No.

At first, I couldn't believe what I was reading. It had to be a sick internet joke. But no--it was all too real. My last sustained memory of MT was the final episode of BUFFY and she was still a child. Now, she's dead before the age of 40, supposedly due to... natural causes.

"Natural"?! Dying at 39 is not natural.

As a BUFFY fan (and as a moderately empathetic human being) this was all upsetting enough. But then you dig into the reports about her life as a child actor, how she was abused by her schoolmates as "that girl on TV" during her pre-teen years and you wonder if the Hollywood that brought her fame and wealth also destroyed her health. And as a BUFFY fan, you are also forced to remember the horrifying rule on the set of BtVS:

Never, NEVER leave Michelle alone with Joss Whedon.

The reason behind that rule has never been made public, and until one of the cast breaks the silence, we can only speculate. But it's not speculation that her self image took a battering on that set. It's a chilling reminder that the Hollywood Dream Factory is, at its core, a factory. And factories often do not care who gets caught up in the gears.

Happy holidays everybody!

Three very different, very entertaining and/or thought provoking pop culture nuggets for your perusal:

American Fiction (written for the screen and directed by Cord Jefferson)

I have to give it up to the screenwriter/director. Given the premise--"serious" novelist pens sterotypical ghetto tragedy potboiler as a joke and winds up with runaway best seller--this could have been a wild, uninhibited farce with our protagonist squeezed into ever more embarrassing situations and parodic scenes from the novel filling up the movie.

But Jefferson does something interesting: yes, some of the farcical elements are here, as Monk (Jeffrey Wright) slams head first into a white-dominated media world that only seems interested in black suffering. But he deliberately undercuts the farce with more grounded scenes with Monk as he deals with his troubled family and his own conflicted self-image.

As a result, the movie is less about white liberal hypocrisy or even black family life, and more about Monk's growth as a character; how his serious novels (based on updates of Ancient Greek drama) and his elitist views of literature reflect his own detachment from the forces that shaped him, and how his "joke" novel allows some of those conflicts to seep out.

The movie never settles into easy answers to Monk's issues. There are no pat resolutions to the family drama--and even the "sellout" author who provokes his vicious parody (played beautifully by Issa Rae) is given the chance to state her case.

Some critics wanted a more caustic satire, more like the original novel or in the vein of Spike Lee's Bamboozled. But Jefferson isn't as didactic as Lee. Character comes first--and in that, he has the perfect partner in Jeffrey Wright. I think Wright is one of the best actors on the planet and this movie has done nothing to change my opinion. Thelonious "Monk" Ellison could have been an abstraction; Wright makes this very difficult character feel real and he holds the center of the movie.


Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (written and directed by James Gunn)

As I am not blessed with a Disney+ subscription, I missed out on this seasonal treat a few years ago; so I was delighted when FX picked it up for holiday viewing.

A GotG Xmas special sounds weird, but fans of the franchise know this is right up James Gunn's alley: an absolutely sincere tribute to the cheeseball Xmas specials of holidays past, with just enough of an acknowledgement of their absurdities.

Wedged in between the second and third GotG movies, the plot is simple: Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is depressed, and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) wants to cheer him up with a present for that strange Earth holiday called Christmas. But what to get him? Drax (Dave Bautista) has the perfect gift idea: why not bring Quill that great warrior he keeps blabbering about...

Kevin Bacon?

So Drax and Mantis warp down to Earth and kidnap Kevin Bacon.

Yeah, it's every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, but Gunn fires off some great comic riffs as Drax and Mantis bounce across Los Angeles like a pair of demented Christmas elves, photobombing the tourists, partying at the club, and terrifying poor Kevin Bacon (who just wants to sit quietly at home until Kyra Sedgwick and the kids come back from New York).

But once the silliness subsides and Kevin chills out, Gunn flips over to the sentimental side of these specials and it fits nicely into Guardians lore: Drax tells Kevin that Footloose inspired the Starlord dance moves that saved the galaxy; and Mantis gives Quill the best Christmas present of all--the sister he never knew he had.

It's not an all-time classic, but it goes down pretty smooth, and for devoted Marvel maniacs, it's an essential piece of the GotG story. (I will say, tbough, that the, um, unusual take on the legend of Santa Claus by the alien rock and roll band should be a perennial.)


Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (co-written and co-directed by Nick Park)

For a Wallace and Gromit fan, there is a feeling of happiness and reassurance from a simple trumpet fanfare. That familiar theme music tells you that you are back in the Claymation world of Nick Park and Aardman animation and you are safely in the hands of a master.

Vengeance Most Fowl is the first W&G movie in nineteen years, but Park and his team haven't missed a step. In fact, the backgrounds seem to be packed with more detail than ever before; the gags are even more exquisitely timed; and the supporting characters are better than ever in adding depth to Wallace and Gromit's world.

Thankfully, Wallace and Gromit themselves haven't changed at all. Wallace is still the model of dotty, kind hearted British eccentricity, tinkering with his gears and tubes and springs to the silent exasperation of Gromit, his ever loyal canine companion. (Ben Whitehead, taking over the voice of Wallace from the late Peter Sallis, is nearly flawless.) One of Wallace's inventions goes awry/falls into the wrong hands and Gromit has to dig in his paws and save the day.

The big improvement over the previous W&G movie is the return of the series' greatest villain: Feathers McGraw, the silent, beady-eyed penguin mastermind from The Wrong Trousers. One of the pleasures of the movie is watching McGraw's machinations slowly unfold. His plan to escape his prison (the local zoo, of course), get revenge on Wallace and Gromit, and complete his final theft is almost as detailed as the animation itself.

I could spend another ten paragraphs listing the great gags in this movie, from the terrifying antics of Wallace's automated garden gnome to the climactic barge "race"; but you should just see it for yourself. (Vengeance Most Fowl is in limited release in movie theaters, and debuts on Netflix in early January.)

It's been seven months since my last post? Really? Wow.

I have no excuse for my absenteeism. Yes, I've been busy at work, preoccupied with my health and hip deep in various household projects, but that doesn't mean I couldn't spare a minute to say hi. I guess it comes down to: I don't think anybody would be intetested in the details of my banal, domesticated tickytack life. (Hell, I'm not interested in the details half the time.) But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe I need to talk about my banal, domesticated, tickytack life with you guys so I don't live in the echo chamber inside my head.

So what's been happening?

My job is my job. No change there.

The one truly positive development is that I've lost 20 pounds! I've bern carrying that extra weight for a couple of decades, and it's probably been a contributing factor to my elevated blood pressure. I'm on statins to bring the BP down and I'm hoping that the combination of weight loss and medication will bring me down to normal.

(There has been no recurrence of my deep vein thrombosis. But I will be on medication for that forever.)

BTW, my wife has lost 65 pounds! (Makes me look like an amateur.) The stress on her back and her ankles has disappeared. We go on extended walks together almost every night. It's kind of romantic--if passing the taco truck outside our local Walgreens can be romantic.

The Boy is in good health. He's 15 now, in his sophomore year at his Catholic high school. His soccer team made it to the city finals again! And they lost. Again.

He is....a teenager. He's hanging with his buds rather than mom and dad. (My wife refuses to accept this development.) He barely squeezes out two words when we ask him a question. If not properly motivated, he will sleep until dusk. He subsists on Doritos, peanut butter, chicken nuggets and Subway sandwiches.

He is also struggling with certain school subjects, which is new to him. I sometimes worry if he can handle the stress of the honors program and I wonder if we're pushing him too hard...or not hard enough. He's taller than both of us now, but there's still a lot of the quiet little kid in there. I want to protect him, stop him from making the same mistakes I did. But I know he's going to make mistakes
no matter what I do.

What else? We finished renovating the basement--it's basically my wife's GirlCave(tm)--and we had the entire first floor painted. The paint job is so beautiful my wife doesn't want to re-hang the pictures that were on the wall. (I'm going to have to wait her out on that one.)

I've been watching a lot of movies on our DVR, but nothing I felt worthy of a post. (The last movie I saw in the theaters was Deadpool and Wolverine--a massive disappointment.) I'm not particularly excited by the current and upcoming slate of movies. When is the Fantastic Four movie out? May? July?

I did venture out of my cubbyhole for two concerts recently: ELO at MSG (my first time at the Garden in decades), and last night, Beat at Kings Theater in Brooklyn. Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai and Danny Carey (the drummer from Tool) playing the 1980s King Crimson songbook. Now that concert was worthy of a post! Let's see if I actually write it. (Watch this space.)

Until then, take care everybody.

I am currently in a bit of a holding pattern. I'm done with antibiotics, but my endoscopy has been postponed until next month. I'll be done with blood thinners after Sunday morning, but I won't know if they worked on the clot until May 9th. I'm waiting for waterproofers to come in and give me an estimate on my basement, but that's still ten days away.

(My wife also had some vital tests postponed until early May. We are very annoyed.)

In the meantime, a brief pop culture review while I'm waiting....

*****************

Late Night with the Devil (written and directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes) is a neat little horror movie, a mostly successful "found footage" film with a unique twist: with the exception of a brief documentary introduction, it takes place entirely within one episode of a late 1970s late night talk show.

The talk show in question is Night Owls, hosted by the affable Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), who has been lagging behind Johnny Carson his entire career and is perpetually one step away from cancelation. In a desperate bid to boost ratings, Delroy turns his Halloween episode into a dive into the paranormal, featuring a 12 year old girl supposedly possessed by a demon.

The movie is most effective when it stays in its chosen lane and sticks to the confines of the talk show, with Delroy interacting with his sidekick, a psychic, and a Ricky Jay-like skeptic (played with bitchy flamboyance by Ian Bliss). The Cairnes subtly, incrementally ratchet up the tension, depending on their host to guide the action until the inevitable blood soaked finale.

And Dastmalchian, in the driver's seat for the first time in his career, delivers. He's made a living playing tragic weirdoes in the margins of big movies (Polka Dot Man anyone?), but he shows here that he's more than capable of handling a lead role. Throughout the movie, we wonder about Delroy's motives. Is he just interested in putting on a freak show for the rubes or does he have deeper motivations? Delroy never loses his show biz bonhomie, but Dastmalchian lets you see the struggles going on underneath. It's a finely tuned, engaging performance.

The movie is not perfect. There are "master tape" excerpts from the Night Owls studio during commercials and the camera is just a little too perfectly in place for key conversations. (It kind of breaks the illusion.) And in the hallucinatory final sequence, we find out that everything we thought we knew about Jack Delroy turns out to be... exactly what we thought. (It's not bad, but it's kind of anticlimactic.)

These flaws don't ruin the movie, though. It's a solid debut for the Cairnes, and it proves that Dastmalchian is ready for bigger things. He says he wants to play a vampire. Give this man some fangs!

[Late Night with the Devil is still in selected theaters and is currently streaming on Shudder.]

Well, I put it off for as long as possible--fifteen years, as a matter of fact. But in the quest to discover the mysterious origins of my deep vein thrombosis, my doctor insisted it had to be done. So I finally gave in.

I had the colonoscopy.

(No really, the leg is doing much better now! Can't we just put it off for another fifteen years?)

I finally decided that I was being a scaredy cat and I needed to get an accurate assessment of my health for my family's sake (as well as my own). So I emptied out my gut and my colon smiled for the birdie.

The results? A few stray polyps (that my GI man didn't seem too worried about), but more seriously:

Ulcers.

This was kind of a surprise. I haven't had much of a problem with spicy foods; peppers don't bother me and I like my sushi with Wasabi. But, weirdly enough, I've had bad reactions to both AFTER the colonoscopy. (It's as if the procedure scraped off a protective coating around the ulcers...) I'm taking Prilosec for the next month, but I think I need to rethink my diet in general. That's not going to be easy.

***************

In between all the medical drama, I've caught up on some recent notable movies and TV miniseries and my reactions ranged from wild applause to total disgust (with a few milder opinions in between). Let's break it down:

The Good Stuff

I already raved about Oppenheimer in a previous post, so I'm not going to repeat myself. It won all the Oscars it deserved to win. Same goes for Poor Things (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos), a brilliant deconstruction of the Victorian mindset (which persists--in many ways--to the modern world). Emma Stone is amazing (of course), but she almost gets the movie stolen out from under her by Mark Ruffalo, as a would-be Bohemian cad who isn't nearly as free from his era's social conventions as he thinks he is. (It's just pure evil fun to watch as Bella's quest for personal liberation completely strips him of his self delusions, leaving him a gibbering wreck.)

The makeup, costuming and production design combine to create a thoroughly believable steampunk alternate late 1800s and Lanthimos handles this expanded pallette with confidence and flair. If I have one complaint about the movie--and maybe this is just me--it's that Bella's logical, empirical methodology creates a bit of an emotional distance between the audience and the character. You root for her (because, yes, she's that awesome), but you don't get a lot of warm moments with her. (You get one between Bella and the courtesan in the Paris brothel, but I would have liked a little more.)

Pay no attention to my nitpicking. This movie is great. And we have another Emma Stone/Yorgos Lanthimos team up all ready to go? I'm there!

I've heard descriptions of Beau Is Afraid (written and directed by Ari Aster) ranging from "technicolor nervous breakdown" to "the world's longest Jewish mother joke." I think the closest I can get to classifying this very bold, very long, very weird movie is the counterculture novels of Terry Southern (like Candy or The Magic Christian), where a naive protagonist would go on a surreal, satirical journey through modern society--a bildungsroman on acid. But since Aster is a horror director, this movie is more like an anti-bildungsroman--the deeper he goes, the more he realizes he's always been fucked.

Whether you're willing to sit through a three hour anxiety attack depends on whether you liked Ari Aster's previous movies (Heredity and Midsommar) and how much you like Joaquin Phoenix. But, love it or hate it, give Phoenix credit--the man commits. His Beau is a vibrating mass of jangled nerves, constantly on the verge of helpless tears or outright implosion. It's a version of Phoenix we've rarely seen before--softer, intensely vulnerable--and he capably guides us through Aster's narrative circus act until the bitter, bitter end.

Is this movie for everyone? No. A lot of people will give up halfway through, muttering "self indulgent crap". But I loved it. It was John Waters' favorite movie of last year. (Have we ever steered you wrong?)


Should Have Been Better

I've been a fan of Nicole Holofcener for awhile now, admiring her idiosyncratic romantic comedies, like Enough Said (starring Julia Louis Dreyfus and the late--sniff!--James Gandolfini) or her screenplays for The Last Duel and Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Holofcener's latest, You Hurt My Feelings, teams her up with JLD again, but the movie just isn't as sharp as their previous outing, and the central conflict--semi-famous author discovers husband doesn't like her novel--comes off as rich people's problems and relatively slight. There are mentions throughout the movie of the author's abusive childhood, but Holofcener doesn't put much emphasis on past trauma, perhaps afraid it'll spoil the warm, relaxed vibe.

The big problem with the movie, though, is that it's not very funny. It's witty and well-observed (as usual for a Holofcener joint), but the big laughs (mostly) aren't there. The exception is a series of riotous scenes with David Cross and Amber Tamblyn as a married couple receiving no help from their couples counseling sessions. Cross and Tamblyn (married in RL!) bounce acid comments off each other and their hapless therapist at breakneck speed and it supercharges the whole movie. Maybe next time, Holofcener needs to get a bit more down and dirty.

Feud: Capote and the Swans, detailing Truman Capote's friendship with--and ultimate betrayal of--the ladies of Manhattan society has an incredible pedigree: written by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Gus Van Sant, and stocked with a-list acting talent (led by Tom Hollander as Capote), it should have been a knockout...

But once the relationship between Capote and his "swans" has been defined--he's both attracted and repelled by the Lifestyles of the Superrich--the drama spins its wheels for the rest of the series. There are occasional breaks in the inertia-- Chris Chalk drops in as James Baldwin, dispensing gay solidarity and hard truths--but no amount of bon mots can disguise the tedium at the heart of the enterprise.

Naomi Watts is superb as practically perfect Babe Paley (wife of CBS chairman William Paley), and Hollander devours Capote like a fine pate de fois gras. I just wish they were in a better show.


Complete Botch

How could they have blown it this badly?

Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Homicide: Life on the Street) take Dashiel Hammett's Sam Spade (Clive Owen) on an adventure to the south of France, where he encounters beautiful scenery, beautiful women, spies, jaded gendarmes and lots and lots of murder. It can't miss.

So why is it so boring?

Frank and Fontana somehow, inexplicably, make every wrong choice. The most interesting characters, like Brigid O'Shaughnessy and Spade's rich and beautiful French wife, Gabrielle? Dead before the first commercial. The main villain, the Sydney Greenstreet of the piece? Lost in the shadows for most of the runtime. Brigid's annoying teenage daughter? Does not shut up.

There is murder at a convent AND a mysterious boy who could be a prophesied messiah AND teams of uninteresting spies working at cross purposes AND much hand-wringing about the French/Algerian war. (An endlessly fascinating topic for American audiences, I've heard.) It's so convoluted that Alfre Woodard shows up in the last 15 minutes(!) and basically tells everybody to go home.

Owen tries his best, but Monsieur Spade is a complete botch from beginning to end. Pray there is no Season Two.

"Wait...this came out in 2022. And you're just getting to it now? I thought you were this biiiig Doctor Strange fan!"

Well...I was busy. (Shut up.)

******************
Warning: spoilers and extreme nerdiness ahead.

This movie almost works. Almost. Everything you need in a Doctor Strange movie is in there (plus a bonus at the end, which I'll get to). But the movie is overstuffed, and the vital material gets swamped under by extraneous action scenes, distracting superhero cameos and dangling loose ends from other corners of the MCU.

BUT before I start kvetching, let me focus on what I loved about this movie: the character of Stephen Strange himself. Not his sooperwizard powers--the man, who he is and where he's going. After we finished the movie, I told my wife: "It's comforting to know that, throughout the multiverse, Stephen Strange will always be an asshole." And it IS comforting! It's consistency of character, from his debut in Strange Tales #110 to right now. He was an arrogant prick as a high priced neurosurgeon and he's STILL an arrogant prick as a wizard. (Only now he saves the world. And he doesn't run up your insurance bill.)

It amused me greatly to see Dr. Strange screaming at everyone that Wanda was coming to kill them all, and the other characters nodded politely and said: "Yes, that IS a problem. But let's talk about YOU, Stephen." Stephen Strange may be the hero of the movie, but to most of the characters in it, HE is the biggest threat to the multiverse. And they're right! At least two other Stranges have destroyed their realities by fatally overestimating their ability to control the forces they've unleashed. So what makes our version of Dr. Strange any different?

That's the central question holding the movie together. Has he grown at all, or at least enough to avoid those catastrophic displays of hubris? Can he finally let go of Christine Palmer and move on with his life? Maybe. He does bow to Wong, a show of deference and respect. He defends and then empowers America Chavez, who must remind him of the little sister he lost. And he finally fixes that damn watch. (Symbolism!) Is he a humble Master of the Mystic Arts and lover of puppies at the end? Don't be ridiculous.

You see? All good! But to get to that good stuff, you have to deal with the plot. And that means dealing with the Scarlet Witch.

Look, I don't really mind that Marvel used this movie to clean up the loose ends of WandaVision; if you're going to continue the story of a powerful sorceress, a Dr. Strange movie is a good fit. But why does it have to be another "Wanda Goes Batshit" plotline? Speaking as a long-suffering Marvel reader, haven't we had too many of those already? In WGB stories, Wanda often seems like a gigantic plot device rather than a legitimate character, setting huge events in motion with her chaos magic, because she's crazy powerful (emphasis on "crazy").

Same here. Why does Wanda have to go apocalyptically evil because her "children" were magical illusions? Isn't there a better path here? (I feel there are a few steps missing between "dealing with grief" and "murderous rampage.") And if you say "the Darkhold is warping her mind", then why does she snap out of it so quickly when her "kids" are scared of her? Shouldn't an infamous book of dark magic have a better hold on its victims?

[Side note: boy, Sam Raimi loves his books of dark magic, doesn't he?]

I think this whole plotline was handled better in Avengers 184-186, when Chthon (the demon who created the Darkhold) actually possessed Wanda and sent her on a rampage. That might have worked better here. (If you're interested, that story is reprinted in the "Nights of Wundagore" graphic novel. Vintage John Byrne artwork. Pick it up!) So even though I wouldn't say Wanda's story was "botched" ("clumsily handled" is more accurate), it still left me with a sour stomach and detracted from the good stuff listed above.

But if I was slightly down on the movie when the credits rolled, that post-credits scene picked me right up:

Clea!

Charlize Theron as Clea!

Hell yeah!

For those of you unfamiliar with the comics, Clea is the niece of his arch foe, the dread Dormammu, occasional Queen of the Dark Dimension, with power levels off the charts... and (sadly) Stephen's ex-wife. (Clea is a courageous superheroine in her own right, not to mention stunningly beautiful, but Stephen just "couldn't make it work." What an asshole.)

Clea is one of the last pieces of the Dr. Strange mythos to fall into place, and it is the perfect set up for the third movie in...2031?

I can't have it right now?

Kevin Feige did not think this through.

Medical update: went for my post-release follow up at the hospital. Swelling in the leg has gone down considerably (but the clot probably won't disappear completely for awhile). I'll be on blood thinning medication for about three months. Doctor ordered a barrage of tests to see if there's any possible underlying conditions behind the blood clot, so.... more needles! More blood work! Colonoscopy! Fun!

**********************

Fargo really hasn't been hitting on all cylinders since the peak of Season 2 (I covered s2 in one of my first Dreamwidth posts!). S3 had Ewan McGregor's flashy dual performance (but not much else), and s4 stranded a lot of great actors (yes, I'm including Chris Rock) in a plot that moved like a tractor in mud.

So Season 5 is something of a retrenchment, with series creator Noah Hawley leaving the mob wars behind, paring down the cast, and focusing on a sympathetic central protagonist (Juno Temple). It's a smart way to keep the audience engaged, and still allows for spectacular performances from supporting characters.

Hawley's main theme this time is DEBT, and most of the misery in this go 'round stems from characters who want to take their proverbial pound of flesh--one way or another. Leading the pack is Jon Hamm, who thoroughly inhabits Roy Tillman, a small town sheriff in North Dakota who has set himself up as the tin god of his own little kingdom. Roy sees himself as a Biblical patriarch tending his flock--but he is a monster, fueled by selfishness, hatred and spite. Roy is determined to reclaim his ex-wife (Temple), who escaped his clutches ten years ago--and has absolutely no intention of going back.

Temple's Dot is no helpless victim here; she looks like a little slip of a housewife with a stereotypical "Minnesota Nice" accent, but she is a tiger when cornered, beating back kidnap attempts with a breathtaking ferocity. She is assisted in her game of "keep away" (sort of) by various ineffectual law officers--and her mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Lorraine isn't really that much better than Roy; as the queen of a financial empire built on America's crushing middle class debt, she wields her power with something approaching cruelty, and lords it over her subjects with smug superiority. (Leigh based her accent here on William F. Buckley. That should tell you something.)

But Lorraine, cold hearted tyrant that she is, is eventually worn down by Dot's courage in the face of Roy's attacks, and her love for--and fierce protectiveness of--Wayne and Scotty (Lorraine's son and granddaughter). That sets Lorraine and Roy on a collision course, and the face-to-face confrontations between Leigh and Hamm are a blast. Roy tries to intimidate Lorraine with macho swagger, but Lorraine slices him off at the knees every time.

[BTW, Dave Foley does great work here as Lorraine's consigliere, a smooth operator with a cool-looking bone-colored eyepatch, who thinks he has all the angles covered (until--unfortunately--he doesn't).]

Drifting through the narrative like a fog coming off a Minnesota lake is Ole Munch (pronounced "Moonck"), one of those weird, quasi-supernatural characters you sometimes see in Coen Brother movies (like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men). Munch (Sam Spruell) starts off as one of Roy's thugs for hire, but then reveals himself as something much older and stranger, with a burden and a code of honor that dates back centuries(!). Munch's code of debts that must be repaid in blood is Lorraine and Roy's code boiled down to its primitive core...

So it's appropriate that, after all the big showy gun battles are done, the final confrontation is between Munch and Dot--over dinner and biscuits at the Lyon home. In both Fargo the movie and Fargo the series, the whole Minnesota Nice motif is something of a joke, a veneer of politeness disguising sinister motives (or just plain idiocy). But this scene--maybe my favorite of the whole series--suggests that maybe behind that veneer there is something deeper: a warmth and a generosity of spirit that can forgive even the oldest of debts.

Highly recommended. Come for Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Stay for the biscuits.

In case you haven't noticed, things have not been going well here at the old homestead.

The latest: on Friday night, my son slipped in the bathroom and banged his head on either the tile floor or the edge of the bathtub. We couldn't quite get an accurate account of events because he couldn't remember falling or momentarily passing out. Naturally, we freaked--and so, barely three days after I left the hospital, our family was back in the ER.

My wife took him down to Methodist Hospital's pediatric ER, which was the smart move. Hospitals make my son very uncomfortable--he was practically looking for exits when he visited my room--so the pediatric ER was a little less intense than your standard, chaotic ER. He was in and out in a few hours. He has a minor concussion; no medication required and no strenuous activity for two weeks.

So with D. on concussion protocol and me on my blood thinner meds (and suffering from a winter cold, too!), my wife has declared herself the healthiest person in the house--which, if you know her various health problems, is a simultaneously hilarious and depressing declaration.

At least the cat is okay.

But if you want to pinpoint when this bad luck streak REALLY started, I guess you have to go back to the end of September, when Brooklyn got hit with eight inches of rain. In the 16+ years we've owned this house, we never had any problems with the basement. But this time, it was too much rain for the structure to hold. No, it wasn't a full-on flood, but there was enough water damage to bring up the unpleasant possibility of mold.

It took weeks to renovate the basement, to waterproof it, repaint it and get the furnishings back to my wife's exact specifications. The basement has always been my wife's refuge, her safe space when she's overloaded with stress. (She's a New York City schoolteacher. She has a lot of stress.) The water damage shattered her illusion of safety; and, to be honest, it shattered mine, too. Now, every time it rains, I check the walls of the basement...just to be sure.

(We also had water dripping down from the upstairs bathroom that's cracked the dining room ceiling. But, frankly, we're too exhausted to deal with that now.)

To sum up: both the house and its occupants are not in the best of health right now. But we will persevere! I'll try to keep you updated...

Happy New Year, everyone.

I am home now, taking a day to recuperate after a three-day stay in the hospital--an unnerving and unpleasant experience.

Why was I in the hospital?

Let's go back about a month.

The family and I were taking a walking tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's annual light show. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes end to end, so you need to sit down and rest once in a while. But I wasn't sitting down. I was worked up (for a variety of reasons), so while my wife and kid sat down, I paced relentlessly. By the end of the tour, I felt something pull in my right leg; it was a severe muscle strain or a small tear in the calf muscle.

I was hobbled for a while and the leg was swollen. But I didn't think it was a big deal; I'd dealt with strains and tears before. You keep off the leg as best you can, elevate it, and take an ibuprofen for any occasional pain. And for the most part, it worked: the strain or tear or whatever healed, and I regained full mobility. But here's the thing:

The swelling never went down.

After the new year, it started to dawn on me that the muscle strain/tear/whatever might be covering another condition--water in the tissues (edema) or, worst case scenario, a blood clot. So this Saturday, I finally had an ultrasound to find out what was happening in there...

It's a blood clot. Deep vein thrombosis.

If you're not familiar with DVTs, they are a tricky, highly dangerous condition. Blood clots don't necessarily disable you and sometimes, they aren't even painful. But a clot can come loose from the leg and travel straight to the lungs or heart. It could be--potentially--fatal.

The advice from my doctors? Go to the hospital. NOW. So I did. I checked into the emergency room at NYU/Langone in Brooklyn. I spent a full day on a stretcher squashed against a nurse's station in the hallway. In that first stretch, I frankly had no idea how long I would be there. I had read or heard that sometimes, a hospital would keep you for weeks while they safely wore down the clot.

On Sunday, they gave me a proper room in the ER and started me on IV drips of saline solution and blood thinners. It severely limited my movements--not great when I had to go to the bathroom--but by Monday morning, I could feel the combination working. The swelling was going down. I was confident that I'd be released Monday afternoon, and put on pills on an outpatient basis.

But they threw me a curveball. Monday afternoon, I was transferred to a semi-private room upstairs. They attached me to a heart monitor. I wondered what the heck was going on: is my condition worse than I thought? Is my "short" hospital visit just beginning? (I was trying not to panic.)

Fortunately, my original assumption turned out to be right: I was started on 10 mg of Equilis and I was set to be released on Tuesday morning...

Then, the inevitable insurance foulup kept me just a little while longer. The hospital didn't have the right insurance information. My wife's ordinarily bulletproof insurance package didn't cover the drug. My wife had to race to a local pharmacy next to the hospital before they closed at six. (Six?! Who closes at six?! Walgreens closes at ten!)

Anyway, I got the pills I needed--no cost for the first month. I was released at 7pm, and we drove
through the rainstorm to finally, FINALLY arrive home.

Home. My couch. My bed. The cat (who apparently was looking for me out the window for days). I am so happy to be back.

I'm not out of danger, though. I need to take blood thinners for at least a month or two, to make sure the clot is gone completely (and doesn't come back). I have to be on guard for side effects and I can't cut myself, because (as one person put it) I would "bleed like a motherfucker."

On the plus side (trying to be optimistic here), my blood pressure and heart are pretty good for a guy my age. I saw a ton of movies in my semi-private room: Elemental, Matrix Resurrections, Super Mario Bros., Quantumania and Dungeons and Dragons. (Some of them were good!)

But mostly, I'm alive. And I'm home.

When I get older
Losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

--McCartney

Today is my 64th birthday.

I am off from work today and tomorrow. Yes, because nobody should work on their birthday, but that's not the main reason. School is starting up again today, and this is both my son's first day of high school and my wife's first day back teaching fifth grade. We've been frantically working out our schedules for the upcoming weeks--coordinating soccer practices, bus pickups and scouting events. It's still a work in progress; I'm hoping that by the end of the month, we'll settle into something resembling a routine.

Right now, I'm home alone. (I'll pick up the boy around 11:45.) Normally, I'd be slightly melancholy at the thought of another year gone by and slipping into my elderly years. But that's not where my head is at today. There's simply too much going on for me to be depressed. I have to help my son navigate his high school years and (hopefully) put him on the path to a happy, healthy adulthood. I have to help my wife survive her last five years of teaching so she can walk away with her nerves intact. I am this close to finishing a new short story that would (technically) introduce a new superhero universe.

Is everything perfect? No, it never is. We have our problems. I want to see more of my sister, my niece and her family. My best friend of almost 50 years is drifting away from me.

Yes, I'm getting older. But for the most part, I feel like I've got a lot more to offer the world. I'm just getting started.

***********************

Let's change the subject.

Pop culture!

As the actor and writers' strikes drag on, the studios are scrambling to find content to fill the gaping holes in their schedules. On the one hand, that means a whole bunch of crappy reality and game shows; but on the other hand, it means some "exclusive" streaming content is filtering down to basic cable, youtube, and even the traditional networks.

Their desperation has been my gain; I just finished streaming Season 3 of Star Trek: Lower Decks on youtube. Lower Decks is not for everybody-- it's an animated Trek comedy, extremely meta, and blindingly fast paced. The dialogue can come off as glib, and sometimes, the show fails to find the balance between parodying the absurdities of the Trek universe and seriously building the characters. But when it does hit that balance? The show is great. I sniffled a bit when the crew of the Cerritos visited Deep Space Nine (Kira! Quark! MORN!), but my favorite ep of the season was "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus"--a rip roaring salute/parody of Trek movie sequels that also explored Boimler's existential crisis and Tendi's career ambitions. I loved the running debate among the ensigns whether their holodeck programs (read: the Trek movies) should be pure action/adventure or deal with deeper, philosophical issues. All this, and George Takei too? Great stuff.

Meanwhile, over on the Disney side of the tube, ABC broadcast the entire first season of Ms. Marvel to set up the big movie crossover ("The Marvels") in November. I love Kamala Khan in the comics and Iman Vellani is a perfect fit for the character. (She is absolutely adorable.) But, to be honest, I found the superhero action completely forgettable. The villains of the season (the Clandestine) were one dimensional and Kamala's wounded puppy love interest was a stiff. (Bruno has nothing to worry about... but the boy really, REALLY needs to tell Kamala how he feels.) What I found interesting were the insights into Muslim family life in America. (I could watch a whole episode of Nakia arguing with the mosque board about upgrading the women's section.) Unfortunately, I think The Marvels will concentrate more on wacky space action than the Khan family. And while I do want to see Kamala spazz out over meeting her idol, I don't know if that's enough to sustain a whole movie....

Oops. Gotta go. I'll pick this up later.