Life, or something like it, part 19: The speaker is weird, plus other miscellany.

377.
Mike Johnson is weird. He’s a mediocre public speaker often trotting out Republican cliches. Nothing strange about that. He represents the people of Shreveport, Louisiana. Nothing weird about that, either, although it’s a big position—third in line for the president—from such an out of the way place. (No shade: my mom’s family is from southern Louisiana.) But:

378.
He doesn’t have a checking account or a bank account. That’s weird. Where does he keep his money? By all accounts, his wife doesn’t have one either. Bitcoin? Shoeboxes hidden beneath floorboards? Glass jars buried in sand? 

379.
While in DC, he sleeps in his office. Not unheard of, but strange. Does he break out the air mattress every night? Shower in the break room? Have an aide bring him fresh towels? Does he tuck a pillow into his desk?

380.
He took in a young teenager to raise but never formally adopted him. This is strange behavior. 

381.
He and his teenaged son kept tabs on each other’s phones. They had an app installed to monitor porn consumption. That’s—come on. I appreciate that he’s a Christian worrying about impure thoughts. But he and his teenaged son?

390.
The government avoided a shutdown, and it pains me to admit it, but Johnson has to get some of the credit. (It’s a low bar—incredibly low—but still.) His response was unhurried, blase even, but he bent in key areas and got a continuing resolution passed. Perhaps there’s a method to his madness. The bizarre thing is he accomplished something that has proven more and more difficult in his party, yet he has to run away from his success. He has to present his only victory as a failure. We’re living in the upside down. 

391.
I’ve been looking for new music and found it: Electric Youth, Zack Bryant, Black Pumas, Burl Ives, The Horace Silver Quartet, Dirty Projectors, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, and New Blue Sun, the new album by Andre 3000, on first listen a bizarre and wonderful record. Not sure how to categorize it. A chillwave jazz record of West African musicians but mixed by Moby? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a weird piece of music, but in a fascinating way.

392.
I watch The Killer, Reptile, Judy, Dodsworth, and Defending My Life (the doc about Albert Brooks). The Killer stands out with one of the great directors (David Fincher), a top-shelf screenwriter (Andrew Kevin Walker), and an always-interesting star (Michael Fassbinder), and brother, is the movie flat. With all the talent involved, its failures make it far more interesting than any virtues.

393.
The title alone reveals a boredom with the form. Fassbinder plays an assassin who screws up. People come after him and hurt his wife/partner, and he in turn seeks vengeance on them, working his way up the ladder. It’s metaphorical, I suppose—a side-eyed satire of capitalism—but the writing is so flat, delivered in Fassbinder’s robotic mode, that I couldn’t give two fucks about what the movie is saying. 

394.
I wondered halfway through if Fincher wasn’t up to something else, testing the audience’s patience, running us through the motions, tempting us to stop the movie. He’s so good, so often, with an incredible hit to dud ratio (I count Benjamin Button as his only bad film before this), that I was bewildered by the movie’s lack of zip or pop. 

395.
I like watching misfires from great directors. Their failures are often more interesting than their successes. But The Killer is so straight-forward yet so flat—I don’t know.   

396.
Things pick up in the two scenes where he confronts the assassins who wounded his wife, and I won’t spoil them here. They’re both great. But overall there’s a feeling of lethargy and weariness. I blame Walker, who clearly thought he was going to defy our expectations in a movie like this, refusing to provide redemption or relief, zeroing out the climax. Okay, fine, I’m game. But you have to replace the dropped expectations with something else. You can’t take my time and give me nothing in return. That’s the kind of film exercise that earns you enmity and rage. 

397.
On the surface, Reptile has a similar problem. It feels at first like it’s going through the motions, but it’s a much more interesting, challenging, and far stranger movie. It begins as a cop drama, where two detectives begin investigating a murder. But one of the detectives is played by Benicio Del Toro, who internalizes all of the cop’s history and hardships, bottling up his rage. The movie pushes against our expectations, slowing things down, focusing on odd scenes, providing key plot points in Altmanesque talkover. 

398.
The movie offers so little straight exposition it can feel difficult to follow. But Del Toro keeps the movie going with his baleful glares and moments of overflowing rage. Is he corrupt? A killer? A psycho? A hero? Is he smart, or dumb, or naive, or cynical? He’s all of these things, and his performance, so internalized and still, is remarkable. It elevates the movie, and although a lot of critics were tough on it, I can’t stop thinking about Reptile, what it means and what it’s saying. The Killer, on the other hand, is nothing but regret. Time is a commodity, too, and we don’t get it back. Not ever.

390.
Biden continues to meet with foreign leaders, pass legislation, give speeches. He’s threading multiple needles at once, and so far is doing a great goddamn job, with the longest stretch ever of economic growth, increasing wages, and investment in America’s future. He de-thawed with China, probably avoiding World War III, and has thus far managed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Gaza war with incredible skill. The key is to keep both conflicts local, and so far he’s accomplishing it. (I admit there are worrying signs of increasing aggression from various Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria.)

391.
Meanwhile his erstwhile political opponent threatens to murder generals, remove “vermin” (his word, not mine), set up detention camps for immigrants, turn the federal workforce into his own police force, deport thousands of Muslims, and imprison all of his political enemies. He’s also been indicted on 90 plus criminal counts. And, in Federal court, found guilty of rape and insurrection. On the campaign trail, he took time out to praise Hamas and Hezbollah.

392.
At the moment, we don’t have two political parties; we have one political party, flaws and all, and a neo-fascist movement bordering on a cult.

393.
I’ve been calling Trump a fascist for years. A lot of pundits, linguists, and political thinkers have cautioned against this language. But, really? He employs political violence. He refused to relinquish power. He encourages violence. He has scapegoated the other. He appeals to a mythological past (read: white) in his rallies that always resembled 1930s cult of personality types in more ways than one. He tied the government to his corporate interests. The lives of individual people don’t matter. Everything is in service to him. He rambles on about blood and land. In what way is he not a fascist? 

394.
Does that offend you? Good. 

395.
I’ll recap: one of the presidential candidates is a rapist and a pathological liar facing 90 counts of criminality and a civil trial involving widespread fraud, found guilty of insurrection in federal court. The other is . . . old. (And Trump isn’t so young either; he was born just one year after the end of World War II.) 

396.
Enough politics. After flailing on four novels in a row—god, I hit a rough patch of mediocrity—I’m reading a wonderful book on 1920s America, One Summer, by Bill Bryson. It follows Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and others through a few months of 1927. It’s excellent, fun and fleet. I’ve never read Bryson before but he’s a superb writer. I’ve written a novella set in this era, and discovering what I got right, and what I got wrong, is a lot fun.

397.
Bernadette often weaves tales about school, her friends, and imaginary places she’s been. Sometimes they involve a neighborhood kid bullying her. They’re always false.
Bernadette: And then he called all of us buttocks.
Simone: No way! 
Bernadette: And then he called us stupid motherfuckers!
Me:  . . .

398.
She’s four.

Life, or something like it, part 18: Trouble a-brewing, plus three obituaries.

361.

Well, fuck. What a rough couple of weeks. A series of personal family crises; the Middle East in utter turmoil; the meat grinder of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; a neo-fascist elected as Speaker of the House; and yet another goddamn mass shooting, this time in Maine.

362.

The House Republicans put forward Steve Scalise, an equivocating racist asshole. He got shot down. Then Jim Jordan pushed to the fore, a bullying misogynist dickhead. He lost, too. Tom Emmer took his shot—the best of a bad bunch—but Trump torpedoed him via social media. So we’re left with Mike Johnson, a homophobic election denier making weird, smug, vaguely sexual prayer jokes about his wife when he got the job. 

363.

I can’t tell if Johnson’s a far-right cipher, a danger to the Republic, or a joke. Time will tell, I suppose, but so far he’s done little to stave off the upcoming government shutdown, and has linked aid to Israel with cutting funding to the IRS. This current IRS funding concerns updating the IRS methods, making it easier (and cheaper) for people to pay their taxes, while also making it harder for the ultra-rich to cheat. 

364.

I’m not ready to write about Israel—it’s complicated, painful, tricky, and a lot of people are doing it at the moment, many of them with insight and context—but I will say, Israel absolutely needs to stop the attacks. We have to be able to hold two things in our minds at the same time: It was wrong for Hamas to kill Israeli civilians, and it is also wrong for Israelis to kill Palestinian civilians.

365.

Here’s a weird fact about me: whenever I have to wear an ID, it always ends up backwards, concealing my face. Without fail. It’s strange, almost mystical. I’ve tried everything and have since given up. My theory is I have some off-kilter body chemistry that pulls whatever plastics they make badges out of into my chest. It’s dumb, but I’m sticking with it. The other possibilities are more disturbing; perhaps the world doesn’t want to see my face. 

366.

The Bad Class is out in the world! A coworker already pointed out a typo. This particular mistake came from writing in google docs; whoever created autocorrect is a miserable person who should be whipped with wet reeds. I feel strange, vulnerable and exposed, just like I did when South came out. I’m now working on getting some reviews, a few interviews, and a few book signings. Really looking to set the publishing world on fire over here. That’s a joke. 

367.

I read Boss: Springsteen in the 1980s. A weird, granular book. Springsteen is always interesting, with his autodidact tendencies, his unreliable narrators, and the vast misinterpretation of his songs, but I’m not a huge fan. Not sure why I even picked it up. It has some great bits—Dave Marsh is praised as one of the great rock writers, but he only offers glimpses here; I’d take Greil Marcus (wonderful writer, often strange critic) or Lester Bangs (just fantastic, if a bit insulated into his own mind), or Chuck Klosterman (dynamite, until he slipped into pop culture ramblings outside his strengths, published so-so novels, and delivered a staid and even boring book on the 1990s, which should have been his defining work)—but overall it’s workmanlike, an inside baseball kind of book. 

368.

It did push me to re-listen to Nebraska, which is a remarkable time capsule, spare and unsettling, wintry and bleak, a thousand miles from the bulk of his output. 

369.

“The rise and fall of art takes time.” A.J. Liebling wrote that in his wonderful trifle of a book, Between Meals. I devoured it with relish, finding the loving anecdotes about wine and provincial French cooking delightful. (And forgive those appalling metaphors; I couldn’t help myself.) I’m on to Demon Copperhead, then Asymmetry, Moon Dust, and Hausfrau, with an interlude of Bono’s memoir. That’s the plan, anyway.

370. 

A brief soccer aside: what the fuck is going on in the English Premiere league? Every team has adopted a play it out the back mentality that is disastrous for every team that isn’t Man City or Liverpool. Just today I saw two avoidable goals from Arsenal and Chelsea attempting to pass out of the back against high pressure—and two other great chances for each side—and this in a sport where goals remain elusive treasures. 

371.

Why have all the teams, especially in the lower tier, mimicked tactics that they can’t possibly pull off? It’s madness. And how the top coaches in the world keep falling for it is baffling. You cannot outpass Man City, you’ll never beat them playing their game, and is it absurd to try. Why continue to do the same thing over and over, knowing it will fail? That’s the end of brief soccer aside. 

372.

Richard Rountree died. Here’s my obituary for him. The world lost one of the original baddasses this week with the death of Richard Rountree, the blacksploitation pioneer who played the titular character in 1971’s Shaft, his second feature. The film begins with Rountree wandering around New York and Times Square, both at home with the seedy hostilities and also above it all, a killer Isaac Hayes score playing behind him. The movie was a phenomenon. It holds up still, today; Gordon Parks directed, his skill at night-time photography capturing the tawdry glory of those on-location New York locales. It kickstarted a fascinating career, with a run of tough-guy roles in the 1970s, including two Shaft sequels, Charley One-Eye, and Man Friday. He later slipped into television and B-movies, acting in CHIPs, and Q: The Winged Serpent among dozens of other projects. He worked and worked and worked, playing detectives and cops and commissioners in Maniac Cop, Se7en. He had extended cameos on tv shows like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and A Different World. He resented the way his career was warped by the early success. He was a good actor pigeonholed into roles but he couldn’t play tough forever. Still, he managed to make it work. I always admired him. He was a survivor in an industry that turns survivors into camp. He resisted, always bringing integrity to shrinking bits here and there, and was always so fucking cool. Go back and watch that opening in Shaft, how he glides through the streets, untouched by the cold or the human suffering. 

373.

Piper Laurie died. Here’s my obituary for her. Hollywood lost one of its strangest actresses last week, as Piper Laurie passed away. She got her start in the 1950s, working in bottom of the bill Studio releases, and with a role in Ain’t Misbehavin’. She got her big break opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler, a film that remains haunting and vital and dark. She plays a lost and broken love interest to the fast-talking Eddie, overwhelmed by his hard heart. She acted in TV for over a decade before roaring back in Brian DePalma’s Carrie. In that blockbuster horror film, she plays the religious zealot mother of the title character. Laurie brought her acting chops to the role, and brother, she is terrifying. Directors perked up. People saw how easily she could play scary in her neediness and desperation. She got horror roles (Ruby among others) and loads of TV work. Fast forward another thirteen years, and Laurie got a juicy role in David Lynch’s groundbreaking show, Twin Peaks. She fit right in, bringing an otherworldly weirdness to a series that bounced back and forth between high strangeness, camp, melodrama, and sinister terror. I’ve watched The Hustler half a dozen times—it’s in my top ten—Carrie just as many, and like loads of other supplicants return to Twin Peaks with a quivering, often petrified devotion. This puts Laurie in rarified company for me, an actress I have watched over and over. I don’t know much about her; she doesn’t reveal much of herself in her performances. But I admire her, I feel close to her, and I will miss her. She was a brave and strange actress. I wish we had more like her. 

374.

As for the shooting in Maine, I have nothing to say. It’s stupid and cruel, the right’s devotion to gun rights out of sync with the Constitution’s original meaning, unpopular and devastating. The leading cause of death for children in America and we can’t do a goddamn thing to stop it?  We’re a dumb country. 

375.

Matthew Perry died. I don’t have much to say about him, but here goes. I liked Friends when I was in high school but I despise it now. Still, he was very good at smarmy; he makes She’s Out of Control, playing a fast-talking cad. He made the cross cultural romance, Fools Rush In, with Salma Hayak, and The Whole Nine Yards, an inexplicably popular movie about a hitman neighbor. He played the straight man, using sarcasm as a shield. He’s good at it, too, often funny. But I wish he had worked in darker hues, rougher material. Like a lot of actors, he struggled with addiction. He had things to say, but didn’t often say them, not in his work. In Friends he was the normal guy on the show, the centrifuge for the oversexed dummy and neurotic intellectual to spin around. Post-Friends, it was tough going, for all of them really, save for Jennifer Anniston. Perry made The Ron Clark Story, a made-for-TV teacher movie. I had a principal show us a clip from it, where Perry keeps attempting to do double-dutch jump rope in an Atlanta public school. It’s . . . dumb, but Perry’s facial expression kind of makes it. I don’t know. Years back I would have written a blistering takedown of his career; I don’t have much patience for the acting or filmmaking style of most sitcoms. But I now see a lonely guy with talent, entering an industry as a child, doing his best to make his way through the world, settling into professional complacency perhaps, but who doesn’t? 

376.

To finish, and as an absolute non-sequitur, here’s the first bit from Campbell McGrath’s poem, “Guns N’ Roses” :

“Not a mea culpa, not an apology, but an admission:
That there are three minutes in the middle of “Sweet Child of Mine”
that still, for all the chopped cotton of the passing years,
for all the grief and madness and idiocy of our days, 
slay me, just slay me. They sound like how it felt to be alive”