If you watched the most recent Emmy and Golden Globe awards shows, you know that HBO’s series, Big Little Lies, cleaned up:
Here’s the headline from Variety’s report on the Emmy awards:
Those Emmy wins include Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Actress (Nicole Kidman), Outstanding Supporting Actress (Laura Dern). Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley were also nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actress, respectively, but lost out to their co-stars.
Big Little Lies also dominated its category at the Golden Globes. The show was named Best TV Limited Series, and Kidman and Dern took home the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe trophies to go with their Emmys.
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I’m sorry to rain on your parade, Big Little Lies, but you fell far short of being a first-rate TV series.
The last 2 or 3 lines discussed the show that should have won the best limited series awards. HBO’s The Night Of was nominated for 13 Emmys, but won only one major prize – Outstanding Lead Actor (Riz Ahmed) – perhaps because that series debuted in June 2016, well over a year before the 2017 Emmy ceremony.
“The Night Of” cast included Amara Karan and Riz Ahmed
Click here to read an article explaining why The Night Of wasn’t eligible for 2016 Emmy nominations.
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Almost everything about The Night Of is better than Big Little Lies.
The latter show did have the edge when it came to scenery – the California coast is a lot prettier than Rikers Island. But The Night Of was vastly superior when it came to writing and acting.
When it comes to writing, Big Little Lies is a glorified soap opera. The best-selling novel it is based on has been described as “fluffy,” with characters that “are more conceits than flesh and blood” – EXACTLY!
The ladies of “Big Little Lies” celebrate their Golden Globe awards
It has a lot of star power, but I found the largely anonymous cast of The Night Of – the only actors in the show I recognized were John Turturro and Michael K. Williams, who are much less well-known than Kidman and Witherspoon – to be much more convincing.
I think Nicole Kidman deserved her best actress awards. But best actress nominee Reese Witherspoon mostly portrayed Reese Witherspoon – her character was a chirpy buttinsky who was annoying as hell – and best supporting actress winner Laura Dern really had no business being nominated, much less winning.
My biggest problem with Big Little Lies is that just about every single male character in the show is violent and prone to abuse women – even Nicole Kidman’s six-year-old son (who reacts to seeing his father abuse his mother by biting and choking one of his female classmates).
The scene that makes this point the most clearly is a scene where one of the male characters sees one of the female characters at an indoor shooting range. The male’s ex-wife later claims that he was obsessed with guns when they were married, and he is usually on the verge of starting a fight with her current husband – who’s equally ready to take it outside and settle their differences like a man.
The female character who’s shooting at the range has very different reasons for owning a handgun: she was subjected to rough sex (and impregnated) by a guy she met at a bar and accompanied to his hotel room after one too many drinks.
The male character has a gun because he is a man, and men are violent per se. The female character has a gun because she is a victim of male violence.
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The final scene of Big Little Lies shows the five main female characters – each of whom is the mother of a first-grader – frolicking with their children on a beach.
There are no fathers in sight. The message is clear: kids are better off without them.
* * * * *
That final scene of the mothers and children on the beach is accompanied by Ituana’s cover version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Ituana is a Los Angeles-based bossa nova group, and their very odd cover of the Jagger-Richards classic is from a very odd album titled Bossa n’ Stones.
There are actually two Bossa n’ Stones albums. (The title should be Bossa ’n’ Stones, of course.) Ituana’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is from the second of those albums.
Ituana’s sound is growing on me, and I don’t have a problem with the idea of doing a cover in a style that is radically different from the original recording.
But who in the hell thought that a bossa nova version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was a good idea? (I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t choose “Gimme Shelter.”)
Here’s Ituana’s cover of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”:
I would have never guessed that Jeanne Berlin was the actress who portrayed prosecuting attorney Helen Weiss in the 2016 HBO series, The Night Of.
Jeanne Berlin as Charles Grodin's bride in “The Heartbreak Kid”
Do you remember The Heartbreak Kid, the 1972 movie featuring Charles Grodin as a callow young New York Jew who deserts his annoying and severely sunburned bride while they are on their Miami Beach honeymoon to pursue the blonde shiksa of his dreams – who was played by Cybill Shepherd?
(The Shepherd character turned out to be just as annoying as the Berlin character, of course. Live and learn, Grodin character!)
Grodin with Cybill Shepherd
Jeanne Berlin – the daughter of famed comedian, screenwriter, and director Elaine May – was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the hapless betrayed bride.
Berlin, who was born in 1949, appeared in several zeitgeist-y movies in the early seventies – including Getting Straight, The Strawberry Statement, Portnoy’s Complaint, and The Baby Maker.
But after starring in Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York – a 1975 bomb – Berlin more or less dropped out of sight for 35 years or so.
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Berlin’s performance is one of the many fully-realized performances in The Night Of, which is without a doubt the best one-season television series I’ve ever seen.
Jeanne Berlin cross-examines a witness in “The Night Of”
In fact, The Night Of may be the best television series ever period. Its only competition for that title may be The Wire, which was a multi-season show. (It’s not coincidental that one of The Wire’s writers was novelist Richard Price, who was the co-creator and co-writer of The Night Of.)
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In the opening episode of The Night Of, a nerdy young Pakistani-American college student “borrows” his father’s cab so he can attend a wild party in Manhattan. (The student would ordinarily never have a chance to attend such a party, but a couple of the scholarship basketball players he tutors take pity on him and invite him.)
While he’s sitting at a stoplight en route to the wingding, a young woman who assumes he’s on duty gets into the cab. They end up at her townhouse, ingesting mass quantities of booze, cocaine, and Ecstasy . . . and engaging in mass quantities of sex.
* * * * *
(Spoiler alert!)
After the best night of his life, the student passes out from all the booze and drugs and sex and wakes up hours later in the kitchen. He heads upstairs to grab his pants and say good-bye to his “date.”
But when he gets to the bedroom, she’s been stabbed about a hundred times and is lying dead in about five gallons of blood.
He panics and skedaddles in his dad’s cab, but almost immediately gets pulled over by the police for making an illegal left turn. One thing leads to another, and he ends up getting arrested for murder.
* * * * *
Every element of The Night Of – especially its depiction of the student’s months-long incarceration pending trial in the notorious Rikers Island jail – felt real to me. The Night Of is equally plausible and nightmarish, and it’s that plausibility that makes the show so frightening.
About two or three episodes in, I almost stopped watching. The show was absolutely riveting, but watching it was never pleasant – it always felt like something horrible was about to happen.
I made it to the end of the show, but it was exhausting.
* * * * *
I wouldn’t say that there are no good guys or bad guys in The Night Of. But I would say that there are no one-dimensional good guys or bad guys.
The major characters – the student/defendant, his parents, the police who investigate the crime, the various attorneys involved, even the prisoners at Rikers Island – were all sympathetic figures to some degree.
On the other hand, all of those characters had their flaws.
* * * * *
I may be a lawyer, but I’m not a litigator – I’m especially not a criminal litigator. All I know about criminal trials is what I read in crime novels or see in TV shows or the movies.
Having said that, I was very impressed by the authentic feel of the courtroom scenes of The Night Of.
Most fictional trials are 50-50 propositions – the author or director makes the prosecution’s and defense’s cases equally strong to keep the reader or viewer on the edge of his seat until the very end.
The eventual outcome of the trial in The Night Of remained balanced on a razor’s edge until the jury delivered its verdict. But every aspect of the trial in The Night Of was credible – I never felt like I was being manipulated. I bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Here's a six-minute quasi-trailer for The Night Of:
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I’m beginning to think that the one-season television drama series is the perfect format.
A traditional movie is just too short to do more than scratch the surface. A series that’s eight to twelve hours long will usually be much more satisfying than a two-hour movie because there is so much more detail and complexity.
Multi-season series can be satisfying, too, but rarely have the artistic unity of a one-season show. Most multi-season series are done on the fly – the creators don’t know how many seasons the show will be on the air, so they often write the first season with no idea when or how the series will end.
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Lord Jamar (who was born Lorenzo Dechalus in 1968) was one of the three MCs in the alternative hip-hop group, Brand Nubian.
Lord Jamar
“Revolution” (which includes samples from Chicago’s 1970 hit, “25 or 6 to 4,” and a Malcolm X speech) accompanies the closing credits of episode six of The Night Of. It was released on Lord Jamar’s 2006 solo album, The 5% Album.
Most lawyers are familiar with this old adage about trial strategy:
If you’re weak on the facts and strong on the law, pound the law. If you’re weak on the law and strong on the facts, pound the facts. If you’re weak on both, pound the table.
Here’s a slightly different version of that adage:
A young lawyer who was consulting an older lawyer as to how he should act in the conduct of various cases. He said, “What shall I do if the law is against me?” The older man said, “Come out strong on the facts.” “What shall I do if the facts are against me?” “Come out strong on the law.” “Then, what shall I do if both are against me?” “Abuse the other fellow’s attorney.”
Those who oppose the “Reform on Tap Act of 2018” – Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot’s proposal to erase anticompetitive and anti-consumer restrictions on Maryland brewers from the statute books – don’t have good arguments to support their opposition.
Maryland Comptroller Franchot announcing the “Reform on Tap Act of 2018”
I suspect they know they don’t have good arguments. So they’re pounding on the table . . . and they’re abusing Comptroller Franchot.
* * * * *
If you believe what you see on television, New Jersey is infested with mafiosi who spend most of their time scarfing down pasta, swilling red wine, and committing felonies (The Sopranos) while Oregon is the home of hipster snowflakes who insist on locavore food and favor artisan lightbulbs (Portlandia).
Television exaggerates, of course. But most people would agree that New Jersey and Oregon are very different states. So it may seem odd that they are the only two of the United States that prohibit the sale of self-service gasoline.
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According to columnist Paul Mulshine, New Jersey’s ban on self-serve gas stations was inspired by an eccentric entrepreneur named Irving Reingold:
It was Irving Reingold who created the crisis that led to the law banning self-serve gasoline.
Reingold, a workaholic who took time out only to fly his collection of World War II fighter planes, started the crisis by doing something gas station owners hated: he lowered prices.
[In 1949], gas was selling at 21.9 cents a gallon. The price was rigged by a gentlemen's agreement among gas station owners. Reingold decided to offer the consumer a choice by opening up a 24-pump gas station on Route 17 in Hackensack. He offered gas at 18.9 cents a gallon. The only requirement was that drivers pump it themselves. They didn't mind. They lined up for blocks.
The other gas station operators didn't like the competition. Someone tried shooting up Reingold's station. But he installed bulletproof glass, so the retailers looked for a softer target – the Statehouse. The Gasoline Retailers Association prevailed upon its pals in the Legislature to push through a bill banning self-serve gas. The pretext was safety, but the Hackensack fire chief had already told all who would listen that Reingold's operation was perfectly safe.
The bill sailed through in record time, despite the objections of everyone who cared about the public interest. . . . Prices went back up. Reingold got out of gas and moved on to other endeavors . . . .
His daughter Roni told me that on his deathbed he was still angry about the way the politicians ran him out of business. It's amazing that New Jersey consumers could still be suffering in the Internet era from a crooked deal that went through in the pre-television era.
* * * * *
As of January 1, Oregon no longer bans self-service gas stations. Sort of.
I say “sort of” because a new Oregon law allowing Oregonians to pump their own gas applies only in counties with a population of fewer than 40,000 residents.
A woman who likes to live dangerously
Eighteen of Oregon’s 36 counties have a population of less than 40,000. But the residents of those counties represent only 7.3% of Oregon’s statewide population. That means the counties where 92.7% of Oregon’s citizens live don’t have any self-service gas stations.
Why does Oregon essentially prohibit self-serve gas? You can click here to read Chapter 480.315 of the Oregon Revised Statutes, which offers no fewer than seventeen reasons why self-service gas stations are bad for the public.
The Oregon legislature would have you believe that it is first and foremost concerned about public safety: “The dispensing of Class 1 flammable liquids [i.e., gasoline] by dispensers properly trained in appropriate safety procedures reduces fire hazards . . . [so] dispensing should, in general, be limited to as few individuals as possible, such as gasoline station owners and their employees or other trained and certified dispensers.”
When’s the last time you heard about a fire at a self-service gas station? Americans who live in the 48 states where pumping your own gas is legal fill up their tanks over 16 billion times each year without incident. Do Oregon lawmakers really believe it’s unsafe for anyone other than a “trained and certified dispenser” to pump gas?
The other reasons given in the Oregon law are equally ridiculous. For example, there’s “the increased risk of crime and the increased risk of personal injury resulting from slipping on slick surfaces” – which is “enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility.” (Oregon has the reputation of a pretty rainy place, but is it really that much rainier there than in other states?)
And consider reason number seventeen on the list: “Small children left unattended when customers leave to make payment at retail self-service stations creates a dangerous situation.” Doesn’t the Oregon legislature realize that you can pay at the pump with a credit or debit card? (If Oregon lawmakers are really concerned about people leaving their kids in the car to go inside a convenience store to pay for their gas, maybe they should prohibit the sale of soft drinks and candy and lottery tickets – after all, you can pay for gas at the pump, but you can’t pay for those items without going inside the store.)
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George Will recently called a spade a spade in a column about the Oregon and New Jersey bans on pump-it-yourself gasoline:
[T]he ban is straightforward, no-damned-nonsense-about-anything-else protectionism: the point is to spare full-service gas stations from having to compete with self-service stations that, having lower labor costs, can offer lower prices.
OF COURSE!
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I’ve written previously about the “Reform on Tap Act of 2018” proposed by Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot, who wants to get rid of current legal provisions that limit the ability of Maryland brewers to produce and sell beer to their customers.
Click here if you're a Marylander who wants to support that effort.
What do legal restrictions on Maryland brewers have to do with prohibitions against self-serve gas in New Jersey and Oregon?
Like the New Jersey and Oregon gas station owners who don’t want competition from self-service gas stations – especially those owned by convenience store chains – beer distributors and retailers in Maryland justify the anticompetitive and anti-consumer statutory provisions that currently exist in Maryland on the grounds of public health and safety.
An “advocate-for-hire” for those who oppose the reform effort recently accused Franchot of advocating expanded sales of alcoholic beverages to the detriment of Maryland citizens:
Franchot’s hands-on involvement advocating for the expansion of alcohol sales and consumption seems to be unprecedented for someone in his position. This extraordinary focus on expanding alcohol sales – while ignoring the concerns of many in the state who don’t think a bar, brewery, or liquor store on every corner is needed – exemplifies gross disregard on the part of an elected state official.
As Len Foxwell, the Comptroller’s chief of staff, has pointed out, “Every single word” of that statement “is both incorrect and inane.”
In Maryland, local governments decide whether a new bar, brewery, or liquor store can open on a particular corner – the “Reform of Tap Act” would do nothing to change that.
The distributors and retailers aren’t concerned about excessive consumption of alcohol. They’re concerned about losing their piece of the action when it comes to the sale of Maryland craft beer.
The focus of the “Reform on Tap Act” is to allow Maryland brewers the freedom to sell their beer at wholesale and retail rather than keeping them under the thumbs of beer distributors and retailers. Those politically influential industry groups object to Franchot’s proposal because it will allow the brewers to control their own destiny.
To borrow George Will’s language, the distributors and retailers want the “straightforward, no-damned-nonsense-about-anything-else protectionism” of current Maryland law to remain in place.
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Here’s something else that the “advocate-for-hire” for those who favor the status quo has said about Franchot:
The Comptroller seems to have fallen victim to the industry’s deep pockets, becoming what’s known as a captive regulator who has lost sight of a balanced approach that’s critical to regulating a product that can cause great harm.
The chutzpah of that allegation is quite breathtaking.
Carly and Brian Ogden, the “mom and pop” owners of Attaboy Beer in Frederick, MD
Most Maryland breweries are small startups – “mom and pop” operations, if you will. (I use that term literally – quite a few of those breweries are owned by husband-and-wife teams.) If they have deep pockets, those pockets are mostly empty because the owners have sunk most of their savings and whatever other funds they could beg and borrow into their businesses – with no guarantee that their businesses will be profitable.
The people with the deep pockets are the distributors and retailers . . . not to mention the legislators who have benefitted over the years from the largesse of those entrenched special-interest groups.
* * * * *
My apologies to Mick Jagger for tinkering with the lyrics he wrote for the 1966 Rolling Stones song, “Under My Thumb,” which celebrates a man’s success in getting the upper hand over the woman who had once held the dominant position in their relationship. (It’s a great song, but it’s also about as politically incorrect by today’s standards as any sixties song I can think of.)
It’s too early to say whether Comptroller Franchot and the Maryland brewers will be able to win their political power struggle with the special interests and their allies in the Maryland General Assembly, or whether the brewers will remain under the thumb of the distributors and retailers.
But as the poet Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”
* * * * *
Here’s the studio version of “Under My Thumb”:
And as a special bonus, here's a video of the Stones performing the song live on British television in 1966:
Who are they kidding? We judge books by their covers all the time. Publishers know that, and design their book covers accordingly.
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Dust jackets for books are a relatively recent invention.
Until a couple of hundred years ago, publishers sold books as unbound sheets of paper. The customer (who was usually relatively affluent) usually ordered a customized binding for his book.
The earliest dust jackets were akin to gift wrapping. They enclosed the entire book, and were torn open and discarded by the book’s owner.
An early dust jacket
Modern dust jackets began to appear in the 1850s, and had become common by the 1880s.
After 1900, publishers began to spend less money on book bindings. Colorful paper dust jackets were relatively cheap to produce.
* * * * *
American women read more than American men – a lot more.
“I’ve read at least 100 books in the past year. Seriously. Probably more like 150 to 200,” one woman recently wrote on a literary blog. “My husband? I'm guessing zero, unless you count picture books and comic books he has read to the kids.”
(Two observations on that comment. First, if she’s really reading 150 to 200 books a year – which I doubt – I’m guessing most of those books would make Fifty Shades of Grey look like great literature. Second, I’d say the over-under for that marriage is maybe three or four years.)
The gender gap grows even wider when it comes to fiction.
“When women stope reading,” the British novelist Ian McEwan once said, “the novel will be dead.”
Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market in the U.S., Canada, and Britain. I’m guessing that a larger proportion of the books read by females are literary novels. (Book clubs consist almost entirely of women.)
* * * * *
You can a book that’s being marketed to female readers by its cover.
Novels set in Italy are usually intended for female readers.
Any book with “amour” or “Provence” in the title is almost certainly “chick-lit”:
Books with the names of bucolic English villages (real or imagined) in their titles are also books intended for female readers – especially if they have something to do with a church and are set during World War II:
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Mystery is a popular genre of novel these days, and it’s usually easy to tell a mystery that was written for women from one that was written for men.
A book that features a protagonist named “Aurora Teagarden” and has a cat on the cover is definitely intended for women:
This mystery novel is obviously trying to ride the coattails of Gone Girl. That mega-bestseller was a woman’s book, so it’s safe to assume that this one is as well:
Here’s another mystery for female readers with a gull-related title:
Here’s one more mystery aimed at female readers:
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This cover doesn’t look like one that would appeal to women, but women are very into vampires – so I’m assuming this a women’s novel:
Women are into dinner parties, too – hence, I’m betting this is chick-lit. To take the analysis one step further, I’d say this book is mostly intended for young women from New York City (or young women who wish they lived in New York City) – the choice of that apartment building for the cover was no accident:
* * * * *
The cover of this Danish mystery novel makes me think it’s not really a book for women – although I’m guessing it will be read by as many women as men:
In case you think that cover looks familiar, you’re right. The publisher is obviously hoping that its cover will subliminally appeal to fans of this very well-known Scandinavian thriller:
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This cover mystifies me, but odds are that it’s intended for female readers:
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“Everyday I Write the Book” was released in 1983 on Elvis Costello’s eighth studio album, Punch the Clock. It’s not much of a song – it’s far from the best song on that album – but it was Costello’s first U.S. top 40 hit. (Go figure.)
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