As Elaine Benes would say,"that's a big coincidence."

The cover of the latest New Yorker, on the right, is obvious in its meaning. The cover on the left is from the week before (dated April 25 but we all know that magazine cover dates and, what's the term? drop dates? are different).  The adoring-fans-in-red-and-blue-with-guitar-in-foreground issue arrived in my mailbox after Prince died on April 21. I remember thinking, very briefly, wow, that was fast. I even thought, oh that's clever, they used red and blue, which of course together makes purple. The title of that cover art is Closing Set, appropriate title for a farewell to Prince, who was a great guitarist, something I didn't appreciate until after he died. 

Today the Purple Rain issue arrived so I checked on Google just to be sure I was right about the magazine devoting two covers to his death. I mean I get that he was beloved, talented, and successful but two covers? In the New Yorker? 

No, they didn't devote two covers to him. The left cover is by artist R. Kikuo Johnson and is described by him in the New Yorker this way:

“Everyone in Brooklyn is a d.j., so I rely on my much cooler friends to take me out,” the artist R. Kikuo Johnson says. “I have been taken to many one-night-only warehouse parties—I love dancing—but this was my first time at the Palisades,” he continues, referencing the underground venue in Bushwick that was the model for his cover of this week’s issue.

I say R. Kikuo should be credited with some unconscious foreknowledge. 

-------------------

**From "The Statue," Seinfeld, April 11, 1991:

RAVA: Yes, that's all, a coincidence!

ELAINE: A big coincidence.
RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!
ELAINE: No, that's a big coincidence.
RAVA: That's what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!
ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.

Colbert at his finest.

It's long and it's sometimes uncomfortable but godlove S. Colbert. (Who I just learned was sick of the Comedy Central job and would have quit soon anyway even if the Letterman job hadn't come along.)

"Better Call Saul"

Michael McKean in the new HBO series Better Call Saul is adorable. On the show, he suffers from “idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields" or I.E.I.-E.M.F., which you can read about here and here. I didn't watch Breaking Bad; too many guns, smashed faces, and spurts of blood for my taste. [I'm assuming that's the kind of violence present in BB.] The spin-off, BCSaul, stands alone I think. Very black humor. Very enjoyable. Not too much violence so far.

The New Yorker article on IEI-EMF includes the intriguing info below. I'll spend some time today -- while watching yet another big snow fall -- trying to figure out exactly where this area is.

A handful of others [who suffer from IEI-EMF] have moved to homes within the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, a vast area of mountainous terrain on the Virginia-West Virginia border, where Wi-Fi, cell phones, and other technologies are severely limited to protect a nearby radio telescope.

Remembering Stephen Colbert by Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, Issue 1224

The American political scene has lost one of its towering characters with the untimely demise of Stephen Colbert. He was 50. Feared by many, hated by some, watched by all, Colbert leaves an uncertain legacy for the media he revolutionized and the culture he altered. Without him on TV four nights a week, there is a truth-shaped hole in our national political discourse. "Anyone can read the news to you," he announced when The Colbert Report debuted in 2005. "I promise to feel the news at you."

He kept that promise, which is how he came to define our era. For so many of us, Colbert sums up the optimism and idealism of the Bush years, along with his hero and mentor Bill O'Reilly, whom he called Papa Bear. "I emulate you," he once told O'Reilly in a poignant appearance on Fox News. "I want to bring your message of love and peace to a younger audience. People in their sixties, people in their fifties – people who don't watch your show."

As a boy, Colbert idolized Richard Nixon and Geraldo Rivera, and he once spoke of his dream of growing up to become Nancy Reagan. His family heritage was Irish – "I could sit toe-to-toe at a potato table with anybody" – and he remained a lifelong devout Catholic. As he once explained on his show, "Catholicism is clearly superior. Don't believe me? Name one Protestant denomination that could afford a $660 million sexual-abuse settlement." But he remained open-minded. "I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior." 

As a child, he pronounced his family name "Coal-bert"; it was only later in life that he adopted the French pronunciation, "Coal-bear." As he explained, it was all part of his plan to sneak past the gatekeepers of the left-wing media. "It's a French name, just to get the cultural elites on my side," he told O'Reilly. "Bill, you know you’ve got to play the game that the media elites want you to." In 1983, he legally changed his middle name to "Gettysburg Address."

His rise in the media world was swift and ruthless. Soon after joining The Daily Show in 1997, Colbert attracted national attention for his uncompromising passion for the truth. As he put it, "When I think about truth, I touch myself." After Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999, it became America's most hard-hitting TV news program, with Colbert as its breakout star. (He also stole Comedy Central's 2002 roast for Chevy Chase, whom he hailed as a "comedy lamprey, just sucking the joy out of everything it touches.")

He was the kind of "Blame America Last" pundit who thrived in the post-9/11 years – able to reduce complex issues to common-sense tidbits, uninhibited by facts. He introduced America to the twin principles of "Truthiness" and "Wikiality," where anything is true if it feels true, or if someone claims it is, correctly predicting, "The revolution will not be verified."

If there was a moment when he officially took over as America’s leading political thinker, it was the night he hosted the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, speaking directly to President George W. Bush, who sat with him onstage. "Tonight it is my privilege to celebrate this president," he announced. "We both get it. Guys like us, we’re not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members of the 'factinista.' We go straight from the gut. Right, sir? That's where the truth lies – right down here in the gut."

Colbert kept following that gut, and America followed along. He ran for president in 2008, only to be denied his spot on the ballot due to behind-the-scenes manipulations by the South Carolina Democratic Party. He hosted the March to Keep Fear Alive in 2010, and wrote the bestselling manifesto I Am America (And So Can You!). But his greatest achievement was The Colbert Report. There was nothing like it on TV – yet that's because everything on TV was like it. Colbert was no different from most of his fellow media pundits – he just went a step or two further. In the Colbert era, America got far more Colbert-like, to the point where Congress seems to be reciting his transcripts verbatim. ("Net neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet" – that's not Colbert, it's the junior senator from Texas.)

Colbert will be remembered for his personal courage after his 2007 wrist injury, which inspired him to campaign against "wrist violence" with his WristStrong bracelets. (It also inspired him to get addicted to painkillers.) He will be remembered for his tireless crusade against bears. But most of all, he will be remembered for truth. Nobody summed up the current state of the American mind as brilliantly, as honestly, as terrifyingly as Stephen Colbert. It's somehow fitting that he left us prematurely and under such mysterious circumstances. He will be missed – even if someone very much like him returns to the airwaves in the coming months. Yet the culture of truthiness will survive him. With or without Colbert, we're all still living in the Colbert era, with no end in sight.

 

Saint Stephen.

A few years ago St. Stephen spent a day working beside migrant workers picking beans and corn. He then testified before Congress on behalf of migrant workers and their deplorable working conditions. At the beginning of this short clip, Congresswoman Chu asks "why are you interested in this subject?" Here's Stephen's reply. 

 

I have a long history of being enchanted, sometimes obsessed, by late-night TV hosts. I remember as a teenager doing homework in front of the TV and watching Johnny Carson. I had a very long Letterman phase  -- in the 80s and early 90s mostly -- when my office was a shrine to him. David Brenner had a short-lived quirky late-night show in the 80s, and between 1988 and 1994 Bob Costas had a very good interview show. Then there was Tom Synder, also in the 90s. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver are my current main sources of news. And entertainment.

Yes, I'm going to complain again about Stephen being tapped as David's replacement on CBS. Only 12 more shows for Stephen; Dave's contract runs out in August 2015. I'll miss The Colbert Report, I'll miss Dave's Top 10 List, but I'll adjust. It's not reality. Or is it? Sometimes it feels more real than the so-called straight news.

On having children.

 

This is a book I read a few years ago. I have zero, and I mean zero, memory of the book so I'm going to break one of my informal rules and read it again. I was reminded of the book (it's short stories, not a novel, which partially explains why it didn't imprint on my brain) when I read an interview with actress Frances McDormand who starred in the HBO miniseries based on the book. In the interview she said this:

About children: "... the minute you smell them there’s a pheromonal reaction between the parent and their child. My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there’s this monster—this tiger, or lion—that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t matter if they become men or women. The whole point of a teenager driving you insane is because they’re supposed to wear you down so you can fuckin’ die sooner and get out of the way, because it’s their place.

This passage speaks to me. My children didn't wear me down during their teen years and they're not wearing me down in their early adulthood. But my gut tells me that Frances is right.

And the 2-night, 4-hour miniseries that aired Sunday and Monday nights was wonderful. She's a great actress.

Noooooooooo!

 

I've always had a late-night guy to watch on TV. For some years now Stephen has been my favorite. This is a sad day for me because it looks like Stephen is going the way of all the other late-night white dudes (with the exception of late-night Steve Allen, who only very old people will remember). Stephen's going to the land of interviewing starlets. Noooooo!

 

On the up-side, I'm very happy for Dave, who finally gets to retire. He's certainly made me laugh over the past 30-odd years.  

True Detective.

 

I want one of those Lone Star beer can men. He's made about five so far.

 

I like both Rust Cohles. The older one and the younger one. The HBO show True Detective is addictive and just weird enough to have pulled me in. And not quite as violent as other series on TV. Disturbing, but not terribly violent.

In Sunday's fifth episode the screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto has Rust spout string theory. At least that's what a couple of other viewers have suggested on Slate.com -- see below. And this! Well this is just hilarious.

Calabi–Yau manifold (3D projection). From Wikipedia.
 



A 2D slice of the 6D Calabi-Yau quintic manifold. From Wikipedia.

 

 

From the Slate article:

I did think Rust’s speechifying this episode—especially as compared to the early episodes—was starting to feel a little far out and pretentious in a nonsensical way. Membrane theory, schmembrane theory.

Haglund: Membrane theory (or M-theory) is presumably an example of the “legitimate scientific and philosophical thought” that Pizzolatto is very fond of. (Update, 4:55 p.m.: In the comments, Dan Schiller notes that Cohle is probably saying “M-brane,” rather than membrane. Brane is short for membrane; both terms are connected with string theory.) Pizzolatto has defended Cohle’s speechifying from charges that it’s just dorm-room bullshit. Me, I love listening to McConaughey talk...

Two unrelated items. Or maybe they're not unrelated.

With Mad Men off the air for a few more months, I have no must-see TV these days. Or maybe it's called "appointment TV." But HBO started a new series on Sunday called True Detective, and after Doug previewed a bit of it and deemed it "not too violent" I decided to try it out. (I don't do violent on TV or in movies any more, which is why I don't see a lot of movies or watch a lot of TV.) One of the characters in True Detective has this monologue that really grabbed me by the throat. Here it is. I fear he's right. Screenwriter is Nic Pizzolatto.

"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist, by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." Rustin Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) in True Detective

And this YouTube video is also wise. Quirky but wise.

Breasts in advertising.

This video makes me think of the Springsteen lyrics "We learned more from a three minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school."

Betty Draper is a whack job.

It may appear that I'm picking on blonde women, see last post, but I'm really not. It also appears that I'm not thinking very deep thoughts these days, which is true. For fans of Mad Men, you will know what I mean about Betty being a whack job. She was never particularly stable but she's now way over the top psychologically.  As one headline said today, she's now "WTF Betty." It was great to have the show back last night. 

Truth embedded in comedy.

"Mad (Men) about the books of 1966: What Don and Joan were (probably) reading" by Ken Salikof

From The New York Daily News here.
Have you ever wondered what the Mad Men characters read in their spare time when they are not drinking, smoking, eating red meat, having sex and, oh, yes, brainstorming advertising campaigns?

We took an informal poll of the people associated with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and here are their reading selections from books published in that mad, mad year, 1966.

Of course these are really just my vodka gimlet-fueled imaginings.

Main mad man Don Draper (back for his fifth season on AMC this Sunday night) is intrigued by Norman Mailer’s “An American Dream.” Originally written on demand in monthly installments for Esquire magazine, the published novel tells the story of war hero and TV talk show host, Steven Rojack, and the nightmarish 24 hours that ensue after an argument leads to the murder of his drunken, shrewish wife. Call it the road not taken.

Silver-haired Roger Sterling, a man who has seen it all, finds it difficult to put down Roderick Thorp’s debut novel, “The Detective,” in which a Midwestern P.I. becomes involved in a case that lays bare big city corruption, sexual duplicity and marital infidelity in a fictional American metropolis. With his world-weary air, Roger could definitely moonlight as a gumshoe. (Fun fact: the book became a Frank Sinatra movie dud in 1968, but its sequel, “Nobody Lives Forever,” was the basis for 1988’s Bruce Willis mega-hit, “Die Hard”).

Betty Draper Francis, who’s finally had enough of Don’s endless infidelities, is mesmerized by Sue Kaufman’s proto-feminist novel, “Diary of a Mad Housewife,” because of her intense identification with the main character, a Manhattan wife and mother torn between a demanding husband who ignores her and a playwright lover who mentally abuses her. (The book was made into a memorable 1970 movie directed by Frank Perry.) Finally, Betty, here's someone who makes your life look good in comparison.

Precocious pre-teen Sally Draper is dutifully making her way through James Ramsey Ullman’s YA novel, “Banner in the Sky.”

But when Betty is out of the house, curious Sally sneaks a peak at her mother’s copies of Jacqueline Susann’s “Valley of the Dolls” and Harold Robbins’ “The Adventurers,” two steamy adult bestsellers from the golden age of 1960’s schlock. This is why flashlights and bedcovers were invented.

Peggy Olson has very adventurous tastes as befitting a young copywriter alive to what’s happening in the zeitgeist. Right now she is enjoying novels by two folk singers making their first forays into the world of fiction—Leonard Cohen’s “Beautiful Losers” and Richard Farina’s “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me,” books that will end up as literary touchstones of the counterculture. All she needs is an espresso and bongo drums playing in the background.

Pete Campbell may be an ambitious conformist at heart, but there are occasional flashes of a different Pete, which is why he likes to indulge his literary wild side by reading Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s first book, “Hell’s Angels,” the gonzo journalist’s account of the year he spent riding with the notorious California motorcycle gang. Can’t you just picture Pete on a Harley with Trudy riding pillion?

Spending all day navigating the sexual politics of Sterling Cooper, the indispensible Joan Holloway Harris finds inspiration in “The Diary of Anais, Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934,” about the early years of the sexually liberated French writer and lover of American novelist Henry Miller. It’s her Midnight in Paris.

Living in America, English partner Lane Pryce likes to keep in touch with his roots across the pond. Since no author better represents his homeland than Graham Greene, Lane is currently engrossed in the author’s latest “entertainment,” “The Comedians,” which tells the story of an English expatriate hotel owner trying to survive amid the terror of Papa “Doc” Duvalier’s reign in Haiti. There but for the grace of God…

Founding partner Bert Cooper is a deep thinker. That’s why his spare time reading consists of the ultra-weighty “The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences” by the French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault, a history of thought by one of the founders of the Postmodernist movement. Take off your shoes and scratch your head. (Confession: I have no idea what this book is about.)

Account executive Ken Cosgrove has a literary bent (he sold a short story to the “Atlantic Monthly”), which explains why he is drawn to John Fowles’ “The Magus,” in which an Englishman falls under the spell of a wealthy intellectual on a Greek island and experiences several levels of reality when he falls in love with a beautiful woman who might be a ghost. Eat your heart out, Kenny.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll put some Esquivel on the hi-fi, pour myself a martini and settle in for the night with James Clavell’s “Tai-Pan.”

Of the books listed in this article...

I've read:
Diary of a Mad Housewife (movie was good too)
The Comedians (also a good movie but Liz and Dick didn't make bad movies, in my opinion)
Hell's Angels
The Diary of Anais Nin (both volumes; note typo in article -- comma between "Anais" and "Nin")
Tai-Pan (half)

I've never read and never will:
The Magus (tried it; not a fan of John Fowles although I did like The French Lieutenant's Woman)
Valley of the Dolls (ditto for the movie)
Anything by Harold Robbins. I read one book by him way back in the 70s and that was enough. Too much actually.
Beautiful Losers (I had no idea that Leonard Cohen also wrote novels!)
The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences
Banner in the Sky
Nobody Lives Forever

I want to read:
An American Dream (Mailer)
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Farina)
The Detective (Thorp) -- and I disagree strongly with the author; the Frank Sinatra movie based on this novel was not "a dud," it was great...very campy and 60s

Photo credit: www.tvequals.com

All 'I Love Lucy' lovers should check out the Lucy fashion show over at The Complaint Department. It will make you smile.

Here's the Lucy Fashion show.
These pictures show what remains of a book my daughter once owned and apparently used quite a lot. It's missing a chunk at the back but I've never been able to throw it out. She would, in a New York minute (ha).

Excellent news!

Whew!
“Mad Men” lives! And it’s going to keep on living for at least two more seasons and possibly three under a new multi-year deal announced Thursday night by AMC and parent company Lionsgate along with Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator and executive producer.

I don't drink alcohol and I don't smoke cigarettes but I used to do both, so I've really missed Mad Men over the past, what ... year? Less than a year? More than a year?

I've been living vicariously through all that smoke and booze, without the liver and lung damage.

What's he drinking? Is that a whiskey sour? And that cig looks unfiltered too. Hard core! Although I know the actors are only smoking clove cigarettes (or so they say), I've never heard what they put in those glasses.