Author: Tom Fitzpatrick

Life

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Sometimes a TV series catches me for the wrong reason and I force myself to watch to the end because this wrong reason captured my attention but I really should know better because I know I am going to be disappointed when I learn the reason. I Will Find You, a Netflex mystery series, is just such an animal.

First a spoiler alert. I will be revealing some of the mysteries in the show so if you intend to watch the series, which I don’t recommend, stop reading now. The good news here is that there are so many plot twists that you aren’t likely to remember them all unless you have a copy of my review available while watching. There are plot twists after plot twists after plot twists after plot twists. Bad cops who turn out to be really good cops who were acting bad for a good reason. This means I started out thinking they were good guys, then I found out they were bad guys, only to later learn that they were actually good. Are you still with me?

The problem starts at the very beginning. David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) is in prison for killing his son with a baseball bat. Awful. Bad David. He sits in prison, not taking any visitors, because he thinks he deserves it for killing his son during a black out. Rachel Mills (Britt Lower), his sister-in-law, visits him in prison despite his requests not to be visited because of how horrible a person he is. She shows him a picture of a photo she received that shows his son who has a very distinctive birth mark is very much alive. Burroughs realizes that maybe he didn’t kill his son and this sets into motion Burrough and Mill’s mission to discover the truth.

The hook that kept me watching now is firmly in place. I really want to know who would killed a small child with a baseball bat, kidnap another child and set up the child’s father for murder. There has to be a good reason for someone to do this, right? I mean killing a child to kidnap someone else’s child, that is a terrible thing to do to a kid and to Burroughs. What is it?

The next 8 episodes are so is a wild run of plot twists, a lot of them red herrings, vitally unnecessary to the actual plot but are thrown in there to keep you guessing. And there is so much to learn and then forget because they are irrelevant to the child’s murder. Things like a mob connection to the murder. The mob has absolutely nothing to do with the murdered child or to the story at all but that doesn’t stop the series from devoting several episodes to this plot line which proves to be both unnecessary and violent. The Mafia Don’s main man is killed, Burroughs is flown into Key West to meet his fate with the Mafia Don, and he learns that his best friend works for the Mafia Don.

So, it turns out, the nasty Mafia Don turns out to be just a good father interested in helping other good fathers, even good fathers who wrongfully sent his own son to prison where he is killed. The Don, who in the past swore revenge on the cops who set his son up, but decides to nothing to the police who screwed over his son even though he has captured and in his Key West home. The Don does nothing and actually is such a good sport about the whole threat thing, even though one of his top guys is killed, that he flies Burroughs back to home so he can further investigate his son’s disappearance. Even though his son still died in prison, his top guy back home is murdered because Burroughs thought the mob was involved and one the good/bad cops pulled a gun on him. Nothing on toward happens to anyone.

Are you still with me? Don’t worry, none of the Mafia Don plot twists have much to do with the actual story so you can forget them right here.

Finally there is the end. Oh boy what a fucking mess. I will just jump to the mess and won’t give you too many details because there are just too many of them and it would only serve to confuse you. To summarize — it involves troubled pregnancies, false names at fertility clinic, and the discovery that the guy who has been helping Burroughs throughout the show is actually a friendly psychopath. The psychopath, who I feel it is important to remind you, killed a small child with a baseball bat, thinks that Burrough’s son is actually his son and so with the assistance of his rich mother and her security man, they cover up his misbehavior because all the psychopath wants is to be a good father.

Yes, you heard that right. The psychopath kills one child in order to kidnap someone else’s child who the psychopath mistakenly believes is his and so he can raise this kidnapped child as his own There are many things I believe a mother might cover up for her son but I think that if my son had killed an innocent child in order to realize his parental goals, I might be a little concerned about his behavior and, dear God, why would I give him access to another small child. I shudder to think of the psychopath’s views on corporal punishment and so should the psychopath’s mother. Wouldn’t it just be easier to hire a woman to have his child? I am sure it wouldn’t be difficult to find a woman willing to bear his child for a cool million and, let’s face it, a lot less messy than covering up a murder.

To say nothing of the mother’s security man. There are plenty of other rich people who don’t have bat shit crazy sons that need security men, why fuck around with a psychopath who, I feel compelled to remind you, yet again, killed a child with a baseball bat and set up another man to take the fall for his client’s murder?

Some other minor points. Sam Worthington is an Australian and he was playing an American. His American accent was perfect but his acting was painfully stiff. It also doesn’t help that a lot of the primary male characters looked an awful lot alike — so that you spend a lot of the early episodes trying to figure out who is the grieving father, the psychopath, the wife’s new husband, and the grieving father’s best friend. I don’t ask this often but do all white men look alike? They do in this program.

The thing is what hooked me was the murder of a small child. The whole series I thought there better be a good reason for such a terrible act, only to discover that the innocent was sacrificed to fulfill a man’s ambition to be a good father. Good grief.

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All I wanted to know is if I paid my Macy’s bill. Pretty simple right. Wrong.

This should be a quick look at the online Macy’s site. Except, for some reason, my browser no longer seems compatible with Macy’s credit card payment information even though it will still show me all the marvelous things I can buy at Macy’s – page after page of sale items but every time I depress the credit card history link — a spinning hourglass. OK. No problem. I will just go to another browser.

The new browser doesn’t have my saved password and user ID. I can, however, see all the marvelous things I can buy at Macy’s but my personal profile which would lead me to my payment information is off limits. OK. A bit of a problem because I rarely use my Macy’s credit card and I don’t have the user ID and password memorized. Contrary to all security recommendations, but absolutely essential because there is no way I can remember all the password and user ID’s I have, I locate these details in a separate Word document.

I attempt to log in. Except the password and user ID don’t match Macy’s records. OK. Maybe I made a typo. I try again. No luck. What to do?

I go back to the old browser that will allow me to log in but will not display my payment history. I go to the log in screen. My password doesn’t display but I can see my user ID but not my password. Now I have one out of two items I need. The password is hidden by *. I can however count the number of * and from that I deduce the correct password. Bingo.

I am in except I can only see the marvelous things I can buy and not the actual amount I owe on my credit card. I eventually, after randomly depressing every link I can find, stumble across the credit card history page. Success.

I paid my bill.

This all could have been handled with a quick phone call to customer service but, as we all know, there is no such think as a quick phone call to customer service. A phone tree will answer with numerous questions about why I would like to talk to customer service and, while I am on hold, frequent reminders that this could all be handled much more quickly if I used the online site. Some of the time, this is true. This wasn’t one of them.

If I can use the online system, I will use the online system. But, sometimes it is easier for me to just talk to someone. The problem isn’t easily routed through phone tree analytics. So, if I am calling, I really need to talk to someone. Any one would do. Just let me talk to someone. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top. It will take them seconds to understand what I want and give me a reply.

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I have always taken pretty good care of my body. The underlying hope from all this care was that my body will get in shape. I will look and feel better from the effort.

I have reached an age (68) where I realize that no matter how hard I try that my body isn’t going to get better. The best I can hope for is maintaining what I have. I am beyond improvement. Indeed, chances are it will get worse and there is very little I can do about it.

Maybe some plastic surgery could buff up the exterior but I am afraid I’ve waited too long to get much benefit from it. Why go through a tummy tuck or a face lift and then drop dead the next day? If I am going to spend plastic surgery kind of money, I want to get plastic surgery kind of bang for my buck. So that ship has sailed.

I am trying not to be depressed about it because this is one of the many sad realizations you have as you get older. In the past I could look 20 years into the future and see a future. Now I think 88, there is a good chance I will be six feet under or spread across the Pacific Ocean (still haven’t decided yet).

There is no future really. Age forces you, at some point, to live in the moment. I don’t put things off any more. Things like saving money for retirement. Well, I am retired. What am I waiting for. Spend the fucking money now while I still can get some pleasure out of it.

Age is letting go of what you were. It is sad but also liberating. Fuck them. The good news for the rest of the world is that I don’t have a lot of energy for causing too much trouble. I won’t be leaping in and out of people’s beds, driving cars too fast, or robbing banks. Mostly I will just be a grumpy old man. But, on that, I can guarantee, so watch out.

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Ken Paxton, notoriously bad Christian and Republican candidate for the US Senate, caught again breaking one of the Ten Commandments.

I know he was a keen advocate for having them posted in Texas schools so that children know their importance as a basis for American Law. They are also a good guide in regulating personal behavior. Perhaps he should post them in his bedroom. He clearly needs a reminder.

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Texas wants to teach the Bible in public schools. I am so tired of this. Republicans are trying to leverage this as an issue because Democrats would likely oppose this and the Republicans can shriek about the anti-Christian Democrats.

They hold this very strange belief that just reading Bible stories will make children Christians. Well, I am sorry to break it to them but I am living proof that it will not. One of the great disappointments of my parents’ lives is the extra money they paid to give their five children a Catholic education and they got exactly zero Catholics in the bargain. Zero Catholics with 12 years of Catholic education.

Catholic education also had the advantage, at least as far as the Church saw it, of putting their lessons in context to a much larger Catholic belief system. The story alone is a story. The story with an explanation of what this means to Bible believing Christians is something completely different and impossible to tell because no two Christians believe exactly the same thing.

The Texas School system will be unable to do much in the way of incorporating these stories into a belief system because once they try to do that they will have Christians arguing among themselves about Christian doctrine. And that is when the real trouble will begin as any one conversant with European History knows — Christians like nothing more than to spill blood over Christian Doctrine. This is the very trouble, by the way, that our founding fathers wanted to avoid.

So, go ahead, read your damn Bible stories. I am sure it will have little effect on the thousands of kids staring out the window wondering what the cafeteria is serving for lunch.

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One of the more mystifying things about sex is we expect 13 year olds to make the right decisions when 40 year old adults are still making bad decisions about sex.

I came out in the midst of the AIDS crisis. At the time, getting HIV was a death sentence. I knew it. I knew I needed to take precautions if I wanted to have sex. I also remember that sometimes I screwed up and had unsafe sex anyway. I was in my early 30’s at the time. Way to old to being making a mistake like that, but I still, embarrassingly, did.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone here, makes mistakes. It is a normal part of life. Some of these mistakes, say lending a friend a hundred dollars who promises to pay you back on pay day, are sad lessons but not particularly life altering. Pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are.

Given the siren call of sex, making a mistake about sex is pretty much par for the course for most people. Sex is mighty tempting and the chances that you will make the right decision 100% of the time is fairly remote. People make mistakes.

Which leads me to this idea that allowing a young woman to have birth control is giving her permission to have sex. Maybe. The trouble is she doesn’t need your permission to have sex. The decision to have or not have sex is in her hands. The idea that she will never give into temptation is wishful thinking at best.

Christian doctrine will save her. Probably not. I went to Catholic schools for twelve years. I heard the word of God on a fairly regular basis and I still wanted to have sex. I wanted it so badly that any rational precautions I could have taken, weren’t taken — mostly because I was too terrified to ask the pharmacists for condoms. Think about that I was more afraid of the pharmacist than the wrath of God. This is a challenging theological problem for Christians.

So pontificate all you want on how giving Birth Control to young women is giving them permission to have sex. But it is cruel to expect young women to never error and crueler still to saddle her with a 18 year project of raising a child for making a mistake.

What is irritating me most about this stand is that the good Christians here are more interested in punishing the young woman for her mistake than giving her assistance to sort through the tumultuous time of raging hormones and sexual temptation. Expecting her to make mistakes should be a given, and this why birth control is a God send.

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I have been laid off three times. During the process, each time I was reminded, as if this was all that mattered, that it was just a business decision. There is nothing personal about it. Jobs needed to be cut, my job was just one of the many that needed to be eliminated. Every time this happened, it was easy for me to see that it wasn’t personal. The company was moving operations or eliminating my department completely. My personal circumstances neither harmed nor helped me — it was irrelevant to the business decision that was made.

What is bothering me here is the phrase “just a business decision.” This absolves the laying off party of any culpability in the decision. People were looking at a spreadsheet of costs and then decided to make cuts. We had nothing personally against John Smith, we just had to cut payroll and poor John was one of the many positions on the spreadsheet we thought we could eliminate. Purely a rational decision based on facts.

Since this was, and as we are constantly reminded, purely a business decision then any emotional reaction towards the person using the spreadsheet is unwarranted. Yes, you were laid off, and yes, it has sent your life into a bit of chaos, but, it wasn’t personal. We have nothing against you personally. I looked at the data and this was what the data told me. Don’t get mad at me, get mad at the spreadsheet.

It is a facile way to avoid responsibility. If I could have made another decision, I would have. But the spreadsheet right? I have to follow the direction that the spreadsheet takes me.

It is annoying because it is a lie. Most companies gather the data on the spreadsheet for one reason and one reason only — eliminating jobs. This just isn’t some neutral gathering of data where after looking at the data it was obvious that jobs needed to be eliminated. Eliminating jobs is the whole reason for the spreadsheet.

The just business excuse removes any moral or human dimension from the decision process. Its all numbers. Data determines the action. It allows businessmen to do about anything as long as the balance shows a profit.

It is the reason why Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg find themselves watching wrestling on the White House lawn — something I can’t imagine either of them doing on a free week day night otherwise. They added up the figures and decided it was just better for their business to show up than risking pissing off some mad man who might use his governmental power to harass them.

Smart businessmen know the best way to keep clear of the growing irrationality of Trump is to go along with him. It is just good business. Nothing personal there.

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I don’t recall ever hearing Aretha Franklin’s version of “I Say a Little prayer for You” when it first came out. I was familiar with the famous Dionne Warwick’s version and, perhaps, because I have always associated the song with Warwick and it was the more well known version, there was no reason to investigate any other singers’ takes on the classic song.

For what ever reason, I just recently stumbled on Aretha Franklin’s version of “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and it is like listening to another song. Warwick’s excellent version is more polished and ethereal while Franklin’s is raw and passionate. Warwick is letting the man know she thinks about him. It is more of a seduction than a declaration of love whereas Franklin is confessing to passionate love.

Franklin’s musical arrangement is clever too. There is a point where she winds the song down so far that you think it is about to end when she ramps it right back up again. It is unexpected and exciting. Also the backup singers take on a bigger role than normally assigned to them. They take over the song at several points while Franklin seems to responding to them instead of the other way around. It gives an almost conversational tone to the song. They ask — he answers your prayers and Franklin answers he answers my prayers all right.

The whole effect is a powerful rendition of standard song. Nobody does female sensuality like Franklin and, if you want to hear her at her most passionate, it is worth a listen.

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I have many complaints about Donald Trump. He is an asshole. He is corrupt. He is stupid. He is incompetent. I could go on but you get the point. I don’t like the man. But nothing illustrates the true badness of Donald Trump like the Reflecting Pool Fiasco. And, also, sadly his genius.

Why on God’s Green Earth is the president of the United States so involved in such a trivial matter — particularly when the nation is at war. Isn’t this more of a First Lady or Parks Department issue? What a waste of the limited time of the most powerful man on the planet.

Other people can, and should, straighten out this mess but no Trump has to put his two cents in.

Furthermore, and much more irritating, why is the media so fixated on this bull shit. Again, I am sorry to have keep doing this, but it seems important to point this out — we are a nation at war. Yet what do we hear about in the news — how the Reflecting Pool, which was promised to be blue, is a murky algae green instead. Really.

And people are actually getting mad about it for some reason.

Donald Trump can create controversies with one hand tied behind his back and blind folded. He likes attention and he knows how to get it. He also, to the great advantage of the powers that be, knows how to distract the media from the issues that really matter. Just because Trump is talking about something doesn’t mean the press is obligated to report about it.

Think about the past few months — the Wrestling Match on the lawn, tearing down the East Wing of the White House, the Reflecting Pool — all, in the scheme of things, small potatoes — and distractions from more important issues. All Trump has to do to get the press dogs off of his ass is for him to pop off about something, make it juicy or controversial, and the press, who all seem to lack any sense of proportion, chases after this new controversy like dogs after frisbees.

Yes it is very interesting that the frisbee was caught but is it any surprise. This is what dogs do when frisbees are thrown. So what if they catch him making as ass of himself about the Reflecting Pool. It is meaningless. He seems to know this. I am afraid the press does not.