Fat Tuesday reflections: When will we fall down?

I can't remember the last time I did not go to Ash Wednesday Mass. Can't remember. Must have been the 80s. Really.

The photo is from last year, when I already didn't believe in what I was doing. Why was I there? Habit. The sublime order of the liturgical year, which is encoded in my DNA somewhere. My body even seems attuned to it. I have often complained (like in comments on this endless thread from 2009) that I find it impossible to leave the Church.

And of course it isn't impossible, but on some other level, of course it is. This is what I have trouble explaining to people.

Someone suggested that I replace the Christian rituals with Buddhist rituals. Alas, one of the things I am trying to expunge is clinging to ritual itself, which is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I have clung to rituals of some kind my whole life; rituals help me make sense of the passage of time, they help mark these passages in an introspective, moral fashion, examining my conscience. What, I would ask, have I done since last year? And the passage of time, these careful yearly markings, would cloak me in feelings of safety.

As one leaves the Church, this feeling evaporates. It is like you are exposed and naked; I get the unwelcome mental image of a naked woman (me) descending the steps of a huge and beautiful cathedral, completely defenseless and at the mercy of the elements. That is how it feels NOT to go to Ash Wednesday Mass, NOT to go to today's Fat Tuesday pancake suppers.

But I have a movie-series to tend to, I have other places I must be tomorrow. It is a lot like an old Twilight Zone episode--I know if I can go the entire 24 hours, I will have it in the bag. But this day, Ash Wednesday, is somehow even more compelling (to me) than Christmas or Easter, since it is about doing penance. Who will forgive me? And why am I so focused on forgiveness to the exclusion of other aspects of Christianity? These are questions it will take me years to answer... and I know the answers are not where I thought they were.

It is my task to answer them.

But first, must resist the hypnotic draw of the ashes.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

~*~

And speaking of falling down, that made me think of Toad the Wet Sprocket, a band name that I immediately spotted as having been named after a Monty Python routine. At the time the song came out (1993), I was riveted by it. Years later, as it became something of an alt-rock staple, I decided it was about my daughter. Now, I realize that it was actually about me, stranded within Christianity (in what I now call my pseudo-Opus Dei period), trying so hard to conform and fit in with secular Carmelites and people like that. Who was I kidding?

And so, it is a perfect song for today, as well as today's blog title.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fall Down

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Bring Joe-Bob back to the Drive-In, and other horrifying updates

Joe-Bob Goes to The Drive-In was the name of Joe Bob Briggs' old B-movie column in the Dallas Morning Herald. These reviews were compiled into a very entertaining book by the same name. The book's sequel was titled, of course, Joe-Bob goes back to the drive-in (introduction by Wayne Newton). Both books are totally indispensable and absolutely necessary for any serious trash-culture fan!

Joe-Bob Briggs was really John Bloom, and with his TEXAS MONTHLY writing partner, Jim Atkinson, wrote a very good true-crime account of one woman killing another with an axe. I sure never forgot THAT one! (Aside: An Amazon reader informs us that this woman, Candy Montgomery, is now a nurse in Atlanta... remind me never to go to the hospital in Georgia, for any reason.) He hosted his own TV show for awhile: Joe-Bob's Drive-In Theater. This was one of the great treasures of the 90s, my friends. You may also recall Joe-Bob as the host of the more mainstream 90s cable-show MonsterVision, which brought us some far-out B-movie classics, such as the inimitable Basket Case.

Joe-Bob has been in a few movies himself, and was even in the mini-series of THE STAND, playing a character named Deputy Joe-Bob Brentwood (attesting to Stephen King's excellent B-movie sensibilities). He was also in Martin Scorcese's Casino, one of my favorite movies, where you may remember him getting fired by Robert DeNiro and hollering in protest, "This is not the way to treat people!" (I remember thinking, is that Joe-Bob Briggs he is firing????) Unfortunately, his scenes were deleted from Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, which I am sure upset him terribly.

My question: WHERE is the contemporary Joe-Bob? Why are we Joe-Bobless? It doesn't seem fair that we have no trash-movie impresario on regular TV these days. (Note: I'm sure one of the millions of satellite channels has this kind of programming, but I refer to mass-market TV.) I grew up with horror movies hosted by the incomparable Ghoulardi of Cleveland, and I love that kinda stuff.

Come back, Joe-Bob!!! And no offense, but you can leave your politics back in Texas. Nonetheless, if I have to put up with Libertarian jabber to get some decent B-movies, I am willing to do that.

~*~

Some more stuff:

:: Conspiracy theories! As an ex-Yippie, I eat em for breakfast. (I also figured this would go well with Joe-Bob.) Bin Laden Death Deemed Murder of CIA Case Officer as 9/11 Coverup:

President George W. Bush knew Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent and in no way ever involved in 9/11. He knew bin Laden personally from family visits and knew bin Laden had been to the White House while living in the US under the cover name of “Tim Osmon.”

This has been verified by CIA officials.

It has? Well, color me surprised.

I definitely need to hear more about this one.

:: Monica runs a video from Ellen DeGeneres, calling out the "One Million Moms" (actually only 40,000) who have targeted her as a gay spokesperson for JC Penneys. (I also thought homophobes go well with horror movies, so that is the reason the link goes here.)

:: And finally, from Politico: The political transformation of Barack Obama, which has most assuredly been horrifying.

Add your own, play along at home.

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News flash: People on TV live better than we do

At left: Audrey Meadows and Jackie Gleason as Alice and Ralph in THE HONEYMOONERS.




I was looking at Ralph and Alice Kramden's tiny, dingy apartment last night, flipping channels and feeling some 50s nostalgia. And then, jarringly, I landed on some shiny new sitcom, and the same supposedly middle-class people are living in $350,000 homes.

Wait, what? How could they afford THAT? Alice and Ralph barely scraped by, and they didn't even have a car. They talked about not having a car, too. They talked about money. They talked about affording things and not affording things. I suddenly realized that modern TV characters do not talk about whether they can afford things now, unless it is something obviously expensive, like tuition to particularly-pricey colleges or spiffy sports cars or extended vacations to Paris. I also realized something else: Ralph and Alice didn't have credit cards. After all, they still bought ice for their actual ice box.

They didn't have much. No nice clothes, no nice furniture. People loved them because they identified with them.

When did that change? When did regular, just-folks TV characters turn into imitation-rich-people? Even though the characters are given simple occupations, they are clearly living way beyond their means and above their pay-grade.

I first became aware of this back in the 90s, when some wit (possibly in the Village Voice) wrote an article about the then-wildly-popular show "Friends"--suggesting that their respective apartments would cost ____ (something outlandish) that unemployed actors and waitresses (the "Friends" occupations) could never possibly afford.

This TV Trope became known as Friends Rent Control, which was the official excuse for this luxurious apartment-dwelling:

Besides appealing to audience fantasy, this is usually done because large sets are easier to film in. If Monica or Chandler's apartment on Friends had been realistic, the entire apartment would be the size of an average living room, rather than the entire first floor of a house. Doing a scene with all six main characters would have been a total nightmare for the cast and crew. It's for this very reason that Angel changed its primary set from a cramped basement office in Season 1 to a spacious hotel in Season 2. In some cases, though, the reason is that the writers and producers have either forgotten or never known how normal people live; born into prosperity with parents able to afford the best universities and pampered by the entertainment industry, they actually have no clue of how the majority of people live.

Ah, we get to the heart of it.

Jackie Gleason came from Brooklyn, and actually grew up at 328 Chauncey Street, the address he used in THE HONEYMOONERS. His parents were both from Ireland. He WAS Ralph Kramden, except he didn't drive a bus (but you could certainly imagine him driving one). Jackie Gleason was poor and never even graduated from high school. He hadn't forgotten how it was to live with an ice box that used real ice.

There is a similar TV trope called Living in a Furniture Store, the title of which sums up how these TV-homes are designed and arranged.

Speaking of furniture stores, does all of this STUFF in TV shows (which we are to believe is owned by regular people like you and me), cause viewers to crave more STUFF? I think it does. I was just admiring some of the bed linens and coverings in an EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND rerun, and thinking idly of my tacky, ancient quilts and how I fall short. I see no reason to have new quilts when I love my old ones, but... well... they ARE old, and I am suddenly conscious of it.

In fact, these thoughts started me thinking about this post, and got me wondering how other people feel about this phenomenon.

What do you think when you see dental-hygienists and waiters and other low-income people living like kings on TV? Do you laugh at it, or does it annoy you?

Have you ever craved something you saw on a TV show? And let me clarify: I do NOT refer to commercials and advertising; it is the JOB of a TV commercial to make you crave something, but it is simply a symptom of viewing that makes you crave something you saw on EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. (It is also a by-product of wanting to be like the characters, as when millions of women cut their hair like Jennifer Aniston back in the 90s.)

Your thoughts?

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Why I hate Newt: It's personal

At left: January 2000 cover of Atlanta Magazine, courtesy of Rebecca Burns and her great memory.




Going to suburban Atlanta for the holiday, later in the week. Now that Newtie is back in the news, I will be hearing all about him from my father-in-law (again), who considers him the most dishonest of the most dishonest politicians. I remember the 90s as one long anti-Newt screed, over various Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It was a nice vacation for my nerves when Newt retired from government to take $1.5 million from Freddie Mac, leaving the good citizens of Georgia alone. (Although lots of 90s survivors have never trusted him, for a variety of reasons.)

And now he's back and noisily running for President, with his famous cost-cutting measures, such as staying in the SC Governor's mansion on my dime. And he instructs us dirty Occupiers to take a bath and get a job! This has brought out some nasty tweets in response:

You know #Newt, some in #OWS may not bathe as often as you, but I'd bet most of them wouldn't divorce their spouses who are dying of cancer.

Direct hit!

Yes, its hard to swallow self-righteous moralism from serial monogamists who owe Tiffany's a half million dollars, and expect to be taken seriously. But there are Newt signs all over my neighborhood and across from St Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville, so I guess he is making important political inroads in the Palmetto State.

He is an awful, resentful, arrogant, duplicitous, dishonest man. And not just in his personal life, but in every single thing he does and every single thing he touches.

This tells us so much about the Republican Party, that this common shyster is what they are left with.

And besides that, he is going to ruin ANOTHER Thanksgiving for me as I listen to a catalog of his sins. Dyspepsia awaits, and plenty of it.

(burp)

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Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age by Susan Jacoby

First of all, I want to make it clear that it is sheer coincidence that I am criticizing another atheist today; this makes two-in-a-row, and I realize that looks bad. As I have said many times, I love the atheists for keeping us honest and forcing us (okay: me) to cut the perpetual starry-eyed routine. However, I have just read a very good book by an atheist, but I'm afraid her atheism has compromised the book, so I have to say so.



Susan Jacoby's fascinating NEVER SAY DIE: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age, is one of those books I have been waiting for, and didn't quite realize it until I found myself hungrily turning pages and consuming it all in one afternoon. Interestingly, I finished it right after my doctor-visit and a lecture (not the first) about my cholesterol.



Do I see the numbers? Yes.



My weight and glucose are way down... but that damn LDL number creeps up and up. "If diet and exercise are not enough..." echo those damn TV ads from evillll BigPharma. Yes, they mean ME, now.



My 35-40 lb weight loss over the past 18 months, coupled with my devoted Swamp Rabbit Trail hiking, was supposed to magically make my cholesterol number go down and... (stares uncomprehendingly at the printed lab results that announce my HDL/LDL) well, it didn't work. I am pleased I am no longer a diabetes risk, but... well, shit, it's always something.



And that is a very good description of aging, "it's always something"... in this hard-nosed book that debunks and deconstructs the various Hallmark-greeting-card myths of aging, Jacoby plows right in. As one of those dedicated atheist-rationalists that takes no prisoners, she decimates several of the major aging myths, and not a few of the minor ones. For example, if you are an asshole in your youth, there is no reason to think you will age gracefully into a nice person with appropriate old-age "wisdom" -- and vice versa. As evidence, she offers (on one hand) Henry Kissinger, who is ancient but still defending genocide with aplomb. On the other hand, she offers Jimmy Carter, who continues to contribute to and enrich our world in so many ways. Certainly, these are excellent examples, and she has no argument from me. My grandmother always said old age simply made you "more of what you are"--and Jacoby seems to agree.



Jacoby is careful to use the terms "young old" (which would be me) and "old old"--which are people in their 80s-90s. She believes the "young old" are used for propaganda purposes, so that (basically young and middle-aged) people can point to them/us with relieved sighs and reassure themselves they can "stay active" while growing old and spry. By contrast, nobody puts the "old old" in TV commercials and nobody seems very glad to see them. They are carefully segregated from the rest of us. She writes at length about the problem of loneliness in old people, as their friends and loved ones die off all around them.



One thing I found disturbing in Jacoby's book, is the casual way she accepts this. She does NOT accept other states-of-affairs as unchanging (in fact, she tells us she intends to go out as an "angry old lady"), without thorough questioning--so why is this particular fact just offered as a given? Perhaps because she simply states that she would not change her life for her aging mother, just as her mother had not changed her lifestyle for her aging mother. However, she does note that her grandmother DID take care of her great-grandmother. Somewhere along the way, "we" (there's that famous punchline: "Whatcha mean We?") stopped doing that. We did? (Did someone mention economic class?) Actually, lots of people didn't. The professional classes, the educated class to which Jacoby belongs, people who have book contracts and write regular columns for the Washington Post, did that first. People with important careers found that they could not (would not) be bothered with aging relatives. That was a deliberate choice that Jacoby made, but it is in no way a given.



"Old old" people are more segregated than ever, and that is because advanced capitalism demands total mobility from everyone, so we end up moving all over the world to get and keep jobs. Of course old people are warehoused, who else is going to look after them? (A possible good side effect of the economy tanking, might be that fewer people are forced to move around so much, and old people might actually be able to stay in real homes.)



One of Jacoby's chapters is alarmingly titled, Women: Eventually the Only Sex. Women overwhemingly overpopulate the "old old" ... social and political concerns about aging are basically about the future of women and how we will live in our final decades; as we all know, the guys check out earlier. Jacoby echoes my own feelings in how modern feminism, profoundly uncomfortable with aging, does not see the economic debates over Social Security and Medicaid to be directly concerned with women, even though WE are primarily who these programs are about... young feminists are preoccupied with sex, reproduction and other youthful pursuits, and it is unlikely we will get them to understand that this is THEIR future too. And that reminds me of another thing I disliked in the book, Jacoby's request that we lay off older men who prefer younger women, using some half-baked pseudo-Darwinian excuse about how men are visual and require more and more to turn them on as they age. Excuse me, but so? It takes me more and more too. If I can refrain (as most women do) from pinching boys on the ass and/or asking them to get married, I think most older men can show some restraint as well. The fact that they don't is because men don't need to exercise restraint... RESTRAINT is not masculine, after all. I am not sure why feminist Jacoby found it necessary to cut men slack in this one area in which they decidedly DON'T NEED ANY, but ... (yeesh)



From Jacoby's website, a summary of the book:

The author offers powerful evidence that America has always been a “youth culture” and that the plight of the neglected old dates from the early years of the republic. Today, it is urgent to distinguish between marketing hype and realistic hope about what lies ahead for more than 70 million Americans who will be over 65 in just twenty years. This wide-ranging reappraisal examines the explosion of Alzheimer’s cases, the uncertain economic future of aging boomers in a shaky economy, the predicament of women who make up an overwhelming majority of the oldest—and poorest—old; and the absence of control over dying in a society that devotes a huge proportion of its health care resources to medical intervention in the last year of life—even when there is no hope that the person will ever recover.

One amazing fact she offers is that even among Catholics, a majority support assisted suicide.



Since I am giving this book a (mostly) good review, where do I think Jacoby got it wrong? Exactly where an atheist would get it wrong: In not covering the role of religion in the lives of very old people. ESPECIALLY when she discusses depression and loneliness and other negative emotional states. Does religion help with these? (they do in young people) She totally avoids the question. I realize the answer may well be "no"--but I would like to see an honest airing of the question, preferably accompanied by some stats (which I realize would be difficult to obtain; like a nice meal, religion is a subjective experience, pleasant for some and pure hell for others)... but I am intelligent and self-aware enough to know that *I* will become a religious fanatic of some sort in my old age. I am trying to work it out so that I will not be an annoying type of religious fanatic, but a benign presence or (at best) one that people might take some comfort from. But I know already, that religion is my opiate, and at the end of my life, I will be administering opiates (all kinds) in spades.



What does atheism offer? I think yall might consider "atheist congregations" of one kind or another, for the social needs of atheists. Sweet Mormon, Baptist and Catholic ladies will come to visit you when you are old... In fact, I visited the late Monsignor Baum myself, about a week before his death (he gave me a blessing in Latin, he seemed to have forgotten the words in English, which I actually found charming) --even though I barely had time to wipe my butt in those days. But I made visiting him a religious priority.



Question: Do the atheists have ladies with angel-food cakes standing ready to visit the old atheists? (If not, yall really need to get to work on that.)



And if the atheists say, fuck angel-food cakes, we don't need people to visit us when we're old, well, maybe that is the major difference between them and the rest of us. They expect us all to be as hard-assed as they are, and we just can't do it.



Does religion make old age better or worse? And I don't simply refer to the religious practices of the old person in question, I also refer to religion as a social force; do not underestimate the importance of hundreds of Sunday School classes going to visit the old people and sing them songs.



I know I'll just love seeing them, when it's my turn.

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Government shutdown averted

Comic comes courtesy of Yellowdog Grannie.



And so the government shutdown was averted at the last minute. I remember the last one (in 1995) quite well, as we had made plans to hike Kennesaw Mountain, which is a federal monument. My father-in-law, who believed Newt Gingrich (his horrible congressman) was trying to ruin his life, was convinced that the park would probably be closed when we got there and all our careful plans would come to naught. The shutdown was lifted right before our planned weekend, and the mountain was filled with delayed-hikers.

I was working at the local community college, and I recall employees asking if the school (which received ample federal funds) would eventually be shut down. I remember our supervisor getting some time-line from somewhere, and reading it aloud to us: this is how long the federal government would have to be shut down before the college would need to close. I can't remember the exact length of time; but it was not immediate. However, it was an eventuality. Employees joked that they had wanted the day off; others worried lay-offs would ensue. And they did.

I hadn't been there long and knew my number would be up soon, so I switched jobs within the year. This was shockingly easy in retrospect; I took the Clinton-economy for granted, as we all did. I switched (and added) jobs with near-abandon in the 90s.

And what will happen now? The infrastructure of this country is falling apart as it is. What "budget cuts" are so important? Oh, right, abortion. Always, abortion abortion abortion... fetuses uber alles, as existing American children starve. Yo, prolifers, there are plenty of homeless, sick children to feed and adopt. At least Tea Party crackpot Michele Bachmann can truthfully claim she has put her money where her mouth is, and has provided for 23 foster children in her lifetime. Impressive. So, let's see a similar record from the rest of them!

Ha! I think we'll be waiting a while on that one.

Your opinions of this continuing Ayn Randian soap opera?

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