Mumble BANG Repeat

I saw an illegal copy of the summer's hot action flick last night and while watching the serious shenanigans, I had a thought. Your TV should have a sound design feature that pumps up the urgent muttered dialog of paranoid action flicks and then lowers the volume during the chase scenes when all decibal hell breaks loose. These pair of scenes happened at least half a dozen times in two hours: A pair of beurocrats mumble about the need to kill a government trained assassin who likes to hop the globe and then, BAM it's fast music, breaking glass, pistols, motorscooters, and the brayng sirens of foreign police forces pouring out of your speakers.

Like Nigel's amp, this flick goes to 11.

I finished a book I had been meaning to re-read for more than a decade and I was glad to pick up an old paperback for fifty cents. I was late for work one rainy morning and took the book with me ona whim. Thanks to some heavy rain and slow trains, I went through 75 pages by the time I hit the desk. Rabbit Redux is one of Updike's screwier novels with weaknesses and strengths throughout. It probably reads like caricature noe but very few writers were writing about the counter-culture while it was happening. The late 60s came to the 'burbs in the pages of this novel and Rabbit Angstrom was the only man in America who supported the Vietnam war. He hates it but thinks it has to be fought. It's definitely worth a read and should make a good reconsidering essay in the pages of National Review.

Right now I am reading The Shooting Party and awaiting a phone call about a job. Hope to hear something good this week. Fingers crossed.

Mad Men -- Good Episode

Finally, the killer episode from Mad Men, the most promising show of the summer. After a terrific start, the resulting three episodes were setting the stage for something big. Oh, I thought, Don Draper has a mysterious past. His wife is a blank slate awaiting relief thanks to a future cocktail of valium and Betty Friedan. His co-workers are going to have their interesting lives that will touch us and horrify us in short order. It's been a frustrating few weeks to watch the set up, especially since the executive producer worked on The Sopranos, a show where a lot of groundwork was laid but sometimes nothing grew, but this week's episode delivered.

Don and his wife return from an awards ceremony where Don wins a coveted award, a golden horseshoe. They are dressed to the nines, more than a little wasted and too tired and content to have sex. Even with the swanky lingerie, which looks like battle armor designed by Edith Head, his wife is a knockout. No zombie here.

They wake up, cough up their smoker's lungs and start their day. Don is in his sharp late '50s suits, the type that only he and his boss seem to have a tailor who knows how to make a suit fit. A mysterious young man dressed like an upstate farm hand shows up. It's Don's half brother with the last name Witcombe. Don is scared and disgusted to see someone from his guarded past. The kid clearly adores him and Don doesn't want anything to do with him. He has created this life and there is no room for someone from his early days. We see a picture of Don in Army khakis with his arm around a young boy. Some talk of family members long gone, an uncle who thought he was soft. Don looks like he about to be sick. His head -- and ours -- are spinning.

Meanwhile, Don is pushing a client to create a bank account for the new man. Statements sent to the office, nothing that the little wife has to know about. This is another bracing fact tht the show delivers -- what wife doesn't know the flow of every dollar in her house? What secretary would cover for a boss' afternoon affair? Who has time to sleep with someone outside the home?

Don's life is a contradiction, and it is the photo opposite of Tony Soprano. The gangster was a dangerous man who dealt with killers, drug dealers and whores. On the inside, he was a family man who loved his family even as they were driving him nuts. Here, Don Draper is all external perfection, a true leader, a creative type and a family man. Inside, he beds women, crushes his competition, drinks to escape problems and has a secret past that cannot see the day of light.

Mad Men is slowly becoming excellent television.

Escape to Bear Mountain

The humidity skedaddled after two days of rain and that meant one thing: get the kids out of the house and now! We hit Bear Mountain where, fourteen years ago, Regina and I had our wedding reception. The weather then was a lot like today, light blue skies, warm yet manageable temps and a slight hint of fall. Just perfect.

Romney and Guiliani's bad week

So Rudy Guiliani's daughter is an Obama supporter. Slate discovered her Obama button on her FaceBook page and wrote a squib that shot around the blogosphere. Too delicious to ignore. The blurb mysteriously disappeared but the story was out. I wonder who contacted the young lady and what was said? "Miss, just name the make and model of the car you would like at college in the fall. It's yours."

Rudy's bump smoothed out when Mitt Robot Romney told a crowd in Iowa that his sons are serving their country not in iraq but by helping him get elected president. Yes, driving in an AC-filled SUV now qualifies as military service in a Romney White House. If you share the same last name, of course.

Chris Matthews blew a gasket and let his mouth outpace his brain. "Why don't these necons, these chickenhawks, take their kids down to the recruitment ofices and sign them up for the army or marines?!"

Easy, Chris. It's the same reason you don't take your kids down to the mosque to volunteer them to be a suicide bomber. Parents don't control their kids that way. The US military is made up of volunteers and parents do not send their kids to war. The soldiers are legal adults -- granted they cannot drink in every state -- who volunteer to serve. Besides, the military brass doesn't want a draft or sldiers who were drafted by their parents. The jihadists, on the other hand, might want a gullible son of an MSNBC commentator for its next attack. Play some Hardball, Chris.

Mad Men of the Summer

I thought the show of the summer was going to be re-runs of The Office or 30 Rock, a pair of shows I discovered and started loving after Christmas. Instead, the show to watch is Mad Men, the tale of an ad exec in the late 50s. After four episodes -- some good, some stale -- it clearly has potential. It feels like they are laing the groundwork for some great stories down the road and it occasionally has that Sopranos vibe, where the Mad Men creator wrote and directed a few episodes. What is normal life like for a gangster or a highly successful and secretive mid-level executive? Both drink too much and sleep around and they must kep an eye on their crew for any ambitious back-stabbers. Of course, Don Draper can't whack any rivals and his family is always safe from retribution, but it doesn't mean that the stakes are not high.

The best thing about the show are the production values -- the women clean the dishes while they re dressed for cocktail party. who look like they ar ready for a cocktail party. Don stands out in his sharp suits while his co-horts are in sad black garb like anonymous company men. And I'm not the first one to mention the smoking or the afternoon ofice drinking -- it's the highpoint of the cocktail culture. Instead of mid-afternoon Starbucks, it's amber liquids and steely martinis.

The creator of the show has definitely read his John Cheever. Draper lives in the leafy suburb that the New Yorker short story writer moved to when he wrote his tales of love and lost romantics. This is out 10th summer in Ossining and I keep straining to see of any of the outdoor shots were indeed done here. The only movie or TV crew here was the Bill Murray yawner Broken Flowers a few years back. Hard going watching that flick but the opening scene of a house not far from here did highlight one point of Ossining: a millionaire can live quite close to a family that looks like it has a tough time paying the bills.

I wonder what's going to be revealed with Don and his past. He doesn't talk about the Army, his Purple Heart or his childhood. Even his wife -- an airhead who is destined for a mid-life of Valiums -- doesn't know anything about the man she married. We did have one clue though: a commuter said hello to Don and called him Whitcomb. Why the name change for Brooding Don. Can't wait to find out.