November 14, 2024: Deflated Christmas decorations on Olive St. in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 99
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion.— The Moody Blues, “Late Lament”
This week, I was reminded that much of our time is spent resolving conflict by making choices. A child at play will voice, through dolls, the opposing sides of some issue. A playwright will do the same through characters and plot. I will pace around my house talking myself into and out of a tempting Black Friday deal.
This sort of “A or B,” “she loves me, she loves me not” decision-making occupies our time and shapes our future in small or enormous ways. You surely know the Robert Frost poem.
Albert Camus famously wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” In my own experience, the next decision after that is something like, “Muesli or Grape Nuts?”
Back in 2016, at their big biennial Thanksgiving gathering, Amy‘s relatives broke into two distinct kinds of clusters. We spoke in shocked, hushed tones to those similarly horrified by the 2016 election outcome. As far as I know, that was their last biennial Thanksgiving party.
Eight years later, I have one sister who is convinced that Democrats have been changing the genders of children during the school day, and a majority of Americans have decided that they want to put total power back into the hands of a raving madman.
So okay — it’s clearly insane and suicidal, but the people have spoken. The other option was a smart woman with a laugh that some found excessive. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in A Man Without a Country, “The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
From this point on, the lunatics are in charge of the logistics. Put the anti-vaccine nut in charge of America’s health? Terrific. Appoint a Russian asset our new Director of National Intelligence? Go for it. How long before they realize Bubbles the Chimp is alive and available?
Meanwhile, like a prisoner preoccupied with the menu for his last meal, I’m just trying to enjoy every sandwich. I mowed the lawn for probably the last time this season. I bought dryer balls and laundered my comforters at Premier Laundry.
I stopped at Piggly Wiggly on our warm Monday evening to get a lottery ticket – and found an amplified accordion busker in the parking lot in front of Value Village unfurling an elaborately embellished rendition of “My Way” (or, more likely, “Comme d’habitude”) to the astonishment of passersby. I have never experienced anything like it in any Racine parking lot – but it did take me back to a moment 22 years ago in Paris.
I walked 3.39 miles this week.
And I washed my windows.
Grampa's Weeder
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Jessica Lang on WTF and in The Great Lillian Hall
When I’m doing chores outdoors, I often catch up on episodes of WTF with Marc Maron. On Friday, I listened to his talk with Jessica Lang — a fascinating jaunt through the veteran actress’s life, from her Bohemian days studying corporeal mime in the turbulent Paris of the late 1960s through her award-winning career on screen and stage.
Maron, of course, also panned for nuggets of acting insight along the way, but he was a gentlemanly usher throughout, and Lang seemed to enjoy taking his arm.
On Saturday night, my mom and I watched The Great Lillian Hall, Lang’s new movie, on Max. It concerns a legendary stage actress who is beginning to experience symptoms of dementia just as she’s preparing to star in a Broadway production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
Lang does an excellent job making us feel frightened, embarrassed, and proud of her — but the script drifts off into melodrama quite a bit.
Oh, well.
My mom loves Kathy Bates, who’s in this one as Lang’s longtime personal assistant. There’s also the charming Pierce Brosnan as her next-door neighbor.
Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones
Johnny Cash: Man in Black – Live in Denmark 1971
I have a PBS Passport subscription, but finding something to watch with it can be a challenge. On Friday night, I rolled the dice.
As a kid, my friend Scott, two doors south, had a grandmother who ran a tavern in the basement of a run-down hotel in Kenosha’s seedy center. Scott’s mom would drive us there, and I would drink a Coke a few stools away from old men with translucent skin wearing Cubs caps in a smoky haze that smelled of stale Old Style.
In that saloon, one afternoon, I dropped a dime into the jukebox and selected “A Boy Named Sue,” probably amused by its title. Thus began my lifelong Johnny Cash fandom. I quickly acquired Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, and sang along triumphantly in the presence of my parents.
They had to be puzzled. We were not a prison family. Dad blasted Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. Mom harmonized with soundtrack albums from Oklahoma! and The Music Man. Now their 9-year-old son was singing about shooting a man in Reno and “the mud and the blood and the beer.”
Nevertheless, they bought me an acoustic guitar and I slung it down my back. I watched The Johnny Cash Show every Wednesday night and was introduced to guests like Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, The Staple Singers, Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon, and Kris Kristofferson.
Man in Black – Live in Denmark 1971 is a one-hour special available via PBS Passport, recorded on the heels of that ABC variety series. It features Johnny and his Tennessee Three in front of a small Danish studio audience, for some reason.
Cash starts with “A Boy Named Sue.” He phonetically and sheepishly reads a long greeting in Danish, then starts adding regulars from his touring show — Carl Perkins, wife June Carter Cash, her woebegone mother Maybelle Carter and sisters Anita and Helen, plus gospel quartet The Statler Brothers.
The weird, traveling family/medicine show vibe escalates song by song — but as it swirls around him, Cash stands squarely grounded, his grave voice booming with a little added reverb, and his eyes twinkling benevolently into the camera.
It’s an odd and dated, but still powerful hour.
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