I didn’t read it either…

But I did read “Tale of Two Cities” in high school…you know, it was the best of times and the worst of times (kind of like today, although I think we’re leaning towards “worst”). And “Great Expectations” with Pip. But that’s it. As for reading Dickens in college… It was part of a course that required you to read books up to a thousand pages at the pace of one a week and if I actually did all the reading…I’d have no time to do anything else.

There have been all these stories recently how even in college students no longer read entire books. But the dirty little secret is always what college you go to. If you go to a classic liberal arts college, believe me, you will. As for studying business at a multi-university…I don’t know. Then again, my classic New England upbringing leaves me with a different view of college from most people today. College was not a place you went to to get a job, but to enrich your life.

Now I could go on a rant here about education… You do know that despite hating on teachers’ unions the goal of many is to starve public schools, to replace them with parochial schools… But I feel like I’m living in bizarroland. I just grew up in the middle class suburbs. Where education was treasured. And I won’t say necessarily rigorous, not for everybody, but I assumed this model continued to dominate, now I know that is not the case. And just one more thing here…although I don’t understand sending your kids away to prep school, I will say they get a much better education there. I was stunned at how well read my prep school compatriots were at Middlebury.

Not that I feel totally warm about Middlebury… I’ve mellowed, but it took me ten years to get over that place. It was a hothouse of conservatism where the students jockeyed for position and…the real world was not like that, god…if you just showed up every day you ended up ascending the job ladder quickly.

Anyway, I hope the title of this spiel doesn’t turn you off, because this 2005 BBC production of “Bleak House” is definitely worth your while.

Now before this we watched “Eddington,” which had a big buzz when it was released over the summer, there were articles and conversation but I’m not going to to go to the theatre… Once again, for many reasons, but…I find I can’t slow down enough to enjoy the picture, if nothing else. I can’t go from working steadily to calming down on demand.

Anyway, RottenTomatoes rates “Eddington” at  69/65 and I’d say that’s exactly right. Which is why I’d refrained from watching it previously, my threshold is 80, but the film continues to pop up in my reading so we delved in.

“Eddington” rang my bell at first, it’s a perfect depiction of the maelstrom we presently live in, with beliefs on the left and the right, arguments between the young and the old, but they throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, it’s overplotted, and you end up disappointed at the end.

Which is why I found myself on Metacritic researching TV series. Once again, I like the character development in series, the greater depth, even though the educated classes, Hollywood royalty, still think movies are the sh*t.

So I’m looking at the best TV series of all time on Metacritic, and not far from the top I find a 2005 remake of “Bleak House.” And wanting to watch something good, we dove in.

Now you can watch “Bleak House” on multiple platforms. We watched it on Amazon… As for the ads, there’s a thirty second one before every episode and that’s all, so you don’t have to pay the $2.99 to get rid of them. I can afford $2.99, but I find it an insult. Just give me one overall price, stop pecking me to death like an overaggressive duck. If you want to see where you can see “Bleak House,” just go to justwatch.com  Ah, here’s the page:

https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=bleak%20house%202005

So this 2005 series is not the only edition of “Bleak House,” but this is the one that was rated so well on Metacritic. It stars Gillian Anderson.

Now as I said previously, science fiction is not my thing, so I never watched “The X-Files,” I wasn’t really familiar with Anderson’s work. But she was so good in “The Fall,” I became a fan. And you should watch “The Fall”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(TV_series) 

And Anderson is great in “Bleak House,” but she’s far from the only draw. It’s a cornucopia of great U.K. actors. You’ve seen Anna Maxwell Martin in so many productions…you may not recognize the name, but you’ll know her instantly by her face. Charles Dance as Mr. Tulkinghorn is an intense villain, without becoming two-dimensional. It even features a young Carey Mulligan. This is not an American series with stars showing off, oftentimes sans acting skills. This is a primer in great acting.

Anyway, the plot is…

There’s a legal case regarding a will that’s been going on for years, but everybody whose put their faith in a payout has had their life ruined by this focus.

And then there’s the heritage of Anna Maxwell Martin’s Esther Summerson.

But, there is tons of plot, tons of twists and turns. You see a huge issue that would be resolved in the very last episode in an American series and then you’re stunned when the truth comes out much earlier…where is the story going to go?

Meanwhile, it’s all set in mid-century England, the 1800s, and you’ve got vast income inequality, the idle rich living in luxury and the poor living in squalor. Actually, it’s not that different from today, even though we’ve pulled back from the extremes.

So there are issues of money, but also passion and honor and…

Don’t be scared off by it being Dickens… You’d be interested no matter who wrote it

The avarice.  Everybody’s trying to get ahead, whether it be the drunken landlord Krook or the invalid carried by chair Smallweed.

Do you let young lovers live their impassioned lives impulsively or does the elder try to slow their lives down, having learned how life plays out over his years.

And can you restrict your passion, your love for another, even if society frowns on it?

And then there’s the power wielded over those who have no standing.

The surprises are plentiful.

My only regret is one of my favorite actors, John Lynch…

Well, I don’t want to give anything away, I’ll just say I wish he was featured more in the series.

You may not be hooked immediately, but within two or three episodes you will be, you’ll be drawn to the TV because you want to know what happens. And you’ll be surprised by what happens.

And on one hand you’ll be taken away from today…but so many of the same issues are in play in the twenty first century.

“Bleak House” was written as a twenty episode serial over a year and a half. Which means Dickens had to keep the reader interested, on the edge of their seat, wanting to know what happened.

Don’t let a knee-jerk aversion to Dickens prevent you from watching this series. It’s a BBC tour-de-force.

And much better than all the vaunted American productions of 2025.

If you’re looking for a respite from this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world…

I recommend this book.

Which I was hesitant about in the beginning, because it’s a “Read with Jenna Pick.” Not that I knew this when I reserved it on Libby a few months back after reading a review in the “New York Times,” but oftentimes the books Jenna recommends are relatively lowbrow and unsatisfying, I won’t quite say time-killers, but I’m looking for soul-fulfillment in my reading more than just warm feelings.

But not long after I started I stopped. And then read and stopped again. Because, you see, one of the characters was clairvoyant.

Maybe that’s not the exactly right word. Becky can connect with people from the past. A spiritualist? I don’t know, but I’ve got no time for this stuff…I’m rooted in reality. And for that reason I’ve got absolutely no interest in fantasy and rarely am entranced by science fiction. I know, I know, you like “Dark” and so many streaming shows…but they’re not my thing.

So I’m going to read a 451 page book that turns on a character communing with the other side?

I don’t think so.

But giving “Buckeye” one more go I got hooked. Turns out that the spiritualist element ends up being a relatively minor theme in this saga about America. Which starts just prior to the Second World War and then plays out through the lives of the earliest baby boomers.

Based in Ohio…in sleepy Bonhomie, you ultimately see the town flourish in the boom of the fifties and sixties. If you lived through this era, you recognize the optimism, and then the looming Vietnam War. That’s one thing young ‘uns never had to worry about…getting drafted. Never mind fighting and dying or coming back with no acceptance, no kudos. The government was disconnected from the public just like today, but instead of fearing you were going to get shipped overseas to fight, now you’re worried about being deported.

Now not everybody is born to set the world on fire. Today’s “news” is littered with people trying to become rich and famous. The opportunity is vast, even though the odds are low. But just living your life was enough back in the late forties and fifties. You wanted a marriage, kids, a job, good times.. Being average was not a sentence, but what most people wanted and were happy with.

So we’ve got the war. Actually three wars… II, Korea and Vietnam. And the men who go and either come back or don’t. And the women wait for their return.

And the depiction of the World War II era…

One of the hottest recent books is Kristin Hannah’s “The Women”…which is phenomenal when it deals with war, but is nearly two-dimensional when the main character returns to the U.S. This is not “Buckeye”… “Buckeye” focuses less on what happens overseas, although it does a good job, but when the focus returns to the U.S., it’s far superior to “The Women.”

So if you liked “The Women”…

“Buckeye” is a saga. It doesn’t start where it ends up. Kind of like the new John Irving book “Queen Esther,” an orphanage figures into the beginning but the plot does not remain there…(I loved the Irving book at first, but it gets twisted up…you’re on your own with “Queen Esther.”)

So you’ve got the orphan who…

“Buckeye” ends up a family drama. With everything from work to passion to internal despair…just like regular life, just like your life.

In a world dominated by “news”…there’s more real life, more truth in “Buckeye” than what you’ll find online.

I don’t want to overhype it, but I love this kind of book…that takes me into another space, separated from everyday reality, yet makes me contemplate life all the while.

As I look at Amazon right now, it says “Buckeye” is:

“ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, People, Minnesota Star Tribune, Chicago Public Library”

But no one has ever mentioned it to me.

Yet it is a best seller.

So if this is the kind of book that appeals to you, one that is not hard to read but tells the story of life…

“Buckeye” is perfect for this period of holiday limbo, you will lose yourself in it.

“BREAKING: Here’s the 60 Minutes Segment Trump and CBS News Executives Don’t Want You to See – Hours before it was set to air last night, CBS News executives pulled the segment, but Canada’s Global TV app received it prior to broadcast.”

https://www.thereset.news/p/breaking-heres-the-60-minutes-segment?brid=B5tlw2JeGMed9O2l7reARA

This reminds me of the record companies and Napster. By suing the file trading company, by trying to keep the record business in the past, the labels amplified the story to the point where not only everybody in America knew about Napster, they wanted to try it! People secured broadband just to download files! And once you used Napster, there was no way you could go back to the overpriced CD for one good track model.

Now the labels could have looked into the future, tried to get ahead of the public. This is what Spotify did. People had never used streaming, they didn’t believe it would work, but when they tried it, they adored it… AND SPOTIFY SINGLE-HANDEDLY SAVED THE RECORD BUSINESS!

But you can’t say that, because Spotify and Daniel Ek are the devil, don’t you know? They’re keeping people whose music the public doesn’t want to stream in quantity from making beaucoup bucks. MEANWHILE, those artists whose music is streamed prodigiously are making more money than ever before (assuming a bad record deal doesn’t have their label siphoning off most of the revenue).

It probably never occurred to Bari Weiss that this video might be leaked. I mean it existed… And the funny thing is, after suing people who leaked albums early, the artists and labels figured out that getting noticed at all was the problem. We had unannounced drops. The story wasn’t the hype, but the underlying material…is it good enough that people want to pull it, listen to it?

Now I stopped watching “60 Minutes” years ago, and if there wasn’t this brouhaha, I probably wouldn’t have watched this segment either.

But Bari Weiss poured gasoline on a smoldering fire and now the conflagration is burning worldwide and I watched the video… And it looks bad, really bad. But if Bari Weiss hadn’t tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it, after all, Trump is flooding the zone and no outlet has universal mindshare.

This is just another straw on the camel’s back. This “60 Minutes” piece is not going to cause a revolution unto itself. But like the renaming of the Kennedy Center, it will stick in your craw. It just doesn’t feel right, so much doesn’t feel right.

Now everybody is expendable. Elise Stefanik just realized this and rumor has it that Kristi Noem is on her way out. The only person who needs to survive is Trump.

And it’s not only his cabinet, but the citizenry at large. Doesn’t matter if you’re MAGA or an extreme lefty… Trump is out for himself, look at all the money is family has made since he’s been in office.

It’s a matter of more and more people waking up.

And you never know when they will.

It’s not like prices suddenly jumped, they were high and going higher, but “affordability” rose to the surface, it’s the number one issue in America today. And it is a problem…just go to the grocery store.

So what is going to bubble up to the surface next?

I don’t know.

But if you’re playing a team sport, if you’re defending Trump to the death, the joke is on you, you just haven’t realized it yet.

As for Bari Weiss and her billion dollar cronies, they don’t understand the power of the public, they don’t understand they can’t enforce their will upon people willy-nilly. Furthermore, they are vulnerable. These techies, they’re not heroes, they’re ZEROES!

Bari Weiss was too stupid to know that the video would out. Because she’s so busy sucking at the tit of the monied class that she doesn’t fully comprehend the internet, which is denigrated by seemingly every publication run by Boomers and Gen-X’ers.

It’s laughable. The internet is here, as are smartphones. And if you’re putting down the phone that just means you’ve got less information, and he or she with the most information wins, always.

Say you’re not on TikTok. Rail against social media. Decry youngsters staring at their phones… But the joke is on you, the internet addicted are plugged-in, they’re much better informed than you, they know how the world turns.

But you know better.

Everybody knows better when in fact they know very little. If you were on TikTok you’d know this, the man on the street interviews are horrifying.

It’s all of a piece…news, music, streaming TV… After all, Apple not only distributes music, it commissions television shows… And Paramount and Netflix are duking it out for Warner Bros. You can’t separate politics from media and vice versa. This is the world we now live in.

As for music… It used to have something to say… But where are the artists today? Alone and afraid, hoarding their dollars.

Oh, I’m not going to play nice. Decorum is for losers. If you just want to read stuff you agree with…

The joke is on you.

But right now, the joke is on THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES!

P.S. Don’t e-mail me that the video is no longer at the above site (right now it’s still available). CBS will do its best to kill distribution, the video has already been taken down in places…but it will never die.

P.P.S. Don’t self-satisfiedly complain that an article I’m linking to is behind a paywall. If you can’t afford $12.99 a month for Apple News+… The old saw that information wants to be free… You’ve got to pay for it, and if you don’t, you’re out of the loop. You pay for Netflix, why not the news?

Everybody can’t do everything.

My inbox is littered with people saying not to use their name. As if the average citizen in New Jersey has to worry about Trump’s revenge. (Then again, maybe they do…)

They call this a “chilling effect.” Bedrock in Constitutional law. Something might look benign on the surface, but have the unintended result of stifling speech or action by Americans.

Americans are ShuttingTFU for fear of retribution by Trump.

Actually, our nation is so fractured that many people refrain from making statements if they don’t comport with conventional wisdom, even if they believe they are correct. You don’t want to support Israel instead of Palestine…(Did you see Chappelle’s statements over the weekend, reinforcing the divide between Blacks and Jews?) You’ve got the woke left, the anti-DEI right…we can’t even have a debate in America anymore.

Even about music…

W. David Marx has a new book “Blank Space,” which refers to the hole in culture that we’ve experienced in the recycled twenty first century. He references “poptimism”… You know, the junk that dominates Top 40 that true fans of music used to decry. Now, that stuff is considered good, criticize Taylor Swift or BTS at your peril. Their minions will attack you. And the main reason you can’t say anything negative is because of the MONEY! If it makes a lot, it’s good. Period.

And you wonder why so many have checked-out of popular music, don’t listen at all…

As for “musicians,” did you see yesterday’s “New York Times” article talking about the influence of Britney Spears?

“Gen Z’s Pop Breakouts Danced in Britney Spears’s Footsteps in 2025 – Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae and Addison Rae’s music is influenced by the superstar who shot to fame before they were born. They’ve learned lessons from her hard times, too.”

I’m not going to dignify this article with a link, never mind a free one. It’s the end of music when Britney Spears is seen as a paragon of excellence, someone whose legacy is worth referencing, never mind exalting. Britney Spears had one great song, “…Baby One More Time,” a certified smash that I went out and purchased just to be able to hear on demand. But that record had little to do with Spears, it was written, and co-produced with Rami Yacoub, by Max Martin, who is the biggest star of the past thirty years… Can you say “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)”? While the top line artists have recycled themselves and the past, Martin has evolved, no producer since the Beatles has had this long a run making different styles of music than Martin. Sans Martin, Taylor Swift is a country artist. It was Martin who brought her into the mainstream with “1989,” who is propping Swift up on her latest album… Martin is the star machinery behind the popular song.

And you can’t get a modern musical star to make a statement, take a side, for fear of alienating some potential audience member. This ain’t art. The job of art is to challenge convention, surprise people, make them uncomfortable. Today’s artists just give listeners more of the same, and we read about their vapid lives in massaged publicity efforts.

And we’ve got the wannabes… Just because it’s now easy to create and post music online that does not mean you deserve to be a professional musician. And I can’t even say that! I’m pissing on people’s dreams! Truly, I hear from people all day long that musicians should be guaranteed a living, that the system is stacked against them… Hogwash, if you’re good, you’re surviving. BETTER than you did in the old days. More people are making more money in music than ever before. But if you don’t say that everyone deserves a chance, that Ticketmaster is screwing the artists and the public, you’re a pariah.

Which brings us to Bari Weiss.

You might have seen John Oliver’s takedown, but the article you need to read that got much less fanfare was recently in “New York”: 

“L.A. Woman – Bari Weiss left New York five years ago under a cloud of infamy. Her exile in Hollywood paved the way for a triumphant return.”

 

https://apple.news/ABwYAe3IBTL6_rbA9v9zPkQ

This is the music business article you should read. This will tell you more about how to become a success than any of the fawning tripe you read in “Rolling Stone” and elsewhere. You see first and foremost Weiss is a businessperson. Who charmed contacts to become a star and ultimately a multi-millionaire and head of CBS News. These are the skills that make someone successful in the U.S. today.

Do you have access to household names? Do you know how to charm them?

This is what you learn in college, this is what elite breeding and education yield. You’ve got to be able to speak their language, manipulate them, otherwise you’re just a pawn in their game, truly.

As for becoming a star… Bill Maher says in this article that he made Weiss one, and I’ve got to say he probably did. He gave her all that exposure.

And now she’s head of CBS News. Which is like Andy Lack becoming head of Sony Music. Remember the rootkit controversy? Maybe not… But Andy Lack came from news to get the trains to run on time at Sony, and then he nearly ruined the company with this fiasco and more. Just like Bari Weiss is doing at CBS News.

You know… The reporters at “60 Minutes” are amateurs, no match for the insight and skill of Bari Weiss…

This is like saying your middle schooler is ready for the NBA!

Like no one in TV news knows anything.

And unlike the wimpy, brain-dead, fearful musicians (people hate when I criticize musicians…but why should they be off limits, can’t I implore them to lift themselves and the music up?), the “60 Minutes” producer responsible for this pulled story barked back… Saying she reached out to the Trump administration and that it hadn’t responded, that the story was screened five times and was cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. Furthermore, it was ADVERTISED! Was Weiss now giving Trump a KILL SWITCH?

But Bari Weiss said the story wasn’t complete, that it wasn’t ready…

Because it nailed the Trump administration, and CBS is part of Paramount and Paramount wants to own Warner Bros. Period.

Have you been following this story? “60 Minutes” settled with Trump on a specious claim so that the Ellisons could buy Paramount. But now Trump is wavering, he’s been attacking “60 Minutes” again… The game is to get Trump to put the kibosh on Netflix’s acquisition of Warner so that Paramount will get it. Period.

Don’t think otherwise.

As for the news… Who can you trust?

That’s where we’ve arrived. Our institutions have crumbled. Not only because of Trump, but the string-pullers referenced in the Bari Weiss article linked above.

Meanwhile, there’s so much news, from oil tankers in Venezuela to killing the offshore wind industry to sending a special envoy to Greenland that this “60 Minutes” story is now being buried under the tsunami of everyday B.S.

As for Weiss… Like a pre-internet dolt, she has gone on record today defending her position, believing her elite status is such that she’s entitled to do things her way…

That’s America. The rich and powerful don’t even live in the same world as the hoi polloi, they fly private, live behind gates and have contempt for those who are not in their circle. Weiss is too stupid to know that by doubling-down she’s undercutting not only her own reputation, but that of CBS. If anything was required here it was a mea culpa… But Weiss believes she’s bigger than the game, bigger than the institution, just like when she cried foul at the “New York Times.” How come Bari Weiss knows so much and we know so little?

Now most of the rich and powerful refrain from publicity unless it is manipulated by a team, they don’t want you to know how evil they are, and how they’ve arranged their finances so they pay few taxes to boot. But Bari Weiss is bigger than the system, she knows better.

And you and me?

WE’RE SCREWED!