Well, the apartment complex wins…
As of July fifth, I’ll still be from Denver. Just not from this apartment complex. Done. Done. Done.
I won’t have easy computer access until July 7th from the new place.
A place with working elevators, a garage and a washer dryer in the unit…YAY
“Murder One,” or downloading politics and justice
My taste in television programming is eclectic and can border on the obsessed, if there’s a particular program I love…when vhs was the rage I had too many taking up too much space…I now have about 40 DVD’s and there are more television episodes among them than movies.
One of the online book/entertainment vendors now lets you pay for and download either whole series or just individual episodes (and not just present shows, but one season wonders, and cult favorites past.)
I don’t lose them, they don’t get dusty or scratched or mislabled…. you don’t ‘tape over’ something important by mistake…and they remain ‘organized.’ Thank God.
My current treat: “Murder One” a Stephen Bocho legal drama with a really addicting opening sequence, and complex characters and great to greater writing that ran on ABC from 1995-1997. My sticking point is great dialogue writing and exposition, so it’s no supprise I also like shows by David E Kelley (“The Practice”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”)
Season two of “Murder One” was a bust, since the amazing Daniel Benzali (as attorney Theodore Hoffmann) did not sign on for it. But season one?
It was a show where you had to be patient, and the pacing did drag sometimes, since a whole season was devoted to a single case….
and, an odd bit of history:
Bocho had the hit “LA Law, in the eigties; when he left that show, David E Kelley brought his brand of bizzare plot twists to the show….
Bocho did “Murder One, and actor J.C. McKenzie played a nerdish attorney in Hoffman’s firm, and when David E Kelley began his phenomenally well written and successful “The Practice, for the same network, JC Mackenzie would play the same sort of character.
Mary MacCormak would go on to a nuanced performance in the post 9/11 years of “The West Wing,”
Patricia Clarkson had come off an unremarkable turn in the Untouchables in 1987, but she did an amazing job for “Murder One” as Mrs. Theodore Hoffman, and went on to do wonderful things with little screen time in “The Green Mile.”
After “Murder One” Dylan Baker (Detective Paulsen) had guest shots on “The Practice,” and “The West Wing, (as a pain in the *** Attorney General)
And Stanley Tucci could have done nothing else on TV. His Richard Cross is all the more scary because he’s deceptively soft spoken, articulate, cultured, polished or amoral, manipulative powerful….genteel, with steel.
There are two missteps in casting that I wish they would have just killed off by episode three.
Jason Gedrick as a coked up movie star, playing pretty and empty and two dimensional.
And whomever played the hooker, sister to the murder victim. The camera tried to love on her, to make her motivations complex, but the actress just couldn’t cut it.
But it is great fun, and seems to have been a proving ground for actors who needed a wider audience and in some cases got one.
Broken cipher
When did I turn left,
That corner, bend, crosstreet that means ‘liberal’
I was bent that way quick and painful…but I would have gotten there by the scenic route anyhow.
The family, you see. They’ve been wondering. When did I become a member of the ‘Democrat Party’ (cue shudder for wrong spelling)
I never was ‘on the right.’ Just wanted to be apolitical, research from the primary sources,case by case…
It began in March of ’89 when I was advised my beloveds clock was ticking…
Or, did it begin in 1987 when our first friend Ray died?
Or, was it 1982, before he returned to my life, when I knew nothing, and he was given Hobson’s choice, take the factorate, sign the waiver and you’ll-never-be-able-to-sue-but-you-will-be-able-to-be-treated-for-your-existing-life-threatening-condition?
Or, was it 1981 again, before me and after me, when he actually believed with Falwell on the projection screen that it was gods-vengeance-against-the-gays…
It began for me in 1987, when I began to form my own opinion about the conflicting medical data and four allegedly private, allegedly medical providers,who had allegedly used unsafe places to get medicine and allegedly unsafe practices in preparing it.
Or, completely separately my own cancer, having nothing to do with him, when I was first told I was in immediate danger of death, and then the story changed…I’d have to wait three weeks have someone actually start holding off death, to go to another hospital. God obliged, I suppose, because I lasted those three weeks.
Or a brief bit of political hilarity in 1992 when my mother in law was scandalized by the husband’s “Jessie Jackson– Jobs Peace Justice” t-shirt. He wore it to mow her lawn and drink a well deserved beer in her kitchen….he’d made quite a journey from Falwell to Jackson, and voted for Clinton…the guy who lied and then, nobody died. And then Jesse Helms sent him correspondence that informed my husband that his ticket was punched for hell. And made my husband cry.
(I think the husband wouda been a Hilary person, today…maybe Obama, maybe not.)
Was it In 1996 when I read that: Allegedly in June 1982 Six*months*after*they*were*allegedly told by the *alleged* govenment watchdog agency that they must retool, relearn the process to avoid *alleged* contamination of the *alleged medicine. that had previously not been the alleged instrument of his death, but the thing that kept him alive…
Why would anyone think I could trust a corporation after that? About anything?
Don’t trust them when they give you products and don’t trust them when you work for them.
Just don’t.
Or in 1998 when my life and Trent Lott’s intersected briefly.
He was holding up some small sliver of justice regarding my spouse’s demise and I sent him an email:
“Shame on you, Senator.”
It was, in fact my first ‘political dissent’
And then 9/11 forced us all to look at the whole world, not just our own personal little mistrusts.
2002. They make stuff up, and we start a second war. Money, disability,civilians women children soldiers….wrong war wrong place….And always my grim pragmatism outside of any moral outrage, “Who, for f***’s sake said we had *money* to give away to wage war like this?” I certainly didn’t.
Afghanistan I might have agreed with a blank check for in the beginning. (Yes, I’m the sort of bleeding heart liberal that wants Osama’s head on a pike in Times Square. I’m all soft and squishy like that.)
Not Iraq.
And even for Afghanistan: Torture? I never agreed to that. If we torture, then *they will too.* I don’t want the torturing of US soldiers on my conscience thanks. Gitmo? Well *that* worked out well, didn’t it.
Throwing CIA people under the bus to make political points. Ditching the Geneva Convention. More wiretapping of all of us here, so they don’t have to do it over there…Didn’t agree to that either.
The legal concept of Posse Comitatus stripped away, and not yet restored. (Habeas Corpus is on it’s way back, though. ) The politicization of the Departments of Education, Vocational Rehabilitation and Justice.
And then 2005. I admitted I was impaired and read a flood of blogs about neglect, abuse, abandonment, invisibility,disrespect…and began wishing that the Democrats would not just work for us, but know about us too.
And Katrina showed just how much this great country could do for it’s poor and/or minority and/or impaired people if they were trapped with no way out
Why would I trust that govermnent. About anything?
And (deep breath) That, family of mine, is why I am a Democrat.
Father’s Day linkback
…Because I spoke best about my Dad in this 2005 post.
Midlife And Treachery 
