“I am not a number, I am a free man!” That memorable line by actor Patrick McGoohan is from the 1960s TV series The Prisoner, which riveted me years later. I remembered the line today when learning that I have a number. There’s nothing official or sinister about my number, 2,772,772,874, unlike that of McGoohan’s character, known only as Number 6. According to the United Nations Population Fund, I became the 2,772,772,874th person on Earth when I was born. While far from precise, the number — via this calculator — is a point of reference. With world population only a few days from topping 7 billion, I can now see the tiny speck that I am on the timeline of human history, a history in which nearly 76 billion people preceded me.
The Killing, an intriguing new TV show on AMC, ranks high on my edginess scale. The storyline is stark and disturbing. Grief of the victim’s family is palpable. The setting, gray and wet Seattle, adds to foreboding that permeates the show. But the ceaseless torrential rain and thunder remind me of my many years in Florida, not the Northwest. The weather here in Portland is similar to that of Seattle, where it rains about 150 days of the year but only thirty-seven inches on average. Soaked-to-the-skin downpours and lightning are uncommon in both cities. Most rain is light or drizzly, and lightning occurs only several times annually. (Some years ago during a class at Portland State University, students rushed to the windows when thunder rattled the windows, as if it was a meteorological phenomenon.) So dramatic and loud is the weather in The Killing that it sometimes drowns out the dialogue. Message to series creator Veena Sud: the atmospherics simply are — forgive me — overkill.
Our son Atticus, now 4, watched part of Finding Nemo tonight. The story’s setting was relevant given the roaring surf outside our rented vacation house on the Oregon coast. Judging from his reaction to the dramatic scenes (shielding his eyes with a blanket and whimpering occasionally), we’ve overly sheltered him from TV and other insidious forms of pop culture. Read More
Getting my hair cut always yields a story or two. That’s because the two barbers and their clients talk a lot. Today the friendly banter included my barber, Horace, recounting how he attended Portland’s Lincoln High School in the 1970s, overlapping for a year with Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.
“We talked occasionally even though I was a freshman and he was a senior,” Horace said.
Then Horace told me his last name, which I should have known considering he’s cut my hair for two years. “It’s Simpson.” Read More
Exercising while listening to music and watching tragic news on CNN is a collision of dissonance.
Picture the scene: two dozen bodies bouncing along on cardio equipment in front of six health club TVs. I’m on the elliptical machine. Music blaring from my ear buds drowns out all other sound, even my panting breaths. My eyes are fixed on the seige at Mumbai, playing out in video images and closed-caption text. But my thoughts careen from one unrelated subject to the next.
The Taj Mahal hotel shudders with explosions and belches black smoke set to an inadvertent soundtrack, Death Cab for Cutie’s “Your Heart Is an Empty Room.” The song doesn’t fit what’s on the screen, though one line jolts me: Burn it down, till the embers smoke on the ground. Read More
Until HBO’s True Blood, I can’t recall a television series with an opening sequence more riveting than the show itself. A foreboding mix of lust, religion, and evil, the montage casts a memorable spell. With each viewing, I’m drawn deeper into the stark settings.
While I enjoyed the series’ first season, which wrapped up Sunday, it fell short of HBO classics The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and The Sopranos. I learned tonight via MetaFilter that a documentary inspired the opening, propelling Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus to the top of my must-see list.
The visceral appeal of True Blood’s opening isn’t the sex. It’s the southern swamps. I trudged through them in my youth. They entered my blood. Read More
