BE AN INDIVIDUAL

Make a difference, have your own ideas, if your only goal is to get along you’ll be left behind.

GET AN EDUCATION

Mostly in school, but travel and summer stuff helps too. Kids should not be allowed to stay home and graze in front of the TV or computer all summer. It’s when you’re not in a school situation that you learn the most, about people, about life. Summer camp could be the happiest and most productive months of my life.

READ

Only a fraction of the front page of the newspaper appears in a half hour news program. Take your choice, NYT, WSJ or WaPo. Hopefully two, with the WSJ as one. The WSJ is a far cry from what it used to be, but it still represents the right wing view. You want to know how the other half thinks. And it’s not only newspapers. Magazines, blog posts… Be a generalist and a specialist. Know what’s going on in the world, but also dive deep in a certain area. You want to be able to have a conversation with anyone, which will garner respect, esteem and opportunities.

EXERCISE

For your brain more than your body. Exercise clears out the detritus holding you back, it evens you out, allows the inspiration to seep in. Find something you like to do and do that. Don’t think you have to go to the gym. If you don’t like what you’re doing, you won’t do it.

FINISH

No matter what it is. Most people can’t. If you do, you’ll go to the head of the class, believe me. Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is key. And it’s the little things that count, don’t delegate, do them.

LEARN HOW TO GET ALONG

But don’t do so at the price of your identity/personality. Groupthink is your enemy. And anyone with a brain and an opinion who expresses it will have haters, they go with the territory, they’re a badge of honor.

DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

Don’t respond to the haters. Know that most kerfuffles end quickly. They want to drag you down, don’t let them.

KEEP LEARNING

Most people don’t, but those who do get ahead. A nurse practitioner I see at UCLA learns Spanish on his hour-long commute.

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU

They’re too wrapped up in themselves. Our society is incredibly narcissistic.

DON’T OWE MONEY TO THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY

It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap, the interest is high and there’s always a day of reckoning. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Unless it’s food or shelter.

MARRY WELL

You don’t want someone to show off, you want someone who is fiscally responsible, listens to you/is compassionate, and will care for you when you get sick, which you will.

DON’T HAVE KIDS IF YOU’RE NOT GONNA SPEND TIME WITH THEM

They are not possessions, they are complicated individuals, if you don’t have time for them, don’t have them. However, we are just animals here to reproduce and there’s a lot of satisfaction in having children.

SEARCH FOR MEANING

Without it your life is worthless. Doesn’t matter if it pays or not, you’ve got to have something to live for.

DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP

You’ll make mistakes, waste time, just dust yourself off and get back in the game.

FEEL FREE TO CRITICIZE

Despite the online bickering, too many people are afraid to have a viewpoint. Specialize in holding contrary opinions in your head simultaneously, the spoils go to those who can split the hairs, who can see the truth.

PLAY THE LONG GAME

That tattoo is gonna fade. Your body is gonna change. Do you want to ink yourself forever? If you do, go for it. But see the long term consequences. Today’s rebel is tomorrow’s complacent adult. If your goal is just to rebel at the system, the joke is on you.

EVERYONE FEELS INADEQUATE

Don’t beat yourself up.

GO TO THE DOCTOR

We’re fallible machines. You’re gonna break down, it’s just a matter of when. Don’t be too proud to see the doctor, especially for that which is not visible. Statins could save your life.

BEWARE OF THE TOUCHY-FEELY

There are false prophets and those who will lead you into the wilderness. The government is not out to get you, science is your friend. Funny how the educated follow junk science and the poor don’t. Beware of fad diets, beware of all health scams.

USE BIRTH CONTROL

To prevent pregnancy and disease. If you think it can’t happen to you, you’re wrong.

DON’T TAKE ILLEGAL DRUGS

Or overdo legal ones. No high is as good as real life. Self-medicating is a torturous road that can end in death, and believe me, you don’t want to die. Experiment at your peril. Drugs are not cool, despite what everybody tells you.

PRAY TO GOD BUT DON’T BELIEVE IN HIM

If your religion is cultural, if it keeps you part of a tight-knit group, great. If it tells you what to do and how to behave because some guy centuries ago laid it all down, ignore it or run.

YOUR DREAM WILL DIE

Just find another one.

LOVE KILLS

Have relationships, but know that bad ones can cripple you for life, and the only people who get over them quickly are those who are lying.

HELP YOUR BROTHER

It could be you next.

Peace And Love

Riding around in a Volkswagen van
Thinking ’bout the people upside down in Japan

I grew up on three-quarters of an acre, not uncommon in the suburbs, and I distinctly remember lying on my back staring at the sun in the backyard contemplating if I just dug deep enough I’d end up in Japan, although I wondered if it was a direct shot, or whether I’d end up in India or Russia…

Lying on the floor just playing my guitar
Trying to find the chords for ‘Just The Way You Are’

We all had guitars. We’d sit in front of our Dual turntables with pitch adjustment, tune our records to our instruments and try to figure out the chords, writing them down on yellow legal pads.

Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont
Open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant

And now I’m laughing.

For some reason the Apple app lists songs by artist, I know, it’s confounding, but that’s when I found out I had so many Fountains of Wayne songs on my phone, all from the album “Welcome Interstate Managers.” You know how it is, there’s an album that catches your attention that you play and end up knowing, this is the one, with “Stacy’s Mom.”

It was a big hit on MTV when that still mattered, before it bit the dust in the wake of video online.

Funny how songs go through your brain. And you need to hear them. That’s how it was with “Peace and Love” the past few days. I’d also been singing “All Kinds Of Time” to myself too, which got some action with the NFL, but I knew it before.

And I’m doing my back exercises marveling at the sound and lyrics of these Fountains of Wayne songs thinking how it used to be different, how music television could rescue you from obscurity, how labels paid for you to get it right in the studio, how erudition used to have a place in the music business before everybody with a brain went into tech or finance.

Actually, Williams graduates Darlingside are following in their fellow alumni’s footsteps, have you heard their track “Hold Your Head High,” it’s worth it, not that Darlingside is the exact same band, it’s just that they’re smart: https://spoti.fi/2KNFjb2

Maybe it started with Frank Zappa, in the rock era anyway. You cracked up when you heard the words. “You Didn’t Try To Call Me”… “Status Back Baby”…

Being smart was not anathema. And unlike Gene Simmons, no one was bragging about how intelligent they were, you could just hear it in the music.

Maybe it was a different era, when we had all kinds of time. When we’d lie on our beds, on the floor, and stare at the ceiling as we listened, over and over again. Now people are overscheduled, they’re getting pings on their phone, they never disengage, marinate in the experience. Maybe this is why TV is so big, you’ve got to pay attention, for an hour, for the series you’re watching on binge.

And the funny thing is I enjoy these Fountains of Wayne songs even more now than then, sure, it’s nostalgia for my own life, but they hearken back to a comprehensible era, when you could make fun of the mainstream and there was enough cohesiveness for people to get the joke, when if you could write lyrics and music with changes, imperfect vocals could be overlooked, whereas today people sing bland songs perfectly, or have thin voices and forgettable lyrics.

Maybe it takes money.

Maybe it takes education.

Maybe it takes promotion.

Maybe it takes a willingness to question.

Maybe it takes a willingness to go on your own path.

But now Adam Schlesinger paints on a much smaller canvas, in theatre and television.

We need people like this up front.

That’s fame.

The turning point was reality television, most specifically “The Real World,” suddenly you could be famous for nothing. You could trump up your personality, argue, and the edgier you were, the more attention you gained, can you say PUCK?

Concomitant with this was the era of the afternoon talk show. Where the more outrageous you were, the more Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones were interested in exposing your story.

Sure, it didn’t last, but you got your fifteen minutes. You could put it on your resume. Not for a job, but as a notch in your belt in this game we call life.

Then came “The Jersey Shore.” Not only were they outrageous on camera, but they opened clubs, they made a few bucks before they returned back to the suburbs. This was after “Survivor” and “Big Brother.” Contestants on those shows thought they had careers, but they didn’t. Now players knew it was evanescent, but they didn’t care.

Then we had the apotheosis, the Kardashians, who were not only famous for nothing, they became rich in the process! Telling fake stories while denying their plastic surgery. WATCHA GONNA DO?

If you’ve been following the news, there’s a big kerfuffle re affirmative action. In NYC, do the underprivileged get to go to good schools, displacing the Asians? And are the Asians unfairly excluded from Harvard? And these are real issues, deserving debate, but they couldn’t be further afield from the fame for nothing crew. That’s America today, those on a trip to somewhere and those on a trip to nowhere, and the nowhere people want their moment and the somewhere people just can’t understand it.

In today’s “Times” there’s a story on the Cash Me Outside girl. You probably know this meme. A young girl with no good path, who got breast implants at thirteen, utters a phrase in Ebonics on “Dr. Phil” and not only is she instantly famous, the entertainment whores sign her up and she gets a record deal at Atlantic. If your parents are not cracking the whip, keeping you on the straight and narrow, you say to yourself…I WANT ME SOME OF THAT!

And there’s a whole internet complex ready to scoop you up. You “promote” yourself on Instagram and other social networks, hoping to gain enough followers so you can sell out to advertisers in sponsorship and ultimately cross over to TV. Meanwhile, the somnambulant press keeps trumpeting the antics of these idiots, promoting them as the new stars when the truth is almost none of them last, they get their moment and… We need news outlets, but it turns out they haven’t adjusted to the modern paradigm, just reporting is not enough, you’ve got to have a viewpoint, which is why Fox News is so successful. Furthermore, news outlets show no vision, they have no idea of where it’s all going, never mind the impact of their coverage. Meanwhile, bottom feeders like BuzzFeed take up the slack, one thing they know is their audience, they know where the culture is going, so you can’t evade the clickbait, meanwhile old stalwarts like “People” and “The Enquirer” are trying to follow along.

There’s endless conversation about political fake news on Facebook when that’s de minimis compared to the CULTURAL fake news on the site. Hell, even the upper middle class, those with graduate degrees, are boasting online. They want to let their compatriots, their “friends,” know how much better their lives are. Meanwhile, most of America sits at home pissed and depressed, feeling inadequate.

And no one likes their opportunity stolen, so they vote for Trump, believing he’ll make things right, that you can have no CV and be a millionaire and no one will get in your way. Yup, you’re gonna be famous, and if the immigrants get a chance, if the Chinese get a chance, if the CANADIANS get a chance, your odds will be lower.

I know it sounds idiotic, that the same people playing the new game want to jet back to the old, but that’s what Making America Great Again is all about, even though it wasn’t so great at the time they’re reminiscing about, they certainly couldn’t get famous on the internet.

They’d have to go to school, do the hard work.

But now if you graduate from college you’re qualified to become a receptionist, that’s right, you can’t get that gig without a degree.

Meanwhile, rappers are advertising brands you cannot afford.

And those playing by the old rules have contempt for you, as they’ve got it for those above them on the totem pole, the financiers who create nothing and the techies providing few jobs.

So what is your option but to try and become famous. You’ve got a phone, posting is free! Maybe at the cost of advertising and your soul and your future, but the other route is riddled with potholes.

And if it all fails you can go on drugs. Heroin is cheaper and cleaner than ever. And hell, you can order fentanyl on the internet. And if Prince and Tom Petty O.D. that’s just a path worth taking, you’ll be famous in the afterlife!

RIVER: SEASON 1

Never underestimate the power of great acting.

I’ve got all kinds of time for great, a little time for good, and no time for the rest…whether it be TV, music, sports, food… That’s the world we live in, one where time is precious and we’re overloaded with options. Our entire lives are tyrannies of choice, which no one is willing to address. There’s too much news, never mind too much Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Is Instagram the end of civilization or what? For a while there, I was loving that the internet brought reading back. But with broadband came video, and now with smartphones comes pictures. Maybe I’m just not a visual guy. But is anybody on Instagram doing anything but bragging? I know, I know, I’m overstating the case, there is some good information there, but two-dimensional promotional images just don’t hook me.

And we all follow different tweeters and we don’t listen to the same music and we don’t watch the same TV either.

This week’s story is Amy Adams’s new HBO show. The L.A. “Times” was not enthusiastic. The other reviewers seemed to have their thumbs up but I’ll be honest, I don’t read any reviews through and through, at least not until I finish a series or a book, because they give away the PLOT! What I love is the surprise, getting into a boat and going down the river. If you tell me what I’m gonna see, what fun is that?

And I’m not free the same time every week, which is why I won’t watch a network or cable show. Of course I can record it or watch it on demand, but my time doesn’t come in one hour chunks. I either have no time, or want to stretch out. The show of the summer is “Killing Eve,” Bywater and Wilson have raved, Benedek too. I pulled it up on demand, watched an episode, got hooked, and then saw it was still in process. I’m gonna wait until it’s done. Because I like to rip through the episodes, I like to get in the mood, turn off the lights and the phone and get involved.

So I was searching for a new series to binge on.

And the truth is almost all of them are crime dramas. And I’ve got no problem with crime, just the absence of other genres. Maybe they’re too hard to do. Like that Alan Ball/Tim Robbins show on HBO, what a piece of crap that was, at least they didn’t renew it, and to be honest I could only make it through one and a half episodes. And I know they’ve got “Succession” now, but… I can watch “Ozark” in a day or two, but I’ve got to watch a family argue about money over months? What’s so special about THAT?

And I’m a believer that foreign television is always superior. In America we try to milk it, overseas they oftentimes get it right, don’t go on too long, and the actors and actresses…oftentimes look like real people, you can imagine yourself in their world, whereas I’m never gonna be accepted by the TMZ people, first and foremost I don’t want to get plastic surgery, and I abhor a world where looks are everything. And the secret is if you get old enough, you come to learn looks don’t matter, not that much, you have enough experiences to discover other qualities are more important, like loyalty, compassion, the ability to manage money… Meanwhile, you’re prettifying yourself to get attention, who you gonna draw? As for Tinder… You’ve got to feel pretty good about yourself to play, or put up a doctored pic. But now we’re getting back to the Instagram paradigm. It’s about the one percent, only in this case it’s all about looks.

And Stellan Skarsgard has a pot belly. Nicola Walker has a cute smile, but she’s never gonna be in “Vogue” without airbrushing. No one is beautiful, everybody is imperfect, “River” reflects the world, which is why it hooked me.

And the darkness. The vibe. The rain. The train. If you’ve been to London you’ll get it, if you haven’t you’ll want to go, if you live there, you’ll nod your head.

So, the show is about dead people. And seeing dead people. Isn’t it fascinating that M. Night Shyamalan could never make another great picture, some people only seem to have one in them. Or more than that, and then burn out, like Francis Ford Coppola. Spielberg gets all the attention, but it’s Coppola who transcended, who is truly an icon. Come on, compare “The Godfather” to “Jaws.” A mechanical shark to an Italian family? And I could go further, but you get the point.

And “The River” is not “Apocalypse Now,” but it rings more true than almost any Spielberg film, because Spielberg is all about the image, whereas it’s truly about story, that comes first, the look comes second.

And the story is told by actors. And Stellan Skarsgard is believable. He’s tortured, yet brilliant. He doesn’t believe in the expedient, only the truth. Are you willing to sacrifice victory in pursuit of truth? Seemingly no one in America is, especially in sports, everybody’s looking for an edge, if they don’t get caught they win, but can you sleep at night? Edgar Allan Poe had it right in “The Tell Tale Heart.”

So I researched. So many sites. From the “New York Times” to the “Thrillist” to…

And my top pick you had to buy.

And my number two was on Hulu, which I refuse to subscribe to, it’s my own personal protest, if Hulu launched before Netflix, maybe. But I want to stick a knife in the side of TV, which believes they’re just going to recreate the old paradigm in the new world, peck me to death by ducks, have me paying a couple of hundred dollars once again.

And then I found on Rotten Tomatoes they ranked the best Netflix shows. And “River” got 100%. That’s quite a number. Although I just found out there weren’t that many reviews.

But I cross-checked the show after watching two episodes. Consensus is it’s a winner.

And the truth is I’ve seen the blue chips, the ones on Amazon and Netflix anyway. And I find that too many people’s recommendations don’t reach me. Once again, they promote what they like, when I search online and find the numbers are bad. Yup, you can argue with statistics, but you can’t argue with the fact that I have so little time.

And the truth is the seventies were a golden age of film. The late sixties too. It was an art form. The grosses were not printed in the newspaper. But after “Jaws” and “Star Wars” showed how much money could be made, and the auteurs flopped, the studios regained control and it’s never been the same. Whereas on Netflix and some cable outlets they give creators complete control. Creators know best, although they might drive you over the cliff.

And I want to check out that Brazilian show “3%.” And that Japanese zombie series. And all the comedies on Netflix are duds. But life is dramatic, my idea of escape is to see truth on screen. Make me feel like I’m living another life. Grip me to the point I can’t think about anything else.

Right now, “River’ does that.

P.S. It’s from 2015 and there’s only one season but we live in an era where being first no longer matters. Actually, that which explodes upon launch rarely sustains. We’re looking for land mines. To blow up our paltry lives. We live for entertainment. It’s our king. Never forget it.