MURPHY BROWN REBOOT

  They’re putting Murphy Brown on the air again. 

  Try to imagine me saying this with a melancholy thespian lilt, a la Kate Hepburn’s immortal soliloquy “the calla lilies are in bloom again,” from the mostly magnificent film Stage Door. (That cross reference seems appropriate, as the movie  was an odd hybrid of wisecracking women and corny sentiment.) 

  And when I say they’re putting it on the air again, I’m not sure what that even means at this point. My television set, which to me appears large until I visit other people’s homes and walk past screens bigger than some I paid to stare at in art house theaters back when DC had art house theatergoers, is less and less like a TV and more and more like a big iPhone with only one app. And these days when I’m watching a TV show, it’s often on my actual phone, which reduces Citizen Kane and 2001 to the size of a Bazooka Joe comic. Among other concerns, I’m not sure what “channel” the reboot will be booted on, or even if channel is the correct word these days. Will they run it on the Stoner Network, and will Murphy’s assistant thus be portrayed by a bearded Baby Huey-esque rapper-slash-chef with a bong the size of Univac? Will Murphy weigh in hilariously on current events, allowing us the delicious pleasure of hearing Candice trying to mine the #metoo movement and Steve Bannon for yuks? Will Dan Quayle be stuntcast, grimly enduring potato jokes in order to crosspromote his new reality show, Epic Quayle? 

  Allow me to remind you— the 90s are a foreign country; they do things differently there.

DOG FREE PLAYGROUND

The posting of this photo somewhere on Facebook generated 799 comments. 

  Some of these were sane, which was nice to see, but many were the usual cocktail of self-righteous indignation and lack of self-awareness we see so often these days in America. At one time or another, I’ve owned dogs and children (that came out wrong but please don’t slow me down here), and I’ve always felt the iron grip of responsibility when taking either kind of dependent out into the world. It’s a terrible, oppressive feeling, this feeling of responsibility, which must be too much for many of our citizens to bear, judging from the circumstantial evidence. 

  Dog owners and child parents are, of course, the real reason for rules (and signs) like this, and not anti-dog or anti-child prejudice. 

  Reading over these words makes me feel something far worse than crushing responsibility; there’s no way for me to escape the realization that I sound very much like George Will here. So, lest anyone confuse me with that erudite romanticizer of conservative doctrine, I’ll just add the word “fuck” at the end.

THREE BILLBOARDS AND A BACKLASH

  I saw the Three Billboards movie. The decision to see it was entirely a matter of default; it was Christmas vacation, my sister-in-law had proposed that we all go to the movies, her vote was for the 18th Star Wars film, I was inclined to see something else, etc. 

  I should clarify that I’m a film enthusiast, or “buff,” but I rarely see movies produced more recently than Kindergarten Cop. After a years-long movie drought, fatherhood brought me back into the theater for a string of works designed for children. Happily, this coincided with what now appears to have been Pixar’s period of early, funny films. 

  Somewhere along the line, I began hearing rumors that Hollywood was occasionally allowing a movie to slip through that did not feature wisecracking gunmen, ironjawed fellows who could fly through the air and smash stuff, or white women in imminent danger of marrying handsome underwritten characters. These rumors intrigued me, and I started going back to the octoplexes and enjoying the many stories about quirky young goofballs coming of age and quirky older goofballs forced to interact with youths that were now sassily bucking Hollywood trends. 

  Thus, when this family moviegoing plan was dangled in front of my eyes, I figured there would be several options available that did not include an actor propelled toward my face with a fireball behind him.

PLEASE DON'T SAY SHUT THE FUCK UP

I’ve spent an unholy amount of time in Facebook posting groups lately. 

I’m not inclined today to get into a lot of specific detail about what happens in these groups, because I’m not trying to shame them. But let me provide an overview. 

  Many groups operate within a robust and complicated set of rules. A common phrase you see in what might be generically described as the “safe space” world is “don’t be an asshole.” 

  This, of course, sounds entirely reasonable. How could anyone have a problem with that dictum, unless they’re an asshole? 

  “Being an asshole” is generally shorthand for using traditional bullying techniques such as name calling, resorting to crass ad hominem arguments, and the like. In short, attacking another group member in a personal way rather than discussing their position or statements on the merits. So far, I’m on board. 

  As with all utopias, though, there’s the danger of being distracted by your own Shangri-La righteousness. I’ve seen people gang up on rule-breakers, group-shaming them, and while it may feel like justice to the folks doing the ganging, to an outsider it looks ugly. I’ve never seen anyone banned from a group or even questioned for talking to a rule breaker this way. It amounts to a rule that you can break the rules, as long as your target is a rule breaker. 

  I’ve seen a group ban the use of the term “politically correct,” following an odd period where an argument about opera turned nasty. I should clarify that it was nasty in a genteel manner, which means the name calling was more Sesame Street than 42nd Street, and the aggrieved tone indignant, in the manner of wealthy philanthropists, or society grande dames in a Three Stooges short.

TEACHABLE MOMENT

This dialogue should be considered verbatim, although I don’t have a recording to back it up.


Son: At indoor recess, we were playing "Silent Speedball." I told the ref that (name withheld) cheated by using two hands. So, then I was out.
Dad. For talking?
Son: Yes.
Dad. What did you learn from this?
Son: People are idiots.

HAPPY ENDING

I know how much you all enjoy kerfuffles, fooferaws, and imbroglios. Or is it imbroglia? 

  Here’s a report from the front, in the aftermath of a recent fracas I attended. (So recent, in fact, that my ears are still ringing and my hand stamp hasn’t worn off yet.) 

  After joining a lot of what are called “Leftbook” groups, which are groups where the rules for posting are longer than the Apple agreements we all sign without reading, and choked with baffling jargon that everyone else but me seems to speak fluently, I figured I’d join some fun ones. 

  With a breezy optimism worthy of General Custer, I joined a few classical music groups. “This will be a nice respite from my normal life, where I’m reluctant to even mention my affection for Schoenberg, Cage, and other composers. I can’t wait to dive into the sophisticated threads that await me, in the magical land where philistines and provincials don’t care to go.” I actually said these things out loud, my eyes wet with unshed tears. Of joy. In case that wasn’t clear. 

  It went south almost immediately. A professor of philosophy, or physics, or one of the other academic areas that qualify you to lecture musicians, was gettin’ biz-zay explaining to the mob how science had proven that atonal music is bad. 

  I gave him my two cents (and when I say two cents, I’m thinking of the coins of ancient Sparta, which weighed so much that even the burliest citizens were unable to lift them. This was a culture where tipping was often deadly, and scratch-off lottery tickets were a three-man operation). He didn’t respond, and I moved on in search of additional jollity.  

  Things seemed to die down, after that, as they did for Captain Ahab between Moby Dick sightings. 

HOT PLATE! SWEEPS WEEK EPISODE-- DEATH STAR DAYCARE, FUZZTONE, TONTO-CON, THE TOT SPOT, AND MEMORIES OF HIGH SCHOOL IN THE REAGAN ERA

ATTENTION SLOW READERS-- STAR WARS CONTENT INCLUDED! 

After a long hiatus (a word that always makes me think of hernias), Hot Plate! The 120 Minute Radio Hour is back with its best episode yet. 

  The Sweeps Week Episode is packed with blue ribbon content, which will lay waste to the previously high standard we’ve established while previously high. 

  The centerpiece of the episode, functioning in the manner of a giant ice sculpture at a gathering of poobahs and muck-a-mucks, is my special guest Yael Ksander. Yael is known for her years as a host and interviewer on above ground radio, where her combination of erudition and effervescence (I think those are the words she insisted I use) has been a feather in the cap of one of the few states whose name begins with the letter I. 

  A little-known curriculum vitum of hers (I suspect she doesn’t even put it on her resume) is that she and I were classmates when we were young. We talked about many disparate things in our rambling discussion, but the excerpts of that talk the Hot Plate team culled for Sweeps Week mostly deal with our recollections of high school during the Reagan era. Our tete-a-tete covering many touchstones of a quainter far-off time turned into an impressionistic meditation on the mystery of human memory. (I say that to distinguish it from canine memory, fish memory, and so forth.) 

  Travel with us back through the mists to a world of overhead projectors and ditto machines, a world where students were distracted by handwritten notes rather than consumer electronics, and presidential prevarication was genteel and involved complete sentences.