Ians

Now for something more abstract.  A name.  Ian.  I like it.  It’s the Scottish/Gaelic equivalent of “John”. 

Most of the Ians I know of are musicians who I don’t know personally; and oddly, of all the Ians listed on Wikipedia as famous ones, the only ones I recognized were these musicians.

Ian Gillan.  Best known as the singer for Deep Purple Mark II, but he was also in Black Sabbath for one album and tour, Born Again.  Nowadays his hair is cut short, but back then it was extremely long.  Between Ozzy, Robert Plant, and Gillan, I like Gillan’s voice the most, and it’s held up the best among the three.  He has a better sense of humor than Plant yet is more intelligible than Ozzy.  He’s one of my favorite singers, period.

Ian Paice.  Deep Purple had not one but TWO Ians.  With Jon Lord’s recent retirement, replaced by Don Airey, drummer Ian Paice is now the only member of the band in literally every line-up.  His long hair is long gone, but he still wears his trademark purple shaded glasses.

Ian Anderson.  The man IS Jethro Tull; they are inseparable.  Nowadays his hair is cut short and beard trimmed; no longer the wild, unkempt savage flutist, but he is still very spry on stage and very witty between songs.  Look for a sequel to Thick As A Brick.  My favorite remains Aqualung, with Crest of a Knave being my favorite late model 'Tull.  

Ian Astbury.  The singer for The Cult.  For awhile there he did have long, straight black hair.  He also has an impressive voice.  In fact, for awhile he was singing with Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger in a Doors revival.  Now he’s back with the Cult again, with a new album: Choice of Weapon.  I like how he describes one song as being “like Hawkwind with Jim Morrison singing.”

Ian Hill.  With first guitarist K.K. Downing out of the band - he quit - and second guitarist Glenn Tipton - sidelined by Parkinson's Disease - also gone, albeit involuntarily, this makes bassist Ian Hill the only member of Judas Priest from start to finish.  As vocalist Rob Halford describes in Confess, Halford's sister was dating a bassist in a band, and suggested he audition for that band - and the rest is history.  Hill keeps it down and has been cool from day one.  

We knew an Ian in the US, son of one of my father’s co-workers.  We may have met him once or twice at most, so I can’t say more than that.  There was an Ian at our high school; I don’t know much more about him than that he was left handed.

Ian (nephew).  Of all the Ians, this is the one I know best personally, my brother’s only son.  He’s 9 years old and very bright.  I’m very proud of him.  However, he has an impressive name to live up to…we’ll see how he does.  Sadly, he has no brothers, and since I have no children and my sister's two kids are both girls, that makes Ian the only male child of his generation from my parents' branch of the family.  

Little Barber Shop of Horrors

Recently I checked out not one, but two gruesome but dramatic movies in a slightly cavalier vein.  They have some familiar elements in common:  poking light at unusual murders, even musically.

 Little Shop of Horrors.  The first incarnation I witnessed was the 1960 black & white movie by Roger Corman.  The most famous actor in here was Jack Nicholson, playing the masochistic dental patient, Wilbur Force.

            A modest flower shop, hard on luck and deficient in business, experiences a dramatic turn for the better – at least in income – when its meek and lowly assistant, Seymour, puts his man-eating plant, Audrey II, on display in the window.  The plant feeds on blood and meat, and gradually grows larger: it demands to be fed.  After initially feeding the plant his own blood, Seymour eventually winds up feeding people to the plant, who he has accidentally killed, including a sadistic dentist.  Its appetite only whetted, not sated, the plant compels Seymour to do its bidding.  He begins actually killing people to feed the plant, before finally being eaten in turn himself.  The plant, before dying, displays buds with the faces of its victims.  Gruesome indeed.

            Much later, in 1982, the story resurfaced as a musical stage show, followed by a musical movie version in 1986, which appears to be the “standard” variant most of us know of today.  Rick Moranis plays Seymour; Steve Martin plays the dentist; and Bill Murray takes Nicholson’s role as the dental patient.  Much of the plot was changed around, including the ending:  Seymour manages to defeat Audrey II and survives to marry Audrey.  Of course, the major change is the addition of various musical numbers.  Flowers, plants, love, life, and death are all the ideas which swirl around in music and song in this cynical but entertaining story.

 Sweeney Todd.  The version I’m referring to here is the recent Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp in the title role (“Edward Razorhands”?), Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, and Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin.  The story has been around since the early 19^th century, immensely popular among jaded London audiences hungry for lurid tales of crime and debauchery in their midst.  Yet again, Burton – whom I might describe as the Syd Barrett of contemporary film-making – provides a fantastic, whimsical, yet comically dark and cynical world and story.  He manages to make late 19^th century London look just as strange and alien as Wonka’s Chocolate Factory or Alice’s Wonderland.  It’s his style, whether you like it or not.

            Todd is a barber in late 19^th century London, with a beautiful wife and pretty daughter.  A nasty, corrupt judge (Turpin), who wants Todd’s wife for himself, has Todd unjustly convicted of a bogus offense and sent off for 15 years (the appellate system seems to be flawed).  His wife refused to marry the judge and took poison – but Mrs. Lovett is vague about her true fate.  His daughter (Johanna) has been adopted by Turpin, who then sets about to marry her.  A young androgynous sailor, Anthony, wins the heart of Johanna. 

            Todd returns from exile and finds a pastry shop on Fleet Street, run by a malicious widow, Mrs. Lovett.  Up until now, her pies haven’t been selling too well.  Moreover, she’s very lonely and has eyes for Todd.  She tells him what happened since he left, though in a somewhat misleading fashion.  Todd sets up his barber operation upstairs, rigging the barber chair to combine with a trap door leading to the basement of the pastry shop.  Luring unwitting customers to their doom (“the closest shave they’ll ever know”), Todd slits their throats with his silver razors and dispatches them into the cellar, where Mrs. Lovett feeds the corpses into a huge meat grinder to make filling for her meat pies.  The recipe is a winner; no one realizes the true ingredients of the pies.  His first victim was a competing barber, Pirelli (yet another Boratesque role from Sascha Baron Cohen), and despite a false start at defeating the judge, Todd does manage to finally overcome his nemesis.  In this film version, at least, several other deaths occur which twist the plot substantially into grave tragedy.  But still very worthwhile.  Did I mention – it’s a musical…and Depp, Carter, and Rickman all sing in their own voices!  Remarkable.

            Extra features to the DVD include an intriguing documentary on the character:  a semi-mythical figure who appears to be fictional after all.  Of course, leave it to Burton & Depp to bring the character to life extravagantly.  Be afraid, but also be very entertained.

The Avengers

No, NOT the British TV series from the 60s (Emma Peel – Diana Rigg – schwing!). 

 I recently saw the new Marvel movie, “The Avengers” – IMAX, 3D, etc.  Very impressive, very intense, a rocket ride.  Well done.  Remarkably, the 3D didn’t give me a headache, nor was it an overload, but it was certainly entertaining.  I have to admit, yet again: I’m not into comic books and have scarce knowledge or experience with any of the original source material for these superheroes, aside from actually being aware of most of them as comic book characters and having seen all the recent movies.

 The Avengers are a superhero team, centered around the nucleus of 4 superheroes: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk.  Each character has had movies done before (two for Hulk and Iron Man) relatively recently; now they are all wrapped up together, very much a sequel to “Thor” as the villain is Loki.

 Captain America (Chris Evans).  Steve Rogers, previously a draft-exempt weakling, became the guinea pig for an advanced “super serum” which turned him into a bulked up fighting machine in World War II.  He defeated the Nazi villain Red Skull (played by Hugo Weaving, also known as Elrond from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy) only to be trapped in a block of ice after the captured Nazi wing-plane (precursor of our own B2 bomber) crashed in the Arctic – a plot device to explain how he can wind up in contemporary time with the rest of them.  (Who knows what effect, if any, the super serum has on longevity.)

            Aside from super strength and agility, CA’s “superpower” is an incredibly strong round shield with the patriotic colors and star of America.  However, I’ve always thought the shield without an accompanying weapon was a bit lopsided.   He defends, but can’t attack – except to throw the shield at people.  He’s also the least imaginative member of the team – very “old school.”  To be honest, I’m not sure what “job” Rogers had as a young man before his scrawniness qualified him to be the test subject.  Then he was simply a super soldier in WWII; then thrust into the early 21^st century to be a superhero in a Nazi-less future society he doesn’t quite understand.  He’s very agile and bright within a limited framework, more of a generic combat guy, though not nearly as brutally aggressive as The Hulk, as medievally articulate as Thor, or as annoyingly witty as Stark.  I suppose Captain America simply serves as a baseline for the group.

 Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Tony Stark returns, wearing a vintage 1978 Never Say Die tour shirt from Black Sabbath.  He’s just as impetuous and “think-outside-the-box” as ever, but fortunately his armored suit is just as implausibly powerful as his arrogant personality.   I understand that Stark is a defense contractor, but his snazzy, high-tech, sophisticated, presentations of the Iron Man outfit in the prior films didn’t exactly clarify this minor point: was he expecting to mass-produce it, or simply have ONE guy replace the entire US Army, Air Force, and Navy?  Or have a team of guys wearing this thing?   At least with the super serum, if Dr. Erskine hadn’t been killed, they could possibly have mass-produced it and injected a whole army of US men with it; or at least as many as could pass the same psychological tests they gave Rogers.  Anyhow.   

            Iron Man flies; shoots “repulsor rays”; and can push stuff around (like huge propeller blades on a flying aircraft carrier – that’s a concept, a flying container for other flying objects).  Like Spider-Man, part of IM’s charm is his wit, but unlike Peter Parker, who seems rather dull in his normal alter ego form, Stark seems to display most of his wit and arrogance outside the suit.  Inside, he’s more or less just a flying red and yellow robot.   

 Thor (Chris Hemsworth).  I don’t get it.  Is he really a Norse deity?  My guess is that the Asgardians are merely aliens from another dimension we would call “Asgard”; the Vikings worshipped them as gods because they didn’t know any better.  He’s buff and strong, but talks in an affected manner.  His “super power” is Mjolnir, his special hammer which only he can wield, and which comes back to him like a boomerang when summoned.  He also seems to be virtually indestructible.  For a god, he’s kind of boring.

 The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo + CGI).  Mild-mannered gamma tech scientist Bruce Banner becomes “THE HULK” when he gets angry (Banner: “the secret is….I’m always angry”).   In the prior two films Banner was portrayed by Eric Bana and Edward Norton (“the first rule of Fight Club is…never mention Fight Club”).  I’ve never liked the Hulk – all he does is get big and green and smash things; he’s a bit like Mr. T from the A-Team, not nearly as useful as his bulk and strength would imply.  Here his first target is Black Widow (!).  Fortunately they eventually manage to channel his aggression to the enemy aliens.  Ruffalo has a fairly easy job acting: just behave like a nerdy scientist.  It’s close to a rip-off of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, with Hulk being somewhat less articulate than Hyde.

 Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson).  She was a secret agent for the KGB, before defecting to the US.  She has a Russian name and speaks fluent Russian, though oddly has NO Russian accent when speaking English.  She can fight pretty well, shoot well too, and she’s damn pretty.  With the leather catsuit and spy angle she does have an Emma Peel thing going there…so there’s the OTHER Avengers giving an influence to this after all.

 Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).  His schtick is explosive arrows…and of course, he never misses.  From his accent (American) and comment to BW (“we both remember Budapest differently”) the movie suggests that he was a CIA counterpart to BW, but according to Wikipedia the character’s background was as a trick shot circus performer (though he did have a connection to BW).

 Nick Fury (Samuel L. M-f**kin Jackson).  I seem to recall Nick Fury was around during WWII and looked like J. Jonah Jameson, Peter Parker’s editor at the newspaper (“Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos”) though with an eye patch.  Of all these comic book characters, this is about the only one I had actually read - as well as “Sgt Rock” - back…eons ago, purchased from the Stars & Stripes bookstore at SHAPE and read on the 3 hour drive back to Paris. 

            As recently as 1998 he was played by David Hasselhoff.  Now he’s Jules from “Pulp Fiction” minus the jerri curls and plus the eye patch (harrr!).   Fury is the de facto head of S.H.I.E.L.D., a shadowy intelligence agency originally formed during WWII to oppose HYDRA (the Nazi-type group set up by Red Skull).   It’s not quite clear what relationship S.H.I.E.L.D. has to the Pentagon, the CIA or the NSA, or if it has multinational jurisdiction and thus some UN angle.  While Captain America’s “longevity” is explained by his freezing, Fury received a longevity serum.  The mysterious cabal which actually runs S.H.I.E.L.D. (Howard Stern, Simon Cowell, Blake Shelton, etc. – JK) gives Fury his orders but he seems to do as he pleases anyway, especially if they give him nonsensical orders like “nuke NYC”. 

 Movie plot.  Loki (evil god from Asgard) comes down to Earth and captures the Tesseract, a glowing cube of immense power, previously seen in the Captain America movie.  With the power of his magic wand, he converts Professor Selvig and Hawkeye to his side.  Fury escapes and summons the other heroes, one by one, to the cause of retrieving the Tesseract and defending Earth from an alien army Loki summons from another dimension using Tony Stark’s own NYC tower (itself very similar to the newly rebuilt single-tower World Trade Center Building, except this one is uptown next door to the Chrysler Building).  Hawkeye is reprogrammed; even Robin Scherbatsky from “How I Met Your Mother” (Cobie Smulders) gets a role in here among the crew on the flying ship.  The Avengers eventually wind up together and fight off the alien monsters until the grand finale.  (Sorry to spoil the surprise, people, but the good guys win.)

 Naturally, getting these headstrong guys together isn’t easy.  Everyone argues with everyone else.  In particular, Tony “Think Outside the Box” Stark and Captain “Old School” America don’t see eye to eye, Stark also bumps ugly with Thor, and everyone seems to argue with Nick Fury, who they suspect is hiding relevant information which they might actually need to know (e.g. is S.H.I.E.L.D. trying to use the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction?).  As you can imagine, after some macho bullshit the heroes put their differences aside and get the job done.   Naturally, they set up the movie for a sequel with a new villain, so we couldn’t bolt out of the theater quite yet.

The Dreyfus Affair

This was a dramatic scandal in turn-of-the-century France from 1894 to 1906.  An Alsatian officer, Afred Dreyfus, who happened to be a Jew, was accused of offering to sell sensitive French military secrets (whatever they might possibly have been) to the German military attaché in Paris.  He was tried, convicted, and sent to Devil’s Island, a particularly harsh French penal colony in South America (famously depicted in the movie “Papillon” starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman). 

 A French intelligence (contradiction in terms?) officer, Picquart, discovered that the alleged “smoking gun”, not only did not implicate Dreyfus – who had heretofore been a loyal and obedient officer since 1880 – but instead pointed to another officer, Esterhazy, whose handwriting matched exactly and fit the profile of the spy: lots of gambling debts, not particularly loyal, and overlooked for promotion.

 By then the Top Brass had committed itself to Dreyfus’ guilt; to back down would be admit an error and look stupid.  Too proud to admit its mistake, it tried Dreyfus again and convicted him again.  Dreyfus accepted a pardon, which got him out of Devil’s Island (none too soon – the conditions there often equated to death sentence) but did not exonerate him or restore his rank or honor.  The original document was finally brought to light and exposed as not only a forgery, but a particularly blatant and incompetent one.  In 1906 Dreyfus was reinstated in the French Army, with honors, and served with distinction in World War I against the Germans to whom he supposedly tried to sell secrets.  He died in 1935, shortly before World War II, apparently managing to avoid being accused of being a disloyal Jew offering to sell French military secrets to the Nazis (but he had been long retired by that point anyway).

 In addition to the inconvenience of Devil’s Island (his most serious and immediate concern) Dreyfus had to contend with two court martials and a pardon; and Emile Zola, the famous author, was sued for libel by Esterhazy for publicly accusing him (“J’Accuse”) of being the actual culprit, and actually LOST the case.  The politics and legal subtleties of the drama are considerably less important in the whole picture than several essential points:

1.         No actual military secrets changed hands:  the German attaché did not take Esterhazy’s bait.

2.         Dreyfus’ Jew-ness was considered evidence enough of his guilt.  French anti-semites believed that Jews could not have any loyalty to France.  The anti-Dreyfusards considered the matter “France vs. Jews”.  The “Dreyfusards” (those who supported him and believed he should be released and restored to honor) believed – understandably – that an innocent man should not be punished and that France’s “honor” was not served by doing so.   The scandal divided France into those two camps, with some intense disagreement and discord.

3.         The top brass considered its own honor critical to France’s security.  “We can’t expect our troops to fight and die against Germans if they believe their own generals are idiots.”  But they compounded the original error of convicting Dreyfus with the subsequent error of refusing to release him when the true culprit (Esterhazy) became obvious.  How THIS would inspire loyalty of French poilus is bizarre.  French troops did in fact mutiny in 1917, but this had nothing to do with Dreyfus and everything to do with idiotic offensives which killed off soldiers but achieved nothing. 

 The affair was turned into several movies; the one I saw was “Prisoner of Honor”, from 1991, which starred Richard Dreyfuss (!) as Picquart (pronounced “Picard” – Patrick Stewart?  Where?) and someone else (Kenneth Colley) as Dreyfus himself.  Oliver Reed has a substantial role, but dials back the panache he displayed in "Tommy" and "Gladiator".  As for Dreyfus himself, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of “Seinfeld”) is claimed to be a distant relative (absent in this movie) but how…is unclear.  

2001 A Space Odyssey

Some time recently I read Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.   The book was good, though rather depressing in its ultimate outcome.  I had seen the movie form of 2001 several times, but was never impressed.  It was not only fairly long (over two hours) but also very dull.  But I figured the novel might be a different story – and it was.

 Here’s an interesting fact: the novel was written simultaneously with the production of the movie by Stanley Kubrick.  The movie premiered on April 2, 1968, whereas the book was released in June 1968 (hardback) and July 1968 (paperback).  Anyone attending the premiere would have had no access to the book.  Audiences’ reactions were mixed: Rock Hudson was quoted as complaining, “can someone tell me what this is all about?”, whereas the Doors, forced to see the film from the front row (the only seats left) were knocked out and impressed; Morrison stood up and said, “Well, that’s the best movie I’ve ever seen, we can go now.”  For my part, I shared Hudson’s impression.

 Unfortunately for most of us (including me), the movie surgically extracts the plot and leaves us with barking monkeys, man vs. homicidal computer, and an extravagant light show.  The novel, as you might expect, fills in the gaps and tells us what is really going on, particularly useful and necessary towards the end.

 Let’s start with the movie, sans novel.

Part I.  Apes jump around mysterious monolith, grab bones, and start kicking ass.

Part II.  Humans find monolith on the moon.  “Gee, that’s peculiar” (in Eddie Murphy mocking white people voice).

Part III.  Astronauts go off to Jupiter on a big ship.  The computer, HAL 9000, suddenly goes apes**t and kills off all but one of the astronauts.  The surviving astronaut, Bowman, succeeds at neutralizing the computer and continuing the mission.

Part IV.  Bowman makes it to Jupiter and enters the master monolith, which was just floating out in space.  After an extended, very trippy light show, he winds up inside a fancy hotel room, grows old, and becomes a fetus (mother unknown).

After witnessing this for two hours, most of us (even those partaking of chemicals or herbs to enhance the movie-watching experience) have the same reaction: W T F?

 Here’s the explanation the novel provides but Kubrick did not.

Part I.  Apes can’t do much except hoot and holler, even at each other.  The leopard is at the top of the food chain.  The monolith comes from nowhere (this is 3 million years ago) and scans, probes, and analyzes the apes.  Finally it puts the suggestion in the alpha male (Moon-watcher) head of “try making a tool out of something”.  Moon-watcher crafts a crude club, teaches the others to do the same (and sharpen stones, etc.) and pretty soon they’ve got the idea.  Now they can not only assert dominance over the competing tribe of apes, but also take down the much-feared leopard and jump to the top of the food chain.  This sets the apes on the road to humanity – to become us.  (“And there was much rejoicing.”)

 Part II.  Humans find the monolith on the moon.  It is clearly NOT natural and was deliberately buried on the moon, though with an unmistakable magnetic signature someone was sure to recognize and start digging.  Whoever left it there, left it there to be discovered.  Sure enough, when uncovered and exposed to sunlight, it immediately sends a transmission in the direction of Saturn (movie: Jupiter).  The monolith is 3 millions years old, so it’s clearly alien.  And the aliens are probably not from Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, or anywhere else in the solar system.  Whatever is on Saturn is most likely itself a relay to the stars. 

 Part III.  5 astronauts are on Discovery, two remaining awake and the other three in suspended animation.  Another ship, Discovery II, is being built, but will not be ready for several years.  The plan is that once this crew reaches Saturn, they will go into stasis (cared for by HAL) and the next ship will wake them up when they get there.  That’s the plan, at least.

            HAL 9000 abruptly decides – on its own – that for some reason, the astronauts are inimical to his plan and must be wiped out.  It sets Bowman off on a wild goose chase to fix an antenna that isn’t broken.  It shuts down life support on the sleeping astronauts, killing them.  It also killed Poole, the other conscious astronaut.  Bowman, exercising extreme discretion and care, manages to deactivate HAL.  However, since he knows the next ship won’t be there for years, and he would need HAL to remain in stasis, deactivating HAL means the trip to Saturn will probably result in his death.  Nevertheless, he decides to complete his mission and see what happens.

            He does reach Japetus, the moon of Saturn on which the master monolith exists, and manages to “enter” it.  Light show?  Yes.   Hotel?  Yes.  However, this proves to be a gate to another dimension, and Bowman…well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.  But suffice to say that Clarke actually DOES explain what happens to Bowman, and it differs considerably from the movie ending. 

 Normally book & movie complement each other so that reading the book is not necessary to understand the movie.  Not so here.  My recommendation would be to read the novel, then watch the movie again (no matter how many times you may have seen it before) and enjoy it now that you can FINALLY understand what is really going on.  Voila!  

Mad Men

Recently, after some delay, the fifth season of “Mad Men” started up.  I have yet to see an episode of that season, but I did finally finish watching the prior four seasons.  It’s grown on me after a few months.  Here’s the deal.

 Madison Avenue, New York City, 1959-65.  A fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper, competes for various corporate (and non-profit) accounts, even competing with real life agencies whose names I recognize.  Of course, all the partners are male, and it’s with some difficulty and controversy that one worker, Peggy Olson, becomes a copywriter as opposed to simply a secretary. 

 Don Draper (Jon Hamm).  The main character; he eventually makes partner.  Draper is the creative genius at Sterling Cooper and inevitably the go-to guy for their ad campaigns.  The firm would be nothing without him.  Unfortunately for his wife Betty (January Jones) he can’t seem to keep his pants on.  Every season we have to see which skirt he’s chasing into bed.  Eventually the couple breaks up.  From flashbacks we learn that his childhood was extremely unhappy (banjo playing Great Depression farm scene), though how that justifies his current behavior is not really explained (“I was an unhappy kid.  Let me have my fun now.”).

            He’s also hiding a secret past – and a completely different identity stemming from a mishap in the Korean War.  How he kept that secret all this time is one of the biggest plot holes in the series.  I’d have made him some “Manchurian Candidate” after being captured by the Chinese, but they went with this story instead.

            I find him only borderline sympathetic.  His talent at the office is offset by his personal life.  The stupid thing about it is his wife is fairly attractive and not very bothersome.  She does a fair job (by no means perfect) of raising their two children Sally and Bobby, and is neither greedy, dishonest, nor difficult.  She compares favorably with most of the women Don cheats with, possibly excepting the real Draper’s wife (and that relationship appears to be platonic).   My favorite was the Jewish woman, Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff).

            Like most of the men on this show, he likes to drink.  If “vodka martini, shaken, not stirred” is James Bond’s signature cocktail, the Old Fashioned is Draper’s.  It seems the first thing anyone does when he walks into an office – particularly Draper and Sterling, especially together – is pour a drink.

 Bert Cooper (Robert Morse).  He’s the senior partner; he worked with Sterling’s father to create the agency and is more a source of down-to-earth wisdom and overall strategy than any creative input.   He tends to favor Asian and abstract art, so he’s a bit of an enigma who the lesser lights (particularly Kinsey) try to impress.

 Roger Sterling (John Slattery).  Competing neck-and-neck with Draper for cynical infidelity, but at least Draper actually contributes substantially to the firm’s output.  Sterling doesn’t seem to think up anything, so much as wine, dine, and schmooze the various clients to persuade them to stay or switch firms; he’s more of a rainmaker than an ad guy.  His (ex) wife is older and his kids are close to grown up.

 Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser).  Next tier down is “Mr. Campbell”, who owns one bright blue suit.  He’s an aggressive, up-and-coming ad guy who wants to be account manager.  This puts him in competition with Cosgrove.  He has a cute wife, Trudi (played by Alison Brie, the cute brunette on “Community”) who’s been trying to get pregnant, without much success.  However, he does get along with her parents (even better than he does with his own), and she’s very supportive of his career.

 Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton).  Cosgrove is fairly normal: his big thing is that he got some fiction published, much to the envy of the other copywriters (all frustrated novelists, it seems).   Besides that, nothing remarkable.

 Harry Crane (Rich Sommer).  Crane is a bit of a nerd, but he works hard and carves an important niche for himself by single-handedly developing Sterling Cooper’s TV ad section.  I like how he figured it out himself and threw himself into it.

 Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis).  Pipe smoking, black-girl dating, pot toking, semi-beatnik anti-establishment guy, very pretentious, but still a worthwhile contributor to Sterling Cooper.

 Sal Romano (Bryan Batt).  The artistic director, a tall Italian guy, set off my gaydar fairly early and sure enough proves to be deep in the closet.  Ultimately he’s cast aside when the Lucky Strikes guy makes a pass at him and he declines. 

 Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks).  110 octane of DD cup woman; she’s the head secretary and briefly has an affair with Roger.  She marries a doctor (Rex’s love child from “DH”) but still has some feelings for Roger.  Inevitably all the girls at Sterling Cooper have to answer to her.

 Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss).  She’s not particularly attractive, but she is smart, and makes some inroads into this heavily male-dominated industry.  But she’s not an angel.  In fact, she managed to go through nine months of pregnancy without even realizing it until the baby popped out.  Maybe not so bright….

 Lane Pryce (Jared Harris).  When Sterling Cooper are bought out by a British company, Pryce comes in to manage things, mainly to veto expenses and make unpopular decisions, but eventually he becomes a far more sympathetic character.  

 The characters smoke nonstop even knowing (thanks to Lucky Strike’s scientific research) that smoking is bad for them.  Later on, Kinsey introduces Peggy to marijuana, which she enjoys.  There are NO black, Jewish, or Hispanic members; the firm shows not the slightest interest in hiring anyone who isn’t a WASP; and Peggy had her work cut out for her getting her own position, thanks to Draper’s intervention.  The top two men, Draper and Sterling, can’t keep their pants on.  I see a modest amount of recognition of the world outside the office:  the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960 (they all favor Nixon), the Johnson-Goldwater election in 1964 (they all favor Goldwater), not much mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a few mentions of the growing unpleasantness in Vietnam, and one brief mention of the Beatles.  The biggest invasion of the outside world into the show's consciousness is the Kennedy Assassination in November 1963.

 Obviously, what goes on after hours – or even during hours, for that matter (Draper makes his own schedule) with this “men [and Peggy] behaving badly” business is part of what gives “Mad Men” its flavor, though I’d say that this ingredient is not particularly unique to the show.  It wouldn’t be “Mad Men” if Don Draper only nailed Betty.  But it’s the less prurient elements of the show which specifically distinguish “Mad Men” from similar competing dramas.  Fortunately, at least 60% of the show is really the work environment:  how they land clients, how they steal clients, how they lose clients, what they do to keep the clients happy, and how they develop their ad campaigns.   That is the part of the show I like best.  For all their infidelity and problems, these people genuinely have to be creative and come up with things out of thin air.  We haven’t reached January 1967, so it’s too early to tell if they get any Super Bowl accounts.  We’ll have to wait and see…

Baron Haussmann

As I promised, here is the scoop on Georges-Eugene Haussmann, better known as Baron Haussmann, part of the tag-team duo with Emperor Napoleon III who completely remade Paris in the third quarter of the nineteenth century between 1852 and 1870.  My source is Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris, by Michel Carmona.  It’s a fairly long and detailed book on his life and how he managed to remake Paris, but certainly an excellent source of information on France from his birth to death.

 Several generations before him, the Haussmanns moved from what is now Germany to France and became French.  From a relative with a noble title, GEH earned the title of Baron, though in practice his vocation was as a prefect (governor) of different parts of France before becoming prefect of Paris.  This was at a time when Paris had no mayor, the role essentially being filled by the prefect.

 The Haussmann story cannot be told without mentioning Napoleon III, also known as Louis Napoleon.   Nowadays it seems N3 is more known as an unsuccessful dictator who messed around in the Crimea, Italy, Mexico, and Southeast Asia (French Indochina) and lost France to the Prussians in 1870 – he was even captured at Sedan.  But I believe this overshadows his far more significant achievement: rebuilding Paris with the help of his prefect, Haussmann.

 1848 was a busy and interesting time in Europe.  Several countries experienced revolutions; Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto.  N3 came back from exile to win the election in late 1848 and become president of France; in December 1852 he succeeded in a bloodless coup to become its emperor, establishing the Second Empire; the first was obviously Napoleon Bonaparte’s.  The latter was actually his uncle; N3 was the son of NB’s older brother Louis.  “Napoleon II”, NB’s actual son, never achieved power, dying in “captivity” in Austria.   Remarkably, N3 spent almost no time in Paris before becoming President.  Most of his life had been spent in exile in Switzerland and England plotting his return to France. 

Upon his return, N3 had brought with him a marked up map of Paris which described his plans.  At that time Paris was still a densely populated city with very few large, wide avenues, more medieval in nature than modern.  N3 had the idea of decompressing the city, allowing it to breathe with more park space and wide avenues cutting across the city and linking up the rail stations with each other; without this it was difficult to cross the city with any speed.  Critics argued the purpose of the wider avenues was to discourage and hamper the use of barricades, but the aesthetic and practical convenience alone of these changes reduces the force of such arguments.  As it was, N3’s colored map went up in flames when the Hotel de Ville was torched by the Communards (aka the Congressional Progressive Caucus) in May 1871.

 If N3 had the basic vision, it was the prefect, Haussmann, who figured out how to turn that vision into reality.  Haussmann was an expert administrator, a clever bureaucrat who know “how to get things done”.  He used eminent domain to condemn huge sections of town – though the owners were compensated – so the demolition and rebuilding could occur.  He managed the financial chicanery necessary to finance the construction, by bonds and finance companies.  He even threw in a few ideas of his own (e.g. the Etoile).  The Opera building itself and the district around it, the Bois de Boulogne, and Les Halles also date from this period under Haussmann’s direction.

 To be honest, I found this “political sausage-making” part of the story fairly dull.  What intrigued me was the way in which Paris changed.  Most of the work was done in the 1850s-1860s, mostly wrapped up in time for the World’s Fair in 1867 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.  Another big issue is sanitation:  Haussmann was responsible for installing the sewer system.  This, combined with the larger avenues, dramatically improved the hygiene of the city.  Of course, this meant razing large areas formerly inhabited by less wealthy elements of Parisian society; the new buildings were much nicer and out of the price range of the former residents.  Part of the “financing” was that not only were the new blocks sold at a profit, the improved property values beefed up the real estate tax income of the city.  But this pushed the riff-raff further out.

 In fact, Haussmann presided over a substantial expansion of the city itself.  What had been immediate suburbs were urbanized and the city’s current 20 arrondissement size dates from this time.  With the major exceptions of the Eiffel Tower (1889) and the Paris Metro (1900), most of what we know of today as “Paris” was shaped and formed during Haussmann’s tenure.  This includes Blvd. Malesherbes, which opened in 1861.  This was the street I lived on from 1984 to 1990.  Considerable work was done in this part of town and around Gare St. Lazare, which was only minutes from where I lived, and the station I used most often (mainly to commute to school from spring 1984 to June 1986).

 Downfall.  By now we take Paris in its present form for granted, but back then these “grand travaux” (major works) involved destruction of much of “Old Paris”, which some misguided dolts treasured in its own right.  Moreover, the methods themselves opened up the arrogant and aggressive Haussmann to not merely aesthetic criticism, but outright allegations of corruption and self-dealing.  By mid-1870 this opposition had reached a critical mass so strong that even Napoleon III couldn’t protect his subordinate – and he was out.  But by then they soon had a far more urgent concern than urban renewal and shady real estate deals:  the Prussians had defeated the French Army at Sedan and were soon besieging Paris itself.  

 Modern impressions.  I’ve been to NYC several times over the last few years, and I’ve noticed a major contrast with Paris.  Below First Street, Manhattan has the more irregular streets we associate with European cities, but the buildings are still all different styles and heights.  Above First Street, the avenues are completely straight.  Looking south simply hits the brick wall of oddly-angled streets, but west you can see straight to New Jersey, east to Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx, and north uptown with Central Park in the middle.  But despite the regularity of the streets, the buildings are completely different. 

 Paris, on the other hand, has consistent heights of the blocks, block after block across the whole city.  It’s like it has a crew cut.  Moreover, the facades are consistent in style, none of the dramatic heterogeneity which American cities have.   The latter element was actually established in the late eighteenth century, but Haussmann can take credit for the former.  But the ultimate credit for Paris as we know it now goes to both Haussmann and Napoleon III.  None of the latter’s political and foreign policy failures mean nearly so much in 2012 as his impact on Paris today.