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White Hot: The Boys in the Waistband

There's a fascinating word missing from White Hot, Netflix's new documentary about the Abercrombie and Fitch years: the word is Aryan. And it dovetails with a similar elision in examining Bruce Weber's visual aesthetic - which the documentary rightly centers much of its grim fascination and derision upon - as the film also elides comparing Weber to Leni Riefenstahl.

And yeah, I get it: "Nazis? Can't you see why that might be a problem?" The point is, yes I do, and frankly I am neither the first, nor the last, to have brought up those comparisons. The other point is, the very reluctance of this doc to follow its own through line to some logical, difficult and obviously uncomfortable ends is why the film, which dances adroitly around the hard questions, never really lands a solid indictment of what was, and is, most deeply problematic about the whole moment when A&F dominated our popular culture.

And boy (cute boy), did it ever. I can tell you because I was there: The whole Abercrombie and Fitch thing was a little nuts. The cadre of topless boys outside their flagship stores! They literally sold a softcore porn catalog 4 times a year! They ran an ad of a naked man on a horse! (BTW - bareback? Get it?)

The first 30 minutes or so of White Hot get at, mostly well, but somewhat imperfectly, what it was to live through the madness. How desirable the bran was at its height. The weird, oversexed vibe of the stores. The even weirder, even more oversexed vibe of the advertising. After that the documentary delves, more deeply, into the underpinnings of how the venerated brand was reshaped by owner Mike Jeffries, and the role, especially, played by Bruce Weber, in creating the brand's visual identity.

Left surprisingly unspoken, really, is the role of the changing culture around the brand, and specifically, the sudden, newfound openness of the American culture to explicitly gay iconography. A&F spoke, as a brand, to teens and college kids... but even more obviously, it spoke to a generation of young, often recently out, gay men in their twenties and thirties, newly positioned in urban enclaves and white collar work. Largely white, heavily professional and service working, these gay men knew Weber, knew what he was doing, and knew it was aimed at them. And they, in turn, helped propel "A&F style" into a cultural watchword.

That the documentary misses, or at least sits quietly, around these dynamics is part of the major hole in its presentation. Because it's the very white, very oblivious nature of this gay community to its own internal racism, that helped create the problems the documentary points to: a culture within A&F focused on lookism and frankly racist definitions of attractiveness that affected hiring, store staffing, as well as advertising and marketing. It's partly why all of this was a merry little game   part of which was merrily avoiding asking why images weren't just overwhelmingly white, but so very male. Or asking why "Fierce" the store's signature fragrance, was a men's cologne. Or asking, eventually, whether straight frat boys understood how gay all of this really was?

The film unpacks, cleanly and effectively, the unravelings of the brand as lawsuits over representation, hiring policies and the like came home to roost. It helps, but also hurts, that key players like Jeffries and Weber don't participate in the documentary, thus making convenient, easily blamed bad guys.

But questions linger: why does the film absolve virtually every staffer in the film of any role in perpetuating just this kind of racist iconography? What does it say about a top to bottom corporate culture that hid, minimized and mistreated its minority work force? What does it say about our culture that the brand was so dominant, so revered, so damn hot? And can we not, at the very least,, take a moment and unpack that difficult and uncomfortable role of Aryan ideals luring in Weber's work?

No, by the end of White Hot, everything has vanished: the images from the bad years, the voices of the minority workers, the omnipresent, overly easy moralizing of folks like Robin Givhan.... in favor of corporate branding that literally tries to paper over the past. It's okay, the film says, because A&F now runs ads with a wide mix of body types and skin colors and... blah blah blah... world peace. That the film soft pedals its own outrage and runs away from the hard questions is, unfortunately indicative of how this mess came to be in the first place: if we don't examine our idealized views of these perfect fit bodies and sexualization of youth, we really aren't trying to sort out how this all worked to sell the brand to begin with. And that's the real problem we need to solve. not run from. Or at least, not continue, in our dirtiest secrets, to ogle them while claiming pious purpose. Cause boy, you still look hot in dem jeans.

Melania Trump Is Selling A Hat

There's a lot going on in the world, but I find myself stuck on the strangest, if not smallest, of news stories: that Melania Trump is auctioning off her hat.

The hat - one she wore to meet President Macron and his wife - is part of an online auction where Mrs. Trump is also selling NFT's of photos of the hat for cryptocurrency.

According to the press release, the starting bid is $250,000.

While much of her husband's family, including his children from his first marriage, are embroiled in a series of financial and political scandals, Melania Trump has managed to find a fairly private life in the post presidency. She is rarely seen. She does not speak, and only occasionally nets public attention, particularly, it seems with auctions. This is her second foray into NFTs.

There are of course, all sorts of questions to be asked over this turn of events - why does she need the money? Is she unhappy? Does she have, as most former First Ladies do, an office and a staff? What do they do, anyway? Sell off her possessions?

And again... why does she need the money?

Myself, I have more questions about the hat. It's a Herve Pierre hat, by the way, and while many may not know, Pierre - a veteran of Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera - designed Mrs. Trump's Inaugural Ball gown and has been a stylist to her for a number of years. The hat was the topper to a severe white suit Mrs. Trump wore, which complemented the white Chanel suit Mrs. Macron wore that day. The hat, however, was wide brimmed and oversized, and generally blocked most views of Mrs. Trump's face. Mrs. Macron, one might note, did not wear a hat. One might also observe that, in general, outside of the British nobility, hat wearing has largely fallen out of favor.

And - this is really only my opinion - it was kind of an ugly hat. I may not be a huge fan of hats, but I enjoy a dramatic picture hat as much as anyone, or the "fascinators" of Britain, cloche hats, cowboy hats... I'm not hard to convince. But the Trump/Macron hat was the sort of hat that, well, annoys me: too big yet not big enough to be a dramatic statement; droopy, rather than jaunty; limiting things like sight and hearing, which seems counterproductive in a social setting. 

So, on the one hand, I get it: why not unload an outfit specific, already worn hat that, frankly, only sort of worked? On the other hand... if you're going to auction off First Lady items, ostensibly "for charity" (vague "scholarships" are promised), why not pull together a substantial, wide ranging representation? Why just... well, you know... a hat?

By virtue of her silence, Mrs. Trump remains largely a cipher. It's why, aside from being well written, that the two books about Mrs. Trump - Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's and Stephanie Grisham's - have been the most intriguing looks behind the Trump curtains. Mrs. Trump, it is suggested, feels the press is unfair to her. Yet this could easily be addressed in a friendly interview. There is of course the fact that she does not seem entirely confident of her English (though her facility in a number of languages was touted frequently by Trump press agents), why not surprise everyone and do the interview in French? Or Italian?

Aside from the Trump family claims of press mistreatment, there's the similar, but not the same feeling across the conservative right that 'Liberal media" is deeply unfair, even disrespectful to Mrs. Trump, and her role as First Lady. This is, yes, a bit rich, coming from the folks who coined "Pig in a Pants Suit" and suggested, repeatedly, that Michelle Obama was a man. But then, too, the "support" for Mrs. Trump is itself kind of odd - a kind of force fitting of a few thinly known details into a blown up, largely fictional presentation of the former First Lady as a folksy, classy mom just trying to stage tasteful events. And indeed, though Mrs. Trump has been dogged by some fairly salacious photos she took as a model, the idea of widespread liberal disrespect for her is a bit extreme. One would have to have a much better sense of her to really even know where to begin or what to criticize.

As it is, Mrs. Trump largely sailed through the Presidential years largely unseen and undisturbed - arguably bringing a rarified, if occasionally severe sense of high style to White House decorating, and occasionally raising controversy with outfits like "I really don't care... do U?" and $75,000 Dolce jackets that were perhaps a bridge too far. And continuing that largely private life appears to be her plan. Which only brings us back to the overall weirdness of this story: why is Mrs. Trump selling that hat?  

 

Loki: If You, Could Save Time, In A Battle...

Not every attempt at comic book TV can be a home run hit out of the park... but I get that I'm going to look contrarian saying that Disney/Marvel's Loki has turned out to be the weak link of series programming by the company thus far.

From a geeky, comic book standpoint, the yea-sayers are probably right: Loki laid the groundwork for much of what's to come in the MCU, and those developments were compelling and intriguing to consider. But to those defenders I would confidently respond... "okay, then why was Loki mostly a long, talky dud?"

While previous series laid ever more tantalizing clues and foreshadowing as they went, week to week, Loki was a set up in search of a promising result. It may be interesting to imagine what the end of time looks like... Loki is the sad reminder that you may be really, really disappointed by what you find when you get there.

Over and over, the series set up promising pot machinations only to stall: when our wayward God of Mischief leapt through time and space to escape his captors... he wound up on a dying moon where the only outcome was certain death. When he cheated that ending (in a total Deus Ex Machina where he wasn't even the Deus), we were left floundering in yet more bureaucratic hell while...zzzz... Excuse me, where were we again? On the dead planet at the end of time? Does this set come only in grey?

Loki was exhausting. Based on the "now what" implications of Loki making off with the Tesseract (again) in the time traveling part of Avengers Endgame (also a bit of a dud), the series started promisingly enough with the introduction of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) policing the "variants" who do something or take things that impede the orderly flow of time itself. Loki - or many Lokis - do this a lot. That's interesting. So is the TVA itself - a homage to seventies era imagery of endless bureaucracy, wood paneled, brutalist architecture, endless files, life in constant triplicate (the show homages everything from A Clockwork Orange to Brazil to Hitchhiker's).

The trouble is... where to go? Loki quickly sets up the existence of an even more remote agent of chaos, a variant who is upsetting timelines in ways that cannot be easily mended. This turns out to be another, female, version of a Loki, chased by TVA authorities across multiple time and landscapes. Also promising. But once we meet this young woman... things gradually stall. What a first looked like thrills and chills and wild adventures become more and more talky set pieces musing on the nature of love and loss, free will vs. determinism and... well, lots of other stuff that I started to just tune out.

Which is unfortunate. I wanted to like Loki, and as with all the Marvel series, I do think it's smart and well executed, even as a talky often pointless existentialist rumination on the nature of free will. But that doesn't make it great, and we should hold Loki, as with all shows, to some standard set of expectations. And there, really, Loki just doesn't meet the imaginative brilliance of Wandavision or the deft weaving of contemporary politics, racial awareness and heroism at pay in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Loki has grander ambitions. And, grandly, it swings hard and misses. A for Effort. C for execution.

Filled with top flight performances - Tom HIddleston's Loki is brilliantly complex, ably abetted by Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku (the casting in the MCU is really off the charts, these days). Sophia Di Martino and several of the other Lokis are fun, but the effect of so many shades of one persona is... wearying. Jonathan Martin provides some zip towards the final proceedings... but getting there is still a bit of a slog.

Visually, too, Loki is a bit of a letdown. As those sets devolve into ever murkier browns and greys and blacks, the murk just takes hold and sludges up what had been fairly brisk pacing. And tonally, I think the show never quite found the - yes, hard to find - comic book sweet spot between seriousness and humorous hooey. Not Batman level drudge, but Loki spends considerable time being a bit of a downer. You can't just occasionally bring up jet skis to get around the fact that episode after episode of Loki boils down to 2-3 characters expositioning one another to near death. And that's just a preventable, unforced writing trap that no one, I think, was watching out for.

Tp their credit, Marvel and the Loki team are the first to get a Season 2 and I say... good. Take a minute, work out the kinks, and deliver on the promise that lurks, so sweetly, at the edges of this talky, murky letdown. Give us a Loki who jumps into action! A story that's compelling! Time travel that's interesting! I know you got this. But you don't get an A for snoozy. Not yet.

Halston: The Boys In The Bland

My best friend suggested that it's possible Ryan Murphy was put here to destroy all our icons, but I'll be slightly more charitable. Halston means well - unlike, say, Glee - but the combination of Murphy's expansive deal with Netflix and his usual hangups and tics when it comes to storytelling lay waste to what clearly could have been a dazzling, messy epic of gay life in the seventies.

Halston is, of course, one of fashion's great stories of success and self destruction, played out against the backdrop of Studio 54, the cocaine years, and too much too soon careers. Originally a hat designer much loved by the ladies who lunch crowd, Halston had to reinvent himself as hats fell out of favor in the mid sixties, and he launched a high end fashion line noted for his easy, breezy use of flowing fabric and a keen eye for distilling the key elements of American style. I remember the first time I saw Halstons at the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum in New York - what amazed was not the sense of their time, the height of seventies style, but the way most of them could have been taken out of a closet and worn today without a second thought.

It's very obvious that part of what's missing in Halston is just that sense of the clothes. The show keeps sort of showing them, as if somewhere, in a room just off camera, there's a collection of stunning clothes we've only been allowed to glance at. It's frustrating, and eventually exasperating - especially in key moments like the famous "Versailles Show" of 1973 - that what was boldly beautiful about Halston's work is mostly merely sketched at.

Yet the other frustrating element is that if this was then meant to be a juicy, dishy tell all of famous messes and their excessive ways, the series only sketches at that, as well. Halstoin swans around a lonely, oddly depopulated Manhattan that lacks grit or glamour or a sense of the city's energy, and that's just deadly for the story of someone who clawed his way to the top of New York's ultimate importance. Wearing Halston, knowing Halston, being Halston... it's hard to understate how off the wall his celebrity as a fashion icon was... and yet, somehow, that's what Murphy manages to pull off.

And all of that makes what works here all the more puzzling. Halston's genuine closeness to Liza Minnelli is beautifully portrayed, as is Liza's intelligence and sense of herself. Halston's ability to see women, and to get what they're looking for in clothes and style is instinctive and that clearly comes across. But too often the film both madly name drops and yet not enough. Where's Diana Vreeland? Grace MIrabella? Why is Eleanor Lambert coyly half revealed when every fashion person on earth will love the character on display here? why two mentions of Jackie O and then... nothing?

Meanwhile, what could and should be a frank assessment of drugs and louche behavior is just... wasted. Too often Halston's descent into addiction has the feel of the kind of music biopic lampooned in the Dewey Cox Story: some man of color Halston is having sex with pulls out poppers or coke... and off he goes. Clearly Halston's tastes were well established, but it's hardly surprising that more white gay men trying to make sense of Halston's dark skinned boyfriends comes off as pretty much as problematic as it could possibly be.

None of which is to fault the performers Krysta Rodriguez' Liza is indeed a delight, Rebecca Dayan's Elsa Peretti floats around the edges of scenes like any good Italian heiress of the seventies would. Halston's various louche bedmates are fine. And Ewan McGregor? It's not the first time he's played a toppy (not necessarily bossy) bottom - that would be Todd Haynes' lovely Velvet Underground, where he finishes the film getting railed by Christian Bale on a London rooftop - but I sure hope the intimacy coach made sure he had a safe word here in Halston. I've rarely worried so much for a star in sex scene after sex scene - getting pounded never looked so, well, pounding, and God knows, Murphy should know enough about that. To his credit McGregor goes balls to the wall (no, literally) on playing Halston at every level, but it's hard when a key role like this is so emotionally cut off from himself that it becomes hard to know what's going on in side his head at all. A better film wouldn't leave us wondering, if only by distracting with endless falderal, a party that seems to neither start nor end. Because that's what the seventies were, and the film just fails at it, utterly.

I suspect Murphy tried to impose all the lessons learned from remaking The Boys in the Band - itself a reminder that, armed with solid material, this Netflix deal gives Murphy room to fly - and on the one hand he's right: Halston, too, is a stunted boy from a deeply repressed background covering it up with style, wit and a lot of drugs and sex in pre and post Stonewall realities.  The trouble is, you can't tell Halston's story and mistake the former for the latter... that is, the story needs a lot of style and drugs and sex... and probably less psychologizing about What Made Him That Way. Halston - which could yes, use a lot less of people walking into rooms saying "Halston" - takes the racy, sexy undercurrent that both defined the seventies and the stylist who dressed it, and trades it for a morality tragedy of lonely people looking to connect. As Halston - or Steve Rubell or Liza or any number of seventies icons would say - "how boring." And, well, they had a point.

Then, too, a crowded messy orgy of a superstar existence is probably the absolutely wrong thing to expect to tell well when filming into the teeth of the pandemic. One wonders why launch a project like Halston right now, really, at all. And still, the bigger struggle of a Halston is when and how someone will step in and give Murphy the kind of feedback he needs to balance his ambitions in ways that deal more constructively with his limitations as a storyteller and producer. Big, beautiful, yet emotionally inert and off the mark, almost anyone can see what Halston lacks... except apparently, the person making it.

Coming Home

About six months ago, I made a strange, and wondrous, and scary decision to do the thing I'd always wanted to do: work from home, focus on writing, and see how that works out.

Obviously, it wasn't an entirely voluntary decision - in the sense that, it's not a decision that would have made nearly as much sense had we not been in the middle of absolute crazy time. 

It's weird, living through a pandemic. It's remarkable, to me, how clarifying the past year has been: how quickly it separated the things that are absolutely necessary (say, to stay alive) from the less than essential (going to the movies, for instance). In almost an instant, everything I'd based my decision making on - is that fun? do I want things? - was replaced with "what will keep my mother from catching a deadly infection." Ordering groceries to be delivered. Going to deserted parks. Life became, in so many ways, so much simpler.

Even when I went back to work (after a 3 month leave, essentially, to make sure mom was as safe as possible), I found trying to resume old routines was impossible without applying my newfound clarity. And, within months, that same newfound clarity was finding myself asking "what work really is most important and ultimately, most satisfying?" 

And so, I came back to what I've always wanted to do most - be here, and write.

I haven't done much. if any, specific pandemic posting; it's not what I think of as "my blog." Plus, I'm not sure it's exactly fascinating - we've all been at home, more or less. It's not easy. But somehow... we carry on.

But what was really interesting to me, what has been interesting in a voyage of discovery that, to my surprise has been generally positive, is discovering life at home. This life is not what I expected or planned. And it has been eye opening. 

For years, I threw myself into work. I went in early, stayed late, worked hard, Laundry, cleaning... home tasks came a distant second. My day off was "catch up on projects." I would tell myself that, one day, I would tackle some bigger plans, really "get organized." Somehow, the time for that was never quite there.

When I got home this past November, and began tackling those very projects... I quickly realized that I had been kidding myself. For years. These were not small projects. Getting my room together, organizing clothes, really making my desk a proper writing pace, starting to do research.... this was a lot of work. It was the work I'd put off to do... other work. And, as it turned out, tackling these 'minor home projects" was also valuable. And satisfying, And required attention and care.

This past Christmas was the first in years where we had a reasonable time to prepare. It was relaxed and festive and I didn't feel, for once, as it was rushed or ended too soon. I discovered the time to invest in making great coffee every morning, making that healthy fruit smoothie I was starting to like having around, to show up for volunteer activities I'd been missing. And, working on the book project that fueled this switch, I'm discovering that writing and editing is really work I love and love to pursue. 

It's easy in this pandemic to focus on the privations, the limitations, the struggles... the losses and the distance. I'm not made for that - life is too full of possibilities and hope and the chance to grow. There has got to be some good to find in all of this. Or we will just have to make it.

And this isn't to dismiss the work I used to do. I ran into a young woman at my old store the other night. She had started a month before I left, it was her first job, and her second day it rained badly and she got soaked walking to work. She was in tears, felt defeated and wanted to quit. I sat her down, talked to her, and eventually told her to go home and I would cover her day out. Now, happily, she's working there full time, and she knows that my assistance is what kept her there and she thanked me.  I miss the opportunity to be a part of that.

Growing up, I read Erma Bombeck a lot; her essays on life, suburban living and homemaker based feminism was humorous and inspiring; I recommend her highly. And, just like some man, I find myself writing about discovering laundry and cooking as if it was some sort of mystical land, and of course, it's not. But I will credit the pandemic with the opportunity to step back, reassess life as I've known it, and discover things I never quite knew. Coming home, being home... it does feel right, and okay. There will be time to figure out what life looks like after a pandemic, when we get there. And I know it's not possible for everyone... but we have been given, by fate and by disease, a real chance to reassess what life in America looks like. At the very least, we ought to explore what that might look like.

You Can't Do That!

Like many a Gen Xer, let me just say up front: I'm quite relieved they didn't have Twitter in my youth, because... well, God knows what I'd have to be apologizing for now. As it is, I know all too well that hiding in this blog alone are words and pieces I'm not necessarily sure I want repeated or blown out of context.

Still, that said... I'm comfortable with saying generally, nothing I've written went there without a lot of thought beforehand.

But let's back out to 30,000 feet for a moment: In a rather odd week, I've been fascinated with the confluence of a small string of events - the dreadful murder spree in Georgia resulting in the deaths of multiple workers and clients in massage parlors, the discussion it has engendered about attacks on Asians in America, Fox News struggling to not cover this, and the fall of Alexi McCammond.

Bear with me... because I think this all has a central point.

First of all, Fox: it's remarkable, really, how the entire network has been fully flummoxed by the unfolding story in Georgia. It was clearly one thing that, early on, the combination of a young white male shooter and the fact that he killed mostly Asian women working in the massage parlors wasn't, let's say, a good look for them. But a dramatic set of murders, gun play and Southern law enforcement really couldn't somehow get reworked to their purposes? Since January - if not earlier - Fox has been falling quietly apart: a massive reworking on the dayside schedule has resulted in largely sagging ratings, lack of Trump has robbed them of their centrality to each days's new drama, and what's been left in his wake  (yes, we all know about the Dr. Seuss thing), well, just isn't much to build an hour broadcast around. And 5 more minutes of Candace Owen trashing WAP? That just sells Cardi B's next single.

It's one thing for Fox to try and flog its own right wing version of a "main story"; it's another problem entirely when the thing leading every other news broadcast on cable or network - or anywhere really - for more than 36 hours is seemingly invisible to Fox. The murders were graphic and public and provided such a high body count in such a short period of time that the story was simply unavoidable. Add in the clearly troubled young man with the guns and his, by his own admission, complex notions of sexuality and deviance... and it's no surprise how this captured the zeitgeist. And when Fox, or any news claiming network really, refuses to acknowledge the zeitgeist happening right in front of them (and what is Fox, but The Voice of What Happened in The South)... well, that's just a failure.

Which isn't to say this is a story where news organizations are particularly distinguishing themselves; from over emphasizing the violence to trying to explore the stories of the victims to getting a bit lost in a tangle of sex work, misogyny and yes, anti-Asian bigotry... this story is a mess and few reporters or news organizations seem to be getting the story right or well. We barely know who the victims are. We certainly don't know much about the shooter's choices or even if he knew any of them. And from his stated reasoning about sexual activity to killing women to the specific choice of establishments with Asian workers... there's a lot to unpack, and mostly, Americans have spent not just years, but generations, trying to avoid just about every aspect this story raises. 

Whatever one thinks about just how these events particularly illuminate, or even intersect with a larger conversation about a rise in anti-Asian bigotry arising out of shallow thinking around the pandemic... myself, I'd say there are no accidents. We are here because we were bound to get here, one day, in one way or another. Objectification and sexualization of Asian women, indeed all women of color, is just one piece of the large conversation around race America desperately needs to unpack, examine, and thrash out. It's not an easy or simple discussion. And while it may not be central to the "Kung Flu" type insults of the pandemic... this is where the point is not some round of picking or choosing which insult is worst. Whatever this sad, murderous kid thought, whatever the world taught him to think about others not like him... it's long past time to have a reckoning about yet another way in which our culture fails a minority group and we all need to do more and better to fix it.

So... here's the thing about Alexi McCammond. McCammond's hiring as Editor in Chief at Teen Vogue, announced weeks ago, got hung up on a revived conversation about a group of tweets she'd written in college, mostly using "Asian" in some derogatory way (but others, as well, that casually engage in hawking "gay" or "homo" as pejoratives). Since college, McCammond has worked her way through journalism and publishing, widely respected, and quite successful. When the issue of the tweets came up in 2019, she apologized at length. Yet and still, staffers at Teen Vogue asked why it was still considered ok or appropriate for McCammond to assume the top spot. In the wake of this week's events - and I'd argue, obviously influenced by the developments - Conde Nast gave up and McCammond withdrew her name.

And who pounced on McCammond's unhiring as their latest example of their mythical "Cancel Culture" morality play? Why, Fox, of course.

To her credit, McCammond, at least, isn't playing along; she's offered no hysterical "cancel culture" defense, and while other journalists are at least lightly bemoaning the state of affairs, the "Cancel Culture" narrative remains largely its own peculiar Fox invention. As it should; as I started, I don't doubt McCammond's sincerity and let those of us whose youth is not widely available online show a bit of pause - there but for Twitter in high school go many of us. But the questions raised do linger - is a 27 year old apologizing away her words at 19 really the point? When did you realize that "gay" and "Asian" and "homo" and who knows what all probably shouldn't be used that way? Who needed to tell you? And why, really, did you need to be told?

And therein lies the thread that I gently pick up and use to tie things together: maybe, in a week of extreme anti-Asian violence and bigotry, we can see why Alexi McCamond was wrong for Teen Vogue in a way that (still) flummoxes Fox. We shouldn't have to say "don't kill Asian women working in massage parlors as some sick response to your sexual issues" just as we shouldn't have to say "don't say that" when using racial and homophobic slurs in casual speech. Just as we shouldn't have to explain to Fox why you can't cherry pick the news when it goes against your narrative. You can't do that. Maybe, in some past time, as a culture we let this stuff slide. And yes, that's on us, and that reckoning was, and is, somewhat overdue. But still.  When Teen Vogue takes on a tough piece about Asian women, sex work, and the myth of the "Exotic Oriental" - one that Fox will probably say is inappropriate for its audience of teen girl readers - this will all make sense. Doesn't it?

 

The Best of What We Saw, 2020

Look, we all agree, it's been a weird year; and while no area has been untouched, it is sad and terrifying to realize just how deeply the performing arts has been up ended by a pandemic. Movies, obviously. But live theater, dance, classical music, indeed, pretty much all live performances of music... with performances spaces largely dark, it's been a horrific moment for those who love and care for life upon the wicked stage.

As i started reading year end summaries, I've been caught in up how fruitless and pointless the whole exercise can be: pretending we've had anything like a normal year at the movies, for instance, watching film critics assemble "best of" lists has been both frustrating for us and, well, embarrassing for them. What is that job, again, and why are you doing it?

For my part, I'm not here to clue you into obscure unseen projects; and I am surely not here to pretend Tenet is a "best of the year" when there wasn't really a year to speak of. This list, well, is what I made it... what most of us made -- a year primarily built on TV and streaming services, when we all just had to admit we were moving into a brave, new, somewhat uncharted, not entirely better, world. These, then, are the bright spots I found:

1. The Boys in the Band (Netflix) - I was leery of seeing the Broadway revival, even for it's Glorious Cast of Major Names, too afraid they'd be too easy star turns that lost the beauty of Mart Crowley's nuanced, challenging work. And I avoided the (re) filmed adaptation, at least at first... until my best friend peppered me with questions and I figured I would have to, if only for completeness sake (and theoretical loss of my Gay Card). What I found was... a happy surprise: a still nuanced, well done look at pre Stonewall Gay Life in the Big City, a reminder that new ensembles bring out new insights. Sure, Jim Parsons and Zach Quinto did sound work as the bickering Michael and Harold (and I dreamed of reversing them, just for actorly research), but Matt Bomer turned Donald into a revelation, and Andrew Rannells' Larry was such a fresh rethink of the role that much of the play's final third sang in a way I'd never even noticed. Even Charlie Carver managed to flip The Cowboy into a sweet, unforced charmer. Which isn't to say it was perfect: Robin DeJesus does what he can, but his Emory feels less essential, and Michael Benjamin Washington's Bernard just felt wan. But watch Rannells tear into the second verse of Heatwave for an actor living in a moment he was born to play. A real labor of love, that pays off, handsomely.
2. American Chaos (HBO via Max or Streaming) - Alex Gibney's 4 hour deconstruction of the "Russia Hack" and the story of the 2016 election puts fresh eyes on the familiar and, from everyone I know, brings a kind of clarity that's thrilling and scary and depressing all at once. From the assured lies of the head of Russia's RT to its unraveling of the Internet Research Agency to its revealing presentation of "Fancy Bear" and the Russian Intelligence operations behind it... American Chaos takes complicated topics and gives them the room needed to make sense. And none of your preconceived notions, whatever side you're on, will be quite the same after taking all of this in. For better, and worse.
3. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix) - A multipart unraveling of the "Epstein Story" that makes fools of us all, for ever not seeing, or believing, that Epstein was anything other than simply a monster who molested large numbers of women and trafficked them around the world to other powerful men. Told largely by the women and the law enforcement folks who tried to help them, Filthy Rich is mostly one horrifying and depressing turn after another, but in the end he's dead and they're alive and they have come together to support one another in a way that just has to provide some measure of hope. Lord knows, that's all we have to hold onto.
4. The Undoing (HBO - Max and Streaming) - I'm with those who call it "Big Little Lies on the Upper East Side" and for whatever reason, watching Nicole Kidman swan abut Park Avenue penthouses (and yes, her fabulous coats!) is less immediately aggravating than watching her and others swan about Marin County. Kidman's wealthy psychotherapist heiress struggling to process the possibility that her pediatric oncologist husband might be a cold blooded killer was every bit as fascinating as her Big Little Lies performance, even when the scars are fully internal. Kidman's TV work has been profound, quality acting, ably assisted here by Donald Sutherland's complex portrayal of her patrician father and Hugh Grant turning his charming rakish qualities inside out. 
5. Bosch, Season 6 (Amazon) and Bosch generally (Amazon). Back when "they dropped another season this week" was more main event than pandemic last hope, the penultimate run of Michael Connelly's grizzled LAPD detective was just another great addition to a strong series run, this time unraveling a potential terrorist plot, a perplexing murder and Chief Irving's run for Mayor while allowing a host of other great roles (Honey Chandler, J. Edgar) to shine. And the performances, anchored by Titus Welliver in the role of his lifetime, remain first rate. As does the writing. Pandemic rescreening isn't just recommended. It's required. 
6. The Crown, Season 4 (Netflix) - The Crown crashed into modern memory, up aging its main cast and taking us through the twin poles of the Thatcher years and the Diana years on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. On the one side was Gillian Anderson's (brilliant) Thatcher, discovering that her sense of mission hadn't entirely anticipated that she was less enamored of Royal Toffs than her royalist ways suggested, and Diana discovering that her dreams of a fairytale romance didn't square with the hard realities of a deeply dysfunctional family. From Dickie's assassination to Fagan in the Queen's bedroom, the eighties as remembered by The Crown is darker and harder than one we may have gotten on TV at the time. But knowing how we got here, and why this is happening, infuses Season 4 with a knowing sadness that makes the tragedy more heartbreaking - everything happens for a reason, and could hardly have been otherwise. And The Queen soldiers on. 
7. Perry Mason (HBO - Max and Streaming) - HBO's reimagining of Perry Mason's origins is a return to, and squarely in the resurgence of, pulp noir, America's dime store book legacy of postwar darkness and deceit playing in our fervid imaginations. Miles from Raymond Burr's upstanding jurist, Matthew Rhys plays Perry as a down and out drunken PI with a decency streak hard up against the worst of Depression era LA. A brutal child kidnapping/murder, the involvement of an Aimee Semple MacPherson like faith healer and a set of compelling back stories eventually pulls Perry Mason into the stratosphere... but the early episodes are about as grim and dark and unpleasant as Peak TV can get. The payoffs, and the promise of of more, makes the journey altogether worth it.
8. Watchmen (HBO - Max and Streaming) - Damon Lindelof's reimagining of the seminal comic book series (and disastrous feature film) as a fresh way to reexamine the American moment was bravura television, exploding our past and present while blowing up its own preconceived comic conventions, a shining example of how our newfound interest in diversity, fresh casting and telling the unheard stories can result in our best art, not just bromides and easy answers. Regina King is a revelation in a cast full of stars and surprises. And each episode is its own mini movie of masterful storytelling. While it may be sad to see it as a one and done... the series is so ultimately satisfying that there really is nothing left to tell.
9. The Hunt and The HIgh Note (Streaming) - The last film I saw in a theater, and the first film I went out of my way to see opening weekend online have no real connection... except that what's happened to movies, and moviegoing, breaks my heart. The Hunt, the long delayed comic horror pic that offers (very) wry commentary on the Trump era was a surprisingly witty slasher flick, enlivened by strong performances and a series of faintly inspired twists. The HIgh Note offered Tracee Ellis Ross the role she was kind of born to do as an aging pop diva looking to reinvent her career and Dakota Johnson as the musical savant who could do it for her. Glorious visuals, and some inspired musicianship lifted a fairly standard music biz flick into the upper echelons, and a pleasantly surprising plot twist really does make the film sing.
10. The Plot Against America (HBO, Max and Streaming) - Philip Roth's foray into "what if" reimaginings of World War 2 posits Charles Lindbergh as the candidate capable of defeating FDR, sending America headlong into its own creative fascism and all that would up end. Set in a New Jersey all too familiar to my mother, The show reminds that the Depression and and waves of European immigration are not the hazy tale of a Greatest Generation we like to tell ourselves, but a messy melting pot of prejudices and old scores. All the more terrifying for its analogues to the Trump years, The Plot is a reminder that anti Semitism isn't as hard or as farfetched as we might like to believe, and the skilled, unnerving performances make everything all too plausibly possible. Sure, it's got Roth's familiar bugaboos of randy boys and stereotyped women, but the adaptation is sharp enough to see beyond even Roth's flaws. Between this and the Man in the High Castle, I think we've pretty much covered all the dystopian alternatives. Now do The Civil War!
11. Designated Survivor
12. Madam Secretary
13. The Blacklist (all, Netflix and/or Hulu) - my three choices for Pandemic binge redux, but fill in with your own comfort foods. For my money, watching Tea Leoni's work with greater care both restored my faith in our American government and the show's real skill in crafting worthwhile plots. Designated Survivor's "what if" scenario of rebuilding government after a massive attack had its charms (even Sutherland seems surprisingly understated). And giving The Blacklist a chance opened up some tasty spy thriller storytelling, if tinged with a bit too much violence and gore; but James Spader's scenery chewing turns out to work better than it really has any right to. And all 3 have enough episodes to make the trip worthwhile.
14. Titans (Season 1, Amazon; Season 2 DVD). DC's clever reworking of the Teen Titans franchise (and even cleverer kickoff via Teen Titans Go) is long on dark muttering and tortured beauties, and maybe a bit thin on avoiding plotted preposterousness... but the result is Saturday morning live action cartoon TV for growups, or at least overgrow kids. From its multiple Robins (Dick Grayson and Jason Todd) to origin stories for almost any Teen Titan you can remember, Titans provides just the right mix of lore and legend to give its less plausible turns a comic universe to call its own. Here's hoping pandemic production schedules don't throw it off kilter.

What didn't make my list? Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was nice but meh, Ryan Murphy's too preposterous for belief Hollywood insults any true Golden Age film lover, FX's "yeah but you should have been there" Mrs. America just didn't do it for me, the less than essential second season of Big Little Lies and the BBC's one too many Christie's of The ABC Murders on Amazon (which, by the way, don't get me started on how Branagh's Death on the Nile is either bravura or a disaster, no in betweens). And no, I didn't watch Tiger King or any reality TV (and that includes RuPaul's Drag Race trying to pretend a pandemic can be business as usual).

The Best Of What We Heard 2020

The easy excuse is to say I haven't done this in a while because I was busy... but let's be honest: pop music hasn't been in a great place for a while, and, if anything, composers and songwriters may be the biggest beneficiaries of the Pandemic in the arts: those who write have in many ways been gifted with the time and space to create in a way that there hasn't been in years. While performing artists have struggled, creativity and imagination aren't bound by a quarantine. And the steady, yet persistent appearance of a considerable amount of new music from musicians of all sorts suggests there's definitely been a flowering in the quarantine hothouse. 

For me, it was an amazing year to see pop, but especially dance music, rebound so thoroughly. By the end of the year, two major international stars had returned to their dancefloor roots. and several others were exploring the surprisingly alive, and not merely retro faddish take on classic disco. And I do mean classic... much of the work could have played through the heyday of 1978, and not in a cheesy way at all. And that, my friend, is progress.

In no particular order, but all with a lot of joy:

• Kylie Minogue, Disco. Kylie shot to stardom as a high eighties pop princess with Stock Aitken Waterman in Britain, then left them at the height of success... only to dip back into retro dance grooves (try "Light Years") and then neo New Wave ("Can't Get You Out of My Head"), before heading off into new and different directions, record after record and a string of smash world tours to boot. So it's hilarious and scary to see her loop back around... to a straight up retro seventies disco record that is also a Star at the height of her powers. Disco is pure ear candy of a sort Kylie has made a career on, each song more glittery and joyous than the last. For my money, the best grooves are some combination of France Joli meets The Sylvers at some intersection of Chic and Giorgio Moroder (Spotlight, I Love It)... but there's an embarrassment of riches here for diehard dance fans of all sorts.
• BTS, Dynamite. K-Pop's leading export has smoothly jumped into an American presence after "Boy With Luv" suggested that even a smidge of English splashed across their super sweet grooves would vault them to the top here as in the Far East. But Dynamite goes a step further, finding a new sweet spot in their own take on retro disco, while swiping the feel of Bruno Mars if he overdosed on starshine. If the lure of BTS remains primarily visual (the candy colored videos, spot on choreography and winsome good looks), Dynamite holds up, play after play after play...
  

• Harry Styles, Adore You. I'm not a fan of Styles' heavily overexposed "look at me I'm wearing a dress" attention seeking in Vogue and elsewhere... nor do I think his blandly pleasant (no current song stylist is less readily identifiable) singing is the biggest or best export from One Direction (I'll take Zayn or Liam -- see below -- any day). Which is why no encomiums to "Watermelon Sugar" or its saucy suggestiveness. That said, the man knows his way around good ear candy and Adore You swoops and soars on creamy harmonies and just within reach high notes. A little stalky? Sure. Still a bit oversexed? Absolutely. Without that dress, really, he's just one in a long line of pale male stars.
• The 1975, Notes on a Conditional Form. I find the 1975, and my love of them, hard to quantify... it's like if Yes woke up and decided to be Haircut 100, or something. There's definitely Art Rock in there, and a love of 80s synth pop that's breathtaking to behold... but what's remarkable, really, is how it all makes such brilliant sense. Proving that their run of success is no fluke, Notes on a Conditional Form builds solidly on all they've done so far and moves forward on the art rock, the glorious synths, and the angelic vocal harmonies that accompany them. Fuzzed up lyrics might be less than meets the eye... but is "Leave It" or "Owner of a Lonely Heart" really that deep? I think not... and isn't that really the point?
• Lady Gaga, Chromatica. She continues to go her own way musically, so after A Star is Born and "Shallow" why not... go back and reassert your dominance in dance music? The "larger than life and twice as natural" quality of Gaga can be... a bit much, but as dance divas go, this is a vastly more conceptual and complete record than anything Madonna's done in at least 10 years, and at least a "something for everyone" notion of songs. For my money, she's at her best when it's not trying too hard, which is why "Rain On Me" works best as that Ariana Grande single that shakes the guest's complacency, or why "Sour Candy" isn't so much "Gaga does K pop" as "BlackPink works in American too". Off the guest appearances (why Elton John, why?), "Free Woman", "Replay", "1000 Doves" offer solid grooves and just enough lyrical thoughtfulness to prove that good dance music can think, too. Not everything can be an instant stomper, but mad respect for aiming for the 3rd mezzanine every time.
• Post Malone, Circles. I don't know much, but when rap/hip hop stars are versatile enough to go acoustic eclectic, well, I'll totally show up for it. In a year when rap seems a bit lost (don't get me started on that "WAP" business), Malone made the best case that labels, at best, should mean nothing. "Run away... but we're running in circles..." is just about the best lyrical sum up for life, relationships, and a year like no other.
• Taylor Swift, Betty (and folklore). Swift couldn't quite contain herself, dropping "folklore" in the spring, and then whooshing out "evermore" at the end of the year. It's an overwhelming indication of her talent that she has 2 full (fuller than full, really) albums in her on a slow day... but evermore's endless flow of "sad pieces I wrote at the piano" could perhaps have used some time to percolate. But why quibble? folklore, on its own, isn't just a brilliant Swift album, it's a folk rock arthouse gem that silences virtually all the nitpickers at Swift's ability to stand tall with giants in the music biz. Not necessarily a singles album, and I don't need a "fuzzy sweater and cocoa" record, myself... but "betty" is masterful songwriting at its peak, no matter how you slice it.
• Dan+Shay and Justin Bieber, 10,000 Hours. Bieber is still very much a post rehab work in progress... but there's a lot to suggest he's on the right track.  "10,000 hours" benefits from his vocal drop in... but more than that, it's a reminder that Bieber's real strength as a vocalist doesn't often get the recognition it deserves. Wide open and exposed on this acoustic track, the warmth of Bieber's tenor and his ability to inhabit a lyric isn't anything bravura or showy... it's just stars, after all, are meant to shine.
• Liam Payne, LP1. Amidst a glut of One D solo efforts, Payne has run somewhat under the radar, dropping singles and building interest while the others jumped out fully formed. I'd say the wait was worth it... Payne manages to carve out a pop/dance space for himself that isn't as tortured as Zayn's, not the attention whore of Styles and not afraid to embrace the mix of sex and mass appeal melodies that made him a star. "Strip that Down" and "Stack it Up" aren't subtle... but they are minimalist surprises, while "Bedroom Floor" makes its point without overdoing it. But for me it's "Polaroid" and "Get Low" that suggest the party by way of Ibiza vibe that the others just miss. 

Other notes: I spent the year rounding out and revisiting my favorites: a slew of Jody Watley, moving Thompson Twins to my iTunes, Finally grabbing this Jackie Wilson tune and that Meghan Trainor song that Target used so effectively in ads. That, and I largely gave up on Top 40 radio. Which makes me sad, especially in a pandemic.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: Art Isn't Easy

In a "quality film" season deeply truncated by the pandemic - we will never know what we're not seeing until well after the fact - it's easy to overstate the relative importance of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom finally getting a film adaptation. No doubt, it would be a contender even in normal circumstances. But this is not normal, and this Ma Rainey will shine more so by being the only game in town.

The second recent adaptation of an August Wilson play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom secures the down payment on Denzel Washington's commitment to produce the full "decalogue" of August Wilson's plays, meant to cover the twentieth century experienced by black Americans. First up was Fences, which won Viola Davis her Oscar. And here, as Ma Rainey, her presence makes clear how these projects will be approached: as prestige vehicles with top flight casts, big name directors, and handsome productions.

Whether that's the best approach is harder to say; I suspect few will want to quibble, but like Olivier in the forties, filming Shakespeare's major works as prestige projects, the approach to Wilson may just be a necessary, well intentioned step towards cementing his importance. Later, when the stakes are lower and/or different, we can take apart these works and evaluate different ways of seeing them. But for now, presenting them as Very Important Art may be just how we get from here to wherever it is we wind up.

As it is, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is an impressive mounting of an important works - the performances sing, and much of it is richly emotionally resonant. But for its impressiveness, choppy storytelling and the weight of expectations does rob the overall work of some of its potential audience impact. It's very well done; which is not the same as creating a visceral audience connection or response.

The setting is a sweltering Chicago recording studio in the twenties, where Ma Rainey, the Queen of the Blues, is set to record some sides. A "small" play, the action revolves around the interplay of her band, particularly a talented trumpet player with dreams of stardom; and Ma herself, the definition of diva, complete with a small entourage of a young man and woman who both attend to her needs and demands.

While overall, there's not necessarily much happening - the recording process at the time requires perfect takes captured mostly with hope and prayer - the tensions of recording, the demands of performance intersect with Wilson's storytelling, which is the real draw here. There are beautifully laid out monologues (acting arias, really) for several of the male principles, and Rainey herself talks about her realistic assessment of just how much stardom she has and its actual worth. Lost in these stories, the film takes on incredible depth, profound sadness, and the omnipresent powerlessness of people trapped in a society that can rob them of their humanity in a flash.

The role of Levee, the young trumpeter with big dreams, was the last project Chadwick Boseman filmed before his untimely death this past year, and it is definitely a rich, brilliant performance. Never one to phone it in, his commitment and intensity shines through, and I wouldn't rule out posthumous recognition. As big, important roles in major works go, this is a dream job for many young black actors, and having seen it, I can now see why. Still, "over the top" doesn't fully convey what Boseman has to try and make sense of here in his performance. As good as he is - and he's masterful - the screenplay isn't doing him a lot of favors, and it would be miraculous to pull off where this story goes. Boseman delivers a lot of miracles; so many, that what's not working here is definitely not on him.

As for Davis, I'm not entirely sure she's exactly right for the role; now in that rare position of stardom where her capabilities are matched to the best material, it's gratifying to see her stretch and take on roles outside of her comfort zone. Hell, we should all have so much willingness to dare to try. But this isn't an especially up piece of work to begin with, and there's a sense of joy missing from her solid, but often grim seeming, performance. Seeing the role, I'm curious how a number of "singers who act" (Jennifer Hudson leaps to mind) might tackle the part. No doubt, Davis is a fierce actress at the top of her game, and reverent with the material. I'm just not entirely convinced reverence is what this film needed most. 

George Wolfe's long history directing Wilson, and overall artistic commitment to chronicling the black experience makes him a natural for directing this, and he does what he can to open out what is, ultimately,  a great one set play (or one great set). More frustratingly, there's a choppiness to the storytelling that feels unnecessarily forced. I'm not sure film is Wolfe's strongest medium. As for the script, Ruben Santiago-Hudson has a sure hand for adapting works to film, and here he mostly seems to get out of the way and let Wilson's words speak.

And again... whether that's the best approach, or not, could be, and probably should be, debated at length. As it stands, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom lets an impressive cast, led by 2 stars in their prime, set a marker for bringing Wilson effectively to the screen. It may well be expecting too much to get a fully transcendent, moving experience to boot. In its best moments, this Ma Rainey really sings. Getting to a film that's more than moments may require trying less hard to make very important art. 

The New Normal

Hello, yeah, it's been awhile...

At first, it seemed like a weird, interesting foreign news story gone terribly wrong. When reporters first described an epidemic in the Wuhan province of China spreading rapidly and causing concerns, it was hard to see what was coming.

The things you realize, after the fact.

I think of Phuket, Thailand and the tsunami, the people who headed out into dry seabed as the ocean receded so far out that people couldn't believe the water had vanished from the shore. It means "run" but who knows that, in the moment?

I now feel like, maybe, I would have been one of those standing on the beach. Maybe a little too long.

As things go, I was maybe sort of lucky. Yes, the panic shopping was already underway, the virus most likely already out and about in my Westchester community, north of New Rochelle. As international travelers came home and cruise lines started to implode, it's hard not to realize that the people who live those lives and take those trips... are your neighbors. Like maybe we should worry. Like maybe we need to take some steps. We were too late. I see that now. Asking questions days, weeks after they needed to start being asked.

(And still, yesterday, the Governor of Florida finally thought, hey, maybe it's time we told that state to stay at home. Yesterday.) 

Still, as I often do, I had a vacation planned for my birthday, the second week of March. Maybe a side trip to Boston to see old friends. Needless to say, that didn't happen as "the Biogen Meeting" blew up. And come the end of that week, staring down the obvious implications of an epidemic now underway in my state, in my county, in the town three towns away... suddenly, living with an 85 year old mother with complicating conditions didn't seem incidental. Not anymore.

Three weeks (and counting) later, the world is... different. In so many ways. Life is lived at home, as we do now, communicating by phone and videoconference and Zoom and watching cable news with agitation and alarm.

There are, of course, many things to be said, many observations to be made. And suddenly, again, I find myself with all the time in the world to write them down. Interesting, that. Some have suggested that Gen X is uniquely equipped to handle this epidemic... I don't feel as confident as all that. I can say that, much like Rachel Maddow and numerous friends of a certain age, living through 9/11 and the early days of the AIDS epidemic does at least give one some markers to work from as this unfolds... not necessarily good or happy ones. You learn some things about people, and groups, in emergencies. Not a lot of them are good.

I think of And The Band Played On (I really must dig up my copy from the basement) -- the story of Anthony Fauci's other big job -- and that moment when one of the CDC shouted at Blood Center execs "how many dead bodies do you need, because we can come back then" about instituting testing controls over blood donations. I think of the leaders putting off stay at home orders, keeping all kinds of falderal open, not doing enough to convince people they, too, are at risk.

I think of those panicked calls on 9/11, when people didn't know where friends, family, spouses were - on a plane, in the Tower, somewhere in Manhattan. How empty Times Square was on the morning of 9/12 (I was there, virtually alone). I look at that empty Times Square and those darkened theaters and empty hotels and I know they come back... eventually. But we are different. We are changed. We just don't know quite how. Not yet.

We try to find the light in this darkness - it's Christmas for introverts! Your cat never wanted you home this much! - but there's a lot of darkness, and so little light. We can't begin to admit, even to ourselves, a lot, how long this could go on, how bad it will get, the people we may very likely lose. Keep calm and carry on. Try to order the groceries online. Try to remember what six feet apart looks like. Try not to panic when you cough. Or someone else coughs. Try not to lie awake, mentally ticking off every cramp, every breath... because who knows if we got it. Or have it. Or will get it.

Gloria Gaynor showed us you can sing I Will Survive when you wash your hands. I mean... we will, right? And so I'm back, from outer space. Back at my desk. Back to the future. Back against the wall. I have no idea how we get through this, how we get used to the new normal. I wasn't really all that keen on the old normal. But like 9/11, like life before AIDS... it does always seem to go that you don't know what you... well, you get the idea.