The Hollywood Bowles

A Thousand Words, Redacted

Scott Bowles

January 18, 2016

A buddy noted with some surprise recently that I use emoticons, and I’ll admit: I’m a fan of the fad.

But see, here’s the thing. Emoticons aren’t a fad, or even anything new. Journalists have been using them for decades.

Of course, we had fewer to employ back then, when language was a more delicate endeavor. But instead of writing, say, “shit,” a reporter would write “$#!t.”

It was a brilliant concept by Mort Walker, the cartoonist behind Beetle Bailey. In 1964, he coined a term for using symbols instead of swearing: a “grawlix.”

Now, thanks to basic cable, there’s virtually no need for grawlixes. There are but three verboten words remaining in the English language: the n-word; the c-word; and the other f-word. And no one is going to make emoticons for them, so hopefully their expiration dates are nigh.

For now, though, we have an amazing assortment of images from which to choose: You can project symbols from an engagement ring to broken heart to the peace symbol. There’s one that sure does look like a well-coifed coil of manure.

You can dress as everything from cop to theater mayfly. There is even a middle-finger (with flesh-colored options, so you can say ‘fuck you’ with that personal touch).

It is too much, of course. We cannot help but equate possessing amounts with having more.

But it really is that rare technological step, to speak in terms that would be universal in almost any language. Much like the one mankind shared until, word has it, the almighty broke the Tower of Babel into a million shards of tongue.

So it enjoys a revival here. And let’s face it: Sometime it’s better to send a symbol when you really don’t feel like writing — particularly when your response it will likely wind up grammatically and alphabetically butchered. And when that happens, your up the creek without you’re paddle.

But I beseech one tweak, to be formerly entered into the Book of (Steve) Jobs: a ‘fingers-crossed’ emoticons. There are many variations on finger dexterity: Fingers that point, clap, cup ears, probably picks noses.

But none, besides having to get all prayerful:

None for “Good Luck.”

What the fuck?

Oh yeah, we need one for that, too.

A Word Worth a Thousand Pictures

Scott Bowles

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January 11, 2016

I had a nostalgic moment with a vagrant this weekend.

That’s not particularly surprising or new. As a former cop reporter, I’ve always been fascinated with the homeless, America’s last indigenous population, and their sprawling, coast-to-coast reservation: the city.

There was the homeless woman who developed a crush on Michael when he was living at my house in DC. Every once and again, she’d leave canned beets or a kitchen chair on my porch as a ‘Thinking of You’ gesture to Mikey. The street musicians and mobile soup kitchens who were fodder for endless beat stories. The homeless lady who hawked a loogie on my door when I told her I had no change. Or the homeless man I nearly accidentally crushed when he grabbed some zzzzs under the shade of my Jeep.

The taproot fascination, though, came four years ago, when I was having the Harley repaired.

The shop sat only a mile from my home, and the mechanic said there was no need to wait around; the repair would take two days, at least. So I had to decide: Succumb to my lazy-ass nature and take a taxi home, or hoof it.

I would have likely chosen sloth had I not seen the empty grocery cart in the alley behind the shop (shopping carts are like Winnebagos for city drifters, and twice as abundant as discarded cans, even though they’re worth between $75-$125 apiece).

So I dumped my belongings in the mobile cage: $200 helmet; $300 leather jacket; new iPhone in the seat normally reserved for eggs and infants.

And we began our rickety, one-wheel-askew stroll home.

Had I ducked into a phone booth and changed into a cape and big red S, the change in appearance could not be more immediate and stark. I may have had $1,000 worth of gear in that cart, but suddenly I was a hobo, human flotsam acting as catch basin for trash treasures.

No one looked me in the eye as I walked down Sherman Way. A woman stood in her doorway and waited for me to pass before she walked to her mailbox. A young man and woman, hand in hand, walked on the grass so as to not brush too close. When I passed the local park/playground, a Motel 6 for the indigent, a bedraggled man awoke from his nap, sat up and looked at me. Mistaking me for the penniless, he flopped back to sleep.

As I neared the house, I came upon my elderly next door neighbor, Ted. He asked about the cart, and I shared the adventure.

“You should have called me,” Ted said. “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

I thanked him for the offer, then realized later that he gave me something more. An epiphany.

I had spent so many years covering the street and its denizens, I thought I had some inkling of their worldview. And congratulated myself so for fragments of altruism. But I was so foolish in my notion that all they needed was money. When really, under the cloaking shield of poverty, they perhaps needed something more basic: acknowledgment. A look in the eye. Even a firm no is, at very least, recognition of you as a human being.

But back to the nostalgic moment.

Whenever I’m feeling invisible (or at least translucent), I like to disappear by car or motorcycle into the Santa Susanna Pass, a wending, scenic and mountainous ribbon of highway engraved into the hillsides of Simi Valley. With the right song and corner, it’s a transcendent escape.

On the drive back, I noticed a man standing roadside at my exit, holding a single-word sign for the motorists as they stutter stepped through the intersection. Emblazoned on the makeshift billboard was this:

HUNGRY

No embellishment, no plea, no bullshit sales strategy. Just a fact, out there like a wayward shopping cart.

I rolled down my window and pulled out my wallet. I gave him the contents: $8. I like to think I’d have given him $60 if I had it, though I’m not that confident in what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

The man took the bills with two hands, and smiled, and said something as the light turned green. I could not hear what he said.

But Mister, I see you.

The Cost of Love

Scott Bowles

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January 4, 2016

Teddy, I swear to god, sometimes that dog…

So he’s always eaten weird things at the house. He once took two TV remote controls while I was out of town, chewed on them a bit, and left them under a sprinkler for two days (somehow, they still work).

Another time, when he learned he could use his height to his fiendish advantage, he ate an entire chocolate brownie, requiring a late-night scramble to the emergency room of my vet.

But cotton. Teddy always cottoned to cotton.

Paper. Underwear. Sweatpants. Bath robes.

Then he took a hankering for, of all things, money. And, apparently, the bigger the bill, the better. When I left a $5 and $1 bill on the foyer table, he ate the $5, in half as precisely as a frog dissection. The $1 was left untouched.

This week, Teddy went for the big score.

I got up about 9 a.m., padded toward the living room. As I opened the bedroom door, I discovered my floor tiled in plastic: credit cards, driver’s license, insurance card. It had been three days since he’d been home, thanks to a quick trip to Atlanta.

And I realized: He ate my wallet. Must have smelled the billfold (perhaps a bouquet of ass and leather?), decided it was a premium rawhide, and ate my wallet. At least he left me my driver’s license, but it was a lot of cash: $164 from the trip. Seven $20 bills, a $10, two $5 bills and four $1 bills (my obsessive compulsive urges demand I order my bills, largest to smallest, and I remembered ordering the stack before the flight).

Then, a break in the case: The ID cards led me on a bread-crumb trail to my wallet, tucked in the cushions of my black leather couch (how he has not passed that through his bowels remains a mystery).

Or what remained of my wallet. Teddy went to town on it.

But when I opened the wallet, the biggest surprise: He left me the four $1 bills.

Mom suggested I check Teddy’s poop for the money, and couldn’t help but crack I could still try to spend it (just lay a turd on the counter at 7-11 and ask for change for a $20).

Yet, I can never hold a grudge against the guy, who simply wants to taste the world.

After a few choice words for him, Teddy took a timeout in the backyard.

Normally, this would not be punishment for him, so thick his coat. He’ll often nap outside to enjoy the winter air, a stark difference from the boiler room Esme and I tend create inside the house.

But if he sees me — anywhere — he wants to be there, too. I’ve seen him sit in the rain when I’m in the backyard. My house is a sauna, but he pants his way through without complain. He leaps into any car I’m driving with unwarranted confidence, unrestricted trust.

And now, he is at the back patio door, awaiting forgiveness and re-entry. He must know me inside out: I could never stay mad at Ted. Not even for $160 cash. I still melt when I think of what that boy has brought to my life.

Teddy, I swear to god, sometimes that dog…

In God We Trusted (an Act in Two Bits)

Scott Bowles

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December 28, 2015

I’ve always been something of a coin nerd.

It began when dad got me into collecting wheat pennies, the early coins minted from 1909 to 1955. I’m not sure why dad liked them, but I hunted them like Ahab on a bender. We tallied 147 of them. They may still lay congregated somewhere, in an unused beer stein at the house (dad, unlike Ahab, wasn’t much of a drinker).

As I got older and into magic, I extended my geekreach to larger coins: half-dollars, silver dollars. I still pester friends traveling overseas to collect the coinage of the land. I have several arcade tokens I’ve kept simply because of their heft and shine.

Recently, cleaning out a drawer, I came upon a quarter that saved itself from the change jar. That’s where all coins typically go, to be amassed and then wasted on something like a magic trick or battery-operated toy or some such equivalent of beanstalk seed.

But this quarter caught my eye. It was dingy, beaten up, clearly around the block a few times. Still, its year — 1953 — shone like a new mom. I’m still not sure why I kept it. 1953 isn’t a memorable year for me, nor an important number.

But the more I thought about the coin, the more valuable it became.

It must have sparkled like Waterford when it was minted, either in Philly, Denver or San Francisco.

Who was the first owner? How many has it seen? Where has it been traveling for the past 62 years? Did it once jingle in a president’s pocket? Help Bob Dylan buy a pack of smokes? Sit in a kid’s first piggybank?

I began to research the year. Gas was 22 cents a gallon. Bread was 16 cents a loaf. The average annual income was $4,011 a year.

Then, another surprise: My quarter, probably handed to me in a handful of change at Yummy Donuts, was actually worth $2.55. Apparently, the U.S. Treasury put more silver in coins back then, when we paid our debts. One website said that, if it were struck at a certain mint, it could be worth as much as $6.

But this coin’s not for sale.

I know that when I’m gone, the coin will re-enter America’s economical orbit. Maybe it will wind up in a parking meter (for the hover cars we’ll all be riding, right?). Or Yummy Donuts. Or Bob Dylan’s great-great-granddaughter’s first piggybank.

For now, though, it remains safe here, in the admiring hands of a nerd in Van Nuys who took a shine to its shine. For we all have one, don’t we? We all are one, aren’t we? Looking to catch the light at the right angle, to rest among the treasured, to announce to the world: Kilroy was here.

It’s funny how priceless a thing becomes with just a little attention.

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Scott Bowles

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December 17, 2015

(Warning: spoilers abound)

Much ink and many megabytes have been spent in praise of the season 2 finale of Fargo, all of it earned.

But in breaking down the cleverness of the final episode, perhaps we, as Lou Solverson would say, are missing the bigger picture there, yeah.

For all the brilliant Coen references, time jumps and links back to season 1, Fargo’s second season is really a retelling of the story of Job — with Hanzee as the devil, a well-dressed-but-indifferent stranger as God and Lou as Job.

The show foretold that in episode 1, when judge Mundt tells Rye Gerhardt the parable: That one day, the Devil challenged God that he could get a righteous man to denounce his faith. He plagued Job with loss, pain and suffering. But Job remained unwavering, and was returned his health and fortune for taking the righteous path.

In the same way, Lou was set upon by modern plagues. He is sent to serve in Vietnam — twice. He’s watched “his boys” die senselessly. His young wife and mother of his 6-year-old has cancer. He is threatened to surrender his faith by the Gerhardt clan, which owns local law enforcement, and by Mike Milligan, who has corporate backing to lure him with cash.

But Lou rejects the crooked for the enlightened path, literally following a pool of blood toward the the glow of the crime scene in creator Noah Hawley’s profound Palindrome in Fargo’s second season finale.

Hawley managed to do with season two what the Coen Brothers did in 2007 with the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s epic No Country for Old Men. The brothers took a bloody Western epic and turned it into a Biblical tale of Satan-angel rivalry. For who is Anton Chigurh if not Death, unstoppable and random as a coin flip, friend-o? And Tommy Lee Jones, as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, is more: a wizened angel who sees the pointless of engaging with madness, particularly after a simple man (Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss) loses his life and soul to greed.

The canny interpretation would win the Coens a raft of Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Similarly, Hanzee is Death incarnate. Throughout season 2, he was present as a silent instigator: Between Dodd and his family, between the Gerhardts and the Kansas City mob, perhaps even between the white man and Indian in the West’s Manifest Destiny (Hanzee takes a long, unreadable look at the site of Indian hangings at Sioux Falls). His demonization is made visually official when he is cast in flames as Peggy imagines him outside, smoking her out of the cooler.

But the defining scene comes 52 minutes into the episode, when a scarred, bandaged and vanquished Hanzee awaits the stranger with his new identification. Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrenches, both children and both staples of season 1, toss a softball in a park. The stranger talks of Hanzee’s insistence of joining empires whose vanity assures their destruction. He issues Hanzee a new Social Security number and new name, Moses Trinity.

Fans have gone nuts over the name, as it’s a reference to a crime boss from season 1.

But, measured as a story unto itself, isn’t it God allowing the Devil to continue to wreak futile chaos — which Satan promises to do (“Head in a bag. That’s the message.”)? As a furious Hanzee storms off the field and brushes past the now-fighting brothers, you could nearly hear Sympathy for the Devil playing in the background. Hope you guess my name.

Meanwhile, the devil’s lieutenants are sent to their corresponding hells: The Gerhardt’s lose their entire family, Peggy becomes a literal prisoner of her pride, Ed left a slab of refrigerated meat for ignorance, and Michael made an emperor-turned-drone in a corporate hellscape for greed.

The faithful Solversons, meanwhile, retire to their version of heaven — and even gets a brief sermon from patriarch Ted Danson (Moses?) who dreams of a world with one language, not of tongues divvied like the Tower of Babel.

Which would also explain the alien visitors from above. Sometimes all people need is faith to make the following a true story.

The devilish question for the F/X network, which has green-lit a third season of Fargo, is how do you top it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiIH5PewAzs

The Latent Geek Gene

Scott Bowles

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December 13, 2015

Magic tells you two things, about practitioner and witness.

For the practitioner, the indicator is obvious. A magician is inherently a geek. God knows where that DNA comes from, but that defective gene takes hold like Alzheimer’s and can’t help but make itself apparent to everyone — because magic requires that you publicly make a jackass out of yourself.

It’s more layered with the witness, however. I’ve found there are three types of magic spectators, which often underscore a larger personality trait (like the geek gene, but more subtle):

The skeptic. A skeptic isn’t interested in watching the actual trick. A skeptic wants to catch you doing something that will reveal the secret.
The believer. The believer is less interested in how you do the trick than in being entertained. Magicians always prefer the believer, perhaps because we know what a silly thing it is to tell somebody you want to show them a mystical lie.
Kids.

That last one is hand’s down the best witness, regardless of kid. Not only do they accept the presence of magic; it’s a perfectly acceptable answer to the inevitable question, ‘How did you that?’ Children typically will not ask ‘Do that again,’ as adults usually ask.

Instead, they’ll respond ‘Do more magic. Make this disappear. Make that disappear. Make me disappear.”

I had the profound privilege of being asked for more magic by two 5-year-olds this weekend, who finagled a sleepover at my mother’s house during my visit. I had recently suffered a severe bout of IGS (Inner Geek Syndrome) and had bought a preposterously expensive brass magic trick and was eager to bring it to the boys.

It’s a clever but simple trick: a cube with three colors. Choose a color, put the selected cube in the brass container, close it, and I guess the color. I add a dash of patter: Hold the container tight and think of the color while I read your mind.

I was surprised that Rafael, my nephew and one of the spectators, learned quickly what he was to do. He told me to close my eyes. With my hands. And turn away. Then he showed his buddy, Angel, the color as Angel stood on the restaurant bench, looking over Rafi’s shoulder. Rafi closed the container, handed it back. Angel sat between us, witness to both.

‘Ok, Rafi, think hard about the color,’ I said. Rafi furrowed his brow in concentration.’

I milked it. ‘I’m getting a feeling, Rafi. I’m entering your mind. You’re thinking about candy. And firetrucks. And I see the color…yellow!’

‘What?I’ Rafi exclaimed in a tone that suggested he had the learn the tone use in bafflement.

Angel, though, did something equally remarkable. He leaned toward me, put a hand on my shoulder, and looked me in the eyes. ‘It was yellow!!’ He was either congratulating me on the luckiest guess ever, or simply telling me, in all earnestness, ‘Good job, champ.’

And so it went, through the night and into the morning when we woke up. ‘Can we make something else change color?’ ‘Can you make me as tall as you?’ ‘Can you make this flashlight disappear in your booty?’

Finally, as we finished breakfast, Rafi asked me the greatest question question any IGS suffer wants to hear:

‘Can you read my imagination again?’

I so wish, more than you can possibly know know, Rafi. That would be true magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-9QuQfP2g

How ‘Fargo’ is Scary Smart

Scott Bowles

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November 30, 2015

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

—–
Jabberwocky, from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXevJJE0YXQ

HoBo’s Commercial of the Month

Scott Bowles

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November 21, 2015

The Art of Owning It (First Draft)

Scott Bowles

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November 15, 2015

It’s time to reinstate the draft.

Not the traditional one, where we send kids to die in the name of suchandsuch in the middle of Whogivesafuckistan.

Instead, the draft needs to reverse polarities; people would be drafted into political office.

Think about it. You would decimate PACs, which should be as illegal as yellow-cake uranium. Lobbyists wouldn’t know where to draw their crosshairs — or even whether a draftee could be bought. Hell, honest people would dread it like jury duty. Even better.

Joe Moglia gave me the idea. Joe Moglia is the head football coach of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, a little team tucked in a little school tucked in little Conway, South Carolina.

I’ve been to Conway. When the water isn’t in the humid humid air, it’s flooding your basement. Rocks don’t like to live in Conway.

The Chanticleers were a mediocre team at best. The school didn’t have a football team until 2003. Its stadium, fully packed, seats only 9,200, less than half many Texas high schools.

But the Chanticleers (a Middle English word meaning roosters) had heart. Made the playoffs a few times, and managed a so-so 4-5 record — not that the tiny conference is even eligible for the major Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) playoffs.

Then along came Joe.

Joe didn’t live and die by sports. In fact, he spent 17 years moonlighting in banking while he knocked around small southern schools, which weren’t quite used to — or didn’t quite believe in — life outside a gridiron.

Joe does. Every Wednesday during the season is “No Football Wednesday,” in which Moglia talks to players about life during and after sports: how to manage your money; find a job; deal with predators.

He has signs that dot the arena: BAM. It’s an acronym for Be A Man. But Moglia told a local news crew that BAM wasn’t about hitting harder, running faster or barking louder. “It’s about taking a stand, respecting the other guy’s and admitting when you’re wrong,” he said.

In other words, Moglia wants his players to own it.

How difficult, that lesson must be. We’ve mistaken an apology for owning our part, contrition for correction. Sorry isn’t the final word on owning it. It’s the first word of a thoughtful acceptance speech. Do pollsters really wonder why Donald Trump and Ben Carson lead GOP polls? They may be nuts, but at least they own their insanity like crucifixes.

But like I said, kids at Coastal have heart, and they heard Moglia. For three years running, the Chanticleers have been Big South Conference champs. Their winning percentage is 76%. Next year, the FBS will promote Coastal Carolina to the big-league Sun Belt Conference, meaning, one day, the roosters could crow about a national championship.

Who would deem it impossible, especially for Moglia? One day, you’re a father of four, holding two jobs to make ends meet. The next, you’re on ESPN’s Sportscenter highlight reel.

Bam.

Let’s start that draft list with M’s…

Gristle or Treat!

Scott Bowles

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October 31, 2015

Aside from mom and sis, there’s little I miss about the East Coast since leaving there 15 years ago.

Space and free time are as rare as plutonium. There’s a palpable tension and gruffness. East Coasters love to bitch about how out of touch California is with real Americans. But I defy anyone to find a state more American than California; after all, 1 out of every 8 Americans chooses to live here.

And the weather there is miserable. Trade winds may blow West to East, but hurricane winds blow in the opposite direction, straight to the East Coast. A Bronx Cheer from Mother Nature.

But the East Coast does get one thing right: All Hallows Eve. The packed-in housing is a trick-or-treaters delight. And, if it doesn’t rain, the fall air feels good when you’re wearing a latex head. I love latex heads.

I have a few. Ultraman. A mentally troubled clown. The Joker.

My favorite, though, is headless. Just a latex mask of a neck stump — with the decapitated head attached to a fake rubber hand so you can put your own inside the skull and move the mouth. My ex-wife and I would unpack it every October for our haunted house party, which drew friends from out of state and costumed kids, literally, by the hundreds to our front door.

But we had to tone it down after one child nearly died of fright. Well, that and blunt force trauma.

It was Halloween 1998, and Spencer flew in for the annual ritual. That year, he decided to don a creepy skeleton costume and hide behind the side rails of our front porch to “greet” unsuspecting visitors. Half of which were moms, who apparently thought it hilarious to visit a haunted house that could cause their children to lose control of the bladders or bowels.

That year was our biggest Halloween turnout. At least 250 kids (we counted the scant leftover candy). At least a dozen moms drove kids from their neighborhoods to our house, which was sprinkled with Bates Motel signs, tombstones and severed limbs, all blinking and rotting to Halloween sound effects of creaks and moans and screams. I would have made a great dad.

As the night wound down, a station wagon pulled to our front curb. I peeked through the inconspicuous slits in the collar bone to find a black woman, perhaps in her mid-30’s, pulling up with her daughter, about six and in a princess costume, in the back seat.

The mother hopped out, ran back to open her daughter’s door. But the girl, seeing the grisly scene, shook her head. No way she’s risking life and limb for a goddamn mini Baby Ruth.

But mom wasn’t having it. She opened the door and physically pulled her from the car, carrying her to the foot of the porch staircase. The girl again shook her head, but mom assured everything would be all right, and pushed her toward the nine steps.

Reluctantly, girl ascended. I whispered to Spencer to not pop out from the side, that this girl was truly unnerved. She took each step deliberately, as one would take up an executioner’s gallows. When she emerged on the porch, she stretched her arm as f a r o u t as she could for the candy bowl, as if she were touching a boy with cooties. I didn’t even make the the mouth move. Just a bloody head in a candy bowl, surely a restrained touch. Like I said, dad material.

No matter. Once she got the candy bar, girl turned and ran. Fast. And leapt from the top stair. Far. Hollywood stuntmen wouldn’t make that leap without protective gear and a padded floor.

Not Princess Stuntgirl. She took off and was caught at the foot of the steps by her mom, who was in a fit of hysterical laughter. I pulled off the mask and ran to the porch edge.

“Sorry!” I called out to the woman. “Don’t worry!” the mom responded, still chuckling as she carried the girl back to the car, though she need not have carried, the girl clutched so. “She’s a little scaredy cat.”

The houses here in L.A. are too spread out to score much of a payday on Halloween. I get a dozen kids, at most. Still, I love the night, and will put the dogs in costume. Esme gets a faux leather jacket that makes her look like a gangster (or that she’s into sadomachism). Teddy gets a dunce cap.

But I always put a “Beware of Dog” sign out, so that, instead of coming to the door, kids ring the doorbell, safe outside the gated front entrance.

I wouldn’t want kids losing their heads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f00DhPY5W-U

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