No, Scrubs

Scrubs – and Arrested Development – were just too good for TV. Without the sophistication of HBO and Showtime, without the edge of Comedy Central or VHI, they existed in the netherworld of the networks, where Family Guy gets cancelled. And then resurrected. And since nobody appreciates genius less than those boneheads and their ilk, Arrested Development and Scrubs were, from the start, bound to the same fate.

Luckily, both have found homes: Arrested Development on G4, the video game channel, and Scrubs on Comedy Central. Kind of a stretch, a new thing, for both channels. Bold forays into the network’s 7 and 11 timeslots and their endless repeats of Seinfeld, Friends, the Simpsons, and Everybody Loves Raymond. And good ones, too.

Arrested Development – the classic(ly?) dysfunctional family, Family Guy brought to life. Narration and the willingness to build and break layers of stories. Scrubs is ER plus candyflipping – hallucinatory fantasies within an easy, feel good frame. Again with the narration, and the same playful attitude towards its presence in the story.

Friends? No, Scrubs.

I'm Totally Lost

I’m totally lost.

Totally. Despite the tiny size and the loud commercials of ABC’s web replay, I’m once again hooked. Brooklyn basement a long ways away from Vassar, but still, these mysteriously intricate plotlines and character back-stories get through. Lost touches the deepest strings of my heart. It is a resonant bass tone vibrating in the key of formulaic. It is everything I need when I get home from work, so don’t call, don’t email, and don’t IM. Busy.

Favorite character is Hurley. Locke and Charlie find him wandering back from – well, that’s a long story. But Hurley’s hushed tone, his newly defeatist but still humorous dialogue, are a perfect counterpoint to the quasi-melodrama of the Sawyer-Kate-Jack triangle. He’s the backbone of my personal connection to the show, the most normal – incidentally the most rich – person on the island. Plus he often assumes the role of audience member and speaks as if reading our minds. This is, of course, exactly what he’s doing when Locke and Charlie find him in the jungle. For Hurley recapping comes naturally.

Of course there’s a new mystery. Seems like Desmond might have done something to the space-time continuum. Don’t worry, I know a guy.

P.S. Oprah, buy me Tivo…

Who gave them all the get out jail free cards?

“Outcry at N Korea ‘nuclear test’” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6033457.stm)

Our President is working to confirm North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, an event, which if true, he will declare “provocative.” The Russians and Japanese, however, have already offered such confirmation; Russian officials, for instance, are “100% positive.” I hope Bush had his copy of My Pet Goat to keep him busy while other countries did our business for us.

From financing revolutions and coups to “extraordinary rendition,” that wonderful euphemism for outsourcing torture to less scrupulous countries, the truth is that the administration’s “aggressive” posture is in fact a cowardly, half-assed attempt to remake the world in its own image. If Bush were actually a cowboy, he would be in Pyongyang already, having said to hell with Saddam, let’s go after somebody who could actually hurt us.

But no – we’re in Baghdad, surrounded not by barrels of anthrax but by the barrels of hundreds of AK-47’s, the smoky tracer trails of thousands of RPG’s, and the shrapnel from a million IED’s. And still, no WMD’s. Only acronyms, endless acronyms.

This cloud of abbreviations, however, has a silver lining. Had we attacked North Korea instead, we would likely have a fiasco very similar to Iraq – not enough troops, not enough security. And North Korea would certainly have put up more resistance, especially in the first phases of the war, before the aircraft carrier landing and the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

So let’s be honest about this administration’s image, about how it will be remembered. What history will say, as Bush likes to ponder. They are certainly a war-making bunch, Titans of the Military-Industrial Complex, but they are more Kennebunkport than cowboy. They are martini-sipping, monocle-wearing monopoly men. North Korea and (let’s face it) China are their Broadway and Park Place. Best to start small, they think, best to not be brave. Don’t want to end up in the poorhouse. They’ve already got the railroads, so they start to gobble up the purples, the blues, the light oranges…

The Community Chest is cut open for a triple bypass. And we all know how Chance is.

A Letter to Erstwhile Benefactors

Dear Oprah and/or Tyra Banks,

Let me begin by saying that I respect what you do. At least, I think I do. Even though your audience had to pay taxes on the cars you gave them, I support your policy of giving away free shit. So here’s my wish list in case you can get around to it:

- A new computer for my dad
- New fabric scissors for my sister
- A new camera for my brother
- A headstone for my mother
- Start up capital for a magazine
- A set of quality speakers
- A Playstation 3
- A hybrid minivan
- Some truffles
- A lightsaber

I know the last one isn’t real, but maybe you know some people who know some people. The rest, I think, are doable.

I’ll even come to the studio to pick it all up. But I will not, under any conditions, pay taxes.

Thank you,
- Laurence Wooster

Bombay, Alaska

A short story I'm working on...

I’m looking at the Pacific Ocean, pack on the dock behind me, and this guy comes and sits down next to me. He’s got long hair and a long beard. Obviously been a long time out. He smells like skunks, and shoves his pack, which smells like dead skunks, next to mine. He stretches his feet out over the dock’s edge, and, reaching into his pocket, produces a silver cigarette case.
How goes it stranger.
Nothing but some sitting in the morning sun.
Like that song.
True, like that song.
For a while he didn’t say anything, just looked out at the ocean, smoke poised and unlit.
Mind if I sit here a spell? Just walked in from up north and boy are my feet cold.
Only if you stop talking like a fool. And if you got an extra one of those smokes. Those, stranger, are my conditions.

*

My mom yells at me a lot.
Did you do the dishes? Did you? Good, now go outside. Can’t have a moment of peace with you in this house. Go clean the spears. The spears have blood from yesterday’s hunt and I won’t have blood in here. Just cleaned the floors. I know you didn’t put it there. But you might put it here with all that fucking around by the stream. And since you’re not old enough to hunt its your job to clean the spears, now clean the fucking spears and then clean your fucking hands because you better not bring any bloody hands inside this house.
It’s not that bad. Out in the back of the house there’s a stream, it runs behind all the houses on our block. Mountain water. The mountains are behind the stream – horizon to horizon, tall, Mount Stephen twenty thousand feet easy according to the other people on West End Avenue. Snowcaps even in summer, deep green tree cover down to the streams and the town.
West End Avenue the western edge of Bombay, a town that hides at the bottom of its mountain. The human presence in a Japanese painting. The town has two art museums and a sushi joint we sometimes go to with fresh salmon from where our stream meets some other streams and becomes the Stephen River. Dad said he’d take me fishing there when I’m old enough. He also said he’d take me to hunt the buffalo.

*

Heavens am I hungry.
Ocean full of fish in front of you.
They say Lewis and Clark came through here but were so sick of eating fish they ate their horses instead.
Then they put what’s her name, their guide, on a coin.
Sacagawea. I have one of those. Ugly.
Ugly?
I mean, coming from a collector’s point of view.
But Sacagawea was totally desirable. I mean, coming from a hunter’s point of view. You, with your coins, you’re clearly more of the gatherer type.
Well fine, I’ll just gather up my weed and walk right down the road where I was heading then. Nice to meet you.
I’m just kidding. Don’t want to see you walk away. Now what were you saying, about Lewis and Clark, I don’t think they came through Alaska.
Sure they did. Book I read said they explored western America to the Pacific Ocean. Seeing how Alaska’s as west as you can get and still be in America, and seeing how from where we’re sitting on this dock we could spit into the Pacific Ocean, I think its true.
Not true. Funny, but not true. And I’ll tell you why if you pass that smoke this way.
Let’s hear it.
Well, I read some books too, and they said that Lewis and Clark explored lands that America bought from France. So how come there aren’t any French people around here? And how come there are so many Russians?
Sure are a lot of Russians. I got stories about Russians. And Japanese? Forget about it.
Hey, watch out. My mom was Japanese.
No shit. So, my half-Japanese brother, where you heading?
Town called Bombay. Inland, cross the Stephen. I hear they have good sushi. Tuna even.
Tuna, shit. Mind if I come with you?
Don’t mind at all. I got some wine if you got some more of that sticky.
Sure thing. Bombay or bust.

*

Past the stream is where Dad goes to hunt – and where I go and follow – because the buffalo sometimes try to sneak between the town and the mountain. That’s where I go after I clean the spears, in the time when the sun makes a silhouette of Mount Stephen and then finally sinks behind, when my vision starts failing at surprising distances and then I know its what Dad calls the magic hour. Can’t hunt then, but like he says weird shit happens and there isn’t nothing to explain, and that’s why we have gods, because if you think you see your dead grandmother out the corner of your eye, its just a god sending you an apparition. That’s how they work, gods. In the peripherals.

*

He’s a good boy.
No buffalo and mud all over the fucking carpet.
He’s a little queer, but he’s a good boy. Well intentioned.
Nelly’s going to hurt himself fooling around at night out there by the stream.
Worst he could do is drop in the water or stub his toe. Nothing dangerous out there. And don’t call him that.
Nothing edible out there seems.
Nothing edible? Are you trying to be a wise-ass?
I think I’m succeeding in being a wise-ass. You, on the other hand, are a total failure of a man. My mother was right, I shouldn’t have married a Jew.
Now this is about my religion? Who the fuck do you think you are?
I’m your son’s mother and I’m telling you, I’m this close to selling him.

*

The stream and West End Avenue behind me, pine trees and snow in front of me. In Bombay the fall brings a wet breeze and a slight chill and it starts to get dark early. The magic hour becomes harder to catch but now I can just grasp it. I’m going to kill a buffalo, and while he’s trying to be sneaky at that.
My boots are laced up to the knee, the bottoms of my pants tucked in, my shirt and coat buttoned with the cuffs tucked under my gloves and my scarf. A matching set, wool from Russia. Bombay’s got actually got some nice shops, but Dad says the Chamber of Commerce is a bunch of douchebags cause they won’t let the hunters and the fishermen in. Still, good bow and arrow shop too where I got my black leather quiver and the finest eagle feather arrows.
Ease the spring-loaded back door shut, set out towards the fallen log upstream in the Mayor’s property. Derek Yamasaki. The gods of the forest have a sense of humor, I guess, making a natural bridge in a construction magnate’s backyard. The stream’s shallow enough to wade but I don’t like to get my feet wet, and anyway, the sneaking around is fun.
Cross the log bridge, pull out an arrow and ready my shot. Eyes adjust slowly to the lack of light. No moon. Lots of stars. Scrubby land rising to mountains in which there doesn’t seem to be much buffalo.

*

We crossed the river, wandered down it, and up an, um, tributary. But I think we might need to cross the tributary at some point.
Nothing but a stream.
So.
So these Japanese guys are working on this fishing boat. They’re on the ocean catching tuna.
Tuna – like the kind they have in Bombay?
Well yeah, but these guys are using this huge boat with huge nets, the kind you don’t see anymore. They processed their catch and put in cans right there. So this one crew is on this boat, a cannery boat, and they’re in the ocean near Japan.
The Pacific Ocean.
Right. Now simultaneously, a film producer is leaving New York – that’s in Eastern America – and going to an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
With the cannery boat.
No. They’re different kinds of boats entirely, on different missions. The film producer –
What’s a film?
What’s a film?
Yeah, what’s a film?

*

I find some white rocks and make a little circle, inside of which I put some dry brush – easy to find this time of year – and start a small fire to sing my prayer.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may live long and prosper.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may eat of its flesh.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may use its hide for shelter.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may use its bones as tools.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may live long and prosper.
The prayer is old and has to be sung loudly and clearly, so that the gods, who are somewhat hart of hearing, can understand. Then they may or may not send a buffalo, and they may or may not send many buffalo. My mom says the prayer hasn’t worked in a long time, that the gods must have lost their hearing entirely, or fallen asleep, or worse, died. But my dad keeps telling me about the peripherals, so I keep looking at the places I’m not looking, focusing on the edges of my vision so hard my eye muscles hurt. But sometimes in the magic hour I see things.

*

I can’t believe you never heard of a film. You must be from the boonies. I’m a little bit scared, I’ll be honest, but since we’re both almost stumbling I figure I’ll be alright.
What was that?
I didn’t hear anything.
Smoke. Look. In front of us, to the left, a thin stream of smoke. Hard to see in the starlight isn’t it. Be quiet – listen.
Swinging his hair back, smoothing down his beard, he tilts his head up and closes his eyes. He seems to recognize what he’s hearing. He hums along.
We must be close to the edge of town.
What was that all about?
Just an old hunter’s prayer. But look, that fire is out. Let’s try to find whoever lit it.
You sure we should do that? If that’s a hunter, I mean, it is getting dark.
Come on, we’ll be the charming travelers and get a place to stay for the night, maybe even a meal. I got the whole shtick down.
Shtick? I didn’t say that, just followed the stranger towards where the fire was lit.

The Air Down There

The New York Post, along with the Metro commuter newspaper and several television stations, recently carried the story of Amit Friedlander, a young adult diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease.

Amit was president of my class at Stuyvesant High School. Intelligent, athletic, and with a charming tone and cadence to his speaking voice, he was a natural leader. Destined for success. Four years later, his disease, though unlikely to be life-threatening, has called this into question.

Today I saw Amit for the first time since he introduced President Bill Clinton at our graduation in 2002. In 2001, we were two of some three thousand students told to run north as the second – not the first – of the Twin Towers collapsed. Another one of those students, Lila Nordstrom, brought a few of us together for a news conference to discuss Amit’s condition. Though work made me miss the actual conference, the fact that so many of my former classmates were still there to fill me in is telling. Because so many years after the fact, it has taken Amit’s case to shock us all into demanding answers.

We hope that his case is isolated, but we fear it is not. Why did they send us back to school so soon, fires still burning, toxins still circulating in the air? Who made that call and why did they make it? And, perhaps most importantly, who will be held accountable for the impending financial consequences of this public health debacle?

Lila’s pet cause is health care and insurance, and as she filled me in on the news conference, she made a scary point. As Stuyvesant’s class of 2002 emerges from their college bubbles to seek employment, many of us will find jobs – if we find jobs at all – that have poor or non-existent health insurance. Like the very young and the very old, we are a population in dire need of governmental aid. Yes, we may have all sorts of fancy degrees and titles, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re broke.

There’s millions floating around out there, going to this or that 9-11 cause – widows, firefighters, widows of firefighters. In their time of emotional and financial need, millions of Americans stepped up to help them. Somehow, though, thousands of New Yorkers were overlooked. If a widow’s pain and loss of income can merit monetary aid, then Amit’s pain, and our risk of pain, certainly does. Perhaps not cash-in-hand, but a cost-free health insurance plan for all those who had to breath in air that was dangerous for months after Condoleeza Rice’s office declared it breathable.

The summer after I graduated I went back to Stuy and peeked in the front doors. The entire building was sealed off, from the inside, with plastic tape. Apparently the asbestos levels were so high that the building required a thorough cleaning – the type of cleaning sometimes avoided because it can actually stir up more asbestos than already present. In Stuy’s case, however, the levels were already up there. Guess where they were the highest? The upholstered seats of the auditorium, the auditorium me and two hundred other seniors spent two months in preparing the final SING! of our high school careers.

I’m going to the doctor, and I’m sending Condy my bill.