Another Week: Number 138

You can feel everyone beginning to pack up their sunscreen and beach toys, and coax summer toward the door. It may not have been exactly fun, but there was idleness and bare skin. Now we’re thinking about lacing up for more serious activities.

The phrase “back to school” is heard on TV, and preseason football games are underway. Both the MLB and the WNBA are measuring chances at their playoffs. The Indiana Fever have had a slew of obstacles thrown in their way, but they’re still hobbling forward. The unsung Milwaukee Brewers have zoomed ahead of the paralyzed Chicago Cubs — but there are still 39 games left to play.

In Washington, DC, Donald J. Trump has made moves to distract from the summer-long subject of his 17-year friendship with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein by deploying National Guard troops to expel homeless people and combat an imaginary crime wave. Trump has suggested he’ll expand the tactic nationally to all cities with Black, Democratic mayors.

Whatever we thought “America” was, getting rid of it only took a few quick months.

In the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu has had enough of humanitarian measures and is moving to take complete control of Gaza and expel all remaining Palestinians — maybe to South Sudan, or somewhere.

Hey, remember when the Nazis wanted to expel the Jews to Madagascar? There’s a word for getting rid of an entire people, but we’re not allowed to say it in America.

I opened my windows on Wednesday morning and returned to air conditioning on Thursday night. I sat out in my backyard on Thursday and Friday afternoon. One hummingbird has been sipping frequently, the second one has become scarce. Landscapers have installed small shrubs at Mitchell School across the way. Once they add a few artist’s-conception people in slacks and sweaters, the remodeling should be complete.

I walked 6.04 miles this week.

Song Exploder: Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris”

I love music — and the mysterious art of songwriting, and the coordination involved in production. More generally, I love the creative process and understanding how a piece of work goes from an idea, to a demo, to a draft, to finished.

For some years now, I have enjoyed the podcast Song Exploder. Episodes typically run about a half hour and explore one song’s journey through that creative process. It’s a handy length, and episodes stay fresh forever.

Awake too early on Monday morning, I grabbed the July 9 episode examining “Iris,” the 1998 song by the Goo Goo Dolls. Some of the exploded songs, like this one, are very familiar; others can be obscure.

We meet singer-songwriter-guitarist John Rzeznik, hear how the song was commissioned for City of Angels, a remake of Wings of Desire. We hear about his broken guitar strings and his unorthodox tuning, and we listen to part of a demo recording. Then we hear the touches added by producer Rob Cavallo that made the recording truly epic.

Until listening to this narrative, I had no idea that “Iris” was randomly named after one of my favorite singers.

Adolescence (Netflix)

According to Seth Meyers recently, there are only six people who have yet to see Adolescence, which premiered on Netflix on March 13 and became the platform’s second most-watched English-language series. After Monday night, only four remain, because my mom and I watched it over two evenings.

It’s a drama in four episodes of roughly an hour each, conceived by Stephen Graham and filmed in the UK last year. Each episode is shot as one continuous take, which has the effect of making the viewer feel like a ghostly witness.

The story opens in the immediate aftermath of a murder, and the suspect is a 13-year-old boy, played by Owen Miller in an outstanding screen debut. We watch the police storm his home, apprehend him in his bedroom, and drive him to the police station where his father (Graham) serves as his “appropriate adult.”

In a bracing departure from the usual quick cuts and pounding sound effects of most TV dramas, the one-take approach allows us to study the characters as they wait … and fidget … and fret. The absence of synthetic thuds allows us to hear our own heart pounding as these figures confront each other.

My mom and I were both astonished at the quality of the acting — especially by Cooper and Erin Doherty in the third episode.

At one point, I did have to pause the show to explain online shaming, emojis, red pill and blue pill, and incel hostility. Mom grasped this stuff with no trouble, and we returned to the story.

Adolescence is an outstanding piece of work by everyone involved.

The Trump-Putin “summit”

All week long, the news media spotlighted Friday’s “Trump-Putin summit” with breathless anticipation. Anticipation is always uppermost when it comes to news coverage. I have seen cameras trained on an empty lectern for over an hour while experts predicted what the speaker might say — only to have producers switch away moments into the speaker’s remarks, with a promise to “watch this for you” in case anything important was said.

But whatever they might have been expecting, this “summit” was a Trump production through and through. Hastily arranged at a joint military base in Anchorage, an idealistic dreamer might have hoped Trump would place Putin under arrest for war crimes against children. Instead, there was a crappy menu, a perfunctory agenda, a red carpet welcome, a stealth bomber flyover, and a ride in “The Beast.’

It was the friendliest welcome of a murderous dictator by a U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt took Hitler swimming at Warm Springs in 1938.

I’m not sure how “real Americans” could watch Trump patting Putin’s hands and kissing his ass and not puke. The whole cheap spectacle made clear who’s the boss and who’s the stooge. Putin was grinning too hard to even bother with lunch.

Somehow, though, the media seemed surprised when Trump’s threat of “very severe consequences” melted into everything Putin wants, on a silver platter, with brandy and peppercorn sauce.

As Nancy Pelosi noted years ago, “With him, all roads lead to Putin.”

Whirlybird (2020)

My mom is very fond of MSNBC anchor Katy Tur, so on Saturday night, I showed her a documentary by Matt Yoka from 2020 about Tur’s parents, Zoey Tur and Marika Gerrard, who constituted the Los Angeles News Service back in the 1980s.

The couple started on the ground as freelance news stringers, monitoring scanners and chasing fires and murders with a video camera. Then they added a helicopter and eventually a second pilot who maneuvered the aircraft while Marika Gerrard hung out the copter door, zooming in on the attack on Reginald Denny and the slow-speed chase of O.J. Simpson.

Breaking news does not respect family time — but it does trigger daily adrenaline rushes, in tandem with the trauma of constantly witnessing tragedy and death. The whole toxic combination gradually brings out the worst in Marika’s husband Bob, the son of an abusive father to begin with. They split up, and he eventually comes out as Zoey, gets gender transitioning in Thailand, and moves to a calmer lifestyle in Northern California.

The film is a dazzling record of the couple’s intrepid accomplishments, and a disconcerting look at society’s appetite for sensationalism. We rented it via Prime Video.

While Katy Tur does contribute commentary and is seen in some adorable family footage, my mom was slightly disappointed: “This movie isn’t really about her, it’s more about her parents.”