Mindhunter

I loved it, but I don’t recommend it.

It’s imperfect. You’re not sure where it’s going. The end is unsatisfying. But the TONE!

We live in an upbeat society, when people are not complaining. Used to be we read books and saw movies about the internal dialogue, you know, the one you’re having right now, about your hopes, dreams and wishes as well as your obligations. When you speak to how I feel, then I’m really interested.

I watched it because David Fincher was involved. In the late sixties and seventies the auteur was king, before the studios took back power and movies went to hell, becoming lowbrow epics made for coin. That’s the scourge of America, we judge everybody and everything based on how much money it makes. Whereas some stuff doesn’t appeal to everybody, doesn’t top the chart, but is better than all the rest.

So Fincher was a video director who got into film and has made many, not all of them my favorites, but the one I’ll never forget is “Zodiac.” Because of the feel, because of the tone.

“Mindhunter” has that same tone.

The late seventies.

No one talks about that era anymore except to make fun of it. The eighties were go-go, the MTV era wherein everybody sold out, but the seventies were about inflation and just living your life in the wake of the tumultuous sixties. We had trends, we had TV shows, but no one ever goes back there and captures what it was really like.

Except Fincher.

THE CARS! I know each and every one of them, like driving with my father when he pointed out the seemingly indistinguishable forties and fifties automobiles. The boxy Americans. The VW bug.

And the CLOTHING! The fringe skirt.

Credit not only the set dresser, but the cinematographer. Real life is not this rich, it’s often brighter, but the darker elements of this show set your mind adrift to how it once was.

And I know millennials don’t care. That’s fine with me. But once upon a time there was no internet, nobody knew what you were up to 24/7, and you had to leave the house to have a good time. Hell, that’s why we had so many bands!

So what the show is ultimately about is the FBI, and a research project wherein they profile serial killers, actually they come up with that term.

But you won’t know this from the start. You’ve got to watch a few episodes to get what they’re up to. But when you do…

The serial killers are fascinating. The goal is to find patterns, but what goes through the mind of a deviant, what caused them to act this way? Psychology gets a bad rap. Today you’re supposed to take a pill for your maladies. But nothing is as exciting as psychotherapy. Not with the hack on your insurance, but a bona fide psychiatrist. The exploration of the human mind. Everybody’s messed-up. It’s so much fun to analyze them. As well as yourself. You can change your behavior and see the results, but most people refuse to do this, refuse to look inward, for fear they’ll lose something…no, they’ll GAIN something. You too can get ahead in life, but it costs. That’s the dirty little secret, everything good costs. And most people, especially older people, want to invest in something tangible, that you own when it’s all done. Youngsters are more about experiences. Ergo their fascination with restaurant meals. But all we’ve got is the human condition, it’s worth investigating.

And that’s what Jonathan Groff does.

If you saw “Hamilton” on Broadway, the original cast, you’ll know he played the king. But you won’t recognize him, his role is completely different. And in the seventies no one wanted to be a cop. So why did he choose to be one?

And then there’s his girlfriend Hannah Gross, the most spot-on performance of the series. She’s attractive and she knows it. She’s manipulative and she knows it. She’s confident and she knows it. She’s studying psychology, when she’s not angsting about paying so many dues, that’s the question, do you delay gratification? And she wants Groff’s character, but she doesn’t want to be controlled by him. She’s a modern woman, you can’t take your eyes off her.

And then there’s Holt McCallany, the brush cut dude who’s by the book but chafes at it. He doesn’t want to think, but when he does he loves the results.

And Anna Torv as their overseer. There’s something creepy about her, she’s unpredictable, you keep trying to figure her out.

Unlike the FBI chief, who can only play by the rules. This is why you hate school, this is why you hate working for the man.

Cameron Britton, as killer Edmund Kemper, almost steals the show. He’s quiet. He’s got the guards in the palm of his hand. But he did it, he killed all those women, WHY?

And the rest of the serial killers are just about as interesting but the star is…

FINCHER!

He creates this mood, this maelstrom. It’s not fast-paced, it goes into nooks and crannies, it doesn’t often build, and unlike seemingly every series in creation, it doesn’t come to a neat conclusion at the end of every episode. Fincher directed four episodes, as well as being a producer, and if you liked the first season of “House of Cards,” which he was involved with, you’ll probably like “Mindhunter.”

You see either you will or you won’t. Or you’ll watch all ten episodes even though you won’t realize you’re hooked until the end. That’s the modern era, that’s why movies are passe. We like the longer form, we like to go deeper.

And what I like to go deeply about most is people. Characters. They don’t have to develop, but I definitely want to peer inside. I want to see the layers of the onion peeled back. And I want their actions to be consistent with reality. I want to go inside the series and forget my everyday life. I want to live in the show.

I lived in “Mindhunter.”

Check it out. You’ll either be in or out. You’ve got to watch two or three episodes, and if you do you’ll never watch one again or be so curious you do.

Where are they going? Why are the people acting this way?

Isn’t it so interesting that the calling of the investigators is not about money and fame.

That’s great work, when you do it for the love of it.

Curiously, the serial killers are in it for the fame.

And look where it leaves them.

Jail.

There’s a thin line between us and them.

P.S. I only recommend things I believe most people will like. Ten percent of the public will hate everything, forget them. But the key to recommendation is to get into the head of the person you’re giving the recommendation to. Which is why I do not recommend this show. I don’t want you watching and telling me the arc is imperfect, that it meanders and isn’t tied up as well as it should be. All that is true! But if what I’ve written here appeals to you, go for it. Kinda like when I watched Siskel & Ebert review Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild.” They were not abundantly positive about it, but what they said was intriguing. It made me see it. “Something Wild” is a flawed movie, the two halves don’t really hang together, but it’s one of my absolute favorites.

I’ve got a lady doctor
She cure the pain for free

That’s from Graham Parker’s initial LP, “Howlin’ Wind.” It was produced by Nick Lowe, the man of the moment, whose bank account was saved by by a cover of his composition “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” by Curtis Stigers on the soundtrack of “The Bodyguard,” proving if you’re just prolific enough, hang in there long enough, your ship may come in.

And Graham Parker (and the Rumour!, with guitarist extraordinaire Brinsley Schwarz!) was the great English hope of 1976, at least in America, where he released two albums. But it was not to be his time. Maybe because he released his music on Mercury, maybe because we were passing over punk and grooving to a new sound called new wave, which wasn’t quite here, Parker was neither fish nor fowl, but he was fantastic.

And the second of those two 1976 albums was “Heat Treatment,” produced by the then unknown Robert John “Mutt” Lange, whose name had only graced City Boy LPs, and the truth is the sound on both of these Parker LPs is completely different, the one on “Heat Treatment” is more dense, less immediate, but that’s the album I love best. The white reggae of “Something You’re Goin’ Thru” is right up there with the work of the Police and the closing “Fool’s Gold” is the piece-de-resistance, right up there with those lengthy closers on Elton’s LPs.

And Graham jettisoned Mercury for Arista and never broke through, but those first two LPs are burned into my brain. I remember playing tennis with the new girl in school on our second date and then bringing her to my apartment where she laid on the floor as I played this album. I’m not sure if it sealed the deal, but something did!

And I thought of “Lady Doctor” today. Because just about every dermatologist in this mega-practice is a woman. Can I say that I’d rather see a woman? That they’re often more compassionate? A little less self-impressed?

Anyway, I texted the doctor.

This is a big step for me.

I’ve completely changed my personality, I’m trying to get back to the person I once was, one who stood up for himself, one who PUSHED!

You see my father always said…YOU GOTTA ASK! But after hearing him ask incessantly, after being overloaded by self-promoters intruding upon my time, I turned into the anti-asker. Somehow I became afraid of taking up anybody’s time, fearful they’d get pissed and push me off, reject me. But I texted the dermatologist from the hospital, and I did again yesterday, that’s just how much I was at loose ends.

And that’s why no one likes to give out their cell number. I get iMessages from people all the time who I don’t know. And then they’re pissed when I’m not warm and fuzzy. You can e-mail me like everybody else. Have you ever heard of privacy?

Anyway. the dermatologist did not respond. I believed I’d reached her limit. And when I got no response I made an appointment for a second opinion, after all, I was doing all they said and getting worse.

But when I woke up this morning there were texts and phone calls galore. They wanted me to come in. See the big kahuna, the one with ten pemphigus patients.

Whereupon I worried I wasn’t sick enough. Why is that? You’re existentially pained and when you get attention you say you’re not that bad. But that does remind me of when I got that nuclear medicine test twenty five years ago and I was so much worse than anticipated. And my eyes were starting to crust up again. And the point is…

I’ve got blisters. That’s the nature of pemphigus. And those blisters burst upon the tiniest provocation. And then you’re left with an oozing, sensitive wound. Which is how I got into this mess.

And the itchiness! They say not to scratch but you can’t stop scratching. I woke up Tuesday night and lathered my body with Clobetasol, I just could not sleep, I had the heebie-jeebies. But by time I hit the doctor’s office today…

She was very impressed how bad I was. Took one look at my skin and saw the problem. I was pointing out blisters but she got the point. I was bad.

So here’s the story. Takes about eight weeks for the Rituxan to work. To replace all the bad antibodies.

Meanwhile. the old antibodies are raising hell.

Which is why we must wipe out those old antibodies once again. We need to apply another round of IVIG. Three days in a row, five or six hours. but in the house! That’s right, it’s cheaper to do it at home than the hospital, and who wants to go to the hospital where you might get an infection.

And I need to take prednisone. Every day. And this antibiotic Bactrim, so I don’t get an infection, since all this treatment is lowering my immune system.

And if that doesn’t work…

They’re gonna replace my blood.

That’s right, I’m gonna be Keith Richards fighting the immigration police. Only in this case I’m covering up pemphigus instead of heroin.

But I should be good to go. That’s what the lady doctor, #2, the woman in charge, said today.

I’ve just got to be patient and get there.

And that’s damn near impossible the way I feel now.

Which is why she’s throwing all this treatment at it.

A. Why am I writing so much? As Ray Davies once sang, “Unemployment is unenjoyment.” You think you want time off, you wish you could clear the decks, but when you’ve got 24/7 to watch TV and read you don’t want to watch or read anything, the world goes limp and you become numb. We were made to work.

B. To quote Prince, “I ain’t got no money, but I’m RICH on PERSONALITY! And that personality has allowed me to build this edifice known as “The Lefsetz Letter.” And it comes with perks. Most rewardingly that anybody I write about reads it, and I hear from them. But also the laying on of hands by laymen, in this case veritable MDs. A woman dermatologist in rural Wisconsin whose husband is an avid reader. She’s helped me through the crisis. And this immunologist James L. Friedlander who e-mailed me the following, which I believe is very illuminating:

“So, full disclosure, typically I am not the treating doc for this, but rather get called to consult regularly for patients with pemphigus (both vulgaris and foliaceous) if the treating physician wants to initiate IVIG therapy. I also get consulted often when rituximab is used for any condition, which as you know can cause a lot of infections (pneumonia, sinusitis, and usually only with continued maintenance ritux therapy). Pemphigus is antibody mediated. Fact. So it makes the most sense to use rituximab and IVIG. The rituximab blasts away all of your circulating B cells, and IVIG washes away and neutralizes the bad antibodies, replacing them with good ones, and meanwhile also keeps you free of serious infection while on rituximab. A safer combo than ritux alone. There are plenty of other immunosuppressives to try, though most of those fight T cells (like azathioprine). It doesn’t make as much sense that those would be effective.

Also, I know that I do not get a vote or know every detail, but am doubtful that Gleevec was the underlying trigger…”

C. And in closing, although this is an ongoing story, the lady doctor said that pemphigus foliaceous is harder to treat than pemphigus vulgaris. Although when you recover it’s from the top down. So the skin on my head will clear first.

P.S. She definitely ain’t treating me for free. I’ve got pretty good insurance, and you should have yours. Because when you least expect it, you’re not on “Candid Camera,” rather the gods reach down and mess you up. The bills are staggering. Health care should be a right. I did nothing to get this disease, and no one should be bankrupted because they became ill. But what I’m really saying is if you’ve got something wrong, get professional attention, the real pussies are those who refuse to go to the doctor.

It’s just something I’m going through.

No, that’s a gross understatement for a gross disease. I should be good, but mortality is not out of the question. And every day the pemphigus fights back, with blisters and wounds and pockets of ooze that would be too gross for any horror movie.

Pemphigus Playlist

Last Week: Diane Warren

You’ve really got to tune in to this because she’s no holds barred. Seemingly everyone in L.A. has a filter, but Diane does not. Even I was surprised when she said her parents had her committed to juvenile hall. You can jump through the hoops, go to college, buy insurance, but that does not mean you’re gonna make it, certainly not in the creative arts. It’s truly the square pegs who don’t fit the round holes who break through, like Diane. She didn’t have instant success, even though she thought she deserved it. But she persevered, and eventually broke through.

This Week: Eric Bazilian

Lead guitarist for the Hooters, I met him through an old girlfriend, and he’s so similar, growing up in a Jewish household where academics were paramount, although Eric not only picked up a guitar, but stuck with it, both before and after Penn. His first band, Baby Grand, faltered on Arista, but then he and Rob Hyman came up with a new ska-inspired sound and ultimately broke through with the Hooters on Columbia, midwived by their old buddy Rick Chertoff, who was looking out for them, and ultimately had them make a breakthrough record with Cyndi Lauper, who hated “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” until it became a hit single, then she LOVED IT!

After playing guitar on “She’s So Unusual” Eric went on to cowrite Billie Myers’s “Kiss The Rain” with Desmond Child, but before that he wrote the song that put his kids through Penn, Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us,” the stories of both are contained in this podcast, you’ll enjoy it.

TuneIn

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(We’re still working on Spotify.)

“Rock and roll then was real, everything else was unreal.”

John Lennon

This is the most depressing book I’ve read all year.

There’s always been music. It’s not like the Top Forty was blank before the Beatles. Even a few good groups dominated the airwaves prior to ’64, like the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but culturally, it was a vast wasteland.

And then the British Invasion began. And wiped out everything that came before it. Oh, Brian Wilson rose to the challenge, his band still had hits, but almost no one else did. Bobby Rydell? Fabian? Everybody who sang before suddenly no longer had a career. It’s kinda like Kodak, decimated by digital photography. Although in the case of the Rochester company there was fair warning, nobody saw the Beatles coming.

It was a revolution. We were invaded. Buzz was rampant, radio jumped on board and when the band appeared on “Ed Sullivan” three times in February, it was over, just that fast, a new world existed.

And it wasn’t only the Beatles, new bands followed in their wake. It was all you talked about, what was on the airwaves. Your records were precious, you spun them over and over.

And then came the San Francisco sound and underground FM radio and it was like the gods of music doubled-down, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, it did.

And Jann Wenner decided to chronicle this.

He’s not a villain, just another guy with vision out to make a buck. And all the buzz about this book is about the portrayal of Jann and his rejection thereof. But that was secondary to the foundation of the magazine, and the end of the dream.

I’d say it was like AOL in the nineties, but that was about you and me connecting.

I’d say it was like the dot com evolving into the app era, but everybody doing that was more interested in making a buck than art. These were coders and hustlers, success was on Wall Street, whereas the musicians of the sixties succeeded by invading our hearts. It was a revolution based on creativity, money was a byproduct, it was about disobeying the rules, being an individual, who you were was just as important as what you made.

And then it collapsed.

That’s what no one wants to talk about today, how it’s not the same. There’s a hit parade, there’s a chart, but this is not baseball, with the same rules handed down through the ages, this is about personal expression, this is about the zeitgeist and…

We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.

Hell, one can argue it died when Don Henley sang that line.

But no one wants to admit it. They just want to point to record sales and streams, as if you could quantify art, and hearts and minds.

So what you’ve got here is a relatively lame recounting of the fifty year history of “Rolling Stone.” Not as lame as the unwatchable HBO special with regard thereto, but the problem with history is it’s best when written by people who were there, in this case the author was not.

Yes, the highlight is the beginning, how the magazine was birthed and stayed steady.

And then there’s the tale of Thompson, Hunter S. that is. And this is done pretty well, but then you ask why there hasn’t been a gonzo doctor since. And then you realize writing is a third class citizen. And you can’t make bank, not the kind they do on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, so the best and the brightest don’t go into the field, which is left to the academics, hell, have you read the output of the Iowa Workshop? It’s like listening to metal records. There’s a code you don’t know that ends up with books you don’t want to read, even though the press keeps saying how great they are. Thompson tested limits, today writers kiss ass.

And the Patty Hearst story is told poorly and the key point is not made… This is what made “Rolling Stone” legitimate, when it broke Patty’s story, when it was suddenly the equal of the big boys. It was the equivalent of SNL, the youth finally took over. And that’s a good analogy. The media keeps trumpeting SNL when the truth is it’s a tired formula endlessly repeated. Like an aged rock star with plastic surgery plying the boards as if he still counted.

After that…

There’s not much to say.

There certainly isn’t much about the music. And there’s little about the blink, the short reviews after “Blender” came on the scene and fudged its numbers. No, it’s basically the story of a rich guy living a good life. Which is what the boomers did en masse, sell out, become their parents, even though their hair was long and they still smoked dope.

I read yesterday that “Sound and Vision” lost ninety percent of its readership, went from nearly a million as “High Fidelity” to under 100,000 with its new moniker. Turns out buying a first class stereo is no longer a dream, but don’t tell that to those still buying equipment, they’ll tell you it’s the same as it ever was.

But it’s not.

But ain’t that America, where no one can sacrifice and everybody believes they rule. Hell, it’s worse than ever in this internet era.

But the truth is times change. And institutions too.

I still get “Rolling Stone,” but I’m not sure who it’s written for. Aged boomers or young hipsters. And by trying to appeal to multiple demographics it ultimately appeals to none. So far from its original mission, where it cared about its generation and nothing more.

But the generation got old and the music died and…

The dream is over.

P.S. There’s a lot of Lennon in this tome, but my favorite story was when Wenner and John went to lunch and fans approached the Beatle for an autograph and he said…GO AWAY! That’s a rock star, not someone who keeps championing his fans and trying to please them. That’s a sycophant, however rich. We need leaders, when we’re not watching the parking meters.

“Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine”