"The Cosmic Distraction"

The following may be debatable in some circles, but I believe it is the emmis (the rock-bottom truth):

The real reason people work is to distract themselves from the terrible awareness that they are going to die.

Okay, it’s out.  Do I feel better now?  A little exposed, but to a substantial degree, relieved.

It is true, you also work to make money to support yourself and your family, or, if you don’t have one, at least, hopefully, a house pet.  The question is, if the government – or, more comfortably, an inherited trust fund – took care of your financial requirements, would you then just lie around the house, or wherever it is they are paying for you to live? 

No.  You would eventually find something to do.  Why?  Because if you didn’t, more likely sooner than later, the Torturous Goblins of Mortality would take up permanent residence in your unoccupied mind.

It can’t just be any work.  In order to successfully divert your mind from the “Really Bad Thing” it has to be purposeful work.  Although it is not difficult and is, in fact, essential – to convince yourself that whatever you do is believably worthwhile.

“I paint fish.”

“You do what?”

“I catch fish, I paint them pretty colors, and I put them back in the water.”

“You paint fish.”

“I may be the only fish painter in the world.  If I stopped, there’d be nobody.”

“Aren’t a lot of fish already colored?”

“Not in my colors.”

“And the paint.  Doesn’t it wear off in the water?”

“Did I say it didn’t?  Which is fine.  I just catch ‘em, and paint ‘em again!”

There you have it.  A person’s “life’s work” – painting fish.  Scoff ye not.  Fish painting is a viable distractor from thoughts of “Oh, my God!  I am actually going to die?” because the job never ends.  The paint wears off, plus, there’s an uncountable number of fish.

“Purposeful work.”  That’s all it takes.

Okay, so we’re recently dining with a couple, the wife of whom, like mine, is a psychoanalyst.  Psychologists ask questions; that’s what they do.  Five minutes into dinner, she is probing into my blog-writing activities. 

My “painting fish.”

We get around to the fact that my work takes me a number of hours every weekday to complete, because I refuse to let go until I’ve gotten whatever post I am working on that day…

Right.

The psychoanalyst immediately jumps in, observing with a hint of intensity that “There is no ‘right.’”  It is quickly apparent she is talking about her work, where it is generally accepted that there is no “right” interpretation that will reveal and explain – and then, at least in movies, heal – what is fundamentally bugging the patient.

Fine, I fume inwardly.  Maybe there is no “right” in her racket, but there is definitely a “right” in mine.  Otherwise, why would I spend hours rewriting my blog posts in an assiduous effort to get there? 

(I went into my wastebasket and retrieved my drafts of yesterday’s post – of which there were three – and counted the changes I had made.  In the course of a three-hour-and-ten-minute effort, I made 76 changes in my First Draft, 40 changes in my Second Draft, and eleven changes in my Third.  I work hard for you.  Though also, of course, for myself.   To do the best possible job.  But, also, though hardly incidentally, to “prolong the distraction.”

Energetically defending my process, I blurted out, knowing it was stupid the moment it exited my mouth, “If there’s no ‘right’, then there’s no ‘wrong!’”  (I was impulsively encouraged in this regard by the reasoning in the arena of behavior, where without the contrasting example of “bad”, there can be no understanding of “good.”  But somehow it’s different.)

The “shrink” and I ultimately found common ground, agreeing that, though there is, in truth, no ideal and perfect “right” in both our endeavors, there are, at least, gradations advancing in the direction of “right.” 

That’s what I do when I rewrite.  I advance, ploddingly but inexorably, towards the direction of “right.”  (It’s a paradox.  There is no “right.”  But it is possible to get closer.  How can you get closer to something that does not exist?  I don’t know.  But you can.)

If I cannot make the post perfect, I can at least make it better, and, with a nod to Spike Lee, mo’ better, and mo’ better still.  It’s, however, essential to believe that that’s what I’m doing.  Because if my activity was not demonstrably valuable and I was simply wasting hours of time, I would decidedly not be engaged in…

Purposeful work.  (And, by the way, neither would the psychologist.  Nor the fish painter.)

And I am.  (Me and the psychologist both.  The fish painter?  Give me a break!)

I am now done writing.  And you know what?  It worked.  In the course of this entire process – Duration: Three hours and twenty-three minutes; First Draft, sixty-two changes, Second Draft, thirty seven changes; Third Draft, twenty-three changes; Fourth Draft, ten changes, including two “changes back” – not once have thoughts of dying crept cripplingly into my consciousness.

Oops. 

Now I’ve done it.

And my work today is over.

I think I’ll go practice the piano.

That seems to work pretty well also.

A Moment Of Personal Privilege

Once every twelve hundred or so blog posts, I assert a Point of Personal Privilege to assert something that is unlikely to be popular but I am compelled to put it out there anyway.  This is one of those times.  Or perhaps on this level of importance, the first.

Though it is now situated a month or so back in our rearview mirrors, an image from the recent election still intermittently haunts me.  You know when something happens in the present resonates with an event from the past that seriously affected you? 

This is that.

My mind trips back to my Toronto Hebrew Day School classmate Arye Leibowitz who, along with all of my male classmates, was attending my tenth birthday party.  I recall this as if it were yesterday.

We had played all of our traditional birthday games, and it is now time to eat.  I can see Arye Leibowitz walking into kitchen and quietly announcing he is unable to eat the hamburgers and hotdogs my mother had prepared for lunch because, although they were kosher (religiously sanctioned), my mother always maintaining a strictly kosher kitchen, they did not rise to Arye’s family’s more rigorous standard of rabbinical certification.

Though wanting desperately his contemporaries’ acceptance, Arye ignored my mother’s comforting reassurances –

“These hamburgers are kosher enough.”

refusing to compromise the rules he had grown up with, despite the inconvenience it caused, and the pressure and isolation he was forced to endure. 

As a "noticer-in-training", I detected the distress in Arye’s ten year-old face, accompanying the tears welling up in his eyes.  This was a party; you were supposed to have fun.  And yet, unwittingly, we had placed Arye in this agonizing position, torn between wanting to fit in and his obligation to his religious beliefs.    

FLASH FORWARD: 2012 U.S. ELECTIONS

In response to a debate question, a Republican candidate seeking the senatorial seat from Indiana informs the electorate that his religion instructs him that life begins at conception, and that therefore, as hideously horrible as the circumstances that precipitated it are, consistent with those religious percepts, he does not believe that pregnancies resulting from rape and incest should be permitted to be terminated. 

Though my personal views lie on the other end of that ideological spectrum, I looked into that candidate’s anguished face, as I watched him put his sincerely held beliefs ahead of his chances of getting elected,

And saw Arye Leibowitz.

The pressure on him must have been enormous.  The candidate’s allies, fearful of his damaging the party by losing the election, were urging him to moderate his position, reassuring him that, by doing so, he would not be selling out his religious beliefs –

“These hamburgers are kosher enough.”

Meanwhile, the “other side” was going predictably berserk, a prominent progressive cable news host, abandoning what is traditionally the bedrock progressive principle of tolerance, and branding the Republican candidate’s profession of his religious beliefs “wacky”, “loony” and “absurd.”  (This, you may be interested in knowing, is the inciting incident that triggered this blog post.  I am saddened when a representative of “my side” behaves in a manner more commonly associated with the opposition.)    

America was nothing less than revolutionary when it guaranteed in its Constitution that one group’s religious beliefs cannot be legally imposed on other groups of people, be they large or small, who believe otherwise. 

We are now confronted with a man, holding a minority-held religious position, facing an excruciating “Moment of Truth”, who, no matter what the cost he will be required to pay, proclaims,

“I know what you want me to say.  But I can’t.” 

And the question arises, “How should we respond?”

To me, if our honor or our admiration is too much, in response to his sticking steadfastly to his guns and, perhaps more importantly, in the name of the “better angels” of the natures of the people who passionately disagree with him, the man who ran for the senatorial seat from Indiana – and lost – I believe,

Deserves, at the very least,

Our, begrudging if that’s what it takes to get there,

Respectful understanding.

"Why The Networks Can Never Compete With Cable - Part Two"

Every pilot-pitching season, the commercial television networks cry out for something “distinctly different”, “an original voice”, and then summarily reject everything of that nature the moment it’s pitched, or down the line, because it didn’t test well, or it was “incompatible with the ‘flow’ of our Tuesday night lineup.”  Of course, it was incompatible!  The new show pitchers were doing something “distinctly different” in an “original voice”, and the network’s Tuesday night lineup wasn’t. 

Whatever commercial networks claim, what they really want is what they already have, but a tiny bit different, their target, a panorama of programming with mainstream homogeneity, exemplified most prominently by the networks’ news anchors, who are required to speak authoritatively but with no personalizing uniqueness.

“Good evening.  I’m from nowhere.”

Cable channels, for reasons explained yesterday – because of less content restrictions and because they’re subscription-driven rather than commercial-driven – happily program series that are “distinctly different”, offering “an original voice”, and that’s why they are dominating in the Emmys for excellence, and the commercial television networks go home envious.  Fabulously wealthy, but envious. 

On cable, original voices sell subscriptions; on network TV, if they ever get on, original voices trigger letter-writing campaigns to immediately get them off.   That’s why many writers eschew the promise of a big network payday, opting for the creative clarity of working on cable.

The difference between Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm?  Larry David, working on cable.

Writers are hungry to speak in their own voices.  (Otherwise, why write?)  Early in my career, it concerned me that I wasn’t.  I felt like I was merely, albeit skillfully, imitating my teachers, be they Jim Brooks, Ed. Weinberger or Stan Daniels, to name but three.  It seemed like I was most richly rewarded when I delivered a script that sounded most successfully like them.  Which, in fact, was the case. 

And so, desirous of reward, Earlo, the Good Boy, adhered to the requirements and did exactly what they wanted.  (Plus, he felt more confident writing in their voice than his own.)

Only on rare occasions would something “distinctly mine” find its way into a script, and survive the scrutinizing week of rewrites into actual production.  In “The Great Line”, a character named John, who was later dropped from Taxi, was given a sure-fire pickup line, which he used, the line being:  “Forget the preliminaries, let’s get married.”  The first girl he tried it on said okay, and a day later, John found himself unexpectedly married.  And terrified at the predicament.  Which he expressed – in my words – this way:

“I thought they were all connected – you get married, you have kids you get old and you die.  Somehow, I thought, if you didn’t get married, you wouldn’t die.”  

That was “pure me.”  And it got a solid laugh.  The rest of the show also went well, but it wasn’t “pure me”; it was me mimicking what my employers – and the network sitcom format – demanded.

A belief floated around in my mind, though it never audibly surfaced, that when I created my own shows, I would write more truthfully like myself.  And this did, in fact, occur.  Though hardly as distinctively as I’d imagined. 

Nobody was better suited to come up with a realistic-feeling – rather than cartoonish – half-hour comedy about the Old West than E. Raymond Pomerantz.  And yet, re-viewing Best of the West episodes, I notice at least as much “formula” writing as “original voice.”  Tonally, I can definitely hear myself in there.  But just as strongly – or even more so – is this constricting urgency to conform to the mold.

Family Man was, by definition, original, as all the eleven episodes I wrote were rooted in experiences that had occurred to me, either as a parent (and stepparent) or as a child.  Using the singular anecdotes of my life guaranteed something different.  Plus, I was experimenting with what, for me, was an untried technique – filming (actually taping) shows without an audience.

Though Family Man is my most truthful effort in commercial television, you can nevertheless detect an unswerving insistence on sticking to the rules – a laugh every ten seconds, every scene “buttons” (ends) with a joke, the build to a hilarious, payoff final scene, the episode’s resolution must be hopeful.  

No one ever behaved outrageously.  And if you’d been mean, you had to apologize.

On Major Dad, I was essentially a hired gun – and don‘t I love saying that – developing an idea that was created by others.  Even with my substantial involvement, however, as a consultant writer friend observed, Major Dad was not “particularly groundbreaking”, and she was right.  I knew she was right – and that she expected more from me – because it stung me deeply when she said it.

I suppose that’s the way it is.  Not everyone, it would appear, has “groundbreaking” capacities.  Some of us have to settle for “good at what they do.”

As for speaking in my own voice, this is it.  Blogs.  Here, I have the freedom of simply reporting it as it happened. 

I run into a dark-haired girl in Paris when I’m twenty-two and there’s an uneventful payoff, and that’s okay, because the goal here is to tell it like it is.  This “nothing happened” ending would call for a rewrite on a network sitcom.  And it definitely wouldn’t work on cable, where’s we’d either have to get naked, or one of us would have to be a vampire.

The primary rule of blog-writing is “Be honest”, and that’s what I try to do.  So in a way, nothing has really changed. 

As when he wrote sitcoms for network TV, Earlo The Good Boy is, once again, merely

Following the rules.

"Why The Networks Can Never Compete With Cable"

You may already know this, I can’t tell, because I don’t know you, and I could be, and have been in the past, egregiously erroneous in my assumptions.  I had a special friend once who knew virtually nothing about show business or sports, and, as a result, she was constantly asking me questions and seeking clarifications about what seemed obvious, and it was – to me, but not to her. 

This imbalance in understanding taught me to take nothing for granted, which can lead me, at times, to over-clarify, so that nobody’s left in the dark.  If my doing that annoys you, and you feel talked down to, don’t blame me.  Blame my special friend.

Always the gentleman, Earlo.

Thank you.  Anyway, pursuant to a post I intended to write but instead veered off in a different direction and never returned to what I’d originally had in mind, I will now write what I had intended to write then, but didn’t.  Not really a problem.  You get two posts for the price of free.

Okay. 

In the most recent Emmy Awards competition, the commercial networks – CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX – were, for the first time in history, nominated for no “Best Drama” or “Best Miniseries” awards.  Let me emphasize that through repetition – the commercial networks were entirely shut out in the nominations for awards for excellence in the categories of drama and miniseries.  Rubbing it in one last time, every single nomination and, consequently, the subsequent awards went to dramatic programs and miniseries, not on commercial television, but broadcast exclusively on cable.

You got it?

The networks did hold their own in comedies, though not, I believe, because they were superior to cable comedies, but because they were less naked and obscene.  The Emmy voters, who generally skew older, feel more comfortable with sexual innuendo, however sleazy and unsubtle, than they are with the actual…”Whoop! – there it is!” 

Once, that cohort passes on and is replaced, however, I predict that cable television will sweep the comedy awards as well, the networks attending the Emmys strictly for the gift bags, and an in-person glimpse of a Kardashian.  

The prizes will all go to cable programming. 

(There may be a time when, being tired of getting thoroughly blitzed, the networks will mount a competing awards show, handing out the coveted Lessies, signifying, “We’re less good than cable, but we’d really like an award.”)

Why can’t the commercial networks compete with cable?  If you know the answer, this is your stop, and we’ll see you tomorrow.  If you don’t, and you’re interested, on we go.

The problem lies with the differing manner in which commercial television and cable programming are delivered, and the contrasting business models of the two broadcast entities.  Allow me to explain, as best I can.

Commercial television programs are said to be broadcast over “the public airwaves.”  Cable programming arrives from another source, possibly bounced off a satellite, though I may be entirely off the mark here.  I am still learning how to work our new toaster.

Why do the different “delivery systems” matter?  Because when any program is broadcast over “the public airwaves” – the “public airwaves” being frequencies the government gave the networks for free in exchange for airtime set aside for public service programming (that they don’t do anymore) – the public is entitled to a say concerning content. 

Ergo, the FCC – the Federal Communications Commission – which, among other duties, polices commercial television on the publics’ behalf, imposing punitive fines when someone inadvertently ad-libs an expletive, or the top of their dress falls off. 

Supplementing the FCC are private “We’ll have none of that on our public airwaves” advocacy groups who promote organized letter-writing campaigns complaining about shows some of which had not yet even been aired but they had heard about them and they hated them, sight unseen.

Early on, the responsibility for shows was in the hands of sponsors, who singlehandedly underwrote entire series, hence the likes of The U.S. Steel Hour, The Voice of Firestone and General Electric Presents.  Sponsors packaged and produced the shows, sold them to the networks, and every commercial on them involved – relative to the above examples – steel, tires or light bulbs.

The sponsors controlled hiring, and the content of the programming.  Which turned out to be a problem.  First of all, fearful of offending their customers, sponsors insisted that the shows they bankrolled be “tapioca safe.”

Secondly, during the McCarthy blacklisting era, sponsors were threatened with mass boycotts of their products, the “Red Scare” enthusiasts demanding that anyone working on their shows be summarily dismissed if their names turned up on a list of “Commie-Sympathizing Undesirables.”

Thirdly, certain sponsors – one, I recall, was Revlon – colluded in deceiving the public by slipping contestants the answers to the questions in their big-money prime-time quiz shows – See:  the insightful movie Quiz Show – in order to manipulate the outcomes of the competitions.  To this day, I have no idea if psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers really knew about boxing, or simply memorized the name “Jersey Joe” Walcott.

As a result of such controversies, the networks relieved sponsors of their “oversight” duties and assumed unilateral control over all content broadcast under their corporate banner.  Which helped very little.  The advocacy groups simply redirected their letter-writing barrage to the networks, who, seeking the widest possible viewership and no negative publicity, performed barely less conservatively than their predecessors. 

Today, focusing on attracting a more permissive younger viewership, the networks’ “Standards and Practices” departments have loosened the reins somewhat, opening the door, most recently, to “vagino-centric” comedy.  Still, in the arguably more sensitive areas involving “political correctness”, very little has substantially changed.  

Contrasting with the networks, whose profits accrue from selling airtime to sponsors, cable makes its money selling subscriptions, freeing it from the stranglehold of commercial crowd-pleasing.  Plus – and this, frankly, confuses me – cable programming is immune to FCC oversight, because cable shows are not delivered over the “public airwaves.”  (The confusing part is, isn’t everything delivered via cable these days?) 

As a result of their differing methods of operation, it is my view that commercial network television can never – and will never – be able to compete qualitatively with cable.

The poor networks never saw it coming.  I was once on a panel including network and studio executives – this was in the late eighties – where I asserted that gifted and passionate writers would willingly sacrifice a more lucrative payday for creative control of their projects, and I got laughed at, the “Business Affairs” manager of the studio I worked at shouting, “Have your agent give me a call!” 

It turns out, I was right.

Dismissing the idea that writers would be willing to take less to make shows they are passionate to produce – and also because they are structurally incapable of doing otherwise – the commercial networks lost the most talented series creators of their era, and cable gained shows like The Sopranos, The Larry Sanders Show, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, True Blood, Dexter, Weeds, Girls, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, South Park, Louie C.K., Nurse Jackie, and Homeland, to name just fourteen.

Of course, not every writer has what it takes to jump the fence, and color successfully outside the commercial network-determined guidelines.  Tomorrow, I will introduce you to a writer who couldn’t.

Me. 

"Walking The Dog" *

* Not the yoyo trick.  So don’t link to it, or you’ll disappoint people.

I recall – though as is usual these days not precisely – a New Yorker cartoon, depicting two dogs on the street watching their two owners picking up their poop droppings from the sidewalk, and one dog says to the other,

“If people from another planet saw this, they would think that we run this place.”

When Rachel and Tim got their part dachshund-part Chihuahua they named Bean, very close to the first thing that emerged from my mouth was, “I am not picking up dog poop.”

This was not an entirely irrational announcement.  Though now an adult, Rachel is still someone’s daughter – or in my case, stepdaughter – and there remains the unfaded memory of the “family” cockatiel that I ended up taking care of, refilling “Cheeky’s” food and water containers even though he bit me, and taking him out of his cage and playing with him even though he bit me. 

The specter of children’s house pets evolving into parents’ obligations remains disturbingly strong, even when the kid in question’s pushing forty.  And she doesn’t live with you anymore.

And then, she moves back.  With husband Tim, Baby Milo, and yes, Bean.  Unexpected complications in their new house’s availability have required their visit to be extended.  Open-endedly. 

In such cases, a battery of new responsibilities arise.  And who would be so inhospitable as to not, at least minimally, pitch in? 

I volunteer to walk the dog.

Knowing

what that will inevitably

involve.

Unless you have a congenitally constipated dog, the two chores – the walking and…the other thing – are inextricably intertwined.  I remember as a five year-old screaming, “I like ice cream, but take away the ‘cold’!”  No can do, Earlo.  Any more than you can separate the dog walking from…the “pickup” responsibilities.  There is no way to get around it.  It’s a “package deal.”

(AN INTERCEDING TRAVEL NOTE:  While vacationing in Rome, inhabiting a rented apartment in an notably upscale district of the city, our morning walks revealed unreclaimed dog doo-doo all over the place.  You really had to watch where you were walking.  So I guess there’s a cultural element involved here.  Upscale Romans must believe it’s the pedestrian’s responsibility to keep their eyes open.  Maybe they consider discarded dog droppings to be fertilizing “sidewalk mulch.”)

I clip the leash to Bean’s collar, and off we go.  The leash includes in its construction a container, housing an extended string of blue, plastic bags.  This not being my first dog-walking rodeo, I am now entirely conversant with the drill. 

When the “Moment of Truth” arrives – indicated by the dog’s refusal to proceed forward and his assuming a hunkering position accompanied by a determined look on his face – you pull out a bag, separating it from its compadres at the perforation, you turn it inside-out on your hand, you reach down…I’ll leave out the next part …you invert the plastic bag, and there it is.  Inside.  Untouched.  But still…

You’re holding it.  (At this point, grateful at least that it‘s a small dog.)

The problem is, as it turned out, I wound up “holding the bag” for an uncomfortably long time.

In contrast to previous walks Bean and I had taken at the beach where the “Refuse Bins” are ubiquitous, on this neighborhood walk, there was, it seemed liked forever,

No place to dump it.

This had never happened to me before.  What was I supposed to do now? 

It not being “Collection Day”, the trashcans I passed were beyond my reach, standing unhelpfully behind padlocked gates.  I passed a U-Haul Truck parked by the curb, and thought about tossing it in the back and letting them drive it to another neighborhood.  But something inside me told me that was wrong. 

Oh, here’s one.  I had brought along three letters to mail, and when I got to the mailbox…

It was close, but I didn’t do it.  I just dropped in the letters, and moved on.

Still holding my package.

It is true that I’ve been known to imagine things.  But it definitely seemed as if pedestrians headed in my direction were deliberately crossing the street to avoid me.  Passing cars appeared to veer out of their lanes, distancing themselves as much as was safely possible from me and my little blue bag of Doggie Doo.

It was apparent that my responsible deed had made me a Walking Pariah.  And there was no end in sight.  I trudged along, a Pedestrial Outcast, destined, it seemed, to carry this odiferous Bag of Stigma to my Doom!

It is true that not all adventures are equally dramatic.  You know, there was that guy stuck in the cave who wound up cutting his own arm off – that was unquestionably an adventure.  But in the circumscribed context of “Will this agony never end?”, a man carrying a bag of dog poop with nowhere in sight to deposit it brings with it, you will agree and if you don’t you can take my word for it, a compatible sense of being desperately alone in an uncaring world.

And then, with hope a depleting commodity, as with all adventures – a rescue.

Following what felt like miles but was more like four blocks, with a dog on a leash in one hand and a bag of poop in the other, I arrived at an alley.  Hypocritically, as I am not conventionally religious, I prayed that the alley would contain accessible trashcans that could serve as a final resting place for my excremental parcel.  Fearful that my fevered condition might conjure up a “Trashcan Mirage”, I intrepidly turned my head, and peered fingers-crossedly down the alley.

And there they were – seemingly dozens of trashcans, but actually just four, and three of them were labeled “Paper and Glass Only!”  I stepped up to the can marked “BASURA” – which is Spanish for “trash” – tipped up the lid, and, with a sigh or overacted relief, unburdened myself of my duties.

We turned away from the alley, heading home without further incident. 

Except for two “pee” stops, which we are fortunately required to do nothing about.