And So It Goes

You wouldn’t think Billy Joel and South Park’s season 27 kickoff episode skewering and, word has it, angering our current POTUS, would have much in common.

But in the opening of the second part of the excellent five-hour HBO Max documentary on his career, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, the singer-songwriter makes a deceptively obvious statement about his work that is a bridge for a lot of common ground.

Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve lived through, has somehow made it into my music.

Substitute the word music with any artistic creation that any of us make, and the conclusion is obvious. Your work can’t help but express YOU – and exactly how YOU feel.

And when you do it right it has a particular resonance.

So why wouldn’t the now billionaire South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who just agreed to a new $1.5 billion, five-year streaming deal for their show to run exclusively on Paramount+, go right for the jugular?

Their brand is mercilessly mocking pop culture figures, religion, current events and charlatans, as well as that week’s hypocrites and/or their zealous followers.

It’d disappoint at least half the country, and at this point probably more, if they didn’t.

And take it from this gay, liberal Jew – NO minority status will save you.

Nor will being a member of the elite majority.

And after almost three decades of mind-bending successes, included the Tony award winning musical, The Book of Mormon – the world, and even their parent company CBS/Paramount, clearly wouldn’t have it any other way.

So once again – on their premiere episode this year:

Why WOULDN’T they make jokes about DJ Trump sharing a sexual bed with Satan; draw him with a talking micro-penis; and have him suing the residents of South Park for $5 million because of their growing street protests against him?

Truly the tamest image from the entire episode

Why wouldn’t they show us reporters on the CBS/Paramount-owned show 60 Minutes all anemic and terrified of saying a cross word against him in light of the ACTUAL real-life network settling a generally accepted ridiculous ACTUAL real-life lawsuit Trump filed against the show for $16 million and more.

Not to mention –

Why wouldn’t that premiere episode also call out the principal of the fictional South Park public school for suddenly requiring everyone to get on board with ONLY Christian values by bringing Jesus himself into school and making them befriend him?

Which finally leads us to ask one last question —

Why wouldn’t they portray Jesus being terrified of our Dear Leader of these United States coming after Him while trying to warn the town not to continue to offend the Big Man (Note: The, um, VERY VERY Big and ever-growing Man) in the White House?

This is/what they/do.

It’d be like, well… going to a Billy Joel concert and him NOT playing Piano Man.

Talk about brands.

And speaking of such, perhaps THIS is the reason why the current Trump-Epstein scandal/association won’t go away?

Trump spent a lifetime ogling women, cheating on his wives, owning beauty pageants and bragging on tape he could grab any female by their private parts because he’s a star.

Wouldn’t the natural creative conclusion be that since he was such good friends with the world’s most notorious child molester, he might be hiding something more about his relationship with him?

Especially since he seems to now be so desperately hiding the infamous Epstein files and having his former attorney – now second in command at the DOJ – suddenly meeting behind the scenes with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator and former girlfriend in some sort of implied immunity from further prosecution deal in exchange for more information, or as some speculate, even some omission of information about one of Epstein’s…best friends and/or clients?

I think my brain just melted reading that

It stands to reason. Given the brand. It seems so true to form for him. Even, dare I say… honest??

Of course, what sounds honest is not necessarily true or real.

At least these days.

But when it goes over so well and lingers for so long, the more likely that there is more than a smidgen of creative reality to it.

At least that’s what people think in our conspiracy theory-led world.

Meaning even people in the White House and elsewhere who like to spread this stuff should be careful of what they wish for.

I didn’t mean to run out of space for Billy Joel.

But as we learn in the documentary, he hates bullshit of any kind (Note: Often to a fault) and tends not to be political for the most part.

Until he is.

One notable occasion was in the first Trump term when a bunch of Neo-Nazis marched through the peaceful neighborhood streets of Charlottesville, VA with Tiki torches, famously chanting, Jews Will Not Replace Us.

And Trump went on television the next day proclaiming there were very fine people on BOTH sides.

Billy Joel, a Jewish guy from Long Island, wasn’t having it but wasn’t one for making speeches.

So what to do?

Well, the next night onstage at his concert he wore a large Jewish star made of yellow fabric sewn onto his jacket.

That star was an exact replica of the ones many of his actual relatives in Germany were forced to wear in the years right before World War II.

And in the years that followed when they were carted away by the Nazis.

Relatives he laments never getting to meet because they didn’t survive the concentration camps they were disappeared to.

Joel has always considered himself primarily an entertainer and over five hours one can’t help but get swept away not only by the music but the personal stories of abandonment, rejection, and misfortune – as well as a great deal of the rarefied talent and hard work that made him a fortune – or two or three – as well as world famous.

As a kid raised in Queens (Note: No, I’m nothing like Trump), you won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve been a lifelong fan of the guy from the moment I saw him in concert as an undergrad in the seventies at Queens College.

Tough, gruff, kinda nerdy hot, kinda scruffy, a piano virtuoso, fun, a little bit dangerous, smart as a whip AND funny.

Luckily I wasn’t out then and never got to meet him or I would’ve been in a whole lot of trouble.

But trouble is a relative word with all sorts of good and bad innuendos and ominous meanings.

Especially at a time when any one of us anywhere can be arrested at any moment for the most bizarre, trumped-up crime.

Or… well… not.

Billy Joel – “And So It Goes”

06.29.25

by notesfromachair

Protect the Family

In the new, emotionally affecting fourth season of The Bear that just dropped on Hulu, there is a conversation about your work family vs. your family family. Are they separate? Do they overlap?

Or do people you love or are close to simply become a part of YOUR family in one big tent if you decide this is so?

If it worked for Mary, who are we to argue?

It’s an interesting cultural question right now as Americans in towns across the country witness members of their families – some of them blood relatives and others friends, neighbors and co-workers – being grabbed, handcuffed and arrested outside their homes, at their jobs, or right off of the street.

The vast majority of these people (Note: The last estimate I heard is 90%) are, in reality, not “the worst of the worst violent criminals” despite how many times this lie gets repeated by the current administration or across the airwaves of Fox News.

Saying something over and over again does not make it true. Nor does wishing for it to stop make it go away on its own.

Especially when you can’t help but see the horrific arrests and sometimes beatings as plain as day on social media websites everywhere.

Or anywhere else you might get your news.

Even, like, a newspaper.

Diehard print journalism major that I am, even I must admit the most powerful of these stories come courtesy of ordinary citizens who simply whip out their cell phones and film videos of these purposely unidentified masked “enforcers”, often not in any discernible uniform, chasing people they know down the street or through vegetable gardens, cuff them and, if necessary, beat them into restraint before throwing them in an unmarked van and driving off to who knows where.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you I am 100% sure that if this happened to a member of my work family, family family or anyone else I cared about, filming it would be the least of what I’d do.

As one of Woody Allen’s characters commented in Manhattan on dealing with Nazis:

..A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats get right to the point.

Yes, I know whole swaths of my students (and perhaps you) don’t like it when I quote lines from Woody Allen movies, but I am who I am and Nazis are who they are.

Still, at the end of the day there is this one truth:

The vast majority of us will fight for our “families” in ferocious and unexpected ways when push comes to shove.

They might work our last nerve or be a key element in a backstory of resentment. But something happens when an outsider picks on them – or does worse.

Suddenly you find yourself brandishing the nearest weapon available at those who want to do them in. Or group thinking some ingenious scheme to keep them safe, or at least out of harm’s way, until you can come up with a better plan.

(Note: For me, it’s usually a sharp, snide, threatening flurry of cutting insults or pithy, bitchy phrases. Unless it’s Nazis).

You might be totally pissed off at your family member, after the dust settles, for their behavior. Or for putting you in this position. You might even wonder where the resolve came from. But what you don’t do is regret it.

Ever.

In a way, that is what most of us will likely come away with after watching iconic Law and Order: SVU actress/director Mariska Hargitay’s raw, honest and highly original new HBO documentary, My Mom Jayne.

For those who had no idea, Hargitay is the daughter of the late, one-time world-renowned 1950s blonde bombshell, B movie actress, Jayne Mansfield. But at three years old, riding in a car with her mother and two of her siblings, she endured a fatal crash that killed Jayne, her lawyer boyfriend and the man who was driving them.

Miraculously all three children survived. But, as Hargitay admits, she has spent a lifetime running away not so much from the event, which she has no memory of, but the legacy of the high-pitched, made-up, girlie-voice and Hollywood blondeness her very famous mother left behind.

And, as it turns out, a lot more. (Note: No spoilers here. Promise!).

Though what makes the film a must-see is not only what we learn about Jayne (Note: Among many other things, she was classically trained on the violin and piano, spoke five languages fluently and had an IQ of 163). It’s how after a lifetime of running away from everything she represented, and by putting her own antipathy at the center of the narrative, she manages to rescue the real Jayne from the neat little Tinseltown sarcophagus Hollywood so ably arrested and hermetically sealed her into all those decades ago.

Full Confession: Mariska’s Olivia Benson on SVU is one of my all-time favorite television characters. Tough, smart, brave and sensitive over 26 seasons and someone who could deal with Nazis and Nazi-like behavior far better than I could advise.

In fact (Note: Full confession #2): On more than one occasion, while watching the news, I have actually asked myself: #WWOBD?

That is, if she actually existed and could save us from our world in 60 minutes with commercials. (Note: Oh, of course, I know she’s not REAL… Or, well, totally… I think).

In any event, watch My Mom Jayne and see if you don’t see the best parts of her in this documentary.

And then look at all of those people standing up for members of their families, chosen or not, across the country.

And then consider that if, in creating that character all those years ago, the SVU writers and actress didn’t draw on the qualities exhibited by the best of Americans that were already out there.

People who would go to great lengths to protect the innocent or unjustly categorized. Especially if it was someone they cared about.

Jack Johnson – “Better Together”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: hbo max

And So It Goes

Protect the Family