The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

DOUBLE FEATURES. Donnie Smith and I have been hosting the I Like to Watch podcast for a few years now and one of our staples is the Triple Feature centered around the movie we choose to discuss every two weeks. Just recently, I decided to use the feature personally, creating little evenings of double features at home.

This week I randomly decided to watch a personal favorite, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, with Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris, creator and host of The Gong Show. I hadn’t seen it in a while—it’s really fun as both a history of television sort of piece as well as a Cold War spy thing—and then followed up with Robert Redford’s Quiz Show. Jon Turturro is simply amazing.

I don’t have tons of time but I like this practice. In the meantime, the double bill of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind/Quiz Show is solid. I recommend.

I decided the next evening to catch the Russo brothers’ The Electric State on Netflix despite the ridiculously negative reviews. It was fine, a bit rushed in the character development, and less a failure of the directors and more a botched writing job. I’m thinking I don’t care much for Millie Bobby Brown as an actor—she was better when her character didn’t speak. Still interesting. The quick decision to follow it up with a much, MUCH better movie about a similar dystopian world—Spielberg’s Ready Player One—was a solid double feature choice. RPO is the same basic story with far better writing and, for a Gen Xer, far more relatable pop culture references in abundance.

Next up? Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/Speedracer.

REAL LIFE IS NOT LIKE TELEVISION. I recall, at a WBEZ Science event I produced, a geneticist on the panel going off on a rant against the fake science on shows like CSI. His frustration lay in the idea that the shows promote a level of competence and scientific know-how that simply don’t exist in the world of reality and that these shows create a fictional belief in DNA science and police expertise and that this belief skews the public’s perspective on what science and law enforcement can do.

Same with the spy shows and governmental conspiracy programs. If one were to believe that those in control of the rudder were as cool, collected, and expert as the TV stars, it would become pretty easy to think that our own agencies were super knowledgeable and good at what they do.

When buttressed against the reality of Trump’s National Security Advisor inviting a reporter from The Atlantic to a text chain elucidating the top secret plans to bomb Yemen, it becomes obvious that these guys are morons. Complete clowns. Unserious actors. Incompetent on levels that boggle the fucking mind.

Are we seriously considering that these boobs have it in them to overturn democracy? Far from a cabal of evil geniuses, these idiots resemble more a group of aged-out frat boys who can’t find their keys and argue about who puked in the kitchen last night.

DIPPING THE TOE. A few weeks ago I caught Fool for Love at Steppenwolf. It was solid and well done. It made me mourn the discarding of the hyper-masculine voice in playwriting a bit. The work of Shepherd, Mamet, and Pinter are what made me, in part, desire to start a theater company way back in 1992. While there I realized I hadn’t been to see a show at Steppenwolf since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? with Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon back in 2011.

This week I swung by the Goodman to see Pinter’s Betrayal. Given my history, few people know about infidelity more than I so Pinter’s backwards tale of it seems both fitting and interesting. The play, originally produced in 1978, details an affair with the husband, wife, and lover as the characters. It is presented from the end of the marriage to the beginning of the seven year affair. The brilliance of Pinter’s play is that, once you’ve dealt with the end, the reverse journey elucidates so much more in those moments that lead to it.

I think about my divorces sometimes (not as often as you think) and I see them in reverse order. The beginnings are now colored with the betrayals of the dissolution and finding the mindless joy of the early moments is indelibly altered by the checkered conclusion.

This particular production starred Helen Hunt, Robert Sean Leonard, and Ian Barford. I’ve seen Barford in a number of Steppenwolf productions where he is an ensemble member. We’ve all seen Leonard and Hunt in films. The trio is uniformly excellent although watching established movie stars adopt British accents was distracting at first.

Two thoughts as my evening concluded. I find I like going to things like this by myself. There is a sense of invisibility, anonymity, in going out in the Big City alone and experiencing art solo. Second is this: after a whole section of my life participating and creating this sort of impermanent art, I’m finding my place (for right now) as a spectator, to be very satisfying.

TROLLING… Democrats should toss a set of keys to each of Trump’s cabinet picks every time they encounter them and say “Not a scratch on the paint, buster!”

THE STRANGE WALK OF CAPITALISTIC TENDENCY. On days when I’m doing administrative work, I drive downtown in the morning, park, and walk from Millennium Park south on Michigan Avenue. Along the way, I am confronted by so many calls for the limited resources I have it’s a bit unsettling.

The downtown is littered with businesses closed and storefronts for lease like a once brilliant smile missing teeth. Some used to be restaurants, others retail spaces. These now empty mausoleums tell stories of big dreams, backbreaking work, and failure surrounded by buildings towering high as reminders of a booming time when all of them thrived.

As I cross Michigan at Monroe, on the corner I see a man in a panda suit with his little girl. They are selling Girl Scout Cookies with familial zeal (“One. Two. Three. GIRL SCOUT COOKIES FOR SALE!”). I wave and smile while pondering the idea that first, no one buys these cookies because they are particularly good confections but because there is a cause of sorts attached and second, this is a nearly perfect way to train little girls about the transactional nature of life.

At Adams, directly across from the Art Institute, is an immigrant woman, huddled with two small children, selling various candies for about a 50% mark-up from the Walgreen’s three blocks north. I know she got them that store because she still has the Walgreen’s branded plastic bags they charged her seven cents apiece for at her purchase.

Crossing Jackson and strolling past sign after sign of sales and cut-rate chicken sandwiches and QR codes on placards trumpeting the new thing to buy, I encounter the $3.00 lady. This woman sits at the same bus stop every morning and every night, defiantly demanding three dollars from anyone walking by. I’ve heard that her need for this amount is for the bus, to get something to eat, and to help her put gas in her car. I admire the specificity but have never considered the sale. At least with the cookies I get something of value in return, amiright?

At Van Buren, there is the older cat who never asks for money but, looking like he’s going to, instead greets everyone with a “Good morning!” and a “God bless you.” He has his cup out for the tip but never requests it.

And this is the game, isn’t it? From the restaurants and gift shops to the seemingly homeless and entrepreneurial, a five block walk is like an initiation rite into a gang or a spanking line for a birthday. The difficulty with the price of eggs is that while the cost to buy them increases, their value does not. Same fucking eggs. The question is how much are we each willing to depart from our resources in order to either have an omelette or feel good about helping out? Is three dollars too much or too little? Is a good morning worth a quarter? And maybe, just maybe, it’s better to avoid buying the cookies despite the rush of sugar and nostalgia each bite of a Thin Mint delivers.

QUICK HITS FOR APRIL. Look for the announcement by the end of April for the latest book—Belief is a Thermonuclear Warhead—the third in compilations of “I Believes…” from LiterateApe.com plus essays about a Gen X dude’s perspective on the culture. If you’re in Chicago, I recommend you snag tickets to see The Goonies with the Chicago Philharmonic playing the score live at the Auditorium Theatre. If you haven’t already, go to Apple Podcasts and search for Amnesia Motel—the closest thing you’ll ever get to a bizarre mix of pirate radio, Daft Punk, and Beat poetry from the cracked mind of my friend Charlie Newman.

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That’s the weekend! Spring is around the corner and the freaking sunshine has snapped me into a fantastic mood! Go outside, soak in some rays, and remember: the only way we survive the next four years is with a healthy and dark sense of humor!