Blog Mix Tape: World Cup Paranoia, Our Criminal Government, Streaming Regrets, and the Demise of the Phone Call

I have a few things on my mind this week. Here are four of them. It’s a long blog. Sorry….

World Cup Fever(ish Paranoia)

As many of you know, the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina takes place this Sunday, July 19, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

We live about seven miles from the stadium. As it turns out, several World Cup teams – England, Germany and Spain – have been staying at the MC Hotel in Montclair, N.J., which is about a mile-and-a-half from where we live.

Our family stayed at the MC Hotel temporarily when we first moved to New Jersey from London three years ago. I still go there a lot to visit the hotel lounges, either on my own or with my wife before dinner in downtown Montclair.

Tonight I went there to have a drink on Daddy’s Night Out, which I’ve done many times before. I waltzed into the usual entrance, and made my way up the usual elevator to the usual rooftop bar, knowing there would be excitement in the air, what with Spain’s team staying there and all.

When I stepped into the rooftop bar, I was greeted by a woman. There weren’t many people around. I asked her if the bar was closed to the public because of the World Cup. She smiled and said she’d escort me down the elevator.

She asked me how I got up there. I said I took the elevator, of course. She repeated that she’d escort me down the elevator. I said that’s cool, I can pretty much take an elevator down on my own. But she insisted.

So, we went down the elevator. She apologized that I took time out to go there when I couldn’t stay. I said no problem.

I exited the hotel. Before I got 11 steps out of the exit, a woman and man approached me from behind and asked how I got in. Here’s a recap of our conversation, as best I remember:

Me: How did I get in? I walked in through the entrance. I live nearby, and come here pretty often.

Her: Nobody tried to stop you?

Me: No, should they have?

Her: You just walked in?

Me: Yes. As I said, I just walked in. I live nearby. I come here all the time. Who are you, and why are you acting like the fucking FBI?

Her: I’m just trying to find out how you got in.

Me: I walked in, as I said.

Her: Nobody is supposed to come in here unless they have special credentials.

Me: Okay. But I didn’t see a sign anywhere indicating you need special credentials.

So I told her goodbye, and walked back to my car, parked on the street. Just before I reached it, two cops – New Jersey state troopers – stopped me and asked me how I got into the hotel. By now, it had become comical, and I had become really annoyed.

I laughed and said I waltzed in just like usual, being a local guy in search of a beer, and deciding a hotel bar was a good place to get one.

Well, they didn’t think it was funny. We engaged in a spirited conversation, them asking me how I got in, and me telling them I got in like anyone gets into a hotel bar, with my GD feet, through a GD door.

I knew what was happening. The hotel was booked up by FIFA, the corrupt soccer organization that sucks up to our corrupt president and does all kinds of corrupt shit, but pretends to care about the integrity of the sport.

FIFA packed the hotel with FIFA people, and staffed it with paranoid FIFA staff. Obviously, some poor security guard took a piss or something when I showed up, and didn’t stop me at the door.

So me, being a 60-something American with a baseball cap and shorts, was obviously a very suspicious person in the eyes of FIFA.

This whole episode almost makes me want to pull for Argentina, which did not stay at this hotel. Almost.

On the other hand: Argentina beat England in the semis. I wanted England to finally win another World Cup after 60 years, but they pulled their usual choke job.

And anyway, Egypt should have beaten Argentina, if not for some questionable calls by the ref.

Go Spain.

And fuck FIFA.

The American Gestapo

While America’s corrupt president prepares a primetime speech designed to spread lies about election fraud that doesn’t exist, his criminal law enforcement thugs just shot and killed two more innocent people in two more U.S. cities.

The shootings were conducted by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a paramilitary gestapo force masquerading as a federal “homeland protection” agency.

One of the victims was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a Mexican immigrant who was gunned down in Houston on July 7 as part of an ICE “traffic stop,” which is just another way of saying an illegal roundup of brown-skinned people.

Prior to the shooting, Salgado Araujo and a work crew were on their way to finish construction on several Houston homes. He was gunned down after ICE goons claimed he was “weaponizing” a motor vehicle, which has become a standard government lie to justify shooting and killing people for no good reason.

Here’s what CNN reported:

Salgado Araujo had no criminal history and was afraid when unmarked cars began following him, his son said. He does not appear to have a criminal record, according to the Harris County (Texas) District Attorney’s office.

“Had my father seen an emblem of ICE, or an emblem that says anything about a law enforcement agency, my father would have complied. He would have stopped,” [the son] said. “He drove fast, because he feared that someone would take his tools.”

Salgado Araujo “was not the target of their immigration operation,” according to a source. But no matter. ICE shot him anyway.

Meanwhile, the FBI – another lawless organization under the current regime – has claimed the vehicle Salgado Araujo rode in carried illegal substances. But prosecutors in Texas’ Harris County “don’t believe” that substances collected in the van were drugs.

The other victim was Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, 25, a Colombian immigrant and father who was gunned down by ICE on July 13 in Biddeford, Maine.

Guerrero was authorized to work in the U.S. and, like Salgado Araujo, was not the target of the ICE operation. But again, ICE made up a story about him trying to “weaponize” his vehicle and used that to justify his killing.

These incidents add to the long list of deaths involving ICE and either immigrants or protestors under the current regime. Some victims were shot down; others have died in custody at various concentration camps scattered around the country.

Make no mistake: These deaths are criminal acts being carried out by a criminal, state-sanctioned agency, all with the blessing of a criminal administration.

The United States should be ashamed of itself for allowing this shit to happen. We should all be ashamed of ourselves. But too many of us aren’t.  

And that’s the real shame.

Streaming of Consciousness

I recently learned a couple new terms after watching a Netflix streaming series, thus proving the old adage that from great pain is borne great wisdom.

One of the terms is “hate watching.” The other is “sunk cost fallacy.” That’s what this blog piece is really about, but for now, let’s set them aside.

The series was Ozark, a Netflix original that ran over four seasons and 44 episodes from 2017-2022. It starred Jason Bateman, Lauren Linney, and a bunch of other actors I’d never heard of. I’d never even heard of Ozark until after I watched another Jason Bateman Netflix series, Black Rabbit, which co-starred Jude Law and aired last year.

Black Rabbit was a limited series – only eight episodes – so if you thought it was pretty terrible, as I did, then at least it was over quickly.

Not so with Ozark. No, Ozark went on and on and on, season after season, for dozens of ridiculous and pointless episodes. If you liked Ozark, fine. But you might want to stop reading now. I don’t want to offend anyone.

With that out of the way….

God, how I hated Ozark. I won’t go into all the reasons why, other than to say that it was exactly the kind of series that aims for critical praise and Emmy awards (and probably got them) by using every cheap film-school trick in the book to ramp up the drama, from overwritten characters who chew up scenery to implausible story arcs and plot lines that make no sense but pretend to be groundbreaking.

There was nothing groundbreaking about Ozark. Even its central premise was stolen straight from Breaking Bad: A white, middle-class family from the suburbs gets mixed up with vicious criminal enterprises. Their lives spiral downward. Danger lurks around every corner. The suburban family constantly crosses swords with these violent criminals, yet manages to survive while everyone else around them dies a bloody death.

That’s the kind of fantastical bullshit that could only happen in a screenplay.

Ozark should have been a limited series lasting maybe two seasons at best, with fewer than 20 episodes. Instead, it lasted four seasons and 44 episodes. And therein lies the point of this blog. Which is…

…that I kept watching it. And watching it. And watching it. I kept watching it even though I hated it almost immediately. I could have walked away whenever I wanted to. I even tried to convince myself to just stop watching it, that it was not worth my time.

But no. I kept on watching and watching and watching to the bitter end, hoping (but never finding) something that would justify my interest.

Which brings us back around to the two terms I mentioned at the top: “hate watching,” and “sunk cost fallacy.”

I hadn’t heard of either until I googled the term “I hated Ozark.” And there they magically appeared. If you’re unfamiliar with these terms, here’s what the internet tells me they mean:

• Hate watching: This means you keep watching a show even though you don’t like it, and consider it objectively bad. In some cases people just get a kick out of how bad it is, and enjoy laughing at its flaws. But that doesn’t fit my Ozark experience. I truly did not enjoy watching it. But I did convince myself that at some point it would take a turn in the right direction. Which brings us to…
• Sunk cost fallacy: This term is usually aligned with the financial world. It’s used to describe the irrational idea that you should keep putting money into a bad investment just because you’ve already invested so much. In the context of TV shows, it means you keep watching a show you genuinely dislike because you’ve already invested so much time in it that you can’t bear to just up and quit. The “fallacy” is believing that you can recoup what you’ve already lost. You can’t. The time you wasted is gone, and you’ll never get it back. So you might as well cut your losses and stop watching. That’s the smart thing to do.

I didn’t do that. I didn’t cut my losses. Instead, I kept pressing forward, motivated by the idea that I would at least get the satisfaction of watching characters I hated get the justice they deserved. But I didn’t even get that. In the end, they all turned out just fine, even as the casualties piled up around them.

One of those casualties was me, the viewer. Ozark won. I lost.

Let’s call it a lesson learned. Hopefully…..

Texts vs. Phone Calls

One of the weirder aspects of digital communication in the 21^st century is that it has made some people nostalgic for phone conversations. I’ve had firsthand experience with this. A number of folks refuse to trade text messages on the mistaken belief that phone chats are the best, most human way to communicate.

I recently read about this phenomenon in an Esquire article titled, “The Lost Art of Calling Someone on the Damn Phone.”

Here are some passages that sum up the central thesis:

“You may think the phone is just a tool for making doctor appointments or dutifully offering your mom Mother’s Day wishes or getting scammed, but it’s actually a conduit to true, visceral emotion….On a screen, your texts look just like everyone else’s; there is nothing to differentiate the love of your life from a coworker besides a few grammatical ticks…Your life is on the other side of the [phone] line. Not the screen.”

After reading these and other passages, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or slam my head against the wall.

I found myself amazed to learn that a voice on the other end of a phone line is a “conduit to true, visceral emotion.” I was gobstruck by the idea that a phone call represents a way to “differentiate the love of your life from a coworker.”

And here I was thinking that a phone call is one of the most intrusive, impersonal means of communication ever invented. Here I was believing that it’s all static and no nuance.

Here’s what I really think:

When the first phone call was made 150 years ago, in March of 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell, it basically ended personal communication as we know it. Before that, humans largely communicated through face-to-face conversations or written letters. Both allowed for a certain degree of intimacy.

In face-to-face conversations, you can look into a person’s eyes, see their smiles, their frowns, their elation and disappointment. You get a thousand little clues into what someone is thinking and feeling, just by looking at them.

With written letters, you can take your time to form thoughts and emotions and share them in a very personal way. Some of the most beautiful words ever written are in letters. That’s why you see letters published and read long after the people who wrote them are dead and buried.

These were the standard means of communication until the phone started taking over. And then things changed in a hurry.

A year after Bell’s initial call, the first public telephone line, switchboard and phone exchange were installed in Massachusetts. Three years after that, nearly 49,000 telephones were in use. That number quickly fattened to around 600,000 phones in 1900, 2.2 million in 1905 and 5.8 million in 1910.

I don’t have any data to back it up, but I’m guessing that pretty soon millions of people were spending thousands of hours a week chit-chatting about nothing much at all, just because they had a tool that would let them do so.

Face-to-face conversations were supplanted by phone calls over a staticky wire, featuring disembodied voices belonging to people who were stuck in one place, with a metal instrument planted against their ear, straining to hear what the other person was saying, never sure when it was their turn to speak, probably wishing they could use the bathroom or get dinner started or write a letter or something.

A century on, hardly anyone writes letters anymore.

Am I supposed to get all weepy over the decline of the phone call? Am I supposed to think ill of test messages because they’ve eliminated the need to chat on the phone?

Not me, oh no, not me.

I do miss face-to-face conversations with certain people.

I miss writing (and receiving) letters. I used to write (and receive) them all the time. I kept a bunch of them for years and years, until they got ruined by a basement flood or some such thing. I wish I still had them.

But phone calls?

I don’t mourn their demise. One goddamn bit.

Image: A man and his computer, blogging about this and that.