Black Mirror, Mirror

Here’s the way life is these days:

1- People take an action and STUFF HAPPENS.

2- Those happenings become EVENTS – and the most noteworthy, salacious or even occasionally the most interesting among them are reported to us by other people and/or sources as INFORMATION, nee NEWS. (Note: Current or just friends and family gossip).

3- This NEWS of the day, whether personal or broadcast internationally, can simply be new facts or stories we’ve acquired. But way, way, waaaaaaay too often it is quickly turned into CREATIVE CONTENT. (Note: Either by the professionals currently on strike (#WGAStrong) or anyone with a cell phone)

4- That CREATIVE CONTENT is then heard, watched, produced and/or ingested via platforms round the world. (Note: Not only on TV and film, or via music, theatre and books but in far, far, far too many personal and public conversations on social media #IKnewTikTokWasGood..OrBad…ForSomething).

my brain when I try to think about TikTok

5- And then, just like that, there is COMMENTARY on all of the above, often before we’ve even had the chance to fully digest it.

6- Which then sparks bigger EMOTIONS, which fuels further CONVERSATIONS, some of which become new HAPPENINGS and EVENTS and CONTENT and even more COMMENTARY, which all feed on each other in a kinetic continuous cycle of….

US.

It all happens so quickly, and at such dizzying speed, that ultimately all we are left wondering are the answers to just two questions.

#1 – IS ANY OF THIS REAL, and if so, which part?

And —

#2– WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED – because the only thing l am now is TOTALLY LOST.

Yes, too many of us are left feeling that way by how fast it all flies by. But what’s even worse, at least from this Chair, is never quite knowing exactly what to absolutely BELIEVE (Note: Not to mention what to believe in).

I mean, even when you know what is LIKELY true on one subject,, it’s hard to believe much of what so many adamant, or even smart, people are saying about so many other things.

Especially when you are forced to get stuck in the weeds of misinformation, arguing with idiots about the ethicacy of —

DRAG QUEENS?

Seriously???

What about Shakespeare, 18^th century France and every man in the Continental Congress?

Not to mention…

CLOWNS!!!

Aren’t clowns, drag? I can testify that it is…I mean, THEY are.

When I was a very little boy I watched The Howdy Doody Show on TV and there was a clown named Clarabelle.

And she was played by a……MAN!!!

And no, she/they is NOT the reason why I turned out the way that I did.

This week saw the season six return of Netflix’s Black Mirror, and in its very first episode, Joan Is Awful, it brilliantly tackled all of the above and more.

Almost immediately we are introduced to a silver streak haired, upper mid-level tech manager, Joan – the kind of self-involved wealthy-ish supervisor of something or other that most of us have personally encountered or watched from afar being a very characteristic kind of awful to everyone in her life.

She’s bored with her loving boyfriend, bitches about her coffee to her gay assistant, rolls her eyes at having to be bothered firing an employee in person, text cheats with her oily ex, whines about her life to her therapist and then returns home that night to start the cycle all over again.

By all accounts, she IS awful.

Not quite Trump-y awful, there are new definitions for that, but awful nevertheless.

That is until she and the bf snuggle in that night and turn on their big flat screen to search for a new, of the moment TV series or movie to watch on Streamberry – the Netflix doppelganger platform where you click your remote and do the all too familiar content browse.

One seems too creepy, the other is said to suck, and still something else is too close in theme to something they’ve already watched before.

But suddenly, there is something on screen that looks interesting. It’s a new series entitled JOAN IS AWFUL, with the silver-streak haired image of a woman that looks a lot like the Joan that we see on the couch – but not exactly.

This Joan is billed as Salma Hayek with a silver-streaked wig and wardrobe that is unmistakably Joan. (Note: And yes, it is indeed THE Salma Hayek).

And when the real Joan is forced by her boyfriend to click on the fake Salma Hayek/Joan image, it begins playing out the events we’ve just witnessed in the real Joan’s life in real time, complete with physically accurate actor replacements of everyone else she has just interacted with over the course of that day.

Now forget that we are watching this episode of Black Mirror ON Netflix, which for all intents and purposes IS Streamberry, which includes the very same dulcet DUH-DUM audio tone we all so look forward to hearing once we’ve pushed our remote and chosen our viewing treasure for the evening.

All you need to know is that it all gets lot more complicated, nee confounding, nee troubling, from there – but not in a way we don’t recognize.

And it raises a few questions:

#1- Is it legal for a streaming platform to just take your life and film it? Well, it turns out it is. I mean, do any of us read the fine print of what it says when we click accept?

#2- Have any of us been filmed doing stuff we didn’t want others to know we did and had it broadcast somewhere? Well, um, we can’t really know for sure. But if you have you glanced on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook even once in your life and tittered at the misfortunes of someone else you are still part of the problem, and not in a solution-oriented way.

#3- Will artificial intelligence, aka A.I.., evolve to the point where what we did hours or even minutes ago could be broadcast to millions across the world? Well, okay, it already can be. But could it happen with computer-generated ACTORS playing US on a mainstream service like Netflix?

Well, why do you think there is a WGA strike to begin with?

I spend all this time on Joan Is Awful not merely to urge everyone to watch the opening episode of a superior series that is sort of a mash up of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, by way of Orphan Black.

Though it is pretty great and you won’t do much better if you’re looking to be entertained, diverted or, heaven forbid, prompted to think for an hour.

Rather, it’s to consider in real time what constitutes our daily realities and attempt to understand exactly how aware and present we are in them. Not to mention, what we want to do with them.

On a cosmic scale, Joan is not quite as awful as we think but in reality she is a lot more awful than she ever believed she was.

If creative content can serve any real purpose in 2023 it’s to show us that we need to dare to do better as we to share our mutual stories of survival.

Before forces beyond our control commandeer our every experience and put their own spin on what is left of our humanity.

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” – Snow White

06.11.23

by notesfromachair

Grumpy Golden Faucets

Here’s a great and meaningful story this week that’s not about that big, bloated news hog.

Four children were rescued in Colombia’s Amazon jungle, surviving alone for 40 DAYS after their plane crashed last month.

That crash killed all three adults onboard, including their mother.

But the kids – aged 13, 9. 4 and 1 – lived due to the knowledge and skill they acquire at a young age as members of the Huitoto Indigenous tribe.

What this means is that they are taught almost from birth about the environment and life they are born into.

That includes:

– Navigating the terrain of their natural habitat.

– Learning basic survival skills in the forest, including how to resist predators and being handy enough with a knife to wield against the 80 varieties of snakes, many of the poisonous, that slither every day all around them.

As well as —

– Leadership qualities, handed down by their elders, that will enable them to save, protect and most of all inspire the youngest of their citizenry.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could offer some, or even any, of the same here?

I’ve been hearing about the Twisted Moron of Mar-A-Lago since I was a teenager in Queens. Only then he was known as the Obnoxious, Off-Putting Oaf of New York, a live action comic book version of everything people born and bred in the Big Apple DIDN’T want to be.

As Fran Le i bowitz once so aptly quipped:

(He’s)… a poor person’s idea of a rich person.

They see him. They think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that. Why are my ties not made of 400 acres of polyester?’ All that stuff he shows you in his house- the gold faucets – if you won the lottery, that’s what you’d buy.”

Well, this week we got a look at one of the gold faucets thanks to a 49 page historic indictment that charges the Gold Gilded Goblin with conspiracy and obstruction of justice; willful retention of national defense information (including top secret nuclear and military strategies); concealing documents in a federal investigation; and giving false statements and representations, among other things.

Together, the charges carry maximum penalties of many dozens of years in prison.

Not even the Decapitated Colonel of Coarseness and Corruption could carry on if convicted at the age of 76 – or 77 – or 78 – depending on when a verdict is rendered and his many appeals are exhausted.

Not that it will get to that point, which, at this point, is not really the point at all.

Yet it is the reason why the bubbling bile is boiling over all of us at such a furious pace these last few days. The Comb Over King of Contempt is freaked out and striking back everywhere.

Ostensibly it’s on behalf of the hunting down of all of his fellow Witches. But we present and former New Yorkers (Note: And those of you who follow us) know all the bloviating is really his personal three-card-monte manipulation for his own personal freedom so he can continue to do and fleece and be exactly anything he wants the way he always has.

If crashing the plane of American democracy is the seeming cost, well that’s a lie.

It’s a simple, and digestible and absolutely true on-brand message, right?

No person has EVER been so persecuted as a man born into a billion dollar family who never paid a bill he didn’t like and has the receipts from all three of his own bankruptcies to prove it.

Up is down and down is up as Lewis Carroll once so poetically taught us in Alice In Wonderland.

A lovely and creative thought but at this point knife skills might have been better.

No, not literally. Figuratively.

As dictated by the terrain that has perhaps been permanently poisoned by the Noxious Know Nothing Neanderthal of Neener Neener Land (Note: The latter being Rachel Maddow’s acerbic technical term for the petty revenge that seems to continuously drive said Neanderthal).

Though perhaps the toxicity is not irreversible.

READ the very, very readable indictment provided by Jack Smith (Note: Not to be confused with the great NYC avant-garde artist) and decide for yourself.

It’s got pictures and everything.

Including a golden faucet.

“In A World of My Own” – Alice in Wonderland