Week 581- Have You Never Been Melodramatic

I am not a cynical luddite, but I believe everyone ought to have a little oldfashionedness in her for the sake of maintaining a soul. Still, progress isn’t completely evil. It brings more good than bad in medicine (at least it does when you compare modern TB and smallpox statistics to the way things were a hundred years ago). But I’m also convinced that as an animal, one whose evolution is influenced by long-term realities, we are not wholly prepared to accept sudden changes. Moreover, being small we are overwhelmed by reasons to feel worthless and dumb; and when it becomes clear that a ten-year-old can do more with our phones than we can, let’s just say it is not good for the self esteem. (Then again I can drive a stick and parallel park without an AI, so there you little Weaselings!)

For at least 99% of human history we lived the same way. It was hard to win a living from the soil and when we managed to light a fire with rocks and damp kindling and somehow outlasted another winter we felt like whatever the word for rock star was way back in the Middle Ages.

Then the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th Century and, slowly, at first, the world began to change. A constant series of technological improvements kept piling up until a stunning era of mechanical miracles seemed to happen at once toward the close of the 19th Century. But, really, with the advantage of hindsight it is easy to see it had been coming since the invention of the steam engine.

Within the seventy or so years (the Biblical three score and ten), from the invention of the telephone to the dropping of the Bomb, our planet had a complete makeover (well, in the industrialized parts). I am able to grasp the quickness of it all via my grandfather (Leigh Freeman, 1882-1965). He was born into a world not all that far removed from the one inhabited by Shakespeare and yet he and I were alive at the same time for six years. Although this was aided by the fact that my father was his youngest child, born when my grandfather was in his fifties (to his second wife), it still boggles when I compare the sameness of human history before he was born to how much it changed during his life and continues to do the same since I came along.

But we are not made for that sort of big thinking. It takes effort, and we tend to come up a little short. Even those smug ten-year-olds have a dose of the Awful Truth waiting down the line. That’s because we are small creatures who own infinite, yet temporary minds. Our lives, even those of super-centurians, are short. We tend to fixate on personal changes that mean little in the Grand Scheme of Things (if there is one, which I do sense to a vague degree), but are dear to us.

For centuries we were tougher and perhaps wiser (if that’s the right word) than our technologies. Then again the competition was not rough. A person had to know a great many things to get the basics done because nearly everything was handmade. The Industrial Revolution changed all that; nowadays a person can go from cradle to grave without knowing a damn thing. Hardly anyone can explain how a garbage disposal works and we have yet to fully utilize our wonderful internet in the altruistic superhuman fashion that was touted in the 1980’s, oh, I remember the old Apple commercials. Our dwindling mass resourcefulness is the reason why there is more cyberspace devoted to pornography, criminal activty and snake oil advertising than there are spaces dedicated to intelligent chat forums seeking viable solutions to stuff like homelessness. It appears that the click falleth not far from the bait.

But, as stated, we are small beings who have small yet sometimes wonderful tiny powers to create good. And being such what might seem odd and dumb to one motivates another to experience genuine thoughts and emotion. Therefore I feel spotless when I state that one of the great things I remember from my past (besides energy and health) is a former American institution called The TV Guide (from here you will see it called “TVG” more often than the full title because italicizing stuff with arthritic fingers can be a drag–or a click and drag, when you think about it).

For non-Americans, and the unlikely presence of Americans of a fresher life stage than I, TVG was a weekly digest-sized magazine that debuted in 1953 (Lucille Ball was on the cover)–I say “was” even though it is still around in a half-ass form today. We all know what the digital age has done to print media; therefore it should surprise no one when I tell you that TVG sales sank ninety percent from its high of twenty million in 1970 to its lowest point, which in this case is “now.”

For close to forty years TVG was a weekly must read for this member of the American public until it became nothing but a shill for Reality TV sometime in 2005, which is the year I stopped reading it. One day I was at the supermarket and found myself reaching for it out of habit and at long last a head voice asked a one word question: “Why?” I clearly remember the year because of a convergence of personal problems. It was also when it expanded from the size of The Reader’s Digest to that of a standard magazine. “Why?” came at a sad moment because there I was, forty-six, with ten times that amount in pain in the latest hand I had to play. Both my mother and brother were very ill at the time and it appeared that one or both might die (which did not happen), I had given the veterinarian permission to end the life of my Cat BeeCee and I had just been laid off from a long term job that was supposed to be my path to retirement. There I was keenly in need of sympathy from a friend–even a print friend, but instead of comfort I saw and smelled the “new” TV Guide, the stink of fools like Paris Hilton and Scott Baio coming off it. I bought a New York Times instead.

But there were good old TVG times worth having and I’m glad I have them. It appeared in the grocery store on Thursdays (sometimes Wednesdays, such as Thanksgiving week). Most times, while growing up, there were either four or three persons in the house (there were periods between my mother’s many marriages), and being the youngest I had to wait for the TV Guide to pass through all sets of hands before I could get it; on average I had to wait until Saturday to see the damn thing. Now, grown-ups first was a law when it came to stuff like the newspaper and magazines. I understood that, but I was grateful that our third step was illiterate. He was a nice enough fellow who retired as a welder in the shipyard. He got the job due to his excellent record in the Korean War. But he stopped going to school in fourth grade and got away with truancy to work in the fields because he was poor and lived way the hell out in the sticks. Anyway, after the adults it would go directly to my big brother, Jack. He seldom pulled elder rank on me, but when it came to looking at the fucking TVG he was a real bastard. He would luxuriate in memorizing the fucking thing–and he’d actually hide it from me and he had the knack of turning up the instant I uncovered his latest cubby hole. I may have been a fan of TVG, but he was obsessed with it. Fucker.

It’s funny how things that shouldn’t mean much can stick to you with clarity. I cannot recall the sound of my father’s voice, but I clearly remember the strange little joy of lying on my bed at last reading the latest TV Guide (or trying to, through Mom’s coffee spills and cigarette burns and my brother’s greasy thumbprints). I recall the world’s easiest crossword puzzle at the end and the annoyance that passed over me when (sometime in the 90s?) the heading “Christmas Day” was replaced by December 25–it was like something special had died, a part of my childhood–and after all these years I’m still stumped to explain it.

Alas The TV Guide has gone from my life, for over twenty years. Unlike music and reading books, TVG had little to do with my writing, then or now, save for today. But I must credit it with adding the word “melodrama” to my vocabulary. In the listings every movie had a little thumbnail plot sketch and the genre–the same went for the weekly shows. I remember the main ones as drama, comedy, adventure, horror, science fiction, western and melodrama. I had no idea what melodrama meant. I didn’t bother asking anyone in our long procession of houses and apartments what melodrama meant because A.) We tended to know and be ignorant of the same shit; B.) The old “look it up” reply, even though I don’t recall the presence of a dictionary in our line of hovels. So I watched a couple of melodramas and discovered that it had to do with either corny Lil’ Nell tied to the train tracks sort of stories or big budget soapers of oppressed women. These usually starred big hitters like Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis. I saw it as a sort of supercharging of plain old drama. They were always in pristine black and white and were loaded with big musical fills, opulent sets and the certainty that one of the Grand Dames was going to get her revenge by the final reel. But I do recall one melodrama told in reverse. Bette Davis, with a strange little smile on her face, opened one melodrama by emptying a revolver into a guy who was trying to get the hell away from her. That was reminiscent of the sort of fantasy that often played out in my mind when my brother was stingy with the TV Guide. One thing I’ve noticed is that other than accusing one another of being melodramatic (usually coupled to the old standby “don’t be a martyr”), I do not see things labeled melodrama anymore. It’s as though it too has gone the way of TV Guide.

Sudden Stop Alert

The week that was was memorable and maybe even a little melodramatic, here in there, in the healthiest of ways.

The Sunday feature was presented by Yours Truly. The Letters of John and Abigail Adams is fine reading no matter where you are from. In this collection the early developments of the USA serve as a backdrop for insight into what really must have been a wonderful marriage.

The regular business of the week opened with Test Site by Zachery Brasier. This is as intense as The Andromeda Strain. It takes special talent to pull off a tale in which character development is secondary to the center of the story. This is a work of tremendous intelligence and pace, and the sheer weight of the billions of dead coming home is a tremendous prospect to consider. If Zachery had published this sixty years ago he would be very rich. Still, money has nothing to do with excellence.

Tuesday brought the latest return of Yashar Seyedbagheri–who a few years ago appeared over forty times in one year. Which is one of the few site records not held by the late great Tom Sheehan (although he is second and third). That year Yash appeared so often that I still hold the muscle memory of typing his name in my curling fingers. Breaking once again shows his keen skill with brevity and yet at the same time breathing full life into his verbal pictures of living.

Chris Klassen’s latest, Transition is a fine bit of Kafkafian work (hmm, maybe that is a word, no red line). I bet that at some level all writers tend to get stuck and immediately blame little “distractions.” That’s why I have Cats. The timing to this piece is crucial and Klassen worked it without a missed beat.

On Thursday, newcomer Hermester Barrington shared his wonderful Xius and Flying Carpet Emporium. This is a fantastic ride and there’s an overriding sense of goodwill to it that makes this charmer a first class story.

Marvin Garbeh Davis closed the week with his fantastic The Weather That Lives With Us. One thing the western world (especially the good old USA) does better than anything in the world is feel sorry for ourselves. If it happens to snow one day in April we freak out and when a heat wave lasts longer than usual then without doubt The End of Days is at hand. We are not all like that, but since our media is, we do look like a bunch of crybabies, and it is damn embarrassing. We forget that there are some places in the world that get clobbered by nature pretty much full time; places that lack the money to build an infrastructure against it; places where the governments are usually corrupt to a degree that the criminals in control do nothing to hide their activities. Davis’ story is simply told and makes no judgment, yet the result should be deeply felt.

The Melodramatic Finish

The previous line is probably the same thing as clickbait, but since I cannot think of a better one, we are stuck with it. Regardless, my list this week is neither a subjective best of, but is what used to be called a Public Service Announcement. I figure if a person does or is involved in any of the listed activities that they should change her/his evil ways or hope there is not any sort of conscious perdition awaiting them.

Ten Activities That Guarantee Waking Hell in Upon Your Death (Also Known as Ten Wrong Answers to the Commandments)

• Giving in and watching Reality TV (that’s even worse than making the shit up)
• Hiding desired items from younger siblings
• Always avoiding liquor, wildmen, wildwomen and wild-whatevers (You only live once for certain; if damned be sure to ask where such “entry” behaviours are listed in the commandments)
• Dumping unwanted Pets off in my neighborhood (I’m on to you fuckers)
• Public spitting (for me it’s like the Cell Block Tango in Chicago–just saw it again recently, hence the second mention. “Pop” killed a gum smacker. She was right, just like a spitter “he had it coming”)
• YouTube Slop Mongers (Actually it took longer for the slack-jaws and addled-eyed to reduce YouTube from a nice diversion into a bunch of trashy click-bait nonsense than I thought it would. We really do need an internet police force of some kind.)
• Glib Personal Hygiene Product Ads (It offends me when standards for coarse behavior and bad manners are inferred to matter only to uptight old people. There are the products and there is the need, but many–not all but way too many–of the advertisers should grow up a little and learn what it means to care about what other people think. No more “this isn’t your grandma’s vag cream” bullshit)
• Forcing employees to wear embarrassing costumes/uniforms (I was required to wear a plaid newsy hat and a bright red clip-on bow tie at one place I worked at. Obviously, the intent for such things is to humble the employee, to give the customer the edge by making the employee look like a fool. It was either that or starve because there were no jobs at the time and the fuckers knew it. We looked stupid and all day people said clever things about us. Maybe I should have had a sense of humor about it, but I cannot tolerate being laughed at. That was about forty years ago and I can still feel the hurt and the anger. Except for the military, the people who make up the “dress code” do not have to follow it. Gee, that stimulates goodwill–right? I’m happy to see that places like McDonalds and the Fred Meyer store that made me wear that hated hat and tie have changed the uniforms to something much more casual and less conspicuous. Sometimes change is good but, damn it, sometimes it is awful late coming round)
• Low Level Retail Rottengod (This rotten person works for retail giants and is placed in charge of small groups of people who are not rotten. We call them a “shift leader” or a “floor supervisor” when the bosses are listening, other names in private. The Retail hierarchy looks like this: The CEO is supremely rotten, but is getting soft–like a six week apple on the counter; the Upstairs Managers are serenely rotten, but are losing their toughness because they have no underlings to abuse in the upstairs offices; middle managers are somewhat rotten, but are losing their edge because they are fixated on cushy upstairs’ openings; the last in line of command are the Rottengods. They smooch the asses of superiors and treat employees like something they scrape off the bottom of their shoes. These are the mental defectives who specialize in ruining workdays of the regular employees to the degree that the ruin spreads like a cancer into the lives of the workers. There should be a hell, if only for these fuckheads.)
• All Yours

Leila

A Song for the Typical American TV Guide Cuisine

And this one for the hell of it…Same sunburst kind of guitar I played on stages not much worse than this one…