The 7 Deadly Sins of Summer

Take a bite?

Summer is over and it’s time to look at where we are and where we’re headed.

Actually, the summer doesn’t officially end until the start of fall, which is technically the last week of September. But in the US, it always seems to end right after the Labor Day weekend. And why not? What better way to signal the end of fun than a holiday that salutes the worker (who presumably have at least been given some kind of summer vacation) and falls on the last long 3-day weekend of the most carefree of our seasons?

Of course, when I was younger and a student, summer’s end coincided with the start of the school term or fall semester. Which now happens mid-August if you attend or teach college or, even if you’re still in elementary school in some places. That also used to coincide with the beginning of the fall television season. But don’t get me started on when that begins because there aren’t really small screen seasons anymore. Just nights and weekends where you can fit in TV binge viewing. My personal theory is that binge viewing might be linked to global warming since it seems to be particularly inspired by unseasonably hot or cold weather – an everyday occurrence these days. Which begs the question of there even being any sort of seasons at all (certainly not in L.A.).

Still, we soldier on. Because more than anything else Americans cling to some traditions that, by any rational standards, have long and forever outlived their usefulness.

That being the case, this seems like a good moment to take stock of what sins have been committed, and where we are and how we move forward into Fall – as opposed to free-fall – since certainly we here at notes don’t want to outlive whatever usefulness we currently retain in the world.

LUST: SEX AND THE SINGLE MILEY

sigh.

Never has so much been made of so little. That’s actually a quote famously appropriated by the late actor David Niven when a naked guy streaked across the stage at the 1974 Oscar ceremonies. But it applies here.

Like any parent, we don’t like to see our kids grow up and become sexual. But when exactly is grown up enough for sexuality to be employed when it’s your own kid? 16, 18, 20, 25…50…or never? I’m not a parent but if I were I’d have to vote for never.

If you don’t know about (or have never seen) the MTV VMAs, here’s the problem – former tween star and now 20-year-old recording artist Miley Cyrus did a song and dance number of her hit tune “We Can’t Stop” at the Video Music Awards last week where she rolled her tongue around like a snake charmer, bumping, grinding and (get your urban dictionary out) twerking across the stage against or dangerously close to the crotch area of tall, hunky and rappy 36-year-old male singer Robin Thicke, who has cultivated the oily persona of a studly, very well-endowed lothario in his hit song “Blurred Lines.” The latter may or may not be true in life, but who am I to say? Entertainment Weekly this week famously called it all a “teddy bear orgy” but, then again, who am I to say or even re-appropriate that phrase?

The bigger issue is this: we Americans are pretty hung up about sex, aren’t we? Yes, I’m purposely including myself in that because while I was watching the Miley/Thicke spectacle (which I then re-watched several times) I groaned, called it gross, and was generally turned off – wondering why Hannah Montana felt compelled to become a fifth rate version of a Sunset Blvd. stripper on national television and why a guy who is height-advantaged, considered hot and, okay, some sort of talented (and is married to the very talented and very hot actress Paula Patton) felt the need to carouse onstage in front of an international audience with a girl young enough to be his…stepdaughter?

As if that wasn’t threatening enough to me and Middle America, he was wearing dark shades and dressed like a high class (if there is such a thing) pimp in a tighter version of the black and white vertical striped pants I wore to one of my own high school dances in the seventies in order to make me look taller.

Just don’t say his name 3 times!

Certainly that has nothing to do with his involvement with Miley, as a very successful female writer friend of mine argued. She’s (Miley) of age, she was (or still is?) engaged to be married and isn’t a Disney star any longer. Why the international headlines? Why can’t women own who they are? Why are sexy girls given the scarlet letter when sexy guys are given the term of…well….stud, or even young buck? In other words, what’s Miley to do?

She has a point, I suppose. But had the dance moves been a little better, the routine a little more clever, or the 36 year-old guy a little bit more of…well, something…it all might have been sort of funny. It wasn’t. Nor was it the end of the world. At the very least it’s the beginning of a new one for Ms. Cyrus. Stay tuned to wherever it’s headed. Which, odds are, has to be up.

GREED: MIDDLE EAST WARS, SYRIA – NOT Syriana

Unfortunately, we have a tendency in the summer to see events through the lens of a popcorn movie, preferably a sequel. In our minds, this reduces even political atrocities like the current mass nerve-gassing of thousands of innocent men, women and children in Syria by a power-hungry dictator to the Oscar-winning George Clooney movie Syriana, which didn’t even take place in Syria and, in fact, wasn’t even released in the summer.

Sadly, the realities revealed in the real Syria these past few weeks seem to be signaling the involvement of the United States in yet another awful geo-political struggle in the Middle East. This is seen as unavoidable in some form by both sides of the political spectrum and surely signals the end of a carefree summer.

It is doubtful, however, whether even the best civics teacher could explain the pros and cons of this extremely complicated situation in ways in which those of us just emerging from the summer of ’13 (that’s 2013) could reliably understand. Try as they might on network news, or on CNN, MSNBC and FOX (let’s list them all together and be fair and balanced here), it’s still not happening for those of us not in the know of these things. Which really means – all of us.

The best I’ve come across is an article in this weekend’s Washington Post. It breaks down the pros and cons of US involvement in Syria and gives a basic understanding of the political situation there in general. Think of it as – Syria For Dummies.

(Note: This title in no way meant to diminish the tragic circumstances. It’s simply the strategy of good teaching: to make something digestible, first reduce to its simplest form and then begin to add layers).

GLUTTONY: DOWNTON ABBEY & YOU

Someone close to me likened the hit PBS series Downton Abbey to crack in its purest form. As a faithful follower, I know this is so. However, as a life long culture vulture, I’m not quite sure why the lives of the aristocrats living in a countryside British castle at the turn of the 20th century along with the servants who love and, well, serve them has such a hold on its worldwide audience. Perhaps because it’s so different than the world in which we live in today. Though the writing, acting, directing and castle itself could have something to do with it.

In any event, the fourth season starts being broadcast in England sometime this month and is set in the roaring twenties. It will also introduce race into the equation with its first Black cast member, a singer in the traditional of jazz great Cab Calloway played by acclaimed British actor Gary Carr. I suspect this is not just novelty casting but will be used as a way to continue to tell the story of the vast cultural shifts of the times as the upstairs-downstairs way of living slowly begins to unravel.

Hellllloooo Gary!

It should be noted that my students have a particularly hard time with the social mores shown in period pieces even though they are historically accurate. For instance, I’ve given up even mentioning either the book or movie version of Gone With The Wind in class since the Mammy character and the sashaying young black maid seems to take them out of a story quicker than the foot and a half sized cell phone you see in early 1980s American films. Yes, I know – those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. You try telling them that.

Finally, DA does not officially premiere in the US until January 2014. That’s a shame. Given how connected the world is via social media and the rest of the web, it’s very difficult to wait four months without spoilers to begin a series that is, admittedly, a street drug. Of course, you can get someone you know in London to send you DVDs that come out midway to late in the fall season. Or you can do it another….no, I am NOT advocating that! Am I? Well, as Will Ferrell once joked on SNL, ‘Maybe I am and…maybe I am…” (Note to law enforcement: That’s a joke).

SLOTH: LAZINESS AND THE MOVIES

Do you smell that?

Someone has to say it – 2013 has generally been a crap year for movies. Sorry, it has. There were a few of good films. But nothing great or particularly unusual. I’m leaving out Fruitvale Station because people I trust really like it and I haven’t seen it yet. Though I very much enjoyed The Spectacular Now and Cate Blachett was wonderful in Blue Jasmine even if the film as a whole somehow disappoints (uh yes, that’s just my opinion).

Still, there’s hope. What I’m hearing through sources is that Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are great being weightless in Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis is a very cool movie from the very cool Coen Brothers and two actors who were different kinds of movie stars in the seventies will be up for Oscars in two other films. They are Robert Redford in a practically one-man tour de force in JC Chandor’s All Is Lost and Bruce Dern (yes, he’s Laura’s Dad) as the difficult father in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska.

I want to see all of these and many others I haven’t heard anything about. But just as much I want to see Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, which tells the story of what happened when the writer of the Mary Poppins books, PL Travers, came to Hollywood and is finally convinced by Walt Disney to allow him to film her story. Emma Thompson plays the writer and Tom Hanks plays Walt. But that’s not why I care. See, Mary Poppins was my favorite film as a child and I played the record endlessly on my little “victrola” (that’s what they called record players, sonny), at the turn of the century.

Do not write in and tell me you’re disappointed in me for wanting this film. Or — that I will be disappointed. I know both already.

PRIDE: STRANGEST NEW FALL TV SEASON ENTRY

OK that’s it.. I’m done.

I’m not going to belabor this. Something called the DIY Network (it stands for Do It Yourself) is doing a reality show called Vanilla Ice Goes Amish. In it, the king of nineties White Rap immerses himself in the Amish community to learn how they do construction work. This will be an offshoot of the network’s current home renovation series, The Vanilla Ice Project. And why not? When I want to hear about how I break into the 2013 rap scene I’m going to call The Property Brothers.

ENVY: ME AND QUEEN JANE

Anyone who thinks 75 year-old actors have lost their looks, timing, talent and general star appeal need only watch Jane Fonda in the final scene of last week’s episode 7 of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. In just under four minutes, Ms. Fonda gives a master class in creativity and craft. Alternately dramatic, funny, coquettish and powerful, she plays each moment to the hilt without ever going over the top or calling attention to herself beyond the requirements of the scene. That’s rare in television acting and even more rare in the movies these days. Newsroom star Jeff Daniels put it best in a recent interview: She comes in prepared and you just watch 2,000 Oscars and 1,000 nominations work.

PS – Ms. Fonda has given immense credit to Aaron Sorkin’s writing for her bravura appearances. But as any writer knows, tour de force scenes such as these can go horribly wrong, especially when you don’t have exactly the right person acting them. See, cause it’s all made up. Stay tuned.

WRATH: IT’S HOT!!!

This summer, which has not yet ended, is best summed up by Krissy Chula’s YouTube video rant of several days ago. Yes, it’s a little raw. But so was Richard Pryor. I’m not saying she’s a star. Yet. But the video has gone viral and will soon be nearing 1,000,000 views.

The humor, the rage, the weather – it all speaks to where we are now – maybe at this very moment.

Or maybe… we’re here:

08.25.13

by notesfromachair

Tuff Love

Do I matter? Have I mattered – really mattered? Meaning, have I, or anything I’ve done, made any difference in the world?

It’s easy to view true achievement in terms of grand accomplishments when you measure it by today’s world standards. You know what I mean – people like Nelson Mandela, Oprah (no last name needed), Steven Spielberg, JK Rowling, Sting, Barack Obama, Kobe Bryant, Mario Batali and Brangelina. Or perhaps even Paris Hilton and the entire Kardashian/Kanye family, if that is what appeals to you. Our culture elevates celebrity, reasoning those who have gained lots money and notoriety for actions in their chosen fields have made their mark on the world and those of us who don’t have those things have not — or else we too would have been so richly rewarded.

This, however, misses the point of both achievement and existence. Entirely.

Nevertheless, it is the entire point of Frank Capra’s classic film It’s a Wonderful Life. Circumstances conspire to trap Life’s plain spoken hero George Bailey in his two-bit town with a two-bit life and, in desperation, George decides to jump off the local bridge to commit what will surely turn out to be a two-bit suicide. But this being a movie in 1946 and not 2013 where a superhero would surely have intervened, George is rescued before he can drown by an “angel” in training seeking his “wings.” This angel, a sort of befuddled, non-descript older guy who is clearly not, nor ever has been, a Mandela, or even a Kanye, determines the only way to prove to George that his life has made any difference at all is to literally show him what his world would look like if he hadn’t existed.

The face of desperation

Although it was dubbed “Capra-corn” in its day, there is a reason this movie has survived for nearly 70 years and is shown on television every Christmas Eve like clockwork. It enables us to see ultimately that all the crappy little lives we might believe we’re living in our darkest hours are in their best moments really as expansive and meaningful as some of the greatest thinkers, artists and saintly people – those humans we today call CELEBRITIES – of our generation. And perhaps even more so.

OKAY, that’s a nice thought, but a total movie contrivance – and just an excuse for you, Chair, to justify your own measly little life – you might say. Fine – then let’s leave my life out of the equation. Let’s look at a moment this week in the life of a plain spoken 53 year old bookkeeper in Decatur, Georgia named Antoinette Tuff – who through a 20 minute conversation with one very sad and troubled young man managed to alter the lives of not only hundreds of others in the elementary school where she worked, but perhaps millions of people who listened to, read about and observed what she did when she single-handedly talked a mentally disturbed individual out of the mass slaughter of children and adults who worked at the school. And who also, through her off-the-cuff actions, countered the decades old argument of the National Rifle Association that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

Bravery personified

Uh, not so much. Understanding and love were Ms. Tuff’s weapons (Capra-corny as that might seem) and they proved far more effective than the many rounds of bullets a young man named Michael Brandon Hill held and ultimately chose NOT to use when Ms. Tuff was done relating and listening to him.

Listen and learn:

Just as George Bailey saw that the comfortable homes he helped regular customers like him obtain, through the generosity of the two-bit Savings and Loan Bank, turn into a shanty town of crumbling, repossessed shacks had he not existed (not to mention his happy friends and family becoming lonely alcoholics, general ne’er-do-wells and antisocial, isolated depressives), Antoinette Tuff’s real life story shows us the fictional life lesson given to George Bailey in a 70 year old film is no mere fluke. Simply sharing yourself with others when you are forced to do so by seemingly supernatural or at least unnatural circumstances, can save more people than you ever intended. And in ways you can never know since, unlike George, we have no way to tell what would or would not have happened had we not done so.

It’s OK to believe to in happy endings!

By merely telling young Mr. Hill that everyone goes through bad times, by confessing to him she herself was so distraught she tried to kill herself last year when her husband of 33 years left her (and her disabled son), and by taking the chance to assure a mentally ill man that he didn’t have to die despite having already firing some shots, and that she loved him and would stand by him and help him give himself up, Antoinette Tuff saved the lives of hundreds and the pain of thousands with merely the simplest of actions. She also managed to show basic compassion and understanding to a potential killer in society by knowing in her soul that he was not merely just a mentally sick person who society had turned its back on and left to rot. One act of kindness to one seriously deranged mind – one moment of understanding – can prevent carnage of unimaginable (or perhaps even imaginable, which is too bad) proportions. It’s a scene so trite that it probably wouldn’t make the cut of a 2013 after school special – if such programming even existed in our current evolution of entertainment offerings.

We all just need a lifeline…

None of this is to take anything away from Ms. Tuff’s extraordinary presence of mind or, on the other end, the achievements of a Mandela, a Rowling or even a Brangelina. But contributing to the world comes in all sorts of sizes and iterations and who is to say who or what is more valuable or more meaningful.

It is admittedly difficult to feel at all relevant in a world where one’s worth is often measured by the number of followers on Twitter and Facebook or the size of one’s house, bank account or wardrobe. Like – really difficult. But every once in a while someone like Ms. Tuff comes along to show us all of the rest of that stuff is really, when it comes down to it, a whole lot of bullshit.

Hey, I want attention as much as anyone else – why else decide to become a blogging Chair with a bright red logo? On the other hand, I also periodically return to something I once heard Oprah – our current (and perhaps forever) reigning Queen of Celebrity – say: More than anything, everybody just wants to be heard.

I am Chairy.. hear me roar!

That means not just me, or you, but everyone. It’s one of the reasons I became a writer and I love education. It enables us to share stories. So often I find students in painful situations (akin to ones that I have been in) where no one was there – rejection of professional work, personal relationships and family dysfunction, all engendering useless emotions of alienation, self-doubt, and even self-hate.

How do you navigate these? One way is to know you are not alone. Another way is to learn what people who came before you did and how they survived.

Reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way helped me enormously. So did an interview I once did as a reporter with director/writer James L. Brooks, who asked me about my writing aspirations and was encouraging. So did once meeting Oscar-winning screenwriter Bo Goldman at a social occasion early in my career where he urged me, a tortured unknown in my twenties, to be kinder to myself and to not force it. The words will come when they come.

Add to that the words a fellow writer told me that Stephen Sondheim once said to a mutual friend – a Tony Award winning actress who was rehearsing one of his new musicals for Broadway – “If you are not having a good time there is no point in doing this.”

Gray skies are gonna clear up

The most significant act of compassion you can do is reveal yourself to another person. Share something other than, well, money. Share a part of who YOU are. Share your pain, or love or happiness or encouragement. My partner of 25 years volunteers with the Trevor Project and every so often a troubled young LGBTQ caller asks him about his life. It is amazing to hear the reaction through the phone when he answers their question about his relationship status and he shares he has been with someone for 25 years. A gay guy?? I can’t imagine how hearing that would have changed my life in my teenage years. Or even early twenties. And yet here I am a member of that relationship thanks, in large part, to the support I had in many different areas of my life from others.

It’s all interconnected and relevant and, most of all, MEANINGFUL. Antoinette Tuff proved this to the mentally ill 20-year-old young man in Georgia who had an assault style weapon and 600 rounds of ammunition. A lot has been made of the fact that Ms. Tuff is African American and the shooter is white. If the shooter had been black would a white person have been so willing to open up?? Who knows. And really, who cares.

This misses the point, or at least clouds it. There is a universal example of humanity that transcends race – a sense of being listened to by someone and not ignored or marginalized. To truly hear and really see a person is powerful stuff – for both parties. And it cuts across race, gender, sexual preference and age. It is, in essence, who we ALL are.

Embrace your inner “corn”

If you believe that our culture, most specifically movies, are a reflection of our current humanity, in an odd way this brings us back to It’s A Wonderful Life and George Bailey. People often ask the question, What is missing from movies today? Perhaps it’s this – that simple shared experience of humanity told in elegant or perhaps inelegant ways. Spectacle is important. But what is more spectacular than being who you are in a simple human way and sharing it with the world? Perhaps it’s time to review our definition of the spectacular. It’s often touted that bigger is better. But Antoinette Tuff makes one wonder whether this is a bill of goods we’ve all just been sold and it isn’t true at all.

I mean, does it really matter whether or not Ben Affleck is the best choice for Batman or even the fact that there is or isn’t a Batman/Superman sequel at all? Big as that story was this week, it’s a lot, lot smaller than any one of our lives.