Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist

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 Editors Note: Dr. Katz is now available on DVD (But sadly not Blu-ray) so you may purchase your copy at the movie seller of your choice.  The Midnight Cafe does not condone piracy.

My good friend Jamison recently sent me the entire series of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist on DVD. This has brought much joy to my heart because none of the episodes from this series are yet available on DVD. My friend bought it off of Ebay from someone who essentially put his dubbed off the TV VHS tapes into the DVD format. The quality ranges from really quite excellent to something more akin to rather unwatchable garbage. Most of the episodes have that old VHS tape that’s been sitting in the attic for a bit too long look. But it’s Dr. Katz on DVD and I’ll take what I can get.

The other, quite humorous, but in this collection is that whoever mastered the DVDs didn’t manage to edit out most of the commercials. A few of the episodes are presented commercial-free and look quite professional. The rest retain the commercials, but the creator has done us the favor of fast-forwarding through them. This creates a nice nostalgic effect to the collection, reminding me of my days of recording favorite TV shows and fast-forwarding through the commercials myself. He even does the guesswork on when the commercials will end, and the show will begin. Many times he’ll hit play only to find another commercial coming on. Or he’s a little slow on hitting the play button, fast-forwarding through the first few moments of the show.

The commercials themselves are also quite interesting. Craig Killborn is still hosting the Daily Show, Comedy Central is overhyping their sure-to-be hit show “Bob and Margaret” and Dell computers with 8 megs of RAM and 10 gig hard drives sell for only $2600!

The show itself is classic. It’s one of my all-time favorite television comedies. The set-up for the show has Jonathan Katz playing Dr. Jonathan Katz, a professional therapist (high concept, I know). His patients consist of guest stars who are generally professional comics, whose “problems” are generally bits from their acts. Other characters are Dr. Katz’s perpetually lazy son, Ben (H Jon Benjamin), and his sarcastic secretary Laura (Laura Silverman – how did they come up with these character names?). There is also the bartender and regular customer at a local pub Dr. Katz frequents (Julianne Shapiro and Will LeBow respectively).

Ben: “I’m saying, Dad, that it’s lonely at the top. So if you wanna ride my gravy train, you better hop on, now.”
Dr. Katz: “Why do you think this is the top? I mean, you could be lonely for any number of reasons.”
Ben: “What are you trying to say?”
Dr. Katz: “I’m saying, you’re a lonely guy. … Don’t blame it on being at the top.”

The best part of the show is the interaction between Katz, Ben, and Laura. The three have great chemistry and often feel more like three hilarious friends sitting around trying to one-up each other. I doubt the show ever had much of a script, for it all seems rather improvised on the spot.

Ben: “I bought a, uh, one of those fake fountains. You plug it in, and the water runs constantly.”
Dr. Katz: “A urinal.”

The only problem with the show is when the guests aren’t all that funny. In the early days, the guests consisted solely of stand-up comics. Generally, these guys are spot-on hilarious, doing their best bits. But, sometimes the guest is more annoying than funny (Judy Tenuta anyone?) Since an individual guest’s bits can make up 1/4th of the show, a bad guest could really drag the show down. This is especially true when as the show got a popular, non-comedian to appear. I loved Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld, but here she says nothing funny, and her only gag seems to be that she goes to the toilet a lot while she’s pregnant. Katz makes the most of poor guests, though, and milks the material for all its comedy potential.

Dr. Katz: “Hold on one second, Ben, let me play the Devil’s advocate here, just for one minute.”
Ben: “No Dad, don’t, okay please, I don’t like the Devil’s advocate thing; you’re too good at it.”
Dr. Katz: “What about ‘Duck Duck Goose’?”
Ben: “Okay, you got a deal.”

In the last season, the show did what too many television shows do when running out of steam: it tinkered with its own premise and added characters. While in the previous five seasons, the only people with speaking parts were the main characters and the guest patients. In season 6 suddenly there are miscellaneous extras popping up. Why suddenly is there an exchange between Ben and his dentist? Todd, the video store clerk has become running regularly into this season as well. The actor portraying Todd (Todd Barry) had previously been a patient on the show. While the bits between Todd, the clerk, and Ben are usually funny, it is an additional character to a show flooded already with too many characters, and not enough time.

These are minor complaints in what is one of the funniest series to have ever hit the airwaves.

Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp

I am a little late in getting this up. I am finding I have less and less energy for writing anything these days. I also found after writing my account of the concentration camp, I just didn’t have it in me to talk about the castle. Perhaps some other time.

As our time in France is coming to an end, I have come to realize that we are just not going to be able to see everything that we had hoped to see. Though the border is but minutes away, Amy and I have seen very little of Germany, and thus it shall have to wait until another visit some years in the future. I had truly hoped to visit the many castles that the countryside holds, and also to visit some of the many horrors left over from the Third Reich.

This past weekend, I was able to visit one of each of these types of things, albeit in the Alsatian mountainside and not the mythic country that is Deutschland.

Our first stop was the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof. Though not the traditional death camp for Jews, it was never-the-less a place of absolute horror for many German criminals and members of the French resistance.

To say that I have been looking forward to visiting a concentration camp is to miss the point. Yes, I have wanted to go for a long time and even felt some anticipation before we left, but I can’t say that I was looking forward to it in any real sense of pleasure. Visiting a place of torture and death is not my idea of a good time. Yet, it seems these places are important, not only in a historical sense but in a manner of trying to understand what we are capable of as human beings.

The camp is located high in the mountains. It is a beautiful area, and I often found myself struck by the majesty of the scenery around me and then the horror of the place below my feet.

Most of the barracks were destroyed by Neo-Nazis many years back. In their foundations are little plaques inscribed with the names of the other concentration camps. This is designed to tie this camp with all the others. What remains of the other buildings is a rebuilt barrack, a kitchen, and a prison in which inmates were tortured, experimented on, and murdered.

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In a little ravine beside the camp, little flowers now grow. A placard noted that in this area many inmates were shot dead. It said the inmates were forced to carry large boulders up the hillside and deposit them in the ravine. A soldier would often kick the tired inmate just as he was bending over to drop the boulder. If the inmate fell from this kick, a machine gunner in the watchtower would shoot the inmate pretending it was an escape attempt. For this murder, the gunner would get an extra day of vacation.

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At the top of the camp is a large memorial. It is a tall spire sculpted to look like flame and smoke, engraved with the image of a man. Next to the spire are small crosses, each with the name of a resistance fighter who died for the cause of France.

In the prison building, there were many methods of torture set up. Beside the regular cell rooms, were tiny cells designed as solitary confinement. They were about 4 feet in height, and no larger than a small closet. For the smallest fractures, inmates would be locked into these cells for days at a time, given only bread and water for nourishment. In a nearby room, inmates were experimented on. They were inoculated with various diseases such as Typhoid so that doctors could notate how their bodies reacted to them. When the inmates died their torturous deaths, they were then autopsied.

A small bare room was said to be a place of execution room. Inmates, not condemned to die on the gallows, but never-the-less committing some small infraction that angered a guard enough, would be taken into this room and shot in the back of the head. A small drain in the center of the room would wash away the blood.

The most harrowing site was the oven. Like many of the concentration camps, the Nazis decided the most effective way to get rid of the bodies piling up, was to cremate them. This camp held but one oven, but it was enough. To see a thing in which so many were destroyed senselessly, was a thing of horror. I will never forget it.

As I walked to the exit, I took one last look down the slope of the mountain, taking in the entire camp. Thinking about all I had just seen, I said a small prayer.

Let us remember what we are capable of, so we shall not forget what we have done.

Long Time Gone

I apologize for having written so little the past several days. This past week a group from Harding University came over and I spend most of my time with them. Each morning I tagged along as they split into group and distributed flyers throughout the neighborhoods. Every evening they held a meeting which Amy and I also attended. So, from about 8 in the morning until 11 or 12 at night I was very busy, excepting maybe a few hours in the afternoon. And even this time was often spent either doing my French homework or attending class.

To have spent the last 8 months doing absolutely nothing, it was quite a shock to the system to suddenly be busy for 12 hours a day.

On Saturday we all did some visiting. We went to the only concentration camp in France. It was not a place of mass execution for the Jews but rather a work camp for German criminals and members of the French resistance. Yet still, thousands of people were malnourished, tortured, experimented upon, and murdered. It was a very harrowing experience. One I’ll not likely forget.

After the camp, we visited a castle. It was used for defensive/military purposes so was not nearly as beautiful or ornate as other castles in France, but it was still quite interesting.

In a day or two I shall post a more extensive entry about these two sites, along with some photographs. For now, I wanted to chime in, since the blog has gone to neglect over the last several days.

The African Queen by CS Forester

the african queen book

See, I told you I would still write reviews. I’m just eliminating the stress that I had built into them.

The fact that it took me over 2 months to read the mere 136 pages that make up CS Forester’s The African Queen tells a great deal about the quality of the writing. Classic film buffs will note that this is no fault of the story, for it made a brilliant motion picture starring the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. The problem, then, lies in the telling.

In Creative Writing 101 writers learn the importance of showing and not telling. Forester must have been sick that day for he spends his entire novel telling the reader exactly how the characters feel, think, and are. He never allows his character’s actions or words to give the reader an emotional response, he spends his pages telling us how to feel.

There is no chance to gain insight into a character through what they do, for Forester is much too busy telling all the pertinent details. There is no subtlety in the text. If we don’t get something the first time, rest assured, he will repeat himself two or three times.

What will keep the reader reading is the power of the story itself. For many years Rose has been assisting her missionary brother in the heart of the African Jungle. When he dies suddenly she enlists Charlie, a gin-swigging rough and tumble riverboat captain, to ship her back to civilization. Along the way they must traverse deadly rapids, disease-infected hoards of mosquitoes, German soldiers, and a river that is not meant for the sturdiest of boats, never mind the old, rickety African Queen.

Forester fills his tale with plenty of chills and spills. There is enough action to keep the pages turning, and an old-fashioned romance to keep the lovers interested. Truth be told, there is almost too much action. In nearly every paragraph, some new obstacle presents itself that must be overcome. Each obstacle is overcome, of course, and that a bit too quickly. Though the obstacles are fretted over and stressed about, Charlie and Rose seem to overcome them within a few sentences; only to find another one waiting around the corner. It would have served the novel better to have had fewer problems, and more struggle to overcome them.

Forester has a keen eye for mechanical detail. He gives good exposition over the mechanics of making an old steamer like the African Queen keep going. He paints a detailed picture of the African landscape, as seen from a riverboat. The physical details of the boat and its surroundings are all apt, and true. It is the abilities of humans that bring an air of falseness.

Rose, though having never piloted a boat before, in a very short time somehow manages to master the intricacies of sailing a difficult steamer through dangerous rapids. Likewise, she sheds her moral inhibitions like a heavy coat in the sultry African climate. We are led to believe that an innocent, sheltered missionary can suddenly give up all of her beliefs and morals to a dirty, foul-mouthed, drunk all in a matter of days.

Ultimately I would have been better off having just watched the movie again and left the novel on the bookshelf. The movie retains all of the excitement and grandeur of the story and elevates the storytelling to the level of a classic. The book seems flat in comparison.

Burning Down

I’ve been feeling a little rugged and ragged of late. The old burnout is creeping precariously close to my entrails.

I know, I know, burned out from what? You don’t do a darn thing, you lazy mother scratcher, you’re likely saying. What’s there to get ragged from, living the good life in France, amongst cheese, wine and beauty?

And I’ll agree. But the burnout is still creeping in. When I decided to start reviewing items on my blog way back when, I decided to review basically everything I read, heard, or watched. Obviously heard has been thrown completely out since I’ve not reviewed a record pert near never. But I have adamantly reviewed every book, every film that I have consumed into my brain cells. I generally run behind in these categories, being 2 or 3 reviews from being caught up at any given moment. I’ve even let this fact keep me from consuming something else.

“No, let’s not watch that movie tonight, I’ve got too many reviews to write”. One might have heard me say to my wife, were you a bug on the wall, or some crazed French pervert listening in. Or that book I’m all but 10 pages from completing sits on the shelf being unread for fear of adding another review to my growing to-do list.

What the crap!? I’ve started letting my poorly written reviews get in the way of my enjoyment of art. Suddenly it is work, and it shouldn’t be work, should it? I love movies. I thoroughly enjoy discussing their merits, deconstructing their value, and reviewing them. I’ve been putting the review first, of late. Well, forget that junk.

So, lately, I’ve been watching a lot more movies, reading a lot more books, and not doing any writing. I do want to review these things. I do want to keep up the posts. But I’m taking a bit of a break. I’ll write when I’m inspired to do so, and not fret about having a stack of reviews I haven’t gotten to.

To wit, I now have the following reviews to write, which you may or may not ever get.

Sin City
The Cold Six Thousand
The African Queen
The Wild Bunch
Young Guns
Grand Illusion
Dracula’s Daughter
Son of Frankenstein
X-Files Season One
Dr. Katz

And I’ll be watching another movie tonight! Caution to the wind I tell you.!

Exploding Blogs

Editor’s Note: As you may have guessed there was a time when I was really trying hard to get more hits, to gain more traffic to this blog.  I tried a lot of different things, including using various websites that promised to bring you traffic. I haven’t really cared about my numbers in years, and BlogExplosions no longer exists, but I’m keeping this post up anyway.

I suppose almost everyone has noticed the blinking advertisement in my sidebar these last few weeks. BlogExplosion is a site designed to bring more traffic to your blog. It is a pretty ingenious program, actually. The way it works is that you sign your blog up into the program. In order to move traffic to your site, you have to view other people’s blogs.

With the main program, you must view the other blogs for thirty seconds to earn credit for your own blog. The more blogs you view, the more credits you earn. The more credits you earn, the more people view your blog.

They’ve set it up to keep the cheating to a minimum. When you view a blog, there is a frame at the top which holds a timer counting backward from 30 seconds. When the thirty seconds is over you are told to click on a certain number. Various numbers are scattered throughout the frame. I like this system because it keeps people from clicking through the blogs super fast, without looking at them. It also creates trouble for anyone looking to create a macro to click the mouse every thirty seconds. In theory, this means everyone is actually looking at your blog for at least thirty seconds.

Of course, theory isn’t always reality. It is very simple to have the blog in the background while you are surfing other websites, checking e-mail, or playing games. I often have BlogExplosion running while I’m doing my normal computer work. Every thirty seconds or so I flip over and click the right button earning me more credits. The only time I actually look at a blog is if something quickly catches my eye at the top of the page.

This has been good training for my own blog. This is, in part, why I started adding the Amazon images and brought in the new banner. Images catch the eye a lot better than plain text. It also makes me work harder in being a better writer.

If you are looking to bring more traffic to your blog I would recommend BlogExplosion. Besides the method I have described to bring in traffic, they have several other methods. You can use some of your surfing credits to enter a monthly lottery. You can create ad banners that run alongside the timer while others are surfing. They’ve even got a battle of the blogs thing going now. The site is a lot of fun, and it definitely works. I’ve seen a big increase in traffic in the two weeks I’ve been using it. We’re still talking traffic in the hundreds, not thousands, but for one little blog with no advertising, that’s pretty good.

One other thing I have noticed since using BlogExplosion is that my traffic from search engines has increased. Many of my reviews are now on the first or second page of a Google search. I’m also hitting much higher than I ever did for a variety of searches on many of the search engines. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I suspect the fact that I started getting more traffic alerted the engines that my site may be worth going to. Or something.

This is actually better news than just getting more traffic. As I said, much of the traffic coming from BlogExplosion isn’t really great traffic. I’m sure my blog has remained in the background of many a computer for the requisite 30 seconds and has quickly been moved away from it. But it is exciting to think someone is searching for a review of the Hitchcock classic, To Catch a Thief and reading what I have to say about it.

God, Wine, and Naked Ladies

On Saturday, my friend Ann, was baptized. She wanted to do it old school style in a lake. So, we jaunted off to the local water hole. It went off, more or less, without a hitch, but it was by far the oddest baptism I have ever attended.

Just as she was being dunked we noticed the posted sign stating that in this section of the lake it is forbidden to swim or be in the water. So her first act as a Christian was to break the local law!

This being a public lake, and in the free thinking land of France, many of the ladies (young and old) were bathing in the sun without a top. It was quite an odd experience to take part of a religious ceremony and then to walk a few yards and see naked breasts!

She wanted to have a picnic afterwards, and so we walked around finding a non naked spot of land in which we could lunch. Many family members were present, and being both French and non Christians they brought plenty of wine. There are no strict rules in the church against partaking in a little wine, but most American versions make a big frown at the big A(lcohol). As the wine and champagne was offered around there were a lot of red faced shakes of the head.

I thought some of the American missionaries-in-training were going to drop dead on the spot, with all of that hedonism afoot. Me, I began to think that France was finally doing something right!

Revenge of the German Heat

We finally saw Revenge of the Sith on Tuesday. I have decided that I will not be writing any kind of review. I am well behind on my review writing, and there are only about 18 billion reviews of this movie elsewhere.

I will say that I rather liked it. I went in with rather low expectations and was rather delighted that the film was actually pretty good. The dialogue was pretty rotten, of course. The acting was much better than the last two, but this isn’t really saying much. I’d say the talented cast did a fair job of acting and a very decent job of making poor writing tolerable. The action was good, if sometimes poorly filmed. Too many close-ups, too many fights in cramped spaces.

As a long-time fan, it was an often moving experience witnessing scenes that I have dreamed of seeing for many a year.

We went to Kehl again today. I bought some blank CDs (50 for 10 Euros!). We have quite a collection of blank discs to take back with us now. With my obsession for downloading live music, my obsession for taking pictures of every conceivable thing twice, and our tendency to burn the discs we borrow from the library, we’ve managed to fill two spindles full of burned disks.

I was also a very good husband today. I generally loathe shopping, especially with Amy. It has gotten to the point where I generally refuse to go with her because it usually ends up in a fight. Today I let her cut loose and look at every little thing her heart desired. We went from store to store browsing everything and trying on more than I care to remember. I even let her pick out one outfit and make the purchase.

German dressing rooms are a bit less private than their American counterparts. They have individual little booths for everyone to change clothes, but they are right on the floor, as opposed to a side room. Most of the little booths have big curtains that theoretically cover up the entire booth. However, in reality, they are too bulky to shut properly and wind up leaving little cracks in them. The point here is that my wife went into a booth and changed, leaving me standing in the middle of a women’s clothing store all by myself. There I stand trying to look like I’m not looking, while catching all kinds of hateful glances from the other ladies, all thinking ‘what a perv.’ To feel better, and to prove I wasn’t some wandering pervert, but a nice guy taking his gal shopping, I would periodically lean my head into Amy’s booth making observations on her clothing picks.

Amy got her hair cut this evening. It cost a good fortune, but it looks very cute. It’s much shorter than before and is actually just about my length now. Which makes us either really cute or nauseatingly so.

It has been achingly hot here. I knew this would happen when we were all complaining about the general chilly and rainy weather a few weeks ago. It wouldn’t be so miserable if France had learned about the modern technology called an air conditioner. That’s not really true, they know what air conditioning is, I’ve felt it inside the nicer shopping centers. They just don’t equip their apartments with it.

Yes, I am a wimp. Yes, people lived without air conditioning for years and years. Yes, millions of people still live perfectly fine lives without air conditioning in much hotter climates. I am weak, I am a wuss. I want my air conditioning! Amy and I lay on opposite sides of the bed not daring to get near enough to touch, for that would bring too much heat. We sweat, we moan, we complain. Eventually, we nod off and dream of icebergs.

American Tabloid by James Ellroy

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Like the supermarket rags in the title, this James Elroy novel is loaded with grandiose stories, half-truths, and more conspiracy theories than an Oliver Stone wet dream. It rewrites history in a manner akin to the Lone Gunmen in the X-Files and is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

It is filled with wall-to-wall celebrities. There are politicians (John F.and Robert Kenney, J Edgar Hoover), flashy millionaires (Howard Hughes), and mobsters galore (Santo Traficante, Jack Ruby, etc). It retells the rise to power of JFK through a myriad of conspiracies, ending with the ultimate conspiracy, the assassination of JFK.

It is filled with bits of history and fact, but also unproven conspiracies and outright fabrications. I am not a historian, so my knowledge of the time period, while pretty good, is by no means complete. I suspect this is true for the majority of Americans. None of us know exactly what happened the day JFK was assassinated. There are a lot of theories floating around, and they all sort of blend together after a while. Elroy uses this to his advantage.

For example, it is generally accepted that John F Kennedy had affairs. During the Clinton scandals, numerous journalists touted this as absolute truth, though I’ve never once seen any hard data confirming the information. Before anyone sends in the hard data, understand that whether or not JFK did have affairs is beyond the point. As a culture we believe it, it is accepted as fact. There are many more rumors and flat-out lies, that as a culture we know, that we have heard for the umpteenth time, that it feels like the truth. Elroy writes all of these things as hard truths and then kicks them up several notches. Here, JFK not only has a few casual affairs but is an oversexed hound dog. He employs multiple persons to set him up with one-night stands at every campaign stop, for every night of the week.

Likewise, such fascinating conspiracies of the American group mind such as the CIA/Mob collaboration to assassinate Fidel Castro, and the CIA sanctioning of heroin sales to support this collaboration,. Or Joe Kennedy’s mob ties, and Jack Ruby’s collaboration with the JFK conspiracy, are all made concrete facts and punctuated with exclamation marks, ad infinitum.

There aren’t any good guys in this novel. Anybody who starts out with anything close to a normal set of morals has completely lost them by the story’s end. Though filled with real people, it centers around three completely fictional characters. Kemper Boyd carries out a tangled web of undercover work for the FBI, CIA, the Kennedy clan, and the mob. Pete Bondurant is an ex-cop who plays bodyguard for Howard Hughes and then Jimmy Hoffa and has a penchant for bloody violence. Ward Little is an FBI agent hungry for anti-mob activity, who through a series of mistakes eventually begins working directly for them.

Each character is destroyed, destroyed again, and sometimes built up a little before they are yet again destroyed. Nobody walks away clean, or undamaged. The plot gets a little thick and there were moments where I wish it had been supplied with a map and a compass. The subplots are so plentiful and intertwined it’s sometimes difficult to tell where you are at within the myriad of webs. Elroy’s style doesn’t help in this matter, for it is about as hard-boiled as a writer can be. I don’t think there is a paragraph longer than five sentences, and there are a great many consisting of only one line. Many critics have found this immensely annoying and find the novel difficult to read because of it. I had no problem with it. It made the novel faster to read, and made it seem much lighter than it actually is. Although I must say that at the halfway point through the sequel, it has grown quite tiresome.

To supply some of the details left out in the brevity of his prose, Elroy supplies any number of fake documents including tabloid cutouts, top secret documents, and verbatim transcripts of phone conversations.

It is a fast-paced, exciting, often violent book. It is pulp fiction with literary sensibilities. It doesn’t work particularly well as revisionist history, but for fans of hard-boiled crime stories, or those who can’t get enough conspiracy it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.