THAT EVENING

I watch Chef, a film with a little budget but big names--Dustin Hoffman, Sofia Vergara from Modern Family, Morton Downey. Dustin plays a prima-donna chef with an anger problem. He blows up at a critic, his tantrum spreads across the Net, and he gets fired. The film implies it's unfair, he's just an artist passionate about his art.

I'm skeptical. He blows up at everyone, even his small son. He does have an anger problem--or at least feels over-entitled about expressing it.

Even Morton Downey, who controls his temper, still plays creepy intimidation games. Seems compulsive, even counter-productive--he just has to push boundaries.

The story's wall-to-wall guys--squabbling, bonding, one-upping. Women are (possibly) more sane, but peripheral--of course.

I'm male. I'm supposed to be this?

THAT NIGHT

I walk into a college hall. But this is a TV show, and I stumble. Gotta reshoot. Go back and enter again. Better this time. Walk to a room with a heavy, sealing door. Go in and invade a nook behind the door where two girls and a guy study. I reserved it, but the guy's slow to give it up. So I open the door past a right angle, swing it till it squeezes him out of his seat. At last, resentful of my heavy-handed tactics, he glares but leaves.

Such intimidation tactics are totally uncharacteristic of me, but that's the script. Bully, or don't get paid!

I hate it, because I was raised Gandhian. Skeptical? I have the paperwork to prove it! Though the Feds just mailed me a threat--I haven't filled in the annual forms renewing my conscientious objector status, keeping me immune from the military draft. Must fill in the forms. Only I can't--in a fit of rage, I tore them up!

Again, tantrums aren't my style. But they suit my role.

It's only a supporting role. The show's not about me; it has to do with quelling gun violence in schools, and the main set's not in this side room but in a bigger room down the hall.

I walk by that door. Yep, there's the star, with his gun... which he'll renounce. Eventually. After entertaining the violence-hungry American audience by emptying it into the wicked. Oh, the show will have lots of pious posturing about male violence, but Hollywood knows what its audience likes.

Or at least has been trained to expect. Good dog!

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Uncharacteristic temper: in Chef, the main characters's constant anger problem.
• Intimidating rival male: in Chef, Morton Downey's a possible financial backer into creepy intimidation/humiliation games.
• Federal government sends a threat, I need forms: the income tax deadline is late this year (Covid). But it's coming up!
• ACTION 1: Grit your teeth and do your taxes. It's deadline time.
• Be Gandhi or be a soldier: I panic at any dominance behavior at all--to me threat-displays are a declaration it's law of the jungle, all-out war. So I misjudge the posturing, bad-tempered men in Chef. Anger is a culturally shaped language; act civilized, and American males will misread you. Or just ignore you.
• ACTION 2: Don't be Gandhi. Tantrums are culturally required--or I get cheated. Chef overdoes it, but I underdo it.
• Violence condemned but secretly condoned to entertain the bored: My sister Althea, a fantasy writer, said "I find conflict & dystopia dull. I like cross-species misunderstanding, sex, comedy, weird art & music, and wish fulfillment instead. Fantasy's ideal for exploring those." I share her tastes, and think it's metabolic; her health, like mine, is fragile, so we find danger tedious not titillating. The dream agrees.
• ACTION 3: Grit your teeth and change this utterly stupid culture. It's deadline time.

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