The Lights over Dillon

OK, it's an obsession. It truly is.

I've just finished (re) watching the last season of Friday Night Lights.  And as usual at the end of it, I feel my heart breaking just a little.

I feel such a sense of loss every time I watch the last season of this show, the same kind of loss you feel at the big changing moments of your life, going off to college, moving to a new place, embarking on marriage.  While you are excited about the future and what lies ahead, part of you wants to stay wrapped up in your former life forever.

It's bittersweet.

In an earlier post I tried to explain a little bit about why it is that I am so drawn to Friday Night Lights.  I am telling you, if you haven't seen this show, GET THE DVDs, you don't want to miss this.  I don't know when I have ever been so moved by a TV show, so much that it permeates my thoughts for hours or even days after I watch it.

I loved the Sopranos and continue to love Mad Men  and like those series, Friday Night Lights is more than just good tv, it's resonating TV.   I saw little bits of  myself in people like Carmela, Charmaine Bucco and even the mercurial Janice Soprano.  In Mad Men I kind of identify with Peggy and I definitely see myself (and my mother) in women like Betty Draper or Rachel Menkin.  But on FNL I don't particularly see myself in any of the characters, but because it takes place in a small town and I went to high school in a small town, because the characters are so real, because the show exemplifies a real community, one where covered dishes are an every day occurrence, one where life is bookended by Church and high school sports and activities, a town where people are defined firstly by what role they play in the town and finally by whether they are getting out or staying and what that all means, I am reminded of California, Pennsylvania, the town where I lived during my high school years.

There are a lot of things to love about this series, the football, the characters, the marriage of Coach and Tami, Coach's mentoring of his players, Taylor Kitsch with his shirt off, Julie and Matt's young love, but what I think I love the most about it is that each character faces real hardship, each character makes mistakes and a lot of the times, they don't get their happy ending but they are all striving to be better people.

There's nothing more uplifting and beautiful than that, which is probably why, even after multiple viewings I cannot get through an episode dry eyed.

Here are just a few of my favorite moments:

• "Let's touch G-d this time boys"  Season 1, Episode 1.  The pilot is perfect.  It sets the stage for the whole rest of season 1 but also introduces us to Dillon and the multi layers of the town and its characters.  Of course the tragedy befalling Jason Street soon takes center stage. But in this moment, hanging out before the big game, Riggins so beautifully shows us what football means in Dillon and how G-d and football are almost one.  We also hear Riggins utter "Texas Forever" for the first time. You can see it here.

• "Champions Don't Complain!" Season 1, Episode 3, Wind Sprints.  The team, falling apart after Jason's injury begins to splinter and they lose focus and their second game of the season.  Coach, frustrated, rouses them in the night, puts them on a bus and makes them run uphill and down in the pouring thigh-high rains while he yells at them about how champions don't give up, how they give 200%.  The beauty of the moment is when the players, exhausted, begin to come together,  led by Smash Williams in Coach Taylor's mantra "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" and how in that very moment, this group of exhausted young men are once again a team moving full speed ahead.  

• "Everybody leaves me, What's wrong with me?"  Season 2, Episode 14, Leave No One Behind.    Season 2 was rhe low water mark for the series, mostly due to one poorly chosen storyline.  But this episode stands out to me.  Matt Saracen, in an uncharacteristic tailspin, gives up trying and adopts the philosophy of teammate Tim Riggins, skipping school, drinking and not caring about anything.  Coach, frustrated with what he is seeing throws him into a cold shower and starts yelling at him, telling him to get his head out of his ass and start making good decisions.  Matt, totally spent, asks the Coach what is wrong with him because everyone in his life (his parents, the coach and his girlfriends) have all left him.  Coach, once again struck by all that his young Quarterback has had to deal with in his life is so moved, he can only mutter, "Nothing at all."  Many people feel that Zach Taylor's finest hour on FNL is later in season 4 when his dad dies, and he is great there too, but this one really did it to me.  

• "3 years ago I had enough hate in my heart to start a frickin' car!"  Season 3, Episode 12, Underdogs.  I love this entire episode but this scene between Tyra and Landry is my favorite.  On the way to State, Landry is trying to help Tyra organize her thoughts for her college essay.  Tyra, the first in her family to go to college, is trying to write an essay which will put her over the top and prove to herself that she is more than just another Dillon girl bound to choose bad men and questionable  jobs.  She makes a couple of attempts at an essay but they sound canned and on the drive to State with Landry, out of ideas and frustrated she mentions how her life has changed over the past 3 years, how Jason Street's paralysis showed her that everybody has to deal with difficulty in their lives and that she could choose another life for herself.  Later in the episode comes her college essay which is touching and beautiful.  I think more than any other character in the series, I have rooted for Tyra Collette the hardest, she truly against so many odds, changed her life.  

• "I can't want it for you."  Season 3, Episode 1, I Knew You When.  We begin season 3 seeing Smash again losing another college scholarship due to an injury sustained during the last season's playoffs.  Smash, the player with the most promising future (although we don't know what happened with Vince) has had mishap after mishap stand in his way, many of them brought on by his own foolishness, ego and hotheadedness.  Under it all though Smash is a good kid, and like a lot of other kids just sometimes makes bad decisions.  In this episode though, an injury has dampened his hopes of ever realizing his dreams, he has resigned himself to working at the Alamo Freeze and has given up, saying his knee will never be what is used to be, so he is finished.  As for Coach, feeling also a little down in the mouth after losing the playoffs, his new team for the year not exactly jelling, Buddy Garrity, yet again threatening his job if he doesn't find a way to win and his wife Tami, deflated after she realizes that her new job of Principal is more about budgets than helping students.  He goes to Smash after his first game and takes him to play raquetball "the whitest sport in history" and tells him that he will do everything possible for him to get him playing football again.  Smash asks him why he is so important to him and he answers truthfully, "I need something good to happen." and promises him that he will help get him his scholarship and won't stop until he gets him there, but he tells Smash, he has to want it.  

• "It's in the tryin" Season 5, Episode 3, The Right Hand of the Father.  Vince is struggling with his father's return to prison and what that means for him and his mom.  His dad a former drug dealer has vowed to make a clean start with Vince's mom and she wants to forgive him and be a family.  Vince's anger at his dad and his fears about what being a family might mean are causing him to make mistakes both on and off the field.  Coach, angry at Vince for walking away from a community event, calls him in his office and gives him what for and tries to get at what is going on with him.  Vince at first responds with anger, questioning Coach's decisions, telling him the standards he is trying to set for the team are stupid.  Coach reminds him of just how far he has come, and how honor is tied up with trying to build character and be a better person.  Vince breaks down and tells him he doesn't know how to be better, because he didn't have a father to show him.  Coach gently explains to his star quarterback that character isn't about being the best person there is, it's about striving to be a better person, that it is in the trying.  One of the best Coach/Player moments of the series. 

There are so many other wonderful moments and I realize that the moments above didn't even include one Tami Taylor moment and she is so wonderful too, as are the rest of the inhabitants of Dillon.  

Watch this show.  It will move you.  

Life Imitating Reruns

I blame AMC.

If they didn't make such good television series, ones where I can hardly wait the period of the hiatus for new episodes to hit the airwaves, where I comb all manner of episode/series reviews and want to dissect every angle of the show and where I re-watch episodes and seasons just to look at plotlines and characters from a different perspective.

So, this is my story with Mad Men (and a few other shows, what can I say I am a TV junky, and no, I don't need a support group, thanks).

I am not going to bend your ears about how great this series is, most people know that already, but lately, in the Christmas/New Years vacation, when I have been home more than I have been working, and there is nothing new or fresh on tv, I have again, in anticipation for the Mad Men's  5th season which will premiere this spring, I have started re-watching Mad Men.

And in light of what is going on in the United States right now, the good folks at Sterling Cooper (or Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce, depending on what episodes you are actually watching) are enlightening.

These folks are decidedly Republicans, the entire first season takes place in the backdrop of the Nixon/Kennedy race and it was (or maybe still is) just not fashionable in the world that Mad Men takes place in to be anything but a Republican.  The few liberal types you see in the series are poor, often intellectual types but on-the-fringes type people, without stability while the advertising and other executives are firmly on the GOP side of the aisle and live in beautiful apartments with spectacular views, eating at Lutesse, wearing the good clothes and hairstyles and driving Cadillacs (no, Mad Men is not about Aluminum siding salesmen or Jews).

There are so many great things about this show but one of the greatest things is how accurately it portrays this era of America.  The pre-Vietnam America of the early-mid 1960's.

The pre-politically correct America.

On Mad Men women still get chased around the desk (pretty regularly), are relegated mostly to being secretaries (and ergo, looking for husbands), the few that do the same work as men, earn decidedly less.  The other women are privileged housewives.  They have to take care of the house and the kids in the suburbs and don't get any help from their husbands, but then again their husbands earn all the money and keep them in country clubs, riding lessons and dresses, oh, the dresses!    



And yes, the nostalgia of the show is very powerful.  Revisiting that era in time stirs me.  Being born in 1965, the America that Mad Men shows takes place largely in the few years before I was born but much of it is my era.  I hail from Washington, PA and it always took a few years for things to reach Washington, PA from Madison Avenue anyway.  My mom spent her days having coffee with her friends, smoking cigarettes and on selected evenings playing cards or mahjong or going out.  Let's face it the era that Mad Men takes place is is pre-Vietnam America (at least so far).  We were a younger and more innocent America then.  Wars were terrible but we were always the good guys, fighting for freedom, ours and the world's.  I enjoy watching that more naive America.


Mad Men in many ways is a chronicle of how much we have really changed as a society in the half century since the early 1960's,  It's shocking to see the amount people actually smoked and drank in that era.  And I have cringed several times when I see pregnant women downing cocktails and puffing on their cigs.  The racial and gender slurs are sometimes downright eye popping.  In the very first episode of the series, one of the first exchanges was about how they don't hire Jews, where the lead character Don Draper, when asked by his boss if he has ever hired a Jew retorted, "not on my watch."   Later in the series one of the executives, looking for ideas to help a client whose sales are flat, suggests to said client to advertise in African American magazines. This client, recognized it was a good idea but very forcefully refused to do it.  One particular scene, less loaded perhaps but really illustrates the point well is a scene where the Draper's are enjoying an idyllic day having a family picnic.  They play checkers and cuddle on a blanket and when it is time to go, they pack their coolers in the car and they pick up their blanket and shake it out and napkins, paper plates and food remnants go flying all over the grass, they grab the blanket and take off, without a care in the world.  You forget that once, that was perfectly normal, no one even thought twice about it.

And one of my favorite scenes ever is when little Sally Draper playing Spaceman with her friends comes running into the kitchen with a dry cleaning bag over her head and her mother yells at her, worried that something happened to the dry cleaning.  


Yes, a lot has changed since the 1960's.


Another thing which I think what is so fascinating about Mad Men and keeps me watching it over and over is how the values shown in it, which are terribly American were portrayed then and how those same values now are looked at in a totally different light now.  Mad Men is certainly focused on acquiring (or maintaining) wealth and privilege.  Money opens doors and doing anything to go after a buck is not only done but heralded in the America of Mad Men.  Now a half century later, with the American and world economy holding on by a thread, those same values of pushing boundaries to turn profits is what is wrong with America.

Sure I am looking at it very simply but I do think there is a lot of truth to that.    So many Americans I know are truly discouraged with where America is and terrified of where it is going (and I am too).  We love to blame the media, Fox News, the economy, Bush, Obama (depending on what side of the proverbial aisle you sit on), the terrorists, global warming, lack of term limits, Congress, campaign financing, lobbyists and a whole host of other things.  And so many people say things were better in decades past, people were better, more moral, more compassionate toward their fellow man.  People and corporations weren't so cutthroat.

Re-watching Mad Men in my disillusionment-with-America-state has helped me to realize that maybe not so much has changed.  Many of the things/institutions Americans hold responsible for our current state of the nation are not new to our current era.  They have been that way since America was born, maybe just a little more technologically savvy and people have more access to the information, but it happened.  It's business as usual.  The difference now is that the economy is in the dumper and the economy, prosperity and upward mobility are America's real measuring sticks for how we are doing as a nation.  In the 1960's world that Mad Men inhabits, corporations were just as despicable as they are now, but there was  more economic prosperity, so people weren't focused on it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Summer Hiatus and Days Gone By

I blame Mad Men!

If AMC and Matthew Weiner would have gotten off their keisters and settled their differences earlier, I would be spending my summer all totally ensconced in Mad Men, and fantasizing about aqua net hair, games of bridge and Vodka Gimlets.  But since they had to drag it out, I have no such summer obsession (and for some reason I am in no mood to start watching a new show) so I am stuck with a summer of reruns.

Current on my hit list is rewatching the first and second seasons of Parenthood.  This show always holds something special for me because one of their main characters is a family that is dealing with having an autistic child.  As I have stated in other posts, this situation is portrayed with a lot of sensitivity and realism and they really go into a lot of the many faceted issues that parents with kids on the spectrum face.  Dealing with the diagnosis, finding the right schools and therapies, dealing with tantrums, dealing with well-meaning but judgmental relatives, dealing with the loss of a favorite teacher or therapist, the loneliness that parents feel when they can't connect with their children.  It's all done very realistically and sensitively, well except for the part that money never seems to be an issue.  A school which costs twice as much as other private schools, therapists which seem to spend enormous amounts of time are easily arranged, but other than that it is quite a realistic reflection of dealing with a child on the spectrum.

Besides that though I love this show.  The acting and writing are great, it is zippy but not too trendy.  But mostly what I love about this show is the family dynamic.  I love the Bravermans and I always loved the film Parenthood as well.  The family in the movie (they were called the Buckmans) had some similarities with their tv counterparts but they are not exactly the same, they are a bit more updated and maybe just slightly less stereotypical.  I love that there are often big and little family get togethers and that the whole family comes out when one of the kids is in a play, has a baseball game, is hurt and in the hospital or at some other school event.  I like that all the characters make mistakes, get angry at each other and on the one hand love each other unconditionally but don't always agree or like the choices that the others make.

I think I love Parenthood because the family seems somehow more real than in other family series, like Brothers and Sisters, which I watched for a couple of years but couldn't deal with Calista Flockheart anymore  (am I the only person out there that didn't like Ally McBeal (John Cage notwithstanding)?

But I think the real reason I love it is because Parenthood brings me back to my own extended family.  Growing up we were very close to my dad's sister and her family.  There were 7 grandchildren in our family and we were more like brothers and sisters than cousins.  We went to school together, we were friends, we hung out together.  We liked each other, we got each other.  We spent every Sunday at my grandparents' house, the whole family.  Boys watching sports, girls watching romantic movies or cartoons in the bedroom.  Kids running all over the house.  My grandmother cooking for us all.  We always ate steaks on Sunday at her house, Delmonico Steaks and her homemade french fries.  And her salad, which is my go to salad today, made only with classic vinaigrette put at the bottom of the bowl ahead of the salad.   I can still remember the little salad bowls she served it in, clear glass with turquoise design (G-d how I wish I had kept those bowls).  Nearly everyone that walks through our door and has dinner with us compliments me on my salad.  Each time, I say thank you and then glance upward in the dining room above the table, where I have my collection of old family photos, some nearly a century old now, that my grandmother lovingly carried with her from her childhood home to America (and all the stops in between).  I always look up there at her photo and give her a little wink. I realize several decades later that my grandmother, Meme was recreating that classic French dish, steak frites and  somehow reconnecting to her infused French culture which she loved every single Sunday.  I always marveled at how Meme could make steaks for 12 people (Pepe, my grandfather ate chicken, giving up red meat way before it was fashionable) so effortlessly and they all came out hot from her broiler at the same time (I have no idea how she did that).  I never serve steaks for more than 4 people unless I use the grill and even then it is a challenge.

After dinner the conversations with our parents and my grandfather always seemed to get more passionate.  There was a lot of politics and history spoken about in our presence and although as a kid I didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about, I used to love to curl up on the couch next to my dad and listen while he had his arm around me, safe in a world of brocade couches and velvet armchairs, of limoges miniatures and books and newspapers that were strewn around my grandfather's chair, a world that smelled like lemon pledge, mixed with chicken soup and the slightest hint of Chanel No. 5.  A smell which I, when feeling lonely try to recreate in my own house.

My family were not the types who came to a lot of our school events.  Our parents were too into their own stuff to really think about our stuff too much.  I was always sad that I didn't attend more of my brother Gary's swim meets.  He was an amazing swimmer who set all kinds of records in high school as a sophomore.  In 1975 we moved to Miami because my dad got a job as a professor at one of the Universities there and so we had to move.  Gary was the most heartbroken of us all over that.  He had a lot of friends and he was the top swimmer in the area.  I remember on his first day of swim practice in Miami he came home upset because he was no longer number 1, he came home saying that the girls swam faster than he did.  But he worked his butt off and set records in South Florida too.  I wish my parents and I had been there to see that more often.  But they weren't focused on it.  They also didn't come to see me when I had one of the lead roles in my senior class play.  I remember on the opening night being almost afraid to go on.  The play (which was a stupid play called The Clumsy Custard Horror Show and Ice Cream Clone Review).  I played the part of the narrarator and the play opened with a shot of me on the stage under a spotlight.  I was terrified and 10 minutes before curtain said I couldn't go on.  Everyone thought it was stage fright and reassured me that I would be great.  But I was really freaked that all the other kids' families were out there and mine wasn't.  I was already the Jewish kid, the kid with divorced parents who lived with her dad in a little town in Southwestern Pennsylvania where everyone around me lived in the same town, neighborhood or house for generations.  I basically walked around high school, a time when it is so hard to be different,  with a neon huge sandwich board that said I don't fit in.  Then to have the lead in the play and not have anyone in the audience for me?  I was devastated.  The opening night of the play fell on a night when my dad had a night class and it probably never even occurred to him to cancel class for the evening.  Like I said these things were not a big deal in our family.  Somehow I got myself together and got out on the stage.  I said my opening monologue and got through it.  During intermission I peered out into the audience and in the very back I saw my grandmother sitting, in a navy suit with a navy and yellow silk scarf and her matching shoes and handbag and my grandfather standing silently next to her.  After the curtain calls they were gone but I was so surprised and happy to see them there for me, that it made me happy for days thinking of them, these little Jewish people, with their Yiddish accents, coming to a school in a town full of coal miners and college professors, the distance from their world to California, PA was galaxies but they made that trip for me.  They stood out like, um, er Jewish people in Appalachia.   It was the first time I really ever thought about how much they loved me and the rest of their grandchildren and what we meant to them.  I love them for that and so many other reasons.

So maybe we aren't exactly the Bravermans, but I know that when I do watch that show, I have one eye on them and one eye back in Washington, Pennsylvania, being at Meme's, sitting on her sofa with my dad, my aunt and uncle and cousins, all of us squeezed together.

I think I need to find a vodka gimlet recipe?  Who's in?

Guest Blogging Today

Today I am Guest Blogging over at Couchtime with Jill.  Jill is a fantastic blogger who reviews TV shows with a lot of insight, humor and depth.  I started watching many shows based on her recommendations and no TV show that I watch and she reviews is complete until after I have read (and likely commented on) her review.

So, today, instead of posting about autism, waxing on about my daughter's achievements or ranting about politics or Dutch society, instead I am a pop culture vulture.

Check it out!

Will Don Draper have an iPad 2?

Just when you thought, ugggh another post on autism, I totally shift gears and go to my other obsession, TV.

This time?  Mad Men.  And no they haven't just introduced an autistic telephone repairman on Mad Men.  Don't forget the show takes place in the 1960's -- autistic people are institutionalized.

Today the Internet is swelling with stories of our favorite ad-men and the women who pretend like their husbands don't cheat.  Apparently the 5th season of Mad Men has been green lighted although negotiations with the head honcho (the show runner) are still ongoing.  On the table, a 30 million dollar pay day and some other demands.  The Blogosphere can sum up the issues better than I can but apparently the sticking points are 3 (a shorter episode, to allow for more ads, getting rid of a couple of characters (please not Joan, Sally Draper,  the-soon-to-be-the-second-Mrs-Draper, Pete Campbell, Roger Sterling or the old dude but you can have Henry Francis) and the third is that they want to have product placement within the show (to be able to make more money).

Certainly there are products which exist today that could be used on Mad Men but I don't see a whole lot of opportunities because many products which are used are not in fashion anymore. They already give us Coke (or is it Pepsi), tons of booze, Lucky Strike. Mad Men certainly can't be the product royalty heaven that shows that take place in the present day can be and cannot even touch the 4 hours of truly painful movie storytelling that are the Sex and the City movies which are let's face it, one very long advertisement for anything and everything.  It's not like they can show a woman scrubbing a floor on her hands and knees using Mr. Clean or whatever, I guess they could but Betty (or more rightly her housekeeper Carla) doesn't have a Swiffer or a vacuum cleaner with GPS and women today don't scrub floors on their hands or knees (and if you can find a cleaning woman who will, please, whatever you do give her my number).  Sure booze they can do (but then I am quite sure MADD will get all up in their stuff promoting drinking and driving and the petitions will fly.  It's not like zillions of American women are going to watch Betty Draper, cig in hand,  reading directions on how to make Jello off a box of Jello and that Jello is going to be the new go-to-dessert.  Maybe in one of Don's drunken hazes, he will fantasize about Joan sauntering into Wegman's seafood bar.  Oh, wait Wegmans doesn't serve hard liquor.  Maybe she will travel in a time machine then to buy her Swanson tv dinner and a Yoo-hoo (she's pregnant remember).

More brilliant minds than me can probably envision and it, but I find it hard to believe that Mad Men of all shows is pulsating with gajillion-dollar-opportunities for product placement.  Certainly they have the viewership but considering that even margarine was a rarity in those days I find it hard to believe that there is a multitude of product placement opportunity in that show.

Come on now AMC and anyone and everyone else involved with getting this show on the air, stop being so damn greedy, be happy with the tons of advertisers you have, DVD sales and the rest of it and give us Don Draper back!

Although they have announced the fifth season the deal has not been inked yet.  How ironic would it be if Mad Men didn't go forward due to advertising?

California Dreamin'

California, PA, along the Monongahela River

I know, I know not a very original title, but so it is.


I have been thinking a lot about high school recently.  My reason?  I think it is Friday Night Lights' fault.  I started watching this series in December after avoiding it for many years.  Why?  It's about football and I am so not into sports at all (Steeler Superbowls notwithstanding).  The show is so not about football.  I became addicted to the show and stayed up until all hours watching it, like a good book not being able to put it down, just one more, one more, one more until pretty soon it is 3AM and I have to get up in three hours.  I love the characters and of course, as I always kid Leo, I love watching young guys in tights.  I also love that this show takes place in some crazy fictional parallel universe that is not all that affected by the 24-hour news as entertainment cycle, the society of celebrity and mass consumerism. It takes place in a small town, where small town values are still alive and well, where just as many people dream to get out as desire to stay.  It very much reminds me of California, Pennsylvania, the town where I spent my high school years and that I called home from 1979-1994.


Unlike a lot of the people of Cal, I did not have strong family roots there but moved there in 1979 when my parents were going through their divorce.  Determined to make a new life for us, my dad found a teaching job at the college, now the university and after spending many months looking for a house, we settled on the town of California.  I was familiar with the town, since our family had a furniture store that in town for many years.  My father's roots trace him from France to nearby Fredericktown, just a stretch down the river from California where he was a graduate of East Bethlehem High School (now Beth Center).  When I was very young my dad ran the California store and we would often visit him there on Friday evenings when the store was open later and then we would eat dinner in "The Acropolis" restaurant in town.  My dad ate lunch there most days and the family knew us very well.


When my dad got a teaching job at the college we looked at different places to live, originally my dad wanted a piece of land and we looked at some beautiful houses where my dad promised to put in a pool.  Finally though after looking at a lot of houses we settled on a house in California, in what was called The Harris Plan. I loved the house, but visions of rolling out of bed in summer to the pool faded since our yard wasn't really big enough for a pool.  We decided on that since my dad, as a single parent, who sometimes had to teach night classes, felt safer in this pre-cellphone world if I lived in a house with neighbors close by rather than out in the countryside isolated.  We looked at a few houses in the Harris Plan and settled on our house at 201 Skyline Drive.  I was 13 years old, on the verge of adolescence and struggling with my parents' divorce and my own relationship with my mom which at the time was difficult.  We were both reeling from the divorce in our own way and although I had chosen to live with my dad, it didn't end great with her and our relationship in those years was sporadic and tense.


I was initially kind of bummed out about moving to California.  Our life (save for the 3 years we lived in Miami) had been in Washington, PA.  My grandparents, aunts and cousins were close by and I knew all the kids there.  It was home to me at the time, so while I was happy to be moving out of our cramped little apartment my dad rented during the separation there was a big part of me that was not very happy to have to start over again in another new place.  Although Washington was only 25 minutes away he wanted to live fairly close to the college, without the commute meant that my dad could try to make his schedule so that I wasn't a latch key kid, only seeing him at the end of hte day.  When I was in high school he often started classes in the morning and then was home when I got home from school and one evening per week he taught night classes, so that most days he was home either when I got home from school or shortly after I arrived.  We ate dinner together every evening and a lot of the time I did homework while he prepared his lectures and graded papers.


We moved in June 1979 and the very first day, moving day I was upstairs unpacking my room, the guys from the store had just left and the doorbell rang.  My dad got the door and I heard the sound of young voices at  from upstairs, I was sure they were selling Girl Scout Cookies but then my dad turned to me and smiled and said, "it's for you."  I went downstairs and my dad invited them in and they stood there in our foyer and were explaining to my dad that they had seen the trucks and they had already heard from the neighbors that there was a girl their age moving in so they came over to say hello and welcome me to the neighborhood.  They asked if I could come outside for a little while, I was shocked that they would come looking for me and without even knowing me ask me to hang out with them.  I looked at my dad and he gave me a look which said, go on.  So I walked outside with these girls.  We walked around the neighborhood, they showed me their houses and introduced me to people that we passed on the street and gave me their stories.  Day passed into dusk and we were still walking around, I was meeting people left and right.  By the end of the week we were fast friends and I felt like I had known them forever.  These girls, who were to become my best friends and although now several decades on we don't see each other or talk to each other very much, they are still in many ways the best friends I have ever had.  They adopted me, they accepted me without question and brought me into their world.  Their parents were extremely kind, sensitive and caring toward me.  There was no angle and in the entire 4 years of high school and in our college years, we never had a falling out.  They brought me into their group and we hung out, we played games, we studied together, had a zillion sleepovers, went shopping, we talked about boys, our parents, our lives, our dreams.  I had never made friends so easily or been accepted so wholeheartedly in my life.


California was so chock full of genuine people from all walks of life.  Although the entire Mon Valley at that time and for many decades before was driven by the steel industry and more particular for this area, the coal industry, we lived in a college town so there were also a lot of academic types around as well.  It was quite an eclectic mix of people, most of them old school.  They were though a real community.  When one hurt, everyone hurt.  It was the kind of town when someone was sick, someone came over with a covered dish.  Where weddings and other celebrations were done old school, not in fancy hotels or by chic caterers being herded about by wedding planners and Martha Stewart,  but in fire halls and elks lodges and where the women of the community would band together and cook the food and the entire town would attend.  Although my dad and I were outsiders and my dad, other than his professor friends with whom he would play poker with on weekends, my dad stuck a lot to himself an close to home when he wasn't working.  He had just ended a 20+ year marriage, was licking his wounds and he threw himself into his work.  He really enjoyed teaching and he was really good at it.  I used to love to watch him with his students.  When he had evening classes I would sometimes sit in for an hour or two.  Often in the evenings I swam at the college pool and then would go over and sit in on the second half of my dad's class.  I had no head for computer science but just used to like to watch him.  You could see that teaching energized him and chased away his demons which kept him up at night.  It was just beautiful to see his eyes sparkle when he was asked questions by his students.  On other evenings he manned the computer center or met with students.  I would meet him at the college, we'd go into town and have dinner at the Acropolis or at Alfanos or Saeli's, I would swim or go study at the library with friends and then I would meet him at the computer center and he would drive us home.


School was also a lot of fun and like in town, the people were largely interesting and very nice.  I did not receive a warm welcome from everyone though.  There were people who did not take to me, for what seemed to me to be no reason.  In particular there was a guy in my neighborhood a year older than me in high school, a jock who for some reason hated me on sight.  For some strange reason I dreamt about this guy last night, which is why he is on my mind now and I am bothering to write about this.  I still remember the first time I met him, he was good friends with one of my friends but even when he met me he did not say hello.  It went from total ignoring to cruelty very quickly.  He started throwing rocks at me at the bus stop and in the winter snow balls and he tried win other kids over to torment me as well.  I could be a mouthy girl and I am the first to admit that I can be an acquired taste but for the life of me I could never figure out what I did to this boy to make him hate me so much.  Our house was vandalized once where people wrote sexual expletives out in gasoline on our yard and I always suspected it was this boy but could never figure out why he would do such a thing.  The kicker was that his dad and my dad taught in the same department and I had told my dad about this boy and how he treated me.  He told me also that his dad was very cool toward him at work also for no reason.  Once we had an open house for my dad's department and their families and the entire depeartment showed up except this guy.  My dad  felt that anti semitism may have been the issue because there was just no other plausible explanation, particularly for this man's son to spew such hatred toward me.  I remember seeing him at a wedding about 10 years after graduation and he talked to me as if I was some old friend.  I never got up the nerve to ask him and I really just didn't care, but remember telling my boyfriend at the time, who was my date at the wedding that I was sure he must of thought I was someone else.  I had conflicts with other kids but there was always a reason for that, with this kid there really was nothing.  I had a big mouth and that did get me in trouble sometimes.  I have never been a person that people are tepid about, you either detest me or you love me and that was very true in high school.


  Although my central group of friends remained the girls in my neighborhood, I had a lot of other friends, some were friends that lasted throughout the entirety of high school and others that were friends just for a time.  I didn't fit into any one particular group.  My close girlfriends were cheerleaders, class presidents and NHS types and that wasn't really me, I did well in school but I didn't apply myself very much so I was honor roll but not more. I had friends from a lot of different circles and didn't fit squarely into any high school prototype.  I was too wild to be a goody-goody, too goody-goody to be wild.  While at times it was frustrating, mostly it left me with a very interesting group of friends and a fun high school experience.


Not everything was sunshine and roses in school, after all I was an adolescent and California was a place where a lot of people's parents went to our high school and grew up with everyone else's parents. In some ways, even though the town welcomed me, there were times when I really did feel like an outsider.  But they were very few.  Being Jewish in a small town also was not the easiest thing.  You can say a lot of things about Jews but we are mostly city folk.  There was one other Jewish family in town and I often got questions about being Jewish, most good natured but some not so good natured.  I also joked about it and made fun of myself for being Jewish so I think I also invited people's scrutiny to some extent.  I do think though that many people defined me by my Judaism.  It was different and many people had never been around Jews before.  In my yearbook, about 80% of the things people wrote to me refer to my being Jewish.  It certainly was on people's minds.  A low point was in my sophomore year when I came out of class to find someone had scratched a swastika on my locker.  At that age, I knew about the Holocaust but seemed very remote to me.  I knew a swastika was a bad thing but didn't realize how bad.  Still this was horribly upsetting, I broke down crying in the hall and when my friends finally convinced me to report it to the principal.  I went to speak to him and his initial reaction was not very concerned.  He gave me a "kids will be kids" type of response and told me to brush it off and go back to class and then my sorrow gave way to anger and I was screaming at him that he had to find out who did it and punish them.  He tried to get me to calm down but it was too late, I was totally irrational.  Finally he told me that if I didn't calm down he would paddle me.  I told him that my dad would wipe the floor with him if he touched me.  He said he was going to call my dad and have him come get me because I was going to be suspended for yelling at him.  I asked him, "are you going to do anything about the swastika or just suspend me?" He said he didn't need to do anything, he didn't know who did it, and what did I expect him to do?  I said I expected him to try and find out who did it and punish them or at least to make an announcement that this was unacceptable.  He said it was not my place to tell him what to do and if I didn't watch out he would make me keep that swastika'ed locker the whole school year.  He called my dad and told him to pick me up, that I was suspended for 2 days.  My dad came to the school and went to the principal's office and asked me to wait outside.  He came out 10 minutes later and asked me if I was okay.  I started crying and he hugged me and told me everything was going to be okay.  The principal was a total jerk but I wasn't suspended and we were going to leave school right now and go out for pizza and tomorrow when I came to school I would get a new locker and everything would be fine.  I found out later that my dad threatened to file a complaint with the school board and that he would mention the incident in our synagogue and he was quite sure that a reporter from the Washington Observer Reporter (one of the local newspapers) who was a member of the synagogue would be very interested in this story  I did not speak to the principal for the remainder of my two years there, and refused to shake his hand during graduation.


Despite those things though California was fun and these were isolated incidents.


I had my first teal romance in California too.  When I was a freshman, a senior boy developed a crush on me.  He was a nice guy and kind of shy and we had home ec together and we always joked around .  He asked me out which was surprising to me, I was only 14 and although I had one boyfriend before, it was total kids' stuff, a bunch of stolen glances and giggling to my girlfriends and a few kisses.  This boy in school used to write me letters and leave them in my locker at the end of the day.  Getting those letters was the high point of my day.  They were very sweet and romantic.  But to be honest, I was so young, very immature and pretty well messed up after my parents' divorce.  I did not know how to deal with the attention of a  boy.  I liked the attention and he was a very kind, sweet guy and even at my tender age, I could see that he saw through the very tough walls I built up around me to protect myself from hurt.  Still, I didn't know how to return his affection and was scared and so I strung him along.  He asked me to go to the prom with him and I just didn't know what to do. I wasn't allowed to date so I was afraid to ask my dad and I was so afraid of both being rejected by this boy and even more terrified of actually feeling something for him  that I just did nothing until the last moment and then turned him down.  When I was a senior I didn't go to the prom, I asked a few guys from school but was turned down, at the time I felt I probably deserved that for the way I strung this boy along.  I felt awful for doing that to him but just couldn't do anything else.  Even then though he was kind to me and really sweet but by summer time, just as I was feeling that I might be able to give it a chance, he grew tired of my games and said that he still really liked me but that we could never be more than friends.  Although I saw him less as high school went on, he was always very kind to me.  As an adult I had the opportunity to talk with him and apologize for doing what I did and for hurting his feelings.  He took it kindly and gracefully.  I was glad to learn a few years ago that he is very happily married.  Still, once in a while I get those letters out and they always bring a smile to my face.


I loved summers in California.  My girlfriends and I belonged to one of the local pools and we spent long summer days swimming and soaking up the sun (back when the sun was supposed to be healthy) and warm evening hanging around the neighborhood with the other kids, sitting on the curbs, talking, laughing and piling in kids cars to go to Dairy Queen.  When I was a bit older I made friends with some people who lived in nearby Roscoe and we spent a lot of those summers on the river, boating, water skiing, and swimming and evenings laying on boat docks seeing zillions of stars and lightening bugs talking about everything under the sun.


When I watch Friday Night Lights I am of course intrigued by the characters and the writing, which is really fabulous.  But I think what I like most about it is that even though the fictional Dillon, Texas and California, Pennsylvania are far apart geographically, there is so much about them that is similar.  I don't think I have ever met 'realer' people than I have in California.  Hard working, genuine, honest, G-d fearing people some of whom dreamed of nothing more than having a family and passing the years with their family, friends and neighbors, lives revolving around high school sports teams.  When I was in high school, very much like in Dillon, Texas, Friday nights were about football.  We didn't have a team as flashy or good as in Dillon but the football field was still full of flesh and blood people rooting their hearts out for their kids, grandkids and for their town.  Winters were about basketball and summers, baseball.  When I watch FNL, part of the appeal is that it takes me back to a simpler time in my life, a time when, even without knowing it then, I didn't have a care in the world, or as Neil Simon once wrote in one of his movies (I am paraphrasing), "I loved it for the most selfish reason of all, because I was young."


I am a city girl in my heart and unlike many others I didn't have roots in California.  My dad sold our house in '94 and I have only been back a few times since then.  My life post high school has taken me from Erie to State College to Tampa to Pittsburgh to Tel Aviv and finally to Amsterdam.  I have had a lot of adventures and via Facebook I have been able to reconnect with a lot of people in all those places, including California.  Even though I know small towns are not for me, I have always craved the city, with its endless possibilities, culture, anonymity and action and I know the city is where I belong.  Still, I am very glad to have had the experience of living in a small town as there is a sense of community, bonds and genuine-ness (I know it is not a word) that cannot be found in cities.  I am a better person for having lived in a small town.  


I am happy that even for a short time California, PA was my home and in some sense, it always will be.

Of Sling Boxes and Mad Men

Recently I became addicted to a new blog - Couchtime with Jill.  She is a self proclaimed TV enthusiast and she provides funny, insightful, thoughtful reviews to many tv shows.  Like me, she loves watching tv and based on her reviews, obviously gets something of value out of it, other than just a mindless whiling away of the hours, the days, the years.

Unfortunately this year I do not have the entire Christmas period off from work.  I have had the last few days off and am going into the office two days this week.  I usually find myself keeping myself pretty well shut in during this period, one to get a much needed break from work, and two I just like to putter around the house not doing a whole lot.  During the Christmas break though I usually engage myself with watching one or two series.   I must say that I usually find myself enjoying being shut in, wrapped up in comfy clothes, watching loads of movie and tv.  I usually "look" for a series to watch over this period and find myself completing a couple seasons of something.  This year I had Modern Family and Nurse Jackie in my sights but unfortunately  blew my load early (found them and watched them), some of what I found I loved so much that I will most likely watch it again, or just mix and match some favorite episodes from some good shows.  I still have season 1 of Friday Night Lights and Damages, although while I know I will like both of these shows I am not totally psyched to begin them and I have not yet begun them, choosing instead a hodge podge, episode here, episode there of tv.

Last Christmas, I took two weeks off from work and spent it being introduced to Mad Men. I watched the entire 3 seasons.  I had heard much about Mad Men and some close friends, whose tv tastes I really trust kept telling me to watch it, and I am glad I did.  This year my new favorite find is Modern Family, but I have also enjoyed Parenthood, Men of a Certain Age, Boardwalk Empire.  And of course I love Dexter, I still watch Weeds (although am becoming less and less a fan of it, but still watch it out of some misguided sense of loyalty).  And when I want to just  feel good and laugh, I still pop in episodes of Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond (which mirrors my life in many ways), Gilmore Girls.  When I want to feel nostalgic I watch, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, the Mary Tyler Moore show, Carol Burnett, The Waltons and Little House on the Prarie.

A lot of people are "down" on watching tv.  They feel it is a waste of time and even if they enjoy it, they limit how much they will watch.  A couple of months ago I got into a discussion about tv with a friend of mine, a person I have an enormous affinity and respect for, but whose lifestyle and attitudes are very different from my own.  He basically says that tv is nothing but a distraction.  People watch it to distract themselves from their own lives, their own pain and use it to not be connected to themselves, their lives and the people in them.  We got into a pretty intense discussion over The Sopranos, one of my very favorite shows ever (and I have seen the entire series at least 10 times through).  My friend who does agree that the Sopranos was and is probably one of the best television series every produced, though was still incredulous when I mentioned that I had learned a lot of lessons via watching the Sopranos.  Like many other people addicted to the Sopranos, my friend assumed I was addicted to the violence and its depiction of the Mafia, it's dark humor and oh yeah, did I mention the violence?.  Of course, those parts of the show are enormously entertaining to me but I explained that what really got me about the show was the the characters, how they got to where they are and why they make the choices they make and do what they do.  There are very few characters on that show who are not playing some sort of angle at some time in their life on the series.  Actually there is only one character I can think of throughout the entire course of the series that never compromised.  And it is not the shrink, but Charmaine Bucco, the wife of Tony's childhood friend Artie.   Certainly every main character on the show, and even many of the more residual characters had many layers and that is what drew me and continues to draw me to that show.  The main character, Tony Soprano, on the one side -- cruel, violent, pathological, and on the other insecure, wounded little boy trying to live with the reality that he had a narcissistic mother who was not able to love him, a victim in childhood and predator as an adult, living out the pattern set for him, while he is setting more or less the same pattern for his own family.   Going to therapy, but just for justification, not really an attempt to grow.   His wife, Carmela Soprano, one of the few people on the show who demonstrates any type of remorse for the life her husband leads and her role in it,  while at the same time totally seduced by the lifestyle that her husbands abhorrent manner of making a living affords her.  What I love about the Sopranos is the shades of grey.  It is all grey and that has a lot of resonance for me, probably because it is so realistic in that way, we all compromise, we are all hypocritical, and we are all a product of our parents, whether our choice is to transcend from that production or just live in it, asking ourselves, why me?  These are the two extremes of course and in between there is everything in between.  This is why this particular show has so much resonance for me.

My friend was somewhat surprised that I could get all this from a tv show and was still not convinced that television is meant to zone out rather than zone in (although to be fair, I didn't explain myself as fully as I did here).  We ended the conversation agreeing to disagree, as we often do on a myriad of subjects.

TV is one of the things I love most.  And to be honest,  there are times, and shows where I do just zone out.    It is relaxing, you don't need to think about work, paying bills, or stress, you can just enjoy what is in front of you.  But for me, there is a lot of thought provoking and moving things on television and many shows get me to think about things, put stuff in perspective.  There are characters I see on television who mirror people I know and getting to know them on tv helps me sometimes to understand the people I interact with in a better way.

I often think that the people who are down on tv the most are often the ones who are most afraid of it.  Afraid that if they would let themselves sit down and relax and watch it, they would never get up, they would never read a book again,  their only exercise would be the distance from the chair to the remote.Just caught up on Season 4 of Mad Men and just could not resist writing a little about it.


Like many, many other people I have fallen in love with Mad Men.  Living outside the US means that I don't live in sheer anticipation and joy for 12 to 13 weeks out of the year waiting for Don Draper to appear in my living room.  I got turned onto Mad Men in a different way.  It was last year around Christmas and I had the week off from work, it was freezing cold and I needed something to watch.  I was chatting with one of my friends, a guy with whom I have similar tastes in television shows and movies and whose opinion on these things I respect.  I told him I had run out of new and interesting things to watch and he asked me if I had ever watched Mad Men.  I asked, "that 1960's show about ad guys, I am not interested in watching Darrin Stevens and Larry Tate in a drama. "  He told me it was way better than that and he knew I would get into it, so while still chatting via gmail, I opened another window and ordered the first season on dvd from Amazon (express delivery) and within 1 and a half days, the complete first season of Mad Men was mine.


After watching two episodes, I took a very short break to log onto the Internet and order season 2 (and hurry it up) and within that first week I watched the entire first two seasons.  A week or two later, via my sling box (courtesy of my favorite uncle who lets me watch his satellite tv remotely and the wonderful people at sling technologies, who took the time and effort to develop this genius piece of technology, so that I, living abroad, could feel more connected to home by watching the Today Show and TNT Primetime in the Daytime) learned that season 3 was being repeated on AMC from start to finish.  So, I logged onto AMC and looked at the schedule and for the next week or two, I was up at odd hours, or early in the morning to catch Don Draper and Co.  So, within about 3 or so weeks I watched the first 3 seasons of Mad Men and I have just watched the season finale of the 4th season now.


I am not going to go into chapter and verse about what is so great about this show, as many other people on the net do that better, more creatively and snarkier than I ever could.  "Your Honor, let's just stipulate that the show is top notch, fantastic characters, great writing, interesting plots and stunning social commentary."


Now that we have that out of the way, let's go onto why I really love this show.  It's the aesthetics.  The scenery, the clothes, the hairstyles and the lifestyle.  I love them because it looks very much like the world I grew up in.  Granted Mad Men season 1 begins around 1960, 5 years before I actually made my premiere (and they don't hit 1965 until season 4), but the decor, the fashions, the lifestyle were more or less the same.  Don't forget Mad Men takes place in NY and NY is always a little bit ahead of the rest of the US, it takes a couple of years for things to hit us in the sticks (well, Pittsburgh), plus technology and lifestyle did not change in the lifespan of a fruit fly as it does today.  So, Mad Men looks very much like the world I grew up in.  The world of Corning Ware, canned vegetables and once-a-week trips to the beauty parlor.  I had totally forgotten that it was a regular thing that women used to sleep with curlers in their hair until Mad Men had reminded me of that.  The domesticity of women like Betty Draper was very much the norm when I grew up, albeit that my mother and most of her friends did not have the beauty and elegance of January Jones, they were more like Francine the neighbor, but still.  Women talking in the kitchen, over cigarettes and coffee while unobtrusively looking at their reflection in the coffee percolator was very much a part of my youth and my mother's lifestyle.  My mom went to the beauty parlor once a week like clockwork to get her hair done and and our house was very much like Don Draper's, we had a "good living room" that we kids were not allowed into except on special occasions and a lot of our life took place at the kitchen table.  My parents were never far from their cigarettes and ashtrays, fancy cigarette boxes and paperweight collections were considered high brow decor.  I actually have a few of my mom's former cigarette boxes and I use them as jewelry boxes.


Actually yesterday on Facebook I was scrolling through my news feed and a guy I went to high school with commented that he was finally watching Mad Men and that there was not a single likable character on the show.  I had never really thought of it that way but it is true.  Each character is reprehensible in a different way although most have their more likable traits as well.


I do think, that while there has been a lot of great television out there, the best two shows in the last two decades are The Sopranos and Mad Men.  I think for me a lot of reason these shows resonate so well to me, is that I see in their plots and characters so much similarity to the life I had both growing up and what I have now.  I think that what is more is that both series are shot during a specific period of time and reflect that time, it's feel, it's attitudes and it's views very succinctly.  In addition, both protagonists, Don Draper and Tony Soprano are struggling, trying to figure out who they really are -- the men that their image defines, or are they really someone else.  I find it interesting that both men address the emptiness in their lives through a haze of booze, drugs and countless extramarital affairs.  Both men had very difficult childhoods.  Both shows are dark and paint a rather empty view of American life and point out that wanton materialism is not the answer.


Who knows, maybe I just like the bad boys.