Another Week: Number 117

We continue to wait to see what will emerge.

The winds of change keep blowing. They can trip you up if you don’t watch your step. One minute the sun is shining, the next we’re in a snowstorm and someone’s throwing a mattress off her balcony.

On Wednesday, I noticed my Maltese Cross perennials already pushing upward from the dirt. I need to uproot them pretty soon. They’re attractive at first — but top-heavy, so they flop before long into a ratty mess. Maybe Russian Sage will go there instead.

The Major League Baseball season started this week — prematurely and in Tokyo. The Chicago Cubs promptly dropped both games to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shohei Ohtani either hit a home run, or close to one. I had not watched baseball in a long time, but it still makes me quite fidgety – like I could be doing anything else.

Having seen a thousand or two basketball games in my life, I still understand next to nothing about the sport — yet somehow I agree that the Milwaukee Bucks are just not clicking.

On the women’s side, my chosen Rose team won the first-ever Unrivaled championship in what felt like the most anticlimactic playoff season in sports history (three total games). Chelsea Gray was amazing. I don’t see myself watching Unrivaled next season.

Meanwhile, March Madness is underway, and the Notre Dame, Iowa, and UConn women’s teams I follow all advanced. UConn beat Arkansas State 103 to 34, which seemed like a statement. Such games conveniently double as guitar practice time for me.

In national news, it’s finally dawning on people that our nation’s “laws” mean absolutely nothing to Donald J. Trump. He’ll deport anyone to anywhere for any reason he makes up, and he’ll remove any judge who attempts to obstruct him.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts made some feeble noise about an “appropriate response,” but come on — Justice Roberts is in charge of the very court that ruled laws don’t apply to presidents. This is the same John Roberts who re-administered the oath of office to Donald J. Trump despite Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government the first time around. 

Shut up, silly man! You knew damn well Trump was a snake before you swore him in.

Speaking of snakes, Elon Musk is buying a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.

As for me, I walked 6.59 miles this week.

Teen promoter Vera Brandes and Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert

I sleep well enough, but there are sometimes gaps in the wee hours when people talking on the radio can be relaxing, so I’ll tune in to the BBC World Service for its calmer style and commercial-freeness.

Late Monday night on Outlook, there was a story that took my breath away through its sheer force of will and the awesome beauty of creation.

Vera Brandes was 18 years old in Cologne, Germany in early 1975, and she was drinking from a fountain of culture that made virtually anything seem possible. She was already a two-year veteran of concert promotion when she organized and pulled off — against all odds — a concert by American pianist Keith Jarrett that became the best-selling piano recording in history.

So next, of course, I had to add The Köln Concert to my music library. Previously, all I knew about Keith Jarrett was that he’s a pianist. Now I have a recording of this magnificent work of art flowing, note by note, from his imagination, via his heart and fingertips, out through a faulty piano to a gobsmacked opera house. It’s an hour-long sheer catharsis that I will revisit often.

Then on Tuesday night, comedian Bert Kreischer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and my belief in human potential gurgled right back down the drain.

Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years

Amy and I both enjoyed Bill Burr when he first ascended to stardom back in 2014 or so. Since then, political upheaval has churned the comedy landscape like almost everything else, and Burr seems to have surfed these waves by leaning either way at any given moment.

The whole “woke” debate boils down to empathy. Should people care about the feelings of others? Ever since, maybe, Matthew 25:40, empathy had been considered a virtue — but conservatives now declare it a weakness.

As a comic known for his edge, Burr has tried to maintain his harsh attitude — but lately he’s also confessing to some personal growth. In a recent hour on WTF with Marc Maron, he discussed the work he’s done (and the mushrooms he took) to improve emotionally. In an hour with Terry Gross, he nervously walked a precarious tightrope when questioned about the intent behind one joke in particular.

On Tuesday I watched his new Hulu standup special, Drop Dead Years. In it, he presents his quietly acquiescing to a couple of excursions with his wife as a revelatory achievement in temperament.

His tone has always been hostile, but previously it was easier to side with him. In this show, the atmosphere is uneasy because it’s never clear which way he’s going. He maintains the tension by keeping you guessing, and that gets a little irritating.

There’s a difference between getting a rise out of people and making them laugh, and Burr devotes too much of his time to the former.

Watching alone, I did laugh out loud at one point.

My Man Godfrey (1936)

On Saturday, we scrolled through the list of Turner Classic Movies titles in my mom’s cloud DVR, and she chose My Man Godfrey, a screwball comedy from the Great Depression starring William Powell and Carole Lombard.

The story is fairly preposterous, and it feigns some vague message about the frivolousness of the rich vs. the virtuousness of the dispossessed.

But the dialogue is outstanding — and so are the performances by Powell, Lombard, and Gail Patrick.

Lombard and Patrick are rich sisters in competition against each other, and the story opens with them on a high society scavenger hunt to find — among other things — a “forgotten man.” Powell is the man they find living in a homeless encampment at a New York City dump. Lombard soon brings him home to work as the wacky Bullock family’s butler, where his remarkable sophistication is tested by their pampered tantrums.

The banter is nonstop, and it elicited several laughs from both of us. The hour and 35 passed quickly.

My mom loves this movie and I enjoyed it very much.