"Everything Old Is Old Again"

Once in a while I see recognizable names on the credits of current TV shows.  I am not jealous.  Nor bolsteringly encouraged, as in “If he (or she) can, I can.”  It’s more a perplexed, “If he (or she) can… how can he (or she)?”

But that’s for later.

Contemporary (though some years younger) Glenn Gordon Caron, creator of the deservedly, lavishly praised megahit Moonlighting in the 1980’s is currently Executive Producer on the TV blockbuster Bull.  I have an impulse to drop him a line with some cautionary advice concerning the show, which, although doing exceedingly well in the ratings, I feel is essentially hollow… or is it shallow…. or is it both, or is it “conceptually unrealized”?  In my mind, Bull is a much-watched show that is detectably floundering – I actually wrote about that already.  I watched the “Season Two” debut?  There is still something not right.

I have personally experienced this type of phenomenon before.  It happened on Phyllis.  First year, it was in the Top Ten; the second year, it was cancelled.  Why?  Call it “Popular Emptiness.”  That’s how I feel about Bull.

Although I know Glenn Caron, I am reluctant to contact him, fearing coming off as an ossified “cast-aside”, ranting at my television and going to bed clutching my Emmys.

(Assuring Note:  I do not do the second one.  And not just because they’re pointy.)

If I wrote to him, I would also inform Glenn – as an interesting sidelight – that there was the name of a street near my house in Toronto – Glencairn Avenue.  When you’re working yourself to the bone on a TV series, sometimes an extraneous factoid can be a ray of restorative sunshine.  I thought maybe that might help. 

GLENN CARON:  “Wow.  I’m a street spelled a different way in Toronto.  For a moment there I forgot that the show’s star is an idiot.”

(Note:  I am speaking generically here.  I have no idea if Bull’s leading man is an idiot.  Although, you know… he’s the star of a highly-rated television show.  Place your bets, ladies ang gentlemen.  And be prepared to give “points.”)

Anyway, this isn’t about that…. entirely.

What it’s about is the recent rebooting – wait, is it “rebooting” if it comes back entirely unchanged, or does “rebooting” imply some meaningful upgrade? 

(Just trying to learn something here, education being a prominent element in this blogatorial exercise.  Well, not prominent, perhaps, but considerably above “Don’t bother me with that; I know enough as it is already.”  I am nothing if not a sponge for unfilled gaps in my understanding.  A dried-out, raggedy sponge, but a sponge.)

Was I a big fan of the original Will & Grace?

No.    

Was I a regular viewer?

Yes. 

Why? 

It was frothy.  Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

So they bring back Will & Grace, and, like Woody Allen in Sleeper – it wakes up, and it is exactly the same.  Will & Grace – the first cryogenic TV show.

I read the show’s original writers are all back.  I imagine they figure if it worked great the first time, why veer from a successful formula?  Although if it’s the same writers, they’d be unable to veer if they wanted to.

My unshakable mantra:  You are what you are.  And you write what you write.  (No optional “veering” available.)

I watched the second half of the resuscitated Will & Grace – I had forgotten it was premiering – and, besides a predictable, musty storyline, where their relationship is jeopardized, then gooily reconciled at the end – in a period of one-and-a-half or so minutes, they delivered a joke structure which is my least favorite joke structure in the world, one I believe led as much as anything to shows filmed in front of a live studio audience finally wearing out their welcome.  Although here’s Will & Grace back again, so apparently they did not wear out their entire welcome.  At least NBC believes there’s still “juice.”   Of course, reviving old hits is considerably easier than developing a new ones.

NBC EXECUTIVE:  “That’s not fair.”

Well, isn’t it?

“It is, but that’s not fair.”

The joke format I most hate (and probably wrote an embarrassing number of during my tenure):

“The old – and inevitably infuriating – “‘180- Degree’ Turnaround.”

Here’s how it works.  (Or, to me, works annoyingly.)

Karen, a staunch Republican, gets Grace, a confirmed Democrat, a shot at redecorating the Oval Office.  Although acknowledging this huge career opportunity, Grace adamantly refuses to consider the assignment, proclaiming it goes against all of her principles to work for “that man” then storming angrily out of the room.  When Karen informs her their appointment at the White House is at ten-thirty, Grace, without missing a beat, replies, “I’ll be there at ten-fifteen.”

And then we are supposed to laugh.  Why?  Because she said the diametrical opposite of what she had previously proclaimed?  Isn’t that just… stupid?

HACK SITCOM WRITER:  “I’ve heard people do that.”

When?

“Okay, never.  But it works every time.”

Really?  Like twice in a minute-and-a-half?

Will says he’s meeting a gay congressman.  Jack warns Will not to giggle, like he

usually does when he meets someone important he is physically attracted to. 

“Jack,” insists Will, “I do not giggle.”

Then he meets him and he giggles.

NOSTALGIC TV VIEWER:  “I remember those jokes.  Why don’t they do them anymore?”

Because they’re not funny?

“I know, but I miss them.”

My original thoughts about this post related to how writers, out of the saddle for over a decade would respond to a situation they had plaintively pined for to which they were surprisingly and unexpectedly returned. 

I know how I’d respond.

After the excitement of the “resurrection” and the reunion and the parking space on the studio lot with my name on it had worn off and we were ensconced in the “Writers’ Room”, breaking stories and pitching jokes, eating indifferent “takeout” out of Styrofoam containers, the safety of hearth and home long in the distance because you have to stay there until it’s finished, my three-word summarizing reaction would be,

“Oh yeah.  This.”

The Will & Grace writing staff went back to their jobs.

I am so glad I was not on it.

Still,

I’ll bet it was cool, receiving the phone call.

'"A Textbook Case Of Classic Displacement"

Irrelevant “Table Setting” (For atmospheric purposes, and as a literary “Throat Clearer” for the writer):

Every visit to Groundwork Coffee Co. now elicits “Priority Treatment” from the Picard-headed manager of the emporium. 

When I arrive, he immediately leaps from the behind an adjacent counter, assuring the “coffista” taking my order, “I’ve got this”, after which he carefully prepares my Venice Blend pour-over himself.  Frequently, there are whispered instructions, concerning a discount.  When he misses the timing and I have already paid, he fills my cup to overflowing with bonus individually prepared coffee.

And I have no idea why this is happening.

Three possible hypotheses have come up:

He has mistaken me for someone important.

Having studied medicine before entering his current field of employment, he intuitively detects that my time on this planet is running out.

Or three – daughter Anna’s idea –

He believes I am a homeless person.

For whatever reason, I now consistently receive individualized attention whenever I arrive.  Which feels inordinately odd to me, as I am given, at best, perfunctory attention everywhere else.  If you sense a hinted, irrational expectation of the former, well… leave us not jump ahead in the story.

I am standing at the counter.  The “coffista” announces the charge for my Venice Blend pour-over:

“Four dollars.” 

I produce a premeditated five-dollar bill from my pocket.  And, though I have never done this before in my life, I startlingly “Frisbee” the flattened money in the direction of the “coffista.”  And it surprisingly takes off.

“That flew!” I respond, with giddy enthusiasm.  The “coffista’s” response is more muted.

“It’s usually handed,” she replies flatly. 

My contributed dollar-in-change into the “Tip Jar” – deposited, not flung – comes repentingly too late. 

The damage had already been done.

As the drops of my “drip-coffee” plop into the appreciative cup below, I proceed across the room to the shelf where the coffee cup’s lids are assembled.  As I do so, I obliviously almost collide with a waiting customer, checking the messages on her cellphone.

“Excuse me”, she responds. 

Although it is clearly I who should be apologizing.

Later, on my walk home carrying my coffee, I step around a dog standing in the middle of the sidewalk, its nearby owner retrieving its evacuated debris.

“Excuse me,” exhorts the upset poo-picking dog owner, as if I had committed some egregious ambulatorial faux pas.

“I was just walking around the dog,” I defensively explain.

But she remains resolutely irate. 

Maybe I was wrong.  Which was developing into a trend.  I had been wrong, sailing the five-dollar bill at the “coffista.”  I had been wrong, jostling the waiting customer, checking the messages on her cellphone. 

Guilty by nature, and curious by inclination, I begin to ponder,

“What the heck is going on?”

And then I realize… (This will feel like a “Jump” but it isn’t.)

More than anything in numerous years, I had become genuinely excited by the possibility of attending a summer Adult Education class at The University of Oxford.  (England, not Mississippi – meaning to clarify, not to compare.)

I do not recall where I found out about this, but I really, really wanted to go.  I quickly imagine us, gathering on “Day One” in a venerable classroom for “Political Thinking in the 20^th Century”, or, alternatively, my second choice – “Ideas of Freedom”, the professor going around room, asking each student in turn what brought them to the program, and me (as I had already begun to rehearse) saying,

“In America, they have these things called “Fantasy Camps”, where, for a week, wannabe ballplayers who wound up becoming accountants… and such, put on uniforms and pretend they are professional athletes.  For me, coming here is a “Fantasy Camp” for thinkers.

That would have been good, wouldn’t it?  To me, it succinctly hit the spot.  (And in my own inimitable patois.)

Our instructions required us to to scan our applications onto our computers (I had found a class for Dr. M to attend as well – “Five Hundred Years of Gardening”) and transmit them to the Oxford Admissions Department.  (Oxford – hallowed background for the Morse and Endeavour mysteries.) 

Since we do not know how to scan things onto computers (I found a class for Dr. M to attend as well – “Five Hundred Years of Gardening”), younger family members generously assisted with our submissions.  (Actually, they did the whole thing.)

With appropriate pomp and circumstance, we dispatched our applications on the first day we were permitted to do so, accommodating the eight-hour “time difference” so we’d be, hopefully, the first applicants n the door. 

Champagne and teacakes!  We were going to Oxford!

Two days later, we were informed the classes we had selected had been filled.

I do no know what we could have done differently.  But whatever we did, other applicants for those classes had – apparently – done sooner. 

I have no words to describe the depths of my disappointment about not getting in.  But I do know this.

However I felt,

I had taken it out on a blameless “coffista,” a waiting customer checking the messages on her cellphone, and a dog.

Writer’s Note:  I have for some time wanted to write a post about the visceral dimensions on “Personal Entitlement”, but I could never quite get a handle on how to adequately describe the volcanic power of that self-centered sensation.

Well…

That raging knot of anger in my throat, that has, as yet, not entirely subsided?

That’s it.

"The Missing Thing (A Substandard Title I Hope To Ultimately Replace, But Probably Won't)"

I have an interest in perfection, a subject easier studied than possibly attained.  (Although I found the previous sentence to be remarkably successful.)

This curiosity began unfortuitously when, as a precocious eight year-old, I proudly proclaimed to my grandfather,

“I got ninety-six on my arithmetic exam.” 

To which he unsmilingly replied,

“What happened to ‘the other four’?”

Is there such a word as “Grand-patricide”?  (I may have then wondered, and probably did.)

Still, the incentivizing “seed” had been permanently planted.  How exactly, I urgently pondered, do you scale the seemingly unreachable summit of “a hundred”?

Then, I went into writing, a pursuit in which “perfection” is functionally inoperative, partly because writing’s a subjective operation so “Who’s to decide what exactly constitutes ‘a hundred’?’”, and partly because there are so many words it is practically impossible to consistently hit the bull’s eye with each of them. 

I’ll bet even Hamilton’s prodigiously gifted Lin-Manuel Miranda has sleep-sapping second thoughts about rhyming… I just flipped through the booklet of Hamilton lyrics and was unable to identify one regrettable rhyme.  (Although I am certain if you asked him, he’d go straight to the spot and say, “I just could not come up a better one.  ‘College’ and ‘astonish’?  Ay, Carumba!”)

Still, despite my inability to approach close enough to “perfection” to see it with the Hubble Telescope, I assiduously examined that conundrous enterprise in others, to determine why that sought-after objective is so frustratingly beyond human achievement.  (Although animals can do it.  CHEETAH:  “I have an unblemished record at ‘bringing down antelopes.’  Which would be noteworthy, except that all the other cheetahs do too.”)

Recent Memorable Example:

I saw the 2017 Dodgers, at one point this season, winning an astonishing 51 out of 62 games – challenging the best “Won-Loss” record of all time – suddenly losing 20 out of their next 25 games, capturing, during that dismal decline, one game, while contemporaneously losing 17.

Yes, there were injuries.  And yes, the “Marathon”-length season eventually exhausted their energies.  And yes, there is the inescapable “Regression toward the mean”, the “Law of Averages”, inevitably bringing one’s “Icarus”-like performance more predictably back down to earth.  (Though, hopefully, without the accompanying Icarus-like “splat.”)

Those factors were unquestionably contributory.  But there was, I believed, some more salient and ultimately more satisfying reason for the precipitous nosedive.

Of course nobody ever wins all their games – an “imperfection” my grandpa, in a mistaken incentivizing technique, would have unhelpfully pointed out.  Still, in baseball, you take 51 out of 62 games, that’s a stratospheric “Winning Percentage” of… you know, numerically, it’s a ton!

And then, the rains came down.

After record-setting successes, pitchers with pinpoint accuracy were suddenly “just missing” their locations.  Batters who regularly punished the opposition pitchers’ “mistakes” now fouled them harmlessly out of play, or whiffed entirely, the missed pitches popping tauntingly into adversary catchers’ welcoming gloves.

Inevitable winners becoming inevitable losers?

What the heck was going on?

Suddenly, I “got” it.  (A spontaneous insight, seen as the illuminating “Answer”,  because, for me, “spontaneous insights” have never once led me astray.)

In baseball, with its under-appreciated standards of Major League proficiency, where even the worst teams can defeat the most talented ones, there is an indefinable “Winner’s Edge” that ultimately generates champions, an edge the juggernaut Dodgers once possessed but had allowed, unconsciously, to slip away.

You win 51 out of 62 games, then take your foot imperceptibly “off the gas”, the propelling “wind at your back” turns in the other direction, and before you know it,  

You are a horrendous “one-and-seventeen.”

It is a precarious proposition, the players – and teams – being carefully tuned machines.  You deviate from your typical game – by, say, the softening distraction of being so far ahead in the standings – you lose your enabling “Winner’s Edge”, and, shortly thereafter, you lose 20 of the next 25 games.

I recall, not dissimilarly, as a performer on the 1974 summer replacement series, The Bobbie Gentry Goodtime Hour, I was waiting to tape my sure-fire “Making a Peanut Butter Sandwich from ‘Scratch’” routine – involving the essential ingredients: a sack of shelled peanuts, a skittish elephant and a measured infusion of scurrying mice.  (Use your imagination, remembering the reliable “‘Eek!’ Effect” scurrying mice have on highly-strung elephants and their shattering consequences on strategically strewn shelled peanuts.)

As I waited backstage – confident, prepared, and ready to go – a visiting producer, a transplanted Canadian who, I believe, mistook me for my older brother, began loudly berating me for “… thinking you are ‘so great’.”

When I finally appeared before the cameras, that disquieting incident threw off my studied “calm but focused” equilibrium, leaving a once can’t-miss “Mice and Elephant” routine edited strategically out of program.

The “Good News” is, with preparation, experience and fueling enthusiasm, you are nearer “Perfection” than you can possibly imagine.  The “Bad News” is, the slightest buffeting distraction, and your excised “Peanut Butter From ‘Scratch’” routine lies ignominiously on the production’s cutting-room floor.

More than any conceivable factor, it’s that vaguely determinable “Winner’s Edge” that spells the disparity between “ninety-six” and “a hundred” – the difference between (arithmetical) “Perfection” and “Just missed.” 

To this day, I wonder what deflecting determinant robbed 8 year-old Earlo of that elusive “other four.”

(And why my infuriating grandpa felt it maddeningly necessary to bring it up.)

"Writer In The Sky -The Return (Home)"

I don’t know why I get such a kick out of this –“Writer in the Sky.”

I just sang it.  (As in “Riders in the Sky.”)

“Writer in the sky…” 

“Doo-doo doo-doo doo.”

It feels so “Tomorrowland” to me.  Like playing ping-pong on the moon. 

(Note:  I am not sure that is scientifically accurate.  Perhaps I should add, “… if you can play ping-pong on the moon, which I am not certain you can.”  Yeah, that feels better.  I mean, for me.  I wouldn’t want you going on about playing ping-pong on the moon in front of some astronaut and have them laugh derisively in your face.  Then you think, “Who talked about playing ping-pong on the moon?” and you remember who it was and you blame me for getting you derisively laughed in the face and you track me down and hurt me.  You see the lengths I go to avoid hypothetical beatings?   That’s cautious.)

It also returns us to the subject of blame.  Just like I just defused the possibility of blame for leading you down an erroneous lunar possibility, that’s how – and to what extent – people will go to keep the spinning “Blame Arrow” from pointing accusatorily at them. 

Blame must be terrible. 

People will go to inordinate lengths to avoid it.

Praise?

“That was me.”

Blame?

“Somebody else.”

I was talking yesterday about how the application of “blame” must serve some Darwinian purpose, hearkening back to at least biblical times (You think Adam and Eve said, “Let’s not talk ‘responsibility’ and just put on some of these clothes”?)  And arguably before even that.  See:  Blame-related cave paintings, featuring some sideways-looking person pointing a j’accusatory finger, and another whose one visible eye reflects serious concerns about their imminent wellbeing.  (And you can bet the unseen “back” eye feels similarly imperiled.)

What is the enduring value of “blame”, allowing it to remain around when nobody likes it if it’s them?

To begin our inquisitorial journey, consider the dictionarial definition of “blame”, the verb:

“To assign responsibility for a fault or a wrong”

In that way of looking at it, “blame” is a valuable remediative.  Something went faulty or wrong.  Assignment:   Who or what was responsible?  Why does that matter?  Because understanding why it happened will decrease its chances of happening again.

Faulty levees are blamed for increasing the damage during Hurricane Katrina?  Improve the levees.  (As opposed to the “Levys”, a Jewish family from New Orleans who are just dandy the way they are.) 

That’s the practical application of “blame.”   After that, however, it gets tricky.  When considering a tragedy, nobody likes “Uncontrollable Circumstances” for an answer.  “Uncontrolled Circumstances” makes people feel helpless, and keeps them sleeping comfortably in their beds.  

“Uncontrollable Circumstances” could happen again.  And at any time.  Try dropping off to “Slumberland” with that troubling your mind.

“Is it now?”  Or now?”  Or now?  Or now?  Or now?”

You want to put the concern – sorry about this – to bed, any way you can.  Which invariably means blaming someone.  Even if was nobody to blame.  Or it means blaming the wrong people, a procedure that satisfactorily “kills two birds with one stone”

“We have determined why that ‘Terrible Thing’ happened.”  (Now we can all sleep comfortably in our beds.  The mystery has been definitively solved.  So “Phew!”) 

“It was the (INSERT NAME OF DESPISED MINORITY OF YOUR CHOICE HERE).”  (We have always suspected them, and now we have proof.  “Terrible People” – “Terrible Thing.”  Case Closed.  With the appropriate punishment.

Problem solved?

(INSINUATINGLY SING-SONGY)  Not if they didn’t do it.

(Yikes!  The passenger sitting in front of me just put his seat back.  My laptop is now embedded into my abdomen.  Please excuse me if my writing feels cramped.  And please blame the passenger sitting in front of me for the constriction.  You see how that works?  Now I am entirely in the clear.)

(A psycho-stratagem that was explained to me earlier.  “Blaming” projects the responsibility you are (consciously or unconsciously) feeling (of, say, possible substandard blog writing) onto, in this case, an innocent bystander who simply wanted to relax.  Does it work?  It’s the “Go-To” escape hatch for most people.  Except the congenitally guilty, who feel bad even thinking about it.  (But, in my case, using it anyway.)

Speaking of the congenitally guilty, “Blame” is also unhelpful (for seeking out ameliorative explanations) when someone reflexively shoulders responsibility, for reasons unrelatedly their own.   

“The town’s well has been poisoned, and we need to learn why?”

A HAND SHOOTS UP

“’Guilty Larry?’”

“I did it.”

“‘Yeah, okay…’”

“No.  This time, I’m really guilty.”

“Fine.  How did you poison the well, ‘Guilty Larry’?”

“I threw my gum in it.”

"And you think throwing your gum in is poisoned the well?" 

“Well, the next day people were drinking from it and dying, so, yeah.”

 “Just out of curiosity, ‘Guilty Larry’, why did you throw your gum into the well?”

“I was finished chewing it, and I didn’t want to throw it on the ground.”

“So you instead threw it into the well?”

“I do not litter.  And not because I’d feel guilty.  I believe littering is wrong.”

“Out of curiosity again, ‘Guilty Larry’, why is it less “wrong” to throw your gum into the well than it is to toss your gum onto the ground?”

“When you throw your gum into the well it doesn’t end up on the bottom of anybody’s shoe.  And the birds can’t choke on it.  I am sorry that my gum poisoned the well.  If I’d known, I’d have kept chewing it till I got home.  And if I couldn’t make it all the way, swallow it.”

Okay, so no help blaming the wrong people, and no help with the wrong people blaming themselves. 

Hold on.  I was just advised to put my own seat back, and now I suddenly have more room.  How many of you were screaming for me to do that for some time?  What can I tell you?  I am not a spontaneously “problem solver.”  I just hope the passenger behind me figures that out sooner.  I blame myself for their unnecessary…

Wait.  It just occurred to me.  I may well be the present-day  “Guilty Larry.”  I feel guilty about everything!  Including the length of this post.  I wonder.  Was I simply determined to keep writing till we reached Los Angeles?  I just heard, “Flight attendants, prepare for landing”, and I’m done.   So yeah.  Maybe I was.

And I did it!

With an Exclamation Point, no less.

Boy. 

Do I feel blame-worthy?