Is He or Isn’t He?

It’s funny, I remember when I first started going to Los Angeles, I felt I was somewhat deficient in the celebrity-spotting game. I mean, I never recognized anyone. I wasn’t sure whether I just wasn’t going to the right places (which seemed probable), whether celebrities out and about had ways of disguising themselves, or whether I just really didn’t have an eye for it. I finally had a little success in that area when I thought I spotted Martin Short at LAX after one of the flight attendants said he was on our plane. Another time, I thought I saw Justin Timberlake in the first-class cabin of the flight I was on (if it was Mr. Timberlake, I actually spoke to him in the boarding line without knowing who he was). Then, at last, a positive ID on Steve Martin, who was having dinner in a Montecito restaurant one evening when I was there with some classmates (though I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to spot him if someone else hadn’t pointed him out first).

Since then, there have been a number of instances when I thought I saw someone famous, but in almost every case there was something a little odd about it. You no doubt remember Inception, the film about labyrinths within labyrinths inside the multiple layers of reality of a consciousness experiment. This was a little bit like that, only more amusing. For example: there is a coffeehouse I sometimes went to in Santa Monica, a funky place with very little (let’s say no) gloss to it. I was in there one day some years ago and saw someone who looked so much like Frances McDormand that I was almost positive it was she, the only problem being, she was dressed like a bag lady. I looked on in wonder, a bit bemused by what I was seeing, not sure what to make of it. Was she in character for a role? Was that what’s considered “method acting”? Did she ever make that picture?

I didn’t know, but that’s not the only time something like that has happened. On that same trip, in the spring of 2011, I thought I saw Viggo Mortensen (you know, “Strider”) one night while I was waiting to cross a street near downtown Santa Monica. I was minding my own business when a large group of cyclists came cruising down the street, and in the middle of them, with blond hair shining like a beacon and eyes bright as stars, was a fellow who looked remarkably like Mr. Mortensen—not that I have ever met him—if he had bleached his hair blond and cut it short. The strange thing in that instance was that he did look at me as if he knew me, and as I remember even called out a greeting. Maybe he’s just a friendly person, if he was the genuine article, but the point is, there was something cinematic and a little bizarre about the whole experience.

Finding yourself on a sidewalk late on a balmy spring evening in L.A. and seeing an entire peloton suddenly appear, bearing along a smiling, fair-haired, mischievous-looking elven king in their midst, is the type of thing that you can almost count on happening in L.A., and that was one of the things I once enjoyed about it, in small doses. Life at home seemed to lack this cinematic quality. It was like a little movie playing out before your eyes, so quickly that if you blinked you’d definitely miss it, and even if you didn’t blink, you still wouldn’t be quite sure of what you had seen. It was magical realism at its best.

Now, last summer, the very first thing that happened when I got off the final freeway on my trip to L.A. was that I saw a crowd of people waiting to cross a street. I believe I was officially in Atwater Village when this happened, not Hollywood, but I heard a voice I thought I recognized. Looking over, I thought I saw John Cusack in the midst of a group of young people. I’ll admit I was sort of staring because it just seemed like peculiar timing to exit the freeway after driving cross-country and immediately fetch up against a celebrity. They’re not that thick on the ground. Mr. Cusack didn’t look in my direction, but one of the young people with him did turn his head and smile at me with what I would almost have described as a complicit smile. It gave me the feeling that my summer was going to be cinematic in that wonderful way I remember experiencing occasionally on past trips. Wrong. This past summer was anything but that. I felt I was lucky to get back to Kentucky in one piece, which only happened because I sized up the situation and faced the facts: I didn’t want to be broke in L.A. (By the way, the film I most associate with Mr. Cusack is The Grifters, if that means anything to you.)

But that was not to be the only cinematic experience I had. There was the day I was riding the Metro Red Line and sat down across from a fellow that I could have sworn was Robin Williams. Yes, I know he died. But here’s my dilemma: I am forced to make a choice between believing in two different versions of reality, both of which cannot be true at the same time. Either Mr. Williams is really dead and has an Asian doppelgänger who rides the L.A. Metro smiling mysteriously at nothing, or Mr. Williams is not dead and rides the L.A. Metro disguised as a highly amused Asian commuter. You’ll have to decide for yourself which is more likely, but since I was there, I have to tell you honestly that at that moment I was sure I was looking at Robin Williams.

But to what end, you may ask? That’s a good question. I will say, apropos of this experience, that I remarked to someone a couple of years ago that there seemed to be an awful lot of major celebrities dying right and left. There were so many of these deaths that I almost wondered if some of these folks might be working for the government. Both the FBI and the CIA have a presence in Hollywood, which would naturally include undercover agents. A few years ago, I was disturbed by a presentation at a professional conference that detailed the ways in which Hollywood partners with the CIA to market the agency’s work. Now, I’m not saying the CIA doesn’t do some good things, but what bothers me is not only the propaganda angle but the fact of secrecy and disguises. It’s the whole Inception phenomenon: what’s real here, and what isn’t? For that matter, spies could be working for another government, which would make it even worse. Just because someone looks and sounds like an American doesn’t mean he or she is one. It’s a picture show, right?

What if you were married to an undercover agent? Would you even know it? Could you go your entire life being married to someone who wasn’t really who they said they were at all? Is that right? Is it ethical? I’m sure the government could present a list of reasons for having to work this way that would sound reasonable. I’m also aware that the majority of their employees do not work undercover but live rather ordinary existences and have desk jobs. I personally couldn’t stand to work undercover, not that I have much talent for it. Honesty in relationships is too important to me for anything like that to have the remotest possible appeal, and if you think about it, I think you’ll see what I mean. How would you feel if you’d been married to a spy (and possibly not even an American spy), duped so that everything you thought was solid in your life was nothing but an illusion? How disorienting and confusing would that be? How cheated would you feel? Would you ever be able to trust anyone again?

I gather I am not the only one who looks askance at the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies over this type of thing, because not long ago I saw a list of Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies ranked according to the level of trust the American public had in them, and the CIA was at or near the bottom. Espionage is just too spooky for most people, and I include myself among them. I associate espionage with getting thrown off the back of a train or having to escape hotel rooms through a back window just in time to avoid an explosion—the kind of stuff you see in movies, but not the kind of movies that generally appeal to me.

I can’t imagine giving up my identity to take on an entirely new life. Whether that is the explanation for the dead celebrity phenomenon or not, I have no idea. I do know that the magical moments I’m speaking of no longer seem restricted to L.A.: the separation between life in California and life in Kentucky no longer seems to hold, as I’ve found myself doing double-takes here more than once. Was that Benedict Cumberbatch I saw? Was it Rosie O’Donnell? Was it Prince? Here in Lexington? As actors, they would certainly be naturals for taking on undercover assignments, or perhaps it would be the other way around—they are undercover agents first, so that’s why they’ve become entertainers. I am only using these instances as examples; I don’t know why the celebrity phenomenon seems to have descended on Lexington, only that I have had some strange encounters.

See how confusing it is? By the way, I make no claim to knowing whether any of these people are living or dead, employed by the government or not. If someone is reported as dead, I assume that they are. Otherwise, life just becomes too confusing. My recommendation to you is that if you think you see someone who really shouldn’t be there, be careful. Makeup, plastic surgery, disguises, and imagination can create some powerful illusions. Maybe Robin Williams really is working undercover, but you know what? If he is, I don’t want to know about it. Save that kind of thing for the big screen . . . Ordinary life, I have always found, is challenging enough, the caveat being, if I turn out to have some kind of history unknown to me (if it turns out that I really am related to British royalty, not a development that I would welcome, but if it happened)—you would not see me moving to Britain and assuming the throne. I’m an American, after all, a Democrat, a Southerner, and a writer, and I have my own life. I probably shouldn’t tell you in advance what I would do, but since we’re speaking of play-acting and all that goes with it, it would not involve listening to other people whispering in my ear all day long and taking their suggestions. It would more likely run to selling off a few castles to pay for my retirement, sending people to gaol, that type of thing. It would, in fact, probably make pretty good cinema.

Isn’t play-acting wonderful?

See You In Court

You know us here at Wordplay—we try to take things in stride. Sometimes, though, it becomes difficult to say, “Oh, well” in the face of yet another run of inconceivable bad luck. I am now at the point of inflicting myself on the charitable organizations of Lexington. You may find it hard to believe that anyone with Wordplay’s credentials could be unemployed for so long—I find it difficult to believe myself. If I post one more update to Facebook about my job search, I run the risk of boring myself to distraction, but I continue to do it because I’m still looking.

I have had a number of bizarre things happen to me in my job search, including being told by more than one public library system that I didn’t score high enough on their tests to be a viable candidate (essentially an impossibility for someone with over twelve years of professional experience) and having someone hang up on me during a telephone interview with a university in Montana (true story). I have seen jobs I applied for and didn’t get either go unfilled or get re-posted several months later. I have been turned down by fast food restaurants. I had a temp agency all but refuse to take my resume (that was here in Lexington). I had another temp agency in one of the largest cities in the world tell me that they just couldn’t help me because they didn’t have enough job orders (during the summer, no less).

I was telling someone the other day not only how strange it is that I’ve been unemployed so long but how incurious most people are when I tell them—no one will admit to it being strange, or very few of them, anyway. I occasionally run across a clear-thinking person who shakes his head or looks incredulous, though I’ve also had people act as if I’m asking for something unreasonable in wanting a normal working life. When someone at my hotel said something to me recently about being a “special guest,” I had to go back and ask what that was about because it puzzled me. Why did they think I was “special”? I know nothing about it. I’m not royalty (any more than you are, I suppose), I’m not in the witness protection program, I’m not working undercover, and I don’t have anyone else paying for my expenses. If I did, I wouldn’t be in debt as far as I am (a situation I’m unused to).

It’s possible that something could still open up, possibly by the time I’ve lost all my belongings because I can’t pay the storage fees or have ruined my health by catching the flu or something worse in a homeless shelter. I remain positive because that’s the way I prefer to be, despite being giving absolutely no reason to stay positive by external events. I am occasionally startled to get a notice about the status of a job I applied for months ago, so who know, maybe I’ll be surprised one of these days by a positive response. It’s ironic that I’m right back where I was a year ago after all the effort it took to move myself and my belongings to Los Angeles (no job for the faint of heart, let me tell you). I’m not opposed to going back; I’m not opposed to staying here. I would like to know, though, why so many otherwise sane-seeming people persist in thinking Limbo is a good place for me to be.

I suspect this will all end up in court one of these days, so I’m prepared for that. I will tell you one thing. I applied again and again for positions here at the Lexington Public Library over the years and didn’t get a peep of interest from them, even when I was willing to take things below my pay grade. While I need a job (and have been reasonable in my expectations), I’m kind of glad that one didn’t work out. As a patron, I’ve seen so many examples of unprofessionalism here that I don’t know if I could bring myself to work with these people. As a librarian myself, I’m a good judge of that, but a blind person could see that there’s something wrong with a place where librarians think they can abuse patrons with impunity. I sometimes wonder if some of these people even are librarians; I kind of doubt it. If they are, it must be the case that they’ll let anybody into library school these days.

Another thing I’m unwilling to do is work for another law firm. Although I liked many aspects of my job and most of the people there, it did not turn out to be a safe place to be, and I’ve had my fill of that. (I do have some standards, a concern for personal safety being chief among them.)

I read a good book this week and was considering doing a review of it, so I may do that next week, if I haven’t caught some dread disease at the homeless shelter . . . or I may regale you with tales of life at the bottom of the barrel. It’s hard to say at this point. But whatever happens, you can be sure I’ll tell you what I think.

Well, That Was a Mistake

Haven’t we been here before? I wasn’t going to watch President Trump’s State of the Union address because I didn’t have much enthusiasm for what he might say, but in the end, I felt it was my duty as a citizen (and also, I was a little curious to see the reactions of the others in the room with him). When I turned the TV on, the President was still shaking hands with people and hadn’t begun speaking yet. When he did begin speaking, I listened intently for a while before the “yada, yada, yada” just became too much, and I couldn’t take it seriously any more. Just one more politician full of pretty words and short on substance, and it’s a tragedy.

Since I was critical of President Obama when he was in office and didn’t hold back on what I thought, I think it’s only fair to say that having given President Trump the benefit of the doubt for a while, I’m no longer doing so. In fact, by the end of his speech, I was calling out to the people in the room with him, as if they could hear me, “Don’t believe a word he says!” Despite not agreeing with his rhetoric, tone, or policies, I had been hoping that the President was actually intending to use his power to achieve some good. But a long year has come and gone and I’ve seen nothing but events and actions that alarm me, so I’ve had to conclude that his story is, unfortunately, one of Might makes Right. Mr. Trump evidently undertook to become president for purely selfish reasons, and I don’t see a good end to this story.

I told someone last summer that I was hoping Mr. Trump’s presidency would run more along the lines of an Oskar Schindler story than Lord of the Flies—although it had already begun to resemble the latter. Having seen so many examples of people who looked OK on the outside but were no good inside, I was hoping that he might turn out to be someone who went against type and tried to accomplish something good despite looking like a blowhard. It would have made a much better story if the brash and egotistical businessman had turned out to be a doer of good deeds in disguise, but I’m afraid the only way I’m going to get an outcome like that is to write the story myself. It’s a pity, because it would have been such a good one had it turned out to be true.

I’m glad I watched the address because the contrast between what the President was saying and reality as I know it was so strong that the dissonance eventually became too much, and that was very telling. I had started to wonder what the President was up to when FBI Director James Comey was fired last spring, but since it was only a few months into his term, I decided to wait and see. That was a strange thing to do, it seemed to me, and the reasons Mr. Trump gave for doing it didn’t make any sense, but having been disappointed by politicians of my own party for so many years, I was hoping that someone else might have something to offer. Alas for that.

As in times past, I ended up creating an impromptu soundtrack to go with the address, though I only started doing it during the latter half, so it’s a fairly short one. I especially enjoyed holding the iPad screen up to the TV so that Jimi Hendrix was wailing on his guitar while Mr. Trump was speaking—probably the best split screen video pairing ever, though it may be just as well that poor Jimi isn’t around to see what the world has come to.

Here’s my set list:

Jimi Hendrix—“The Star Spangled Banner”
Simon and Garfunkel—“American Tune”
Dave and Phil Alvin—“World’s in a Bad Condition”
The Grateful Dead—“Touch of Grey”
Lorin Maazel, Sinfónica de Galicia—Mozart, Symphony No. 41 (“The Jupiter Symphony”)