In The News and On My Mind: School’s Back In Session

“Watching the news in the evening is a bit like being on an emotional Tilt-aWhirl. “Isis now sets people on fire.” “Harper Lee has a new book out!” “Some oddballs are bringing measles back because they’re scared of autism, which is a bit like saying I’m worried about birthday candles, so let’s start a forest fire.” “It’s going to be gorgeous this weekend!” “Look, a politician being deliberately rude.” “And also, look at these adorable puppies!” My limbic system does not work that fast!”
–JEG

Labor Day was Monday and now it’s back to school. This week is, thought by many, to be the end of summer.

A lot of what’s been going on in the news, I’m not sure, should be talked about. I’m not sure those I am referring to deserve to be mentioned by name, so I am going to try my best not to.

Instead, because these stories are still on my mind and, many are extremely bothersome, I will focus on recognizing those who do deserve it, just to balance things out a little.

***

Not sure how I feel about the British monarchy, but I did watch

“The Queen”

in theatres, on its release, and again, on television the other night.

It’s sixty years of Queen Elizabeth and Britain is celebrating her this week.

At the moment, those making the news with names I hesitate to mention include: a “comedian” who believes fat shaming is acceptable, another “comedian” who has gone on the record and defended rape, and the continuation of the circus around next year’s US elections.

There is a difference between honesty and bullying behaviour. It’s a fine line and I don’t know where that line is. We’re much too serious these days, we must learn to laugh at ourselves, but that can hurt when you constantly feel as if you are the one being laughed at and the universe always seems to be making jokes at your expense.

I don’t know what right anyone has to say any woman is “unrapeable”. I’m sick and tired of men like this, making stupid statements like that, falling back on the “innocent until proven guilty” line. I also don’t care how important of a TV sitcom doctor/father icon anyone was for the African American community during the eighties.

As for all talk of building a wall and kicking people out, splitting families up, this is likely a non issue anyway, but, I must admit, I do look forward to Colbert’s Trump jokes over the coming months.

Then there’s the judge who is becoming some kind of right fighter for the cause of religion and biblical belief. She has the right not to do anything she doesn’t feel sits well with her and her God of course, but she does not have the right to go against the newly set law of United States, as it has been set. The world is becoming a more accepting place, overall, and those who wish to fight this will get left in the dust of the past. Why do we seem so keen to stop progress and challenge love? It’s fear. We can’t let fear rule over common sense.

There’s been more news, stories every day, about the flooding of mostly Syrian refugees, into neighbouring, European countries. Boat. Train. On Foot. They keep on coming.

Images are powerful. I heard something about the image of a dead child on a beach. I can’t see it, but the visual in my head is still heartbreaking.

Germany is being praised for its acceptance of these people, so desperately in need and so is Iceland.

What about Canada? Would we here step up as well? What if I had to flee my home? Wouldn’t I want a safe place to open their arms wide for me and my family?

The decline of the once so self righteous Ashley Madison cheating website continues and I was, admittedly, happy about it from the start.

Then, last week, a literary website that featured a short essay of mine back at Christmas ran into some issues. There was a hack or a virus and the person running the site wasn’t sure everything would survive.

How Cranky is Our Little Editor? – Brevity Magazine: Precise Literary Nonfiction

I have included a link, in a past blog post of my own, to my essay on that site. I was worried that would be lost forever, as sometimes backlinks fail. This has happened with things I’ve written, guest posts I’ve done previously.

Surely, my glee at the misfortune Ashley Madison’s been having wasn’t resulting in karma being directed right back at me, was it?

🙂

I offered up that possibility, on Brevity’s Facebook page, that it may have all been down to it being my fault, and thus issuing my sincere apologies to them, assuming this might be the case.

All the names of those caught using the cheating website have slowly been released. This included a member of America’s most notorious TLC family of religion, and multiple children, so recently known to have been outed for sexually abusing his sisters over the years. Not to mention, the head of the cheating website himself.

He swore, although he ran it, he never used it personally. Yeah right!

One of my favourite late night television segments joked about the hack:

Jimmy’s Thank You Notes – Ashley Madison

Although the fate of Ashley Madison may be in question, Jimmy is right. Like a phoenix that rises from the ashes, it could always become OKStupid! This is because I believe people would continue to share their private details and take foolish risks and engage in secret keeping against those they claim to love.

Again, I hate to pick on them and specifically the guy who ran it. Anyone who can convince so many men and women to hand over their most precious personal information (names, addresses, credit card info, fantasies) may think he’s clever, but may not be making the wisest of choices, even for himself.

As the new school year begins, there is more of an uproar on the newly revised sex education curriculum in the schools here, last updated back in 98 and as school has begun, certain parents are keeping their children out of the classroom.

I don’t know what these parents are imagining. It’s as if they are picturing daily sex ed classes, all day every day, all year, from September until June, with a continuous bombardment of sexually descriptive indoctrination, but, from what I heard, the sex ed program is only days long and isn’t even scheduled to begin until the spring. So, these children aren’t missing anything, right now, other than the usual: math, science, and language arts. The only damage being done is that the children are pulled out of regular classes, with their peers and friends, into a make-shift class, organized by the fearful parents themselves.

I like how Canada and the US seem to be so afraid of the proper education, our priorities so horribly messed up on so many things, but something as important as sexual health and physical safety are left up to the internet and tales told out on the playground. Maybe we should have Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver explain the whole thing to us all:

This week, not only has school resumed, but the late night TV wars are beginning.

I like Stephen Colbert and I have been looking forward to his taking over of David Letterman’s spot.

I watched the premier and it didn’t feel all that different. Speaking of the cheating website’s troubles:

“With this show, I begin to search for the real Stephen Colbert. I just hope I don’t find him on Ashley Madison.”

Sure, he is now no longer playing a role, but just being himself. I just couldn’t tell. The tone in his voice and his style of speaking were very nearly what they were on The Colbert Report. I am glad because that’s what I like about him, all political affiliations aside.

I’ve always loved Conan and Fallon is always entertaining. I rarely have stayed up until midnight to watch, often preferring to check specific clips out on Facebook and YouTube after-the-fact:

Letters From Kids – Suggestions For Jimmy

A lot of these shows have been bringing the children into their skits lately. The other Jimmy has been asking kids a lot of interesting questions in his segments. It’s always a slam dunk with the audience.

***

I just saw a goofily-captioned picture of a puppy right next to a photo-story about the awful things we did in Hiroshima 70 years ago. How can we be the same species who loves cute puppies and came up with such a terrible idea as an atomic bomb? This being human is a strange thing.

Indeed, JEG, indeed it is. Let the stories about cute puppies and children always be there to balance out the horrible headlines about injustice and hatred.

I Already Miss the 60s: My Mad Men Wrap-up, Part One

I miss the 60s, and it hasn’t even been a week.

Of course, I did not see this most turbulent of decades firsthand, but I got to live through it, from a distance and with plenty of years of perspective, through the show that was: Mad Men.

I thought it would be fitting to wait until today: Throwback Thursday, to write my review of the series finale for my favourite TBT era historical television drama, with so many throwing their two cents in. Figure – might as well include mine.

Also, this would give me a few days to let soak in what became of Don Draper and the rest of the Mad Men.

Excuse me, and women of course. Don’t forget the women. They were always a key part of the show.

From the spoiled attitudes of Betty, to the sexy and in charge style of Joan, to the original innocence and naiveté which slowly developed into Peggy’s signature modern woman with the talent to back it up.

I loved it all: characters, setting, plot, and theme.

I loved the setting of New York, from the suburbs of Don’s home and family life to the fast-paced Madison Avenue where Ads are born.

The true battle, in my opinion, was always between Don and this place. Which one was the main character, truly?

I wanted to shake Don, sometimes to even wring his neck, when he would drift from woman to woman. As his disturbed past was slowly revealed, I kept an open mind to what must make someone act in the destructive ways he did.

There was something intrinsically cool and detached, aloof about Don Draper, but yet something so sad – the very thing that causes women to want to help a guy so wounded by life become a better, more evolved, sensitive, and empathetic person.

I loved the perfect case study embodied in the decade Mad Men took place in. The sixties, a quarter of a century before I was even born, this time has always stuck with me as being one of the most interesting in our shared history.

I guess it was post World War II and yet the cold War and Vietnam would see that war was never far from the public’s consciousness.

Deaths of icons, both Hollywood and Washington. Civil Rights. The ability to still deny the toll that cigarettes can take on the human body.

The birth and growth of rock music and the culture that accompanied the scene, still so new – Beatlemania.

Some sort of innocence of the fifties and the cliche of a simpler and happier time. I don’t know why I waited as long as I did to tune in to see what this was all about. I didn’t care much for the business side of things. It was the social backdrop and all the issues that arose that had me hooked.

It was a different time, for sure, before all the modern technology I know so well, yet not so far back that I can’t imagine what it must have been like.

I zoned in on every story line focusing on feminism and gender roles and stereotyping.

I kept an eye out for historical accuracy, or a lack thereof. It seemed well done to me.

Of course this was the United States, not Canada, but I drank it all in, as if I were studying for a course in gender politics.

I couldn’t keep track of a lot of the actual ad campaigns the characters worked on. A lot of these were visual, but I did imagine I could write ad copy just as well as Peggy did.

product placement plays a crucial role, advertising is everywhere, both then and now.

Social issues made me want to yell at my screen. I guess those were restless times, the sixties, but that’s what gave Mad Men its edge.

Edgy is an excellent word for what Mad Men was. I had been looking for a show that would incorporate all these elements into one. I was irritated when the sixties finally came to an end. I saw the start of the disco era of 1970 to be the beginning of the end, and of course, it was.

The show could slide from gritty reality, directly into a strange dream-like state. Never was this more clear than at the start of every single episode. The theme song, with its erie string section and catchy percussion, made the decade of the 1960s come alive through its signature moodiness.

When Armstrong landed on the moon, 1969, I knowingly anticipated an end to the “madness”.

🙂

It came with a slow surge. I felt parts of the last one drag along, but yet each main player got his or her end, happy or devastating.

cigarettes kill! What a fitting end for one of these characters. The irony was not lost on me that the very product that Don and his colleagues pushed for so long, that is what would be the demise of the mother of his children.

Wonder what the statistics for survival from cancer, lung cancer to be exact, what they were back in the early seventies?

So certain characters (mainly Peggy and Pete) did not end up together, as I might have guessed. So what.

It made me happy to see that Pete finally grew up, realizing what family truly meant, while he still had a chance to be a decent husband, role model, and father to his daughter.

People have affairs. People cheat and they mess up, but it’s nice to know that anyone can find redemption.

It was clear it wouldn’t necessarily be a smooth road going forward, as the women’s movement grew, for Peggy and Joan, but if any two females could make it through the seventies it would be them.

Roger finally decided on a companion, a woman to match him. The scene with his two secretaries was priceless also. A world without Don in it wouldn’t be all that conceivable to Roger, their friendship being at the core of the show.

All the characters grew up, found their place. What more can you ask of a finale like this, so full of such richness and depth?

Don rose up, like a mythical phoenix from the ashes, to live to create another ad. It’s empowering when you finally admit where you belong, what you’re meant to do.

Many articles have been posted, everyone wanted to hear from series creator Weiner, but I prefer to read a little and write a little more, while letting his show be what it was, meaning what it meant to me.

Don spoke with the three women, while on the run from himself, in his life. They are those who have had a clear affect on him, as he’s just now realizing: Sally, Betty, and Peggy.

These three names sound alike as I say them to myself.

I like a finale that isn’t all wrapped up with a pretty bow. Life is messy and nobody does it better than Don Draper (AKA Dick Whitman).