The Gilded Age on HBO - scrapes off the gild to reveal plywood

Madison Square Park, photo by Sarah Sarai

I am most unhappy with the first episode of "The Gilded Age," a Julian Fellowes-written jam which is very silly and very white. My HBO subscription ends in a few hours, so this was my farewell and no problem there. 

This first-of-the-series episode is a fitting send off (to the demise of my subscription).  There were many complaints with HBO's The Wire - that it was a white writer's impression of a black city (Baltimore) and a black struggle (Baltimore). That is my perspective of "The Gilded Age" - that it is very very very white and remarkably uninventive in being so. Despite the one young black woman who is a struggling writer. Perhaps her struggle will be representative of the times but why bother representing those times? Why use the history of racism as an excuse to further racism? 

And why such a pallid portrayal of the nouveau riche? Hallelujah and thank you, lord, two great and interesting actresses brightened the screen. Christine Baranski as an old school white lady richie rich. And, briefly so far, Audra McDonald as the mother of Baranski's new secretary. (There is no situation or script on God's earth that could not be bettered by Baranski and/or McDonald.) 

The plot is pallid. Carrie Coon, an actress I dislike (her expressionless face creeps me out - has done so since Fargo [the t.v. show], is the striver in this series. A monied wife who has a house built on Fifth - across from Central Park - as her Cape Canaveral to launch herself into old New York society. Her architect is the great Stanford White but apparently his name means nothing to the first families of New York. New York has always had snobs spinning its social circles with a circus clown's panache. And, yes, snobs are delightful when they are Baranski aided by some of the mustachio twirling men in the series. 

In the final scene of Episode 1, the Carrie Coon character, an arriviste, insists she's going to make the snobs of New York admire her or come to her parties. THAT's the issue? Sounds like a Father Knows Best episode with Kitten scrunching her 10-year-old face to reveal gumption. It would work better if Reese Witherspoon were the pushy broad determined to get through Harvard Law. 

I live in NYC and it is mundo snob-o-licious. It is awful here, in fact, IF you harbor a desire to fit in. Which I stupidly did. Because there are no accommodations for weirdos like me (a simple country lass with no money and a quick tongue). I'll talk about that sometime when my thinking portions are up to par. 

N.Y.C. + L.A. I am a New Yorkaleno.

I'm like one of those funny male caricatures who claim to love all women. Like Christopher Walken's The Continental.

Hear me: Skinny, fat, Page Six-reader, Anatomy of Melancholy-memorizer, I love them all. Whether they smell like dead rat topped by spoiled gefilte fish and Limburger cheese or Chanel 19 from a Rodeo Drive atomizer, Thank You to Both.

It may entail a twenty minute walk to find a cup of coffee and wi fi. The coffee, the wifi, a grocery, a health food store, post office and five thrift shops may be in a three-block radius. Mmmmmwah youse.

The time-consuming stretch may be gorgeous. The 3-blocks stinky and without enough sunlight. You're my honeys, both of ya.

Intellect everywhere. Great art everywhere. Rapid transit everywhere. What to do.

I'm a New Yorkaleno. A poet who loves New York AND Los Angeles, a New Yorker and an Angeleno. It's a cruel fate for the underly employed, the dirty lucre-challenged but there you have. I should open a New Yorkaleno Cafe. Everyone would have to wear breezey shirts, have beautiful welcoming smiles (L.A.) and be agressive and team-spirited (N.Y.).

Well, that's that.  Name it, claim it.

I shall sell you sell you: a N.Y. morning with Elizabeth Bishop

And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.
Elizabeth Bishop, "Varick Street"

Today I so happily went to unemployment for a shot-in-the-arm, a pep talk and new resources to keep me in the looking-for-work game. I was peppy; my counselor saw it but then, she's polite.

What was not peppy and really never is -- Varick Street on which my (my) state unemployment resources office is located. Varick tends toward no-nonsense. It runs from a vaguely nameless area, not the Village, not Tribeca to downtown. The small factories of early last century are replaced by industrial chintz--air conditioned buildings with glass and no architecture.

It used to be thusly, per Elizabeth Bishop:

Varick Street

At night the factories
struggle awake,
wretched uneasy buildings
veined with pipes
attempt their work.
Trying to breathe,
the elongated nostrils
haired with spikes
give off such stenches, too.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

On certain floors
certain wonders
Pale dirty light,
some captured iceberg
being prevented from melting.
See the mechanical moons,
sick, being made
to wax and wane
at somebody's imagination.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

Lights music of love
work on. The presses
print calendars
I suppose; the moons
made medicine
or confectionary. Our bed
shrinks from the soot
and hapless odors
hold us close.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

That she mingles in italics the refrain quoted in italics which is New York -- and what I am trying to do -- sell myself -- sell you sell you, my dear--that I like. L.A., where I grew up, is a city of salespeople as well. I'm not sure what's being sold in this poem, Elizbeth to her lover, her lover to Elizabeth, their love (two women) to the world.

". . . and hapless odors / hold us close." The entirety of our joinings and mingling binds us to our cities and more importantly to each other.

{from The Voice of the Poet: Elizabeth Bishop; Random House. I never had the audiobook which accompanied; hmmm.}