April 21, 2026: Hail falling on Webster St in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 174
Easter was three weeks ago and I’m still waiting for it. I remember the sun in our eyes as kids standing on our front step for a photo in our Easter clothes, and the green and squeaky neighborhood smelling of fertilizer and potting soil.
Instead, this past Sunday, there was frost on our local rooftops. I had planned my first lawn mowing for Tuesday, but got a hail storm instead. I finally mowed for the first time this year on Wednesday, trying to walk the line between grass that’s too wet and grass that’s too long.
The crabapple buds in my backyard emerged as little pink balls that evening — and the Chicago Cubs have gone on a happy tear. They swept the Mets, took all four from the Phillies, and even won the first one in L.A.
Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump has started comparing the length of his quagmire in Iran to the one he skipped in Vietnam. He’s setting bold, smudgy deadlines — then resetting them as they approach. The news media kept waiting for JD Vance to depart for more negotiations in Pakistan, but he never actually did.
Even my dreams were muddled and indeterminate. On Thursday morning, Amy had been putting her hand prints in yellow paint on the dark, cheap paneling in our Kenosha apartment. On Saturday, I awoke with urgent need to remember the never-before-heard name “Carrie Soens” and look her up.
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The Lowdown (FX)
Amy and I watched a lot of TV series during the golden age of television earlier this century. Now she’s gone, TV is sinking into enshittification, and not much has caught my interest — but I do need some break from cable news, and sports don’t always suffice.
The Lowdown premiered on FX last September. I finally got around to watching it over the last couple of weeks. It’s a laid-back crime drama starring Ethan Hawke as a used bookstore owner and self-described “truthstorian” — a loose and leisurely investigative reporter for an alternative magazine.
The show is set in Tulsa, Oklahoma — current home of creator Sterlin Harjo, who gave us the wonderful Reservation Dogs, also set in Oklahoma, a few years back.
The plot unfolds over eight episodes, very slowly at first, then gradually adding more suspense. Mainly, though, the show is a trail of cultural breadcrumbs. The soundtrack is a smorgasbord of intriguing songs. The clothing and the sets are layered with grungy detail. References to writers are sprinkled liberally throughout. Hawke’s character is loosely based on Tulsa historian Lee Roy Chapman. Much of each hour is spent moving from this Tulsa location to that one.
A real highlight was seeing actor Graham Greene one last time in two of the episodes.
The Lowdown was an enjoyable series that had me looking up all sorts of interesting stuff.
American Masters: Starring Dick Van Dyke
On Saturday night, I pulled up a PBS American Masters installment from my mom’s cloud DVR that originally aired in December, titled Starring Dick Van Dyke. Mom, 90 years old herself, is buoyed by the fact that the actor is still going at 100.
The thing that struck me most about this fairly standard bio is how much frustration Dick Van Dyke experienced while trying to earn a living from his affable personality and genius for rubbery physical comedy. Even The Dick Van Dyke Show was at serious risk of cancellation after its first season.
Nevertheless, Van Dyke kept smiling, navigated a lot of hurdles, and built an impressive career in both TV and the movies.
Mary Poppins, incidentally, was one of my first big-screen experiences at age 4. I was taken on a city bus to Kenosha’s Orpheum Theatre by the mother of actor Tony Russel.
My own mom enjoyed this profile. She said it was a relief to spend 90 minutes celebrating goodness for a change.
White House Correspondents’ Dinner
I started watching the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, when Stephen Colbert performed and George W. Bush fumed. By 2011, Rachel Maddow was mocking the event as “Nerd Prom,” and President Barack Obama was mocking Donald J. Trump from the dais — before leaving to oversee the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Awkward confrontations can be entertaining — but the jobs of the president and the reporters covering the administration are too important to be reduced to schtick. The annual dinner has made me slightly queasy for a few years now, and I grew more nauseous when Donald J. Trump reversed his neurotic boycott and decided to attend this one. Then CNN promoted its own red carpet coverage and I suppressed my puke.
So we watched Dick Van Dyke instead.
But then — sure enough — we were forced to tune in after all by news alerts that shots had been fired at the event.
Yet another norm shattered and potentially eliminated. In this case, it’s just as well.
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