On My Mind
Cold air has swept over the west coast, creating pressure mismatches and wind in California, and chilly mornings here. It’s currently 34 degrees F., and that’s been dropping for the past hour.
But there’s sun! It’s time for imaginary bottling of light, always doomed but something I always try to do, pretend that I’ll remember these bright days when it’s not so bright, which will be next month (I’m assuming, but I do know my Northwest Novembers).
Sun has to be enough. It’s busy again, and a virus is wandering through our household, and the air is incredibly dry. I’ve become a regular user of antiseptic wipes, although mostly it’s 1-2 a day, just swiping surfaces in service to the notion that every little bit helps. I have no empirical evidence for this. It just makes me feel better.
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I turned off comments on this blog, something I’ve considered for years. I rarely get them, actually, and care not a bit about this. Honestly. I like feedback and interacting with readers, but I’m obviously not all that inspiring, and from time to time I get confused about how to handle a troll.
There are a few of these, and not anonymous. A couple appear to be mentally ill, and all of them have had plenty of signals from me that I’m not interested in having a conversation. Just as a matter of hygiene, I’d periodically rummage through (I don’t get informed when I have comments, so I have to backtrack and check and I rarely do that) and delete these, which are usually multiple paragraphs that I don’t read, but the other day it just seemed easier and maybe the better part of valor to turn them off. As I said, I don’t seem to particularly inspire discussion anyway.
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I wrote back-to-back columns about TV shows recently, which was a weird position to be in. I have far too much tunnel vision when it comes to this; I’ll focus on an element of a movie or show, a performance or maybe the sets or dialogue, and lose the big picture. I wouldn’t make a good critic, in other words.
But I’m always looking for distractions, and a couple of these 8-episode Netflix series caught me. Living With Yourself was the first, and last weekend I digested the entire second season of The Kominsky Files, which inspired my column this week.
As I wrote, I don’t have much of a Halloween sense, but this gave me an idea, or at least a mildly funny concept – it might seem scary to some people to realize there are a bunch of old people on TV.
That’s what The Kominsky Files is all about, aging and how we deal with it. As with Grace & Frankie, the show mines the adventures and indignities of getting older for laughs as well as plot lines. And also like the Fonda-Tomlin (and Sheen-Waterston) characters, these people go to a lot of funerals and doctor appointments. As happens.
It occurred to me today that these limited series feel an awful lot like books, particularly e-books these days when the estimated time it should take to read them is right there on the title page. A four-hour series is roughly equivalent to a 300-page book, for me, in terms of time investment. I don’t mind at all taking a weekend to dip in and out of a series until I’m done, because I’ll be done. I close the book and won’t think much about The Kominsky Method until a new season arrives in a year, assuming one does. Otherwise, it’ll just live on Netflix, waiting for me to get bored in a few years and rewatch.
And I can certainly recommend the show, if for nothing else than outstanding production values. It’s filled with very good actors and it looks great, even if we’re seeing mostly vignettes about ordinary life that is only getting a little more ordinary. This is me we’re talking about.
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I’m a fan of the podcast format, because I like to eavesdrop on conversations between interesting people. It’s just hard to find the time to listen.
I don’t seem to be able to just sit and absorb these – I have to be moving and doing something. Sometimes this is just a good excuse to take a walk, but I prefer to be alone with my thoughts most of the time when I’m exercising. It tends to clear stuff out and put me in a better mood.
So I’m stuck with listening either when I’m in the car, or else in small chunks when I’m doing chores, lawn work or cleaning around the house. I listen to a lot of political talk these days, but my preference is usually the interview format, where an author or musician or other celebrity talks about a project or just their work, and I get to listen.
I’ve also been a fan of The West Wing Weekly for over three years, a podcast in which two fans (one of them, Joshua Malina, was also an actor on it for the last four seasons) have gone through the show, episode by episode, with fun talk and lots of guests. I never miss TWWW, because I love The West Wing and return to it often.
So I was excited to listen to The Office Ladies, a new podcast in which two cast members from The Office, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Pam and Angela on the show, respectively) talk about each episode, sharing memories and tidbits.
I was a little amused by the first one, because these two (who are BFFs in real life) just seemed excited and kind of goofy. Kinsey spent the first show either laughing or just repeating everything Fischer said (“It was a fun day!”). Just nerves, I figured. Angela was coming off as a bit of an airhead in that first episode.
OK. Two episodes in. Angela is definitely an airhead.
I mean, I hate to say that. That, and the fact that there’s way too much giggling. The blonde dingbat and the giggling girls are pretty offensive stereotypes and this is not a good era in which to point out that occasionally it’s an accurate description. But it feels true, and kind of like a train wreck.
And not everyone can do podcasts. Fischer is actually fine, very organized and interesting with her reminiscences and trivia. She maybe just picked the wrong partner. I’m trying to stick with it, because I love The Office and I’d really like to hear about some of the back stories. I just need less air in the mix, maybe.
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Scientists have recently speculated that they’ve found evidence of an ancestral homeland for humans, in southeast Africa (in the Botswana region). This is mostly genetic research, and there’s a ton of pushback from others in the field, and I find the whole thing fascinating, particularly the mystery and the sort of inevitable unknowable nature of this. As a layperson, I can’t really keep up, and what I think are currently accepted facts are always changing.
It’s the migratory nature of this that intrigues me. I’m struck by this vague idea I’ve always seemed to carry – and I think this is fairly common – that people in different regions sort of sprung up in those regions, when of course they didn’t. There are fairly clear DNA-based relationships between people living in East Asia, in northern Japan, and in Alaska and even other indigenous North American peoples. Humanity has always been on the move.
It’s just amazing to think about, for me. If these recent conclusions have any relationship to truth, humans arose in South Africa and stayed there in Eden for 70,000 years (the climate was significantly different in that region) before following green paths to the northeast (as well as, maybe, the west).
I imagine early humans making their way north to Egypt, then into West Asia (the Middle East), then the Central Asian steppes and Mongolia and China and then, hey, only about 50 miles separate East Asia from North America, who knew? With the Bering Sea level much lower approximately 15,000 years ago, there was a land bridge and there you go. From South Africa to Argentina in only 100,000 years. Make your reservations now.
I’m just eyeballing those 50 miles. It could be further than that. Still. I’m a walker. Dreaming of walking around the world is a fun one. I just need some sun.
