The Hollywood Bowles

Breaking Small (or The Revenge of the Tighty Whities)

Scott Bowles

October 26, 2015

It’s been a rough year for Breaking Bad junkies.

First, we had to go cold turkey when the finest drama on television concluded its remarkable run. Then Aaron Paul starred in the abysmal Need for Speed. Bryan Cranston took a forgettable role in Godzilla (though he redeems himself playing a legendary screenwriter in Trumbo). And we won’t discuss Metastasis, the Spanish-language remake of the series that turned out muy mal.

Even the Vince Gilligan-helmed Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad, lacks the tension (though not the dark absurdity) of its source material. Besides, Season Two doesn’t even begin until 2016.

But like a rush of Blue Meth to the market, a show has emerged from BB‘s ashes that not only takes its cues from the dusty drama; it eerily parallels the spectacled odyssey of Walter White.

Say hello to Fargo, Season Two.

Violent, gory and grinning with a wicked sense of humor, Fargo has established itself as the finest crime drama on television. And by avoiding the sophomore jinx that beset shows like The Killing and True Detective, Fargo towers as TV’s best “anthology” series, in which plots and, sometimes, entire casts, reset with each new season.

Such was the challenge of Fargo, which won 10 Emmys last year. But instead of mimicking the first season, which was really an homage to all Coen Brothers films (Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo is a reinvention of No Country for Old Men‘s Anton Chigurh) , Fargo instead tips its cap to something just as sinister, but more New Mexico-centric.

Consider:

A touch of suburban evil. A mild-mannered protagonist (Jesse Plemons) tries to live a quiet, domestic life, but finds he has a knack for the macabre (even in tighty whities). Unlike Walter White’s “molecular dissolution” of victims, Ed Blomquist chooses to turn the unfortunate into hamburger.
A son struggling with physical disability: Walter White Jr. (R.J. Mitte) suffered from cerebral palsy; in Fargo, young Charlie Gerhardt (Allan Dobrescu) copes with a crippling, as-yet-unnamed condition that resembles muscular dystrophy.
A Bob Odenkirk past. He was a founding father of Breaking Bad and the first Fargo, playing a deputy in 10 episodes.
Location as character. New Mexico played as big a role as any character in Breaking Bad, much like Minnesota deserves a screen credit in Fargo.
The death bell. Breaking Bad‘s uncle Hector rang a bell whenever hell broke loose, much like the bell that scores Fargo‘s soundtrack when a body winds up metabolically challenged.

Of course, Fargo need only sustain itself for one season, requiring just a sixth of Breaking Bad‘s endurance record. And there’s always the risk of the show running out of gas by season’s finale.

But ask any diehard Breaker if they’d take even a nostalgic sliver of the crime classic’s heyday, and you’ll get a resounding, uniform response.

Ding ding.

Knock Knock…

Scott Bowles

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October 18, 2015

One of the nicest things about returning to class is to see chalkboards again.

And erase boards, bulletin boards, Post-It notes — basically any host to the hand-written word. Hell, even the (grammatical) graffiti and light posts doubling as billboards that dot the UCLA campus are a fun read. It’s like a paleolithic Craigslist.

I’ve had memorable experiences with random scribbles. I bought my first Jeep from a bulletin board ad; a scrawled FOR SALE note that had the seller’s phone number vertically tabbed at the bottom, like a papered pianist with a dozen little tattooed fingers. I met the Lost and Found Mouse from a desperate LOST sign wallpapered to telephone poles in my neighborhood.

I almost made millions off a brilliant business plan I launched in Detroit, harnessing the power of scrawls and humor. The only barrier turned out to be that I know shit about business. And it was a stupid idea.

I was an elementary school student and just learning the nuances and of the telephone. When I figured out how to call long distance, I began phoning novelty stores across the country that advertised in Boy’s Life Magazine (which always promised riches selling Grit magazines.

The conversations would go thusly:

“Zakoor Novelty, how may I help you?”
“Hi. Do you sell whoopie cushions?”
“We sure do.”
“What about hand buzzers?”
“Yep”
“Fake dog poop? Fart Machine? X-Ray specs?”
“All of those.”
“Cool. Thank you. Bye.”

And so it went. Until the first telephone bill. Dad went ballistic when he saw dozens of daytime phone calls to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — basically any place that had crap by the cartload. Dad informed me, with no small amount of bluster, that it cost to make a phone call to those places. Ah, I realized; people need to call you. A young Conrad Hilton was born!

I was also learning about dial-a-joke. For just pennies, you could call — any day of the week, any time of the day — to hear a hilarious joke with which to impress your friends.

One day, I huddled with best friend and co-conspirator Danny to launch our start-up. We would plaster every telephone pole near Eight Mile Road to saturate the market. We looked to Mad Magazine and friends for material.

What do you call pizza that’s not yours? Nacho cheese! What do elves learn in school? The Elf-abet! Where do pencils go on vacation? Pencil-vania! How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it!

Graphically, we wanted our ad campaign to be unencumbered with much copy, pre-dating wannabe imitators like Apple and Google.

Call Dial a Joke! the ad said simply. Beneath it, my home phone.

And for a few days, business was brisk. At least once a day, we’d get a customer. After school, whenever the phone rang, I’d pick up, offer a brilliant quip, and hang up.

What I didn’t realize was that other people might need the phone, too. Namely, mom and dad. But whenever someone called our house, my parents’ frustrated friends noted, some kid was picking up the line, telling a joke, and hanging up on them.

After the discovery, mom offered me my second piece of business advice: Do that again, and I’ll pop your bottom. She ordered me and Danny to shutter the business, starting with taking down the dozens of signs in our neighborhood urging strangers to call our home. Reluctantly, we did.

But I must have missed one. About a month later, as I flipped through Boy’s Life in my bedroom, I heard mom coming up the stairs.

“Scaawt!” she hollered in an angry North Carolina accent. “It’s that damn daahl a joke!”

Surprised, I walked to my parents bedroom, picked up the phone, and offered one of my classic gut-busters: Why did six hate seven? Because seven eight nine! Click.

Get it?

The Daily Medicine Show

Scott Bowles

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October 4, 2015

A grandfather I never met lost his tiny Georgia grocery story (in which dad was born) during the Great Depression. He couldn’t bear asking customers, all neighbors and friends, for money they did not have and would not see again. Eventually, he gave away so much that he had to shutter the business.

So he started a medicine show, a common sight of the era. By horse and cart, medicine shows traveled from town to town to sing, dance, tell jokes and, hopefully, sell ‘remedies’ and trinkets to monied spectators. A traveling Tonight Show and souvenir shop.

Dad was too young to hit the road, so his eight brothers and sisters handled the entertainment. But my uncle Fonnie laughed so much at his own jokes that grampa had to cut him from the non-star roster.

I wonder what gramps would have thought of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Noah is the high-profile replacement to Jon Stewart. The South African-born standup comedian is clever, young and leading-man handsome — a trifecta in the cable TV derby. But something is missing in the retooled show.

The writers are the same. So is the left-leaning humor. But the bite lacks.

Perhaps it’s a matter of age. Political humor requires a certain world weariness. Stewart, 52, had it in spades. So does Larry Wilmore, 53, whose Nightly Show follows The Daily Show and who would have seemed a natural replacement to Stewart. Like Stewart, Wilmore is terrific at exasperation.

Noah, on the other hand, is terrific at tourist-like bewilderment. The 31-year-old often wonders aloud about an American political system that has become as cartoonish as Daffy Duck. His observations are on the money, and should be fodder for eternal material.

But politics in the U.S. is humor we know all too well, and the jokes feel somehow dated and retold. Just substitute Marco Rubio for Boss Tweed.

And then there’s the Fonnie Syndrome. Noah has a megawatt smile, and his laughter at punchlines feels genuine. Certainly, Stewart chuckled all the time at a good zinger. But Stewart laughed at the absurdity of a broken system, not the humor of his joke. There’s a razor-wire difference, and perhaps it comes from a half century of experience with red tape buffoonery.

It’s unfair to judge this early, and Noah may soon find his wheelhouse. It took Stewart the first six months of his 16-year stint to become a canny political satirist. And Comedy Central will not give a rat’s ass about wit if the millennials keep the Nielsen numbers high.

But The Daily Show had such a dry and knowing sense of humor it bordered on informational. Stewart eventually became a Post-It note reminder of the forgotten, the hair-pulling pundit for those who had to close their stores, join medicine shows and tap dance to the Muzak of The Department of Bureaus.

To lose that would be no laughing matter.

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers (and Other Oaths but Wind)

Scott Bowles

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September 28, 2015

On all grounds, legal and ethical, I should have been murdered for the Rubber Baby Joke.

The Rubber Baby Joke was borne of a documentary I saw as a kid on sharks. The show said that shark skeletons are made of cartilage, the sinewy gristle that comprises our noses and ears. Human baby bones, the show said, begin as cartilage until morphing into bone to cover vital organs like the lungs and heart.

Because I’m a genetic asshole, I immediately trotted to my sister, who would have been a Littler Kid, to tell her that babies were born of cartilage. If fact, I pontificated like a drunk Jon Levitz, if you dropped a baby from a three-story window with the right amount of backspin, it would bounce unhurt up to the window ledge of a first-floor apartment. Er, why that’s why they’re called bouncing babies. That’s the ticket.

Caroline, who would have made a far better reporter than I, did the smart thing. She never forgot the lie. If ever I windbag a story that begins to wax unlikely — I estimate 137% of the time — she will ask “Is this a bouncing baby story?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NvtR63Ks-g

I’ve always wondered from where that jackass humor sprang. I’d like to blame it on a parent. But mom presented me with strong evidence recently that there may be a sonofabitch gene: The Carbonaro Effect. It’s a show featuring a second-rate magician with first-rate props, a Candid Camera in which subjects are lured on stage, which in the show’s case is anything from a fake crafts shop to a lumber yard.

There, Carbonaro will perform hilarious jokes: floating coffee cups, taxidermy turning real; a great hardware store skit where he suggests he’s been magnetized by an electric mishap; that’s why bikes keep sticking to him. Unlike my sister, suspicion is checked at the door. This, even though 90% of studies are 70% fake, statistics say. People need to believe. People need to know there’s a reason, however unreasonable the reason may be.

Like all good reality TV shows, the series works not for the jokes, but the subjects. When played correctly, reality show participants underscore a larger zeitgeist (Tosh 2.0 the prime example). In Carbonarao’s case, just just a little bit of rubber-baby logic does the trick: The coffee floated because, duh, heat rises. Water a dehydrated mouse, and it will no longer be snake food. He’s discovered: add a little logic, however skewed, and an audience will do the rest.

Perhaps that’s why magic is back. Carbonaro has gone syndicated; Penn & Teller’s Fool Us crossed the pond to American prime time; Now You See Me, an awful Morgan Freeman flick, was one of 2014’s biggest box office surprises.

The opposite should be true. Magic works best up close, without camera editing. Does anyone believe David Copperfield vanishes the statue of liberty?

Then again, perhaps it makes sense. About a third of Americans go to regular religious service, the lowest in history. Politics have become an As Seen on TV minstrel show. Perhaps, unlike pastors and politicians, a magician will tell you a lie is coming.

But, trust me on this, Mike, for your own health. Do not turn a baby to rubber.

To: Ingram, Michael (PlusOne@notforgotten.you)

Scott Bowles

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September 15, 2015

Hey bro,

It’s been too long since I’ve written you, but not a day’s length since I’ve thought of you.

I can’t imagine you’d tolerate any place without Wifi, but, just in case reception is spotty, a quick update:

I thought of you this weekend, kickoff of the NFL season. Why did we know so much about every sport, regardless of whether we played it? But you would have loved the U.S. Open. Federer is still great. Serena is still great. As good, dare I say, as when we marveled them on those courts in Westwood. Every time I drive down there, I think of your apartment, and how those neighbors must have considered us pervs, the adult men who gathered every Sunday night to giggle at a cartoon.

That, by the way, is still on, too. And dude, I gotta say, Homer is still damn funny. So, uncle: funniest. show. ever.

Maybe that’s why you were on my mind. Sunday nights in fall were always pretty cool: football and Simpsons. And a Futurama should we need further geeking.

Oh, I began the arduous process of applying to be a Big Brother. I need someone to endure my magic. Why not force a child? Hell, they’re already being fed Halloween costumes and candy in August. Seriously. They don’t celebrate it like D.C. did, though, and no one makes a better member of the Village People.

Man, you’d go ape shit over all the Steve Jobs movies. Seriously, at least five this year. This is mythology in the making. You think history ultimately sees him as visionary or PT Barnum? If you see him, tell him the new iphone sucks.

Well, that’s about it. I miss hell out of you, dude. See ya.

Your idol,

Nor Even Frog!

Scott Bowles

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September 12, 2015

One of my father’s (and therefore my) favorite cartoons was Underdog.

Launched in 1964, Underdog was the secret identity of Shoeshine Boy. Though he didn’t possess any of the powers of today’s glistening, branded superheroes, what Underdog lacked in strength and speed he made up for in grit. And love. Specifically, for girlfriend Sweet Polly Purebread, a name dad found subversively clever, like the show. Underdog could rise to any challenge when his girl was in peril.

No plane, nor bird, nor even frog! the theme song jingled, as our hero smashes into a brick wall, ‘It’s just little old me, Underdog.’

Roberta Vinci could have worn Underdog’s U cape to the semifinals of today’s U.S. Open.

The 32-year-old Italian had never made it to a semifinal at a Grand Slam event in her career. And she was to face Serena Williams, who was marching to history. Williams was seeking her 21st Grand Slam title, tying her for the most in the modern era.

Williams is the Tiger Woods of tennis. Athletic. Photogenic. A game-changer shoulders above peers. Like Tom Brady, Williams’ commercials seem to punctuate her games.

Analysts predicted Williams would make quick work of Vinci, whose odds of beating the champ, according to Vegas, were 300-to-1.

Even Vinci, a doubles player by career, began to doubt. She had never managed five games in a set against Williams, whose thighs each are about the width of Vinci’s entirety. Vinci bought a plane ticket back home to Italy for Saturday.

Analysts didn’t help. That gasbag John McEnroe mused aloud whether Steffi Graf, whose record Williams would surely be tying, would show up in New York to personally give Williams the trophy and pass the mantel.

And the show went according to script through much of the match. Williams took the first set easily. When she bored and dropped the second, she began what has become her trademark: working up the crowd. In the third and deciding set, she began to fist pump, clench, whip the audience, which was getting frenzied. On one brilliant shot, she can be seen clearly shouting, either to herself or Vinci, “yes, bitch, yes!” The crowd began to chant. Drake, the celebrity rapper who was in the Williams’ family reserved box seating, stood up and began to applaud.

As Dad would have noted, Sweet Polly Purebread was on the tracks.

But never underestimate a badass beagle.

When the crowd went rabid at Serena’s screams and Drake’s one-man wave, Vinci rested her racket on the asphalt, looked about, shook her head at the thunder.

And smiled. She would later admit she never expected to be there, and decided she was going to enjoy being at a Grand Slam. Center Court, no less. Why not go down swinging?

Williams continued to bomb serves, some of them 126 mph, unheard of in the women’s game (Vinci hits 90 mph on a good day). But with every thunderbolt, there came a steady echo: a shot back. Wham. Return. Blast. Return. Cannon fire. Return. After winning a rally that would become emblematic of her day, Vinci gave her own Bronx cheer. She raised her arms and looked defiantly at the crowd to say, ‘I am here, too.’ After the rally, Williams bent over the net, gasping for air. She would never recover.

Analysts would later rank Vinci’s win as one of the five greatest upsets in sports history. Arguable. But this is not: When she took the microphone after the win, a tearful Vinci apologized to the crowd for beating the toast of New York.

But Vinci became so much more: a life lesson. Never underestimate an underdog. Especially when Sweet Polly’s tied to the tracks.

Where I Wait

Scott Bowles

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August 31, 2015

Dedicated to K. Vonngut (11/11/22-04/11/07)

So I’m sitting on the shower stall floor. Again. Hot water seems the only failsafe when nausea has me in Her viselike grip. But She hadn’t yet let go. So I sat and listened to music and looked at my toilet.

I doubt I would have given it much pondering in a hotel or a rental. But it’s a real consideration when you own your house. Few things are more menacing than a wrong choice there.

Thus it was with much cauton that I bought my current model, the most expensive available at Home Depot. I forget how much I paid, or what it’s called. But the advertising on the box said it was “Capable of Flushing 1,000 Golf Balls!”

Is that a standard unit of measure in toilet manufacturing? And why golf balls? Is that the average size? Or weight? Or volume?

And is 1,000 a lot? Did scientists count, or measure, or weigh or do whatever they did, and call out a Eureka! when they hit a thousand Titleists? Do plumbers talk about having to toil back in the day when you could cram only 15 golf balls down the crapper?

Anyway, She let go, and the nausea left, and I quit pondering. But that’s my Toilet Story.

E.T. the Extraordinary Terrestrial

Scott Bowles

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August 30, 2015

I met the real E.T. last night.

It was at a birthday party and barbecue at Anthony’s house to celebrate the sixth birthday of Audrey. Anthony, a friend, colleague and baker extraordinaire, had made a massive E.T. cake: a full moon with a chocolate profile of E.T. and Elliott biking through the the night sky in the middle. Friends have urged Anthony start a bakery, called “DaddyCakes.” I told him I support the nagging, as long as he doesn’t forget the little people when he becomes filthy rich.

Being the utter ham, I decided I would do a brief magic act for her. I mean, what more could a child want for her birthday than to see an adult man showboat?

There, I said it. I love magic. Since I was a boy. Magic appeals, to paraphrase Lincoln, to the dorkier angels of my nature. I will buy a magic trick just to learn how it works. I watch anything Penn & Teller do. I have entertained audiences by the several. My favorite audience is kids; partly because they still believe in magic, partly, perhaps, because I have yet to emotionally mature beyond them.

And I had no intentions of doing so last night. I thought up a small routine, and grabbed one of my favorite pocket tricks, the D’Lite.

After cake, we settled in for the movie playing in his backyard theater (Anthony’s energy makes me look like a zombie extra from The Walking Dead). The film, of course, was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Midway through the movie, Audrey came to the kitchen for a cake refill. I caught her on the patio, set down my cake, called her over.

“Wanna see a magic trick?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ok, well, let me ask you something; are you liking E.T.?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you know I’m like E.T.?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Seriously. I ride a bike like E.T.” I held a wink, to show my ever-webbing crow’s nest. “I’m wrinkly in the face like E.T.
“And, when I want to phone home to tell the dogs I love them, I just make my finger glow and send them an ‘I Love You’ message.”

I did the simplest of tricks, making the D’Lite glow red and appearing to throw a tiny star into the air. Audrey followed the toss, and opened her mouth a little when it vanished.

If I could ever learn to shut the hell up, I could have ended the trick there, on a note of wonder. But as I said, I’m a ham. Like, Oscar Mayer poster child ham.

So I continued the act. I caught the star. Pretended to breathe it up my nose and pull it from my ear. Pretended to swallow it fart it out. Overdid it enough for Audrey to realize it was a trick I was holding.

The wondrous thing about magic for kids, talking with kids, listening to them, is that they know no limits of possibility. If children watch something disappear, you’ll routinely hear, “Whooooaaaa.” “Where did it go?” Do the same for adults, even impressed ones, and the commentary never varies: “Do that again.”

But all kids are the exception. So I shouldn’t have been surprised by Audrey’s response, the first time I’ve ever gotten one like it, and perhaps the nicest one I’ve ever received.

“Can I have that?”

When I stopped laughing, I told her she could, on three conditions: “One, you show it to your mom and ask if it’s okay. Two, never let your little brother touch it, because he could put it in his mouth. And three, don’t tell anyone how it’s done; that can be our secret.”

She nodded, and I put the tip on her thumb, at least three sizes her own digit. After a brief practice, we went into the kitchen together, where Jill was resuscitating the kitchen after the tsunami of a child’s birthday party.

“Mom!” Audrey said. She put the tip under her nose, lit it, sniffed the star right up her nostril. When Jill stopped laughing, we reiterated the Golden Rules for Audrey. She again nodded impatiently, and ran back to the screening.

I returned, too, but couldn’t watch the movie. My eyes were peeled for a blinking red star, which seemed to float through the crowd as Audrey sparkled her new magic.

I’ve never been big on cliches, but they exist for they are true. And I guess home really is where the heart is. Because she phoned straight into mine.

Why Donald Trump Is Good For Democracy

Scott Bowles

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August 29, 2015

Damn I miss Jon Stewart.

He would be having a field day with the Republicans. Donald Trump continues to trounce the GOP presidential wannabes, despite his tendency to blow your mind straight out of your ass with his racism, chauvinism, and general disdain for anyone not named Donald John Trump. Hell, even his hair wants out of the race (his head looks like it threw up on itself), yet there seems no levy strong enough for Hurricane Donald.

But given Stewart’s contrarian instincts (when is this guy going to run for office? Jesus, if Al Franken can dork his way to the Senate, what’s to keep Stewart from the Oval Office?), he might have given a heartfelt thank you to Trump.

Not only for the punchlines, which are endless. But also for revealing, like a reality show, what America truly craves: Someone to own it.

Stewart even had a name for the current American political landscape: Bullshit Mountain. But, in all honesty, you couldn’t blame Trump for adding to the pile, currently at new heights thanks to Democrats and Republicans alike.

Listen to contenders in the ’16 field, and they spend more time explaining what they’re not than what they are. Not a racist, not a homophobe, not a tax-n’-spender, not an atheist, not a comin’ for your guns. It’s a strategy of pre-emptive apology, lest they offend and, gulp, go viral.

Not Trump. He’s one of the few politicians to admit wealth, though all possess it. Trump not only will tell you “I’m rich,” but he’ll pull out the checkbook to brag: $8.5 million and change. Ask him about a balanced budget, and he’ll say “I’ll hire accountants.” Foreign’ policy? “I’ll kick their asses.” As him if he’s a racist, and he can’t help but tell you he is, usually punctuated with an “and fuck you for asking.”

The result? The latest GOP poll numbers, if the election were held today, according to the AP:

Donald Trump 28.3%
Ben Carson 11.6%
Jeb Bush 8.0%
Marco Rubio 6.6%
Ted Cruz 6.1%
Carly Fiorina 5.8%
Mike Huckabee 5.3%
Scott Walker 4.7%
John Kasich 4.1%
Rand Paul 3.2%
Chris Christie 2.7%
Rick Perry 1.8%
Rick Santorum 0.9%
Bobby Jindal 0.6%
Lindsey Graham 0.5%
George Pataki 0.1%
Jim Gilmore 0.0%

If you don’t recognize most of these names, you’re not alone. But, for the record, the man in second place is the Detroit-born neurosurgeon who said in a March interview that homosexuality was “absolutely” a choice, explaining that “a lot of people go into prison straight, and when they come out, they’re gay.”

Regardless of your political spin, it’s hard to miss the parallels between Trump and Carson: Successful business men, not weaned on politics, willing to own their positions. Analysts say that Trump could redefine traditional campaigning, because he isn’t dependent on the Koch brothers (or any other lobbyists, for that matter) for cash. At this point, who could blame anyone ready for a slash-and-burn approach to governance?

We may regret that approach.

The polls suggest we crave something else: sustenance. That just doesn’t flourish doesn’t grow on Bullshit Mountain.

Ode to O Life!

Scott Bowles

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August 23, 2015

O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

— Walt Whitman

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