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I think this might be the most Metafilter-y Ask Metafilter question possible. The ne plus ultra.
If a Martian showed up and saw me looking at Metafilter and said, “Hey, what’s the deal with that?” I’d show him that sentence above. The Martian would be like, “Oh, yeah, sure, got it.”
“Because there are people out there who buy things, people like you and me. Then something happened, something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that’s very valuable.”
- Don Draper
It’s been a few days, now. But nobody is really interested in sitting with things for a few days and thinking. What with the page impressions and search traffic and such.
I’m reposting this because I’m not particularly interested in reading another post or article about whether Don Draper is being Draper-y enough, or if you can stand one more minute of Betty, or if Peggy is being realistic, or if Joey’s haircut is appropriate, or “Ha ha, that Roger, I love those zingers!”
The show isn’t about Don Draper, or drinking, or Advertising, or fetishizing furniture and dresses. The show is about America.
And the scene above, with Don sitting hat in hand, literally, the sunlight illuminating his face like a prayer card, was the climax. We are rolling steadily downhill now with the dénouement sloshing all around us. For however many more episodes and seasons it goes, we are in the dénouement. Just like America.
Give me some insight, blogs! Not just a checklist of things you’re dissappointed about not getting. Your entitlement about a show about how your feelings of entitlement have irretrievably ruined us is deliciously, post-modernly ironic.
But it is insufferable and sad and has to change. Do you see how these are all the same thing? Do you see?
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One of the things I miss most about living in New York City instead of in the middle of the country is the lack of weather. Real, proper, weather.
People give me a look when I say that.
“What do you mean? It rained today!”
or
“It’s so hot!”
or
“Did you get caught in the storm last night?”
And by storm they mean a breeze and a flash of lightning over New Jersey.
We more or less don’t get spring and summer weather here with consequences. The kind of weather that gets you real excited just before it gets you real scared, where the temperature drops 20 degrees in 10 minutes and the pressure falls through the floor. The kind of weather that makes you see for just a second or two that you are not in charge of the universe. New York City could use a touch of that sometimes, and Mark Twain, a man from the middle of the country, reminded me of that.
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“So, you just won the World Cup, right?”
This is almost like a Christopher Guest movie, or something.
“We like big scoring games!”
I’m having a hard time coming up with a more incongruous scenario. Like, maybe he’s cutting the ribbon at a Walmart grand opening, or being interviewed on stage at the Iowa State Fair, just after the cattle show.
Thierry Henry, one of the great athletes of our time, one of the most successful footballers of all time, a man who at his peak performed feats of sublime skill, strength, and creativity, putting up with this shit at 7am. I’m embarrassed for him not only as an Arsenal fan, as a soccer fan, as a sports fan, as an American, but as a human.
“Did you like those horns, those… what are those called?”
Look, after this, let’s just call it even about the handball thing, ok?
“Have a great season. When does it start, by the way?”
It’s almost like they’re trying to intentionally know nothing about the guy and what he does, to prove their FOXiness. Imagine that.
