It was a very good year for my micro-life: another novel, another grandson.

Not so good for the country I love.

No matter what our individual accomplishments or pleasures were, there was a black cloud hanging over us all this year.

No. Make that an Orange Cloud.

Nonetheless, I found some reasons to be cheerful.

IMPEACHMENT

FINALLY!! It’s about time. And it’s still not soon enough: damage has already been caused. The wackos, ideologues, and incompetents in the Federal judiciary will be with us for decades. (Thank you, Federalist Society!) Not to mention what Trump has done to our alliances, our sense of national decency, and the real lives of many, many people. Kids are still in cages.

I was searching back though my blog and found out that I’ve mentioned “impeachment” thirteen times over the past few years. Call me old-fashioned, but when I couple the 272 known contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians (including 38 meetings and who-knows-how-many-emails-and-texts) and Trump’s actions and statements that were pro-Russia (criticizing and denigrating NATO, denying Russian interference in our election, changing the Republican playform at the convention, suggesting that Russia should keep Crimea, wanting to let Russia back into the G7, wanting to lift Russian sanctions, praising Putin without exception), I think TREASON.

There were so many other issues: violations of the emoluments clause … campaign finance violations (Stormy Daniels anyone? Michael Cohen in jail?) … fraud (Trump University, his charity and foundation) … obstruction of the Mueller investigation (why didn’t Donald Jr. testify?) …that you lose track of any one misdeed in the blizzard of crimes and lies. You can’t keep up with the day-to-day craziness. Any one of these scandals would have sunk a normal president, but he’s not normal, nor is his party.

And so if they nailed him on one specific crime – the Ukraine shakedown, exemplified by the July 25th phone call – that’s OK. It’s like getting Al Capone on his taxes.

The Senate won’t convict him, but the trial can still rough him up. And if Bolton or Mulvaney or OMB director Michael Duffey or Robert Blair, Mulvaney’s chief advisor testify, anything could happen. At least it might demolish the silly “hearsay” argument that the GOP had leaned on.

(My other favorite stupid GOP argument is: “Trump said it didn’t happen, and Zelensky said it never happened.” So let me see…. the shakedown artist says nothing happened, and his mark – who still desperately needs his help – says nothing happened. Nothing fishy there. Haven’t these people ever seen a Scorcese movie???? The willful ignorance – about many things – never ends.)

The problem with moving public opinion is that people who watch Fox never hear the legitimate arguments for impeachment/conviction. I watch Fox, and I know: everything you hear on it is propaganda. If they are obliged to drop an anti-Trump fact, it is immediately erased by something some GOP source says. Everything is directed against the Democratic party (and their other enemies like Hollywood celebrities, George Soros, uppity women, and dark people.)

Of course, I saw someone say that if the Senate vote were secret, 30 GOP senators would vote to impeach Trump. (I’d be happy for half that. I think they love tribe/brand/money/power more than country and the American people.)

I’m old enough to remember when the GOP was a conservative party that watched the books and supported the Army, the police and business/upper class interests. But there was always that undercurrent of nativist, know-nothing intolerance and father-knows-best authoritianism that, when joined with good, old American racism after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and subsequent measures, created the toxic GOP we see today.

It was all fermented on right-wing hate radio and Fox News after the dissolution of the Fairness Doctrine in 1992. (Another thing to “thank” Ronald Reagan for.) Now any crazy crap can be broadcast in the USA, without any reasonable, balanced response. No “other side.” So people were/are hearing crazy crazy all the time.

90% of political and talk radio shows are right-wing. In Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia, 100% of the news/talk shows are conservative. Each day, 2,570 hours of conservative talk are broadcast versus 254 hours of progressive talk.

This imbalance has occurred for a variety of reasons: the abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine and the public trustee concept of broadcast ownership, the elimination of clear public interest requirements, the relaxation of ownership rules, allowing for greater concentration of ownership, allowing the few (Clear Channel, Sinclair, etc.) to indoctrinate the many.

The political media is stacked against the left. The right has Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager, Ann Coulter, and the entire Murdoch media empire, starting with Fox News. The left has Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Lawrence O’Donnell, and maybe Thom Hartmann.

As long as the right-wing has a stranglehold on the media for a huge chunk of the USA, it’s going to be hard for the Democratic/progressive message to break through.

I blame the Republicans for this nonsense for nominating him in the first place. Once Trump refused to produce his tax returns, they should have known right then that he was either a crook or a liar or probably both. (Of course, all New Yorkers knew for years that he was a clown and a deadbeat and crappy landlord/casino owner and minor player in the NYC real estate world and couldn’t get loans from US banks.) Once a guy who constantly brags “I’m really, really rich” couldn’t reveal his taxes, they should have smelled a rat. I still don’t know why one of his primary opponents never straight-on challenged him – “put up or shut up” -- to produce his taxes. Instead, we’re all stuck with this human and historical monstrosity.

We will never live Trump down. Whatever happens, he will be a permanent blot on our history. For the rest of time, Americans will have to explain “how Trump happened.”

He was a joke when I lived in NY many years ago … but I guess now the joke’s on all of us.

I am a patriot, and he is doing horrible things to my country.

As Roland Elias says on Page 286 of WHEN I GOT OUT –

“Well, my son, it’s like this,” he began, “there are two Americas: the Good America and the Bad America, always have been. And they’ve always been at war, on and off. But now the centrifugal force and stress of modern life have separated them out, and now the Bad America seems to be winning.”

MOVIES

I didn’t see everything this year, by any means. But, of what I saw, these were my favorites.

ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD

I like Tarantino’s work … up to a point. Some of it is absolutely brilliant, a lot of it is tiresome. The only film I really like all the way through is PULP FICTION … and now this one.

This is perhaps the most un-Tarantino-like film of his career. It unfolds leisurely … it’s funny and often goofy (“The 14 Fists of McCluskey”!!!!) … it’s a true bromance … it has a child in it … it has a happy ending. There are so many things to appreciate about it: the love of movies and the process of movie-making, the love of Hollywood in the late 60s, the love of actors and what they go through. It’s “likable” Tarantino. Even the TG, who doesn’t enjoy his movies, liked this one.

Leonaro DiCaprio is excellent as usual, but Brad Pitt does his best work ever. He should win the Best Supporting Oscar, for this and his entire career. He has some Big Time Movie Star Moments in this film.

It has perhaps my favorite scene of the year: a few moments between Leo’s Rick Dalton, a struggling TV Western star, and a young, very serious little actress, supposedly modeled on Jodie Foster, who actually did a “Gunsmoke.”

It rewrites Sixties history in a very sly, satisfying way. It’s Tarantino’s best movie since PULP FICTION.

“Anybody order fried sauerkraut????”

[I actually went out and saw this one in a real movie house, on the big screen. Confession: the others I watched on the Academy screeners that the TG gets.]

ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD (trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAA

Top Ten Moments from ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD (Spoiler alert!! – Do not watch unless you’ve seen the movie.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LyM344w44A

ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD – Press conference from Cannes Film Festival with Tarantino, DiCaprio, Pitt, and Margot Robbie – a fun circus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIlsmK_FqFM

PARASITE

This is simply a fantastic movie. A must-see. When I found out what a phenomenon it was at film festivals, I purposefully kept myself as ignorant as I could about it, and I’m glad I did. This movie is so unusual and takes so many odd (yet perfect) turns, that I’m glad I didn’t spoil it for myself. And I wouldn’t want to spoil it for people. So my advice: go in blind.

I’ll just say it’s a very, very dark satire … a tragicomedy about two families on opposite ends of the social spectrum … a farce about Korea that has global resonance … a slapstick thriller … a feast for actors … and a tour-de-force for co-writer/director Bong Joon-ho.

PARASITE (Trailer) – Don’t even watch this: just see the movie. ASAP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xH0HfJHsaY

1917

A technical tour-de-force from director Sam Mendes and director of photography Roger Deakins, this is one of the most powerful, harrowing, realistic war movies ever made. Made to look as if it’s shot in one, long,single take, this is an amazing achievement. (Light on the interior life, great on the exterior life, this movie reveals the wonders – and the limitations – of cinema.)

This movie will win the Best Picture Oscar.

1917 (Trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqNYrYUiMfg&

JOJO RABBIT

Not since “The Producers” has a filmmaker gotten so many belly laughs out of Hitler and the Nazis. JOJO RABBIT is a high-wire comic turn that had me from the beginning and never let me go. Writer/director/co-star Taika Waititi takes a big, mad risk – a WWII satire about a 10 year-old German boy, whose imaginary friend is Hitler, finds out that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic – and it pays off.

Excellent work from Scarlett Johanson as the mother, Sam Rockwell (what can’t he play??) as the commandant of a Hitler youth camp, Taika Waititi himself as a wacky, 10-year-old’s vision of Hitler, and especially Roman Griffin Davis, the little boy who carries the movie.

Be warned: my wife, shiksa goddess that she is, walked out of the room after ten minutes, saying that she didn’t think it was at all funny. Meanwhile I, who almost certainly had distant relatives who died in the death camps, laughed the whole time.

But despite my laughter, I remember one thing my father taught me a long time ago: the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.*

Nothing has changed. I hate Nazis. And I hate people who like Nazis. There are not “good people on both sides.”

*McCluskey agrees.

JOJO RABBIT (Trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKaDXapi1o

MUSIC (CLASSICAL)

One of the best things about living in the Los Angeles area is the profusion of great live music, almost any night of the week. This year, the TG and I saw some fantastic shows. Of the classical music concerts we saw this year, this was my favorite:

DANIIL TRIFONOV at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

I love listening to piano music. Through the years, I’ve been lucky enough to see many great pianists -- from Martha Argerich, Alfred Brendel, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andre Watts, Lazar Berman, Stephen Hough, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Andreas Scholl, Helene Grimaud, the Labeque sisters, and Yuja Wang to Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, and Keith Jarrett to Ray Charles, Leon Russell, Steve Winwood, Booker T. Jones, Roy Bittan, Bill Payne, Matt Rollins, and list goes on.

And this year, I saw (and heard) one of the best pianists I’ve ever experienced: the 28-year-old Russian phenomenon Daniil Trifonov. We heard him play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. As famous as this concerto is – it was even a million-selling hit song for Freddy Martin in 1941 as “Tonight We Love” – I don’t think I’ve ever heard it played live. I’ve listened to it many times on records, but never in-person.

Trifonov’s interpretation of this famous music was revelatory. Going into the concert, I thought, “I know this music so well.” When I was a child and “took” piano for years, I practiced this piece forever, butchering it every time, with my recalcitrant, webbed fingers. Yet Trifonov surprised me, phrase after phrase, finding new insights and inflections in the same notes that every other pianist plays.

It was instantly apparent why he is such a big deal: “Without question the most astounding pianist of our age” – Times of London … “arguably today's leading classical virtuoso” – The Globe and Mail (Toronto) … Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year (2016) … a Grammy award for an album of Lizst etudes … New York Philharmonic’s Artist-in-Residence for the 2019-2020 season, etc., etc.

There is a very good recording of Trifonov playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. The recording was described by "International Piano" magazine as "a simply remarkable disc [...] Daniil Trifonov's playing is a heady mix of super-virtuoso and the ability to generate the utmost tenderness ... He demonstrates an enviable variety of touch and shading ... the couplings are as intelligent as they are magnificent".

Here is a link to a video of a 20-year-old Daniil Trifonov playing this music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g80VU33jr8Q

He was even better, I think, eight years later, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall..

In a world of sham and questionable talents, a musician like Daniil Trifonov is the genuine article. He performs at 100% -- zero errors -- plus feeling.

TELEVISION

Truthfully, the bulk of my television watching this year fell into two categories: politics (MSNBC/CNN/Fox) and sports (Dodgers and Lakers). The serious and the frivolous.

In this new Golden Age of Television, I haven’t kept up with most of the new shows everyone talks about. But I did see and enjoy …

COUNTRY MUSIC – Ken Burns’ documentary was plain wonderful. I know something about country music, and still, I learned a ton! I had some quibbles with it (not enough on the attack against the Dixie Chicks, the political/social meaning inside the music, along with some significant omissions), but I watched every minute and loved it.

DERRY GIRLS – Lisa McGee’s brilliant, hilarious, heart-rending, everything sitcom from Britain. True, I have to watch it with subtitles on so I can understand the rapid-fire dialogue in that flat Ulster accent, but I love every episode. I’m a fan of almost anything Irish, but truly, “We’re all Ulster girls!”

THE CROWN – Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth doesn’t seem to have any fun, but the show is still good. I don’t know why we should care about these silly, self-directed people: talk about “white privilege!” But we do.

THE KOMINSKY METHOD -- I’ve never been able to watch more than a few minutes of any of Chuck Lorre’s empire of super-successful crappy comedies (“The Big Bang Theory,” “Two and A Half Men,” “Young Sheldon,” “Dharma and Greg,” “Cybill,” etc.), but THE KOMINSKY METHOD is brilliant: heartfelt, funny, and just deep enough. I’m not the biggest fan of Michael Douglas’ (though I reflexively like him because the TG had some big successes with him: “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct” and he wasn’t a jerk to her.) I think this is the best work Douglas has ever done, in part because he plays many of his scenes with Alan Arkin, a master actor, who forces Douglas to raise his game. And it’s always good to see the warm, friendly interior of Musso & Frank’s.

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW – Pure escape. A “nice” reality show where everybody roots for everybody else, and you see the beautiful English countryside and lots of fancy cakes. What could be better? I can’t eat this stuff anymore, but I can look at it while I gorge on low-fat Graham crackers.

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES – My default station. Turn it on and “The Philadephia Story” or “Double Indemnity” might be on. So I always check here first.

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW (the American and British versions) – Relaxing viewing where you can learn about stuff. People have made such interesting, beautiful, and strange things – for centuries. I always learn something new on every show. And it’s fun to watch on the lottery level – when people bring in a dumpster dive that turns out to be worth thousands. Or hundreds of thousands! And Fiona Bruce is a lovely host for the British version and the worst dressed woman in the world.

But mostly constant, it’s constant MSNBC>>CNN>>Fox>>MSNBC until I can’t take it anymore, or the TG tells me to turn it off.

THEATRE

The best theatre I saw this year was Bill Irwin’s one-man show ON BECKETT at the cozy Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. They make a specialty of bringing in first-class Beckett to the Kirk Douglas. In the past, they’ve presented Barry McGovern doing his version of Beckett’s trilogy and John Hurt’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Bill Irwin was every bit as good.

Bill Irwin-doing-Beckett is a natural. Both men play the Existential Clown.

Bill Irwin is “no kid” as my Dad used to say. He’s 69, and to see him doing his rubber-bodied shtick after all these years, while saying the words of “my favorite writer,” was a highlight of my year.

I especially liked this piece because it focused on Textes pour Rien (Texts for Nothing), one of Beckett’s works that I am not very familiar with, compared to his other works. So it was great for me to be re-introduced to a great work of Beckett’s that I’ve overlooked.

Bill Irwin – ON BECKETT (Trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om0zRTjEEVM

TEXTES POUR RIEN – someone’s beautiful 8-minute short film (can’t find a credit, but this gives you some of Sam’s unique music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZXyiU5Q-bI

and since I came across it --

Jack MacGowran, perhaps the greatest Beckett actor of all, in BEGINNING TO END (an early, one-hour version of his famous one-man show.) I saw him do the full evening at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 1971: a precious memory. At 32:21, the fabulous “sucking stones” monologue from MOLLOY. Turn and turn about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zXy57O7bc

More next time.

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