Sunday, September 26, 2021

I Am Linda Tripp

I was reading New York magazine's review of Impeachment: American Crime Story (because if there is one thing the world needed it was another story about a president getting a blow job from an intern. I swear to God, 50 years from now, Hollywood will still be delving into history's least interesting, most overanalyzed scandal in American history) and the author wrote two passages that hit particularly close to home:

Paulson's Tripp is petty, vindictive, and selfish. She's also foolish, or at least just smart enough to make the same very foolish mistakes. She wants attention and can't muster the self-awareness required to admit she wants it. Everything bad in her life was done to her; everything good was the result of her own, Herculean efforts

and this ... 

Too often, though, Paulson's performance is uncannily like Tripp herself. It is trying so, so hard in a way that makes you want to recoil. It would be a disaster, except this is precisely what Impeachment is most interested in: the contempt we have for desperation and for people whose desperation is too painfully evident.

When I think about my personal life and how my career has dead-ended, the first quote often applies. I think through a lot of things that others did to me - my parents, my ex wife, the boss who fucked me over after I ran through wall after all for him, and how angry I am at all of them, but that all the success I want to think I achieved has been due to overcoming all of that abuse. On the other hand, when I think about my utter failure and inability to have even a basic, normal dating relationship with a woman, I think it is because the desperation to have one is so painfully obvious and it just repels anyone within 100 miles of me. 

Most of all, it just feels like at this stage in my life, I am just passing time. I am not going to achieve the things I hoped to in my career, so I am totally checked out at work, and I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life, so why bother showing any interest in anyone or anything?  

Friday, September 24, 2021

TV Review - The White Lotus

 

The rich, Fitzgerald famously observed, are not like you and me. In the roughly 100 years since that line appeared in The Great Gatsby, movies, books, and television shows have reinforced the point. This summer’s buzziest addition to this milieu was HBO’s The White Lotus, a six-episode limited series that takes place over a week’s time at a luxury Hawaiian resort.

 

The upstairs/downstairs class struggle is established quickly. The “haves” include Nicole and Mark Mossbacher, their two teenagers, Olivia and Quinn, and Olivia’s college bestie Paula. In addition, we have newlyweds Shane and Rachel Patton; he comes from money, she does not. Lastly, there is Tanya McQuoid, a flightly middle aged singleton who is here to dispense with her mother’s ashes (and hopefully the mental damage inflicted on her when her mom was alive). The “have nots” are Armond, the resort manager, Belinda, who manages the resort’s spa, and Kai, a native Hawaiian working at the resort as a fire dancer while bemoaning the theft of his family’s property by unseen forces.

 

In lesser hands, this would be standard, pay cable summer escapism, but Mike White filmed a horror story that is easy to miss because the eye is constantly drawn to the lush cinematography, gospel-like Hawaiian soundtrack, and internet catnip (social media lost its mind over the syllabus of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism books Olivia and Paula devoured, Jennifer Coolidge’s hot mess performance as Tanya launched a million memes, etc.)

 

But below the surface, White’s story telling simmers until boiling over in the show’s bleak conclusion. When the guests arrive, Armond naturally counsels his staff to be invisible, anodyne, and essentially treat the guests as overgrown children whose every whim should be catered to. It is surely the same lecture he gives them at the start of each resort week, but because he and his staff are human beings and not mindless robots, that edict is thrown out the window as the ever-present demands from the entitled guests start wearing on the staff.

 

And that’s the thing. Kids can be negotiated with or disciplined but adults with privilege cannot.

Shane is a male Karen, refusing to accept that the honeymoon suite his mother (because of course) reserved was double booked even though the alternate room he and Rachel are given is also very nice. Instead of simply leaving well enough alone, he keeps after Armond about the screw up, inflicting unnecessary humiliation on the resort manager, whose pride gets the better of him and he refuses to simply admit his mistake, which just escalates the problem.

 

Tanya pleads for a massage as soon as she arrives, quickly adopting Belinda as an on-demand combination masseuse, therapist, and dinner companion as she vomits out all of her messy baggage without a second thought at the demands (emotional and time-related) she places on someone who has to service all the other guests at the spa. Belinda feels obligated to attend to Tanya both because of her status and Tanya’s dangling the possibility of funding Belinda’s proposal to open a wellness clinic.

 

The Mossbachers are caught up in their own drama swirl. Nicole is a LEAN IN executive who feels undervalued while her daughter is both repelled and ensconced by the wealth her parents provide. Mark is neutered by his strong willed wife who has not forgiven him for having an affair while simultaneously dealing with a cancer scare (in the balls, METAPHOR ALERT) that may kill him and deprive him of a stronger bond with his son (whose face is buried in an iPad 24/7). 

 

Rachel and Paula have a foot in each world. Neither comes from money, but they now reap the benefits of being in proximity to it – they are, what you might call, privileged-adjacent, but that puts them in a precarious position. For Rachel, the stakes are outlined neatly – Shane (and ultimately, his mother, who randomly barges in on their honeymoon after one-too-many calls from him complaining of the treatment he is receiving) will literally pay his own wife money to not accept a freelance assignment she receives while they are at the resort. Her mother-in-law poo poos her idealism, explaining the impact Rachel can have by hosting fundraisers and getting involved in philanthropic efforts not in pursuing the career in journalism she hoped to have. In other words, a future as a trophy wife who is expected to look pretty (and not much else) is on offer if she is willing to accept her place at the side of a just-keeping-it-together rage monster who will LOUDLY demand to see the manager if he is unsatisfied with the service. 

 

Paula, on the other hand, is smitten by Kai, who puts a human face on the punishment that has been inflicted on native Hawaiians who must serve rich (mostly) white people in order to survive because America annexed the island 100 plus years ago. While Paula is clear-eyed enough to see Olivia’s limitations (vague allusions are made to her hooking up with one of Paula’s former boyfriends) and her parents’ blasé attitude toward their own fortune, she is also self-aware enough to pass on Kai’s offer to stay with him in his humble abode and turn her back on the college education she no doubt sees as her ticket out of whatever modest background she comes from.

 

The story lines slowly start bending toward one another as the week unfolds. Paula hatches a hair brained scheme where Kai can sneak into the Mossbachers’ suite while they are gone, pilfer a few expensive bracelets, and sell them to get the money he says he needs to hire a lawyer to recover his family’s land. The plan flops when Nicole shows up unexpectedly with Mark trailing behind her, forcing Kai to rough them up, but being caught approximately two seconds after he flees. Olivia quickly figures out that Paula gave Kai the code to the safe and freezes her out. The crime gives Shane the hook he needs to go over Armond’s head and get him fired, but his obsessive need to humiliate the resort manager is the last straw for Rachel, who decides to leave him. As a parting “gift” to Shane, Armond sneaks into his room, drops trou and leaves a deuce in Shane’s luggage but before he can leave, Shane returns to the room. Shane, sensing the presence of a burglar, grabs a knife to protect himself. In a moment of really bad timing, the two collide, with the business end of the knife penetrating Armond’s chest, killing him. Meanwhile, the Mossbacher parents, estranged and distant when the trip started, are brought together by Mark’s fit of heroism in protecting his wife. Shane, who literally killed a man, is dapped up by the cops, leaves the resort with essentially no questions asked, and with Rachel, who had toyed with leaving him, back in the fold. Finally, Tanya predictably cuts Belinda loose when a male guest starts showing Tanya attention (not to mention affection).

 

In the end, the Lotus acts as a bizarro Fantasy Island reinforcing the sense of entitlement and privilege its wealthy visitors possess. Mark, who arrived emasculated by his successful wife and fearing he had cancer at the physical center of his manhood, departs a hero in the eyes of his wife and children, a badass black eye from saving the day, and a clean bill of health. Shane now has a compliant Stepford Wife at his side, and Tanya absorbed all of Belinda’s kindness and desire to help and walks away with a guy who has seen the layers of her onion and not run away screaming. 

 

Both Paula and Rachel, given the opportunity to escape their toxic, albeit privileged surroundings, balk. Rachel, given the alternative between scrounging out a living as a clickbait news aggregator at the bottom of the journalistic ladder and having all her money problems disappear, chooses the latter. Perhaps she was simply honest enough to see her own limitations, lacked the self-confidence to do things on her own, or just decided that being poor sucked. For Paula, she benefits from her proximity to privilege and moves on at the cost of knowing she has left behind a life ruined.

 

The outcomes for the have nots are the exact opposite. If you try to literally (or metaphorically) take a dump on a person of privilege, your best case scenario is termination, your worst, death. If you try to ingratiate yourself in order to get the money you need to fulfill your dream of striking out on your own, it will be cruelly snuffed out by the whims of a flighty rich white woman who will assuage her guilt by shoving some money in your face, but will not afford you the chance to mourn your lost hope because the phone keeps ringing with new demands from new people. And if a girl you’re having a fling with tells you to commit what she believes is a victimless crime, you will undoubtedly pay the price for her miscalculation, be made an example of and punished to the full extent of the law, lest the same wealthy people whose money keeps resorts like the Lotus in business fear vacationing there. The message could not be clearer: resistance is futile. The house always wins.

 

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Sunday, September 19, 2021

My Boring Life

Every year, my college girlfriend and I exchange birthday greetings. It's our version of Christmas cards. She, of course, carved out a "normal" life - marriage, motherhood, a successful career, and a healthy outlook on life. Me? Not so much. I am divorced. I have no children. My parents are both dead and I was estranged from each when they died. I do not talk to either of my sisters, so I basically have no family. I have not been on a "real" date in, I don't know, 3 years? 4 years? When I do "date" it is usually by paying women to have dinner, you know, just for ~ companionship ~ (which makes me feel like even more of a loser). My career has stalled out. I have no opportunity for advancement and yet, I don't have a readily marketable skill set that would allow me to find another job. It is a pretty grim tableau. Of course, the below is just the sanitized version, you know, the version that leaves out the really ugly and messy parts in favor of just making my life sound boring and mundane as opposed to hopeless: 

I think 50 hit much harder than 40, which really did not seem like a big deal at the time or in retrospect. I guess I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how I became so … boring. I gave up fast food, junk food, red meat, and alcohol. My wardrobe is either suits/ties or UA/Nike workout clothing. I eat the daily recommended allowance of fruits and vegetables. I go to bed by 9 pm. I have cats and am happiest watching old Columbo reruns. I cut coupons. It’s just not the life I envisioned having and I now understand why researchers say depression peaks in middle age. You’re old enough to feel regret for all the things you didn’t do and scared shitless that time is running out to do the things you want to.

The worst part, if I'm being really honest, is that I know that time is running out and yet, I seem completely unmotivated/unwilling to change any of this.

Saturday, September 18, 2021

The Scale Never Lies To Me

I weigh myself every Saturday. It is a sterile accounting of calories consumed versus calories burned. If the former is greater than the latter, the number is higher than the week before. If the latter is greater than the former, the number is lower. There is something comforting in this cold math. The scale does not care how your day was, if your boss was a jerk, whether you skipped a work out, or put that pint of ice cream in the grocery cart. Those excuses are reserved for the lies we tell ourselves when we do not like what we see. It also does not care if you ran that extra lap, did that extra push up, or ate that extra vegetable. Those are the things we quietly pat ourselves on the back for doing and when the number is one we like, encourages us to do more of. 

 

There is a reason the weight loss industry (sorry, I think it’s now referred to as the “wellness” industry) is a multi-billion dollar a year business. It sells cheap fixes to people who either do not have the time or the inclination to do the boring work of eating right and exercising. That is literally all you have to do. But instead of the Occam’s Razor, most people prefer baroque, Rube Goldberg solutions that inevitably fail.  


Want my advice? Have your daily step count look something like this: 



Should you walk 10,000 steps a day? The science is iffy, but is it bad to do it? No. Eat that daily recommended allowance of fruits and vegetables (my favorites are grapes, oranges, and apples for the former and red pepper, carrots, onions, and avocado for the latter). Opt for lean proteins (I can't bring myself to eat tofu, sorry, or ~ plant based ~ meat fakes, so I just stick to chicken and pork. I gave up red meat last year.) Don't drink alcohol (sorry!) or soda (sugar water). Drink lots of water. Don't smoke. Avoid the snack aisle at all costs. Everything in that aisle is literally designed to be addictive and it's all bad for you. Limit the sweets. WORK OUT. Not some breezy amble in the hallway for 5 minutes. Get moving. Sweat. Find work outs that are that sweet spot of challenging and fun that you will be excited to do. Stop making excuses for not working out. And finally, do not get discouraged if that cold math on the scale is not always to your liking. This is not about dieting, it is about making a lifestyle change and committing to it. 


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