Everything You Want

I get home from work late.  8:00 p.m.  I'm exhausted.  I have skipped the gym again because my neck still hurts and have opted to eat sushi once more.  I tell myself in the morning that I will begin my new regimen this day, but with sushi there is sake, and when I get home there is whiskey.  That wasn't in the morning's plan.  But a spot has popped up on my shoulder which I am certain is cancer and I think I am dying, so I tell myself that I am happy to have lived the way I have for there is no saving for tomorrow.  I am convinced that it just might not come, and that it might not be the worst thing.  But I am depressed by the idea of it, of the spot and the possibilities of what it may be.  Who wants to die?  Everybody, sure, but not just yet.  I want to see how "Mad Men" turns out if nothing else.  Hell of a thing, no?

Many people have written me (at least three) who thought I would have commented on the last episode.  Since I supplied you with the blogs that do that, though, I thought not to.  But Q emailed me the very line that I remarked as the funniest in the last episode.  Roger, having had his enlightening LSD experience that seemed to have changed his life, tells Don that if his pitch to Dow Chemical doesn't work, "Punch him in the balls."

"What happened to your enlightenment?" Don asks.

"I don't know.  I guess it wore off."

It is the most hilarious line of the series for sure, but it is the delivery that sells it.  Nobody can do that the way John Slattery does.  It is a gift.

Everything else, I think, has already been said elsewhere.  The episode's close is the thing.  Glen Bishop, a creation out of J.D. Salinger, asks Don, "Why does everything you want have to turn to crap?"  Or something of that sort.  Don doesn't answer, but asks a question.  "If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?"

In the next scene, Glen is driving Don's car.  One has to wonder if Don was looking for something profound.  But truly, I believe, most of our dreams are equally mundane.  The viewer is left wondering at the Glenn's desire.  I keep thinking, though, that driving that car is hugely metaphorical.  I love such things.

My own desires remain unquenched, even unnamed.  Right now, though, it would be something as mundane as having a dinner waiting me at home.  Once in a while.  Sometimes.  And, oh, I guess there is more.  Sometimes, too.

I'll have to keep an eye on that spot.