The Tune-In Factor

It was in my formative years that the commonly grumbled phrase was “generation gap”.  Even after all that violence and turbulence of the late 60s and early 1970s gave way to some resigned, inflammatory apathy, too many people beyond the threshold of middle age, respectful of youth or not, claimed some inability to relate to the popular culture of youth today.  What was once an irreparable crevice though has undeniably become an ocean.

It’s probably no one’s fault. Parents interested in relating, or more likely forced to relate to the socioculture of their teens will effectively do so.  I doubt however that someone unforced, like myself, will ever bear any type of connective lexicon with that of modern youth.  While it doesn’t really concern me, I am sometimes led to wonder just what this means for the future of generational connectivity.

Invariably, there I’d be, a boy of ten or eleven, the lone and outstood child at high noon on a Sunday, in an apartment full of kibbutzing, arguing, eating, coffee drinking grownups, me seated hospitably one bedroom away, before the portable Trinitron TV throughout the visit, understandably unable to engage with the towering elders, those who roared with great fervor, argumentation, laughter, over subject matter no less than foreign to me.

TV back then was still, even in itself, a more collective medium.  You didn’t watch what you wanted, you watched what was on. Multiple channels, digital services, platforms, or viewing devices did not exist in the spring of 1978.  What’s more, that which was on the six-channel smorgasboard was limited to what television stations, independent ones in particular, deemed most cost-effective.  If King World’s re-processed, re-packaged, re-edited (and to film purists, abomination of the) Hal Roach Our Gang series, re-dubbed The Little Rascals, proved a winner in key cities, then it was the reigning kid-vid Sunday staple for a good long time. It’s what was for breakfast.

Original syndicated programming on the commercial dial for formidable youth was not quite yet the cottage industry it would soon become.  In the late 1970s, “live-action” programs, or shows featuring a host or talent of sorts was no longer a very common format, certainly not to the extent that it was in the prior decades.  By this time, with cartoons and animation efforts largely targeted by interest groups over violent themes, the mainstay for the independents flickering on the cathode-ray tube on America’s day off was off-network re-runs and old, old movies.

The so-called staple that something like The Little Rascals became was a very strange kind of intimate belonging in one’s daily or Sunday life. It wasn’t something you tuned into with great anticipation because you haven’t yet seen it, like the next episode of some long-running decade-old digital TV series from some other platform that you haven’t seen all twelve seasons of yet. This was basically wallpaper.  It was the equivalent of songs or music videos you know only too well, who does or sings what, and what happens when.  The jokes really aren’t funny, but the visuals are more or less iconic.  I don’t think any kid my age who’s eyes and TV dial gravitated towards it each Sunday would’ve been capable of explaining why he wanted to watch it, other than a cursory admission of “I always do..”  It somehow wasn’t 11:30 on Sunday morning without a TV screen branding a grainy, sound-muffled, black-&-white image of a pom-pom capped Spanky and Pete The Dog, something produced for the big screen by Hal Roach for little folks forty years prior.  This stuff composed that piously denounced image of “junk” us children grazed on, preferenced to homework, reading, or going out and getting some exercise.  If anything though, for a kid too-intelligent like myself, those familiar, foolish flickers were just a common admonishing over a lack of better initiative.  It wasn’t even the kind of offering you could ever rationalize as something you “just want to see the end of….” before getting to the book report.  It almost kind of helped to bring closure to the awareness of television as a finite entity, a containable “box” one needn’t allow oneself to indulge in like a sack of sugary, nutritionless, and mostly stale donuts.

And all this is just what would render such as uncomfortable to a kid seated before it in some stranger’s home, where you’d rather not share your more intimate, embarrassing habits, akin to eating in your pajamas, or singing some ubiquitous commercial jingle aloud as a silly parody only you and your mom might get or appreciate.  

And in spite of all your awkward alienation, you weren’t alone.

Invariably, I’d be sitting there, politely, that obligatory child in the room, trapped before the monochrome Alfafa, Buckwheat, Farina, Chubby and Jackie Cooper, in a way I would not be ordinarily, soon upon which some transient adult on the way back from the bathroom would look in on the boy in the bedroom with the TV as a brief respite from the dining room circus.  Characteristically, the visitor was some tall, overweight gentleman of urban Depression-era descent, some walking revival of W.C. Fields in his own right.  But well meant enough..

“Eh….is that Jackie Cooper…?? Ah, we used to see him at the movies all the time…….Ha..! There’s Spanky..! You know about Spanky…?”, the old coot would mutter, fixated suddenly on the screen, breaking into a grin……..”Eh, these people are all old now……..” He’d gaze for another moment before addressing the viewer.  “Ya’ like these kids..?? We saw ‘em in the movies….”  He’d chuckle wistfully and walk off.  What just happened there…?

In spite of all my staunch, pre-adolescent iconoclasm, in a world where grownups just wouldn't understand kids, this unlikely figure of a time, an era and a sociology long prior, joined me in some abridged moment of common understanding. Perhaps no other circumstance could have furnished that.

It’s a bridge more impressive in that time than likely any chronological one constructible today.  The common lexicon is somehow just less likely or less readily established.  Those rotating dozen or so little crackly two-reelers were unmistakably just those, the originals.  Not re-makes, re-boots, re-casted, or re-done.  They were not one of a massive series of offshoots or spinoffs, with endless plot or premise changes.  The little films each bore their own iconic immortality, like the runaway jalopy, or the kid tossing the cake out the window, landing on the blustery policeman’s head.

Making that connection with one’s elders over, say, feature films would already be a more involved and mature effort.  Indeed, I spent plenty of afternoon TV matinee moments with some unknown WB classic flashing onto the screen mid-feature, my uncle muttering….”Jimmy Cagney…….Paul Muni..”, recognizing them aloud while channel surfing.  For a ten-year old though, too boring.  

So the next question is, in a world where families of young and old continue to gather on occasion, the impressionable youth left to their own devices whilst the adult folk gather to ostensibly convene as the grownups, is that very connective moment, opportunity, or the existence of it even sociologically possible..?

To put it in TV terms, first you’d need some kind of common ground. Are the kids watching anything “old” on TV anymore..?  Anything you, the reader, a contemporary of mine perhaps would recall thriving on videologically at their age..?

Very possibly not.  Again, it’s no one’s fault.  Movements in the entertainment and personal-electronic “platform” industry have mandated the need for more constantly changing forms and styles of entertainment.  There is no available time for some television series to “trend” nowadays, by way of exposure.  No one cooks anymore.  The smash hits of the 1970s and 80s became so as a result of failed launches, and the determination of network programmers to give the show a good, hard try. Now, it’s not about the show, its content or quality.  It’s all about the pre-trending efforts and external on-line and social media hype.  And in more ways than one, the hype takes precedence over the show.

Some years ago, my cousin’s teenage daughter, whom I got to spend a few moments in a room with after dinner at a family occasion was busy texting her friend some image of TV’s Gomez Addams, the great John Astin in some unmissable black-&-white frame from the The Addams Family.  I thought that encouraging, at first.  The photo though had Gomez with some superimposed red hat of some sort on his head.  I had no idea what it was about, but it was obviously some short-lived on-line gag.  Unaffected by that addendum, I offered “Hey, you remember The Addams Family..?? That was a great show….I used to watch it….”

“What….?”, the girl looked up, quite obviously puzzled by my reference, no clue as to who the fellow in the trending photo was….

“He’s an old actor…..”, I dismissed.

The common absence of such immediate lexicon from one generation to the next may not seem relevant or important in a world too absorbed with greater strife.  But the question begged here remains, is there indeed the threat of a generation gap even greater than the one lamented more than fifty years ago, one that deems threat in different ways, one even more alienating and divisive between populations each more intelligent than ever before...?  It seems that before even more serious points of history can be understood in relation to today’s or future worlds, the first hand understandings of those having lived those events need in some way to convey that understanding to those of today’s generation, never having known the past in it’s very context.  It’s about the dangers, the violence, the misanthropy of today’s world.  And it’s not about an absence of Spanky, Buckwheat and Alfafa.

Come to think of it, just as powerfully memorable to the likes of myself from the time of my irreverent-humored youth is the once trend-heavy explosion of comic Eddie Murphy, and the hilarity he so brilliantly mined from that ancient, anything-but-politically-acceptable 1930’s image of little Buckwheat.  Murphy was clearly firing a comic bazooka at the outrageous creation of such figure. It was an irreverent, well-defined attitude and attack we all, of every race, appreciated and seemed to share.  And that effort seemed by contrast to outscore the fearful, witch-hunting instincts of today’s so-called, thought-eschewing “cancel culture”, one in which clearly no expressed thought as such would be permissible by anyone’s admission.  Except on social media, the most vocal platform possible, where the ugliest mental synapses rage without apology.  Or in probably any case, not even a shred of humor.

And is that in fact the frustrated connective ground to which our modern-day culture is reduced..?  The war on alienation can only be fought and better resolved with a connectivity, a communication, and in some ways perhaps a level of self-admission that needs to be taught, and learned.  And shared. Enough of a little more of that, and dare I say there’s every chance that that’s one less automatic weapon picked up and handled by a civilian hand younger than twenty-five.

Noah F.

Common Ether

Social media may have its critics.  Everyone’s a critic.  It’s their endowed right.  But the medium’s finest defense just might be its most significant offense.

It doesn’t discriminate.

If it did of course, it would not nearly be the fertile ground of commercial harvest known to its founders and financiers.  Their job is to constantly monitor, analyze and arrive at sectored determinations on their product markets and consumers.  No better way of doing this than gaining as intimate exposure as possible into the private lives of proudly shared egos, and as many as possible.

It’s the most powerful advancement in commerce yet.  Retro-head that I am, I find nothing more captivating than a trip down the Memory Lane of forty or fifty years ago, and all those highly serious and sophisticated diatribes on the social dangers of television.  Plenty of media critics and sociologists went in both directions on the social dangers and rewards.  One of the recurring attributes however, was in television's ability to unite so many co-existing cultures.  Two men, one upscale from the suburbs, and a ghetto struggler can both, for just one moment, meet in pleasurable unity over a punch line heard on Sanford And Son last night on TV.  Any medium that can provide that in such a scattered, sectored and separative world is certainly worth the highest admiration, according to some.

By contrast, it was the detractors who concluded over the years that the medium bears no such honorable social intent other than to indoctrinate innocent eyes and ears young and old into deep consumership, and a sense of self-inadequacy over any inertia or indecisiveness toward such at any moment.  Their point was no less valid, and still very much so.

The difference between now and fifty years ago however, is this brand new thing that has fast left the controversial frontier of television in the dust, and that's this new invention called Social Media.   It wasn't invented or introduced as such all at once.  Much of it began with the earliest underpinnings of the Internet.  Then, by the time Y2K rolled around, you really weren't anywhere unless you were there.  The author of this diatribe in fact was not agreeable enough to crack open his wallet for such until he genuinely deemed himself enough of a clinical outcast, five or six years into the millennium.  Even then, it took some getting used to.

Wrong as I might be, it somehow seemed that I got onto the entrance ramp of the Facebook Expressway just around the time all the other superhighway motorists did.  That was kind of encouraging.  Nothing makes arrival into a new neighborhood easier than the shared experience of such.  And before long, we'd all start absorbing the art of becoming highly sophisticated junior sociologists, standing back and watching the various toxic personalities vent themselves quite predictably in word, online, the written equivalent of their loud and incorrigible selves.  We'd see the sociopathic side of the traditionally meek and polite.  We'd see the odd, inexplicable passive-aggressive side of famous beasts sharing greeting-card memes and kitten videos with little red heart emojis.  

But beyond all the zoological exhibits we're mostly careful not to step up and hand-feed, there's us, the mentally responsible adult participants, moderating our tempers and self-monitoring our words and reactions.  Next step..? Make some friends.

Pretty soon, you're in a very friendly neighborhood of shared likenesses.....people who also get up in the middle of the night.......people who hate running late in the morning.......people who treasure Sunday brunch at home in their affectionately decorated kitchen.  People who go on vacations.   People who are grateful to God for the care their sick child got at the clinic or hospital.  People reveling proudly in their hard-labored, newly re-decorated kitchens. 

Well, perhaps I can't vacation in Rome or spend Sunday at a rented villa in Fire Island like my treasured Facebook compatriots.  But I can just as easily share the sophistication of my own, economy-sized world with some artfully conceived and just-as-exquisite phone camera-snapped images of my kitchen wall-hung art, my pet snoozing peacefully in a sunlit corner, and maybe a clever caption and music link to accentuate just how we're elegantly spending our well-deserved down time together.  See..? We can be some pretty impressive self-advertisers, too..!

It's a great, and often very positive and supportive way of asserting one's self-confidence.  Among well-meant friends its nothing but well-received.  Matters of socioeconomic division need not be a separative factor amidst this online interactive ocean liner cruise, one that transcends the barricades of COVID isolation and many other of life's unfriendly strongholds.  But as one relies more and more upon such social existence, among the kindest and most genuine of the faraway strangers, as legitimately intimate as the emotional co-dependency becomes, and amidst all its invaluable daily treasure, the stark and divisive factors ultimately emerge.  And whether or not we choose to bear effect reigns upon these so-called friendships.

There are no socioeconomic "barricades" on Facebook.  A young mother of three, situated in a NYCHA apartment in the Bronx can quite easily find close kinship with a young Carrie Bradshaw on the Upper East Side, after a blessed encounter where the young mom helps Carrie off the ground with great concern after she fell off her Manolo heels and dropped her new Apple phone to the ground.  Next thing, they're friending it up on FB.  Young Mom and Carrie have virtually zero in common beyond same biology, same birth year, and the same shows they saw on TV as kids, the same sugar cereals they ate, the same songs they heard at their prom, and same kind of irrational tempers that flare at the same ugly behaviors they see every day.  Ah, the unity the World Wide Web can provide..!

Down the spectrum somewhat, you'll encounter others of slightly better economic struggle-status in happy friendship with those Finzi-Continis of the higher tennis-courters. Friendships that prove that you don't need money to share the appreciation of a flowered garden.  Perhaps the only insignificant difference remains whether you can appreciate it from behind the gate you pass along the Botanical Garden on the way home to your complex from the bodega, or in the garden you own and have tended by your hired gardener, in the backyard of your four-bedroom home in East Islip, with the newly finished deck, all set for the summer holiday.  But to recognize and self-discriminate on such obvious basis remains uncouthedly trite.  Is the object of the game to disparage yourself or others based on such blatant economic disparity..?  Or is the better reminder that of exercising mindful adulthood, and owning up to one's position in the world, and learning to embrace it proudly, within this mall of online citizens, each in rightful possession of a sense of artful and joyful appreciation on the most visceral levels.

In the eyes of many, such co-existence is simply "where we are now", and the social atmosphere to which we're behaviorally expected to acclimate.  To some, the grind of such is really no different from the way their mom or dad had to wait on line at the bank in 1972 just to cash a check, and in the process endure a friendly conversation with some lady or fellow they know from somewhere, who can't help but regale them with tales of woe over their golf or tennis game, and wallet photos of their grandchildren and their beaming parents, degreed physicians residing in the Douglaston Hills.  Meanwhile Mom or Dad is more absorbed with how badly the cost of that blown carburetor or the kid's sudden trip to the ENT is going to kill them.

The difference now is that these passing and more prominent social media "relationships" are more elusively and conveniently both selective, and at the same time insidiously invasive, often in ways we're not going to realize or accept until we're forced.  I could insert a "Heaven Forbid" next to "forced", but the truth is that Heaven will not forbid inevitability.

Should one's barely-afforded lodging be destroyed in a local flood one fine day, should one's loved one or self be pitted against injury or illness for which treatment is undeniably unaffordable, or should one be put to any kind of crisis for which their previously livable economic situation finds them tragically unprepared, suddenly, the value of nearly all those well-meant, affectionate Facebook "relationships" with all those on the economic upper balconies immediately becomes, to no fault of anyone, confederate currency.  The best anyone can offer to anyone in those once-fantastical, joyful, picture-sharing, day-off-I'm-enjoying portraits that compose our fragile social existences is now reduced to an illustrated smiling cat-face emoji, the extent of what some far-extended well-wisher can offer, a friendly wave from the curb.  No one can come forth to save the life or even the day of the tragic struggler.  And they're not really supposed to.  Even the struggler might not bear resentment against her fair-weather Facebook friends.

Especially since there's really nothing "fair-weather" about them at all.  Social media is just what those words denote: A media providing the capacity to be social.  Nothing more.  Whether or not we, as responsible participants decide to see ourselves bearing any unreal socioeconomic connection with our "friends", greater or less, is part of our "God-Given Right To Life".  And at the same time, it calls upon the need for mindful, responsible "Choice".

And indeed, amidst this social crowd, bigger than any blanket-to-blanket beach population on the hottest Fourth of July, there is, fascinatingly enough, a level of social order, a Geneva Convention of sorts, one that no Group Administrator needs to post, articulate or remind.  One that transcends angry rants, political talk on retro-memory pages, homophobic talk on collectible antique pages, and the misanthropy that will find welcome nowhere.

Should one find themselves unable to care for a loved one, when one has to in any way bid farewell to their parent, sibling, child or even beloved pet, forced strictly by dire economic condition, where conditions held by perhaps any or more of one's Facebook "friends" would never, Heaven Forbid, incomprehensibly see them, an understanding somehow politely exists.  When divisive conditions become inarticulately clear, on line, for all to see, civilian "friends" and commerce kingpins alike, it's all well wishes, extensions of prayer, and red heart emojis.  No questions asked.  

And it's not, as prior eras and in-person acquaintanceships might suggest, an insensitive distancing or alienation.  In such case as this, it's a level of shared respect.  It's the humility that reminds that rich or poor, we are valuing shared ground together at all times.  And none of us bear the right to judge the struggle of another.  For one thing, we've no right. And for another, we've no desire.   Everyone has their own cross to bear.  Even if a greater population helps us carry that weight every day.  "For The Grace of God Go I" is more than ever just as much a secular prayer.  And if we had to log off our social media page each day or night with some type of serenity prayer known to twelve-step fellowships, that certainly would be the disclaimer at the end of the broadcast day.  

Yes, the internet, commerce-commanded social media and the like are hijacking our minds, our brains and our behaviors every day, every minute.  But it's still worth it for the relationships and what we discover they really can mean.  Because as living, breathing humans, we still know better.

Noah F.

I'm Sorry, I Can't Help You......

Not long ago, I was surfing the Facebook waves one day, where an old acquaintance shared one of those widespread, silly little "memes", one that said something to the liking of "How can I tell you're being sarcastic...?"  With all candor, I responded, "At this point in my life, even I can't tell anymore.  And even worse, I'm not too concerned..."

Fact of the matter though, is that indeed it was an evaded concern haunting me in more recent times.  Despite this acclaimed, life-long, exterior veneer of adorable, cherubic innocence, somehow over the years, in ways genuinely unbeknownst to myself, there emerged this counterbalanced, razor-edged, sardonic and brilliantly-just-as-subtle beast, one that would send the humor of Albert Brooks and Martin Mull to the borscht-belt woodshed.  

With a life-long commitment against morphing into anything even remotely cliche, my young adulthood was certainly cautious enough not to become a T-shirt clone of the renown MTV's Daria, the pop-culture comic House Representative of the morose, Gen-X 1990s.  As I recently channeled the spirit of the immortal Rodney Dangerfield and his "no respect" act, my quote was "When I was a kid...? Depression was somethin' we did for fun...!"  When it comes to the 1990s, that's no hyperbole.

Early youth in the late 70s and early 1980s had me garnering no respect for my peer culture.  If a kid in my high school bio class were to develop a cure for cancer, I'd have likely concluded that he was probably on drugs, and just being a trophy for his rich parents.  I gave short if no shrift to the pop music of the period, and MJ's white glove.  Instead, I spent plenty of headset time late Saturday nights with my mom's old Dylan Blonde On Blonde LPs, studying the musicianship of the arrangements. My mother was in fact my best friend during my altogether blacklisted pre-adolescent peerhood, the innocent, sweet little rotund boy.  At age twelve, I thought the term "jerking off" referred to some kind of sports penalty.  Needless to say, my innocence of the world's avarice and my generalized belief against any such thing as a "bad kid" got me injured, robbed and death-threatened in the far corners of some the borough's finest public schools.  

At the same time, my mother even more viciously infuriated than I, there was a stern teaching, that to turn vigilante, and act against their violence or anger with mine would only render me something worse than those troubled and injured souls, both inside and out.  It was a good reminder.  It served well in an adult future where you'd need to remember one thing:  Standing up for yourself in victimhood will at best end you up a courtroom defendant.  The best revenge is somber defeat.

As I leaned into my mid-twenties at the time, despite a lifetime of alienation from the peer culture in general, I couldn't help taking note of how the hair-flipped pastel aerobicizing of the Reagan era had starkly turned dark-flannel, black matted-haired, dark, coffee-slurping inertia.  For those whose young, presumed  "Wonder Years" and "Happy Days" were spent on the dateless, friendless, disconnected, misunderstood sidelines, this was the spiritual revenge your whole life had resisted suicide for.  And somehow, you ultimately ended up questioning whether this is in fact what you wished for.  In some ways, I found myself bearing an even greater sense of violation at the time.  Seemed like everyone was suddenly stealing my act..!

And that was a good thing. Even if was going to take myself too seriously, I wasn't going to expect to impress anyone in the process. But even still, my exterior always remained that of the quiet, innocent, respectful lad that bore no irreverence.  Or at least displayed none outwardly.  It was my professional passkey in life.  I don't know how many doors it opened for me necessarily, but it certainly didn't keep me locked out and kicking them when my hands were full.

That didn't stop me from adopting the world's best weapon against the intolerable and inescapable injustices of generalized disrespect, ineptitude and stupidity to which I'd be forced to acclimate in this world.  And I found it in nature's best source: Humor.  

Not the volatile or brazen insult kind of humor, much less the sociopathic grime of the immensely popular "Jerky Boys", or the smirking punk arrogance of Kevin Smith's beloved Clerks protagonists.  Like the figures cited earlier, I took my cue from such enlightened luminaries as the writers acquired discriminately by creator Norman Lear, in his efforts to use humor as a tool, to see our human flaws in the mirror before us, to "check us", in effect.  

To do that on a one-to-one basis in sardonic capacity however, is a dangerous knife-throwing act.  People at large, no matter how cynical you are about human intelligence, are still way smarter than you think.   And if you have any doubts about that, you're just the violence-embracing kid who's no better than his hallway harrassers.

My own deep-rooted sardonicism has rarely, if ever been used as a one-on-one weapon, with the exception of confrontations that might send others into some heated, self-defensive shouting match.  My defense, in contrast, has been that of polite, quiet and curious response, an unassuming padlock that only the intelligent stranger requiring his just desserts will detect the combination.

Somewhere along the line, maturing as I, and many have into a culture who's anthem has long been the revenge of the underdog, Michael Douglas in Falling Down, Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall, or maybe Charles Bronson in Death Wish, my prized recipe for personal-insight-humor-coated social balance lost it's eminence.  

At some predictable level, where the victims would out-populate the antagonists, youth violence would erupt nationwide, onto peers and others.  The desperate plea for a "kinder, gentler nation", the once-famously misguided mission statement famously coined by the war-abiding Republican George H.W. Bush, was now the outcry of a United States in siege.  A new renaissance of enlightenment was illuminating our despaired culture, imploring each and every individual to see not themselves exclusively, but the needs, wants, and deprivations of that creature before them, human, animal or otherwise.   Walking home one night, I let a scurrying waterbug cross my path.  I was too intimidated to squash him.  Or her.  It could have been a "her".

Sure enough, after years of enduring my own oppression, the still-no-less-than-oppressive culture now also saw fit to view themselves as eternally persecuted.  Translated into my social currency, this meant that any curiously kind, polite response I'd offer to anything that might otherwise be deemed inapproachable or objectionable by some would immediately be deemed viciously and inappropriately insulting.  In the most extreme circumstances, to meet a curt, or insidiously malicious comment with a most innocent "hey, thanks so much...." would meet with a departured "Don't talk to me like I'm a fucking idiot...!!!"  To respond with, "Well, I think you asked for it" would certainly, I'd find, be an insult to the both of us intellectually.  So, I'd just lumber off in silence, invisible trophy in arms.

That's the successful working version.  Trouble is, there's the unchecked, unperfected, dangerous version.  Still working on that, and I'm unfortunately not so sure the algorithm for success is in fact attainable.

The whole science here is based on nothing more or less than the science of human dynamics. But in lieu of the unapproachable factors, I have educated myself towards a few modifications, as my trunk has cultivated its rings of time.

For starters, humor is generally unwelcome as an approachable technique.  To try to institute yourself commonly as the brilliantly clever final box of a daily Doonesbury or Calvin & Hobbes strip, in the effort to provoke cluster-wide, situation-enlightened, irony-observant laughter is about as entertaining as "pretending" to be a knife-wielding, death-threatening Martin Sheen in The Incident.  An ungotten joke can be socially and interpersonally fatal.  You might have the urge to take pride in being "hipper than the room", until one day you realize:  There's actually in fact no room hip enough for you, except the one you're in all alone.  Is that where you want to spend your life..?

Have you ever watched Star Trek: Voyager..? Since I'm no enthusiast of the genre, I never would, until my Trekkie-wife introduced me to the 11PM strip reruns years later.  It's magnificent.  For me, it's picked up where my teenage 11PM M*A*S*H viewing ritual left off.  Of all the Trek re-constitutions over time, I'd put this one on top, and not for it's related sci-fi association.  With it's stellar cast and writing, it's primarily about interpersonal experiences, trust, emotion, betrayal.  All the things that make us the human machines we are. Nothing says it better than Jeri Ryan's brilliant portrayal of the ice-cold, stoic Seven Of Nine trying a concerted effort at embracing humanity. There's a reason a show like this remains popular well beyond the Trekkies in the living room.  It's about the struggle of every human to relate properly to one another and themselves.

I could easily define myself over time as "Vulcan", but they're just not as complicated as us desperate and confused humans.  They're relatively comfortable in their emotional isolation.  No chance of that here.  Weaponry becomes necessary, and for those in this category, it's a matter of intellectual cynicism, sardonicism, and overall incomprehensibility.  My response to that meme was the most truthful self-assessment I've admitted in years.  To myself.

In the effort to follow Seven Of Nine's admirable intentions, I've in fact sought to consciously ditch the crutch ironic-commentary humor, and respond to people and situations with merely direct and sincere straight answers.  No smackdown punch lines are needed to make my way into a room filled with private jokes.  No need to slather on some artificial Peter Brady-esque "Ya like my new personality..??" charm.  Expression of kindness and concern is always best and universally embraced before anything.  The late, great Edith Bunker in her lifetime was never known for making instant enemies.

Discriminating fiction consumer that I am, one of the few contemporary pieces of work I've treasured remains Caren Lissner's Carrie Pilby, a first-person narrative I would embrace as a cautious mirror.  Carrie is a somewhat mis-placed young woman of nineteen, on the borderline between guarded youth and accelerated adulthood, in a struggle to break her force field of life-long cultivated distrust against others, to begin the process of her only option on Earth: relating to others.  As with the best fiction, it's a treasure to know that you're one of the few, and probably the many so well and articulately understood by the author. Lissner's Carrie did it.  On a less intensive, and more elusive level, so can I.

And at the same time, human science being what it is, like a dramatist clueless on the roar that line got, I'll see my innate humor appreciated when I expect it the least.  Like when somebody mentions something miserable, with no possilble rejoinder but silence, and I'll bravely chirp, glaring out the window......."Nice day out, though..." That once met with a quiet individual's hearty, startling, explosive laugh and a handshake .  "You're somethin' else, man...!", and we'd part.   And I'd walk off, quietly but with pride, knowing I brought someone some momentary joy and comfort, in a way no one could.   I'd like to think that's what I'm really here for.

Noah F.