Monday, March 26, 2012

Red World: "Kate Is Enough"

This is a spoiler review of "Kate Is Enough", episode four of Awake, a TV series about a police detective, Michael Britten, who loses a family member in a car crash. Britten responds by creating a dream world in which a different family member died in the crash, a dream world so real that he can't tell it from the real world, and is in fact determined to act as though both worlds are real. As I've noted before, while in reality (the Red World) Detective Britten's son Rex died in the crash, Britten has created a dream world (the Green World) where Rex survived and it was his wife Hannah who died in the crash.

We open in Britten's dream world, where Rex gets into a fight with his best friend Cole while they're playing tennis. While Tara is breaking the fight up, Rex accidentally smacks her in the face. She asks him what's going on, and Rex explains that Cole was using his racquet without his permission and broke it, so Rex started beating the crap out of him. Cole points out that Rex uses his racquets all the time, and that he offered to pay for it. Rex walks away. Tara asks where he's going, and he says he's going to the principal's office.

Later, Britten asks Rex what the hell happened, and Rex stonewalls him, then tells Tara not to bother suspending him, because he's quitting the tennis program. When Britten discusses the matter with Dr. Evans, she points out that anger is a typical reaction to the sort of loss Rex has suffered. Britten's attempts to help Rex have come to nothing, and he feels helpless. Dr. Evans suggests that the reason Britten can't get through to Rex is because Britten doesn't really believe Rex's mother is dead.

In the real world, Britten and his partner Vega investigate the death of a woman, Annie Ng, during a party on a yacht. The yacht is owned by two men who own a tech firm, and Ng was the personal assistant of one of the men, Cameron Fuller. Ng fell, or was pushed, overboard, but nobody saw it happen, so nobody can say which it was. Britten interviews Fuller and his partner, Darren Knox. Fuller admits that he had been having an affair with Ng, despite being engaged to a famous lingerie model, and that he had broken off the affair that morning. He was with a group of people when Ng went over the side.

After the inteview, Britten runs into Kate Porter, Rex's old babysitter. Porter is now with an investment bank in New York, and the tech firm is one of her clients. There's a stain on her dress, and she explains that Knox ran into her shortly after Ng's fall and spilled a drink on her.

In the dream world, Britten and his partner Freeman are investigating the execution-style murder of Charlie Simmons, a local wastrel living off an inheritance from his recently-deceased father. Simmons had a hidden safe under the bathroom sink, which has been opened and emptied. Back in the station, Freeman says that Simmons' house was alarmed, but his killer used a guest code to deactivate it. They start interviewing people who knew the guest code, starting with the cleaning lady.

The cleaning lady was playing bingo with her niece when Simmons was murdered, but she tells Britten and Freeman that two other people who knew the guest code were Simmons' step-brother Mark Hudson and his girlfriend Amber Blue. Britten and Freeman find Amber, and it turns out that Amber is actually Kate Porter. Simmons had dumped Porter a month earlier, and when Freeman asks her where she was the night of the murder, she says she was in the emergency room sleeping off a drug high. She gives Britten her discharge paper after fumbling around looking for it. Britten offers to help Porter enter a rehab program, but she brushes him off.

In the real world, Dr. Lee says that Britten has created different versions of everything to avoid admitting that his other world is a dream. He points out if his world is a dream, then that means that Britten dreamed of Porter, whom he hadn't seen in ten years, before meeting her for real. It would be far more reasonable, Dr. Lee suggests, to think that Britten met Porter in the real world, then added her to his dream world.

In the dream world, Dr. Evans suggests that Britten subconsciously saw a picture of Porter in Simmons', and that prompted him to add her to his dream world before meeting her in reality. After hearing this, Britten suddenly does remember seeing Porter's picture in Simmons' house.

In the real world, Dr. Lee says that Britten added the picture of Porter after the fact, so he could keep believing that the dream world might, in fact, be real.

In the dream world, Dr. Evans says the more important question is not which Porter is real, but why Britten imagines the dream version of her as so different from the real one (whichever the real one is). She thinks the duplicate Porters are not important to the cases, but to Britten's relationship with Rex.

In the real world, Britten tells Hannah about meeting Porter, and Hannah tells him that she saved one of Porter's paper airplanes in a scrapbook. Hannah also tells Britten that Porter went through a rough patch after her sister died, and she's glad to hear that she pulled herself together and has a successful career. When Britten checks the scrapbook in the dream world, it is, of course, there.

In the dream world, Britten tries to use the paper airplane to get through to Rex, but Rex insists he barely remembers Porter. When Britten reminds Rex that he hasn't apologized to Cole, Rex becomes huffy and leaves.

Britten and Freeman see Hudson, who tells them that Charlie Simmons' father Ben Simmons had been bankrolling his boxing training. However, when Simmons pere died, Charlie cut Hudson off. Hudson tried to sue Charlie for a share of Ben Simmons' inheritance, but couldn't keep it up. Hudson has no alibi for the night of Charlie's murder -- he was training alone. Back at the station, they look up the terms of Ben Simmons' will, and it turns out that with Charlie dead, Hudson stands to inherit the Simmons fortune. They now have motive and opportunity. If Hudson did kill Simmons, though, then the robbery of the safe must be a red herring, as the money in it would be Hudson's anyway with Simmons dead.

Britten and Freeman go out to interview Simmons' neighbors to see if any of them can identify Hudson's pickup truck. It turns out that one neighbor has a surveillence camera pointed more-or-less in the direction of Simmons' house. They now have a video record of who was at Simmons' house when he was murdered.

In the real world, Vega calls Britten to tell him they've recovered Ng's cell phone. However, Britten is made uneasy when he can find no evidence on it that Ng and Fuller were having an affair. Why would Fuller make up an affair? Vega asks. Because, Britten says, an affair would make everyone think that Ng jumped rather than was pushed.

Britten and Vega investigate Ng's house. They can still find no evidence of Ng's affair with Fuller. Britten's subconscious prompts him with a memory of the safe in Simmons' bathroom in the dream world, and Britten searches Ng's bathroom. He finds a can of the same shaving cream he saw in his dream, picks it up, and hears it rattle. He unscrews a false bottom, and inside is the key to a safety deposit box.

Looking in the box, Britten and Vega find a research report. It turns out that the report showed that the company's research into silicon chip manufacturing had gone down a blind alley. Fuller and Knox were keeping the information from the company's investors, and Ng was threatening to go public. Fuller had an alibi for the time fo Ng's death, but Knox did not. Britten has the stain on Kate Porter's dress tested, and it held the same mix of wine and Ng's prescription drug that was found in Ng's body after her death. It was Knox who drugged Ng and pushed her overboard, while Fuller made up the story that they were having an affair to create a motive for Ng's supposed suicide.

In the dream world, Britten and Freeman play back the video for the night of Simmons' murder. They do not find Hudson's truck on the scene; instead, they find Porter's car. Britten and Freeman interrogate Porter, and she admits that she was broke and jonesing for a hit, and gave her dealer, Leon, the code for Simmons' house. She says that Leon told her he would just scare Simmons into opening the safe for him. Leon, of course, killed Simmons, making Porter an accessory to murder.

Back in reality, Dr. Lee points out that Britten has created two lives for Porter after her sister's death, one where she successfully dealt with the loss, and one where she didn't. Britten says the two lives are different, but equally plausible.

In the dream world, Dr. Evans asks Britten what he thinks caused Porter's life to go in one direction or the other. Talking to Porter in reality, Britten learns that she blames herself for her sister's death, and was determined to punish herself. Her mother refused to give up on her, and eventually was able to help her out of her depression. Talking to dream Porter in prison, Britten is told that Porter's mother did finally give up on her, and her downward spiral continued.

In the dream world, Britten finds Rex staring at the broken tennis racquet. He refuses to accept Rex's silence, and eventually Rex admits that he got angry because it was Hannah's racquet that Cole broke. He never used it, he just kept it in his bag as a way of keeping his mother's memory alive. Whenever he thinks about Cole breaking the racquet, he gets angry again. Britten tells it's all right, he still gets angry himself. The next day, Rex apologizes to Cole, and they make up.

Kyle Killen, the creator of Awake, has stated that one of the worlds is in fact a dream, and one is real. Britten, though, insists on thinking of both worlds as real, and since the audience identifies with Britten, they also tend to think of both worlds as real. In "Kate Is Enough", though, we see proof that one of the worlds is actually a dream. If both worlds were real, diverging from each other after Britten's accident, then the only changes between them would be those resulting from the different outcomes of the accident four months earlier. The alternate Kate Porters, though, have been growing apart for years, enough time for the real Porter to become an investment banker and move to New York, while the dream Porter becomes a drug addict. After tonight's episode, Detective Britten can no longer maintain the pretense that both worlds might be real. One of his therapists is right -- one of the worlds is an elaborate construct he has created to avoid dealing with the death of a family member. Whether he comes to see that Dr. Lee is right, and the world where Hannah survived is the real one, remains to be seen.


On the other hand . . .

Green World: "Kate Is Enough"

This is a spoiler review of "Kate Is Enough", episode four of Awake, a TV series about a police detective, Michael Britten, who loses a family member in a car crash. Britten responds by creating a dream world in which a different family member died in the crash, a dream world so real that he can't tell it from the real world, and is in fact determined to act as though both worlds are real. As I've noted before, while in reality (the Green World) Detective Britten's wife Hannah died in the crash, Britten has created a dream world (the Red World) where Hannah survived and it was his son Rex who died in the crash.

In the real world, Rex gets into a fight with his best friend Cole while they're playing tennis. While Tara is breaking the fight up, Rex accidentally smacks her in the face. She asks him what's going on, and Rex explains that Cole was using his racquet without his permission and broke it, so Rex started beating the crap out of him. Cole points out that Rex uses his racquets all the time, and that he offered to pay for it. Rex walks away. Tara asks where he's going, and he says he's going to the principal's office.

Later, Britten asks Rex what the hell happened, and Rex stonewalls him, then tells Tara not to bother suspending him, because he's quitting the tennis program. When Britten discusses the matter with Dr. Evans, she points out that anger is a typical reaction to the sort of loss Rex has suffered. Britten's attempts to help Rex have come to nothing, and he feels helpless. Dr. Evans suggests that the reason Britten can't get through to Rex is because Britten doesn't really believe Rex's mother is dead.

In the dream world, Britten and his partner Vega investigate the death of a woman, Annie Ng, during a party on a yacht. The yacht is owned by two men who own a tech firm, and Ng was the personal assistant of one of the men, Cameron Fuller. Ng fell, or was pushed, overboard, but nobody saw it happen, so nobody can say which it was. Britten interviews Fuller and his partner, Darren Knox. Fuller admits that he had been having an affair with Ng, despite being engaged to a famous lingerie model, and that he had broken off the affair that morning. He was with a group of people when Ng went over the side.

After the inteview, Britten runs into Kate Porter, Rex's old babysitter. Porter is now with an investment bank in New York, and the tech firm is one of her clients. There's a stain on her dress, and she explains that Knox ran into her shortly after Ng's fall, and spilled a drink on her.

In the real world, Britten and his partner Freeman are investigating the execution-style murder of Charlie Simmons, a local wastrel living off the inheritance of his recently-deceased father. Simmons had a hidden safe under the bathroom sink, which has been opened and emptied. Back in the station, Freeman says that Simmons' house was alarmed, but his killer used a guest code to deactivate it. They start interviewing people who knew the guest code, starting with the cleaning lady.

The cleaning lady was playing bingo with her niece when Simmons was murdered, but she tells Britten and Freeman that two other people who knew the guest code were Simmons' step-brother Mark Hudson and his girlfriend Amber Blue. Britten and Freeman find Amber, and it turns out that Amber is actually Kate Porter. Simmons had dumped Porter a month earlier, and when Freeman asks her where she was the night of the murder, she says she was in the emergency room sleeping off a drug high. She gives Britten her discharge paper after fumbling around looking for it. Britten offers to help Porter enter a rehab program, but she brushes him off.

In the dream world, Dr. Lee says that Britten has created different versions of everything to avoid admitting that Dr. Lee's "reality" is real. He points out if his world is a dream, then that means that Britten dreamed of Porter, whom he hadn't seen in ten years, before meeting her for real. It would be far more reasonable, Dr. Lee suggests, to think that Britten met Porter in the real world, then added her to his dream world.

In the real world, Dr. Evans suggests that Britten subconsciously saw a picture of Porter in Simmons', and that prompted him to add her to his dream world before meeting her in reality.

In the dream world, Dr. Lee says that Britten added the picture of Porter after the fact, so he could keep believing that the real world was, in fact, real.

In the real world, Dr. Evans says the more important question is not which Porter is real, but why Britten imagines the dream version of her as so different from the real one (whichever the real one is). She thinks the duplicate Porters are not important to the cases, but to Britten's relationship with Rex.

In the dream world, Britten tells Hannah about meeting Porter, and Hannah tells him that she saved one of Porter's paper airplanes in a scrapbook. Hannah also tells Britten that Porter went through a rough patch after her sister died, and she's glad to hear that she pulled herself together and has a successful career. This is actually Britten's subconscious reminding him of the paper airplane, and of the death of Porter's sister (which Hannah told him about at the time, though consciously Britten had forgotten). When he checks the scrapbook in reality, there it is.

Britten tries to use the paper airplane to get through to Rex, but Rex insists he barely remembers Porter. When Britten reminds Rex that he hasn't apologized to Cole, Rex becomes huffy and leaves.

Britten and Freeman see Hudson, who tells them that Charlie Simmons' father Ben Simmons had been bankrolling his boxing training. However, when Simmons pere died, Charlie cut Hudson off. Hudson tried to sue Charlie for a share of Ben Simmons' inheritance, but couldn't keep it up. Hudson has no alibi for the night of Charlie's murder -- he was training alone. Back at the station, they look up the terms of Ben Simmons' will, and it turns out that with Charlie dead, Hudson stands to inherit the Simmons fortune. They now have motive and opportunity. If Hudson did kill Simmons, though, then the robbery of the safe must be a red herring.

Britten and Freeman go out to interview Simmons' neighbors to see if any of them can identify Hudson's pickup truck. It turns out that one neighbor has a surveillence camera pointed more-or-less in the direction of Simmons' house. They now have a video record of who was at Simmons' house when he was murdered.

In the dream world, Vega calls Britten to tell him they've recovered Ng's cell phone. However, Britten is made uneasy when he can find no evidence on it that Ng and Fuller were having an affair. Why would Fuller make up an affair? Vega asks. Because, Britten says, an affair would make everyone think that Ng jumped rather than was pushed.

Britten and Vega investigate Ng's house. Remembering the safe in Simmons' bathroom in the real world, Britten searches Ng's bathroom. He finds a can of the same shaving cream he saw in Simmons' bathroom, picks it up, and hears it rattle. He unscrews a false bottom, and inside is the key to a safety deposit box.

Looking in the box, Britten and Vega find a research report. It turns out that the report showed that the company's research into silicon chip manufacturing had gone down a blind alley. Fuller and Knox were keeping the information from the company's investors, and Ng was threatening to go public. Fuller had an alibi for the time fo Ng's death, but Knox did not. Britten has the stain on Kate Porter's dress analyzed, and it held the same mix of wine and Ng's prescription drug that was found in Ng's body. It was Knox who drugged Ng and pushed her overboard, while Fuller made up the story that they were having an affair to create a motive for Ng's supposed suicide.

In the real world, Britten and Freeman play back the video for the night of Simmons' murder. They do not find Hudson's truck on the scene; instead, they find Porter's car. Britten and Freeman interrogate Porter, and she admits that she was broke and jonesing for a hit, and gave her dealer, Leon, the code for Simmons' house. She says that Leon told her he would just scare Simmons into opening the safe for him.

In the dream world, Dr. Lee points out that Britten has created two lives for Porter after her sister's death, one where she successfully dealt with the loss, and one where she didn't. Britten says the two lives are different, but equally plausible.

In the real world, Dr. Evans asks Britten what he thinks caused Porter's life to go in one direction or the other. Talking to Porter, Britten learns that she blames herself for her sister's death, and was determined to punish herself. Her mother tried to talk her out of it, but finally gave up. In the dream world, Porter says that her mother didn't give up, and eventually was able to help her out of her depression.

In the real world, Britten finds Rex staring at the broken tennis racquet. He refuses to accept Rex's silence, and eventually Rex admits that he got angry because it was Hannah's racquet that Cole broke. He never used it, he just kept it in his bag as a way of keeping his mother's memory alive. Whenever he thinks about Cole breaking the racquet, he gets angry again. Britten tells it's all right, he still gets angry himself. The next day, Rex apologizes to Cole, and they make up.

In Awake, the Red World has always served as a cautionary tale for Detective Britten. In the most obvious sense, the Red World shows Britten how much worse his life could be: he could have an unsympathetic therapist, an untrustworthy partner, cases that he can't solve. With the alternate Kate Porter, as Dr. Evans pointed out, the Red World was showing Britten how high the stakes were with his son's depression. The dream Kate Porter was Britten's subconscious telling him that he couldn't afford to give up on Rex, with, ironically, the real Kate Porter as the worst-case scenario for what might happen if he did. Britten heeds the warning from his subconscious, and is able to help Rex out of his downward spiral.

On the other hand . . .

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Fish in a barrel

So, Dick Cheney got a heart transplant yesterday.

The jokes pretty much write themselves.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Leave me never

It's time for another embedded music video here at the Johnny Pez blog. Today we go back . . . back . . . back to the very dawn of time. Appearing live on the ABC variety show Shindig! on January 20, 1965, it's the Kinks with "All Day and All of the Night".

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Origins of the partisan divide

Paul Krugman recently blogged about the latest Republican lies about the Affordable Care Act, pointing out:


This is the reality of modern American politics: a large and cohesive bloc of
voters lives in an alternative reality, fed fake facts by Fox and Rush — whom
they listen to out of tribal affiliation — and completely unaware that it’s all
fiction.

It’s also, by the way, why attempts at outreach by Obama will
fail. Even if he gives the GOP 95 percent of what it wants, these voters will
never hear about it; they will still know, just know, that he’s a radical bent
on destroying America.
Only, it's actually worse than Krugman makes it out to be. As I've noted before, the birth of this alternate conservative reality can be traced back to the end of segregated schools in the South, when white bigots withdrew their children from newly-desegregated public schools and sent them to whites-only "segregation academies". While the rest of America moved forward to the point of electing a black president, the Resegregated and their descendants have remained stuck in 1954. When William F. Buckley was standing athwart history yelling "Stop!", that's what he wanted to stop: the oncoming arrival of racial equality.

And this is the reason why American politics has become steadily more polarized for the last 60 years: because there's a large segment of the American voting public that has remained stuck in the past. The further ahead the rest of the country moves from the Resegregated, the deeper the partisan divide between conservatives and everyone else becomes.

The Sensible Centrists like Thomas Friedman and the late, not-so-great David Broder, who have made careers out of decrying political polarization and partisanship, insist that the way to deal with it is to pretend that there's no "there" there, that it just sort of happened for some inexplicable reason, and that it can be done away with by an act of will -- all we have to do is all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya", and the nasty partisanship will go away.

In a more "practical" vein, the Sensible Centrists try to reduce partisanship by compromising with conservatives, which in effect means giving conservatives what they want and hoping they won't demand more. However, all this does is validate the conservatives' belief in their alternate reality, and make them even more determined to stay in their bubble; hence, compromising with conservatives actually worsens the partisan divide.

The only way to make the partisan divide go away is to pop the conservative bubble, force them to give up their Jim Crow fantasia, and make them live with the rest of us in the 21st century, where white people are no better than anyone else, women control their own bodies, homosexuality is normal, and global warming and evolution are real. Because if we don't force them to live in our reality, they'll never give up trying to make us live in theirs. And if you're not white, male, rich, straight, cis, and Christian, you won't like living in their reality.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Why the green world is the real one

WARNING: SPOILERS A-PLENTY

The most fascinating new show on NBC is "Awake," a show about a police detective named Michael Britten who wakes up from a traffic accident to find that his son Rex has been killed in the crash, then wakes up again to find that Rex is alive and it's his wife Hannah who was killed in the crash. Every time Britten goes to sleep in one world, he finds himself waking up in the other. To help himself keep things straight, Britten wears a red band on his wrist in the world where Hannah survived the crash, and a green one in the world where Rex did.

In each world, Britten's superiors make him go to a psychiatrist to deal with the trauma, and he tells both about his double life. Both psychiatrists insist that their own world is the real one, and the other one is a delusion that Britten has constructed. But there are actually four possible scenarios:

1. Both worlds are delusions. Britten is in a coma and is dreaming the whole thing.
2. Both worlds are real. The accident somehow allows Britten to experience two different possible outcomes.
3. Dr. Lee, the psychiatrist in the red world, is right. Rex really died in the crash, and the world where he survived is a delusion.
4. Dr. Evans, the psychiatrist in the green world, is right. Hannah really died in the crash, and the world where she survived is a delusion.

But four possible scenarios were too many for series creator Kyle Killen. In a recent interview, he stated that one of the worlds really is a dream, and one really is real. So, scenarios 1 and 2 are out, and viewers have a choice of 3 or 4.

So, which is the dream and which is reality? If you consider the psychology of the whole thing, it's obvious that Dr. Evans is right: Hannah died in the crash, and Britten is imagining the world where she survived.

The red world is clearly a cautionary tale, a way for Britten's subconscious to remind him how much worse his life could be. In the real world, Britten still has the support of his partner, "Bird" Freeman, whom he likes and trusts. In the dream world, Britten has been given a new partner, Efram Vega, who's job is to spy on him for his superiors. In the real world, Britten's therapist is kind and understanding. In the dream world, Britten's therapist is confrontational and unpleasant. In the real world, Rex deals with the trauma of his mother's death by taking up tennis under the tutelage of Hannah's pretty friend Tara. In the dream world, Hannah deals with the trauma of her son's death by turning Britten's world upside down, redecorating the house, and urging Britten to move to Oregon.

The second episode, "The Little Guy," makes the cautionary nature of the red world even more obvious. In real life, Britten investigates the murder of a well-known fertility doctor named Bernard Mackenzie. With subconscious hints provided by the dream world, Britten is able to solve Mackenzie's murder. In his dream world, Britten goes on a pointless quest to find the killer of a homeless drug addict, because the addict's name happens to be the same as Mackenzie's. He fails, and his co-workers fear that Britten's faltering grip on reality is impairing his work.

Still, even knowing which world is real and which is a dream, it's fascinating to watch the interplay between the two. In the most recent episode, "Guilty," a man named John Cooper breaks out of prison and kidnaps Rex. Britten had arrested Cooper ten years earlier for killing a drug dealer after Cooper's son died of a drug overdose, but Cooper has always insisted he was framed. Cooper contacts Britten and tells him that he has Rex imprisoned in the desert, and that Rex will die unless Britten finds proof that Cooper was innocent. Unfortunately, Britten's ex-partner Jim Mayhew kills Cooper before he can tell Britten who the real murderer was, thereby dooming Rex.

In his dream world, Britten visits Cooper in prison, and Cooper tells him that it was Mayhew who framed him. When Britten asks Cooper about the place in the desert where Rex is imprisoned, Cooper says he can tell Britten where it is, but refuses unless Britten finds proof that he's innocent. In desperation, Britten confronts Mayhew, and is able to get him to admit that he did in fact frame Cooper for the murder. In the real world, amazingly enough, the dream-Cooper's information leads Britten to an isolated shack in the desert where Rex is imprisoned, allowing him to save Rex.


Dr. Evans points out that Britten's subconscious is trying to relieve his guilt over Cooper's fate by letting him imagine a reality where he was able to free Cooper. But it was Mayhew, she reminds him, who framed Cooper, and who bears the guilt for Cooper's wrongful imprisonment and death.

On the other hand . . .

Why the red world is the real one

WARNING: SPOILERS A-PLENTY

The most fascinating new show on NBC is "Awake," a show about a police detective named Michael Britten who wakes up from a traffic accident to find that his son Rex has been killed in the crash, then wakes up again to find that Rex is alive and it's his wife Hannah who was killed in the crash. Every time Britten goes to sleep in one world, he finds himself waking up in the other. To help himself keep things straight, Britten wears a red band on his wrist in the world where Hannah survived the crash, and a green one in the world where Rex did.

In each world, Britten's superiors make him go to a psychiatrist to deal with the trauma, and he tells both about his double life. Both psychiatrists insist that their own world is the real one, and the other one is a delusion that Britten has constructed. But there are actually four possible scenarios:

1. Both worlds are delusions. Britten is in a coma and is dreaming the whole thing.
2. Both worlds are real. The accident somehow allows Britten to experience two different possible outcomes.
3. Dr. Lee, the psychiatrist in the red world, is right. Rex really died in the crash, and the world where he survived is a delusion.
4. Dr. Evans, the psychiatrist in the green world, is right. Hannah really died in the crash, and the world where she survived is a delusion.

But four possible scenarios were too many for series creator Kyle Killen. In a recent interview, he stated that one of the worlds really is a dream, and one really is real. So, scenarios 1 and 2 are out, and viewers have a choice of 3 or 4.

So, which is the dream and which is reality? If you consider the psychology of the whole thing, it's obvious that Dr. Lee is right: Rex died in the crash, and Britten is imagining the world where he survived.

The green world is clearly a wish-fulfillment fantasy. In the real world, Britten has been given a new partner, Efram Vega, who's job is to spy on him for his superiors. In the dream world, Britten is still working with his old partner, "Bird" Freeman, whom he likes and trusts. In the real world, Britten's therapist is confrontational and unpleasant. In the dream world, Britten's therapist is kind and understanding. In the real world, Hannah deals with the trauma of her son's death by turning Britten's world upside down, redecorating the house, and urging Britten to move to Oregon. In the dream world, Rex deals with the trauma of his mother's death by taking up tennis under the tutelage of Hannah's pretty friend Tara.

The second episode, "The Little Guy," makes the wish-fulfillment nature of the green world even more obvious. In real life, Britten finds himself trying to find out who killed a homeless drug addict named Bernard Mackenzie. A loopy possible witness says he saw "a little guy" near Mackenzie after his death, and Britten spends the next couple of days in an ultimately futile effort to locate the little guy. In his dream world, Bernard Mackenzie is the name of a well-known fertility doctor, whose murder Britten is able to solve thanks to his obsession with how tall the various potential suspects are.

Still, even knowing which world is real and which is a dream, it's fascinating to watch the interplay between the two. In the most recent episode, "Guilty," Britten's anxiety about an upcoming memorial being held for Rex starts his subconscious reconsidering a murder case he solved ten years before. A man named John Cooper was convicted of the murder of a drug dealer after his son died of a drug overdose, but Cooper has always insisted he was framed. In the dream world, Cooper breaks out of prison and kidnaps Rex. Cooper contacts Britten and tells him that he has Rex imprisoned in the desert, and that Rex will die unless Britten finds proof that Cooper was innocent. Unfortunately, Britten's ex-partner Jim Mayhew kills Cooper before he can tell Britten who the real murderer was, thereby dooming Rex.

Since Britten himself refuses to believe that his dream world isn't real, he is convinced that Rex is really in danger of dying, and he sets out on a quixotic quest to "save" him. He visits the real Cooper in prison, who tells him that it was Mayhew who framed him. When Britten asks Cooper about the place in the desert where the dream-Rex is imprisoned, Cooper says he can tell Britten where it is, but refuses unless Britten finds proof that he's innocent. In desperation, Britten confronts Mayhew, and is able to get him to admit that he did in fact frame Cooper for the murder. In the dream world, Britten is able to find Rex in time to save him.

Dr. Lee reminds Britten that Cooper's failure to make parole coincided with Rex's death, and that Britten's subconscious used the threat to the dream-Rex's life to force Britten to act in reality to right the wrong he had done to Cooper.

On the other hand . . .

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Dog walk: 3/14/12

Yesterday saw temps in the low 80s and a cloudless blue sky. It looks like we've leapfrogged spring and gone straight into summer. And yet, technically, it's still winter. By the time the dogs and I were finished an hour-long walk through the streets of McKees Rocks, both of them were panting from the heat. One of the things that made walking the dogs in Newport so enjoyable was that some of the shops would set out bowls of water for passing dogs, and the basenjis had a couple of favorite spots where they liked to stop for a drink. Sadly, this enlightened custom has not made its way to the land of McKees Rocks.

The highlight of today's walk occurred on Holmes Street, when the dogs and I met a woman on her way to work. After she asked The Question and was informed that the dogs were basenjis, she revealed that she worked in a kiosk at the Robinson Mall where she sold dog treats. Sadly, she had no samples with her, but she invited me to stop in and say hello if I ever found myself at the mall.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Dog walk: 3/11/12

It's sunny and 76 F. Spring isn't just around the corner -- spring is here.

To celebrate, the basenjis and I took the big loop around Chartiers Creek, crossing over on Linden Avenue, then crossing back on Wind Gap Bridge, passing through the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Esplen, Sheraden, Corliss, Chartiers City, and Windgap on the way.

As we made our way down Bradley Street, we passed a woman pushing a baby stroller, taking advantage of this beautiful day, much as we were, to walk to downtown McKees Rocks. You'd think that a pair of hunting dogs would be able to outpace a woman with a baby stroller, but you'd be forgetting about the basenjis' need to stop and investigate every piece of litter on the sidewalk to make certain that it's not edible. The woman with the stroller passed us on Island Avenue, and we never caught up with her.

As we were passing above the livid green waters of Chartiers Creek on Linden Avenue, a man ahead of us paused to reach over the concrete barrier separating the sidewalk from the street to retrieve a small, inflated purple rubber ball. As we joined the man at the intersection of Linden, Stanhope, and Stafford, the basenjis noticed a security guard with a German shepherd beyond a chain link fence on the far side of Stafford, and eventually I did too. After all of us crossed the street, the man threw the purple ball over the fence to the security guard, who thanked him and began (well, resumed) playing fetch with the dog.

We were walking down Hammond Street in Sheraden when a man standing on the porch of his house with his family asked The Question: "What kind of dogs are those?" He had never heard of basenjis, but he thought they were very good-looking dogs (a common reaction), and the rest of his family (wife and three girls) very much wanted to meet them. Well, I'm always happy to let people enjoy the company of the basenjis, so I joined them on their porch and let them pet the dogs. The two older girls wanted to hold the dogs' leashes, and I let them do so. After a time, though, the basenjis were ready to be on their way, and we all said goodbye.

A block away, at the intersection of Hammond and Glenmawr, there were more children who also asked me to stop and let them meet the basenjis, and again I was happy to do so. A woman standing nearby asked how old the dogs were, and I went over to talk to her, explaining that Klea was 8 and Woo was 7.

"Is that months?"

"No, years," I said.

"Wow! They don't look it," she said, and indeed they don't. Among other things, the nice long walks help keep them fit.

We had reached Chartiers Avenue and were passing by Fire Station 31 at the intersection of Chartiers and Citadel Street. One of the firemen was relaxing in a chair, smoking a cigar, and he asked me The Other Question: "Are those basenjis?" I admitted that they were, and we went over to say hello, but the basenjis aren't fond of tobacco smoke, so they come within petting distance of the fireman.

Just west of Windgap Avenue, as it rises to cross Chartiers Creek via the Wind Gap Bridge, there's a house on Edmore Street with a chain link fence-enclosed kennel. The kennel holds a German shepherd dog who started barking as soon as the basenjis came in view on the bridge, over a hundred feet away, and continued barking as long as they were visible.

Back in McKees Rocks, we were walking down Chartiers Avenue when we passed a couple going by on the other side of the street. The woman asked The Question, and the two crossed the street to say hello to the dogs and talk about how good they looked. Frankly, I never get tired of hearing that.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The curves in the road are not really there

Time for another embedded music video. Today it's the Bobs in a live performance of "Bus Plunge" at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in 1987.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Dog walk: 3/7/12

Spring made another sneak preview in McKees Rocks today. The sun was out, and the temperature was around 60 F with a warm breeze blowing. Needless to say, the kind of day that demands a nice long walk behind a couple of basenjis.

The basenjis led the way up Churchill Street, past the abandoned houses and litter-strewn sidewalks, and around the corner to Lillian Drive, where we met a woman enjoying the weather with her terrier. She picked the terrier up as we came down the sidewalk, since her dog doesn't get along well with other dogs, but she found the basenjis adorable. Her four-year-old son was less enthusiastic, and he hid behind her until I led the dogs away.

We went downhill to Chartiers Avenue, past the post office, and then around behind the Family Dollar Store along Herbst Alley. There we happened across a woman who was getting ready to take her English bulldog puppy, Waldo, out for a walk. Waldo was overjoyed to meet some fellow dogs, wagging his little twisty tail for all he was worth. After I knelt down to pet him, he spent some time attempting to climb into my lap.

After leaving Waldo, the basenjis led the way past St. Mary's Catholic Church, then down Thompson Avenue along the tracks of the Pittsburgh and Ohio Central Railroad to Chartiers again, and after that we all went up Island Avenue for the return trip to Churchill Street.

While walking up Cutler Street, we saw an amusing sight: a van hitched to an open trailer full of chairs was trying to back down the steep, brick-paved street. But it was the day before garbage day, and the driver, unbeknownst to himself, was trying to back over a number of garbage bags piled on the sidewalk. One had become lodged under the van, and was being dragged along underneath it. When the dogs and I turned onto Front Alley and left the van behind, the driver had given up on trying to back down the street, and was trying to drive forward again -- right through the remaining pile of garbage bags.

I freely admit, I never saw anything like that when I was walking the dogs in Newport. Only in McKees Rocks.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Clavilux by Robert A. Wait

The Johnny Pez blog returns to the works of Robert A. Wait, one of the most obscure science fiction writers of the Gernsback Era. Wait was an instructor in chemistry at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois who published just four stories between 1929 and 1932. All of Wait's stories appeared in Amazing Stories, and none have ever been reprinted. Last month, we posted Wait's first story, "The Invisible Finite", and now we present his second story, "Clavilux", from the June 1929 issue of Amazing. Since "Clavilux" is only 2000 words long, this blog post will include the entire story. And now, without further ado:


Clavilux
by Robert A. Wait


The audience stirred in an uneasy manner. The curtains should rise in one minute. The absence of music seemed to bother a few. Others raised their heads expectantly from the bright, colored programs in their hands. The buzz of an excited audience suddenly stilled as the rose velvet curtains before them parted, revealing a dapper gentleman in evening clothes smiling down upon them.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began the blond young Frenchman, "I am Monsieur Du Bois. That is only by way of introduction, for it has no part in this evening's entertainment. Behind me you observe my instrument of pleasure."

He gestured toward the main stage. Upon it stood a huge box-like arrangement much like the console of a theatre organ with a regular organ bench and keyboard and pedals, very similar to the ones found in most pipe organs. It was gorgeously done in gilt and spangles, and the spot lights from above shifted over the machine, as the Monsieur continued his interesting monologue.

"At the back of the stage you will observe a screen so situated tht any light rays from my color organ will be reflected to you directly. In physics we would say the angle of incidence is such that you are in line with the angle of reflection."

So saying, he reached back to the console of his organ and touched a key. Instantly the theatre was brilliantly flooded with a cool green glow. The screen seemed a bottomless sea of emerald.

"No doubt many of you wonder how the whole audience may be thrown into the angle of reflection. I have back there an unusual screen. It is what is known as parabolic in shape, which means it is concave in a very definite mathematical curve. The source of light from my machine throws a diverging beam of light at this peculiar curve and, because of its shape, the screen reflects all of the impinging rays in nearly parallel lines; thus each one of you receives a few rays reflected directly from the light source with no confusing cross interference of one ray with the others."

Seating himself, the young man signalled the spot lights out. Only a dim bulb lighted his keyboard. The house was as still as a summer calm while greens flowed into purples, flashed into scarlets, and faded to soft yellows and blues.

"You note I do not have any music. I find that music is detrimental to the moods I desire to carry my audience through. Anyway, light and color correspond very closely to noise and musical notes. Color is primarily a function of frequency, not of wave lengths, just as high musical notes are produced by frequencies as high as 15,000 vibrations or more per second. Low notes may go as low as twenty vibrations per second and still be heard by the ear."

"Reds are light waves of extremely slow vibrations while violets approach the extremely rapid vibrationss such as those of ultra-violet light which you all know to be present, yet invisible to the eye. Corresponding to these ultra-high frequencies we have the infra-reds or colors of such low frequency that our eyes will not detect them. Our senses feel their warmth, however, just as they feel the warmth of red rays if either kind is focused by means of a burning glass."

He turned to his organ with the announcement that his first number would be an overture in color, built up much as an overture is written for music. Before him was a peculiar type of score, similar to, but different from, musical notes.

With a crash of color, if such can be conceived, the overture began and for ten minutes the audience watched breathlessly while colors flooded the screen; reds danced through blues; circles of green sailed through and behind pink and white clouds; black thunder clouds melted to golden mists; blue sky showed through with the flashes of purple and scarlet of birds. Abruptly the theme changed. A cool dark green with moving lines of brown and patches of greys and blues took on the semblance of a journey through the woods where birds flickered among the trees. A streak of rusty red across one corner of the picture showed where sly br'er fox had slipped through -- a flare of yellow as the traveler again came into the bright sunlight of the open field. Soon the multi-colored roofs of a village floated by and hazy clouds of dust rose from a herd of sheep scampering down the lane.

* * *

As the piece ended, the audience sighed in ecstasy. Never had it had that particular side of its nature stirred. As Du Bois rose, applause broke forth, and the spot lights searched out the smiling artist.

"You enjoy it, yes?" He fell into the broken English of his earlier days in the States. "May I explain, friends? This is my color-organ, my clavilux. I revel in its playing just as a pianist revels in his musical masterpieces. In music the artist must skillfully combine pitch with pitch at a certain tempo to produce a harmonious series of sounds. This constitutes a work of art if properly done. I combine color -- red, blue, and so on -- with forms -- clouds, circles, squares, and others; this combination I move in a graceful way at certain speeds. Thus the clavilux combines color, form, and motion to delight its player and audience. Even more skill is necessary to play a clavilux or color-organ than is required for a piano. By these consoles of keys I can secure 100,000 combinations of color and form which I cana move at will -- up, down, around, across. You have all heard sad and doleful music, I am sure. Now I ask you to listen with your eyes to this tragic piece of color-shape."

Seating himself, the artist again secured darkness and began to weave magic colors and shapes before his spell-bound audience. Predominating were blues and reds, the more somber reds, and finally the very deepest reds or those of extremely slow vibration. Faster the colors flowed, melted into one another, flashed suddenly out -- scarlet, then azure, cobalt, cerise, and somber dull grey. Frenzied they boiled and splashed about the screen, shapes jumbling about chasing each other, dissolving into nothing, racing toward the front of the field, speeding off into that blue grey void beyond, slipping into that fierce fiery border of reds. The trend was more terrifying than sad.

The audience was on edge. Hard-headed men breathed quickly and clutched their hats with destructive force. Faster the colors flared and streamed. The screen was nearly devoid of definite visible color now, yet a devilish warm glow played about the flashing forms of pale yellow and green. Perspirations streamed from the brows of half the audience; children cried, men and women shifted uneasily, murmuring and whispering. Still the musician played madly at his keyboard. A scream of terror split the air as the upper console of the clavilux splintered. The screen flared a terrific series of reds and burst into genuine fire.

It all happened in less than ten seconds, and Monsieur Du Bois stood aghast at the turmoil. He shouted for quiet, wildly gesticulating, and falling into French in his excitement. The audience hesitated, whimpered, and slowly sank back into its seats, muttering and gazing at the ashes of the ruined screen. Stage hands had soon extinguished the fire.

"Mesdames, monsieurs, I beg of you to calm yourselves. No harm can befall you. I am to blame for your fright. Two things are to blame. First, I have played for you one of the new modernistic compositions entitled 'Collapse of the Cosmos.' It has never been played before and is evidently too violent for a beginning audience. The emotion I stirred in you was a blind fear of catastrophe. Many musical compositions produce anger, some fear, others laughter -- so it is with the clavilux. Compositions may be written for producing any desired mood. Very little is yet known about the effect of concerts in color on audiences, so you will please forgive if I have frightened you. We are none of us educated in the art of enjoyment of combinations of color, form, and motion. May I relieve you with a light composition full of sunshine and laughter? A new screen has been placed by the stage crew. Please?"

Seating himself he ran his fingers over the keys not affected by the splintered console, and the colors flashed out once more. This time bright gay forms danced and floated; warm blues, cool greens, delightful yellows, and fluffy pinks chased about the screen, flowing about. Children laughed happily and clapped their hands. Women smiled again and men relaxed their grim features to pleasant enjoyment. Evidently the simple sketch of light color was having its soothing effect.

"May I play my newest composition for you, ladies and gentlemen?" The performer looked expectantly at the calm faces turned up to him. No dissenting voices arose, so he proceeded.

"Musicians are able to distinguish a single pitch from a group of sounds. Notes usually are accompanied by groups of pitches called overtones. Few of you have heard a single pure pitch. Nearly every instrument has its overtones. I wish to play for you a piece in color, form, and motion in which I emphasize the 'overtones' of those three phases. Doubtless you have heard church organs whose lowest note was a '16 foot,' as the deep tones are called. These may be played by a skilled operator in combining several of the lower and middle notes to give the effect of a very low note which is known as a '64 foot' note. Naturally this has a very low vibration. If an 128 foot note could be produced, it would be apt to wreck the building in which it was played.

"It is my ambition to produce an extremely low vibration in color by the same general method used in obtaining the low organ note and with the overtones. With this in mind, I wish you to be my judge."

* * *

Colors began to flow as they had never been seen before. Colors that man had never before witnessed splashed and ran across the screen. Forms that the wildest imagination had never before conceived of, jumped and skulked about through the maze of color. Gradually the trend was more and more to the red, and motion and form slowed to a few regularly appearing pulses. Men grew warm about the collar. Women fanned themselves with programs. Children moved restlessly. Still the color flowed. Perspiration trickled down the organist's face; his features became distorted, his eyes wild. He had glanced at the screen whereon his composition glowed. Too late he realized what was going on. Overtones, to be sure. He'd give them plenty! What was that buzzing in his ears? Drat these hot lights! Where was that heat coming from? That chord again --- it was immense! Feel that thrill and wild exultation it sent through you. What was that tumult -- the audience felt it too. Well, let them -- give them more. That low vibration -- what was the combination he had figured would produce it? Oh, yes, press all the reds and all the violets to cause sufficient interference of vibrations. There, it was done!

The screen flamed. The back stage smoked for a second, flashed into a mass of fire and with a roar the audience rushed for the exits, fighting, screaming, scratching.

He had done it! What was that awful ache in his head -- they were wild -- the building had caught fire -- must have produced that low vibration -- heat ray below the infra-reds. Ah, it was well -- damn that buzz in the ears -- snap, flash -- blackness.

Morning found an article in the paper concerning a peculiar performance of the color-organist in which the electric wiring seemed to have caused a fire and frightened the audience. None of the audience could give an accurate or connected account of the affair.

The performer, so the news item said, had fainted under the extreme heat, but he was doing nicely in the local hospital.

THE END

Monday, March 5, 2012

You got space opera in my historical fiction!

Historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman has a blog post up where she talks about her favorite novels from 2011, and asks her readers to talk about books they've read recently and why they enjoyed them. Penman's readers understandably tend to prefer historical novels, so I was reluctant to intrude with my usual science fiction. However, some of Penman's other readers also talked about other genres, so I decided it would be all right. Here's the comment I posted:

Probably the best books I've read in the last year (apart from yours, Sharon!) were a science fiction trilogy by Walter Jon Williams called Dread Empire's Fall, about a civil war in a multispecies interstellar empire. It's like A Song of Ice and Fire in the sense that Williams takes as many genre tropes as possible and turns them on their heads -- the genre in this case being space opera rather than fantasy.

The books are well-written and entertaining, but the main reason I like them was because they helped to keep my spirits up and take my mind off my troubles when I was forced to move from Rhode Island to Pittsburgh in the fall.

Birther of a nation

So, the birthers are back in the news, thanks to America's Favorite Gestapo Officer, Joe Arpaio, the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. That means I get to link back to my own take on the birthers, A Brief History of the Wagner for President Campaign.

But it also means I get to disagree with one of my favorite bloggers, Digby of Hullabaloo. In her own piece on Arpaio, Digby expresses the hope that "Maybe his press conference today finally did him in." I respectfully disagree. I think Sheriff Hochstetter knows his own constituents -- it's how he keeps getting re-elected. He thinks that going Full Metal Birther will get him another term as Sheriff, and based on what I know of Arizona politics, I think he's right.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

It's that simple

So Rush Limbaugh announced on Wednesday that women who use contraception are sluts and prostitutes. There's a lot to say about this, and a lot has been said by better people than me, so I'll stick with pointing out the obvious.

Conservatives hate women. It's that simple.

IT'S THAT FUCKING SIMPLE.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Prophecy 11

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez continue to push their way out of my hapless brain, like spriggans from a cracked mirror.
Seven will be lost from a three hour tour
Savant and merchant and merchant's wife
Farm girl's sense and player's allure
Captain and first mate rue their life

Who can say what arcane meaning is to be found in these puzzling lines?

(continue to Prophecy 12)