My bunny is a fish
Last weekend my son chose to warm my Gen X heart by adoring “Choose Your Own Adventure #4: Your Very Own Robot” by R.A. Montgomery, 1982 edition. He toted it everywhere, showed it to kids at the kolache place and the coffee place like it was an iPad.
In one plot, your robot, covered in mud, falls into a vat of strawberry ice cream. The president of the ice cream factory demands $800 for the ruined product, and if you don’t run away, the president takes you to jail where you’re, it seems, never heard from again. This is just how it was in Reagan’s America.
My son asked if jail is actually like that, and I said it wasn’t, quickly adding, "as far as I know.” He doesn’t need to know his dad’s been to jail yet.
Some of the other endings are too gruesome to share, including one actual decapitation. R.A., are you OK?
Speaking of OK - The Small Bow recently published “Kid Alcohol,” a longer piece of mine. It wasn’t finished until just before publication, and it took a lot out of me emotionally. The last couple weeks I’ve been joking that my next entry would be a collection of my favorite poop jokes, which would definitely be an entry my son would read.
Instead, here are thoughts on six episodes of television.
It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, “The Natural” (Season 3, Episode 5)
I saw “The Natural” - the Robert Redford movie - when I was 11 and thought it was perhaps the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. Eleven is a snarky age, but nostalgia and earnestness made me itch. Even as a teenager when my classmates were devouring John Hughes movies, I felt like I’d come from the future, already hating the nostalgia his films evoke now.
A couple years after the film, Garry Shandling did an episode-long parody of “The Natural", centered around a ping pong tournament between condo associations. I watched it last night before bed, and still cackled over the biggest story beats like I was 14 again. Like a lot of comedy from that era (1988), there’s a dry irony that will always scratch an itch. I don’t think this is an affectionate parody, though it is quite silly.
(Related: Right this second I’m listening to a 20-year-old cover of a Madonna song by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. This is absolutely a coincidence.)
I’m allergic to others’ nostalgia, too. Fellini's "Amarcord," for example. I got 48 seconds into “Stranger Things.” Even “Freaks & Geeks,” a show I recognize as inhabited with real characters, depth and a fair amount of acid hit me false, because nostalgia is always, always false, and Garry knew I’m right.
Thirtysomething, [Unknown]
Thirtysomething, which I’ve written about a bunch, is not available to stream anywhere, probably due to some music rights issues. I don’t think there’s any groundswell to make it available, so it’s unlikely to warrant the effort to replace Ray Charles and Karla Bonoff with digital instrument covers sung in Esperanto.
So I don’t know what episode this is from, or whether that episode is any good. I ran a constrained Google search on this Tripod-hosted episode guide, but didn’t find the dialogue that pops up in my head multiple times per day. (Guys: Tripod! Lycos!)
It’s a Gary scene. Gary was a resolutely single character who dated around, accidentally impregnated Susannah and turned her into a regular guest star. They keep the baby and eventually get married. Later Gary is killed in a car crash on the way to the hospital to celebrate another character’s cancer going into remission, which is pretty sudsy.
(In fact, that’s probably why I killed off my imaginary girlfriend in high school. I told everyone she moved to Little Rock. Then she died in a car crash. On my birthday. )
Anyway, in my head, Gary is either talking with a friend or a therapist. The camera is steady on Gary, dollying slowly forward, almost imperceptibly, that thing Mad Men does 11 times per episode. He’s trying to come to terms with the fact that he’s in a relationship with Susannah, and he’s happy. He’s always had this ache inside him, and now that ache is gone. Here’s how the line goes in my head:
“And a normal person would be happy, right? They’d be relieved. But me, I just keep thinking, ‘Where’s my ache? That’s my ache.’”
Is this a normal thing for a 14-year-old with horrible self-esteem to identify with? Particularly when Gary was played by Peter Horton, who resembled Bjorn Borg, who went on to star in a volleyball movie because America was beach volleyball crazy in 1990. But anytime I feel steady for a moment, I grab for my ache. I’m not comfortable unless I feel a little queasy around you.
NewsRadio, “Pure Evil” (Season 4, Episode 6)
Listen, “Super Karate Monkey Death Car” is the best episode of NewsRadio. But the Dave-and-Lisa on-and-off-again thing was doubtlessly an idealized model relationship for me. Circa 1998, when I was 24, I had just moved to Philadelphia to follow my girlfriend to be near her law clerkship in Delaware, but I didn’t want to live with her. It wasn’t the grandest of romances, and by keeping her at a remove, I never got too emotional.
Thirteen years later, I fell in love with a coworker, and definitely believed we had this kind of rapport. She fit the incredibly-smart-but-with-some-vulnerabilities mold of 90s crush Maura Tierney. I fit the Dave Foley role of funny, but not intimidating in the slightest.
In this episode, the station’s owner has suddenly made Lisa the boss, demoting Dave, and he spends the episode looking for ways to undermine her, frequently declaring himself to be “pure evil.” It’s a line I’ve quoted myself, along with a line from a Robyn Hitchcock song: “I’m a charming and dangerous guy / If you don’t expect too much it’s alright.”
The coworker and I later married, and she was the wife who read all my journals while I was in rehab. She was disturbed by them. At that moment, to her, I was at least pretty evil.
Peep Show, “Funeral” (Season 1, Episode 6)
Peep Show is a pretty straightforward roommate comedy with a gentle conceit - all the camera work is done from one person’s perspective or another, at eye level. It also houses an absurd amount of comedic talent, including Olivia Colman as Sophie, a coworker love interest for Mark. In this episode, Jez, the other lead, is dealing with family and fear after his uncle dies of a hereditary illness, and Mark uses the funeral as an opportunity to ask Sophie on a date. So it’s that kind of show.
The plot point here is that Jez’s Uncle grew to love God just before he died and Jez’s sister does not want that as part of the ceremony. Jez’s monologue at 2:17 of the clip above is perhaps exactly where I am on religion. I don’t believe in God, I don’t give religion much weight, but I, too, don’t really know if I believe in the stock market either.
Flight of the Conchords, “Bowie” (Season 1, Episode 6)
I can probably recite all 22 episodes of “Flight of the Conchords” verbatim, which is impressive given that I usually watched it drunk on business trips at the Millennium Hilton, watching them build the Freedom Tower. I couldn’t tell you much about the communications campaign I worked on for a massive financial institution, aimed at giving them credit for underwriting things like the Yum! Center or restoring the City of New Orleans after Katrina. But I can definitely do a terrible version of Jemaine Clement’s terrible David Bowie impression.
This episode of the show — it’s about two struggling New Zealand musicians living in New York; very deadpan and funny, with musical interludes — has a surprisingly sensitive plotline on Bret’s body image issues as he fears he’s too thin. It also lets me continue my love of parody, though it’s perhaps more sophisticated and definitely more affectionate, avoiding note-for-note recreation.
Referencing another piece of art has always been an easy way to create depth, since it forces your brain to think of two things at once. In high school English, I asked Mrs. S why whenever Faulkner references the Bible we call it art, but if I wrote a story that referenced Bunnicula, that’s just a silly waste of time. I argued that me and Faulkner were the same, just stealing plots and shared memories to make our work seem like more than it actually was.
She may have answered me, but I was too young to listen. God I was right.
The Leftovers, “Guest” (Season 1, Episode 6)
One ex told me that I was the sort of bastard who only cries in the movies, never in real life. This was during a the good days in our relationship, when she was quoting “Catcher in the Rye” at me. The full quote:
You take somebody that cries their eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.
From 2004-2019, that was definitely true. Now I cry at everything.
I loved “The Leftovers,” about how the world changes after 2 percent of the world’s population vanishes, with my whole heart. The first season is relentlessly dour and grim — later seasons found some humor — but “Guest” was a highlight, sending Nora, a mother who lost both her children and her husband, to a fucking conference in New York.
Whoever wrote this episode nailed the conference feel, that constant sense of being bought and sold, the carpets and fake walls, the weird horny vibe among marrieds at the bar.
But at the end of the episode, Nora meets a sweaty religious figure named Holy Wayne (played by Mark’s boss on Peep Show) who lifts burdens through hugs, and I have never felt more seen in my entire life. It’s a plot turn that should not work, it’s seedy and strange, but it’s made me cry drunk, it’s made me cry sober, and that. Is art.