MALLS ARE are now movie-lands, Walmart having thrown up drive-in sized screens on 330 of its parking lots, running to meet America’s hunger for entertainment away from home. Happy families, in kind, flocking to “cinema under the stars” — or, as the case may be, under hovering storm clouds — or cinders from nearby riots. ...
. SELLOUTS JAMMING Walmart screens make it feel like the fifties all over again. Pardon me for dropping the fifties, that reviled decade dammed mostly by people who did not live through it. I will not apologize for too many things about the era that prove their value over and over again on current-day profit-making platforms prone to push whatever still works with the public. Like The Twilight Zone on MeTV. Like great musical concerts on You Tube.
GRAINY BLACK and white revelations: Other night, I ran into Leonard Bernstein on You Tube introducing pianist giant Glen Gould for the first time on national TV. The fantastically long, nimble fingers of Gould's were as sure and strong as lighting. On the same bill, Igor Stravinsky visited the podium to direct the final segment from his powerful Firebird suite. And now I love Leonard Bernstein. My memories of his Young Peoples Concerts on TV in the fifties are fuzzy, but now, all the yeas later from my adult eyes, they are a brilliant achievement. What a great and gifted educator he was, so easy to understand, and so interesting! I now regard him as the greatest figure in American music history. He had it all.
ON MeTV, Rod Serling’s eerie, ever- provocative Twilight Zone was running in marathon over the July 4th weekend. Between episodes, I broke away to watch a dreadful flick on HBO, Requiem for a Dream. The characters were so repellent, the subject — drug addiction, a drag addiction I had no patience for — wore me down in 15 dreary minutes, and I bailed back for more Twilight Zones.
BEFORE TELEVISION news got drunk on its own power to fabricate and favor, the boob tube, as they called it, gave you everything, I Love Lucy to Jack Paar. Best of all, it gave you the news in daily briefings lasting a half hour, max. Such a sane way to keep the public informed without its going insane on broadcast overkill. At the moment, TV newscasters are working overtime to keep us riveted to what next they might drum up on the racist watch. Lately, I feel like I am being bombarded by that one word over and over and over. And so I run — anywhere away from news outlets. Into some kind of a hell hole, we seem to be sinking, literally into mass hysteria? It feels like an old episode from The Twilight Zone. Read on.
GOOD CORONA news gets shoved aside. No relief from the media whores, who refuse to give headline coverage to a drastic drop in the daily number of new Corona-related deaths. Let me explain: You may hear a TV pundit conceding it to be down “somewhat” No, not somewhat, idiot. Down by as much as 75% from highs in April, and no, I am not quoting either Fox or CNN, but from a CDC graph. Or are they, too, no longer to be trusted? From a high of 2,700 a day on May 6, down to more in a range of 600 per day now. Only 212 deaths yesterday. How can I not believe that the media is biased, whatever the reasons? Have they no shame? No, they haven’t.
WHERE WAS I? Oh, yes in a Walmart parking lot drive-in under the stars. Back in 1918, thousands of U.S. film palaces were shut down in the fall of 1918, due to the Spanish flu pandemic making a comeback. But by spring the following year, most of them were back up and running. May we be so lucky. May there be a vaccine soon. May Amtrak still be on the tracks. And may a real circus somewhere find a return of crowds ready to re-embrace its down to earth appeal. Most of all, may I get to take off this damn mask for good? Heck, I might be wearing it right now, as once or twice happened in my cozy Corona cave. And you?
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