This and That
Someone Somewhere, Jeff Hiller, and the Emmys
About a month ago, beloved wife and I were looking for something to watch when I thought of the HBO series Somebody Somewhere, starring Bridgett Everett. I liked Everett the few times she showed up on Inside Amy Schumer, usually doing her own standup/burlesque act, and I’d heard a little about the show, so we gave it a shot.
Somebody Somewhere only ran three seasons of seven half-hour episodes each, which made it easy to jump in. And we were delighted by the story, in which characters open up to their own sadness and trauma as a way to process them and emerge into a kind of happiness. The show also embraces a range of LGBTQ+ characters, including the incredible Fred Rococo (played by comic Murray Hill), who is a real life-force, and a character who Jezebel called a “quietly radical, wonderfully nuanced representation” of transmasculinity.
As we learn, our main character, Sam Miller (Everett), recently came home to Manhattan, KS, to tend to her terminally ill sister, who has since passed away. She’s doing some work as a standardized test essay grader and bartender, but mostly she makes connections to some amazing people while using humor to deflect those friends’ attempts to help her get out of her funk.
One of those friends is Joel, played by Jeff Hiller, who is one of the most refreshing gay characters I’ve seen on TV in years. Hiller just won an Emmy for his performance, and it’s well earned. He’s a dedicated church-goer, and has a real way with children and animals in that context. There’s an episode toward the end of season three when Joel, who’s settled into a lovely and comfortable relationship, keeps bursting into tears for no reason he can identify. It takes the acceptance of his friends (and his own radical self-acceptance) to help him find his way, and he returns that care over and over to help Sam make a true and deep connection with someone she cares about.
Seeing Hiller win was just about the only thing I liked about the Emmy Awards show this year. I didn’t have any real quibbles with who won, but geez was it boring. Seeing stars in fancy dress wasn’t enough to keep me interested, and I gave up with about half an hour left. I’m sure there are people out there who like Nate Bargatze, but I found his stumbling performance hard to sit through. It’s not like my expectations were particularly high, so I guess I should have known better.
Thinking about an Old Colleague
Not everyone would consider this kind of thing sad, but I do. The other day I tried to play a compact disc, and it wouldn’t run. Space is at a premium in my office shelves, so I reluctantly decided to throw that CD away, despite the fact that it was one of the first I ever acquired and had a certain attendant sentimental value. (On the other hand, I have the same album in one of those great “Five Classic Albums” sets that sell for about $20 each, so I still have the music itself.)
The disc in question was the album “A Night in Tunisia” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and it was given to me around 1987 by an old colleague. His name was Lancelot Braithwaite, a tall man with a lovely accent from his native Trinidad, and an engineer who was also a dancer. If you feel so inclined, you can read about him in an article from Wired magazine here. Wired wrote about him because he was a legend in the electronics community.
When I worked at Video Magazine he was the tech gear tester, and he taught me a lot about stereo equipment (“Always buy separate components! Never throw away a user’s manual!”), signal to noise ratios, and things like that. He wore a white lab coat at in his office and ran insanely detailed and comprehensive annual tests of every available Beta and VHS videotape on the market. In retrospect he reminds me, physically at least, of Richard Ayoade, and he would not have been far out of place as one of the tech guys in The IT Crowd, persnickety attitude and all. This CD, which bore a stamp with Lance’s name and home address on the disc itself, was a link to him.
Thankfully I still have a few issues of Video Magazine around. As I’ve written before, I worked there in the late 1980s for a few years as an assistant editor, where I did things like photo research, a little writing, and arranging for messengers to deliver and pick up packages. Manufacturers were always sending their products – VCRs, mostly – to Lance for testing, and I helped with returning those items.
I don’t know for sure whether he’s still with us. The Wired article is from 2017 and talks about his health issues, so it’s very possible that he has died since then. Either way, I’d like to think that somewhere he’s telling someone “Don’t waste your money on VHS tape rewinders!”
Oh, and his full name was Lancelot Saturnine Braithwaite. Best. Name. Ever.