Merlin

I’m delighted to see that season four of Merlin is making good on the promise of the show.

I love the Arthurian tales. Their telling is like pizza — good, even when it’s bad. Not that there’s anything wrong with the first three seasons — on the contrary, there is much there to love and admire.

But toward the end of the third season, the show really seemed to find its legs with the coming together of the round table. No doubt the good people who bring us the series realized they have a hit on their hands.

Now the story is going from strength to strength — with verve, sweep, and romance … and magic!

Good for them. Good for us.

____________

PS,

O, drat — they’ve cancelled the series.

____________

 Merlin @ BBC 1

A Glorious ‘Hobbit’

I loved it. I wondered how Peter Jackson would make the book into a trilogy.

Well, he embellished the tale — lovingly, brilliantly.

The Hobbit is great fun — exciting, suspenseful, funny. Just right.

I don’t know what so many people were kvetching about — don’t much care. It all seems like so much sophomoric fault-finding, compared to the beautiful, sweeping story up there on the screen.

Gym Rats, 2

 

 

Another little boy took his life here in Iowa the other day. He’d been bullied for being gay.

Why does this happen? As we might have learned from Kinsey — or Kurt Cobain — everyone is gay, to one degree or another.

I’m obviously not the handsomest guy who ever walked the earth, but I have been involved in strength training for 30 years. And I can tell you, based on direct experience, that what Kinsey said was true.

In the course of working out, it’s been my privilege to know thousands of truly terrific people. Among them, there have been about a dozen who were seriously good-looking, virile as hell, naturally athletic, and popular with everyone … and who hit on me.

Guys you’d never guess in a million years. Why me? I was nowhere near their league. Well, I used to work as a counselor and learned long ago that simply accepting people as God made them goes a long way toward helping them out along the road. Plus, I’m a writer, and when people trust you to not put their business on the street, well … That’s how you get to hear the really good stuff.

I’ll get around to that, later. First, a little lesson in simple metaphysics.

Everyone knows the classic Taoist emblem depicting yin and yang — symbolizing the fluid balance of all dualities, including masculine and feminine, where each is present in the heart of the other — and that is the nature of things.

In the West, we have long been trained to fear and hate what is perfectly natural and always present in the center of our being. No good can come of it when we hate any part of ourselves, much less the deep infinite sea of eros — and so we see violence against others and children taking their lives before their lives have scarcely begun.

We need to learn to love and understand ourselves better. Like the little boy in the Eudora Welty story, many among us have swallowed the lie, and it’s killing our kids.

Game of Thrones

There is a wealth of good things to be said about Game of Thrones, the terrific series on HBO, easily the most grownup sword & sorcery epic I’ve ever seen.

Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, is at the top of my list. He’s a generous actor, but his instincts, intelligence and gift for invention make it impossible to take your eyes off him.

Fascism TV

I have nothing against cops on TV, per se. Like many others, I think The Wire was one of the best offerings in the history of television. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed Without a Trace, Law & Order and CSI. My new fave rave is Justified.

That said, I’m increasingly tired of the whole genre. It’s gone way beyond the saturation point. In recent years we’ve had The Shield, The Academy, Cold Case, and Flashpoint. Today, we have The Closer, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Hawaii Five-O, Prime Suspect and multiple clones of Law & Order and CSI. We have NCIS and now NCIS: LA.

It gets better. Tuesday nights on CBS, all of prime time is dedicated to cop shows. Last week, I had a gander at the ironically titled Unforgettable. It’s about a beautiful woman cop who never forgets anything. It’s a predictable procedural, but with a twist. In this episode, she tells a bunch of activists to go ‘camp out in the park, knock yourselves out.’ You could cut the sneering condescension with an axe.

Friday night, confronted with a vast wasteland, I had a peek at CSI: New York, which is typically all too forgettable, and with no twist in sight. We find a noble cop talking with his adorable girlfriend. It’s an intimate morning-after scene and all very affectionate — right up to the point where she makes a smirking reference to some “sexually ambiguous” person of interest.

In the cop show called Person of Interest, we recently had the computer-savvy-nerd half of a vigilante team make an approving remark about fracking.

You get the picture.

Gym Rats

I am not a whore. I’m a writer.

To be sure, there are those who will say that this is to split hairs, but no — sorry to disappoint — the truth is otherwise. I’ve done my share of fooling around, but no money and no favors have ever changed hands. No, never, not ever.

Whereas I am involved in a deal with a good publisher concerning a science book, bearing on my original research in the foundations of quantum theory. You can look it up.

Why do I protest? I find myself in a truly ridiculous predicament. Lately, when out and about, running my errands, I have been accosted by unruly persons who shout out “whore!” while I pass by, thus derailing my train of thought and otherwise disturbing my usual equanimity.

Now, as anyone who knows me can readily assure you, this accusation is wholly bogus and utterly absurd. I’m old enough to be the grandfather of the college students who typically (you should pardon the expression) abuse me.

Why is this happening, then? You might well ask.

One need not look far for reasons. I’ve been lifting weights, watching what I eat, and generally taking good care of myself ever since my late 20s. All by way of saying I’ve got it going on, as I believe one says these days — at least, below the neck. My face remains goofy-looking, but seems to enjoy a halo effect, courtesy of the bod. The evidence? For years, now, I’ve done better by a lot of people who are quite arguably out of my league.

The other thing is, people see me walking around downtown, to all appearances unoccupied, and, on the basis of no real information, seem inclined to assume the worst. O, happy day.

And that’s it. Yes, a number of “working men” are bodybuilders, but the vast majority of weight-lifters are not “professionals.” Far more often they are poor schlubs like me, working through their insecurities.

But I thought it best to set the record straight. Then it hit me — for a long while, now, I’ve been meaning to write a series of stories about the many remarkable characters, colloquially known as “athletes,” whom I’ve met in the course of working out. People I would have feared and rejected as alien and intimidating, long ago in my bookish, neurotic youth, but whom I came to love and admire and even help along their way. The truth is, you see, in any other time or place I would have been the village healer or something of the kind. And that’s far more fascinating than simple sex, for as Jung tells us, the unconscious, at bottom, is God.

I’ve put off this little writing project for years. Now it seems to me I needed an inciting incident, a place to plant a seed.

#OWS Highlights Authoritarian Police

Allison Kilkenny on December 18, 2011 – 10:47am ET

A funny thing happens when one uses the term “police state” to describe behavior by authorities in response to the Occupy protests.

Free Speech Zones

In late November, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released a midnight press release in anticipation of a raid on Occupy LA, which included this line: “During the park closure, a First Amendment area will remain open on the Spring Street City Hall steps.” The absurdity of that statement should be immediately apparent to anyone who understands how real journalism works. Good reporters don’t obediently stand in a “First Amendment area,” deliberately placed far away from the heart of the story. Reporters need to be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with protesters, precisely so they can witness how the police interact with them.

Earlier in the month, journalist Josh Harkinson reported on being alerted to the existence of something called the “frozen zone” when he attempted to cover the eviction of Zuccotti.

A white-shirted officer moved in with a bullhorn. “If you don’t leave the park you are subject to arrest. Now is your opportunity to leave the park.”

Nobody budged. As a lone drum pounded, I climbed up on the wall to get a better view.

“Can I help you?” an burly officer asked me, his helpfulness belied by his scowl.

“I’m a reporter,” I told him.

“This is a frozen zone, all right?” he said, using a term I’d never heard before. “Just like them, you have to leave the area. If you do not, you will be subject to arrest.”

…

He grabbed my arm and began dragging me off. My shoes skidded across the park’s slimy granite floor. All around me, zip-cuffed occupiers writhed on the ground beneath a fog of chemicals.

“I just want to witness what is going on here,” I yelped.

“You can witness it with the rest of the press,” he said. Which, of course, meant not witnessing it.

“Why are you excluding the press from observing this?” I asked.

“Because this is a frozen zone. It’s a police action going on. You could be injured.”

His meaning was clear. I let myself be hustled across the street to the press pen.

“What’s your name?”

His reply came as fast as he could turn away: “Watch your back.”