All posts by Steve Stern

Mad Men and Packard

Television

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First you write for yourself, then you write for others, then you write for money. Somebody famous.

Michele and I watched the last episode of Mad Men -Season 6 – again last night. I like watching movies twice; somehow, I am not as caught up in the moment and it is easier to follow. On TV programs – that sounds so archaic – I have watched parts of Justified more than once but never Mad Men. My loss.

As a car guy, the last scene in the last episode of the season, really struck me. It didn’t jump out so strongly that I saw it the first time around but it did jump out on the second viewing. Don is looking down at his daughter and behind her is an old, seemingly faded, circa 1958, Packard.  It is just perfect. A touch that most people will never notice, a touch that the writer must have written in for himself.

Everything in a movie or a TV Drama is done by somebody for some reason. Everything everybody is saying, everything somebody is wearing, every background, has been planned to say something; about the character, about the situation. In the movies – and I’m including TV here – nobody just pulls a sweater out of the closet in the dark and wears it in a scene, even if the scene is somebody pulling a sweater out of the closet in the dark and putting it on. No director ever said Oh, who cares? Just stand by that wall and I’ll take the shot. So, almost by definition – I guess – everything on the screen has meaning. Including a 1958 Packard. Especially a 1958 Packard.

Packards were great cars – they may have been better than Cadillacs during the early 30’s – but the company went through a slow decline and stopped making cars in 1956 or so. Studebaker, also in decline, bought Packard – or their name – and, for a couple of years, produced a Packard that was just a tarted up Studebaker President with the Packard name pasted on the hood.

That poor, sorry, car behind Don’s daughter, was an almost departed Studebaker, all dressed up and pretending to be a Packard. It makes me want to go back and watch the whole season over again.

Jose Froilan Gonzalez RIP

Cars, Sports

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 Maserati team-mates Jose Froilan Gonzalez and Juan Manuel Fangio , British Grand Prix, Silverstone, July 18, 1953

Against all odds, Jose Froilan Gonzalez died a natural death on June 15th of this year in his home in Argentina. I say against all odds, because Gonzalez, on the left above and known as The Pampas Bull – I wonder why – raced Formula One cars when Formula One drivers were real men. Real men being a nice way to say men doing incredibly stupid things like driving an open car, in a polo shirt, without a seatbelt, wearing polo helmet, in the rain . Some wag said it was a time when drivers were fat and tires were skinny.

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The Exploratorium with the Grandkids

Americana, Around home

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Photograph of August and Charlotte by Michele

 Recently, Michele and I went to the new Exploratorium with my daughter, Samantha, and the Grandkids, Auggie and Charlotte. The Exploratorium bills itself as an interactive museum of art, science, and human perception based on the philosophy that science should be fun and accessible and was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of the famed – atleast to my generation – father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.

Right after WWII, Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most famous and revered scientists in American, second only to Albert Einstein, but he fell out of favor during the McCarthy era even having his security clearance revoked. (As the Dude might say, irony abides.) Robert’s brother, Frank Oppenheimer, was blacklisted during the same time because he had once been a member of the Communist Party during the 30’s.

Several years later, after rehabilitation, Frank moved to the Bay Area and founded the Exploratorium.  I imagine family re-unions in which, over the years, the family star becomes less Robert and more Frank. I would certainly rather have Founder of the Exploratorium on my tombstone rather than Father of the Worst Killing Machine of All Time (so far).

This Exploratorium is new because it has moved to Pier 15 – on what used to be called the waterfront – from its previous digs in the Palace of Fine Arts. The old Exploratorium was one of my favorite places in San Francisco and I think the new one is already as good, has lots of space to enlarge, and is in an area that is rapidly becoming upscale tourist. Inside are lots of interactive science exhibits posing as games.

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And art posing as science.

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Another nice feature of the new Exploratorium is a new restaurant, Seaglass. It is a sort of free-form cafeteria with an – apparently – changing menu. When we went, there were four basic stations, pizza,  tacos and quesadillas, salads, and sushi. The restaurant also offers natural soft drinks, organic and fair trade coffees and teas, and sparkling house-made drinking vinegar beverages and a bar that showcases artisanal distillers, many organic, and a thoughtfully curated wine and beer list. All this makes it sound much more pretentious than it really is in real life. It somehow seems like a perfect San Francisco kid friendly menu with sushi.

Outside, is a sculpture designed for kids where Michele took the portrait on top of the post, and behind that is a fog making machine because, I guess, San Francisco doesn’t have enough fog.

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We spent several hours at the Exploratorium and I don’t think we even really scratched the surface. Thanks, Mr. Oppenheimer.

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Syria

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

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I remember a story – during our intervention, along with several NATO allies, in Bosnia and Herzegovina – about United States Army Forward Operating Base Cobra. This was  in 1995 or so, after the majority of the fighting was over. FOB Cobra – if I may be so familiar – was the biggest American base around and it was surrounded by a plethora of concertina wire backed up by as many motion detectors as the supplier could talk the Army into. This was during the time when American soldiers going into town were required to wear helmets and body armor (other NATO troops wandered around in their uniforms with berets or other soft headgear).

Anyway, there was a farm nearby and the farmer had two teenage sons. They spent their teenage summer seeing how close they could get to FOB Cobra proper. When the teenagers were spotted by an motion detector, the lights would come on and sirens would go off. The base would go to Defcon One – or its local equivalent – with the entire base coming up to full attack defense status: all defensive positions were manned, the helicopter gunships were scrambled, and everybody was up and at their battle stations.

The thing is that after the first couple of attacks, everybody knew it was the kids but FOB Cobra couldn’t help itself. Every time the motion detectors were tripped, it reflexively reacted.  Not  in relation to a threat, everybody knew it wasn’t a threat, sort of like a reflexive knee jerk. I feel the same way about the United States and somebody else’s war. Somehow, we have to intervene.  We just can not help ourselves. Obama ran on a platform of staying out of stupid wars like Iraq, and, he knows better, but he can’t help himself. Our body politic won’t let him.

Happy Father’s Day

Psychological Musings

Daddy-1In my personal history – maybe personal mythology is more accurate, maybe something in between – my Dad was pretty much absent. But, today, a day after going to the Exploratorium with my grandkids, Charlotte and August, several – similar – memories of my father have surfaced.

He took me to my first car race and, several years later when I was thirteen, taught me how to drive. We argued over Dred Scott and the proposed tram from Palm Springs to near the top of San Jacinto Mountain. He took me to the 1960 National Democratic Convention and the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. I could bum cigarettes off of him but he wouldn’t sign a permission slip to let me smoke at school.

I was deeply embarrassed that he was a draft dodger – during World War II, a time when everybody’s father had been in The Service – and deeply proud when, at a church service, he outed himself  as an atheist by sitting while everybody else kneeled to pray. He was soft and tender with me, much more than my mother. When we saw each other we kissed, I am not sure we ever shook hands.

He often forgot my birthday and he paid for me to go to College at, what I now know, was a sacrifice on his part. He died 45 years ago last May and I still miss him.

He was my Daddy.