Another Week: Number 147

Grocery shopping, lawn mowing, driving here, driving there, redesigning websites, filing my taxes, reading Light in August (I learned the word “hardihood” on page 203, and the word “ratiocination” on 258), buying ScentPlug refills and then some smart plugs to control them — sometimes life whizzes by like a time-lapse clip of ordinary events, even under our ulcerating fascist regime.

Recent birdbath visitors have included a Blue Jay and a Brown Thrasher. Also, the Dark-eyed Juncos are back from the north country for the winter, and swarms of boxelder bugs have been frolicking in the sun on the back of my house, dashing my hope that they’d gone away.

The Bears and the Packers both won their games this week, and I watched the Badger women sweep Maryland in softball after getting swept by Penn State last Friday.

On Monday, Donald J. Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset, where Speaker Amir Ohana called him “a colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history thousands of years from now.” I guess time will tell. For the moment, all 20 remaining Israeli hostages have been freed two years after the horrific October 7 attacks by Hamas, so that’s something.

On Tuesday, I paid $20 at Walmart for a 40-ounce container of Folger’s coffee that was priced at $13 not long ago, and seemed expensive even then.

On Saturday, I drove over to participate in our local “No Kings” demonstration. I had no sign, so a kind lady handed me one of the dozen or so American flags she had brought, and I waved it at the corner of highways 31 and 20 from 10:30 to 12:30. A young man next to me held a sign saying he was too young to vote, but old enough to know authoritarianism is wrong.

The weather was cloudy at first, but gradually became more beautiful, and the mood of the crowd was profoundly joyful as it grew into a quarter-mile crescent around the corner, from one entrance of the shopping center to the other. I estimated it at 2,000 people — and so did the Racine County Eye. That’s a substantial increase from the crowd of 1,100 on June 14th.

Beatles music played on speakers that someone brought. Every traffic signal change released another pack of cars past us from one direction or another, and the vast majority of them were strongly supportive. Drivers honked loudly, passengers cheered us, gave us thumbs-up, and shot video as they passed our smiling mob.

There was one motorist who was visibly very angry with us and yelling something, and maybe six or seven others who casually flipped us the bird over the course of the two hours, but that was all the hostility I saw.

I spoke with a few of my fellow protestors during the event, and enjoyed some extended conversation with a woman next to me. As things were wrapping up, she told me her name and, recognizing it, I asked whether she was a high school teacher.

Sure enough, she had taught Amy at Reuther. When I explained that Amy and I had been together for 42 years until she died two Januarys ago, the teacher fought back tears.

I walked 6.97 miles this week.

WTF with Marc Maron: Marc Maron

I have been listening to WTF with Marc Maron for 14 and a half years of its 16-year run. Amy started listening shortly after I did. We saw him at The Pabst Theatre in 2013. Our friend Sharon took Amy to meet him in Chicago in 2014. We watched his comedy specials and his IFC series. We sympathized with him when he lost his sweetheart to leukemia, and Amy borrowed “a hummingbird” from him to crack her own black joke shortly before she died.

Now, Maron is ending his landmark podcast.

Most often, I have listened to WTF while mowing the lawn or shoveling snow, and there’s a weird thing that happens, in which a particular moment of an interview — a phrase, or a joke, or an insight — gets welded in my memory to my exact location while listening. For example, Dwight Yoakam relating how his dad pawned a shotgun to buy him a guitar is forever linked to the snow on my driveway’s approach.

So it was kind of perfect that I found myself crisscrossing the yard once again on Sunday as I listened to Episode 1685 of 1686 — Maron all by himself, summing up the whole adventure through a list of keywords and their definitions.

It was an odd, almost out-of-body experience. He stumbled along, touching on things, but without profound articulation. Instead, there was just a jumble of emotions gradually bubbling up in his voice — a sense of relief, a sense of sorrow, of accomplishment, of confidence, of peace.

It was a shorter episode than usual.

And then, as my mower droned, and the warm breeze blew, and golden maple leaves fluttered down through the lambent daylight — inside my orange plastic earmuffs, Maron played a montage of comments about the show over the Flaming Lips hit “Do You Realize??“

It was a transcendence that I’ve only experienced a few times — like when Amy held my hand in the middle of the night before she died. It was every moment at once, every season, all those guests, all those chores, the aha moments, the walks, the stories, the drives, the laughs, the pain, listening with Amy, and listening alone.

John Candy: I Like Me

I was a huge SCTV fan, going back to the obscure syndicated days when the show would air in Chicago after Saturday Night Live. That’s where I first saw John Candy. He was Johnny LaRue, he was Dr. Tongue, and he was Mrs. Falbo’s Mr. Messenger. (Just the thought of that last one would literally choke our friend Randy with laughter.)

My mom, meanwhile, loves John Candy from movies like Uncle Buck.

So when I heard that John Candy: I Like Me was coming to Prime Video, I figured it would be perfect to watch with my mom on Saturday night.

And it was good. I mean, the documentary — directed by Colin Hanks — includes home movie footage and many John Candy clips. We meet his widow and their now-grown children. Many stars, like Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Tom Hanks, talk about John Candy.

Some critics have been disappointed that the documentary doesn’t reveal any real dirt — everyone mostly just lauds Candy, which may not be riveting. Also, Christy Lemire disliked the film’s cloying soundtrack, and she is right about that.

But for all of Candy’s comedic genius and his down-to-earth, personal humanity, there is a dark and compelling story here: Candy’s father died from heart disease at age 35 on John’s fifth birthday. Haunted by this tragedy, John nevertheless drank, and smoked, and was overweight — and died at 43.

While some of those who knew him offer speculation into his self-destruction — e.g., the studios equate fat with funny — the only guy with real knowledge of his inner shadows died in 1994. We just get his stoic reaction to some unbelievably rude interview questions.