“Things that remind of other things…”
“Trivialities”
It begins with “The Bear.” I get it that some people just don’t get it. Yet, at least. Fine. I quit “Mad Men” after two episodes before later discovering the layered complexity and its occasional pure joy — such as the wonderful song and dance homage bit done by Robert Morse after the death of his character, Bert Cooper. The good shit always rises (it’s the fat content!). “The Bear” has terrific characters, acted superbly, and ones that I actually give a damn about. It pays homage to the Second (and best) City. The soundtrack is also excellent (if predictably Tweedy-heavy). And the show has great emotional range, whipsawing from the anxiety-inducing chaos of the “Seven Fishes” to the Zen-sublime of “Forks.” The characters evolve but also stay true to their native DNA — unlike the preposterously horrid reboot of “Sex and the City” called “And Just Like That… (It Sucked Ass!),” which we now enjoy hate-watching. For my money, “The Bear” is well worth any damage to the undercarriage for the stretch of smooth, open road that is your rich reward.
And living in Chicago, we decided to pay a visit to the fine-dining establishment EVER, which was used to film the “Forks” episode that had Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) honing his craft at a world-class restaurant under the tutelage of uber-calm Chef Terry (Olivia Colman). The food they served was highly inventive and quite delicious. Although for a long time I was an anti-foodie. Fuck all the pretentious foam and the portion-to-price inversion, etc.. But I’ve come around over time (Alinea finally clinched it!), and for the culinary experience alone I’m glad we went to EVER. The bonus was in obliquely connecting us to the show we love. Maybe you’d get a similar jolt from visiting the bar that gave the world “Cheers.” Or for fans of “Slumdog Millionaire,” dropping from that outhouse into the underlying cesspool. Whatever floats you…
And that provides a nice, clean segue to another aspect of EVER that was pleasantly surprising. Around mid-meal, I excused myself to use the facilities, which was a series of spacious and clean private washrooms. As I was closing the door, I heard a voice but couldn’t exactly localize it. Was it coming from the adjacent restroom? It was a man’s voice, soft and calm, and it sounded vaguely familiar. Hey, is that Matthew McConaughey?? It is! Wait, is he HERE?! Noooooooo, he wasn’t. At least not in person. It was an audiobook of his memoir “Greenlights.” And I have to say, it was perhaps the greatest bathroom experience I’ve ever had (at least to date), and I was in there a good 5 to 7 minutes. Whether you are just freshening up, checking your texts, emptying your bladder, or having multi-staged spasmodic ass-plosions, it is so relaxing to hear a familiar and soothing voice talking about their own life’s journey (a close second might be David Attenborough discussing marine life, which might have you pondering where your biological effluvia was heading and its overall effect on the chain of life that unifies the planet). It had me thinking that ALL toilets everywhere, whenever feasible, should employ Mr. McConaughey’s melodious vocalizations in this way. The world would truly, undoubtedly, be a better and more joyful place! I’ll never forget it.
“Who’s on in your toilet?”…. taking callers now.
“Player-8 has been eliminated.”
“LOVE on the 4th of July”
“My Morning Rorschach”
“Mad Men and Troubadours”
The peripatetic life of the journeyman folksinger has seen our man Tommy Treacle wearing sundry musical hats. From his bid to write horror-movie themes to reworking heavy metal songs into folk ballads to a foray into political tunes, he has generally eschewed the conventions of the touring troubadour. While he’s seen his share of dive bars and roughneck saloons, enough to earn a few scars and sordid tales from the road, he always looked for ways to find new audiences. During one particularly fallow stretch, he took a stab at writing product jingles. In this first example, you will hear an old ad spot from the 50’s for Ban Deodorant, which is followed by his own demo version done in the early aughts. The irony here will not be lost on his friends and family since Tommy rarely ever used deodorant himself.
Tommy even shopped his wares around Madison Avenue but to no avail. He watched the entire series of “Mad Men” and did find inspiration (saying he looked more like Bert Cooper than Don Draper) but grew dispirited when he discovered that Secor Laxatives is not a real product. He claimed it was his best jingle (I’ll try to uncover it!). Our second ditty is his take on FLOMAX, which dates from 2007 and follows an actual product advertisement for the same. And, for the record, he always contended his urinary stream was stronger than Secretariat’s.
There were a few others, including for Preparation H, but I’m not sure the world is ready for that one. It’s pretty graphic.
“Stephen Miller Slept Here!”
“Hey, Trump…..”
“My Menagerie”
“Trump’s A-hole Conclave”
Since Trump offhandedly endorsed the notion of him becoming pope, I wanted to offer a few papal names that he might deserve:
Pope Decadent X
Pope Doucheus Amoralis III
Pope Un-Innocent IV
Pope Anus Equinus IX
Pope Idiot Maximus
Pope Irredeemable V
Pope Judas Democratis II
Pope Fuckface I
I want to talk for a moment about these “artworks” of Jon McNaughton. I have come to appreciate them as perhaps the most succinct embodiment of the projection and hypocrisy of the MAGA movement. It is, in short, an unapologetic trolling exercise. I think the overarching theme of the modern Republican movement is pure FANTASY, much of it of the sinister kind. Power and policy based on lies and half-truths. For McNaughton these visions come conveniently in both bright, aspirational and also dark, apocalyptic colors. He’s Bob Ross for the paranoid, conspiratorial, gun-toting, white nationalist, homophobic, incel coalition. It’s all so fucking sad and ridiculous.
The political problem of triangulating with an opposition force ran Clinton into trouble as he tacked to the center and signed the ill-advised criminal justice bill while balancing the budget; yet they still gutted him over the Lewinsky affair (Blowgazi). The chief inquisitor, Newt Gingrich, at the time cheating on his wife, showed them the way and now, true to form, they herald Trump — the serial groping, philandering and porn-star paying dirtbag — as their holy deliverer. That asymmetrical dynamic has only increased since the 1990’s in the “post-truth” and “alternative facts” era. The GOP has turned itself into what Paul Newman’s character in “The Sting” called “the big con.” You can’t win a game if one side keeps changing the rules and, even then, won’t abide by them. It’s an administration run, literally, by members of FOX News, which itself creates a dizzying stream of propaganda, fearmongering and counterfactual stupidity. They succeed daily at Steve Bannon’s exhortation to “flood the zone with shit.” In fact, that would be an apt tag-line — “FOX News: Flooding the Zone With Shit Since 1996!”. Obama faced the same headwinds, as evidenced by the absurd faux outrage over his TAN SUIT (to ponder: how many tan suits equals an attempted stolen election?).
It is well known that there are a great many more words in the English language for negative attributes than positive. I think the wordsmiths were preparing us for the extreme buggery and skullduggery from the likes of McCarthy-Nixon-Trump, the axis of weasels. Psychologists have a term that well applies here, the “dark triad,” which includes the following pathological charcteristics (all fully max’d out by Trump himself):
Narcissism
Machiavellianism
Sociopathy
What differs in Trump 2.0 is that so many more of his administration, and in the Republican Congress, share some or all of these negative characteristics. It’s a gigantic morass filled with mis/disinformation, conflicts of interest, illegality, non-transparency, and an utter lack of expertise. A menacing-clown-car driving wildly around the country with “dirty” fissile material in the trunk that contaminates anything within a hundred mile radius, while also playing really shitty music. The White House is now a gilded Porta-Potty for all the “waste, fraud and abuse” that comes out of Trump’s mouth. Yup, it’s a Dark Fantasyland that McNaughton and FOX and QAnon have created and continue to prop up. To the upside, you could teach kids a panoply of negative vocabulary terms based in DJT alone. But first, a little music theory. As some will know, a musical cord is made up of three notes (a triad), often the root, the third and the fifth of a given scale in Western music. A particular chord is called “tritonic” if it contains a “tritone,” which is a dissonant interval of three whole tones between two notes. In the Middle Ages, it was sometimes referred to as “the Devil’s interval” for its spooky evocations and is frequently employed in horror films like “Halloween.”
So I began thinking in “triads” or chords, vis-a-vis Trump/Musk, Inc. Here are a few tritonic chords sketched out as examples. Feel free to build your own chord library at home!
Destructive
Divisive
Duplicitous
That works pretty well. Let’s try another:
Sadistic
Sycophantic
Sleazy
Fun, right?! And also damn accurate!
Heedless
Hypocritical
Huckstering
There are so many possibilities. It’s hard to stop!
Mean
Manipulative
Maniacal
Would you like more….???
Disruptive
Destructive
Defiling
It just never ends…..
Bombastic
Bullying
Buffoonish
… sadly for us…
Un-Constitutional (Authoritarian)
Un-Christian (Assholes)
Un-Scientific (Asinine)
But to veer away from the alliterative, I offer these last few:
Incompetent
Vengeful
Corrupt
With their typical actions characterized as…
Fabrication
Projection
Bluster
Then finally we have the home triad…. and this should be their new slogan (but, then again, why stop at three??):
FANTASY…!!
VENALITY…!!
CRUELTY…!!
BIGOTRY…!!
HYPOCRISY…!!
MENDACITY…!!
Great Exudations 