A MASS. EXODUS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-03-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     We made a trip to Massachusetts last weekend, I wish it were under happier circumstances, but any excuse to get out of the house and see some old friends is welcome. I'm at the age where I am an old friend and an OLD friend. The trip was a few hours long, and it helps to be entertained by interesting conversation while I'm driving. By definition, that means a conversation that I am not in. The one that I'M in is a running commentary of a discourse of subjects ranging from the mundane to the inane. 

     By the time I had run out of mundane, the exchange gravitated toward a discussion of current films, on which I am something of an expert since I have been to two screenings in the past two years. The discussion was more about the subjects producers are choosing to make films about, not actually the films themselves. It's been pretty much just Batman, but they've gone down an interesting path this time by calling the new one "The Batman," as opposed to the simple and boring "Batman." We surmised that there are many more movies that could be updated and improved by this type of artistic re-imagining. Producers, if you're out there, contact me to take this off-line when I'm not in the middle of driving around a roundabout that I can't get out of, but what about a film called, "The Casablanca" or "The Gone With the Wind?" How about this little nugget of genius: "The The Godfather?"

     If you just want to stay within the Batman franchise I get it, stick to what works, but we even mined some new territory there. What about "Bat Cat," which explores the dark and complicated reasons that Bat Cat got into crime fighting in the first place, such as there being only one litter box, etc. Or even "Batman," only this time it's a bat dressed like a human, living a normal bat life at night and fighting crime during the day, and catching a quick nap upside down on the office Xerox machine legal paper tray when he gets tired. There are a lot of different ways we could go, so give me a call.

     The whole car ride we had the Sinatra station playing on satellite radio, and it's mind-boggling how many songs Frank Sinatra recorded. If you wrote a song between 1939 and 1984 and you DIDN'T want Sinatra to record it, you had to hide it someplace where he would never find it, like in between two yogurt containers or something. Some of the songs were masterpieces, some were really good, and a surprising amount of those songs had REALLY dumb lyrics. Like the song about coffee in Brazil where he sings: "You date a girl and find out later, She smells just like a percolator." That kind of thing. 

     I had my wife Google how many songs Sinatra recorded and it was something like 1,350. Then I made her Google how many dumb songs he recorded, and Google refused to say, which I found surprising, because algorithms are always trying to show off how much like humans they are, and how they can think anything that humans can. It's possible that Google thought these weren't dumb lyrics: "Heaven rest us, I am not asbestos." Or maybe it was just trying to be nice or is still a even little afraid of Sinatra (he could be intimidating).

     Then the conversation drifted to New England itself, and how a lot of historical places and landmarks here are actually quite old. Perhaps we need a NEWER England, at least update the place a little, install some vinyl siding on some of these hell-holes from the 1700s.

     In what seemed like only four hours, three hours had passed and we were at the hotel. You know you've made it to Massachusetts when there's a sign in the lobby that says "NO HOCKEY STICKS OF ANY SIZE," and there was a picture of a hockey stick (small sized) with a red line drawn through it. And wouldn't you know it, my wife dropped her smartphone right on its noggin, and it started to remember only certain things, like it had amnesia in a soap opera. It could remember how to get to the restaurant, but nothing about our previous relationship, nor anything about Frank Sinatra.

     What's the point of all this? It was just a bunch of idle conversation, probably idler than usual, and that IS the point. If you turn off your phone, even for a little while, you can have one yourself. We chatted almost the whole trip, about next to nothing. By the time we had gotten to where we were going, we had gotten nowhere at all. Sometimes that's the best place to be.