This is IT! Sometimes it’s called ART. Don’t be embarrassed by the word ART. It’s cool to do ART. It’s okay. Even if it’s gay it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about gay any more. You can be gay, you can change from man to woman or woman to man, nobody cares! If you want to know where it is, where the cutting edge in creativity can be found these days you can see it on “So You Think You Can Dance”. The judges aren’t scary. They aren’t there to cut you down. They want to show you The Future. Word up, Bro. There IS a future. Nobody can stop it. It takes some work. Everything good takes work. Making a future is hard work. It’s not like it used to be, when the Future was going to happen no matter what. Now it takes a little faith and a lot of work, but it’s there: you… DO…Have…A…Future. Do you want it to kick you in the nuts or do you want to dance with it?
When has anyone given a shit about choreoraphy? Are you kidding? Corey-who? Shazam! Choreographers are the composers of Dance. They arrange the time-space-music continuum in which Dance exists. On the TV show they are not only given credit, they are like stars! Now I know the work of Tice Diorio, Mia Michaels, Sonya Tayeh, “Nappytab”, Stacey Tookey and Travis Wall. Choreographers come from the elder population of dancers. They still dance but they are the keepers of the flame, the mentors of the seventeen through twenty two year old dancers who are living the dreams.
I’m not sure there is any more difficult art form than what is now appearing as Dance. It’s not enough to specialize. You can’t be a ballroom dancer, a hip-hopper or a Broadway hoofer. One of the messages of So You Think You Can Dance is that you must be trained in ALL the dance styles. Choreographers wont’ hire you if you don’t know all the styles of dance. Choreographers are the Gate Keepers, the bosses, the ones who hire dancers. Get tight with the choreographers who work at SYTYCD and you will be employed for years to come. In time, you will become a choreographer.
The most amazing thing about the dance numbers on this show is their purity. We’re not seeing arrangements for pop superstars. We’re not seeing choreography for Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson (RIP). These dance routines are created for the television audience. For US! Sometimes magic happens on that stage. Those of you who watch the show know what I mean. In more than a decade this show has lifted the art of Dance so that each season is more amazing than the last. The mutations continue. Evolution is visible year to year. Dancers get more flexible, their muscle memories become more detailed, malleable, imprintable. This happens in front of our eyes. Sure, it’s a TV contest show aimed at a teenage demographic. That’s how things work. Consider the difference between the egregious karaoke of American Idol and the drama and high art of So You Think You Can Dance. Big difference, yeah?
Big big difference.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn’t about Texas high school football.
It’s about Texas high school football.
I admit to writing this stupid/cutesy opening and I don’t even have a good reason for it. I suppose it expresses my surprise. I expected a sports drama. I anticipated a series about a scrappy low-ranked team overcoming its difficulties and moving on to the semi-finals and then the finals and then…..you know the story.It’s been done to death. Underdog Triumphs Despite Impossible Odds.
Peter Berg’s masterwork about Americans at their best and their worst is way beyond football scoreboards. The game dramas we’re given, the playoffs and championships, are almost footnotes. Do they win or lose the nationals? Yay! Boohoo! Oh well…the story moves on.
In case you haven’t heard, Texans have a local football culture like no other. Its passions fill in the great empty spaces of the land. It entertains, it distracts, it involves, it sucks people into its politics, it’s a tornado and it leaves nothing untouched.
It’s serious. The aristocracy of star players have perks beyond belief. They are scouted by major college teams and the NFL looms in the background for a few talented athletes. The perks have to be within the bounds, so to speak. There’s no buying and selling of games and players (or, at least, there’d better not be). This adherence to the strictures of amateurism doesn’t preclude assigning a virtual harem to the stars, the quarterback, the tight end, the wide receiver and so forth. These guys stride the halls of school like gods.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn’t about Texas high school football because it’s really about character, relationships and community.
The true star of this drama is a relationship. The marriage of Eric and Tami Taylor is the spine of this narrative’s skeleton. It’s the beating heart at the center of the town of Dillon, Texas. Without the marriage of Eric and Tami, there is no story. Actors Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play their parts with such natural grace that their marriage should receive an Emmy. It is one of the great marriages in television history.
Eric is the new Head Coach of the Dillon Panthers. Tammy is the high school counselor. Their marriage is subject to pressures that would crush most commitments. If Eric and Tammy can survive this alchemist’s crucible, they will be peerless. They will be jewels.
If they can’t, they’ll be another sad divorce that leaves behind a shattered family. Their daughter Julie is at that age just before she starts to rebel and roll her eyes. We need to wait until Season Three for the foot-stomping, eye rolling and the whole alphabet of gestures of teenage contempt for adult restrictions. Meanwhile, she’s a nice cute kid with a training bra.
Eric and Tammy have tough jobs. If you think coaching high school football is small time stuff, think again. This is Texas. Eric needs all the qualities of a drill sergeant, a general, a shrink, a priest and a politician. He has to raise his voice and deliver a fifteen minute harangue to a team of wall-sized athletes until they are reduced to terrified little lumps of jelly, quivering on the locker room floor. Or he can put his arm around a confused, demoralized quarterback, pull the boy’s head onto his shoulder and choose the right words to unleash a deluge of tears. He must puncture the macho armor of these arrogant teen prima donnas and make them, FORCE them, to live in the real world where they are not God’s gift to women and football. Creating better athletes is secondary to creating better people.
All across the country, the name of Eric Taylor is being discussed. He’s a young, new coach, he’s just emerging and he’s the man to watch. He may be next year’s High School Coach Of The Year. He’s at the beginning of a career that may some day take him to the Super Bowl.
Eric is, by nature, a man of few words. At home, he’s a firm but gentle presence who doesn’t make a lot of noise. He’s busy. He’s working, watching playback of games, evaluating his own calls and his players’ moves. He works ALL the time. He lives football. His wife understands this, she has grasped it from the very beginning of their marriage and rather than pout and grow disillusioned, she creates her own life. She uses her own strengths and interests to engage the world. She’s a high school guidance counselor. This makes her the equivalent of a prison warden and The Great White Hunter on an African Safari. She is stimulated by challenge. She is one of those goddess mothers full of lush strength, red-maned, sexy and very tough.
What makes a marriage between two such powerful people function so well?
Honesty keeps the marriage strong. Tami and Eric are always honest with one another. Even when they lie, they’re honest about lying. Neither is afraid to admit being wrong about an issue. They support one another with unbreakable consistency. If they have a fight, they cut through the bullshit, find the central issue, and look for compromise. They don’t resort to yelling and name calling.
There are times when an irresistible opportunity appears before Eric or Tami. The problem is, accepting the opportunity would require changes in the marriage or the family lifestyle. One of them, Eric or Tami, is going to have to make a sacrifice. Who is willing to see a lifetime dream fade away? Who is wise enough to see that opportunity does NOT come only once in a lifetime?
The town of Dillon, Texas is neither large nor small. It’s like a town with a hundred thousand people that has been absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Houston or Dallas. It has an identity. Much of that identity is drawn from the supremacy of the Dillon Panthers.
The power brokers, the mayor, the oil moguls and the owner of the Cadillac dealership are Panther alumni and sit on the board of the Booster’s Association.They know which strings to pull, how to schedule games to the advantage of the team, how to acquire players from other teams who might be Panther-killers if they’re not brought into the fold. They’re the guys who play dirty, behind the curtain. A little pressure, maybe some mild blackmail; it gets the job done and the team is none the wiser.
It’s amazing how much of the human condition can be collected into a single file cabinet with the same labeled situations. There are aimless kids on drugs, there are abandoned old people, cheating husbands, bankrupt businessmen, pregnant cheerleaders, corrupt officials, natural disasters, infatuated teenagers going suicidal over a romantic setback….all these potholes in the road of life are much the same, no matter where you go.
The things that can’t be pigeonholed, that can’t be stuck in a file, are the lineaments of character. Which one of these people can overcome the temptation to shirk? Which one can step up and make an effort to change?
I ask, because I think Friday Night Lights is a narrative about that power in human beings, that ability to see their own trouble and solve the problem, and then move forward. There will be another problem, and another. No matter. By the time Season Three begins, even the people we learned to hate have become different, better. They are tougher, yet softer. They have something that we all wish we had: a supportive community.
I was amazed, over and over again, at the way the people of Dillon turn to one another. Coach Taylor’s door is always open. If the phone rings at three in the morning, he will answer it. “I’ll be right there,” he says, sliding out of bed and looking for his pants. If some sopping wet weeping teenager having a crisis knocks on someone’s door, there will be a soft place to fall. A motherly hand is extended: “Why come on in, sugar, you look awful, and you’re just SOPPING wet! What can I do for you?”
In my dreams I live in a place like that. Dillon is special because Southern Hospitality is not only real but it includes everyone and it understands that shame is the enemy of communication. As a community, Dillon expands its definition of humanity and grows like an amoeba to absorb shame so that being ashamed is not shameful. Lying about the cause of the shame, THAT’S shameful, so it’s better to unburden the heart, to come clean and let someone help you, someone with a wiser mind like Eric or Tami Taylor, or a hundred other people. What’s sad is that this town is a television fiction but it gives me hope. If someone can imagine such a place, someone can create it in the real world.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews”? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
Writing to be Read 
Nightmare With Tracfone
Posted: March 27, 2020 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Humor, Opinion | Tags: Art Rosch, Art's Visual Media Reviews, cell phones, Commentary, confrontation, customer service, daily life, frustration, Humor, Opinion, social observation, Writing to be Read | 7 CommentsI am preparing a review of “Better Call Saul” but I’m not finished. Instead I will relate an experience that I had with a cell phone provider, I.E. Tracfone. Consider it a public service:
Nightmare With Tracfone
“God damn it!” I shouted into the cell phone. “I’m done with you, asshole, done done done! Go Fuck yourself, you motherfucker!” My wife stared at me in total shock. I hadn’t blown up like that in decades. If ever: in fact, I don’t remember the last time I lost my temper. Well, yes I do but that was fifty years ago and I was enraged with a particular girl. That’s a long time to go without blowing my cool. I did not, however, keep my head this week. Not after dealing with my cell phone carrier, i.e: Tracfone.. It may be that their service people are coached to present a hostile front to customers asking for refunds. After three days of agony dealing with Tracfone employees I ended the encounter screaming into my phone,
I can’t remember being as angry as I was now with this asshole fuck-turd Tracfone employee who was probably twenty six, living in a shitty condo somewhere in Reseda or Toluca Park. I don’t really assign blame to this hapless cubicle worker. I have compassion. I know I’m living a better life than he is. This essay is my revenge on Tracfone and a cautionary tale to anyone who has a mishap with a cell phone carrier.
I’ve used Tracfone for years without problems and the advantage of Tracfone is that they’re cheap. Like 90- days- with -unlimited -calls – for thirty – bucks cheap. I could keep going for months at ten bucks a month, and so I did, for seven years. Then I lost my phone. It was gone. No searching could retrieve it. The finder-app said it was on Third Street in Santa Rosa. I did a couple of drive-by searches. Alas, the phone was gone. I needed a new one. Everyone needs a cell phone. What if there’s an emergency in your 1998 Jeep Cherokee with the rattling fan belt? What if you can’t text your lover, your spouse, your kids, your granma? Phones possess dramatic intensity. This is the twenty first century! Phones are highly charged emotional extensions. They carry family, friendship, love, sex, money….all kinds of drama.
And I had lost mine. I needed a new one, quickly. I got on the Tracfone website and ordered a modest but decently cool phone costing $131.09. Then I waited. I expected delivery in no more than two days. Everything comes immediately these days. Drones drop your shit on your porch five minutes after you order. UPS robots open your back door and leave it on the couch by five o’clock. Things really move! But the phone didn’t arrive. And I waited yet another two days, still there was no phone. I needed a phone. Doesn’t everyone? Does life proceed without cell phones? Clearly it doesn’t. So, I tried again with Tracfone. I needed a phone, asap. I ordered a hundred dollar phone and asked Tracfone to expedite the shipping. I tried to order the drone service but Tracfone isn’t up to speed in that way. I did the next best thing: overnight shipping. I received that phone the next day. Where was the first phone? The one that costs $131.09. No one knew. I had never received a confirmation e-mail, a fact that should have raised a red flag. Of course, in this world we walk through a forest of red flags daily, so it meant nothing. Three weeks later there was a knock on the door, and a Fedex driver handed me a box. I accepted the box. I shouldn’t have. But I did, and therein lies this whole agonizing tale. It was, of course, the missing phone. I didn’t need a phone anymore. I took it down to the post office, paid fifteen bucks to ship it back to Tracfone. It was received by Tracfone in two days and I asked for a refund of $131.09. According to the phone agent, I should receive my refund within three to five work days.
I used the new phone for a while. Let’s give it a name. Call it Stylo 4. Then one morning I awoke to a seemingly normal day. It turned abnormal as soon as I tried to make a call with Stylo 4. I dialed a number and a neutral female voice said “Your device has been de-activated. If you wish to speak to Tracfone, please stay on the line.” So I held, and shortly had the Tracfone robot and went through three sets of identifications and options until I finally said that word, “Other”, which means that non of my problems were addressed by the previous robot. So I got another, more senior, robot. Again, after enduring the list of options, I uttered that loaded word, “Other”. I waited another ten minutes, then, finally, I got an agent.
Why has my phone been de-activated? The agent asked for the ID number or the EIMI identification code for the phone. I read it off the little red booklet, then I double checked the phone itself. The numbers matched.The Tracfone employee stated, quite simply, “That’s the phone that you returned to us.”
Huh? I’m holding this phone in my hand, I explained. I’m reading the EIMI number from this phone.
“We’re sorry, sir, but that’s the phone you returned to us.”
“No,” I said calmly, “it’s clearly not the phone I sent to you. I never opened the box on the other phone, the one you sent to me, the one that took three weeks to arrive, the one that cost $131.09 and is slated for refund directly into my bank account. I already had another phone, that I bought from you, Tracfone, for about a hundred bucks.”
“Would you please read the number again, sir.” I did so.
“Sir, that is the phone that you returned to us, according to the EIMI number.”
“There’s some mistake here. Can I speak to your supervisor?” Then I made a random hand movement, accidentally touched a number on the dial pad, and was disconnected. I had to start over again. I began with the first robot, then the senior robot, punching number after number. I asked for an agent, then a supervisor, and I arrived at the same deadlock at which I had arrived before. Tracfone is telling me that I returned the very phone upon which I was presently speaking.
“Does it occur to you that this is flagrantly impossible and that perhaps there’s been a mistake at your end?”
“Sir, your refund will be deposited in your account within thirty days.”
“Thirty days? I thought it was three to five days.”
“Your account has been marked and referred to our dispute department. Are you trying to obtain a free phone?”
I was shocked. “Of course not. Forget the refund for now, OK?. Please, just re-activate my phone number because I’m an elderly man suffering from Recalcitrant Plebny, Mono-Amine Insufficiency and a serious case of Portofino.”
Must I continue? I don’t want to. I spent nearly three days on the phone with Tracfone (the only number with which I could connect) and got nothing, no re-activation, a delayed refund and a black mark against my name. I think the black mark happened because after so many hours of going around and around I lost my temper and shouted “I’m sick of you assholes, I’m done I’m done, so Fuck You!”
Then I went to Walmart and purchased a Samsung A10e, a nice little phone. I’m signed up with Sprint and I’m paying $45 a month for the privilege of no longer dealing with the morons at Tracfone. I call them morons but I think that they’re just following company policy, to whit: Obfuscate, delay, confuse, deny, denigrate, de-activate.
That’s my cautionary Tracfone tale. Does any of this sound familiar? Is the world crazy? Of course it is.
For a further take on the basic humor and craziness of cell phones, go to my essay, “Total Cell Phone Ban” Click here: Complete Cell Phone Ban Coming Soon
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He hearkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
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