Mad Men. A Review.

A couple of months ago, my wife walked into the Apple store looking for a cable and walked out with Apple TV. Suddenly we were all hooked up with Netflix just in time for my shoulder surgery. It was a few days later that we discovered Mad Men. Last night we finished season four, so now, a review.

First of all, MM has the coolest theme song ever which features haunting cellos and an amazingly rockin’ drum line that practically demands that you watch the show. So, there’s that. The show is a period piece, set in the early sixties. It takes place on Madison Avenue, New York City back in the days before Giuliani, back when the city was a festering dump of trash and crime. The lead character is an advertising executive named Donald Draper who works for a smallish, boutique firm called Sterling Cooper. Draper is the brilliant, brash, boorish and mysterious creative director of the firm and the character through which the entire show flows. There are an abundance of fascinating characters from his smoking hot wife Betty, to the Rat Packish rogue partner Roger Sterling, to the rich boy brat and insufferably entitled Pete Campbell, all the way to the neophyte secretary/lost lamb in the wood Peggy. All of these characters are essentially horrible human beings inasmuch as each of them sets about doing horrible things to themselves or others. But each of them have a barely there, yet vaguely discernible streak of decency simmering under the surface. You find yourself watching, hoping to catch a glimpse of humanity. Eventually you are rewarded and when you are, it is incredibly satisfying.

But there is one character who is different somehow. She is the statuesque red head who runs the office, Joan Harrison. She overpowers every scene she is in partially because of her stunning hourglass figure, and shocking red hair that shapes her face like a painting. When she walks across the office, coming or going, she plays up her ample assets in a way that stops traffic. But she isn’t just eye candy for the hoard of rude sexists she works for, she brings with her an arrogance, a cool detachment. She is the only true grown up in the room and she knows it. She has the air of self confidence that comes with the knowledge that you are truly indispensable. Joan isn’t much better than anyone else in the morals department, but she makes up for it with the substance of her work and the one thing lacking at Sterling Cooper…integrity. She quickly becomes the only character on the show who you find yourself rooting for.

Donald Draper is another story. Handsome beyond human understanding, and possessed of an artist’s creativity and imagination, he is to advertising what Warren Buffet is to investing, a genius who people tolerate because, well,..because they have to. He waltzes through the show cheating on his wife, cavorting behind her back in ways large and small, all the while running from a terrible secret that gradually reveals itself over the first couple of seasons. He is riveting to watch. You know he’s a terrible person, a real ass, and yet you can’t look away somehow. You can’t decide whether you want him to find happiness and redemption or end up rotting in jail for the rest of his life. And in this conflict lies the brilliance of Mad Men.

We will keep watching because, well…because we have to!

August Stinks

How can it be August already? Seriously, what the heck happened? It seemed like just a few days ago Pam and I were in Myrtle Beach celebrating my birthday and looking forward to warmer weather and now I wake up and it’s…August! You remember August, right? That’s that worthless month sandwiched between vacationing July and Labor Day. There are no holidays. Most people have already taken their vacations already. Now there’s just 30 days of hot nothing.

If you have school-aged kids, you’re counting down the days until they finally go back to class already! If you have college kids in the house, you have setting up a dorm room to look forward to. If you’re a teacher, August is that pit in your stomach, that rude reminder that life is about to get harder soon. Your yard is turning brown; your bank account is empty because you spent too much money at the beach last month. Yes, August is great.

Back in February, my other least favorite month, there comes a time when you’ve had it with the cold. Snow no longer holds any wonder. Christmas is over, you’re sick and tired of hot chocolate, and you just want to go someplace warm. Well, August is that way. There comes a time, usually around the 15^th where you discover that you are very much over summer. You start day dreaming about fall colors, drinking apple cider, and wearing sweaters. But those days won’t come anytime soon because…it’s freaking August!

Thanks to our hard working Congresspersons in Washington, August has been granted a few titles that you’re probably not aware of, in a desperate attempt to spruce it up a bit. For instance, I bet you didn’t know that August if National Romance Awareness Month. Yes there’s nothing like 95% humidity and 105 degree temperatures to make me aware of how romantic the fall will be! August is also National Picnic month. I don’t know about you, but every morning when I go outside and my sunglasses immediately fog over, the first idea that comes into my head is always, “Hey, let’s have a picnic!” And finally August is also National Eye Exam Month. What, was National Anal Exam already taken?

What is wrong with us? We are never satisfied with where we are in the moment. When it’s cold, we want warm. When it’s hot, we want cool. When it’s August, we want it be…anything else.

Karma at Firebirds

Monday night, Pam and I went out to dinner at Firebirds. As we got out of the car and began walking through the parking lot, there on the ground in front of me was a familiar blue-gray colored card. I stopped, took a closer look and confirmed that it was a Wells Fargo debit card. Someone had dropped it and there it was, face up in the middle of a busy parking lot of the largest mall in Richmond. My first reaction was to make some crack, “Looks like dinner is going to be on Anne Smith!” But then Pam and I started to talk about how terrible it was going to feel when this person reached for her debit card only to discover that it wasn’t there. So, once we got settled at our table, my wife went to work surfing the Interwebs and in no time, we had a phone number.

When I got her on the phone and told her that I had found her card, she practically promised to put me in her will, so thrilled was she that there still existed in the world an honest man. She explained that she had given the card to her three sons so they could go get something to eat and they had lost it, and how she would send them to Firebirds right away, and she was just so very thankful that I called. In less than ten minutes her three boys, each over 6’5”, wearing basketball jerseys arrived. Before I gave them the card I asked which one of them was going to be cutting my grass for the rest of the summer. A big laugh was had by all, and they disappeared from my life forever and I went back to dinner at Firebirds.

Here’s where it gets weird. Two days later, I take my filthy car to the carwash, order the works then go to the cashier to pay. No debit card. Immediately, my stomach tied itself in knots and I could feel my blood pressure inching up as I began retracing my steps. When did I last use it, was it at Martins? Didn’t I buy some gas at Circle K yesterday? No, that was Sunday, and I haven’t been to Martins in a while. Maybe I left it at home. I texted Pam. She said it wasn’t at the house. “When did you last use it”, she asked, and in a flash we both remembered Firebirds. I quickly found their number on Google and called. I got put through to the friendliest restaurant manager in the world who said, “Yes, Mr. Dunnevant, we’ve been waiting for you to call. I’ve got your card right here.” What are the odds?

Now, if I were Buddhist, I would understand this to be a textbook example of Karma. But I’m not Buddhist. But it’s still a textbook example of Karma, if I understand the concept correctly which is roughly that what good deeds you do for others eventually will return to you. It’s sort of an Eastern spin on the Golden Rule, an addendum to it that says…”and if you do unto others as you would have them do unto you…it will come back to you”.

I’ll take it

Er...On Second Thought

Yesterday, this space suggested that men needed to bow out of political office for a few years and let women take over. Now, I hear news that makes me rethink that idea. The Congressional Black Caucus has just put forward Sheila Jackson Lee as a candidate to replace Janet Napolitano as Director of Homeland Security. Wait a minute. On second thought…

I will not here catalog the manifold failings of Congressperson Lee. It would take too long and I do have to get to work at some point today, but suffice it to say that the one legislative accomplishment of her interminable tenure in Congress was her Co-Authorship of a Congressional Resolution honoring Michael Jackson. My favorite Jackson Lee quote was the one where she was touring the Mars Pathfinder Control Center at NASA and asked the director if the Pathfinder had taken any pictures of the American flag that Neil Armstrong had placed there in 1969.

According to the fine folks who make up the Congressional Black Caucus, Ms. Lee would bring “valuable and unique insights and perspectives to the job of protecting the homeland”. I’ll say! This got me to thinking about other similar candidates that could emerge for other government jobs if what we were looking for was merely, “valuable and unique insights and perspectives” rather than actual qualifications. What follows is a short list.

1.     Let’s get Bernie Madoff out of prison to run the Federal Reserve when Bernanke steps down. Talk about unique insights? I can’t think of a more qualified candidate to run the Fed than a man who successfully ran a Ponzi scheme without detection for twenty five years!

2.     How about we put Paula Dean in charge of the School Lunch Program? She needs work, and it would have the added benefit of cutting down on the truancy rate.

3.     Sean Penn would certainly bring unique perspectives to the Department of Defense. Once he got finished disarming the country and surrendering to Cuba, we could balance the budget.

4.     Talk about an Agency that could use some unique perspectives, how about we get Warren Buffet to run the IRS? Since he’s so horrified that his secretary pays a higher rate than he does, I’m sure he would figure out how to fix that in no time.

5.     Let’s get Nancy Grace to become the new Attorney General. She used to be a lawyer right? We could use some screaming hysteria at the Justice Department, don’t you think?

6.     Lil Wayne could head up the National Endowment for the Arts. Rap IS art, right?

7.     Tim Tebow would make an excellent Ambassador to the United Nations. Who could resist that smile? I can see it now, right in the middle of a contentious debate, Tebow smiles and says, “Well, our job as the United States is to work hard and try to get better each and every day. God bless.”

8.     Bryce Harper as President Obama’s Press Secretary. “That’s a clown question, bro.”

9.      Sarah Palin could run the Department of the Interior. She’s from freaking Alaska; it doesn’t get any more interior than that.

10.    And finally, Kim Kardashian, a woman who has accomplished nothing her entire life yet is somehow famous, would be the perfect person to run the Commerce Department, an agency of the federal government that has accomplished nothing its entire life and yet still exists.

It's Time For Women

Having two twenty-something kids has many benefits. They do their best to keep me as hip as humanly possible with remarks like, “Dad, you’re not seriously thinking about going anywhere dressed like that, are you?” But as a writer, they also serve as my personal sensitivity coaches. We are from distinctly different generations, and I rely upon them to help me to steer clear of the politically incorrect usage of words. Phrases that I think are merely accurate descriptions, like “Chi-Coms”, they think are rich with derogatory racial undertones. So I will proceed with this blog post as gingerly as possible, because even I can sense the potential sexism inherent in its theme. If so, my kids can be depended on to let me know about it.

With the latest Anthony Weiner sexting controversy, his poll numbers have shown some rather severe shrinkage. Perhaps he will finally go away and the Republic will be free of him, but perhaps not. But as horribly embarrassing as this whole episode has been, imagine how much worse it would be if it had been Janet Napolitano caught sending selfies of her womanly private parts to young men via Twitter? Come to think of it, when was the last time a female politician was caught up in ribald sexual Tomfoolery? I can’t think of one. Sometimes I think that we would be far better governed if we only elected women to political office. At least we wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire of some ideological pissing contest between a bunch of horny Alfa-males. I feel certain that if women ran the country we wouldn’t get involved in so many meaningless wars, and I’m rather certain that we would be spared pictures of politicians’ genitalia splashed all over the internet. It seems to me that testosterone and power aren’t mixing well at the moment, and the country would be well served if the men were placed in time-out for a few years. Think about it, for even the most conservative among us, if the choice for President came down to Hillary Clinton or Elliot Spitzer, who would you prefer? This one might be a bit tougher, but suppose it came down to a contest between Anthony Weiner or Michelle Obama? I can say with confidence that in each case I would prefer the liberal woman over the scumbag man.

It is my sincere hope that the feelings and sensibilities of any woman reading this  were not offended by this post.  

The Bargain

Walking into your office after a week away is one of the most deflating experiences this life has to offer. Yesterday, I decided to do so to prepare for my first day back. My desk was piled with 8 days worth of mail and correspondence, a prodigious mound of worry covering almost its entire working surface. Then I glanced at my phone, saw the blinking red light and the number “22” in the message window. “Welcome back Mr. Dunnevant”

Two hours later, I had plowed through all of it, sorting it all into workable piles on the floor, this pile containing the stuff that must be filed, that pile the stuff that needs some sort of action, and a third pile that I get to throw away. Then I catalogued all of the phone messages. Thankfully, there were no emergencies, no angry clients wondering why on earth I would be taking a vacation on the very day they needed to speak to me. I then set about prioritizing the order in which these 22 calls must be returned. I transferred this information onto my very old school “to do list” on the yellow pad that always sits just to the right of the laptop on my credenza. When I was done, twenty five items required my attention for the week of July 29^th.

This is the bargain we make with ourselves every summer. We plan a vacation with the family someplace far, far away from work and the reality of our lives. We go, and temporarily turn our backs on our responsibilities. It’s glorious, and we love every minute of it, but in the dimly lit recesses of our brain, (right beside old high school memories and to the left of memorized poetry), there lies a poorly suppressed thought, the first day back at work is going to be horrible. But we accept it as a necessary part of being a functioning adult. We can’t have the vacation without the job, unless we are members of Congress where one is indistinguishable from the other.

So, back to work, where I will do my duty and begin plotting the details of my next vacation, which lies somewhere out there at the end of a rainbow.

What's a Vacation Without a 911 Call?

I hate it when you wake up and you’re still in your beach house, but vacation is over. All of a sudden, the place isn’t a fabulous retreat with glorious views of the ocean; it’s a three story house with stuff strewn everywhere that needs to be picked up, vacuumed, and left clean and pure for the next family. The end of vacation stinks.

This has been a great week with nearly perfect weather. There has been amazing food, lots of laughter, and what vacation would be complete without at least one 911 call? Unfortunately, I missed it all since I was down on the beach, but I have it from fairly reliable sources that it involved Christina, Ezra and Bennett taking an ill-advised joy ride in the elevator. Naturally, the thing got stuck, something about a circuit breaker. So, now you had two little boys trapped in an un-air conditioned closet. Ron, our go-to family know it all, was out walking and unavailable, and me, the family blogger wasn’t there to offer any snappy one-liners, so someone made the decision to call the authorities. Soon, Buxton’s finest pull up the driveway, and suddenly the house looks like a set from CSI: Criminal Minds. Two firemen in full regalia, wielding axes and attitude burst through the door ready for anything, then a couple of plain clothes detectives walk in flashing badges and assuring all that there was no need to panic. Too late. Paul freaks out when he sees the firemen, certain that once Ezra is greeted by these uniformed giants, all hell will indeed break loose. Thinking fast, he recalls a passage from one of Ezra’s favorite books and yells up the elevator shaft, “Hey Buddy, guess what? Your two favorite firemen from, “Let’s Put Out The Fire” are here!!”

Thankfully, the circuit breaker problem was solved, and all ended well. When Bennett emerged from the ordeal he took full advantage of the crisis to demand, “I’m gonna have a pop-sicle right now!”, thus cementing his title of “Most Valuable Vacationer” of 2013.

So, this morning we will stuff everything into the back of the car and cheat the hangman by spending the day in Manteo while waiting for the traffic to die down, wrenching every drop of fun we can out of this week before surrendering to Richmond, Virginia.

Can’t wait for 2015.