GLEE: a review of the TV series

            I enjoy the TV series GLEE.  Let me make that clear right away.  It's loaded with tokenism and it knows it.  The political correctness is like a flagpole stuck up, well, let's say it's stuck up.  In spite of these sins, it's a lot of fun.  It's relaxing, sometimes moving, always entertaining.  If I had to watch commercials with this show, it would suck.  My wife and I ordered the discs from Netflix.

            What a wonderful world it would be if we could sing our feelings to one another, if a song in the vast library of pop music could be taken from its envelope and seamlessly rhapsodized to our partner, our friend, support group, spouse...whomever.  That would be great.  And that's what GLEE does.  It's a variety show merged with a sit-drama.  It's a great big musical with a few scenes of spoken dialogue.  Important themes are explored in the plot: teen pregnancy, toleration for gays and weirdos, high school bullying, adolescent angst. The range is modest but positive.  GLEE gets us emotionally involved.  We get angry at the lies that hurt and deceive innocent (or ignorant) young people.  My wife and I wanted Quinn to fess up to who was the real father of her baby.  We wanted Terry to come clean to Will that she was NOT pregnant.  It's basic, simple story telling, but it's effective.   

            I've written, in my other reviews, of the so-called Fulcrum Character.  This is a supporting role without which the whole story would collapse.  In GLEE this role is carried by the effeminate gay character of Kurt Hummel.  The actor, Chris Colfer, landed this plum as his FIRST show biz role.  Talk about fate.  He's good, really good.  The story lines of GLEE would simply flatten without Kurt's presence.  Colfer carries the role with amazing authority.  If he weren't such a good actor, the gay stereotypes offered by the script writers would be off the charts.  He simply accepts his status as Victim with indifferent aplomb and leaves it behind, leaves it in the dumpster where the jocks toss him every morning.  In the REAL world, a Kurt Hummel would spend most of his time in the hospital E.R.  But this is GLEE, not the real world.

            GLEE, the TV series, shows the influence of another TV series, SCRUBS.  I'm so often reminded of SCRUBS by the incidental music, the 'tween scenes' bopping and percussion fills.  I'm also reminded of SCRUBS by the dialogue, especially that of the vindictive cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester.  Alas, GLEE is not SCRUBS.  Not even close.  And Sue Sylvester, no matter how gloatingly superior her rhetoric, no matter how repulsive and outright dirty MEAN she gets, is not Dr. Perry Cox.  Not by a long shot.

            Still, GLEE is a lot of fun.  When Rachel breaks up, or reconciles, for the twentieth time, with Finn, Jesse or whomever, she belts out a perfectly produced, professionally glossed song -and- dance number.  The Show Choir, the so-called "losers" dubbed New Directions, waits in the wings with supporting harmonies. It pops out from behind the curtains with a great band, sometimes even strings and horns.  The lighting gets inventive, the costumes are immaculate.  Brad the piano player is always available and the fantasy is complete.  This ain't no high school glee club.  We wouldn't sit still for a high school glee club unless it came from the School For The Performing Arts.  We wouldn't watch the performance of a show choir from a suburban midwestern town unless our kids were in it.    

            When the glitz of the music fades away, and we return to the plot, I find that my wife is crying along with Kurt Hummel, when his wonderfully supportive father lies in a coma, and the series' emotional content spikes in some not-quite-preachy way.

            If you've enjoyed this brief review, I may yet have more commentary on GLEE as a paradigm marker, or something like that.  Meanwhile, we're starting Disc One of Season Two.

Twelve Angels

Angel One by Art Rosch

Twelve Angels

Everyone can have twelve angels.

Everyone.  All that is required is desire.

If you are alive

and  can imagine the idea

of having twelve angels,

they are yours.

They will protect you, guide you, teach you,

and make a home for you in the world of spirit

while you struggle with the trials of your life.

Everyone can have twelve angels.

That which is Great Spirit

does more than create.

Great spirit delegates. 

Great spirit has structured the cosmos

so that twelve angels are always ready, anywhere,

to help in a moment of terror, to comfort in an emergency,

to guide the living along the pathways to death and beyond,

towards another kind of life.

Twelve angels are yours now.

Just ask them for what you need.

They don't always grant what you want.

But they know what you need and bring it to you

before you know yourself

what is coming down the trail of the future.

Next time you meet a stranger

it is possible that this person has twelve angels

and doesn't know it.  If you tell him, he will

think you're crazy, so it's best to stay quiet.

Light years beyond the wildest dream, twelve angels for every mind

that seeks to know truth, are there, the twelve of them,

there for you.

Prayer For 2012

ShoShow me the way, Lord.

I am always your student.
I am always in love with you.
I am always willing to change myself
to follow the deepest promptings
that you have planted in my heart.
Show me not the answer, 
show me the right questions
to ask. Show me what is right
and I will try as best I can
to do it. I will fail, often.
If I ask for something that does not help me, 
show me the error, and lead me to that
which helps me.
Show me how to love, Lord.
Many things pose as love; 
how do I sort my way through all the masks
that show themselves as love
that are not love.
Show me how to live my life.
I walk in a trance, 
I move without being awake
I act without a plan.
My head is fuzzy; my limbs do not respond well.
My walk is tilted.
I don’t know when I’m hungry.
I eat whenever my stomach hurts.
I breathe air that I have spoiled.
My spirit seems clogged. Though I want to fly
I have no wings.
Teach me how to recognize you, Lord.
help me listen
to know your voice
when I hear it.
A thousand teachings flood my senses 
until I am falling over the ropes of words
of those who claim to be wise.
Cloudy mysticism is everywhere: 
“we are all one, god is in all of us, 
listen to the silence within you, ”
so many messages that do not bear
on my experience of reality.
I only know what my day presents, 
nothing more. I can feel my fellow humans, 
their fears and their dreams.
I would serve and be served by them
if I had something real to give.
Show me what is real, Lord.
Show me a work that is generous and clean.
Show me how best to use my gifts, 
for you have given me so many, 
yet I squander them
and am left with a greed
that controls me.
Help me not to ask for help, Lord.
Or help me ask for help, 
for it is confusing to know what provides
dignity. Confusion is not dignity
unless you sanctify my confusion
as a worthy state. 
Show me what is possible, Lord.
I would love to believe that anything
is possible.
I need to have faith in Faith.
My senses tell me 
that nothing is fixed, that the earthly world
swirls like a fluid dream. I want to know
what is true, Lord.
If nothing is fixed, then nothing is impossible.
Show me how to master it, Lord.
At the depths of my heart, I long to master life.
I long to master awareness itself.
Show me my own mind, Lord.
I don’t know who else to ask, but You.
Everything is important, Lord.
Everything. Show me how to wear myself
in the best light. Show me grace, Lord, show me
all the things I have forgotten, all the things I knew
when I was young, whan I was a child, 
before I lost my courage, 
before I knew what courage is, 
before I cared whether I won or lost
or tied or died or lived well
or lost myself in dark valleys, 
before I learned to walk, 
before I learned to talk
before I learned to think.
Show me everything, Lord, 
show me all that I need
and all that I can handle
to create me as your heart’s desire.
Show me how to make your heart’s desire
my heart’s desire, 
that I may walk alongside you
secure in the knowing of you
as my friend and mentor.
Show me, Lord, show me, show me
I weep with desire, show me
reveal it to me though it be too bright
reveal it to me in the little bits that you deem right, 
any way you want to bring me into your heart, 
Lord, just show me. 

The Scam Of Self Transformation

They're everywhere.  There are thousands of would-be gurus, life coaches, revealers of new techniques, New Age formulators of ways to help you empower yourself, to get what you really want out of life.  They're all offering you a way out of your problems.  Everything will be fine if you follow the Eleven Laws of Committment, or the Seven Ways of Tai-Fen, or The Secret's True Secret At The Heart Of The True Secret's Truest Secret.

            Relationships, Money, Health.  Those are the holy trinity upon which are based the promises of the Salesmen of Miraculous Change.  These salesmen will show you how to cut through the knot of your obstacles, how to rid yourself of the Negative Energies that have been keeping success at bay. For only $75, or $350, or whatever amount applies, you can purchase the Program.  You'll receive your DVD, The Book, and maybe a T-shirt or a coffee mug.  There are essential accessories, like tuning forks and magic water and The Program doesn't really work unless you have these gizmos to enhance your Chi.  Gee.  If you follow the techniques diligently, the mess of your life will clear up very soon, maybe in a few months.  You might start to see change immediately!  Your life will begin to work for you!

            Are people THAT miserable?

            Yes.  A lot of people are.

            Many, too many people are sick and stressed out.  We've been hooked on the Happiness Con  our entire lives.  It got cooked into The American Dream.   It means different things to different people but those of us beyond a certain age have a veritable cellular expectation that the Good Times are going to roll.  Our lives are supposed to be Fulfilling.  That's written into the contract.  Isn't it?

          Now that it hasn't worked out the way we planned we're in a state of shock.  How did our lives get so fucked up?  We were supposed to be happy, we were guaranteed a life of abundance so long as we got our degrees and certificates as we went around the track.   We were also expected to be "nice".  We weren't supposed to make Bad Karma.

            Bad Karma happened anyway.  We chose the wrong partners, made dumb business decisions and indulged in escapist activities.  Whoops!

            I call this state of affairs Human Life.   Some of us are more messed up than others, it's true, but the bedrock reality is that everything is a mess.  I'm not saying that we can't and shouldn't work on our characters.  I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't put compassion into action on the stage of life.  I'm not saying that miracles don't happen. Clearly they do.  Big ones and little ones.  The world is filled with miracles, the world IS a miracle.  It's just that the world is also a mess.  How are we supposed to live in a messed up world without being ourselves messed up?

            I believe that most of the Self Empowerment carpetbaggers are sincere.  They really believe their own schtick.  They're selling books,  DVDs and T-shirts.  They have followers.  People attend their seminars.   I can't help wondering if, deep down in the ooze of their suppressed Negative Energy, they don't have a little twinge of guilt.  Nah, probably not.  Ninety nine percent of their followers, or consumers, are failing to transform their lives.  They're still overweight, or single, overwhelmed with financial problems,  fighting with a partner or confused by the demands of parenthood.  Hence they sign up for the Advanced Course.

            The Self Transformation Industry is just that, an industry.  It's loaded with hyperbolic advertising.  If you want to transform yourself, it will happen organically.  All you need to do is aim your intention and cooperate with your own life.  Good things will happen, and bad things will happen.  Usually it's the pain that does the most transforming. 

Captain America: A Review

Some time beginning in the late 70's a change began in the genre of Super Hero/Comic Book movies.  I think in particular about the first "Superman" released in 1978.  Then I follow a trajectory that brings us to 1997 and"Men In Black".  Within this time frame superheroes stopped declaiming their lines like politicians on steroids.  They abandoned the cornball sentiments that are still heard (unfortunately) in the world of politics.  Before this sea-change a film might end with the hero giving the obligatory pretty girl an obligatory super kiss.  When the kiss is done, he looks into the sky, eyes narrowed with noble determination, and says the ogligatory closing line:"Now the world is finally safe from Tyranny."

            By the time "Men In Black" came along, the hero's lines had changed, the entire tone of movies had changed, so that Will Smith could say something like, "I hate gettin' goo on my suit when I blast those mothas!"

            The deeper truth that lies behind this change is that pop culture has entered a new psychological era, the Age of Irony.  Insofar as mass entertainment is concerned, irony is now a more common dramatic currency than is heroism.  We, the audience, see ourselves more realistically.  We are saturated in irony because we know that we are doomed.  We are doomed individually: we are all going to die.  We are possibly doomed as a civilization, because of the way we have fucked things up.

            We know, or can imagine, many dooms that were hidden before the Discovery Channel founded its empire of info-tainment.  We imagine doom by comet impact.  We imagine the coming doom wrought by global warming.  We imagine doom by the explosion of the super volcano simmering under Yellowstone National Park.  We imagine doom by weapons of mass destruction, or malignant microbes.  We are a people of a thousand imagined dooms.  
           I have devised a personal motto:  March Cheerfully To Your Doom.  Is there any choice?  Or shall we simply proceed to the Age of Despair and forget about having any fun at all?

            I was curious to see how the producers of "Captain America" would adapt to our modern ironic sensibilities.  The themes of "Captain America" hearken back to that most heroic and patriotic era, World War Two.  How could they twist this red- white-and-blue superhero into an ironic commentary that would appeal to today's audiences?

            The producers used a simple device, and it worked.  They made the film's action a flashback.  Contemporary explorers in some remote shifting glacier discover a strange artifact sticking out of the ice.  As soldiers rappel down into this artifact, it becomes obvious that it is a highly advanced aircraft.  There is a pilot's seat looking out a giant windshield.  We don't see what, if anything, is in that pilot's seat. Scraping away a shallow layer of ice, one of the soldiers discovers a round device.  Is it a shield?  It looks like a shield.  And, by god, it is emblazoned with the white star surrounded by red and blue circles: the icon of the U.S. Armed Forces during World War Two.

            This flashback device enables us to look as through the wrong end of a telescope, witnessing the Age of Heroism through the sensibility of the Age of Irony.

Captain America, played without hyperbole by Chris Evans, goes about his business

without any bodice-busting fuss.  He's likeable, modest and utterly committed.

            A top secret agency, the Strategic Scientific Reserve, is working with a brilliant scientist, a fellow who escaped from the Nazis.  He has invented a biological technology that can turn ordinary men into Super Soldiers with super reflexes and super physiques.  The scientist's name is Dr. Erskine, but we may as well call him Dr. Epstein.  We all know he's a Jew, which releases him from the taint of Germanic Fascism.  Meanwhile, the Germans have an advanced Black Ops club, run by  a rogue genius named Johann Schmidt.  Herr Schmidt is at the helm of his own organization called Hydra.  This Hydra thing is to Nazism as a Great White Shark is to a goldfish. 

            Now we throw in a pretty girl.  She is an intelligence agent who liaises with the aforementioned Strategic Scientific Reserve.  She's everywhere.  She's part of the inner circle, though she doesn't seem to do anything besides be head cheerleader.  Heck, she's the only cheerleader. She believes in Dr. Epstein.  She accepts his choice of the first human  subject to undergo the transformation into Super Soldier.  This person is Steve Rogers, a weak, skinny but indomitably plucky 4F washout. The boy weighs maybe eighty pounds in a wet T-shirt and can't lift a moth without dislocating his shoulder.  He has tried to enlist forty times under forty different names in forty towns, but he's got asthma, heart murmur, flat feet, bed wetting, 20/80 vision.  He's under weight, under height, has Recalcitrant Plebny, Feline Leukemia, and every other disqualifier for military duty.

            But he is plucky!  Dr. Epstein recognizes this Pluck as the true ingredient of a Super Soldier.  Sure enough, when Steve gets put in the machine and pumped full of the esoteric hormones, he emerges as a plucky hunk of buff manhood like whooo hooo!  Now his head looks as if it actually belongs on his body, which was a disturbing artifact of his previous digitally de-buffed body.

            Agent Peggy Carter loved him before, but now she loves him just as much

and will love him even if the hormones turn him into a gay guy with a huge body and a tiny pin head.

            Here we go, folks!  The elements are in place.  We are now ready for many chases, explosions, gun fights, grappling and swinging from the bars of industrial catwalks, plus a few romantic interludes that are always interrupted before The Kiss can happen.  The Kiss finally happens as Steve Rogers pluckily volunteers to go on a suicide mission that leads to the surprise denouement of the film. 

            I liked the film, (meaning I watched all of it) but the ending left me saying "HUH?"

            I give the film three muskrats.  One of those muskrats is for the moment when villainous Herr Schmidt tears his own face off to reveal a red-orange skull with a Michael Jackson nose.

           

            

The Singles Party From Hell

            When I hit middle age I found that it was time to re-calibrate my mating radar.  The things that I wanted in a woman were becoming less  relevant.  A twenty five year old man falls in love with his girls’ boobs.  A fifty year old man, if he’s not an idiot, will fall in love with his partner’s character.  If he’s expecting to revel in exciting boobs his whole life, he’ll look like the old fart that married Anna Nicole Smith.  That arrangement did not end happily.

            I continued to behave as if I was twenty five. This strategy wasn't working.  It led me into  ridiculous situations where I felt as if I was closer to twelve  than what I was, a supposedly mature man.  I needed to overhaul my pheromones.  My romantic fantasies needed a serious tune-up.

            Let me say this right now: looks don’t mean a thing.  Love doesn’t care what someone looks like.  Love is a matter of soul, the long run, a lifetime.  Love finds us, we don’t’ find love.  When I met the woman who would become my partner, it was as if love was waiting for both of us.  Love had acted as a match maker, moving us around like pawns until we were together and committed.

            I had spent years doing some of the craziest things imaginable, with one purpose: to meet my life’s partner.  Everywhere I went, to clubs, parties, salons, bird watching expeditions, I went with only one motive: to meet someone!  I went to events that didn’t interest me.  I went to boring seminars, poetry readings by bad poets, turgid discussion groups.  I spent time with people I didn’t like.   I even joined Mensa.  Wow.  (Mensa members, please do not take offense.  I’ll trade you mockeries.  I’m a hippie.  Mock me!  You have my permission.)

            All this frenzied woman-chasing came to a head when I attended a monthly singles party hosted by the local newspaper. 

            I had never attended a singles party.  When I entered the restaurant and looked over the crowd, I realized that I was at a gathering of predators. There was a subliminal noise of growling and hissing, of lips smacking and barely audible wolf whistles. The good looking people became like human bumper cars.  There wasn’t enough room for the girls to squeeze into the space around The Handsome Rich Guy.  It was a maniacal jostle, carried out on the dance floor to the D.J.’s disco beat.

            The scrum around Hot Chick was even more ridiculous.

            There are always a few major players of each gender at a party.  Ms. Hot was exuding a monstrous fug of pheromones that drew men like some protozoan homing beacon.  I could feel the other women hating her with arachnid intensity.  She monopolized..no, she hypnotized.. the men with her jiggling act, the bouncing of her visible parts.

            I began a conversation with an attractive woman. A few moments later a man emerged from a nearby restroom.  He looked me up and down disdainfully and said, “I’m already here.” 

            I checked with the lady.  Our conversation had been fun. I thought she was enjoying my company.

            “Do you want me to leave?” I asked. 

            “He was already here,” she said meekly.  The man, who had thin wispy hair, glasses, and looked like an insurance salesman, puffed up his chest and moved in close to me, getting inside my personal space in an aggressive way.  I could have crushed him with one hand.

            “I’m HERE, get it!?”

            I walked away.  I’m not the crushing type, although I admit there would have been a certain satisfaction in lifting this twerp and throwing him across the room.

            As the evening progressed, distinctive sub-groups began forming.  There were the “alternatives”, that is people who dressed like hippies, punks or eccentrics.  I felt that I was an “alternative”.  I have a tendency to wear loose, comfortable clothes.  I just put on whatever is handy.  I spent some time talking to a woman who dressed entirely in black, like a French intellectual from the fifties.  She wore a turtle neck sweater, a black beret and thick-rimmed black glasses.  Her name was Harry.  Or Hari.  Or Hairy.  I don't know...the music was loud.

            The “office workers” seemed to dress like cubicles even when away from them.  The“Bad People”, tattooed and pierced, grimaced disdainfully and often strolled to the parking lot to imbibe drugs.

            There was a legion of dark curly- haired men with shirts open to the waist, wearing gold chains and Rolex watches.  They danced that eternal dance, The Crotch-and-Swivel.  Their heads rotated, eyes searching, arms groping in the crowd.  Women jumped backwards and collided with other dancers as these hands found private places.  The expression “meat market”, cliché as it is, kept whirling through my mind.  This was it; the erotic butcher’s selection of choice cuts, laid out on a platter, a dance floor, as Abba tunes alternated with Stevie Wonder.  Good god, I was dressed in athletic pants and a t-shirt.  I was overmatched.  I was completely out of my depth. 

            The final assault on my sensibilities occurred when I saw, there on the dance floor, my therapist. 

            My therapist.  

            Ten years of weekly sessions, a whole cataclysm of my soul in a decade of the most intensive work, and I see my therapist at a party so comic and ridiculous that I sensed a foreshadowing of the end of my therapy.  If she’s HERE, why am I paying her to advise me on how to live my life?

            I left before ten and never went to another singles party. 

What Isn't Love?

No one has ever read this poem.  There was a period in which I was obsessed with a woman.  It was a terrible, destructive, painful experience.

The woman enjoyed her power over me and used it to pull me in, push me out, toy with me.  She wasn't such a bad person.  She was simply in thrall to her own problems and the two of us constructed an awful parody of "love".  During that period I wrote several poems exploring rage, obsession and the difference between healthy love and obsessive love.  I chose to post this poem because I think such experiences are not uncommon.  Many of us have been through the agony of obsessive, jealous, manipulative and enslaving attachment.

What Isn't Love?

Staring into space at work,

while over and over you rehearse

something you must say to wound your lover.

Or having to replay

again and again throughout the day

some way that your lover wounded you.

Listening to the sound

of cars homeward bound;

to extend the range of audibility

farther and farther down the street,

parsing motor noise as you wait:

car too big, car too small,

how long will he or she be gone?

Wincing when your lover smiles

through a party's unheard talk

with a too-attractive stranger;

it feels so much like danger.

To miss someone is sweet,

but helplessness is bitter,

and love does not taste bitter,

rejection is the acrid morsel on the tongue.

Trying too hard to be good;

trying too hard to be bad;

trying too hard not to feel;

feeling too hard to try,

and wanting to cry

when you beg for love

as if it were a drug,

then moan in shocked surprise

when you don't feel high.

Yet you grow more passionate

with each betrayal.

What isn't love?

Heat without light;

lust without compassion;

compassion without passion.

No word exists for what isn't love

but it's always been around

in promises that are broken

in the language being spoken

by those who cannot hear

its splintered sound.