The Existential Crises of Ja’mie: Private School Girl

 Goodbye, housewives! I’ve found a new guilty pleasure! It’s called Ja’mie: Private School Girl and it’s on HBO.

You may recall star, writer and director Chris Lilley from his last HBO show, Summer Heights High, which also featured the eponymous Ja’mie (pronounced Ja-MAY, and played by Mr. Lilley).

Now, I’ve never been to private school (nor have I ever been a teenage girl), but I have to say that Mr. Lilley has captured this world with all the detail of an anthropologist! One of the things that makes the show so simultaneously entertaining and horrifying, is the way it demonstrates the degree to which Valley Girl-isms have saturated the conversation not just of teenage girls (and many adults of both sexes) in the United States, but apparently Australia, as well.

Part of me wants to feel above getting caught up in the exploits of Ja’mie and her ability to turn every minor event in her life into an existential crisis and part of me wants to totally give in to it and jump up and down on her bed with her.

To say that Ja’mie is fond of hyperbole would be an understatement. After a while, you too may find yourself overusing such words/phrases as “seriously,” “literally,” “I'm literally freaking out right now” and “I seriously can't even deal.”

I must give kudos as well to the supporting cast for being able to maintain a straight face through all this. The other “private school girls” are played by actual biological girls who seem to be in or near their teens and ground the show in something approaching reality. Also on hand are Ja’mie’s tirelessly patient parents and school principal, her gay best friend, her hot new boyfriend, and an African boy that Ja’mie’s family “adopts” (and has yet to utter a word of dialogue).

The show is also educational. For example, up until now, I didn’t realize that being called gay was the worst thing that could happen to a teenage girl. (Homophobia: it’s not just for boys anymore!)

In his earlier show, Mr. Lilley also played a somewhat effeminate drama teacher and a teenage thug in addition to Ja’mie, but it’s in Ja’mie that he has found his true calling. (His talents also extend to interpretive dance and singing, as he demonstrates in some of the show’s other running motifs.)

I look forward—with unrestrained teenage longing—to watching Jai’mie’s travails unfold the rest of this season.

A Letter to Congressman John Boehner

Dear Congressman Boehner:

My name is Paul Hallasy. My unemployment benefits are due to expire next week and my extended unemployment benefits are due to expire at the end of this year thanks to a law passed by Congressional Republicans (led by you, as Speaker of the House) to cut both the amount of extended unemployment benefits as well as their duration.

I am looking at the very real possibility of becoming homeless or, at the very least, being forced to apply for welfare and food stamps (which you have also cut) for the first time in my life (in the middle of the holiday season, no less).

Rather than passing legislation to create jobs, you and other Congressional Republicans have done nothing but cut benefits for the weakest segment of our society, benefits that would not only prevent people like myself from falling more deeply into poverty but would actually improve the economy, since they would be spent immediately, rather than hoarded like the tax cuts you passed for corporations and wealthy individuals.

For your information, Mr. Speaker, people who can’t find jobs in this economy are not “lazy” and people who rely on benefits to survive are not “takers” (as Mitt Romney famously put it). They are veterans, children, senior citizens and people like myself who have struggled mightily to find a job but still been unsuccessful.

I have spent every day of the last five months actively looking for work, answering want ads, networking on LinkedIn, and attending networking events and seminars. I’ve had seven in-person interviews so far, but no job offers yet. Clearly this is not a matter of my being “lazy.” It’s more a matter of our economy still being weak five years after the financial collapse of 2008 (which Congressional Republicans also exacerbated by weakening regulation of financial institutions), as well as a vicious cycle where companies keep cutting jobs to improve their profits because nobody has any disposable income to buy anything.

Just before writing this letter, I called your office and your representative had the audacity to suggest that it was Senator Harry Reid’s fault that unemployment benefits were not being extended, when it’s Congressional Republicans who have stonewalled every piece of legislation or nominee President Obama has put forth since he took office, to the point where Congress had to finally (thank God!) overturn the filibuster on executive and judicial nominees.

I hope that, as you’re gathered with your family this Thanksgiving and over the holidays that follow, you reflect on the untold pain and suffering you and your fellow Congressional Republicans have caused millions of Americans like myself.

Sincerely,

Paul Hallasy

P.S. I filmed an interview with CBS News on this subject this week and took that opportunity to (correctly) point out that Congressional Republicans are the ones responsible for unemployment benefits not being extended.

When Harry Met Sally = Annie Hall + Manhattan

Having recently read Billy Crystal’s memoir (Still Foolin’ ’Em) and never having seen When Harry Met Sally, I finally watched it on cable last night. (I’m gay, what can I tell you. Maybe if it had been called When Harry Met Barry.) I was struck by its similarity to Annie Hall and Manhattan. Now, Annie Hall and Manhattan are two of my favorite films of all time, so it’s understandable why even someone as talented as Rob Reiner would want to copy them, but still… So I decided to come up with this handy chart:

	When Harry Met Sally	Annie Hall	Manhattan
New York City setting	X	X	X
Gershwin songs	X		X
Nebbishy, funny Jew meets emotionally unavailable shiksa	X	X	X
Characters talk directly to camera	X	X
Scene in deli	X		X
Male romantic lead goes to apartment of female romantic lead to comfort her when she’s crying	X	X
Male romantic lead runs to reunite with female romantic lead at end of movie	X		X
Montage sequence at end of movie encapsulating course of relationship	X	X
Male romantic lead winds up with female romantic lead at end of movie	X

Significantly, When Harry Met Sally is the only one of the three where the male romantic lead winds up with the female romantic lead at the end of the movie. And that’s why Annie Hall and Manhattan were critically-lauded films and When Harry Met Sally was just an entertaining movie.

Rudeness is the New Normal

 As the traffic backs up outside my apartment window (a daily occurrence at rush hour), complete with drivers honking their horns and yelling at each other (along with no cops in sight to enforce existing traffic laws), it occurs to me once again that rudeness is the new normal.

But it’s not just traffic. Rudeness is now an accepted fact of daily life, whether it’s driving, the subway, going to the gym, social media, political discourse, you name it.

How did things get to be this way? When did we go from being a society that at least paid lip service to civilized behavior and the idea of community, that “we’re all in this together,” to the dog-eat-dog world we live in now?

I blame a lot of things, beginning with the economy.

As I enter my fifth month of unemployment (the second longest stretch I’ve ever been unemployed), I think we need to admit that we’ve been in a recession now since at least 2008, despite protestations to the contrary. The number of jobs has declined, along with salaries and benefits, so that what’s left is being fought over like a piece of meat in a lion cage.

Of course, a big reason for the sorry state of our economy is the sorry state of our government. Where Democrats and Republicans once used to work together in order to pass legislation, the political process has come to a standstill, with Republicans literally bringing government to a halt because they didn’t get their way with Obamacare.

And why are we fighting over Obamacare, or other social programs like food stamps, unemployment, etc.? Because we’ve gotten to the point where certain people would rather see someone literally starve to death than give them anything that could be considered a “handout,” never mind that a lot of these same people are themselves receiving public assistance. Meanwhile, those in top 1% of our society continue to make record profits.

And why are we so polarized as a society? Blame social media.

We can now “block” anyone who doesn’t agree with us (and frequently do), so that we live in an echo chamber where we only hear our own opinions repeated back to us. We’ve taken “preaching to the choir” to a whole new level!

I also blame parents for not doing their job as parents, but what do you expect when it now takes two people working full time just to pay the bills, where a generation ago one person’s income (usually the father’s) could support a middle-class existence, allowing someone else (usually the mother) to devote all her time to child-rearing. Nowadays, we plunk our children in front of a TV set or computer, give them a TV dinner and call it a day (if we even do that much).

Sometimes I think that the only thing that will bring things back to “normal” would be a full-scale revolution. But how are you supposed to have a revolution when people are working 80 hours a week? They’re too tired to revolt!

I hope that when Bill deBlasio is elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday (as seems likely) that he’ll be able to start to turn things around, at least in New York City. I hope that the moneyed business interests that run this city haven’t already sunk their talons into him.

But I said the same thing about Barack Obama and look how that turned out.

California Dreamin’ and Laurel Canyon

California dreamin’/On such a winter’s day.

Truer words were never spoken. And it’s only fall!

This is why last night I found myself watching Laurel Canyon, Lisa Cholodenko’s 2002 slice of neo-hippie SoCal living, on the Sundance Channel. I’d seen it before, but it holds up well to repeat viewings.

The movie is seductive because it touches on so many forbidden pleasures: California, drugs, bisexuality. From the opening shots of Laurel Canyon Boulevard winding through the hills above Los Angeles, with its quaint Canyon Country Store and rows of old-fashioned mailboxes, I was sucked in.

In the movie, Christian Bale plays Sam, a recently graduated psychiatrist from the stuffy Northeast who moves to Los Angeles to start his residency in a local hospital, bringing along his equally stuffy girlfriend, Alex (Kate Beckinsdale), who is doing a dissertation on genomics.

While in town, they plan to stay at the vacant Laurel Canyon house of Sam’s mother, Jane, a record producer played by the always-entertaining Frances McDormand. Unfortunately for Sam (and fortunately for his girlfriend, as it turns out), Jane is recording an album there with a band fronted by Ian McKnight (Alessandro Nivola), a man 16 years her junior that she also happens to be fucking.

During the course of the movie, Sam develops an attraction for Sara (Natascha McElhone), one of the female residents at the hospital, while his girlfriend develops an attraction for Ian. High jinks ensue.

This movie touches on so many themes that are near and dear to my heart, among them authenticity and the primacy of rock music’s place in the culture. There are no chain stores in Laurel Canyon in 2002, and I just read Graham Nash’s and Linda Ronstadt’s autobiographies, where they describe Laurel Canyon in the ’70s as being some kind of singer/songwriter’s mecca.

Then there’s the thrill of living vicariously through someone else (preferably someone else with more money), the same thing that originally attracted me to the Real Housewives of Orange County and reality TV, in general.

A lot of Laurel Canyon plays like some kind of lesbian fantasy, which is not surprising considering that Ms. Cholodenko also wrote and directed the lesbian-themed High Art. Two of the main characters are conveniently bisexual, which strains one’s credulity even more than the idea of Kate Beckinsdale doing a doctoral dissertation, especially when Frances McDormand’s character makes out with her son’s girlfriend in front of her own boyfriend. There may be such a thing as being too laid back!

But it sure is fun to wallow in a little uninhibitedness for a while.

Near the end of the movie, there’s the requisite mea culpa, with Sam vowing to save his relationship with Alex.

But then, in the last shot, he receives a call from Natascha McElhone’s character, who says, “What you said last night isn’t true. I can’t control my heart.”

Neither can I, Natascha. Neither can I.

I’m a (Virtual) Star on Nurse Jackie

Nurse Jackie filming in front of my apartment. If you look closely, you can see Edie Falco (left, in blue nurse's scrubs and camel-colored coat) and Adam Ferrara (right, in police uniform).

 

This morning I had an experience that might serve as an apt metaphor for my life, as well as the lives of many other people in our 21^st-century, technologically-mediated world. The TV show Nurse Jackie, which stars Edie Falco (a.k.a. Carmela Soprano on The Sopranos), was filming in front of my apartment building. Now, in addition to being a huge fan of Edie Falco, I also have a real—if tenuous—connection to her in real life. We did children’s theater together on Long Island…37 years ago!

“What are the odds of Edie Falco being in front of my apartment?” I thought, conjuring images in my head of instant entrée to show business, camera bulbs flashing, velvet ropes parting. “Let me go across the street and say hello to her.”

Yeah, right! Like there isn’t someone on the staff on Nurse Jackie whose sole job it is to keep people like me away from her.

I showered and quickly got dressed (without eating breakfast), ran across the street and approached the PA.

“I know this sounds crazy,” I said, trying hard not to sound crazy, “but I did children’s theater with Edie Falco on Long Island.” The PA, who couldn’t have been more than 25, widened his eyes and said, “Cool.”

“I know you’re working and I don’t want to interrupt, but do you think it would be possible for me to say hello?”

“Well, we’re kind of busy shooting right now,” the PA said.

“Of course,” I nodded, assuming the air of a seasoned TV actor. “Do you mind if I watch?”

“No problem,” he said. “Just stand over there.”

He pointed me to a spot outside the gate surrounding the park where they were filming.

I peeked through the metal poles of the gate and, sure enough, about 15 feet away from me, I could see Edie Falco sitting on a park bench in her blue nurse’s scrubs and a camel-colored coat and Adam Ferrara sitting next to her in a blue police uniform.

I instinctively took out my iPhone and took a few pictures.

“How long are you going to be filming here?” I asked.

“About another half hour,” he said.

I was surprised they were going to be finished so soon. The last time I did extra work, I was on set 16 hours and I only did five minutes of work!

“Maybe I can come back later. I live right across the street,” I said, pointing to my apartment.”

“Sure,” the PA nodded.

I figured I would have a leisurely breakfast and come back in a half hour. Instead, I ran back to my apartment and frantically started trying to post the photo to my Facebook page from my iPhone, along with a pithy comment. The first three times I tried sending it, it didn’t go through. Shit! I hooked my iPhone up to my computer and tried sending it again. Still no luck!

Finally, on my fifth try, the photo went through, along with my painstakingly worded comment.

Then I looked out my window and, much to my dismay, saw that the crew was already dismantling the set.

I went back to the PA I had spoken to earlier and asked, “Did everybody leave already?”

“Yep,” he nodded. “They just left a minute ago.”

What TV shoot ever wrapped in 15 minutes?! That had to be the fastest shoot in the history of television!

It occurred to me that if I had just stayed 15 minutes and waited until they were finished filming, I might have been able to say hello to Edie Falco! Instead, I spent that time posting a stupid picture on my Facebook page! My chance at stardom was lost!

Oh, well. At least I had my Facebook photo. Proof that, for one nanosecond, I was 15 feet away from Edie Falco.

The Silent Epidemic of Middle-Class Homelessness

 Yesterday, I ran into a friend of mine in Soho. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.

“Long time no see,” I said to him. “You look good.”

He shrugged in his self-deprecating Jewish way.

“Well, at least you’re eating regularly and you have a roof over your head,” I said.

He shook his head.

“You’re homeless?” I asked, half-joking.

He nodded.

“You’re kidding me!” I said.

He told me that he’d been sleeping on the F train for the last two years, with the exception of one month, when he was able to stay at a friend’s co-op, and his birthday (his 60^th), when he treated himself to a room at the Y.

As I was talking to him, I realized that I personally knew four people who either are or have been homeless.

At this point, if you’re a Republican, you would probably say, “What’s wrong with these people?”

And I would say, “What’s wrong with our economy (and our society, in general) that people who were formerly what you would call ‘middle-class,’ people who played by the rules and did everything they were supposed to do, still wound up being homeless?”

It’s no surprise when people like Mitt Romney are tone-deaf on this issue. But the reality is that most politicians—Republican and Democrat—are so wealthy that they’ve lost touch with the challenges facing middle-class people. (And forget about the poor. Nobody even talks about them.)

My Soho friend, Norman (not his real name), is a photographer. I don’t know exactly what happened to his last apartment (he was living in New Jersey), but he’s been working as a messenger for the last few years because he couldn’t support himself as a photographer.

I have another friend who was recently forced to move back with his sister in Virginia because his landlord stopped accepting his rent check at the apartment he’d been subletting for the last 19 years. He had been working as a doorman at an apartment building in Soho, but quit his job, partly because the staggered hours were destroying his health. He retired shortly afterwards.

A third friend, who admittedly had certain mental health issues that prevented him from working in office buildings—a serious liability in a city like New York—slept for a period of time in a Korean deli on Fifth Avenue and 13^th Street before, after a long period in which he studied to be a priest among other things, he found a room in a house upstate. I’m not sure what he’s doing for a living now, but I know that at one point when he was still sleeping at the Korean deli, he was distributing flyers for a copy center.

A fourth friend, formerly a successful architect, has had to move back with his family on Long Island because he hasn’t been able to find work as an architect. I’m not sure what he’s been doing for money the last few years.

As you can see, some of my friends have been forced to take jobs (messenger, flyer distributor, doorman) that would make it hard for them to find so much as an apartment share, let alone their own apartment, in a city as expensive as New York. So what we’re seeing is a crisis in jobs, as well as housing.

A fifth friend just started a new job at half his normal salary after being unemployed for almost two years. Fortunately for him, he owns his apartment and had received a substantial severance package when he left his previous job.

But most people who describe themselves as “middle-class” are just one crisis away—one job loss, one medical emergency—from being homeless.

So the next time some Republican tries to blame a homeless person for being homeless, I would say, “There but for the grace of God go you.”

And I.