February 21, 2021

First, I want to say I was not entirely happy with the way last week's post turned out. Sunday Morning gave me the feels. I wanted to try and convey all that, but I can barely go back and read what I wrote. If I did, I think I would find it overwritten and layered with too much angst. That's probably what I get for focusing too much on myself. I regret everything. I regret nothing. I am the bottomless void at which everyone looks but no one pays attention. I am the internet.

Anyway, another week, another day (or two - I'll probably head off to bed before I can finish this) late. 8 weeks a year I get distracted by tennis. A couple closing thoughts on Australian Open finalist, Jennifer Brady.

One, thanks for making me look smart:

For posterity: Jen Brady and Jen Brady's forehand (TM) in the #AusOpen finals.

— John L (@SnickleMixCD13) February 15, 2021

Two, there's a certain delight in watching a Jennifer Brady match. Pretty much every tennis player falls somewhere on the Borg-McEnroe continuum. You are a stoic, a racquet smashing, umpire/crowd antagonizing firebrand or somewhere in between. (No one is only one thing.) But as, Donnie Darko teaches us:

There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else.

Jen (can I call you Jen?) Brady is the whole spectrum of human emotion.

When she plays, she wears her emotions on her sleeve. She makes ridiculous shots and ridiculously funny faces. (I was hoping that the internet would have a few posted, but I could find none easily.) Her reaction after winning a point where she mishit a ball that both her and Osaka thought were going out but landed on the baseline was priceless. The running internal monologue she has as she plays is barely internal. She is certainly not a Borg.

However, her expressive nature is not one of anger or antagonism. A McEnroe is looking to construct a foe in their head that will present an obstacle they must overcome to achieve new heights a la Michael Jordan or that they can transfer their frustrations onto. A Jen Brady facial expression is a manifestation of competitiveness, focus, nerves, silliness, sometime frustration, but I can't say I've seen her angry. She is not a McEnroe.

She is her own thing. I was going to say that maybe she's an upbeat version of Andy Murray, who also does not fit neatly into the Borg-McEnroe spectrum. But Andy is much too dour and curmudgeonly (i.e. Scottish) to be categorized with Jen.

I ended up constructing a narrative in my own mind that there is a deeply weird person beneath her tennis playing exterior. The facial expressions, gesticulations, and occasional outbursts are the weirdness trying to escape. I think I finally figured out why I constructed this bizarre narrative during the semifinal against Muchova - Jennifer Brady vaguely looks like Abbi Jacobson from Broad City.

Is Jen Brady one of Abbi's alter egos a la Val about town? I'd like to see the lost Broad City episode where Abbi tries sobriety and ends up winning a grand slam tennis tournament. I'm guessing the truth is that they have nothing in common other than both being born in Pennsylvania.

None of this has anything to do with anything. I just needed to get that out of my system where it has been taking up brain space for the past five or six days.

Onto the show - The CBS Sunday Morning Power Rankings!

1) Seth Doane

This week was a landslide victory for Seth Doane. His postcard from Italy this week:

Do I really need to follow that picture up with a recap of the story? The whole 90 minute episode could have just been landscapes of the Val Di Fiemme in Italy and I would have been happy. (That would have made it reminiscent of Seth's story on Norwegian Slow TV.)

Paolo Fazioli makes beautiful pianos out of those trees, so naturally the above shot was accompanied by Clair de Lune for a soundtrack - one of my all time favorite pieces of music. And when Paolo plays a Chopin Nocture, I melted. And just when you think it can't get any better, Rachel Naomi Kudo marries Paolo's son, Luca! It was a story that made me want to live in Northern Italy, made me wish I had mastered an instrument. I fiddle on a keyboard or guitar at best. Music can tell a story in a few notes that this interminable recap blog could never tell in 10,000 words. Well done, Seth.

An added bonus, the story also features an interview with Jazz pianist legend and Fazioli aficionado Herbie Hancock. I have to admit that I was only vaguely aware that Herbie Hancock was a musician of great renown. I mostly knew as the man behind one of the two greatest synth riffs of the 80s. Forgive my ignorance, Herbie, but this was awesome:

You really shouldn't have to ask, but the other one is Axel F.

2) Nancy Giles

Nancy Giles is a relative newcomer to Sunday Morning (in that I think she started as a contributor 2 or 3 years ago). I've grown to quite like Nancy's contributions and her red rimmed glasses that I could never pull off. Her recent piece on Etsy was a good one. Pieces like that can come off as blatant corporate synergy (it still kind of does), but it nicely kept the focus on the artists and craftspeople who make some genuinely cool stuff.

It was Nancy, and not Tracy Smith, who pulled the "Oscar Buzz" interview of the week, which robbed us of the Sunday Morning drinking game. She interviewed Ellen "B-E Excited!" Burstyn, who looks great at 88. Definitely has a Katherine Hepburn vibe going. Not that Tracy couldn't interview a legend, but her milieu is more young, hip up-and-comers than acting legends. There's something about interviews with people who were around for the Hollywood golden age of the 60's and 70's that makes me want to cancel streaming services just watch some old movies from the library.

I haven't seen a lot of movies with Burstyn. Sure I've seen The Exorcist. I plan to watch The Last Picture Show this weekend. And I've seen Requiem For a Dream once. Requiem For a Dream is a movie that stays with you, but is deeply disturbing so once is enough for most. However, it was a favorite movie of an old friend of mine, which was weird and a little disturbing. It was more than a little off-putting to find him watching it alone in the dark on a Friday night.

3) Chip Reid

A person's name is their name so I shouldn't make fun of it, but for some reason, I have trouble taking an adult man with the name Chip seriously, much less a serious journalist. Maybe because of Beauty and the Beast:

Chip's story, apropos of Black History month, about trying to find and restore the headstones of a displaced Black cemetery in Washington D.C. was full of poignancy won me over.

My Mom used to walk in cemeteries. I used to think it was a weird thing to do. Not so much anymore. These days, every time I ride a bike past a cemetery, it is a reminder of my mortality and spurs me to pedal a little harder to prove I am alive.

Even if you know no one buried in a cemetery, you can feel history of past generations. You can look at the dates and family names and who is buried next to whom and start to construct stories. Those who have passed are not forgotten. It is sad that those interned at Columbian Harmony Cemetery were forgotten by the powers that be. I don't think I've visited my grandparents graves since they passed. This story makes me feel like I should.

At the same time, I often question the utility of cemeteries - there is not enough space to bury everyone. If you ever visit the Paris catacombs, this is apparent. Cremate me or let the Earth reclaim me after I finished running my race.

And then Ralph Northam, somehow still governor of Virginia appears, and says, "Well, Chip..." and I start laughing because, well, please don't start moonwalking, Ralph.

4) Ted Koppel

Ted took the top spot a few weeks ago when he interviewed Fauci. Everything I said that week, I could say again this week.

The pandemic has now killed half a million people in the United States. Per capita, this is not as bad as the UK or Italy. Congratulations on not being the worst by at least one metric, but it's still really awful.

Speaking of Black History Month, the Tuskegee Experiment was also awful. Whenever I hear Tuskegee, the first thing that pops into my head is the Tuskegee Airmen and not the Tuskegee Experiments, but we should all know about both and never forget either. I don't know if reparations will ever happen, but given the continuing obvious racial inequalities that continue to exist, it's hard to rebut when someone says, "I want my money back."

Wear a mask. Get the vaccine when you are eligible.

5) Wolves of Yellowstone

Wolves are cool. I understand they are incompatible with human settlement, urban or rural. Considering the overpopulation of deer where I live, are we sure there isn't a way that we can coexist with wolves? I like the snow. I like wolves. I need to go out west for a bit. Go west, young man, go west.

6) Nicholas Thompson

So a man that goes by the name "Mostly Harmless" walks the Appalachian (not Tallahassee) Trail, turns up dead and was so far off the grid it takes years and special forensic analysis to positively ID him despite being well known to other trail folk. Along the way the story engrosses hundreds of thousands of people. I was not one of those people, but I suppose the allure is that people can still hold deep mysteries, even in today's hyperconnected, overshared social media world. I don't really like being on the Facebook, but I am because it just makes certain things easier. It was not hard to guess that "Mostly Harmless" had a computer programming background before he went off grid. He knew what he had to do to delete his past and his trail moniker is a Hitchhiker's Guide reference. But it's to the last book that people didn't like as much because it was depressing. I guess that's a portent of the revelation that he was not the easy going, affable chum he appeared to be on the trail in his other life. As John Mulaney rightly points out, people change. Maybe he chose trail life over a connected one because he did like the person he had become. Maybe he had issues where could not longer deal with modern society and this was his act of rebellion. Whatever it was, I hope you found peace Mostly Harmless.

As for Nicholas Thompson, he is an infrequent contributor. CBS Sunday Morning really likes to play up that he is CEO of The Atlantic.

7) Steve Hartman

So there's thing in Cincinnati, the metropolitan area where I reside, called the Crosstown Tip-off. It is an informal competition between (affluent) Xavier and Cincinnati fans to see which group can leave the biggest tips at restaurants as they struggle through the pandemic. I think it has to be 4 figures to be considered part of the Tip-off. Of a similar vein, Steve Hartman presents a story about a pizza delivery guy who's been doing it for 31 years who gets a crowd sourced new car for a tip. Is it a matter of time be Steve shows does a story on the Tip-off?

The guy who receives the tip does seem like a swell guy, but he has to or it wouldn't fit the classic Hartman narrative.

Niggling thought in the back of my head: the existence of crowd funding sites to get needy people things they need to survive (not that the hero of our story was needy) is a sign of a broken system. I realize that GoFundMe no longer takes a cut of donations, but even so, there is something unseemly about a company that has managed to monetize digital panhandling.

8) Lee Cowan

Here's me once again ranking Lee far too low. I'm still waiting for the 2021 Lady Gaga interview. But just because Lee is on every almost every week, doesn't mean he should fall in the rankings. I mean if Teichner were on every week, she'd be guaranteed a top 3 spot every week. I guess I'm just not that interested in politics. I actually liked John McCain a lot. At this point in my life, I probably lean a different way than he did politically, but I admired him. He wasn't perfect (nobody is) and there are certain hardliners (of which, I am not one) that said don't forget about things X, Y, and Z that he voted for that made the world a more terrible place. To which, I respond, he would not be the only person that voted for those things and feel free to drown in your own vitriol. He also got dinged for being funny and appearing on and even hosting SNL. It was the "stick to sports" reversal, "stick to governing". He was funny! My favorite John McCain story, involves a bill he introduced multiple times to switch over to a $1 coin, like most other countries have. (Canada has the Loonie and the Toonie!) From Huffington Post:

But in the past, concerns have been raised over how $1 coins would affect strippers’ incomes. Daniel Harris, owner of Archibald’s Gentleman’s Club in downtown D.C., once told The Hill “you can’t put a coin in a garter belt.”

When asked about the potential problem, McCain said he hoped strippers “could obtain larger denominations.” The Hill reports:

The 76-year-old lawmaker began answering another reporter’s prying questions before cracking a smile and hollering to [The Hill] down a Capitol hallway, “Fives, tens, one-hundreds!”

While we're putting Harriet Tubman on the $20, let's go ahead and eliminate the penny and switch to a $1 coin in honor of McCain. Put his face on the front front and a stripper on the back. (A joke to the humorless out there.)

I know the story was about Cindy McCain seems nice and reasonable and even fun. But:

At what point after putting Palin on the ticket did John McCain go full G.O.B Bluth?

9) David Sedaris

Humorist David Sedaris was on Conan O'Brien's podcast once and was hilarious. I am more familiar with the work of his sister Amy. His occasional Sunday Morning appearance don't make me laugh that much. The can be reminiscent of old Andy Rooney 60 Minutes hits. And yes, I just called David Sedaris old after he spent two and a half minutes complaining that an Apple Store makes him feel old. To be fair, he does not deny being old and is aware of the irony. And I suppose the Apple Store for old people is a decent bit. The ending line about "Mable" really brings it home.

10) Martha Teichner

I could, should put Jane Pauley here, but I'm still protesting protesting the lack of Sunday Almanac segments. CBS Sunday Morning, you've abandoned Sunday Almanac the way Daniel Plainview abandoned his boy.

Sunday Passage wasn't even narrated this week because no one wants to touch a Rush Limbaugh obit with a 10 foot pole. I promise to give Jane her proper status back in the Power Rankings next time.