Mike O'Connell

The other night I watched a documentary that had been in my Netflix queue since 2013: Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Alternately subtitled “Esquire in the ’60s” and “How Howard Hayes rocked journalism,” the film highlights Esquire magazine during the 1960s and how its editor, Howard Hayes, well, rocked journalism during that decade.

The film is written and directed by Tom Hayes, son of the famous editor who had little time for family and fatherhood while running a major magazine. Young Hayes resists making the predictable documentary of the famous man’s dark side and instead glorifies the old man, and if the film has any flaws it’s that the pendulum tilts a bit too much in this direction. The movie’s a self-congratulatory puff piece, but cool in a Mad Men meets Jack Kerouac meets The Rolling Stones sort of way. To say the film has a pro-Esquire (really pro-Hayes) bias is like saying the pope has a bit of a Catholic bias, but as one who likes the product, I digress.

Smiling Through the Apocalypse was the name given to Esquire’s compendium of the 1960s, a nod to the cheerful disposition those at the top may have taken during tumultuous times. No fiddling while Rome burned, but genuine cheeriness of those who celebrate life and man at his best. Truth is, the magazine did show the darker side of Camelot and that which followed, and gave its readers through Mailer, Talese, and Wolfe the real America which was neither Apocalyptic nor grinning unnecessarily.

I recommend Smiling Through the Apocalypse. It’s a period piece, and one with great journalistic star power (like the magazine itself). It’s also a story about family, work, personal relationships, and the bonds that bring them together. While smiling, no doubt.

This is how you spend July Fourth weekend if you live in the suburbs and have a one-year-old…

Friday night: celebrate all things great about America with pizza and s’mores.

(Silently curse neighbors with their fireworks going waaaaayyy to late into the evening.)

Saturday: doughnuts from a place called Duck Donuts. I was a Duck Donuts virgin until this weekend. Seriously, it’s worth driving past several other doughnut shops on your way there, including Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and the other two Starbucks.

Followed by…

Morning baseball. Seriously. Eleven a.m. start time? I’m in on that.

Gig 2-5 at a winery… outdoors in a rainstorm. Can’t win ’em all I guess.

Franklin and I played outside a bit in the evening when it stopped raining but he was asleep long before any fireworks began.

Fireworks on TV. I thought the lead up to the fireworks this year on “A Capitol Fourth” was pretty terrible, but passable with the sound off.

(Silently curse neighbors with their fireworks going waaaaayyy to late into the evening.)

Sunday: not a damn thing.

Perfect.

The article referenced here is about a month old, but I’ve got a baby and am therefore behind the times.

CNN headline from May 26, 2015: “Fashion, plus-size modeling and race: When ‘diversity’ isn’t so diverse.” Yeah, the folks who clamor for “regular”-looking people (read: overweight) to be featured in magazine ads are now upset that more, let’s say people of color are not used in said ads.

What we have here is proof of two things: 1.) Our opponents will never be satisfied; and 2.) Even with 2015 politically-correct sensibilities (is that an oxy moron?) in place, it still comes down to appearances and physical characteristics, doesn’t it?

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing a movie I’d been hearing about for roughly half a decade or so: The Rewrite, starring Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei. What was the hook that got me to watch this maudlin piece of Hollywood tripe?

It takes place in my hometown.

Yup. Binghamton, New York. And seriously, it’s no incidental mention. Binghamton is a character the way New York is a character in old Woody Allen movies. The movie is about Binghamton. Or rather, it’s about Binghamton, and I have no idea how that plays if you’re not actually from there. I spent nearly 30 years of my life there, and for the most part The Rewrite nails it. Heck, the main plot line is that the protagonist hates that he has to live in Binghamton!

Director Marc Lawrence, who has teamed with Hugh Grant now in four films, is a 1981 graduate of Binghamton University (we called it SUNY back then), and luckily for him Binghamton’s been in a freeze-frame timewarp since then, so the Binghamton he remembers from 1981 is precisely what it looks like today. Well, it might be a little scummier but it’s basically the same.

Serling. Spiedies. Rain. Carousels. It’s all in there. And who knew J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney were going to pop up in the film too? My thought pretty much was: my God, those are real actors in this home movie… wait a minute, this is a real movie.

Predicable at every turn, The Rewrite isn’t going to win any Academy Awards. (Have you ever seen a chick flick before? Yup, you know how it ends.) But the characters, the acting, (some) of the scenery, and, in a starring role, the music make The Rewrite an ultimately enjoyable film, whether you’re from Binghamton or not.

And for your sake I hope you’re not.

Ha! They even get that right too.

If you’re me, yesterday was the last day of summer vacation: the few days between the end of school and the beginning of summer camp that always seems to pass too quickly.

Today’s the first day of summer camp at our local community center, and yours truly will be presiding. The kids call me “Mr. Mike,” or sometimes “Dr. Who.” Mostly I’m some actor they can’t name, or someone that reminds them of Bill Nye.

Please, kids. It’s the Bill Nye of Poly Sci, and don’t you forget it. Now let’s see if we can all keep our phones away long enough to remember we’re on vacation.