Day: July 15, 2016

Lunchtable TV Talk: Maron

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I don’t know of anything better than a certain self-deprecating humor, the likes of which Marc Maron has mastered in his podcast and further on his TV show, Maron. I binge-watched all four seasons in two days (could not stop), and read just as I slid into season 4 that the episodes shown this week would be the last ever. It did feel fitting and perfect, ending on his terms, well before some ho-hum inertia, repetition or dullness set in.

I think what gripped me about Maron is how the somewhat unusual parts, which appear in every episode, are still relatable. I was shocked to find how many times the plot points mirrored things that happened in my friends’ and acquaintances’ lives.

Cases in point:

  • A colleague forced an elderly, dying hamster on another colleague and then dodged her phone calls when she was trying to call and ask him about this sickly hamster. In the end she took the hamster to a veterinarian and had to spend about 200 USD to put the hamster down humanely.
  • A man I used to know was secretly living in his storage unit/garage. He built a loft inside. I did not know for a long time that he lived in a storage space, so was surprised when he drunkenly phoned me one night and reported that he had somehow fallen out of bed… onto the hood of his truck?! It sounded logistically impossible until I later learned he was sleeping in a loft above his vehicles.

I could continue this list but it’s useless. I only want to illustrate that there is something both real but unreal about Maron, and this is its perfect imperfection … and why it was utterly addictive.

(And, my god, who doesn’t love the cats?)

“This is basic”

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As I smeared some Boursin cheese onto a giant, round flatbread from Sweden’s Liba Bröd, I suddenly remembered my long-ago introduction to Boursin and a whole lot of other things that are not the norm in America. A French ex who always had Boursin and 1,000 other types of cheese at all times, exclaimed, shocked that I did not always have Boursin, “But… this is basic!” This was one of his most frequently repeated expressions. Every time we jointly encountered something that was normal, everyday and basic to him but unknown to me, I got, “But this is basic!” (pronounced of course like “bey-zik”). There were other things that were basic to me – like knowing that there is oil in the engine of a car – that he did not know.

But what is basic to one is not basic to another. Also, what we are “brainwashed” to think – or not to think independently about – is another thing. I talked to someone about Iran and how he had no idea how nice, forward-thinking and technologically enthusiastic Iranians are. But why would he? That’s not the image Americans get about Iran and its people.

What is basic and should be well-understood to everyone: when writing online SAVE SAVE SAVE. Or write in a Google Docs or Word or something first. I wrote a long and fairly well-researched post about Brexit consequences and lost the whole thing. I have not been so angry at myself in a very long time. Idiotic… but basic.

2016-2020… the ills of the 80s on steroids

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As Britain careens toward its own economic, political and existential doom, I’m almost tempted to laugh except that pointing at the chaos is an entirely misplaced form of schadenfreude. Their chaos is probably only foreshadowing what worse ugliness is to come in the US. If much of England and Wales can vote the entire UK out of the European Union, much of America can vote the “reasonable parts of the rest of America” into the oblivion of a Donald Trump presidency. Who will be laughing then?

It will be a lot like the 1980s of Thatcher and Reagan – only much worse. More xenophobic, more reactionary, more chaotic, more violent. And even though I know many people care deeply, the fact that things are unfolding this way makes it feel as though no one really does. The current escalation of terror attacks (all blamed on Islam or racial unrest but underpinned more and driven by all kinds of other issues – socioeconomic and historical vestiges of colonialism and slavery) feels like a parallel to the various terrorism that took place in the 1970s, which then led to the 1980s of trickle-down economics, a continuation of the Cold War and constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the AIDS crisis, the escalation of the war on drugs/Just Say No and all the socioeconomic and racial implications of that (i.e. turning drug problems into a criminal justice problem rather than a public health issue), a lot of economic unrest (striking, etc. in the UK), Bhopal, Chernobyl, the famine in Ethiopia, Iran-Contra, Tiananmen… and a whole lot of other not so pleasant stuff.

The rest of this decade may be tumultuous indeed: like the ills of the 1980s on steroids. I hope I am wrong.