It's been a while since I've mustered the will to write something new. Partly this is because I have no job, so this has been my outlet for "work," and I decided to give myself a vacation, so to speak, and partly I needed to wait for something to build up so I could write about it, lest I start to emulate Marcel Proust and begin to write about sleep, which I've often said is a self-indulgent, lazy topic of conversation that you can be sure that I will tune out. (No one gives a shit about your dreams, everybody--FYI.) I could have, and arguably have, forced my words in the past. However, I'm voluble by nature, so talking about minutiae has never been an issue. Even now, with neurological issues that threaten to stymie my tongue, I manage to eke out grumblings about idiots who TiVo shit like Two and a Half Men (have I mentioned how much I loathe that show?).
I've subsequently occupied my time by perusing The NY Review of Books and The New Yorker. I have subscriptions to those, along with Harper's, and, if you think those are pretentious, ESPN Magazine. I enjoy Bill Simmons's columns, as well as Anthony Lane's movie reviews. David Denby can be too priggish for me to stomach at times, along with various professors from Princeton who fecklessly try to convince me of Toni Morrison's aesthetic attributes. But I digress.
One thing I discovered--a little late, admittedly--is the great AMC show Breaking Bad. I've seen Mad Men, and I can't get into it. It comes off (to me, at least) like a vapid period-piece of the advertising world of the 1960s. Breaking Bad takes place in the present, but this is not why I find it so compelling and, uh, addictive. The writing is pitch-perfect and the storytelling is not cloying. It doesn't demand your attention, but you find yourself drawn to it. Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle, in case you didn't know) plays a high school chemistry teacher stricken with incurable, advanced cancer. He, along with a 20-something kid who guides the distribution of the crystal-meth that they produce and amass, deals the drug beneath the attentions of his wife (Anna Gunn, who played Mrs. Bullock on Deadwood, my favorite show of all time), son, and brother-in-law, who happens to be a DEA agent. I've reached the end of the ongoing run, and look forward to watching its resumption coming up on Sunday.
I was also grateful for the release of the recent documentary of the Canadian tour of The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights. It has a distinct Eat the Document (the unreleased film about Bob Dylan's 1966 tour of England) feel, without the Dada-istic digressions or someone--like John Lennon did--needed to temper the acerbic frontman. Jack White is gentlemanly and gracious, even to the nursing home residents who have no idea who he is. And he brotherly-ly watches over and guides Meg, the other half of the duo whose emotional tenuousness and fragility necessitated their subsequent, and currently unbroken, hiatus. Decry the shenanigans and the apocryphal "brother-sister" thing all you want, but it's obvious that he cares about her. The gentle way that he consoles her by putting his arm around her after playing a tender "White Moon" on a piano shows that he empathizes with her. The seamless way that she intuitively follows his leads on guitar with her drums shows that she does, too.
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