The internet is not a good place to argue with people, Part 37. That’s what this page is going to be
from now on. I used to post my year-end music and movie lists here, and not much else, but I seem
to have stopped doing those--music lists for sure are finished; I may go back to movies eventually.
Surreal internet arguments, that’s my new passion in life.
Last time, the Isley Brothers. After that, three big baseball arguments I didn’t write about here:
1) whether or not Justin Verlander should have been pulled early in Game 1 of last year’s WS;
2) whether or not the Astros’ combined no-hitter in Game 4 was something to get excited about;
3) a story I related about a friend getting Willie Mays’ autograph at a card show.
If winning or losing an argument is scored by how many people agree with you, I lost all three.
A few days ago, it was the death of Cindy Williams. “Really? What was the argument about--whether
she actually died or not? Did someone say she’s hiding out somewhere with Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot to argue about there.” I agree. Once this one got underway, “What
exactly is it we’re arguing about here?” was a question that kept popping into my head.
Same message board as before, where there’s a yearly obituary thread for all the celebrity deaths
that fill the news during the course of a year. After an initial post relating news of the death,
with a link to a newspaper or wire-service account, there may or may not be a handful of follow-up
posts, depending upon how prominent the deceased is; if it’s someone like Prince or Jean-Luc Godard,
the discussion quickly moves over to an already existing thread devoted to that person. This is not
a new phenomenon, but one that’s heightened considerably by social media: it’s sobering, once you
reach a certain age (I’m 61), how many people you grew up watching or listening to start dying.
With Cindy Williams, after a couple of one-word reactions, someone posted an American Graffiti clip
(Laurie and Steve dancing to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” at their homecoming dance). I posted that it
was a great scene, as was a scene she shared with Harrison Ford. A few minutes later, I posted that
I’d completely forgotten The Conversation, and how great she was in an elevator scene with Gene
Hackman. No problems so far. After which, I posted for a third time, and we’re off to the races:
I understand the nostalgia for Laverne & Shirley, I've got no shortage of equivalents in my own life,
but I think it's too bad she got sidetracked. I look at The Conversation and American Graffiti, and
I wonder if--to name another actress starting out around the same time--she could have gone on to
have a career like Sissy Spacek's.
As I wrote that up, I thought I was paying her the ultimate tribute: that she became famous for a
popular TV show, and that that was fine--and that I understood that, and shared in the same kind
of nostalgia for certain things in my own life--but that I wondered if she could have had a movie
career as successful as Sissy Spacek’s (and, implicitly, that I’d already decided she could have,
based on those two films--two of my favourite ever, I’ll mention).
Why am I translating something that doesn’t really need translation? Again, good question.
A few more posts, and then someone (Person A, we’ll say) says that 1) Lavern & Shirley had more
impact than the theoretical movie career I’m imagining for Cindy Williams, and that 2) Lavern &
Shirley was accessible and funny, not like some falsely prestigious movie career. That, and “fuiud”--
fuck you if you disagree, in internet-speak. But an LOL was attached, and as long as you include
an LOL on social media, you can say almost anything and expect the other person not to take offense.
Okay. In response to that, I tried to paraphrase my original post like I did above, and also added
that “I think it's a stretch to say (Laverne & Shirley) had any impact beyond that in the sense of
influencing television history or anything, which many shows from that era did.” Which I’ll stand by.
It was a very popular show, but it wasn’t The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it wasn’t All in the Family, it
wasn’t Julia with Diahann Carroll. Those shows inarguably changed television. Laverne & Shirley was
part of a general retreat from the topicality of early ‘70s TV. I’m not saying it was Three’s Company,
but--like the show it spun off from, Happy Days--it was part of a return to the friendly, My Three
Sons-type shows of an earlier era.
The next post (Person B)--people sure do love to take up other people’s disagreements on this message
board--said somebody’s nostalgia didn’t need to line up with my own idea of importance, although, pre-
sumably, my idea of importance needed to line up with somebody’s else’s nostalgia. Besides which, I
thought I’d made it clear I understood and shared in feelings of nostalgia.
I again--starting to get exasperated at this point--tried to make it clear that I was praising Cindy
Williams, adding that she was trapped inside of a system then that drew up a clear wall between
success on TV and a movie career. I don’t begrudge whatever success Laverne & Shirley or Cindy Williams
had, and if I say it sidetracked her from the movie career I think she could have had, I’m criticizing
the this-or-that system that was in place at the time, not trying to wish the show into non-existence.
I’m trying to think of a parallel example and how I’d react...Chris Elliott came up on the message board
today, in connection with Saturday Night Live. I think Chris Elliott’s one of the funniest guys of the
past 50 years. I couldn’t get enough of him in the early days of Letterman: Conspiracy Guy was my fa-
vourite, where he’d jump out of the crowd and start badgering Letterman: “What about Connie Chung and
the secret documents?!” He was great on the couch with Letterman too, and there were other appearances
here and there. I watched a few episodes of Get a Life, his one chance at a hit show, and, as best as I
can remember, it was interesting but kind of missed the mark. If I’m still here when Chris Elliott dies,
and somebody on social media posts “He was so funny; too bad he was never given an adequate chance to
show that,” I guarantee I won’t take great offense that the person is stepping on Chris Elliott and on
my memories of him by imagining the career he could have had instead of the scattershot one he did. My
reaction will be, “Glad you said that.”
Anyway, that wasn’t the problem, I was told (by Person B); it was that I needed to let Person A mourn
and just keep quiet. (Another way to say “Fuck you if you disagree,” I think.) Person A then came on to
re-explain herself, reinforcing the idea that I was stuck on some fictitious, highbrow movie career that
somehow trivialized what Cindy Williams actually accomplished.
Highbrow? American Graffiti? It’s a good thing I didn’t say she could have gone on to star in Jeanne
Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
I had headed out to a movie, so I didn’t see that post for three hours. When I got home and read it, I
responded quickly, never a good idea, beginning with “I think you’re being ridiculous,” followed by more
clarifications and paraphrasing.
Person C had now entered the fray, but things seemed to settle down, and I was even able to dig up an
interview where Cindy Williams seemed to be saying exactly what I’d been saying all along--that she wished
she’d gotten the chance to play more dramatic roles, but that producers never gave her a chance because of
Laverne & Shirley. Did that bring everything to a close? Of course not: a fourth person jumped in later
that night to say that A, B, and C were “on the mark” about how misguided my posting has been. And then
a fifth person. (Happily, and surprisingly, there was one poster who seemed to understand what I’d been
trying to say--that doesn’t happen very often anymore.)
Cut to, what, day three of this? Person A returned to say that the problem was my condescending “you’re
being ridiculous” more than anything I was saying about Cindy Williams. So I apologized for that, but did
mention the “fuiud.” No response to that. Translation: “fuck you” + LOL = no big deal, “you’re being ridicu-
lous” = mean and condescending.
I again assured Person A that I was a very nostalgic person, and also again expressed puzzlement over the
American Graffiti = highbrow snobbishness formulation. And that was the end of it.
The worst thing about all this--unlike the Isley Brothers argument, where I’ve never had a whole lot of
respect for the three people I’d been doing most of the arguing with--is that I’ve always liked Person A
and Person B here; I’ve felt some kinship with them in the past over subjects ranging from Friday Night
Lights to Husker Du to diabetes to the film Zodiac to teaching. No, that’s not the worst thing: the worst
thing is that they’re both female, and getting into arguments with females on social media where the
perception is that you’re stepping on their nostalgia and grief is, to haul in some more internet-speak,
“never a good look.”
As I reran everything in my mind later, I entertained the idea of starting a “Long Ago and Oh So Far Away:
the Value of Nostalgia” thread. It’s a topic that greatly interests me. For starters, I’ve been working on
a book the past year-plus that’s about a few things, but you could say that it’s primarily about my deep
nostalgia for a certain year and a small number of songs from that year. I often find myself overwhelmed
with nostalgia for various long-gone fragments of my life. When Robert Crumb thumbs through an old school
yearbook in Crumb, remembering everyone he had crushes on at the time, he sighs and says, “Jesus, where
are they now?” That might be my single favourite line in any movie ever.
My internet friend Steven--we’ve never met, but we once joined up for a shared project on Facebook, and
we’ve been doing semi-regular movie-related Zoom calls the past year--often dismisses nostalgia as some-
thing pernicious. I’ve joked about this with him--he’ll often write about his student days at Berkeley,
or his favourite concerts ever, or will post some random Jefferson Airplane song for no special reason--
saying that I think he’s a very nostalgic person whose complaining is a way of masking that. But I think
I get his basic point: wanting to go back to some moment in time that might have been great for you but
was undoubtedly miserable for lots of different groups of people who weren’t as lucky as you is selfish
and deluded. That, and also that he keeps up enough that there’s no shortage of great new movies and new
music to keep him happy today. The world moves on. I get that.
When I talk about my own nostalgia for the things I hang on to decades later--the Carpenters, Katherine
Ross and Jan Smithers and all my movie/TV crushes, Mark Fidrych, Toronto’s Yonge St. when I grew up 40 miles
away--I try to maintain some perspective about what has real lasting value to the world and what exists pri-
marily in my mind. All the American movies from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that became such a cornerstone
of my lifelong interest in film, for instance--that led me to take a degree in film at university, what I
always single out as the dumbest decision I ever made--I think I’m pretty clear on which ones were objec-
tively great and which ones belong to me. The Godfather, Nashville, Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men,
those are great films; no rationalizations required. The Paper Chase, on the other hand--or To Sir with Love,
or The Heartbreak Kid, or The Sterile Cuckoo, and you can probably even add The Graduate to the list these
days--I’m well aware of their limitations. The Paper Chase is far from a great film; it might not even be
a good one. But with university on the horizon, it spoke to whatever fantasy version of that I had already
concocted for myself, which involved much more than Lindsay Wagner--John Houseman’s imperious, legendary
professor was just as much a part of it. (When I did get to the University of Toronto a few years later,
though, Marshall McLuhan was on leave, and would die soon after, and I never even tried to get into one of
Northrop Frye’s courses. So I never really got to fulfill the John Houseman end of my fantasy. And, good
guess, not the Lindsay Wagner part, either.)
I’ve also found with nostalgia, timing is everything. What means the world to me means nothing to someone
five years older than me, and ditto in the other direction. When Laverne & Shirley debuted in January of 1976,
I was in grade 10--that just wasn’t something I was going to form any long-term attachment to. I think I did
watch the show for a year or two, but my friends and I were much more liable to compare notes on the previous
night’s Fernwood 2 Night or Gong Show.
So what’s the point of all this? Essentially, that I’m a very nostalgic person who thinks about nostalgia, and
my relation to it, all the time. It’s bizarre when you get characterized in a way that’s 100% opposite to how
you actually are--that’s another hallmark of social media. A couple of months earlier on this message board,
on the baseball sub-board, someone described me as this guy who was hopelessly teary-eyed over the days when
Reggie Jackson hit six home runs a game and starting pitchers were expected to stay out there until they threw
300 pitches, incapable of keeping up with a game that has moved on...it was two people, actually, and I’m col-
lapsing (and exaggerating--slightly) a few posts into one there. Or this notion of me as emblematic of highbrow
film snobbishness. That one killed me. I thought of how some of the regular film posters on this message board
would react to that, where I’m more or less viewed as this guy trapped in the Godfather/Taxi Driver moment,
oblivious to the subtleties of Akerman and Tarkovsky and Kiarostami, incapable of keeping up with an art form
that has moved on. It reminds me of that Firesign Theatre album, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When
You're Not Anywhere at All?
Yesterday, a week after Cindy Williams, Melinda Dillon (the mom in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) died. I
loved her in that, and also remembered a unforgettably sad scene in Absence of Malice, where she reluctantly--
to protect her friend, Paul Newman--told Sally Field’s reporter that she had an abortion once. I wanted to post
but hesitated. “Maybe I should start with a self-deprecating joke...‘Please promise me she never had a hit tele-
vision show.’” I didn’t, but posted anyway, being--as I more and more try to be these days, often to little
effect--very careful with my words.