I was disappointed with “A Man on the Inside,” especially after hearing an interview with the award-winning writer. What is it about American shows, especially comedies, that makes them such unsatisfying fantasies? I measure them against the brilliant German comedy “The Last Word,” which also had a slightly absurd premise – a woman is hired as a eulogist by a failing funeral home – but was steeped in the reality of the human condition.
Also, I stopped watching the highly acclaimed “Black Doves” after one episode. It’s not a comedy, but it displays an equally distant relationship to reality.
Friday afternoon, Hania and I drove to Miami Beach for our (mostly) annual taste of Miami Art Week. Traffic on I-95 was only a little worse than usual, but getting onto the Julia Tuttle was a lot worse. The electronic board announced that it would take us about a half an hour to drive four miles (to Alton Road). I wondered where all these cars were going to park. We eventually reached Arthur Godfrey Road, but ended up behind a wide-load truck. A man in a kippah sped past us on his scooter.
Traffic lightened after we turned south onto A1A (aka Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway), but available parking spots seemed like a dream. I turned down 37th Street, found none, and joined the multitudes inching north. Circling back to 37th we saw some people getting into a parked car. And within less than a minute, the car departed and I pulled in. Miracle on 37th Street.
We used the restrooms at a nearby café and then walked to the beach to see the herd of wooden elephants that had been installed there. I like art; I especially like art that’s public and free.
Back in the car, we headed south to Collins Ave., which was not as bad as I had anticipated. Turning right onto 17th Street, we headed straight to the Miami Beach Convention Center, home of Art Basel, the eye of the storm. Our favorite parking garage, amazingly, was open. (We were wise to come late in the afternoon, as people were leaving.) We found a spot on level 2.
We strolled Lincoln Road and then Washington Ave. (The price of Art Basel was $85.) Espanola Way was quiet at 5 pm, but A La Folie had diners inside and out. We took a small table on the sidewalk and ordered crepes with cider from an aloof waitress we assumed was French but found out later was Argentinian. (Undoubtedly from Buenos Aires.)
At 6:30, the party on Espanola Way – one of the world’s loveliest tourist traps – was in full swing. We walked down Washington to The Wolfsonian and joined the line of people gathered outside the entrance. The doors opened promptly at 7, and people headed straight through the lobby to the side rooms offering cocktails and food.
“This is dinner!” a woman said indignantly, showing me her croissant. (The invitation had said “pastries;” perhaps she hadn’t read it fully.
We took the elevator to the 7th floor and worked our way down – as instructed by the elevator attendant – admiring the paintings of industrial landscapes and the outfits on many of the art lovers. I was reminded of what a treasure The Wolfsonian is. On one floor we saw the stained glass window full of Irish literary references that Micky Wolfson purchased after it was rejected by the person who had commissioned it.
Back in the grandiose lobby, a DJ alternated between spinning records and playing the trumpet, while people – some beautiful, some ordinary – talked in tight groups. We bought some Christmas presents in the gift shop and then made the long walk back the garage.
Was it worth all the trouble of getting there? Definitely. Saturday morning I woke up with an idea for this year’s Christmas card.
I went to Fogo de Chao for lunch yesterday and heard "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" sung in a kind of samba style.
Before heading to The Parker last night to hear David Sedaris, I went through my Best American Travel Writing anthologies to see if there were any in which we both appeared. I found three, but grabbed the 2002 edition, where our pieces appeared back-to-back. My plan was to have him sign the table of contents page, where – I would tell him – we were neighbors. Once at the Miami Book Fair I handed John Updike a quarterly in which he had a poem and I had an essay, and he wrote: “To Thomas Swick from John Updike” – then put a bracket around our two names and wrote “In this issue!”
Sedaris took the stage at The Parker without an introduction and, after a few perfunctory remarks, began reading from a sheaf of loose pages. The longest reading was of a piece I had recently read in The New Yorker, about a visit with friends in Maine, a cancelled flight to New York, and a long drive in a rental car with another stranded traveler, a young Chinese woman. This was disappointing; humor depends on the element of surprise. Yet the way he read it made it funnier than I had originally found it.
Also, there were some things in it that I didn’t remember. I had forgotten that the people gathered at the house in Maine had included a MacArthur fellow and a Pulitzer Prize winner. And I had completely erased from my memory the scene in which one of them expresses his dislike of Greta Thunberg and then does a mocking imitation of her.
There is a scene, on the drive to New York, in which they pull up to a gas station to use the restrooms only to find the gas station closed. Heading for privacy behind a dumpster, they spot two Orthodox Jews adjusting their flies. Sedaris shouts “Hasidim!” – “the way I might have said ‘Deer!’ or ‘Racoons!’” I didn’t remember the second animal.
When he finished reading, Sedaris revealed that The New Yorker employs a “sensitivity reader.” (He said the term three times, the first two times in a garbled accent that showed his disdain.) This reader, he said, had insisted that he take out mention of the prestigious prizes because they sounded too “elitist.” The reader – I don’t think Sedaris mentioned his or her gender – also took out the bit about Thunberg.
They had fought over his reaction to seeing Orthodox Jews emerging from behind a dumpster; Sedaris had been able to salvage ‘deer’ but he had lost ‘racoons” because, the reader said, they were viewed as furtive and shifty. “But,” he pleaded, now with his audience, “racoons are what you see around dumpsters.” For me – if not for him – this was not a big loss; one example is often better than two.
There is a discussion in the car, with the Chinese woman, about pandas; this was flagged by the reader because it touched on stereotypes. Sedaris defended it – and won – by saying it was the woman who had brought up the subject.
Sedaris said he was grateful to write for The New Yorker and noted that any cuts they make to his stories he will restore when he puts them in books. But his insights into the inner workings of the place explained why the writing is so often bland. (Unlike that in the British Spectator, whose new editor, in his introductory column, said that the best magazines are parties on pages.)
During the Q&A, someone asked how much he had walked that day, and, in answering, he praised the Riverwalk. “I love it – that walkway along the water.” In less than 24 hours, he had found one of the loveliest things in Fort Lauderdale.
The line for autographs stretched through the lobby. A man came around and handed everyone a piece of paper on which we were to write what we wanted his inscription to read. This was an attempt to save time, yet Sedaris is so friendly with fans, so giving of his time, that for five minutes the line didn’t move. I tucked the anthology under my arm and headed for the door.
Scenes from South Florida: https://realsouthwestmag.com/2024/11/south-florida-days/
Friday evening we went to Regal Oakwood in Hollywood to see A Real Pain. Numerous commercials preceded the coming attractions, including the longest car commercial I had ever seen. It began with a woman informing her husband that she was pregnant and ended with her nearly getting run over by a car, on a strangely empty street. Finally, the coming attractions began – that dismaying, de rigueur montage of shootings and crashes – though in the middle of them a commercial was thrown in.
I was in a very bad mood when the movie began. My spirits lifted when the two protagonists arrived in Poland, then they plummeted again as it became clear that this was not a road movie, it was a buddy picture. It’s not about cultural differences, it’s about relationships. Of course it is; who in today's Hollywood would make a movie about the former?