View from the West Coast

 

It is not because I am unhappy with the result. Not because I predicted the outcome more than once. No. I will not spend too much time on the recent national election because I have come to a place where I have seriously taken in the reality that such stuff is no longer about me… even when I want it to be… it just isn’t. Anymore.

I suppose I can take pride in having written more than once that America is a land where people watch TV and that Donald Trump… if nothing else… is good TV. What I didn’t see was much beyond the horizon of my own special Island.

Some of my readers might remember that even before The Donald came onto the political scene, I railed about the gulf between our economic classes being too wide and that it should surprise no one if it resulted in revolution.

The majority of my fellow citizens here off the coast of Miami and the Beaches vote Republican and they are mostly of an age and/or an economic class where that could arguably make sense (or, at least, might have in its day). But it is my own limited vision that I have put under scrutiny.

I sit on my Island where gasoline prices are not much of an issue… not directly. Hell, we don’t even have a place on the island that sells gas. My monthly dues have certainly increased… and once a year (maybe twice) the price of a hamburger on the Island is raised. That is more noticeable than the cost of a piece of sushi going up… I am none too sure why that is, but I think it is true.

My 401K has repaired nicely since Biden has been in office. The value of my unit on Fisher Island has soared. Medicare is great… covers just about all my needs. Hey, the economy is fine with this old guy.

I went to London earlier in the year. Everything there, from ice cream to hotel rooms, to theatre tickets, and (yes) petrol, was much more expensive than in the US. Biden/Harris must be doing a great job… right?

Obviously, folks … those out there off-Island… did not think so, and my view was proven to be myopic.

What can I say? I am not going to bust a gut over this… except, I have. That hernia surgery I had in mid-August did not hold and I need more surgery to repair what was done not so well in the first place. The good news? I am not a hypochondriac. My pain is real. The bad news? My pain is real.

The election, the aftermath, the failings of this nearly 87-year-old body are distracting me from such things as theatre… I turned down two potentially delightful trips to New York and have yet to see the latest version of Sunset Blvd. or the latest opening, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. I understand both are terrific. But you cannot take my word for it. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. At least for a while.

The about to be hernia operation #2 will take place here in LA which means a delay in my return to my Island paradise. It is just as well. My Island is undergoing major renovations and upgrades to stay ahead of government edicts and the rising seas. I hope to get back home sometime in January, meaning I will be forced to spend Christmas among folks I know who like that holiday a whole lot better than I.

I became aware of at least two box office hits, Deadpool & Wolverine and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and decided to be conscientious and prepare myself for giving these reviews by seeing a prequel to the Deadpool genre (the original Deadpool, for instance) and the first Beetlejuice … another one of those box office wonders I had never seen.

I didn’t like either one. Will probably not get around to watching Deadpool & Wolverine, let alone Beetlejuice Beetlejuice since I have herein debased my own credibility in this idiom. Millions… Billions maybe… have been spent by folks who love this stuff. I didn’t like sophomoric humor when I was a sophomore. Sorry. Go to the movies and judge for yourselves or, do what I am doing and keep watching MSNBC for clues.

The Diplomat (Netflix) is back for a second season. I liked season one, so I turned it on… have seen one episode. I intend to see more but I warn you… Do not do this without revisiting at least the last one or two episodes of season one to get you up to speed. These show runners are taking no prisoners and acting as if no time has passed since season one ended and season two began. Well, on screen … in their story… that is accurate. In actuality though… some of us have had lives and something like two years have gone by since the final episode of season one ended. I have friends who, because of the long wait, decided to watch season one all over again before diving into the new episodes. They liked it even better the second time. You might want to try that in lieu of Beetlejuice.

The Old Man is finally back for its second season on HULU and FX. Same thing applies here as it does to the above on The Diplomat but not as much. You have been warned.

The Academy channel provided me with the opportunity to view Three Daughters. Neither William Shakespeare nor Lear, his King, should fear replacement.

Amazon is presenting a post war English series, The Bletchley Circle, which I found wanting. The idea is worthy, the blatant sexism nicely introduced, but I have never seen so many women occupy so much screen time with so little sexuality. Even with an aching back, I missed that essential ingredient.

Scarlett Johansson stars in Fly Me to the Moon. It is either my aching back, my hernia, or Ms. Johansson’s semi-recent marriage but here again… even a superstar such as Ms. Johansson comes off as so much less sensual than usual… and this clever little movie suffers for it. I am going to blame the costume designer who went full bore (double entendre intended) to dress Ms. Johansson in the worst collection of 70s chic I have ever seen. It had to be deliberate. If Doris Day could look great in that kind of stuff why not Scarlett Johansson? Were I Mrs. Colin Jost, I would make it a standard clause in all future contracts that costume designer Mary Zophres not be allowed near any picture in which I had to appear wearing clothes.

Finally… in desperation… I turned on TMC and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. Not much to say, save for the fact that it is one of his best, that Barbara Hershey is sexier than all the best parts of all the above-mentioned women in all the aforementioned movies put together, and that Ms. Zophres might do well to study up Ms. Hershey’s look before damaging yet another movie.

Have you noticed what a better mood I am in when writing this stuff from my Island paradise? Just curious.

Loosening My Load

 

“Take it Easy,” the Eagles song by that 70s rock group with the lyric …standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, I’ve got seven women on my mind… came to this mind of mine just east of that southwestern town of the Eagles’ lyric. I was ruminating about a place to settle in from the ride that began later than usual due to my mid-afternoon departure from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

To be factual, the women on my mind totaled more than seven. It is what happens when you are on a cross-country road trip, well into your mid-eighties, have been married three times, fathered three daughters, and been gifted with a pair of female grandchildren.

I had yet to count any of the more prominent of the girlfriends I never found the time to marry (let alone visit) that might well have come to mind on this road trip which… has now… finally, ended.

The BMW is now in the driveway of my Studio City pied-a-terre in California’s San Fernando Valley, and my tweaked back has been elevated to the status of MRI worthy. I am caught up in the bureaucracy of the California medical establishment and may well have to wait a month or more for the imaging to land on the desk of a qualified physician willing to jab a drug-loaded needle into my spine.

There was never a plan to return via the blue lane highways to my warm Island off the coast of Miami’s famed South Beach. These trips of mine always end in California, around four weeks from when they began, with an additional four-to-six weeks tacked on for visiting friends, family… and… this year… giving eulogies. The BMW will then be loaded on a truck bound for the east coast where it will arrive in something less than five days while I fly home for the rendezvous with truck, car, and driver. Me? No need to ask. I have no desire to drive across the country in either direction in the month of December.

Today’s California session with an acupuncturist “took” better than usual, or perhaps it was my misreading of the clock and the resultant “extra” dose of the Hydrocodone pain pill. Whichever, I found myself reminiscing over this just-completed drive of mine. My return home to Fisher Island falls just before my 87^th birthday. That this last cross-country drive might well be exactly that… the last... should not surprise; yet, somehow, it does.

If, indeed, this trip is the last, then it was a good one. Never mind that the first third of the route was dictated by attempts at outguessing the unpredictable weather patterns of two of the decade’s greater hurricanes. Dealing with the storms’ subsequent impact on roads and their interconnecting communities also became a component, along with the quite predictable fact that driving across the Rocky Mountains in October… a full two months later in the year than any previous crossing I have ever navigated over that impressive range of mountains… might well present challenges never before encountered on any of my trips.

Those earlier journeys had all begun in Miami in July or August. There was no question that this October start… two months closer to the dead of winter… could make that Rocky Mountain crossing more demanding.

Eventually… if you are determined to go from sea to shining sea, winding up at the Pacific coast, The Rockies are something you must encounter and, although you might get an argument now and then from a Texan… the vastness of the West really begins mid-way during your automobile’s adjustments to the climb that makes up the essence of the Rocky Mountains.

No matter what route taken, for me there is nothing comparable to being behind the wheel of a powerful automobile, climbing westward over that vast mountain range outside of Denver, Colorado, and then descending into Utah, driving the breath of that state on a diagonal line into the southern tip of Nevada, and then on to Southern California’s Route 66…

Barstow, Kingman, San Bernardino...

There is nothing like Utah. It takes an ordinary guy like me and makes him believe that there is a God. There is just no way that dust and wind could have arbitrarily formed that incredible landscape. It has been decades since I went west without Utah as a major part of my road trip’s plan.

But this year would be different. The Rockies in October were intimidating, and so I elected to cross them as far to the south as I could and yet remain in the continental United States. It brought me, for the first time in over thirty years, to the Land of Enchantment: New Mexico… then onward through more of Arizona than I have traversed in over half a century.

It was remiss of me to ignore this landscape for so long. The shapes of the mountain ranges, the colors of the terrain, clouds, and sky. Simply breathtaking.

Winslow, Arizona had seemed a good place to stop en route from the fabulous Bishop’s Lodge by Auberge in Santa Fe, New Mexico while en route to the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

La Posada, the historic last great railroad hotel built in 1930 in the center of Winslow, was full. There was (literally) no room at the inn.

The name of the hotel should have prepared me for that possibility long before the Eagles reference got me into midtown Winslow. Besides, I was humming the more age appropriate (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66, not realizing I had incorrectly inserted Winslow where the King Cole trio had written Flagstaff…

You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino…

It goes on, but my misrepresentation of Winslow brought me to the song where Winslow belonged. A Google search on the BMW quickly produced the right tune with the seven women of the lyric.

I did have dinner at La Posada and was more than happy to have done so. The next morning, I was on the road again, this time to Phoenix and an important birthday party for my very best friend at the splendidly detailed Arizona Biltmore.

Truth to tell, The Biltmore is not my kinda place. I generally have a rule that keeps me from staying at any hotel where the USC band can march through the lobby without being noticed. The Biltmore is a bit like that. Not my thing, but one does have to admire the attention to detail, if not scale. It is an impressive edifice and must have caused architect Albert Chase McArthur a lifetime of hurt that his fellow Arizonan, Frank Lloyd Wright, so often gets sole credit for McArthur’s work on this luxurious structure.

I was by now fully dependent on the shillelagh I had acquired last year in London for use as a cane. The good news is that the driver’s seat in the BMW was so comfortable that whatever pain I had was literally left at the auto’s door. A drive along the Mexican border and then slightly north brought me to my penultimate stop, California’s The Fairmont Grand Del Mar.

It was mostly wasted on this by then near-cripple. The Grand is another one of those country clubs in the style of a more affluent time with landscaping and vistas that challenged the architectural capabilities of the team that put the whole place together. The food was terrific, but my back was worse. My plan was to be in California for the month of November and I feared it might take that long to get me fully back on my feet.

Finally, some good news. A writer-pal gave me the name of her chiropractor and, although I had sworn off that aspect of the medical arts nearly half a century ago, I was in sufficient pain to willingly agree to an appointment.

Before that date came around, I re-entered the gentler art of the acupuncturist and Chinese medicine for the first time since moving to Florida in the 1980s. Those subtle treatments, and a steady supply of hydrocodone/acetaminophen, kept me ambulatory until yesterday’s visit with a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine.

Chiropractic is different from regular medicine. It is more of an art form. If you have ever had the experience of crawling into one of these offices… and all but dancing out… you know what I mean. I haven’t been to one of these “artists” since my days of producing Daniel Boone in the 1960s. Around about then, one of those guys scared me bad enough that I never went back. Not until this week.

One visit and I can inform you that Dr. Martin Stites is the “real deal.” I did not exactly “dance out” of his office, but I could have. Thank you, Vivienne Radkoff, for the recommendation. I am smiling as I write this…  grinning, really. On my feet and ready for family and friends in Southern California at the end of what some think may well be my last road trip.

We shall see.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

On The Road Again

There are some blue notes from the road including not visiting friends in places such as Omaha, and various cities and towns in Texas. Choosing October to travel rather than August is another, since that fact alone forced me on a southern trajectory across the country not only for warmer weather, but primarily so that I could cross the Rocky Mountains at their lowest altitude. I did not want to risk running into snow, which in Colorado and points north can happen even in summer. 

I will make that crossing over the Rockies in the next 48 hours. Right now, I am chilling in a fabulous and luxurious resort in the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico… trying not to let the thin air or my tweaked back get me down.

I have gotten ahead of myself. You last heard from this intrepid… and rapidly aging… traveler as I was preparing to leave Rosemary Beach in the Florida Panhandle. Normally, I would continue to go west to New Orleans and then visit with friends in Houston and another couple I have not seen in a very long time who reside in the beautiful community ofRound Top, Texas.

Hurricane Helene had decimated the West Coast of Florida, impacting on my initial plan of a drive up my home state’s West Coast; then, as I travelled, a new storm (Milton) formed in the Gulf bringing into question a drive along the Panhandle’s coast to New Orleans.

I decided---prematurely it turned out---to hightail it northward, away from the storm, into Alabama, and to revisit what I had remembered as the fabulous tributes to the Civil Rights movement in both Montgomery and Birmingham. It had been two decades since I visited the area with my eldest grandchild when she was a Black Studies Major at Oberlin College in Ohio.

I left Rosemary Beach that Sunday morning and stayed faithful to the country roads on which I love to drive. Alabama is beautiful, thecountryside pristine and replete with two-lane roads that are well paved.

The BMW cruised through Brantley which has a high school that appeared to be housed in a trailer. Brantley High School is for pre-K through 12th grade and the town, founded over a hundred and thirty years ago in 1891, still has not reached a population of 1,000. It is a long way from my birthplace in East Los Angeles, or my adopted home of Miami… and not only in miles. Even my Island paradise has more residents.

I was in Selma by late in the afternoon. It was all but deserted. I parked the car and took the time to walk over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. 

Onward to Montgomery which has improved dramatically in the time that has gone by since my last visit nearly twenty years ago. The bad news was that all the museums and historical tributes to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights Movement were closed by the time I got there that Sunday night; none would reopen until Wednesday.

The Legacy Sites did not exist when I last visited the Civil Rights Trail,but the reviews were so powerful I felt compelled to at least drive-bythem and was glad that I did. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in 2018, informally known as The National Lynching Museum, is an architectural wonder. Even as I peeked in through the gates of the nearby Freedom Monument Sculpture Park near the banks of the Alabama River where countless slaves began their journeys, there was more than a hint of the worthwhile visit within. It is unlikely this old guy will make it back there, but you should… with your children and theirs.

I moved on to Birmingham… often referred to in my youth as BOMBingham for all the terror brought down on that city’s Black population. I remembered the museum there as one of the most impactful I had ever seen. It too was closed until Wednesday. I walked across the street to Kelly Ingram Park which had left indelible images all those years ago with its lifelike sculptures of police attack dogs, power water hoses and other offenses against Black people. Unless my memory was playing tricks, this park is no longer the powerful visit that it was. Stuff happens in 20 years. Not all of it is progress.

Now, well into Monday afternoon, I drove south and west to Tuscaloosato see the campus of the University of Alabama. Absolutely gorgeous… and alive with young people everywhere making their ways across the multiple quads to seemingly innumerable numbers of beautiful brick buildings. 

Hot Springs, Arkansas was my next destination point. I had never been, despite multiple trips across the country, and the name only jumped off my map because of some vague recollection I had of the town being anescape from the trials of life in Chicago for Al Capone and Lucky Luciano in the 1930s.

There are a lot of tributes to the two mobsters in Hot Springs, which one must believe has seen much better days. I think “tacky” covers it today. I did not leap at the chance to try the baths. To give the place its due, the locals could not have been friendlier.

It was just after all this that I drove through a very tiny town in Arkansas called De Queen. Best chicken fried steak I have ever had and the best meal so far on this entire trip… admittedly a low bar on this kind of adventure, but still… the food was so good it is worthy of note: Ranch House Café of De Queen, 208 East Collin Raye Drive, Arkansas… just in case you find yourself in the neighborhood.

The drive westward across Oklahoma and then down into Albuquerque provided little amusement over the two days it required. I decided to reward myself and book the best room I could find in New Mexico’s largest city. I picked the historic Hotel Andaluz… built around the time I was born and the pride of Conrad Hilton who spent his honeymoon there with Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Once inside the Hotel I came to realize that I had stumbled into the city at a most propitious time… The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta was happening. There had been a cancellation… some dude from Florida could not make it because of Hurricane Milton. He had to give up his room. Apparently, that is how I had gotten mine. I also took his place on the bus that would leave the Hotel at 4AM the next morning to watch the ascension of the hundreds of hot air balloons that would begin in the pre-dawn hours and go on until about 9AM.

It was all very impressive. I have never seen anything like it and felt fortunate to have lucked into such an event. Back at the Hotel, later that morning, I napped with the intention of rising in time to watch the USC-Penn State game on the extra-large screen my hotel room provided. Good plan, but a failure with the Internet blacked out all TV in the entire area.

With a little help from the Hotel concierge, I was off to a distant sports bar in time to watch my Trojans go down to defeat… again. My passion for this team is being tested, but this season fits right into the time of loss I have been experiencing too often with friends and family. A tough year.

That is why I elected to spoil myself in Santa Fe. My trip is close to an end.  I will soon cross the Rocky Mountains and make my way to Phoenix and the Biltmore Hotel, of Frank Lloyd Wright fame. It is where, at the age of twenty-one, I spent my wedding night with my recently deceased first wife and where I will watch USC play its next game against another Big 10 rival. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

 

 

The Road Part I

Driving across the US of A in a fine automobile is one of my passions. When I was younger, it was something I did every even numbered year… tooling from Miami to Los Angeles over a three-to-four-week span, first in a Mercedes SL, then a Bentley Azure, next a Phaeton by Volkswagen, and then a Bentley Continental GTC. Now, I am on what will most likely be the last such trip of my life… this time in a BMW 740i.

The BMW is a bit of a step down in class, but it is extremely comfortable, a more than decent driving machine, and not at all bad looking. I know, I know, I have settled. There is nothing like driving the blue lane highways of America in a Bentley with the top down. The emotional and social experience cannot be replicated; although being pulled over for speeding in the Phaeton, and the first question out of the police officer’s mouth was to ask with awe what kind of car it was that I was driving was special… and memorable.

Enough about the past. By now most of you know what is meant by “the blue lane highways,” and why it takes me at least three to four weeks to make a drive that professionals do in three to five days.

On the trip, my idea of exercise is to enter a town via main street, drive to the end of the strip, park, walk back the length of the road to the diner I saw on entering, have lunch, then walk back to the car, climb aboard and drive on. Each trip is different, mostly these drives have been in the month of August, but this last adventure is an October surprise, and as such has some weather implications that have heretofore not impacted my plans.

Hurricane Helene flooded a lot of the back roads I had hoped to take on the western coast of Florida. Now that I have managed all of that with me and The Beamer in Rosemary Beach on the western end of the Florida Panhandle, Hurricane Milton has me rerouting northward. It is hard to take a hurricane with a name like Milton seriously… but I will.

My oldest grandchild will be proud when she learns I have decided to retrace some of the places she and I did together on our second road trip when she was a Black studies major at Oberlin College and leading me through Montgomery and Birmingham in Alabama.

That will get me out of harm’s way but also far from New Orleans and any chance of dropping in on pals in Houston, Round Top, Dallas, or San Antonio. More on that future stuff when it is in my past. For now, a brief report on where I have been.

To appreciate all of what follows you must understand that on any trip from Miami to Los Angeles the absolute worst part of the drive is the part involving getting out of the State of Florida.

I love my adopted home, but it has its flaws. A general lack of topography is one of them. Florida is flat and the routes in and out are long and boring. It doesn’t help that the worst drivers in the US have Florida license plates on their automobiles. The temptation is to stay close to the coasts, but those eastern coastal towns can really be tacky, traffic-y and generally an eyesore.

Once Hurricane Helene ravaged the Florida West Coast, I resolved to stay inland… to see the farms of Florida no matter how flat, and to finally get a look at Lake Okeechobee, the largest body of water in my home state and the second largest in the contiguous US.

I got to the lake and couldn’t see it. I mean, c’mon, it is reportedly huge. I could not see it, and the reason was that nearly a hundred years ago, there was a storm which created enormous flooding resulting in hundreds of fatalities. Better late than never, a berm was built around the lake’s perimeter all but eliminating any danger from the lake to surrounding communities.

Good for them, bad for the view. I took the better part of a day driving around that enormous thing determined to see some of that massive fresh water supply, and finally, via a small, unmarked road that took me to an honest to God observation deck, was able to do so. There… as far as the eye could see…. was Florida’s finest freshwater lake.

Exhausted I opted to spend the night at a hotel in Orlando. Boring, but theme parks are not part of my dream. I moved on…. drove in and around The Villages to see what all the fuss is about.

The Villages is Florida famous. A created community in the middle of nowhere, conceived and built by a genius entrepreneur of a developer. There are multiple Golf courses, polo fields, softball diamonds, tennis courts, pickle ball, manicured lawns, beautiful homes…. some bigger and more beautiful than others, but everyone impressive or semi-so in its own way. It is an authentic and popular adult community with a notorious social life and supposedly the highest rate of venereal disease in the country. I looked around, but only exited my car to buy gasoline.

Then on to horse country, Ocala, Florida. Reminiscent of the blue grass estates I have driven past in Kentucky… every bit as opulent and beautiful… even without hills. The next day I drove into Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle. Charming. A town that used to be the oyster capital of the Stare that has all but died because of pollutants in their Bay is trying a comeback. The 19^th century homes and neighborhoods are lovely. I could live among em… there was even an occasional Harris/Walz sign.

I write you now from Rosemary Beach… one of my primary Florida destinations. A manufactured town in the western most part of the State that is Disneyland for grownups. I really like it, even if it is a movie set without the cameras. I first visited here maybe twenty years ago and thought seriously about buying then when it was only a fledgling community. Now it has fulfilled its promise.  

Northward bound tomorrow. More to come as the road provides.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

 

 

 

Loss and the Road Traveled

 

I have been busy of late doing what in my case can best be described as the business of self-amusement. I have finished my novella, The Killing of Rush Limbaugh, and I am in the midst of what will probably be something close to the penultimate polish of my latest tome, Life Without Cagney & Lacey. I have been a bit bogged down in and around chapter 10 of the twenty-seven segments that complete the book, and all but convinced that it will never be read by anyone save yours truly.

For the curious: the referenced chapter 10 has quite a bit of content leading up to the end of my first marriage in the late 1960s. I was experiencing some difficulty with the present-day timing of this task coinciding as it does with my first wife being brought back to her California home by our children as a hospice patient for what will surely be her last remaining days on the planet.

The kids have been checking in with me regularly by phone and even placed the speaker close to their Mom so that I could say the best goodbye I could come up with under the circumstances.

That all melded with the other piece of writing I had to do this week, which was an obituary for one of my oldest, boyhood friends. We had met a year or two before we attended the same high school together, and then we were both at college at the University of Southern California. My pal went on to law school and I became his first client. He was my lawyer until the day he died.

All this was going on while the powers that enforce Florida law are bringing my 40-year-old Fisher Island building up to current code with some destruction of the old, and more than a little construction of the new. The refurbishing is finally getting to be tiresome and there is a certain loss of privacy as crews of hard hats climb my deck to erect scaffolding while the seawall outside my window gets knocked down to be replaced with something newer, stronger, and higher.

The whole thing has me looking westward. A road trip. It would have happened sooner, but I have been mourning my Bentley convertible. This week’s events put that loss into perspective. It was time to stop moping and take my new(ish) BMW cross country to family and friends in Southern California. The Beemer is not the tower of power and prestige that was its predecessor, but it ain’t bad. Besides… it is arguably the most comfortable car I have ever driven and at my age there is something to be said for that.

There is the latest piece of harsh news: Hurricane Helene has very possibly wiped out a good section of roads I had planned to take for the first week of the journey. I have done many drives across the US in the past but never later in the year than August. This being October, I had therefore settled on a southern route… the gulf coast to New Orleans and points west, abandoning the roads through Appalachia, the Lincoln Highway, the friends in Omaha, the crossing of the Rocky Mountains … too late in the year… too cold.

I will make some hurricane-result adjustments but stick to the South as best I can, taking somewhere between three to four weeks to make the journey to California… never driving at night, and rarely going more than three hundred miles in a single day. The route will avoid the Interstates and focus primarily on the Blue Lane Highways (so named for their color on most maps). These are the roads (like the famed Route 66 of song and story) predating Eisenhower’s expansion of the nation’s highway system. These are the ones that go through America’s towns and business sections. Thanks to Hurricane Helene I may have to duck Florida’s central west to northwestern coast and most of her panhandle. Too bad. I was looking forward to that.

Finally, it may be a while before another one of these missives, so indulge me as I whiz through some suggestions and warnings about what might be viewed these days on your so-called premium channels.

So far only three episodes of the second season of The Old Man have been released by Hulu. With the caveat that things could easily go south in this series, let me say so far/so good, and very worth your time. The Penguin on MAX is provocative and dark, befitting its Batman pedigree. Colin Farrell plays the title role, and the actor is sure to get his share of nominations for his makeup, if not his extraordinary work. Only one episode out so far, but worth a look. There is a danger in giving accolades so early in a show’s season, but by the time I am settled in LA these shows may be old news.

One piece of old news is Dark Winds, a series released in 2022, set in the Navajo Nation of today’s American West and featuring all native American talent both in front of and behind the cameras of this AMC police procedural. You can catch it as well on HULU, but my best counsel is that you avoid the whole mess. Mediocre writing and some very poor acting are coupled with pedestrian direction in every episode. Occasionally there are some worthwhile moments but too few for you to stay with this series. Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon plays the lead in the show, and he is a notable exception to the talent level of the remainder of the players.

Even worse is Palm Royale, which I found unwatchable as early as midway through the first episode. Finally, my views are at best mixed about the Amazon Prime series, The Underground Railroad.

There must be a term for … wish it could be so even though it isn’t…shows set in an historical context, but if there is I don’t know it. Bridgerton from the Shonda Rhimes factory is an example. Quentin Tarantino turned it into something close to an “IF ONLY” art form with Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The Railroad series is that kind of fantasy/semi-realistic show.

Unlike what you will see in this series, the Underground Railroad was not literally a railroad that traveled subway like under the ground… nor was there a community at the end of the line where former Black slaves could be dressed up, fed, housed, and studied “for science.” Still, interesting stuff in this well produced series and a powerful presentation of America’s “original sin.”

I would continue to watch this last series, but I am called to my own road… This one above ground and (hopefully) not under water.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

THE NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE

One of the major television events of this century played out this past week in front of nearly seventy million Americans. The reactions were varied and ranged from celebration to feeling the need to bathe. Whatever side you may root for… no matter who your candidate may be… one thing was clear: it was great TV.

The nation’s political passions are at fever pitch. Never before has one of the two major candidates for President been on the political scene for such a long time, both as a candidate and a national celebrity. Never before has our nation been so polarized. The prospect, that no matter how the election goes in November, there will be tens of millions of deeply unhappy Americans in America is, to say the very least, daunting.

There is a chilling final moment in the movie The Ugly American where, facing a similar kind of awful, uncomfortable truth on a television screen, the hand of an unseen TV viewer appears and changes the channel.

That is what I am doing now. Taking the coward’s way out and, at least for this moment, escaping from reality by way of letting you know what else is going on via your television screen.

Dark Matter is a limited series out of Apple TV+ that is a long way from everyone’s cup of chowder, but it is good and should satisfy many a science-fiction buff as well as most of the psychological thriller crowd.

On some levels I found Dark Matter reminiscent of Orphan Black, but in reality, it does not measure up to that outstanding show, lacking the wit and wisdom not only of that series, but also missing the Academy Award winning Tatiana Maslany’s performance(s).

That said, there are few shows that can ever come up to the standard set by the Orphan Black gang and it is no shame to, Icarus-like, make that attempt.

Dark Matter does work on many levels, so its failures tend to stand out… one such mistake being the “explanation” of the universe in which the show’s action takes place. At times, the viewer gets the feeling that the whole thing is being made up as it goes along and that the “rules” can be bent when necessary to extricate the writers from any corner in which they have painted themselves.

Even with that caveat, Dark Matter delivers more than enough suspense to satisfy most. The series pretty much works and I recommend it.

For the less demanding there is Expats on Amazon Prime, Under The Bridge (Hulu) and Shogun, also on Hulu. All three shows have some literary credentials (some easier to discern in their television adaptations than others), and all have some merit. That said, I found them all to be overblown and overlong and their cast of actors less than compelling even though their numbers include Nicole Kidman (Expats), Lily Gladstone (Bridge), and Archie Panjabi (Bridge). I would argue that Shogun is the most disappointing of this trio, but many professional critics seem not to share that view.

A last-minute entry for this column (with 11 Emmy award nominations) is Baby Reindeer (Netflix). This is tough stuff, beautifully and brutally delivered. Richard Gadd lived it, wrote about it, and plays the leading role. Jessica Gunning, the female lead is real, powerful, and impressive. Definitely not for everyone, yet I would not be surprised to see this sweep up most of the awards for which it has been nominated.

Mr Bates Vs The Post Office (PBS) is also excellent and, unlike Reindeer, has the advantage of being pretty much for anyone. Like Reindeer, it is based on a true story. The performances by the all-UK cast are uniformly excellent. It is another of the PBS Masterpiece presentations and is a worthy addition to that excellent series of top-notch television. All that and a double dare from this writer to the viewer not to get teary-eyed at the end.

A brief mention… and even that is more than it deserves… for The Perfect Couple. It is another Netflix miniseries starring the beautiful Nicole Kidman as well as an equally beautiful beach house that is supposed to be on Nantucket but is not. This piece of junk (the miniseries, not the house) does not even qualify as guilty pleasure… although I did enjoy looking at that beach house… and, of course, Nicole Kidman.

Finally…. Kaos on Netflix. I found it unwatchable, but then I could not stand Schitt’s Creek and can only occasionally get through a film by Wes Anderson. Simply put: just not my thing… with the understanding/concession that you, like so many others, just may like this.

The Emmy awards are coming up on the 15^th of this month and, due to the number of shows that accumulated during the various Hollywood Guild strikes, there are an inordinate number of quality shows and performances worthy of recognition this cycle. If you are watching/wagering, keep your eye out for multiple awards for The Morning Show, Fargo, Bear, Hacks, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Ripley, Lessons in Chemistry, and for a couple of sentimental favorites such as Griselda and Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. I realize it is never too smart to bet against the Brits (The Crown), but I found that I have tired of the Royals, and I would not be surprised if Academy members have as well.

However the awards turn out, this year may be the most qualitative we will have for quite a while. The Industry is slowing down, not recuperating at all well from last year’s labor disputes, nor the realization that the economics of the streaming model, exploited so well by Netflix, has turned out to be far less profitable than was hoped.

With Americans adjusting to watching more and more foreign based shows, and with film libraries overflowing with materials from by-gone golden ages, there will be (at least for the foreseeable future) plenty for us all to watch until the younger generation learns how to make their own movies, simply by dictating something they think they may want to see into some not-too-far-in- the-future A-I device.

They just may have  to change the Irving Berlin tune There’s No Business Like Show Business to There’s No Business, Period. That is unless they can get Trump to agree to more TV debates.

 

Barney Rosenzweig