Mark Knows It All

I was surprised at the number and rapidity of comments I got relating to The Prairie Home Companion blog. I didn’t know that movies were such a hot topic. So I thought I would share with you my movie picks for great summer viewing. These are smaller movies which may or may not have been seen by a wide audience. Notwithstanding the huge diversity of topics, they all have one thing in common. These are good people trying their best to get along in life, albeit with various degrees of success. 1) THE MAJESTIC : I mentioned this movie last week. It is about a writer under investigation by the McCarthy Commission who loses his memory in a car accident and is mistaken for a fallen war hero in a small California town. Kleenex Box alert. 2) MY FAVORITE YEAR : This is a comedy blockbuster starring Peter O’Toole as you have never seen him. It is a takeoff on Sid Caesar’s 1950’s television program, with O’Toole playing a washed up actor trying to make a come b...

I have only heard The Prairie Home Companion radio show a few times over the years. I would be away from home, driving around and surfing the radio dial trying to find something to which to listen. It is an odd sounding program, so it always gave me pause. Then I usually started to laugh, and I was hooked. The bluegrass/country music wasn’t bad either. For those of you not familiar with the program, it is a live radio show produced by PBS and broadcast on NPR, the subject of which is every day life in a small Minnesota town. Garrison Keillor is its originator and host. Because my wife is from a small town (Shiloh, OH, pop: 800), I have observed small town life first hand. It IS different than what many of us are used to. Sitting in the American Legion next to the train tracks, with all the doors and windows open on a sultry August night drinking 50 cent beers, one learns what it means to come from a “red” state. At my wife’s 20th year high school class reunion, I learned how to talk a...

I have written before about the diminishing role of males in today’s society. My comments included: 1) the treatment of men as buffoons on television sitcoms; 2) the violence exhibited against men on sitcoms and Lifetime Network television; 3) societal assumption of the feminist view that men and women are “the same”, where science has clearly shown that is not the case; 4) the wholesale adaptation of the “feminized” method of teaching in the schools, the result being a marked drop in male achievement scores, college admissions, and degree completion; 5) the legal system’s unequal and unconstitutional treatment of men in alleged sex abuse and rape cases as well as the inequality of sentencing for female sexual predators. But most disturbing, the importance of the role of fathers has all but been eliminated in today’s society. Modern television shows like Sex in the City , Friends , Roseanne , Queer as Folk and Will and Grace clearly take the position that men are not needed to raise...

My son and I were watching an umpteenth rerun of Mama’s Family very early in the morning the other day. The story line had Mama and her friends dressing up as the Andrews Sisters singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy at a high school dance, and saving the day when the scheduled punk band didn’t show up. Given that punk when out with the “hair” bands of the late eighties and early nineties, the morning was just chock full of dated references. My son is a fan of rat pack chic, and therefore at least knew who the Andrews Sisters were. I started to play some mind games. I have an incompetent 89 year old client who is confined to a nursing home. Going through his personal effects, I found his father’s discharge papers from the army dated 1899, along with a medal for serving in the Spanish American War. His father was 25 when he joined the army in 1887, which means my client’s father was born during the Civil War. That puts me within 2 degrees of separation from the Civil War, and 1 degree of se...

From time to time, we all make a faux pas. For those of you who don’t know the definition, it is a French word the literal translation of which is “mistake”. In our society, however, it has taken on an aura of a social misstep resulting in a high degree of public embarrassment and humiliation. I often say that humiliation is my friend as I faux pas my way through life. My family just rolls their eyes. One of my more blatant faux pas occurred when a church I once attended made a concerted effort to bring more minorities into its congregation. A minority family found its way into our lily white establishment, and I hoped to make a valiant effort in making this very lovely family feel comfortable. As a church dinner approached, I asked our then minister the last name of the new family. His reply: “Oh! You mean the Buppies”. At the church dinner, I proceeded to introduce the family as the “Buppies”. I came to find out that it was a slang word for a black yuppie, a term with which I was unf...