Breaking Dad

This is a picture of Bryan Cranston as Walter White. It's also pretty much the same position I've been in for the last ten days, minus the stacks of cash and plastic storage containers full of 99.1% pure blue meth. For the record, I also had an open laptop in front of me.

The reason is that after several conversations with extremely insistent friends who wouldn't take no for an answer, and a Twitter feed that was on fire as the series finale approached, I finally jumped on the Breaking Bad train. And it was every bit the wild ride everyone promised it would be.

I'd heard of the show of course, but frankly - what with Homeland, Dexter, Person of Interest, Modern Family (which one of these is not like the other?) - I felt I already had enough tv show commitments.

Besides - FIRST WORLD PROBLEM ALERT! - recording everything in HD only leaves so much room on the DVR.

But once I saw the opening scene from the first episode, I was - pun intended - hooked.

Fortunately I wasn't working the last couple weeks so I had the time to devote to it. I sat in my chair, streaming seasons 1 through 5 on Netflix. Season 5 has 16 episodes, broken into two parts. Netflix has the first 8, and I had to pay to download the rest from iTunes. Money extremely well spent.

I would watch in the day, the night, late at night, middle of the night and early in the morning. My daughter said it should be called Breaking Dad because I was neglecting pretty much everything and everyone to get through this extraordinary show.

A little OCD sometimes? Perhaps. And check again to make sure that door's locked on your way out.

The beauty of it was no commercials, so instead of a full hour each episode was around 45 minutes give or take. I went through all 62 of them, many of them twice because I couldn't believe how great they were.

As far as series endings go, it was genius. Every loose end was tied up, every question answered. And it all made perfect sense and felt right. It was brilliant.

The downside is now, unsurprisingly, I'm experiencing severe withdrawal. Going through all 5 seasons in less than 10 days didn't give me nearly the fix I need. But thanks to iTunes, season 5 is on my laptop and I can revisit it whenever I want.

You should know you can't immerse yourself in the meth world for such a concentrated period of time without lingering after effects. For example, I now recognize every RV on the road as a mobile meth lab. I use the phrases "Tread lightly" "I am the danger" and "Say my name" almost daily. I'm suspicious of fried chicken restaurants.

And worst of all, I like a Badfinger song.

You shouldn't have

First, I'd like to send my sincere thanks to everyone for all your emails and notes asking why Rotation and Balance has been taking weeks between posts lately. All of us here at RNB International Headquarters have been deeply touched by your demonstration of enthusiasm for our blog, and your genuine concern why we haven't been posting more often.

Nah, I'm just funnin' ya. No one cared.

The truth is I could never put up another post, and the impact on your life would be zip. Zilch. Zero. And some other "Z" word.

Don't feel bad, as apparently you don't. I'm used to it. I work in advertising.

You wouldn't think it at first glance, but the product is essentially the same between this blog and advertising. When it's there, and it's clever or engaging on an emotional, humorous or intellectual level, you like seeing it.

But when it's not there you don't miss it at all.

It's a lot like my high school girlfriend that way.

At any rate, we've been undergoing an "organizational restructuring" here at the main office. Our editorial and contributing writer staff has been streamlined for better efficiency, more frequent postings and articles that you can relate to and that will help you find happiness in being your true self.

Oh, wait, that was the staff over at O. Disregard that.

What we've done here at RNB is fired all the planners wearing knit caps (for a good laugh, see what my pal and Round Seventeen auteur Rich Siegel thinks of knit caps). So the work should be more frequent and a lot better, even without their unique insights.

Here's hoping you'll (continue to?) enjoy the renewed, reinvigorated, recharged, re-tooled and some other "R" word Rotation and Balance.

Up, up and away

There’s no shortage of complaints about the commute. And it doesn’t even matter where the commute is. If you live in the greater Los Angeles or Orange County area, you are, as we say in the driving biz, screwed.

When I worked recently in Santa Monica for a few months, it took almost an hour to get from the west side to the freeway at rush hour. We’re talking mere blocks. And then another hour to crawl home. Everyone has a commute-from-hell story.

It’s not as if there haven’t been solutions offered to relieve gridlock. Like the picture above from 1954. Yes, 1954.

A monorail system that rides over the center lane of the freeway. It follows the same route, and the property is city owned reducing the cost. Stations would be on a platform, visible, reducing crime.

Then there was the time in 1955 when Walt Disney offered to build a monorail system like the one at Disneyland from the beach to downtown L.A., fifteen miles of track for the then crazy price of free.

But L.A., being the forward thinking city it’s always been, decided to yield to the auto companies and not implement any form of mass transit beyond buses in order to drive up car sales. (Just a side note: years ago when there was a bus strike in L.A., the late comedian Steve Landesberg said it was the first time in history there was a strike of a non-existent industry.)

If you want the full story about it, watch Roger Rabbitt. It’s closer to the truth about public transportation than you think.

Anyway, I write this as I sit in my office in Orange County on Friday night, getting ready to make the drive north. I can see the 405 out my window, and trust me, even with all the lights it’s not very pretty.

The trick to making the ride bearable, or something close to it, is to arm yourself with a few things that can help distract from the congestion, and even make the trip go a little faster.

Which is why I have a nice car, E Street Radio and a carpool partner.

What is it with getting better?

This past Thursday night I saw Jerry Seinfeld at the Long Beach Terrace Theater. It was the second time I've seen him perform there, but not the second time I've seen him.

The first time was many years ago at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, just as his summer replacement series The Seinfeld Chronicles (later just Seinfeld) was picked up by the network. I have to admit prior to that I'd always had kind of a non-opinion of him. I felt he just did the observational humor, stayed away from anything political or edgy, and was just middle of the road.

You know, what Leno turned into.

That was when I went into the Paramount. When I came out, I was a convert.

I've also seen him in Vegas on New Year's Eve at the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV.It's a tough crowd because everyone is just waiting to shout at midnight. But within one or two jokes, he had them. The show started at 9:30 so he was onstage at midnight, and he brought us all humorously into the new year.

And by the way, try getting a cab in Vegas on New Years Eve. You'll need a few laughs.

Anyway, each time I see him, it begs the same question: How good can this guy get?

His standup is the most highly polished, precision tuned performance you'll ever see a comedian give. And the real beauty of it is you feel as if he's delivering it off the top of his head, in the moment, just for you for the first time.

The observations are astute. They are dissected in a way that points out the foolishness or brilliance of the subject at hand. The material is eminently, frighteningly relatable. Take for example his description of being married:

It's inspiring not only to see someone like Seinfeld, who doesn't have to work another day in his life, but in spite of that continues to keep whittling, honing and improving his material to such a glossy sheen that it's brilliance seems to come so easy.

It's really electric to see a comedian so at the top of his game. And everyone else's.

Shamu's tale

We just returned home from our annual week at the Hotel Del Coronado. It was our twelfth year, and in almost all of our past stays one of the most anticipated parts has been our visit to Sea World. The visit is usually driven by me, because I love the Shamu show and getting splashed.

What can I say? I'm easy that way.

But this year, we didn't go to Sea World. It was on the itinerary, until we decided to see the extraordinary documentary Blackfish. It's about the many trainers that've been injured or killed by these whales, and particularly Dawn Brancheau who was killed a few years ago at the park in Orlando by Tilikum, an orca that had already killed two people before it came to the park. Blackfish also speaks to the conditions that make the whales so aggressive: small tanks, ripped from their families, attacked by other whales in their pens, lack of food and more.

I won't run the litany of excellent points this film makes, but I will say this: it doesn't take a documentary to know that these beautiful creatures, who once had the run of the ocean and swam over a hundred miles a day are not enjoying the same quality of life in the small (for them) tanks at Sea World's Shamu Stadium.

Understandably, we don't see any of the mistreatment from the stands. Instead, we see the show, take the pictures then buy the stuffed Shamu dolls. I'm as guilty as the next person.

I find myself at a crossroads, because my feeling is that, like zoos, if you can't see these animals in person you can't get a genuine understanding of their beauty and grandeur. In my way of thinking, contradictory though it may be, the ability to see them in captivity makes me want to protect them more in the wild. That's the effect it has on me. So much so, I even wrote about it days after Dawn Brancheau's tragic death.

I don't know if I'll ever visit Sea World again. But I do know after seeing Blackfish, my involvement and contributions to organizations who protect and preserve these animals will be an ongoing commitment.

cANT handle it

There was a time in America, a more innocent time, before we were all wired for sound and obsessed with electronic entertainment, when a two simple pieces of plastic, a little sand and a few industrious ants could provide hours of entertainment for children.

Whatever. There was also a time when gas was thirty cents a gallon, but we won’t be seeing that again either. As far as now is concerned, ants are a royal pain in the ass.

It’s summer, and it’s hot and humid. Apparently ants don’t like it anymore than I do, because they’re busy looking for a place to cool off. The problem is they’ve chosen my place.

It seems to be relegated to a few, about 5 at a time that I see in the kitchen, and one or two at a time in the main bathroom. I know what you’re thinking and thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that for every ant I see, there are probably thousands that I don’t.

Denial is a river that runs right through my living room.

Anyway, right now it’s not unmanageable. I’ve made the trip to Loew’s, bought the ant traps and have strategically placed them in those rooms. And when I say placed them, what I mean is my wife has actually put them down where they need to be.

Truth be told, I have a little issue with ants (what other size issue would I have with them?).

For the most part, bugs don’t bug me. I can deal with spiders, bees, roaches, junebugs, wasps (the kind who sting and the kind who wear button down shirts), ladybugs, dragonflies, worms, whatever. But the one thing I cannot deal with is ants.

It has to do with a giant, sci-fi invasion we had in our house about ten years ago.

Under the heading of no good deed goes unpunished, I had the exterior of our house sprayed for ants after I'd seen a trail of them milling around.

What we didn’t know at the time was there was not one, but two gigantic forty-year old colonies under our house. When they couldn’t get out to do their shopping and take the little ants to school, they came inside.

We tried everything to stop them. And again, when I say we I mean the wife.

I think I completely shut down the morning I walked in the kitchen, looked at the back wall and asked, “Why is that wall black? And why is it moving?”

There were four, three-inch wide trails of thousands of ants coming in the back door, across the floor, up the refrigerator, down the refrigerator, across the counter, in and out of the sink and eventually to our coffee maker, where they were crawling on top of each other inside that clear water level indicator. They were trying to move the entire colony inside.

It was actually a few days before it reached this point, and I was trying desperately to avoid spraying inside the house. But when I saw the kitchen that morning, only two words came to mind.

Nuke ‘em.

After clearing out the bottom shelves in the kitchen, we moved in to the Marriott Residence Inn for three days and two nights while the pest control people had at it. When we got home, we still found thousands of ants, but we found them in the best condition possible.

Say it with me: dead.

Since then, we've had the exterior of the house sprayed quarterly and haven't had any problem. I'm hoping the few I've seen are just a few that've been trapped inside after our quarterly treatment and will die off quickly.

Because if it gets any worse, it's going to be hell on the wife.

What weekend?

Here's what I think happens. Every Friday after work - when I'm lucky enough to be working - unbeknownst (five-dollar word) to me I get kidnapped and placed into a time machine set for Monday.

Then, as if there was never any weekend at all, it's just me and Monday morning.

The kidnappers are smart. They implant false memories in my head, like what happened on Dexter (someone got killed), True Blood (someone got turned) and The Newsroom (someone was walking and talking fast) when they aired on Sunday so I'll believe I've actually had a weekend.

But I haven't. I know this because they also give me memories of running around the entire weekend I didn't have doing errands, then doing chores when I'm at home. For some reason, they don't want me to have any memories of a pleasurable, leisurely weekend.

Because they know that would just make me want them more.

Even though I think I'm writing this on Sunday night, I know that can't be and it's probably actually Monday morning.

Fortunately after this coming week I'll be on vacation. Then every day will feel like Saturday.

At least that's what I'm hoping.