Michael Cohen Hearings

          Today's seven and a half hours of Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee was fascinating. Millions of people from here and across the world watched it from start to finish to see first-hand what our democratic system could do to investigate wrong-doings by our president and/or those who worked for him. The lines have been drawn for over two years now, which of us are the believers and which the non-believers. Ay, there's the rub. There's the thing that has so divided us that we can no longer even discuss it with anyone but those with whom we side.

          Hypothetical #1: If you had a choice between being a great person or a mega-rich person, which would you choose? If even half the allegations against Donald Trump are true, apparently he has chosen wealth. Or maybe his megalomania has told him he could be both. Chairman Cummings today in his summary suggested that Michael Cohen was a credible witness, with nothing to be gained by giving false testimony and only more years in prison if he lied. The republican Trump defenders could say only that Cohen had already admitted he was a liar, so why should he now be telling the truth? Refer back to Chairman Cummings rational--that the man could gain nothing by lying under oath.

          This hearing today was a bombshell and I can't wait for further developments. How much longer will the nation have to wait to find out the truth about this man who probably thought he would not win election in 2016, this man who probably thought his winning could serve as a way to further build his Trump empire, this man who having won the election decided he could be both great as well as super wealthy.

          Hypothetical #2: Why do people who are already super wealthy feel a need for even greater wealth?

Oscars & Paddleton

          It's Oscar time again. I'm hoping my reviewer's eye hasn't failed me regarding the best movie category, hoping that Roma doesn't win and that A Star Is Born does. I never did get around to watching the last half of Roma, but based on the first half, I still say it smells more like dog poop than  Channel. We'll see this evening.
          Last night, because regular programming was a wasteland,we went to Netflix and found a small gem, Paddleton, starring Mark Duplass and Ray Romano as two middleage, semi-nerdy friends whose favorite movie is a kung fu classic and who often play a non-competitive paddle game they invented called, naturally, "paddleton." It's a cooperative effort to bounce a tennis ball off the back of an abandoned outdoor movie screen and into an empty oil barrel. Mike (Duplass) learns that he has terminal cancer. He decides not to wait for the ugliness of death by the cancer and instead chooses to take his own life. He asks his friend (his only friend?) Andy (Romano) to be with him throughout the fatal medicating process, a request Andy painfully agrees to. The nearest pharmacy that would fill his prescription was six hours away, all those nearer refusing to fill it on moral grounds. This review  doesn't need a spoiler alert since the ending is obvious and inevitable. How they get there is what makes this such a great movie. We see them interacting on their way to get the drugs, their overnight stay, and the trip back. I called this movie a small gem because it has a singular premise, assisted suicide, colored in with the details that reveal the nature of Mark and Andy's friendship, their love.  The motel owner mistakenly assumes they're a gay couple and a comically. awkward discussion ensues about the number of beds they would need. Their relationship is more than friendship but it isn't a physical love. Love comes in many forms and now it's become almost daily more and more complicated. I remember thinking about this complexity when I first saw The Crying Game. If a man falls in love with a woman who he then finds out is actually a man, does that mean he's gay?  Or does it mean that anyone can fall in love with anyone else regardless of sexual orientation? That's where Andy and Mike are--in a love between two people regardless of sexual orientation.
          This is such a simple movie but so incredibly effective for so many simple reasons. Much of the dialogue felt like improv, making it fascinating to watch Duplass and Romano bounce lines off each other. I and so many others are long-time Romano fans, from his early days of standup to all those episodes loving Raymond, to his ill-fated but excellent series about men of a certain age, to his Oscar-worthy performance in The Big Sick. Thanks, Ray. I wish Paddleton was the nominee for best picture instead of Roma.

Opioids

            Much is being made of the increase in death by opioid overdose, both accidental as well as purposeful. From 1999 to 2017, the numbers for all overdose deaths have grown from 17,000 to 70,000, of which from 8,000 to 47,600 were for opioid overdose. And the number of suicides (by all methods) in 2017 were 47,000, but I can’t seem to find any stats that show how many of those were from drug overdoses. I’m guessing it would probably be about half of those 47,000. The numbers are hard to pin down. Let’s say that about half the overdose deaths were suicides and half were accidental. Are the opioids, as with so many of our illegal drugs, used for the euphoria they produce or for the pain they alleviate? If they were prescribed, then they were for the pain. I’m now being treated for polymyalgia and have a prescription for a low-level opioid called Tramadol. I now know what recurrent pain feels like—the pain that migrates across my back and hips, that moves from shoulder to shoulder and all too often seizes my attention with pain where the shoulder joins the neck or where the back of my head attaches to my spine. It’s not the constant pain of a headache or toothache. It’s the pain that makes me howl like a wounded banshee with a trunk twist or shoulder shrug. It makes me want to take anything in any amount to stop the pain. I wonder if that isn’t exactly what happens when someone overdoses on one of the opioids. Are they trying to end life or just eliminate pain? Lee Child, in The Midnight Line, writes about several veterans whose wounds are so severe they have to use fentanyl to stop the pain, but as their bodies adjust to the drug, more and more is required to do the job. Their addiction was for alleviating pain and not for getting high. At what point, then, does a drug become addictive? How do we know when we’ve gone more than halfway across that bridge? Are these people who die from overdoses trying to relieve pain, or trying to kill themselves, or simply to feel the euphoria the drug induces? If it’s the latter, then the addiction is to the euphoria and not to the drug itself. Or do I have it backwards, that the addiction is to the fentanyl or oxycodone or any of the other opioids and that most overdoses are accidental? My head is spinning. I think I’ll go take another Tramadol or two.

           

Random Thoughts 1993

I’m stuck again, trying to find something worth writing about. I know the news is filled with stories that are interesting for one reason or another, most of which have to do with our POTUS, but lately I feel too lazy to work that hard for a blog. So, instead, I went back through my journals from 1993 to mine a few chunks of either gold or just fool’s gold. And here they are, loosely linked by that year when I’d finally retired at an age that was way too young. I’d really planned to, wanted to, retire in my mid-seventies, but student apathy became just too depressing to stay at it that long. Here are the nuggets from that year:

My kids are really starting to get to me, my students, that is.  Or is it really my non-students?  They don’t seem to care about anything anymore, only the games they play.  They’re so arrogant, rude, self-centered, and ignorant.  And they’re so smug about their ignorance.  I kicked two boys out of my first period class today.  One, a bright but lazy as hell black (chocolate tan really), gave a two-handed finger when I told him to do something.  Out he went.  Five minutes later, discussing a quiz I’d given them, I heard a not-so-quiet response to a comment of mine, “Who gives a fuck?”  Out he went.  That pretty well sums up their attitudes about me and school and life in general: the “who gives a fuck” generation.

* * *

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

If you can’t fix it, don’t break it.

If you don’t break it, use it.

If you can’t use it, lose it.

If you can’t lose it, fake it.

If you can’t fake it, fuck it.

If you can’t fuck it, break it.

But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

For some weird reason, I dreamed most of the above.  I was teaching a class and it seemed important to get the words right, and they were coming out right.  When I woke up they were still there, so I wrote them down pretty much as they are here.  I’m pretty sure the expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is current and someone somewhere said it or sang it, but I don’t remember ever having heard it.  And what follows that first line is original with me (I think).

* * *

I’d really like to get all the books in the Matt Scudder series by Lawrence Block and then read them in order.  I’m trying to figure out why they’re so appealing to me.  Nothing much happens in most of them, nothing violent, that is.  It’s just Matt going from door to door prying out what seems like useless information.  But the characters are very good, and he doesn’t stint on anyone, no matter how minor the character.  He uses the first person point of view throughout, which is sort of unusual, and even in the pace and cadence of the words the reader gets this feeling of despair that lies at the heart of Matt Scudder.

* * *

I started a new Matt Scudder yesterday, When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, all about the problems of Matt’s drinking buddies who all hire him to solve them.  Now if I could just find them all at the same time so I could read them in order.

I finished Sacred Ginmill this afternoon.  The title’s from a song called “Last Call” by Dave Van Ronk.  Talk about a boozer’s lullaby.

And so we’ve had another night                  And so we’ll drink the final drink

Of poetry and poses                                       That cuts the brain in sections

And each man knows he’ll be alone            Where answers do not signify

When the sacred ginmill closes.                  And there aren’t any questions

And so we’ll drink the final glass                 I broke my heart the other day.

Each of his joy and sorrow                            It will mend again tomorrow.

And hope the numbing drink will last         If I’d been drunk when I was born

Till opening tomorrow.                                  I’d be ignorant of sorrow.

And when we stumble back again               And so we’ll drink the final toast

Like paralytic dancers                                    That never can be spoken:

Each knows the question he must ask        Here’s to the heart that is wise enough

And each man knows the answer.               To know when it’s better off broken.

Whoa!  Is that depressing or what?  But I’ll bet it hits it right on the nose for the dedicated drunks all over the world.

* * *

My brother-in-law Paul had this to say about one of the women who live near them: “He got a wife’d scare a cat off a gut pile.” I just had to write it down so I could someday claim it for my own.

* * *

My latest Matt Scudder, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, is the one where he first meets the street kid TJ.  It was very good, but depressingly violent, with two really nasty German types who like to play sex games with young boys and then kill them . . . on tape, something called a “snuff” film.  And Matt joins his friend Mick Ballou to rob and kill them when he realizes the police aren’t going to be able to do a damn thing about them.

* * *

Friday, April 30, 1993

The last day of April.  I think I’ll be glad to get done with April.  Elliot said, “April is the cruelest month.”  I agree, although in western New York we get a whole lot of cruel months, months that just break your heart because you assume they’ll be nicer than they really are, just like a woman that promises with her eyes and then doesn’t come through, sort of a climatic prick-tease.

* * *

Saturday, May 1, 1993

May Basket Day in the old days, but I don’t think anyone celebrates the day as we did when I was a young boy.  Or maybe nobody even knows about this May Day ritual we had back in South Dakota.  As I remember it, boys and girls (very young boys and girls) would venture out to the front door of a potential sweetheart, place on the doorstep a basket of cookies and sweets, knock on the door, and then run like hell to avoid the pursuit from the young person who lived there, a pursuit which, if successful, resulted in a big kiss on the lips of the deliverer of the basket.  Wow, did it really happen that way?  How innocent, how prehistoric, how . . . South Dakota.

* * * 

I bought a Sting tape a few months ago and I never really listened to it until one of the songs got popular enough to be played with some regularity on the radio—“Fields of Gold”—and I fell in love with it.  So today I listened to the whole album looking at the lyrics.  Oh, my, were they ever good.  It’s called Ten Summoner’s Tales and all the songs seem to be related in that they tell stories of people set in some kind of magical Middle Ages.  Great music and vocals, but excellent lyrics.  I not only want to be able to sing them like he does, I wish I’d written them.  For example, here are the lyrics to “Fields of Gold”:

           

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves,

            Upon the fields of barley.

            You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky,

            As we walk in fields of gold.

            So she took her love, for to gaze awhile,

            Upon the fields of barley.

            In his arms she fell as her hair came down,

            Among the fields of gold.

            Will you stay with me, will you be my love.

            Among the fields of barley?

            We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky,

            As we lie in fields of gold.

            See the west wind move like a lover so,

            Upon the fields of barley.

            Feel her body rise, when you kiss her mouth,

            Among the fields of gold.

                        I never made promises lightly,

                        And there have been some that I’ve broken,

                        But I swear in the days still left,

                        We’ll walk in fields of gold,

                        We’ll walk in fields of gold.

            Many years have passed since those summer days,

            Among the fields of barley.

            See the children run as the sun goes down,

            Among the fields of gold.

            You’ll remember me when the west wind moves

            Upon the fields of barley.

            You can tell the sun in his jealous sky,

            When we walked in fields of gold,

            When we walked in fields of gold,

            When we walked in fields of gold.

Isn’t that something?  It’s all about romantic love and the passage of time, and how that love gets lost, or just grows old, whatever.  I’m such a sucker for romantic love.  I’m not at all sure that that isn’t the one thing that makes life worthwhile—romantic love, and even the nostalgic feeling of lost or unrequited love.  It’s better than sex, sex is so short-term, but romantic love makes life worthwhile while most of life isn’t worth all that much, not nearly as much as the gold in those fields as the sun goes down. 

* * *

This is a recent find and not from 1993, but it says so much about Donald Trump I just have to put it in here: “These intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called ‘willful ignorance’ when presented by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.” (Time, Feb. 18-25, 20)

* * *

There, have I found gold bullion or just a lot of bull? I leave it to you to decide.

The Orville

I’m happy to say that my wife and I have been fans of Seth MacFarlane’s tv series The Orville right from the start, but neither of us was willing to admit it. Happy, and a bit proud of bucking the mostly negative reviews it got from critics in its first season, many of whom thought it would fall flat on its si-fi-ish face. “I mean,” many of them snorted, “a sort of kids’ parody of Star Trek? How dare it, how dare MacFarlane poke a stick at one of the most venerated television series of all time?” Well, we both found it so amusing and intriguing that we admitted to liking it a lot. In fact, MacFarlane must be some sort of genius to have come up with this idea and then written most of the scripts as well as starred in them.

Although the reviews for Season One weren’t so good, those for Season Two were much better. And despite the reviewers, the show right from the start must have appealed to a lot of actors who guest-starred on it, even if it was for only a brief spot (Ted Danson was on for about twenty seconds as the regional director of the galactic force, speaking to Capt. Mercer via a future Skype). But others seemed equally eager to get aboard: Charlize Theron with a fat part about a time traveler with evil intentions, Rob Lowe as a sexy blue guy, Liam Neeson delivering a message from a dead commander, Jeffrey Tambor (from Transparent and Arrested Development) as MacFarlane’s father, Holland Taylor (from Two-and-a-Half Men) as MacFarlane’s mother, and Jason Alexander (obviously, from Seinfeld) as Olix, the horny bartender. I’m guessing that most of these cameos were grabbed eagerly by those who got them and we’ll probably see many more in future episodes.

The humor lies mainly in the varying alien beings who are aboard their galactic ship, The Orville (named for MacFarlane’s interest in original flight and one of its originators, Orville Wright). But the humor and crazy diversity of the aliens is never intended as a cruel parody of those on Star Trek’s Enterprise. In many cases, these people (Can I really call them as well as think of them as people?) are not only identifiable but are also charming. Even Yaphit, the blob, one of the ship’s engineers, is a nice little fellow who likes to crack jokes as he oozes his way around the ship. And the Spock parallel, Isaac, the ship’s science and engineering officer, is a humanoid computer aboard to study human behavior, to see what makes humans human instead of artificially intelligent fellows like he and the other inhabitants of his planet. But humor is only part of MacFarlane’s intent; he also includes plot elements that speak to current and universal human concerns. For example, in one episode (“All the World Is Birthday Cake”), they receive a first contact with a planet whose inhabitants have sent out a microwave message to the cosmos, “Can anyone hear this?” Capt. Mercer and his crew respond and go to the planet to meet them, to discover a society that seems advanced enough for consideration to join the Planetary Union. But when two of their crew, Cmdr. Grayson and Lt. Cmdr. Bortus, mention that they are celebrating their birthdays, the planet prefect (played by John Rubenstein) screams to have them taken prisoner. It seems that this race believes that anyone born during this astrological period is dangerous and criminally insane and must be imprisoned forever, thematically pointing the finger at all our present racist beliefs.

In the episode “A Happy Refrain,” Dr. Finn (Penny Johnson Jerold) realizes that she is becoming romantically attracted to Isaac (Mark Jackson), an android, and wishes there were some way they could connect, even though romance between them, with a robot who doesn’t understand human emotion, is, if not impossible, at least unlikely. The whole episode might have been played for its humor, but instead it was a very appealing examination of love and romance as good as, if not better than, most of what Hallmark produces. The serendipitous use of the ship’s simulator allows them to consummate their relationship as two humans instead of human and robot, and may give us more plot lines for future episodes.

The success of The Orville will depend on how well MacFarlane and the other writers can maintain a balance of humor, Star-Trekian adventure, and interesting themes. I hope it can last at least one or two more seasons.

Waste Management Golf

       A gloomy, chilly, most uncharacteristic day in Arizona. It looks and feels more like what I remember from upstate New York. Television viewers tuned in to the Waste Management golf tournament are used to seeing our clear skies and the several hundred thousand spectators in shorts and golf shirts. Not this Sunday, though. Instead, we have light drizzle (Now there's a word I thought I'd never use to describe a day in Arizona) and temps in the mid-fifties. Brrr!
       Rickie Fowler is leading and looks like he'll probably hang on for the win. The poor weather conditions will make it hard for anyone to post a low number and he presently has a 4-stroke lead. But, as Johhny Miller might opine, a choke is always possible. Oh, how tour players hated to hear that word and Johnny used it rather often. Miller is being celebrated for his nearly thirty years in the broadcast booth. There have been all kinds of accolades from golfers and fellow broadcasters this weekend, most of them now saying how much they admire his straight shooting. But many of them in the past disliked him, labeling him as a wise-ass egotist. I always thought what he had to say was spot-on accurate even though what he said may have been painful to those about whom he said it. His farewell was appropriate and brought him a few red eyes and tears. And the song Peter Jacobsen wrote for him was clever and really well done with help from his band, Jake Trout and the Flounders, and some of the golfers, like Bubba Watson and Zach Johnson, and other commentators, especially his old buddy in the booth, Roger Maltbie. Paul Azinger will be replacing Johnny. Let's hope he can do as well. What else did we learn about Johnny? He was always barefoot in the booth and he liked Cheez Wiz straight from the can to his mouth. So, Zinger, you can easily fill his shoes since he never wore any, but you may need to get your own shtick instead of the Cheez Wiz.
        The Waste Management continues to be the most unusual tournament of the year with attendances approaching one million for the six days (which includes the practice rounds). Nearly 20,000 each day race screaming into the stadium to get a seat in the triple-decker seating at the 16th. Just how bad does one want to be able to say "I was there" that they would wait from midnight to 7:00 a.m. when the gates opened, then wait another hour and a half for the first players to come through (the ones at the bottom of the leader board), and another five or six hours for the leaders to show up? Just how much beer do they want to glug? In both cases, more than I'd want.
        What other golf goodies do I have? Still not very many who choose to leave the flag in when they putt. That will change over the course of the year when more and more players see the advantages of leaving the flagstick in. Still some rules that need further refining, like the knee-high ball drop and the rule against a caddie standing behind a golfer when he takes his stance. This not a rule, but a trend--the distances these guys are hitting their drives is prodigiously outlandish. Cameron Champ now averages--AVERAGES!--about 340 yards. I keep wondering if it's true or if I only dreamed it: that Cameron Champ can throw a baseball 106 m.p.h. Another change in this year's rule book, that what we used to call a hazard will now be called a penalty area. Don't you U.S.G.A. rules people have more important things to consider? Not all shots that end up in a penalty area result in a penalty, so why call it a penalty area? But then, I guess calling it a hazard is equally stupid.
          Here's an item not related to the Waste Management but to women's golf. In early April, the gods of Augusta National have deigned to allow some women to play on their august grounds the final round of the women's amateur tournament called The Augusta National Women's Amateur Championship. But only a few will be allowed to grace their hallowed halls. A field of 72 of the top amateurs in the world will play the first two rounds on Wednesday and Thursday at the Champions Retreat Golf Club in Geneva, Georgia. The field will then be cut to the top 30 and ties, who will play a practice round at Augusta National on Friday and a final round on Saturday. So, a week ahead of the Masters, the world will be able to see how the ladies handle this iconic course. I hope they tear it up and kick some Augustan butts.