I am taking time off. See you next week.
I am taking time off. See you next week.
The mall Santa was having a stimulating conversation with the mall cop, and holiday tunes were tucked between songs from artists few over 30 can appreciate. This was the face of holiday shopping eight days before Black Friday. For some stores, Black Friday has already been going on since Chartreuse Monday two weeks ago, or something like that.
It’s the two months out of every year when life falls into chaos. And we added a presidential election to it. No wonder everybody is going insane.
There are some things about the holidays which we should, in the words of Shark Tank guru Kevin O’Leary, take behind the barn and shoot, because all the years of repetition in the world can’t save them from being unnecessary and bad for the human spirit.
First is bringing Santa to the malls anytime before, say, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It’s so disconcerting to see clearance items from Halloween with candy cane footprints glued to the walkways leading to the poor guy in the red suit, who has to spend extra weeks away from his workshop to meet with kids who haven’t even gotten over their candy high yet. It’s not as if we have to wait six weeks for the photos with Santa: now they’re printed on site and cost a week’s pay (those of you who remember “Santa and Me” photos know what I mean). Also, the road to Santa is now paved with commercial tie-ins and elaborate settings which overwhelm the kids and parents while the queue grows by tens every second. Whatever happened to a small plot of mall space with a big throne and the man sitting there in full view of all? I miss those days.
The next thing that should go is the annual gag gift of the year. You know the one; it costs $19.95 and is usually designed to make grumpy guys laugh and their friends break it during an inebriated evening watching football.
Finally, festive food packaging has to go. For about six weeks out of the year, every item in the grocery store has a candy cane, a snowbank or snowflakes or shiny outer wrappings and a higher price tag. I don’t think any of us parade our holiday packaged stuff in front of the guests before setting them on a festive platter.
If these things have to continue, they should wait a bit before they materialize. Some of us just aren’t ready, like that mall Santa with no guests. That’s just sad.
Have you ever watched an animal’s eyes when they are in full-blown predator mode? The look is primal, untamed and destructive. I’ve seen that look in the faces of people who bullied me in school, and I got to see it again this week after the elections were over.
An animal that fights to survive and kills for its food gives into instinct and basic survival mindsets to hunt and bring down other animals which will attempt to run away and deprive it of its needs. In groups, they work together for a common cause. We, as human beings, normally only kill for our food if we decide to execute a lobster for dinner. Otherwise we tend to let experts kill and dress our food. To survive we strive, through craft and knowledge, to better others like us, and our groups are much more exclusive. In the wild there are no major deviations between lions or elephants; a lion is a lion and an elephant is an elephant. Humans, though, separate themselves and may choose divisive measures over working together for a common cause. Humans work together for the common cause of a few. That is where cliques are formed, races divided, education divvied out like a prize for the chosen few.
Why else would we see such a shocking turn of events as watching a black person beating up a white person because of the results of an election? Why else would middle school students start chanting about a border wall, making their fellow Hispanic students cry?
I have never understood why humans go into predator mode over nothing. We are all the same, basically. Just because we all don’t look like what we call a lion or an elephant, we tend to behave as if there are really some human beings who don’t matter. We all matter. When we start feeling desperate enough about being poor or ignored or disenfranchised that we vote as we did last Tuesday, nobody should be surprised by the outcome. It’s survival instinct which drives us all. If you’re going to kick a dog, don’t be surprised when the dog bites back. We have all brought these election results upon ourselves because we let our primal fears and instincts take over. Some of us are overreacting; some of us have no right to complain because we sat and did nothing.
It doesn’t matter if you can put two and two together; you should look at yourself and ask yourself, “What kind of a human being am I, really?” “Who am I afraid of, and why?”
If you’re not sure, that’s where we have the real problem.
Being human is a curse and a blessing, in so many ways. Animals are lucky: with very few deviations lions look like lions and so on, but unless you’re a multiple birth person, nobody looks like you. This also gives rise to our constantly picking each other apart for unusual reasons. With the election and a controversy surrounding the new Marvel feature Dr. Strange, I realized how petty we are and how it all really doesn’t matter.
The news was that Tibetans would be protesting the casting of actor Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in the movie because she is scripted as a Celtic woman, and the story-line was originally based upon a Tibetan monk and, naturally, a man. The movie industry is being called out for not representing other races properly and skirting the issue by hiring white casts for principal roles and nominating them for awards over less non-white cast films. I recall a little movie called Slumdog Millionaire with a mostly non-white cast and which portrayed some aspects of India as, shall we say, less than developed, yet it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and seven other Oscars ™. Yet there are still those who grumble that white people just aren’t getting it right.
I beg to differ: we do. It’s just that you pick apart ours more than we pick apart non-white efforts to portray white people. Nobody laughed louder than me when Eddie Murphy did comic portrayals of white people, because I could relate to exactly the type of people he was creating onstage. He even went so far as to get into a full body makeup as a white man and took to the streets, and didn’t get recognized. There are men out there who do a better job looking like a woman than many women. I don’t protest. I admire.
Having seen Dr. Strange, I was impressed by Tilda Swinton. She looked rather nondescript as far as nationality was concerned. Sure the folks at Marvel could have gone with by-the-book casting, but in a world in which we are being led to believe that it is not the only one, who says what an “Ancient One” is supposed to be? If they had cast a kid in the part, and it was true to the ideals of the story, why pick on it? Why not just accept it?
So what does this all have to do with the election? Well, the party lines are being blurred because many people don’t like either of our two major choices (we will put aside the independent candidates for now, especially since one seemed to have no awareness of what the situation in Aleppo is), and the political ads and stumping show how much we pick each other apart for being not what we want. One points out that somebody was “a Mexican,” and anticipates us filling in the blanks with whatever prejudices we have about people from Mexico. The other is reminding us that male candidates can be crude and think too highly of themselves to realize how horrible an attitude they have. Yeah, they’re human, just like us, full of prejudicial baggage that keeps a wonderful world at bay so we can try to group ourselves into convenient ideals of what is normal and refer to outliers as “the other guys.” Or the wrong guys.
If I were casting a movie, how would I have enough of an understanding to write a part for a Tibetan monk unless I had a Tibetan monk write the script? Then how do I find a good Tibetan actor who would appeal to a world audience? Any place that hated Tibet would not want to see the movie. Also I should point out that Dr. Strange’s assistant, Wong, appears in the film as a rather dour (but kick-ass) scholarly librarian, and is played by Benedict Wong, an Englishman born to parents from Hong Kong. So there was international casting going on. Just not what some folks wanted.
So I would recommend voting and seeing Dr. Strange. And stop picking on your fellow man.
I can say I was at the Metropolitan Opera for some wonderful productions. This year they are celebrating 50 years at Lincoln Center, and they have enjoyed success there. Sometimes, though, I am witness to some strange goings-on, like this past Saturday.
I went to see the matinee performance of Guillaume (William) Tell, a new production and one which hasn’t been done in decades. The music is well-known to the average person, even if they don’t like opera: the performance starts with immediately recognizable movements such as the storm music often used as a meme in cartoons (Tom and Jerry comes to mind), and a passage probably best referred to as the background music to the comedic short “Bambi Meets Godzilla.” The famous overture is known as the theme for the original TV “Lone Ranger,” and probably one of the most frequently mis-hummed tunes known.* But this is not where the strange things went on. That didn’t happen until the second intermission.
After a walk to stretch my legs, I returned to my seat and dutifully went onto social media to say I was at the Met, put everything away and waited with the rest of the audience–who were also securing their social media gear–for the final act to start. Nothing happened. The orchestra had not even returned to the pit.
Somebody finally appeared onstage to announce that there was a delay and the program should resume shortly. Then they returned about twenty minutes before the production was scheduled to end, to say that circumstances had forced them to cancel the rest of the performance. An obviously enraged patron sharing my portion of the house started shouting rudely, “I want my money back!” and ignored repeated urging from the rest of us to shut up. We did file calmly out of the opera house. I assume the fellow stormed the box office in a snit. Perhaps the staff took the famous prop apple (which Tell shot off his son’s head) and shoved it into his mouth.
I found out later, via the New York Times, that an audience member has come to the Met with the ashes of his music mentor in a bag, and told anybody who would listen that he intended to scatter the fellow’s cremated remains into the orchestra pit. Apparently those who took this in simply replied, “That’s nice,” and didn’t give it a second thought. He did the deed at the intermission, causing the clearance of the orchestra pit and calling police and other law enforcement officials to investigate.
Isn’t the fault really as much with those who didn’t think about reporting the guy’s intentions to the staff at the Met, as it is for this schmuck who didn’t really think through what would happen if he threw a potential biohazard into the air where hundreds of people would be breathing? If he had asked beforehand, some accommodation could have been made to honor his mentor. As a result of his rather rash idea, the orchestra could not claim their instruments, a handful of people were treated by paramedics for handing the unknown stuff, the performance was left incomplete (and the evening performance was also cancelled) and hundreds of paying patrons–not a few of whom travelled some distance or were visiting from overseas to see the Saturday scheduled performances–were cheated of their experience. The man is known to the staff and apparently left without seeing the final act himself and, so far, is still being sought for questioning.
So I won’t get to see the end of the opera (I could ask for another performance, but the remaining dates are not good for me), and I won’t fault the Met or ask for my money back. I would, however, like to meet this fellow who ruined my day and pull a Dr. Phil on him and just ask, “What were you thinking?”
*(Most people hum the tune with all the “dadadum’s” one note until the “dum dum dum,” but if you listen you’ll find the next line does have a change of note. Don’t sweat it: it’s just good to know you have a little culture, and be proud of it.)
 | Eden on Getting the Message |
| Eden on The Unasked Questions |
| Eden on And Her Shoes Were #9 |
| Eden on The Poison Field |
| Eden on Final Tally |
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