Bald and Goatee

Back to less substantial issues, in this case, a “look”, naturally limited to men:  bald with a goatee.  Where have we seen this before?

Bryan Cranston as Walter White (Breaking Bad).  I’ll start with this, because Walter White is a fictional character.  In fact, by the last season of “Breaking Bad”, he had shaved his goatee and let his hair grow back.  Moreover, I’m not aware that Bryan Cranston himself ever adopted this look. 

For those of you out of the loop, “Breaking Bad” is an AMC TV show about a high school chemistry teacher who says, “WTF”, and decides to translate his skills as a chemist into the lucrative drug trade making crystal meth.  He teams up with a former student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) and goes into business.  It also turns out he has cancer, the chemotherapy costing him his hair, so he grows the goatee and adopts a clever nickname, Heisenberg.  Ironically, his brother-in-law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) is a DEA agent who is trying to track down this mysterious kingpin whose crystal meth is 99% pure and the most popular strain around.  And there’s a colorful attorney, Saul Goodman – who we’re seeing in prequel series “Better Call Saul” – who makes the show that much more intriguing, especially for guys like me who went to law school (George Mason U., now Antonin Scalia Law School, somewhat more prestigious than the University of American Samoa), passed the bar (Virginia and Maryland, plus waive-ins to DC and New York) and are actually practicing law.  Anyhow.   If you haven’t already, check out “Breaking Bad”, and if you’re already familiar, you know who Walter White is…

Rob Halford of Judas Priest.   Back in the 70s he was clean shaven with long, blond hair.  In the 80s he switched to short blonde hair and leather (was he gay?  Need you ask?) and around the time of 2wo, his second solo project after he left Judas Priest (Ripper Owens taking over briefly for two albums) he finally adopted the current look.  It’s usually combined with sunglasses.  His voice and stage presence remain impressive, though I can’t say I really care that much for the bald and goatee look in his case.  I remain a fan of Judas Priest and continue listening to the music, buying the albums, and attending the concerts.  I’d say my favorite Priest album is, hands down, no contest whatsoever, Sad Wings of Destiny.  

Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash.  Back in the 1970s, Andy Powell had long hair and glasses and was clean shaven.  As the rest of Wishbone Ash melted away – Ted Turner (guitar), Martin Turner (bass) (no relation), and Steve Upton (drums), Powell kept the band going.   I actually have Ted Turner’s solo album, purchased directly from him.   Martin Turner wound up creating his own Wishbone Ash band, appropriately named Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash.   As with Priest, I’m still an ‘Ash fan and still go to shows as often as possible.  I’d say my favorite Wishbone Ash album is Argus. 

Nick Oliveri, currently with Mondo Generator and formerly of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.  He’s grown his goatee down a little further.  I saw him with QOTSA and Kyuss Lives!   I haven’t followed his post QOTSA career and haven’t seen him in concert since he left the band, though that’s more out of indifference than any principled objection.  Rated R, by QOTSA, is probably my favorite work of his.  Back in that band he would sometimes play naked, only covered by the Fender Precision bass covering up his naughty parts – a look I never witnessed in person – and that got him in trouble when the band played Rock in Rio in Brazil.  I sense he’s quieted down a bit in recent years. 

Anton LaVey.  Here’s the guy who started this whole thing back in the late 1960s, forming the Church of Satan and writing the Satanic Bible; he died in 1997.   For all his provocativeness, he was actually an atheist and pro-life.  As I noted before, his “Satanism” is more a deliberately provocative form of atheism, very similar to what Ayn Rand preached:  do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt other people.  Initiating the use of force is wrong, but if attacked you’re free to retaliate as you see fit.  Remarkably sedate notwithstanding all the rigamarole around it.  I suspect far more of us are practicing Satanists without even realizing it…(wicked smile)….

Better Call Saul

I’ve exhausted the Christmas topic, and don’t want to address – or spoil – any Star Wars “The Force Awakens” – issues, so I’ll tackle this one: “Better Call Saul”.   Season One is complete, and received sufficient ratings and applause to merit a second season, due out in 2016.  As an attorney myself, I found the subject matter extremely interesting, relevant, and relatable.  See below.

Background.  If you’re a “Breaking Bad” fan, you know who Saul Goodman is.  If you’re not…. Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) was the attorney who represented Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in his crystal meth business.  Because Walt’s business was not legal, he got a shady lawyer to represent him.  Saul wore double-breasted suits, had a flashy office in a non-flashy location (a decrepit strip mall), and advertised aggressively.  He had an arrogant and flamboyant style and no issue with not merely defending criminals such as Walt but also helping them perpetrate their criminal activities…for an appropriate fee. 

“Breaking Bad” is over, but Saul lives on.  Part of the charm of “Breaking Bad” was the host of fascinating characters:  not only Walt, but Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Walt’s brother-in-law, DEA Agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito), Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks), and many more.  If it were just Walt, we’d have lost interest long ago.

Fans of “Breaking Bad” will recognize Mike (Banks), whose background gets far more attention now that we have the luxury of not dealing with Walt or Jesse, neither of whom seem to show up here.  (Maybe they’ll show Walt teaching Jesse chemistry in high school…in Season 2). 

This show takes place a few years before “Breaking Bad”, but still in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It has a habit of going to flashbacks without warning, leaving you to guess the time frame from context.  It seems that Saul, who isn’t even Jewish, used to be James “Jimmy” McGill, originally from Chicago, Illinois.  His older brother Chuck (Michael McKean) is a former partner in a prestigious firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (aka “HHM”) but is now semi-retired due to a bizarre allergy to electricity.   Jimmy used to be a scam artist back in Chicago and only moved to New Mexico to start a new life, starting in the mail room at Chuck’s firm.  

As yet, he’s still Jimmy.  Since this takes place before “Breaking Bad”, we know that both Saul and Mike survive whatever challenges and dangers they face, but it’s still entertaining to see how they do it – Saul/Jimmy through fast talking, Mike through general bad-ass-ness, a former cop from Philadelphia who had to move west under questionable circumstances. 

Inspired by Chuck, Jimmy finished his college online and managed to get a Juris Doctor from an online law school, the University of American Samoa.  On his third try he managed to pass the New Mexico bar exam (I have to wonder what the State Bar of New Mexico thinks of the show).  With no help or support from Chuck, he started his own practice, with an office tucked away in a Vietnamese nail salon.  He drives a used, beaten Suzuki Esteem with mismatched doors.   Still “James McGill”, most of his cases are flat-rate court-appointed criminal cases, representing mostly guilty and unsympathetic defendants. 

For the meantime, he’s trying to build a practice as a sole practitioner.  Normally you would expect he could get into his brother’s firm on the ground floor – he started off in the mail room – but alas, it’s not that simple, for reasons which become clear by the end of the season.  Aside from court appointed work, he’s also trying to do wills for elderly clients, which leads him to a huge class action case – and eventually friction with his brother. 

Usually a lawyer has two paths to stardom.  Either he 4.0’s in college and then gets into a top law school, then does law review and gets hired by the top law firm.  OR… he slogs along either as a sole proprietor or in small firms, hoping to ace a super huge, impressive case which will get him the attention of a big firm (very likely the big firm he won that case against), willing to ignore his lack of pedigree and recognize his talent.  The latter is Saul’s “career track”.

Is he unethical?  That’s the initial impression and one the show enjoys reinforcing – up to a point.   Taking court-appointed criminal cases, representing defendants who are mostly guilty and unsympathetic, inevitably reflects poorly on the attorney himself, even if he’s just doing his job. 

A lawyer with a better pedigree would probably start out as a junior prosecutor and eventually establish a private defense practice after earning the top prosecutor job (District Attorney, or in Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorney), or possibly US Attorney (federal prosecutor).  My experience has been that even for junior, entry level prosecutor positions, the US Attorneys’ offices only hire Ivy League, law review, law school graduates.  There’s definitely an upper stratosphere of the legal profession which begins in law school and continues throughout the career tracks of attorneys.  Breaking into that upper crust, if you didn’t start out there to begin with, is almost impossible – as Jimmy is finding out.  As of “Breaking Bad” he’s still a sole practitioner, so we’ll have to see what happens in later seasons of this show. 

Myself, I went to George Mason University School of Law, which could be considered a second tier law school.  Even there, I didn’t finish in the top of the class or do law review.  Upon graduating I worked for a sole practitioner until he got hired by a firm, worked for various small firms, and still work for myself, as a sole practitioner with two attorneys working for me as independent contractors.  I never won any big, huge, high publicity cases which would earn me the attention of a big firm.  To that extent I can identify with Jimmy, even though I was never a scam artist; I went to law school directly from college, with that plan as far back as high school.  I was honest prior to being a lawyer and remain honest and ethical as an attorney, whether I’m doing divorces, bankruptcies, criminal defense, or personal injury.  I neither seek out nor attract sleazy clients nor do I associate with meth dealers or corrupt cops.  What I share with Jimmy is surviving in the lower tier of the legal profession with neither glamor nor riches.   At least not yet, but I have no more hope or expectation than Jimmy has of breaking into the top stratosphere of wealthy attorneys.  We’ll see. 

Jimmy’s case is off-kilter because of his colorful past.  The assumption is that “Slippin’ Jimmy” from Cicero, IL will simply be an equally unethical attorney in Albuquerque.  The law office in the nail salon and mismatched Esteem reinforce that.  Sure enough, some of his initial business is shady: he runs a scam with some skaterats, which ends poorly [“You’re a lousy attorney!” “Hey, I got you from down from a death sentence to a broken leg.  I’d say that’s a good deal.”]  

In fact, you may wonder, never mind passing the bar exam on three tries, how the board of bar examiners even let him take the exam at all.  The Bar is highly sensitive to its reputation and diligently screens applicants for background and ethics.  Presumably his “Chicago sunroof” incident may have been the only transgression which made it into the court system.  We can’t give Chuck any credit, as Jimmy did all of this without Chuck’s knowledge.   Chuck probably would have torpedoed Jimmy’s bar application had he known about it – which explains why he was unpleasantly surprised rather than proud to hear that Jimmy passed the bar exam.

Anyhow, notwithstanding the Chicago sunroof, Jimmy is slowly but surely changing his attitude.  He knows he won’t get respect as an attorney – least of all from his prestigious but arrogant brother – until he cleans up his legal act.  He wants to do the right thing.  And ultimately, forced to make a hard choice, he usually decides to do the right thing. 

Or does he?  The last scene of Season One leads us to wonder.   Those of us who know him as Saul Goodman might conclude that he remains in the nether regions of the legal profession because he knows the top lawyers will never accept him as one of their own no matter how hard he works and what brilliant jobs he does for even the most respectable and sympathetic clients.  Stay tuned.

                                                                         * * *

By the way… 1) I still think of Michael McKean as a) Lenny from “Laverne & Shirley” and b) David St. Hubbins from “Spinal Tap”.  He always has an indelible stamp of arrogance he can’t seem to avoid no matter what the role.  2) If you REALLY like Bob Odenkirk, check out “Mr. Show”, a variety show he did a few years back (before “Breaking Bad”) with David Cross.  I found it funny, if a bit hit-or-miss.  

Weeds & Breaking Bad

These are two remarkably similar shows, both on cable, and both continuing for several seasons.

 Weeds (Showtime).  Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is a widow living in Agrestic, California.  Her husband Judah, who had been the brains and breadwinner of the couple, abruptly died of a heart attack leaving her to raise their two sons Silas and Shane all by herself.  Apparently she has no high school diploma or college degree, or the slightest skills of any nature, as she delved right into the marijuana trade immediately and hasn’t looked back since.  I’ve just finished Season 3.

            Along with her children, there is also the city council’s goofball treasurer Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), Nancy’s BFF Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), her husband Dean (Andy Milder) and Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk).  Her primary source of weed is a quasi-Jamaican criminal godmother Heylia (Tonye Patano) and her (son? Nephew?) Conrad (Romany Malco) who is the real genius in growing the weed and is consistently the man who makes it happen.  He reminds me a lot of Montel Williams.

            Naturally, even being able to grow a decent crop means little without the means to sell it off and make money, and when the money does come in (as it tends to do) then the challenge is how to launder it.   And when the operation grows impressive, that attracts not merely law enforcement attention – e.g. Peter Scottson, the “Agent Wonder Bread” corrupt DEA agent who marries Nancy but can’t win her heart – but also competing gangsters, be they Armenian, black (U-Turn and Marvin), hispanic (Guillermo) or biker/redneck.  Everyone wants a piece of the action, it seems, and even non-gangsters, when they learn of the operation, then try to charge for their silence. 

 Breaking Bad (AMC, the same people who bring us “Mad Men”).  Almost identical plot, but considerably darker, especially with no comic relief from characters like Nealon or Kirk to lighten the mood.  Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a long-suffering, overworked and underpaid chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who develops terminal lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.  When his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) alerts him to the vast cash made by crystal meth dealers, Walter rides along on a bust and realizes he can cook far better meth than these clowns.  He quickly corrals former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) into a 50/50 partnership, with Walter producing the finest, purest meth anyone’s ever seen, and Jesse taking care of sales and marketing.  They cook in a used camper out in the desert, and Walt insists that they wear yellow hazmat suits and gas masks.

            Of course, keeping this a secret from his ugly wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and cerebral palsy-suffering teenage kid Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte – looking like Steve Martin’s long-lost love child) is a challenge.  By the end of Season 2, she’s left him, convinced that his secrecy is hiding an affair, not a lucrative crystal meth business.   Hank himself is beginning to suspect him at this point.  What saves Walter is that NO ONE can imagine this bald, super uncool high school chemistry teacher – who eventually code names himself “Heisenberg” - is a crystal meth cook.

            As in “Weeds”, the challenge is to hide the cash and account for its results: how can Walt explain how he pays for expensive chemotherapy without the help of his former university colleague?  And the other huge problem is how to deal with nasty competitors who either try to shake them down or put them out of business.  For his part, Walt gets progressively more ruthless and aggressive about expanding the business and begins losing his patience with would-be competitors and his scruples about fighting back.  If he has to be a killer to make this whole thing work, damn it, he’s facing terminal cancer and is not about to back down from what has to be done.  This freaks out Jesse, who considers himself just a sales and marketing guy – if a bit of an unusual industry he’s in – but not a killer at heart.

 Nancy doesn’t smoke any of the marijuana (though practically every else does – even Shane tries it) and Walt never samples his own product, but Jesse has tried it enough to be able sell his customers on its quality.  Neither show glorifies the drugs, but marijuana still comes off as pretty harmless and crystal meth as a recipe for rotten teeth and terrible hygiene. 

 Neither show goes into enough detail to explain HOW to grow marijuana or cook crystal meth.  The former involves growing lots of plants, some form of fertilizer in big white containers, and lots of lights.  The latter involves chemicals and equipment and a fair amount of occupational hazards (e.g. poison gas or explosions) if not done properly.  While neither marijuana nor its by-products prove the least bit dangerous, Walt has managed to make phosgene gas, ricin (from castor beans) and thermite, an intense  burning substance useful for cutting holes in big thick steel doors.  No one is going to be able to watch the shows and know enough to go into business for themselves.  The real kicker to both these shows is that they show how dangerous and unpleasant both businesses are not merely for meek souls such as Nancy Botwin or Walt White who might be inclined to enter them to make some extra cash and solve their financial problems (and exchange them for a whole host of much more dangerous ones), but also the hardcore criminals who frequently wind up dead.  Very dead. and in some particularly nasty ways.  Enjoy both, and be warned.