On a Nice Day: A Stream of Consciousness

I love taking walks during the cold months. I find the late fall and winter to be uniquely sublime, and not just because the lesser warm-weather creatures stay inside and hide then. It is nice having a park or a paved trail to myself. Indoor privacy is nice, but outdoor privacy is just lovely, especially on a nice, cool day. One of those days when the sun is out, but the air is chilled like cheesecake. Good weather for a trench coat and corduroy slacks, and a pair of combat style boots that are still solid and taken care of, but tired and worn. Weathered like an old hooker who's seen many beds in many towns. Too many miles, too many tricks, and too little fun are wearing on her. She needs to hang it up and find a warm barroom to wait out what's left. But she's like the smoke stained lace curtains: still pretty under the right conditions. The right lighting and a little digital editing can make anything nice to look at. Like an old water tower moldering under the sky. The refuse of something that nobody can remember anymore; all they know is that it's a great place to smoke a bone... get lucky... or leave a body. It IS technically ugly. It's urban blight, after-all. But urban blight has become its own kind of niche art. Some of us find it enlightening when it's good. And it is if you know how to look at it. Which just goes to show, ANYTHING becomes noble if it can last long enough: ugly buildings... whores... lawyers. Just look at "Gone With the Wind". That movie is awful, but it's considered high culture because of how old it is. Bob Dylan hasn't made a good record in decades and yet every English major and hipster with a complex worships at the alter of the Jewish kid from Duluth who wrote songs about the relevant, even though he only got good after he stopped being relevant. He proved his critics wrong because he outlasted them long enough to write a book that I didn't like. But you have to respect that. And perhaps that's why autumn is the venerable season. The seasons change, and the year gets older with each month. By November the year is ready for retirement, and even if it sucked, it's been too long for anyone to remember why.

Fargo Season Two: Not so Minnesota Nice.

            I didn’t want to do it. I managed to avoid it all through season one. But I finally broke-down and watched the Season Two premier of “Fargo” on FX.

            Set in the morose, crisis-harrowed late 1970’s, Fargo Season Two takes place in the freezing, grey Middle American tundra of its namesake. And like the culture defining, 1996 classic by the Coen Brothers, FX’s Fargo manages to capture the lurid, bloodstained, homespun, wood-paneled, linoleum floor, “ya, you betcha” world of seemingly innocuous people steeped in a crisis of identity and innocence.

            FX’s Fargo seems to capture the silk hat… though not the magic of the film. The Coen Brother’s classic fable of greed vs. good on the prairie had all the subtle wryness of a Garrison Keillor monologue behind the gauntlet of explosive brutality we expect from them. It was more than brilliant, and sweet, and sad, and moving, it was orgasmic.

            The series, on the other hand, seems to come-up short. In a TV world hallowed by cable dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire, Fargo for TV fails to be original and to strike us like its namesake. It suffers a lot like A&E’s “Bates Motel”. It has all the potential of a groundbreaking classic ten years ago. But it’s not ten years ago. The tricks are old now. The magic is gone.

            And for a religious devotee of the 1996 film, that hurts. It hurts because it cheapens the impact and the importance of the original. FX’s series cherry-picks the parts left to it, and manages to do nothing special. The show isn’t terrible. But it certainly doesn’t impress me… yet.

            But I’m not a total Debbie Downer, so here are the things that DID impress me about the series premier.

            The acting is totally genuine. It’s genuine in that way of being awkward and somewhat hammy. There’s a quietness and utter mediocrity about these characters that strikes me as absolutely convincing. That’s something too seldom seen these days.

            The visual design is absolutely convincing as well. Cheap-looking and lacking any sense of style, it perfectly captures a Sears Catalogue Middle America. A land of booger green polyester, flannel shirts, and piss yellow wall paper. Not once did I ever doubt that we were in the 1970’s, and never once did I get that awkward feeling of watching a reenactment. A feeling I get WAY too often when watching period pieces.

            I was, however, disappointed that the show does not use the heart-fluttering Carter Burwell soundtrack of the original film.

            About the UFO… I don’t even know. Maybe it will make sense in future episodes. But since this is the 70’s, maybe a random UFO makes enough sense as is. 

Tom G Reviews: An Honest Liar

I recently had the pleasure of watching a documentary that made a name for itself at several film festivals last year, including Tribeca. “An Honest Liar” (2014) details the life of legendary magician and skeptic James Randi, covering his career as a magician and escape artist, his homosexuality, and his decades-long mission to debunk psychics of all varieties and MO’s.

The recounting of how Randi exposed the likes of Peter Popoff, Uri Gellar, and the media’s willful blindness strike me as a the story of man who, with his intelligence and skill, could easily have become the best of the hustlers he despises, instead using his gifts to expose and educate the public about such schemes and the con men behind them. Sadly, his message of skepticism and the value of rational thought often fall on ears in deaf denial.

Well edited, but slightly shorter in length then it should be, “An Honest Liar” delivers its truth potently, as so few documentaries do. That truth is, “People believe what they need to believe”. Whether it is the public who need a healer, con artists who lie to put food on the table, or even Randi himself (I’m not giving away any spoilers); people believe in the reality they need to as a mechanism for living. And that point is what makes James Randi’s story so intriguing and so important.

I would recommend “An Honest Liar” to anyone interested in James Randi’s career or understanding man’s capacity to deceive and be deceived. 

Helter Skelter Author Dead, But Hollywood Still Loves Charlie

Vincent Bugliosi, the man who prosecuted Charles Manson and his “Family” for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, died earlier this month at 80. After going into private practice in 1972, Bugliosi wrote “Helter Skelter” an acclaimed book documenting the infamous case from start to finish. The book was adapted for the small screen twice, first in 1976 and again (less impressively) in 2004.

It’s another tick in the long timeline of the lurid case that has captivated the minds of Americans for decades. And while to most, the story of Manson and his band of murderous misfits represents a strange era, there are some even stranger people who are gripped by morbid fascination with the case and Manson himself. But now to the repellant part, there is a market for it.

Ever since Manson and his “family” exploded into the news in 1969, they have been a ready source of sales for TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the web. The myth of Manson attracts eyeballs. Bugliosi’s book and the movies based on it raked-in millions. In facts, it gave birth the “Serial Killer” market: a media niche that tantalizes the dark sides of those who are turned-on by it. The lurid and mysterious parts of the human experience have that magic that just sells itself. It’s attractive on a certain level.
            
The latest media dalliance with Manson Family mayhem is NBC’s primetime drama, “Aquarius” starring David Duchovny as an LAPD detective on the trail of Charles Manson in the late 1960’s. While nothing shocks me, I have to say that I was disturbed by the idea of this show. It feeds into a myth surrounding Charles Manson, portraying him as some kind of evil genius, when in reality, he was an illiterate, transient hillbilly who spent more of his life institutionalized than out and was known to have committed at least one rape at knifepoint. Less that mastermind than the marginal misfit, when the time came to make a name for himself he had young girls do his dirty work.

But worse than propping up a coward is the idea that Hollywood would exploit the deaths of six people. One of whom was eight months pregnant. Charles Manson left a lot of victims in his wake, not all of them murdered. And worse still is that there is an audience who find it entertaining. There is an audience who will probably root for Manson as an anti hero. And the fact that we live in a society that lionizes a victimizer is probably a society in trouble. 

Bottomed-Out by the Black Pool

           Her single light revealed the stone walls at the bottom of the labyrinth she had spent so many terrifying hours navigating. The unimaginable being that had pursued her throughout had now left her alive for reasons which she knew not, but was nevertheless grateful for. Though he had spared her life, he had not spared her eyes, or her heart… or her imagination. She now watched as her companion… the last one still left… sank slowly into the black and seemingly bottomless pool before her. She nervously fingered the black and white length of silk tied fastidiously around her neck. Her tense brown eyes locked compulsively behind the lenses of dowdy glasses on the body of a hard and good young woman sinking into nothingness.

            The walls, like the undercroft of some decrepit church or an ossuary of the dead of Paris, were lined with crude carvings. As they had descended ever deeper, the carvings had progressed into ever more horrific shapes to taunt the eye and turn her imagination against her. They were pagan and brutal. Stick men and primitive beasts with horns and multiple heads flanked gibberish writing. She feared to move her small light, for any flash against a wall might reveal another image most bewitching to burn itself into her mind where she would see only it in this darkness.

            Sitting alone, she fingered the collar of her maroon trench coat and pondered what her next move would be. She could not go back. The only way out was forward, but there was no forward, only down… into the hole… into its blackness. Still, how could she? It was still full of the water that had by now consumed her companion in whole, vanishing her like a lovebird’s penny in an artesian well.  The young woman’s mind began to fill with a terrible thought. Was this Hell? Had their escape route been a descent into an underworld from which there was no exit? A feeling began to creep over her. They had entered the maw of a nightmare. And worse yet, she was pretty sure that she was awake.

            She waited as thoughts of what had lured her into this place beyond time and reason swirled. Pushing her fine dark hair back from her face, she could look beyond the darkness and into the past; a past too agonizingly recent to forget.

            She had watched him from across the room many times, although she pretended not to. She waited for him in corridors and found reasons to buy things where he worked. Headphones, a pack of AA batteries, a power strip; all overpriced, but worth the trip just to make sure that he was there and that she might run into him by accident. She never engaged him directly, at least at first. The temptation and the possibility of absolute failure levied sheer terror on her timid heart.

            Then he came to her. Their eyes had somehow locked in the old library that fall day. He had never paid her a second thought, other than her normal and yet strikingly unusual appearance. A soft afternoon light dropped through the window on the pale, eye grabbing young woman. She seemed to glow in that way that only the Dutch masters could achieve in oil on black canvasses. He approached her and for whatever reason they hit it off. For the first time in her long time, she felt legitimately happy. It was a good day.

            One night she opened a fortune cookie and it read, “You CAN have what you want.”

            She remembered standing in a dark corridor some months later, alone. Her phone rang and she answered it. It was a text message. They knew that she would not respond, and she figured that that was the point. Somebody they both knew, he better than her, had laid it on in clear terms. He was dead.

            It was an automobile accident. Something had happened, she never learned what, but someone had slammed into someone else. He was either that someone or that someone else. She could imagine it with a near clairvoyance; the broken and twisted wreckage of an economy car like a carcass on the side of a rural road under the spread of a single, barren, diseased elm tree. His red blood squeezed from him, and spattered like paint across the grey road. His glasses, broken and twisted fell through darkness and to her feet. The shattered pieces of what she had only reached-out and touched enough to fall in love with, now before her and irreparable. She would never see him again.

            They had not spoken in some days. She imagined that it was her fault. She knew that she could be grinding on people, especially when she did not mean to. Had she said the wrong thing? Had she done the wrong thing? Made the wrong move? Most likely, yes. She knew that was what it had to be. She scared him away, and before she could tell him how she felt and why. Again, she had sabotaged herself without knowing it.

            It would be just another part of a life that she could not fit into.

            “I know why I’m here, now,” she lamented, her voice drained and quiet, “I can’t taste the future. I’m not meant to go on. I guess I belong back up there… nowhere.”

            “Are you sure?” said a voice, deep, but unspecific. She was startled to her feet by the sudden reply from nowhere and from no one.

            “The only way forward is down, through the hole.”

            “But it’s full of water,” she answered back.

            “Only because you want there to be. Your fear is what keeps you here,” explained the voice. “Beyond there is unknown, but it is not here. Through there is tomorrow.”

            The water began to drain from the hole. She watched as the slow pull grew into a flush. Soon the water was gone, and she found herself staring into blackness. She struggled to see a bottom, but she could not. Might she drown down there? Might she come-out alive? Would she simply drift in the darkness ahead? Perhaps she would land near the light of day. She did not know. She faced the black chasm of a future where nothing was impossible.

            “The only way forward in down,” said the voice.

            She pictured him waiting for her down there. Might the one she lost be there to share whatever future awaited her? She had to believe so. Her heart raced as she stepped to the edge, her cold, wet feet trembled in her boots, her thoughts fixated on his image.

            “Dream on,” said the voice in her ear.

            With that, she took a step and plunged into the hole and into whatever lay ahead. Falling down…down…down…

Tom G Wears: Master of the Closet

Clothes... the last of the old school inventions. We keep warm in them, we stay cool in them, we express our personal taste in them, flaunt our status in them, hide our nudity in them. Some of us become ourselves when we get dressed... some of us get dressed to become someone else. Some people hate thinking about clothes. Some obsessively ponder every day's costume. Some are fashionable, some are not. Some spend big, some spend very little. Some...

Shut-up and get to the friggin' thing!

Getting dressed is a hard business for most of us. Especially when it comes to proper shirts... you know, the kind with buttons. These days, everything is small. Small collars, small cuffs, low waistlines, and skinny legs.

Tiny collars and Renaissance fair pants are all good-n-dandy if you have the build for it. But most men... MEN... aren't build for it. and more over, some of us simply don't look good in it. If there's three C's to getting suited and booted it's this: Cut, Color, and Comfort.

Cut: A garment should be shaped to flatter your figure. Big head = big collar, Big hips = longer jacket, and I could go on. Think balance.

Color: Does the color(s) of a garment look right on you? Do you feel right in them? Those with a pink complexion probably won't look good in red for the reason that there's no cool color to counterbalance his complexion. But then again, perhaps blue or green just isn't his/her color. Does it feel right? Does it look right? Think balance.

Comfort: The biggie. Probably the most important. If you don't feel right in a garment, you won't move right in the a garment, and then you're not in control of the garment. And no matter how stylish it may be, you'll know that you're not in control. I, for one, hate low-rise pants. There are few things worse than feeling as if your ass is going to pop out of your pants every time you sit down. And so, I do not wear them. Even if it means women see me as less of a spry, Swedish sex machine.

In short: Your clothes need to work for you. You need to be the master of your closet, whatever that closet looks like. And make no mistake, just because you might master the closet, doesn't mean that you're IN the closet.

I'll be banging-out a series of these designed to help the fellows be a little happier about getting dressed, and even help the ladies do a better job of dressing their fellows. I hope you'll check them out, lay some feedback on me, and share them. I hope to teach you a thing or two, and maybe send you away with a good chuckle.

Hapless Without a Point

A life focused entirely on going somewhere only to get nowhere is a hard one. It’s a difficult thing to pour yourself into your work… into your passion, and to be rejected without knowing how or why you were rejected. To reach-out into darkness and to find nothing. A silent “No” is the worst rejection there is; especially when everything originally pointed to “Yes.”

            

To give all you have to a thing, to a passion, to your future, and to simply see a smiling face vanish behind a closing door. Your future is on the other side, behind the smiling face and happy greetings, and the promises of better than what you had before. It’s that point in the journey when you realize that there’s no treasure waiting for you at the end. If you’re lucky enough to not be stymied by an impossible feat you’ll most likely find nothing at the end, just an empty box… or barren table… or vacant summit. Maybe you’ll find a door that’s locked and the key’s been melted-down into someone’s weird accoutrement.

            

He played his song and opened his heart, only to find that nobody was listening. And those who were, were deaf. She tuned-in only to find-out that everyone else had tuned-out. How do you live on a different wavelength? How do survive when you are invisible? Why share yourself when nobody wants any part of what you are?

            

Rejection with a curse and a “No” is at least clear. You understand why. Rejection with a smile and a “Yes” is something else. What can you make of it? It’s a good meal with a bad taste. Or a bad meal with a good taste. Or just a meal with just a taste. It’s a nothing meal with a nothing taste. How can your bowels digest nothing?

            

Serves me right for thinking that I could ever succeed at anything. 

Punching Jesse Ventura in the Face

Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's 2012 memoir, "American Sniper" was released on Christmas Day, 2014. Why anyone who go an see such a depressing thing on Christmas is beyond me. As if the suicide rate isn't high enough during the holiday season.

Texas born and bred Chris Kyle was a burly, blue-eyed, All American serviceman and elite sniper with SEAL Team 3. He survived a four-term bit in the Iraq War, including being shot multiple times and nearly dying in at least one roadside bombing, a daily occurrence during the war's hottest years. Kyle is perhaps one of the most prolific snipers in the history of modern warfare, clocking a confirmed 160 kills. Though the number is possibly higher... especially if you believe Kyle himself.

So what does this have to do with  anything? The man's a war hero. Alright... yes... a war hero. Bingo. He accomplished something few soldiers ever could or would. He shot dead at least 160 insurgents threatening American servicemen stationed in Iraq. Or did he? He himself admitted to killing not only Kalashnikov-toting terrorists, but as well, mothers walking with there children, old men, and possibly children. All Iraqi civilians who were unlucky enough to draw the short straw that day when they crossed his cross hairs. Even more heart-rending was his own admission in his memoir that he enjoyed the killing. Driven by bloodlust and a good ol' boy's complete and utter confidence that the mission was noble and good, Chris Kyle became by far the most prolific sniper since man began hunter man with a gun.

Without the slightest bit of sarcasm, Chris Kyle admitted to enjoying his work. In his memoir he described the those he killed as "savages" and never once regretted what it was that he did. Not even conceding as so many warriors do, to his actions as terrible but necessary. After his book was published, he made multiple appearances on television news and talk shows, speaking candidly and matter-of-factly about those he killed, and his record as a sniper. He spoke about the violence he encountered, witnessed, and perpetrated like a pro talking shop. With no regret and no doubt and no reflection he never once doubted the war. He even revealed himself to be a braggart, exaggerating the number he killed and gloating about punching ex wrestler and open critic of the Iraq War, Jesse Ventura in the face. An incident Ventura denies. Kyle even claimed to have shot and killed several victims of Hurricane Katrina, though this was never confirmed.

Like any leopard, the light reveals his spots.

Perhaps the greatest casualty of war is the human heart. Those who survive, survive. Those who don't, don't. No one who experiences war comes-out the whole person they were before. It's an experience that shatters even the hardiest country boy and the toughest camp whore. It leaves a void in the psyche and in the emotional core... an emptiness in the soul that most likely is never again filled. What Chris Kyle saw... and did... in Iraq, was a horror greater than its face value. What he lost there was more than his blood and his time with family. What he lost was something more profound.

At least, we would like to believe that. The truth is more likely less than happy. Chris Kyle's darkness lived long behind his eyes. Like so many young men who live by the gun, he was not only capable of violence... he probably enjoyed it. He enjoyed leaving victims in his wake.

Like any braggart, his brag ultimately landed him a challenge. He was sued by Jesse Venture in civil court. Ventura ultimately won his suit, leaving Chris Kyle's estate on the hook for atleast half a million dollars.

In 2013, the man who saw mankind down the sight of his barrel, found himself on the other side of the bore. He was killed at a shooting range in Erath County, Texas. Shot to death by a fellow veteran whom he was attempting to help the only was he knew how to... shooting targets.

Chris Kyle was no hero. He was no winner. He was a murderer, a warrior, a liar, and a cruel narcissist. More over, he was a victim. A victim of a war, a victim of a system, and a victim of a way of life. He was victim long before Iraq. Chris Kyle was a victim, and like so many victims he left behind victims.