Category: Reviews

The Wars of the Wonderful

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“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald an excerpt from The Crack Up.

Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s (AKA F. Scott Fitzgerald) quote isn’t just wonderful, it’s the product of multiplying wonderful sentiments. Wonderful writers don’t write these things to us. It’s a competition among their peers to be crowned “Most wonderful”.

We saw this in high school, during the “Mr. Wonderful” pageants, that the rest of us called drinking parties, in which the jocks would try to impress upon the available women at the party the idea that not your typical dumb jock. Their comments are just as general, and just as uninformed, but everyone who hears them considers them brave for saying, “What everyone else is afraid to say.” They praise them for their “ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, because … at least they had the courage to say it.” Say what, we ask. No one knows, and no ones cares. It’s more important that they said it than what they actually said. 

In one of these pageants, a 2016 awards show, a star declared, “The world is B.S.!” If one definition of B.S. is nonsense and the other is a more direct definition of fraudulent, or inept behavior, I wondered if the star was attempting to pit these definitions against each other. Her argument was either the most ingenious I’ve ever heard or the dumbest. We’ve all heard stars say things about the treatment of people at awards shows, and it might be unfair to pick on this one, but was she more informed and determined to make them otherwise, or was she just saying it to say something important. Even though stars are generally as uninformed as everyone else, they’re usually more pointed and specific with their concerns. This star proclaimed that our entire planet is not doing things the way she would proscribe for it to “un-B.S.” itself. To be clear, she didn’t say B.S., she used the humdinger, one of the real naughty words, to provocatively say that inhabitants of earth aren’t doing things right. 

Some reviewers viewed her statement as “a controversial one from a strong woman,” “valuable,” and “it still resonates!” Reviewers then interpreted her open-ended comment in long form. “What she was trying to say was …” which often leads to them clarifying her comments in a way that says more about the clarifier than the actual author of the quote. If someone said that the inhabitants of the world are BS, we can assume that it bothered everyone from her intended targets to the ones with whom she presumably pledges allegiance, but the old adage applies here. If she offended everyone with her statement, she offended no one, because we all know she was talking about some other side. If she was talking about the planet, we also have to wonder how many species, plant or animal, she offended. 

“Are you talking about us?” the Jade Plant, otherwise known as the Crassula Ovate, probably asked. She may have even offended the macaw, who were in the process of making some really powerful changes in their infrastructure to provide a better world for their fledglings. Like most Hollywood stars, macaws don’t offer a solution, because they don’t have any. They just repeat what they’ve told.

If I wrote, “The world is hopeless,” or “The world sucks!” and “We should try to fix it” right here, how would you reply?  

“What did you just say? We should try to…what were the words you used again, fix it? Has anyone ever considered that before?” 

If the world is broken, and we imply that someone fix it, in the most general way possible, shouldn’t we try to figure out who broke it first and how? If we don’t, what good are the fixes? The problem with attempting to properly source a problem is that proper investigations can end up demonizing the wrong people, the people who had the best intentions, and the methods they used that ended up leading to greater corruption and devastation. It’s best to keep our complaints general to keep the focus on those complaining, because complaining is provocative and beneficial. The nature of proposing solutions, however, can prove messy and loaded with unintended casualties through friendly fire. Proposing generic solutions can also make us feel better, but does it do anybody any good, and will our solutions eventually prove worse than the problems? The big problem with most proposed solutions is they don’t try to source the problem first, and they often make none of the people happy none of the times. 

Sending money, blindly, is the best way we’ve found to mollify all parties concerned. Money does not blame, it only helps, unless that money is stolen by the bad guys who tend to use all that well-meaning to further their goals. 

The peacocks and penguins hold charities, galas, and other fundraisers, and when the banquet employees begin tearing the façades down, everyone knows who gave what. Donations have a bad tendency to leak, to clarify the line between charity and publicity. Wonderful people don’t talk about the source of the problem, because no one really knows what it is. If we do find out, and we openly address it, we unwittingly reveal some vulnerabilities in our character. Then when we send money to fix the problem, and the problem gets worse, the recipients of our charity direct their ire at those who report that the problem is now worse. 

I’m not going to pretend that I know how to fix the world’s problems, who would? Answer, those who play dress up and pretend. “But they’re using their platform to bring attention to a cause.” True, but let’s go back to the wonderful people in the jock world. They want to prove that they’re not as dumb as everyone thinks. They have important ideas they learned at a cocktail party, and they’re not afraid to share it in a “something meaningful, important and controversial” college party where everyone is drunk, because it does wonders for their public relations scores. So, they play dress up and use their platform to address problems of the world, of which they know little-to-nothing. They just provide such in-depth analysis as “The world is B.S.!” or “One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Other pretend people, leaders of local, special interest groups, then tell us that wonderful people shouldn’t try to solve their problems. It does no good, they say, to involve ourselves in their problems, because we don’t understand all the complexities involved. They then mock those who do try by saying that they’re trying to save people, and they say that word in the most condescending manner possible.

I don’t know when genuinely trying to save other people in anyway we can became a bad thing. They talk about it as a savior’s mentality, and I can discern some meaning when it comes to movies, books, or other entertainment venues, but when an individual does whatever they can to help another person, why is that a bad thing? I’m not sure if this new method of assassinating another’s motives and character is to further promote guilt, or if they want to encourage blind giving, but the driving force for criticizing those who try to help others genuinely confuses me. 

They say that not only do they not want us to save them, but they don’t need it. I have no problem with someone saying, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ because I don’t, but if someone tells me to send money, back away, and shut up, and let me handle it, I can’t help but think they’re suggesting we avoid investigating their results or holding them accountable for their actions. I also have no problem with someone saying, “I’m on the ground. You’re not. You don’t understand the depth of the problem as well as I do.” Because, again, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I guess you’re going to have to define involvement for me. At some point they’ll drop an “It’s complicated” on us. It’s not complicated, if you sincerely don’t want us to help you, and you just want us to blindly give, you do what you do to help your fellow man, and we’ll monitor, investigate, and we’ll hold you accountable if you can’t or won’t fix the problem. “Ok, but be forewarned, you could make matters worse.”

Most wonderful people have the typical bad guys in mind when they talk about the problems of the world. If they dug deep, they might find that some of their guys are the source of the problem, so they don’t dig. They just proclaim that the world is full of problems, and we fawn. They don’t want to play the blame game, because, at this point (the point of obfuscation and diversion), who cares who caused the problem, let’s just fix it. Let’s not fight and argue, let’s fix the problem. Ok, but if we don’t properly source a problem, from A to Z and back to B, we’ll just be papering over the problem with duct tape and chicken wire, so we can plant a “fixed” flag in it that will probably blow over if a wind over 20 mph hits it. Even if we can pinpoint the exact problem, and the solution is surprisingly simple, everyone tells us it’s so much more complicated than all that, and no matter how much money we send, it never gets fixed, and that might be one of the reasons why the world is B.S.  

19th Century Medicine: Be Grateful

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“When it comes to modern medicine, do you ever feel grateful?”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s like being grateful that Jupiter doesn’t fall off its axis. We know the catastrophe that would happen if it wasn’t there, but it’s always been there, so it’s tough to remain grateful for it.”

“Are you grateful for your good health?”

“Yeah, of course, but again, that’s like being grateful for good weather. We don’t notice it until the bad weather hits. We have to constantly have our perspective adjusted to appreciate health, wealth, and weather.”

“Because after reading Thomas Morris’ The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth, I went real grateful that I didn’t end up in a different time. I know what you’re saying about it’s always been there, but damn, you read what those 19th Century doctors were doing to their patients back then, and it seems like they were just guessing most of the time.”

“Look, our moms took us to the doctor, and he fixed it. It’s what they do. I never considered myself ungrateful, or taking it for granted, but it’s their jobs.”

“Fair enough, but did you ever have something your doctor couldn’t fix? That’s some scary stuff, let me tell you. They put us through an array of tests, they prescribe stuff, just to see what works, “Take two of these and call me in the morning.” What if nothing your doctor tries, works? Who do you blame? We don’t blame the researchers for failing to develop that perfect pharmaceutical to cure what ails us, we don’t blame innovators for failing to develop technological advancements necessary to find out what’s wrong with us, and we don’t blame modern medicine for being as yet ill-equipped or ill-informed to deal with our mysterious ailment. We blame our doctor. Our doctor is the hero or the zero, because they are our face of modern medicine. They’re who we see when we think of medicine. If you’re the one they can’t cure, it would be difficult for you to be grateful for the advancements of modern medicine, but the rest of should remember that for everything we can’t cure yet, the list of what we now can cure should earn a whole lot of gratitude. You’re right, it’s difficult to be grateful for good health, or life in general, but reading through a brief history of 19th Century medicine should remind us all to be grateful that we are not living in constant pain, and that our species managed to survive at all.”  

Previous generations reminded us to remain grateful, “Always be grateful for the times you live in, because I’ve seen worse, and my parents saw far worse.” They don’t understand our technology, and the machines their doctors put them through overwhelm them. “Don’t take it for granted,” they say. The lead by example in this dictum, because they can’t believe they’re still alive, relatively healthy, and pain-free. No matter what they say or do, however, we were born with this technology, and we can’t help but take for granted what has always been there for us.

Author Thomas Morris might provide a better perspective for why we should be grateful, by “gently mocking” the medical practitioners of the 19th Century for their practices and procedures. Before gently mocking them, however, Morris adds two qualifiers every writer who compiles such material for a book should add before gently mocking prior eras for their lack of scientific knowledge:

“The methods they used were consistent with their understanding of how the body worked, and it is not their fault that medical knowledge has advanced considerably since then.”

It’s not their fault, I would add, and it’s wasn’t their doing. The doctors, family practitioners, or ear, nose, and throat specialists of the era were handcuffed by the constraints of knowledge at the time, and as Morris adds they performed admirably under such constraints.  

“One thing that these case histories demonstrate is the admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.”

We could use the hindsight of modern medicine to call early 19th century medicine something of a guessing game, but will 23rd Century medical professionals think the same thing of 21st Century medicine? Western medicine has come a long way in 200 years, and Morris’ book emphasizes that, but professionals in various medical fields will admit Thomas Morris could write a second book called The 21st Century: What We Still Don’t Know. Modern authors probably won’t be able to write such a book, because they don’t know what they don’t know, but a Mental Floss article details some of basic, fundamentals we still don’t understand yet, including: why we cry, why we laugh, why we sleep, why we dream, why we itch, and how we age. These matters might seem insignificant in terms of greater physical health, but if we can unlock those mysteries, what answers might follow? As with modern medicine, The 19th Century medical professionals had precedent, studies, and literature to study and guide their decisions, but the precedents they followed, like ours, were as flawed as they were.

Thomas Morris, prefaces a quote from an article James Young Simpson, the pioneer of chloroform anesthesia, writing, “[Simpson] cautioned that it was unwise to be too hard on the “extravagance and oddity” of their methods, adding presciently:

“Perhaps, some century or two hence, our successors … will look back upon our present massive and clumsy doses of vegetable powders, bulky salts, nauseous decoctions, etc., with as much wonderment and surprise as we now look back upon the therapeutic means of our ancestors.” 

Morris’ qualifiers illustrate how annoying it is to read modern authors assume a level of authority, even intellectual superiority, over the most brilliant minds of another era without qualifiers. These modern authors critique past knowledge and technology from the pedestal of modern research, acquired knowledge, and technology as if they had anything to do with it. Few of these authors acknowledge that they, like the rest of us, are the beneficiaries of modern advancements, even though they have not personally contributed anything to the difference between the eras.  

That being said, we all know the line: “those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” There’s nothing wrong with mocking and ridiculing the past, because it makes the art of teaching history more entertaining, and we find mockery entertaining, but the author of it should provide some sort of context.  

Thomas Morris pursuit of this is also admirable in another way, as it displays a takeaway, we can’t help but reach by the time we finish his book, gratitude. How many minor ailments (and there’s no such thing as minor when we’re suffering from them) can we magically resolve with two aspirin, ibuprofen, or a series of prescribed doses of antibiotics? How many procedures (currently considered routine) cure what harms us? How grateful are we to the technological innovators, doctors, and all of those who played roles (be they unwitting or otherwise) in the trial-and-error processes involved in research that have contributed to the progress medicine has made in such a relatively short time. It’s relatively difficult to be grateful for life, but as Morris’ book alludes, we should be grateful that our ancestors survived at all. We wouldn’t have the luxury of regarding our modern medicine as commonplace if they hadn’t, because as incredible as the human body is, it’s possible, and even probable, that we shouldn’t be here.

How did our ancestors survive the plague? World History Encyclopedia lists cures such as rubbing bare chicken butts on lesions, chopped up snakes, and drinking crushed unicorn horns as some of the more popular remedies at the time. They also list drinking crushed emeralds, arsenic, and mercury straight, with no chasers. How did they/we survive? 

We currently believe in using cardiopulmonary resuscitation when a person stops breathing, but 19th century man believed, as Morris writes, that blowing tobacco smoke in someone’s rectum might revive them after, for example, a drowning. Other periodicals note that physicians played around with blowing smoke into the mouth and nose, but they found the rectal method more effective. “The nicotine in the tobacco was thought to stimulate the heart to beat stronger and faster, thus encouraging respiration. The smoke was also thought to warm the victim and dry out the person’s insides, removing excessive moisture.”

The “How did we survive?” head-shaking laughter the follows hearing such measures might cement the fact that no one ever tries to pass such foolish nonsense along again. While we’re laughing, however, let’s keep in mind how much information, innovation and technology benefits our definition of modern know-how. We could go through that list, but even if we bullet-pointed it, it would be so lengthy that our eyes might glaze over, and we might accidentally dismiss a most vital discovery, such as the germ theory.

How did we survive the years preceding someone’s idea that they might be able to scientifically confirm the idea that the onset and spread of disease might have something to do with microorganisms, pathogens, and germs. They suggested that eating spoiled food, drinking stagnant water and poorly preserved alcohol, among other things could cause disease and the spread thereof. Modern readers might “Of course!” such findings now, but it rocked the scientific community at the time. Although the records show that the idea that microorganisms might be the cause for the spread of disease dates back to ancient civilizations, the scientifically-backed idea was credited to Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch between 1860 to 1880, and that was probably made so late in the 19th century that we can guess that it wasn’t fully implemented by family doctors (AKA Ear, Nose, and Throat doctors, or ENT) until the early 20th century. Think about how many lives have been saved by the idea that stagnant water, spoiled food, and fermentation of wine could cause diseases. This first officially documented scientific discovery also paved the way for the first official, scientific discovery of the first, widely used antibiotic penicillin by an Alexander Fleming.   

The ENT doctor is our face of modern medicine, much like the police are the face of law in our experience. They are the people we know, but if we think about it, the ENT doctor sits at the bottom of the medical community’s pyramid. They have nothing to do with the research that helps them make determinations on what courses to follow or prescriptions to write. They also use the technological innovations created by others to pinpoint our ailment, so while we could say they are beneficiaries of modern medicine, future experts might say our modern physicians were captive to the limits of 21st century medical knowledge at the time.    

Do we expect our ENT doctor to perform research in a lab before they diagnose us? Do we expect them to trial and error the medicine they prescribe? No, they have to act on the knowledge of those who specialize in those areas, and the 19th century ENT doctors and surgeons were no different. 

How many modern patients enter a general practitioners’ office, see a specialist, and undergo the array of tests we currently have at our disposal, and we still don’t know what’s wrong with them? We hear it all the time, patient A entered the office with a condition that mystified the most brilliant minds of medicine who examined her, and she died before anyone could properly source her ailment. I’ve known such a situation personally, and I’ve witnessed it intimately. I only write that to suggest that my empathy goes out to victims, family members of victims, and anyone who knows someone who has experienced such a matter, but there are times when no one is to blame. When we’re in such a desperate state, or grieving the loss of a loved one, our first inclination is to blame someone for not recognizing her ailment sooner. We blame her doctors, her doctors blamed the specialists, and they all quietly threw their hands up in the air in frustration. Who was at fault, or is anyone? Our advances in modern medicine, since the 19th Century have been so remarkable that they lead us to believe that we’re at the final frontier. We think if her parents could’ve only found the most brilliant mind of medicine, with all of latest technology available to them, and all of the information research has provided, we think she could’ve been cured. This isn’t to say there hasn’t been instances of malfeasance and misfeasance in the medical community, but as opposed to the TV shows we watch, some of the times even the most brilliant encyclopedic minds of medicine won’t know, because we don’t know yet. That’s the harrowing, humbling truth that no self-respecting doctor, or anyone else in the medical field, will admit is that in some cases the science isn’t there yet. 

If we were able to interrogate a family doctor, a surgeon, or someone else in the medical profession of 19th Century, I imagine a confident professional of that era might say, “Mock away, we deserve it on some level for our lack of knowledge, but you cannot say it was for a lack of trying. We cared deeply what happened to our patients, from the little, old ladies who complained about chronic ailments to devastated small boys, and everyone in between. These were not only our patients, they were our neighbors, and members of our community seeking our knowledge, guidance, and medical assistance to relieve them of horrific illnesses and injuries, and we did our best, with our era’s best knowledge, technological advancements and research, to help them in every single way we could. It’s not what you have today, so mock us all you want, but you cannot say we weren’t trying.”

Anytime I read such a compendium, one of the first things I think about is time machines. We all love the speculative concept of going back in time to talk to long-dead relatives, historical figures, and to experience our romanticized notion of living, if only for a moment, in a different time. The implicit warning books like The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth leave is, if some brilliant mind ever develops the technology to travel back in time, that pioneer taking one giant leap for mankind should check, recheck, and triple check to make sure they get one key component of their technology right before they leave: make sure you can get back. The authors of speculative fiction devote very little space to this need to get back to the present. It’s not very sexy, and no matter how much an author of fiction loves their character, they’re not concerned with the ramifications of their character getting stuck in another time period. They can play this short-term game with their characters, because their characters aren’t real. A real character who knows anything about the research, technology and science that influenced the decisions made by the medical community of the 19th Century should make getting back their primary concern, because while they will experience worldwide, historic fame for the technology of their contraption, if they’re not able to get back, they might not get to enjoy that fame.

Seinfeld’s Unfrosted was … Not Bad

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Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted was … not bad. Screech! Spit coffee! Swear word! Screams! Car Crash! It is shocking, I know, to hear that coming from a Jerry Seinfeld fanatic. If you’ve read any of the articles on this site, you know how often I source him as one of the greatest comedic minds alive today. I consider him one of the best standup comedians of his generation, and his observations on what makes us weird have had a huge influence on this site. The show Seinfeld was my favorite sitcom of all time, I loved Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and I even enjoyed his Bee Movie. I didn’t love it, but I really liked it for what it was. Oh, and I laughed so hard during one of his standup shows that Jerry Seinfeld looked over at me with a look that suggested he was comedically concerned about my health. If the difference between fanatic and fan is excessive and intense, uncritical devotion, I am a fanatic. I never wrote to him, collected dolls, scripts, or took tours, but if there’s a hip term I don’t know for a passive fanatic, that’s me. I’m probably his idea of the perfect fan, a guy who quietly buys and watches anything to which he attaches his name. Which is why it pains me to write these five words: “Unfrosted is not as funny as I thought it would be.”

Watching the movie reminded me how we all want more of everything we love. We want more from our favorite artists, athletes, politicians, and plumbers, until they give us so much that we realize it probably would’ve been better if they left us in a state of wanting more. That’s the advice seasoned entertainers often leave young upstarts, “Always leave them wanting more.”  

And Seinfeld warned us, numerous times, that more is not always better. He’s said it in relation to why he decided to prematurely end his show Seinfeld, but he’s applied that principle to his career too. He’s informed us on so many days, and in so many ways, in the numerous interviews he’s done throughout his career, that he’s learned that he’s best when he stays in his lane, his lane being standup. He’s learned what he’s good at, and what he’s not, and he has proven to be the opposite of what makes some comedians so great, in the sense that he’s not daring, risky, or experimental.

If I were to pitch him a project, I would say he and Larry David should develop a sketch comedy in the Mr. Show vein, but we can only guess that he’s had hundreds of similar pitches from friends, fellow writers, and corporate execs, and he’s turned them all down. Some of those projects may have proved embarrassing, some may have been so far out of his lane that he didn’t even consider them, but we have to guess that some projects that were so close that he had a tough time turning them down. He did it all, because he knows who he is, what he’s good at and what he’s not, and he’s learned how to stay in his own lane.   

On the greatest sitcom of all time, Jerry Seinfeld surprisingly (to me anyway) credited the three actors (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Michael Richards, and Jason Alexander) for making the show so brilliant. He does not shy away from the idea that the writing on the show, of which he played a huge role, was great, but he admits that the actors brought that writing to the next level.  

“I did get caught in a beautiful, cyclonic weather event,” he said in an interview. “The actors, Larry David, the thirteen phenomenal comedy writers, and everyone on both sides of the camera was a killer. You know when you’re a part of it, but you know it’s not you. You’re a part of it, but if you’re smart, you know it’s not you. It’s not all you.”   

On Seinfeld, Jerry played the Alex Rieger of Taxi, the Sam Malone of Cheers, the center of the storm. He’s always been great at adding that final comment, lifting that eyebrow to exaggerated levels, and saying, “ALL RIGHT!” at the end of another character’s hilarious rant. He knows how to put a cherry atop the pie in other words. As long as that pie, or the acting required to nuance it, was filled in by someone else. He can write funny, he can deliver a short, crisp line deliver as well as anyone, but the nuances in the acting craft required to build to Seinfeld’s punctuation were always best left to others. I heard him say this so many times that I saw it, until I accepted it, but I always thought there was a bit of humility attached to it. Some of us were so blinded by enthusiasm that we never learned how to curb it completely.

When he decided to end Seinfeld after the ninth season, it felt similar to an athlete retiring at the downside of their peak, not the prolonged, sad tail end, just the other side of the peak. There were hints in seasons eight and nine, after Larry David left, that the show was on the downside of its peak, but it was still the best show on TV. Why would an athlete, or a successful showrunner, quit prematurely? I understand not wanting to outstay your welcome, or allowing us to see glaring levels of diminishment and not wanting to go out like that, but if you’re lucky, you might still have forty years on this planet. What are you going to do in the rest of your life to top that? Some of them, I think, are too worried about what we think. They don’t want us to see their downside, or because they love the game so much that they can’t bear playing at anything less than their peak. They can’t bear someone saying, “If you just called it quits after season nine, it would’ve been a great show beginning to end. Season ten was probably one season too many.” They, some of them, don’t want us to remember them as someone who stayed around too long.

When we were kids, we ached for another Star Wars movie, then we got one later, much later, and it ruined the legacy of Star Wars. After the second trilogy was complete, the almost unanimous opinion among those I know is they probably should’ve left us wanting. As Led Zeppelin did. Zeppelin broke up after the untimely death of their drummer John Bonham, in 1980. We spent our teens and early twenties talking about the possibility of a reunion and another Zep album. I understand they said it wouldn’t feel the same without Bonham, but the remaining band members were still in their early-to-mid thirties when they broke up. How do you leave a juggernaut like Led Zeppelin in your early thirties? The Beatles were in their twenties when they broke up. As Theodore Roosevelt said of being president so young, “The worst thing about being president of the United States so young, is that there’s nothing you can do to top that for the rest of your life.” Led Zeppelin left us wanting, and it was probably for the best. What could they have done to top those first six albums? They most likely, and in all probability, would’ve only disappointed.

In a career studded with comedy gold, Gold Jerry! Gold! Unfrosted has the feel of a sequel. It’s not a sequel, but how many of us walked out of a killer comedy, talking about how that movie just screams out for a sequel. We didn’t talk about how great that comedy was, we instantly wanted more. Then, when the sequel came out, it was, “That wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as the first one.” That was the impression Unfrosted left on me. It felt like all the players were trying to recapture something that used to be really funny, and we were all prepared with our preparatory smiles on our faces, until the smiles slowly faded away.  

The characters have this feel of trying to repeat something that worked before, but it just doesn’t for all the mysterious reasons that some movies work and some just don’t. The jokes have a feel about them that suggests to us that they’re brilliant, but they’ve been done so many times before that we no longer need to figure them out. As someone who doesn’t know one-one hundredths of the knowledge Jerry Seinfeld has about comedy, I think the figuring out part is the reward of comedy. 

Unfrosted seeks the opposite tact. It goes for familiarity, and we all love familiarity. Familiarity with actors, themes, concepts, and all that. Unfrosted displays this level of familiarity in the beginning, to establish a through line to the audience, but it never branches out into that unique spin that kind of shocks us into laughter. The setting of the movie is the 60s, and what a foolish time that was, and even though this has been a million times before, we still think it could be great in the minds of geniuses.

It’s a mystery to us why some movies don’t work, because we don’t make movies, but you’ll often hear moviemakers, actors, and all the other players say, in interviews, that they don’t know why either. “We thought it was funny, but we had no idea how huge it would get.” We don’t often hear the players involved say, “We thought it would be huge, but we had no idea people would consider it a little boring.” What works and what doesn’t is a mystery to us, and it’s a mystery to them. Generally speaking, dramas and action movies are probably a lot easier to predict for those involved, especially when the star actor signs on to the vehicle. Comedies and horror have a super secret formula that even those involved in the finer details of the production involved don’t know whether it will hit or not.  

Unfrosted gave us all a be-careful-what-you-wish-for feel, because you just might get it. As much as we cried out for a movie, or any project, from Jerry Seinfeld, we walked away from it thinking that Unfrosted, unfortunately, should never have been made. What could they have done to make you feel better about it? “I don’t know, I don’t make movies, but they probably should’ve left me wanting more instead of giving it to me.”

Watching Unfrosted, reminds us of that elite athlete who retired on the downside of a peak, not the bottom, just the downside, and we clamored for his return. How can he retire at 37? He still had what two-to-three years left? If he lives to eighty, he’ll spend the next 43 years reminiscing and thinking he should’ve played two-to-three more years at least. Then he comes back, and we see how much his skills have declined. He didn’t do it for the money, I can tell you that much. He did it, because he loves the game, and what’s wrong with that?

The point some people make on various websites is that athletes and entertainers run the risk of ruining their legacy by staying too long. This line right here makes me almost fighting mad. So, you’re telling me that the athlete who made so much money for the league, the city, and the franchise shouldn’t be able to sell his wares to anyone who will take them? He shouldn’t try to get another paycheck for the punishment he put his body through for your entertainment, because you want to remember him the way you want to remember him? Isn’t that a bit myopic, even selfish? He wanted to get paid for his efforts, of course, but he didn’t necessarily do it for the money? Seinfeld, and most modern athletes, have so much money that that’s not why they’re doing it. They’re doing it for the love the game so much that they want to play at least two more years? What’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with you for wanting to deny him that?

Did Seinfeld ruin his legacy by doing Unfrosted? No, first of all, it wasn’t that bad, but, then again, I never expected to say that a Seinfeld project “wasn’t that bad”. I don’t remember any of the elite athletes who “stayed one year too long” for those latter years, and I don’t begrudge them for taking as many paychecks as they could before they called it a career. I also don’t begrudge them the idea that they loved the game so much that they couldn’t walk away, until it was obvious to them that they truly couldn’t play the game anymore. I actually respect it, as I say it was for the love of the game. I respect the fact that Seinfeld’s friend pitched him on the idea of Unfrosted, and not only did he like the idea, but he didn’t think he was done yet. He thought he had one more big project in him, because he loves doing the things he does so much that he wanted to try it at least one more time. Good for you, Mr. Seinfeld, I say, and if he feels like doing another project, or projects, I’ll be there on the first day it’s released.  

Jerry Seinfeld has admitted that he doesn’t expect to be remembered after he’s gone, and he’s even gone so far as to say he doesn’t care, or that’s not his driving force. I’ll remember Jerry Seinfeld as a great, almost perfect standup comedian, the cocreator of one of the greatest sitcoms in TV history, and as a gifted natural when it comes to observational humor, but Unfrosted doesn’t do much to either lift or damage his legacy. It was just a marginally entertaining movie that they probably won’t list in his very lengthy resume when that final wave off arrives.