Peradventure, Somebody's Confused Miracle in the Backyard

I was enjoying another scooter ride to work when the oil light came on. Being a scooter novice I'll be the first to admit I don't know thing one about scooter maintenance. I'll further admit that even when I become a scooter riding veteran given my history with automobiles and other mechanical items I'll likely remain quite ignorant about scooter maintenance. I do know enough that when the oil light comes on it's probably a good idea to add some oil and not ignore the warning.

On my way home I stopped at Scooterville in Dinkytown and as I was adding oil to my bike I mentioned to Bob, the owner of the store, that I likely was going to upgrade to a better scooter next summer. Bob said that he had just gotten in an used scooter the very model I'd likely upgrade to- and it only had 600 miles on it. When asked why the owner had sold it Bob said that the guy had gotten cancer after buying the scooter and had died shortly after. After Bob and I worked out the details, I bought the used scooter. It has bigger tires than my old one and has a top speed of around 45 miles per hour as opposed to the 40 miles per hour of my first bike.

It's a much smoother ride- and when I hit the gas the power is evident where my old scooter no matter how hard I tried to accelerate I always felt like I was puttering along.

The first night I had my new used scooter I couldn't get it started. When I finally got it fired up the next morning it kept stalling every time I came to a stop. So as I had the guys at Scooterville clean out the fuel intake tube and look at the carburetor I was mindful that maybe the bike wasn't as good as advertised- no matter all the unanimous glowing reviews I had read on the Internet before I decided to buy it.

Sure enough every morning I rode it to work the scooter stalled at nearly every stop light. It isn't a pleasant feeling to be there in the middle of traffic and when needing to scoot finding yourself at a complete standstill. Worse yet- the electric starter on the handlebar didn't restart the bike so instead I'd have to put it up on its kick stand and kick start it.

Somehow I kept not only the bike but my faith that it would one day be a smooth running machine. As I cycled through fresh gas the bike began to run better. Sure enough once it ran on a couple of tanks of fresh gas, the stalling problem went away. Turned out it merely was bad gas- and who among us hasn't had bad gas a time or two?

The first day the bike was running smoothly I went out to my garage, inserted the key to lift the seat to get to the storage area of my scooter. The key turned but the seat would not lift. This wasn't only a matter of inconvenience at not having access to the storage area- it also meant I couldn't get to the gas tank. On my ride to work all I could think about was that given the timing of this latest setback it was almost if my scooter was haunted. Maybe its original owner wasn't so keen on someone else riding his bike.

I brought my scooter into Scooterville once again and Bob monkeyed with the latch. He got the seat up and found that a screw to one of the brackets holding the latch in place came loose and the bracket was holding the latch in a crooked position. Problem solved although Bob admitted he had never run across that particular problem before.

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I thought about riding my scooter to the Paul McCartney show at the Xcel Energy Center last Wednesday night but given that I still lacked confidence that it wasn't somehow haunted I decided I didn't want to get stranded in downtown St. Paul late at night.

I got my McCartney tickets the day they went on sale not really wanting to spend as much as I did ($144 for a single ticket!) because after having seen Paul twice before, I knew this show wasn't going to be all that different from the other two. I don't need to hear his versions of his most famous Beatle songs ("Get Back," "Back in the USSR," "Let it Be," "Yesterday,") again. The original versions were quite adequate thank you very much. Still I knew that if I didn't go I'd regret it the day after the concert.

The show seemed to take forever to begin. I didn't have my watch on but I'm assuming it was a little before eight when the piped in classical music stopped and this guy came on to the side of the stage and stood behind what looked like a large computer console. He began to do a DJ dance mix of several songs from the McCartney catalog that likely weren't going to be played later on in the evening including "Old Siam Sir," "Oh Woman, Oh Why," "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose," and "What's That You're Doing?" The thumping electronic bass pulsated rhythmically throughout the mix and a barrage of colors filled the overhead scoreboard screen flashing patterns like a screen saver gone wild.

After about fifteen minutes of this a film about McCartney began. Good God Paul, enough is enough already. When the man and his band finally appeared they opened with a lackluster version of "Magical Mystery Tour" but quite honestly just about any song would have been appreciated and sounded fine after the long wait.

I clearly was in the minority but I was glad that the second song was the less predictable "Flaming Pie" from his 1997 CD of the same name. I love the piano part and the song had a momentum that was irresistible (even though I've found the recorded version to be quite resistible).

The rest of the show followed this jarring pattern. The crowd clearly got into the show whenever Paul played a familiar Beatles or Wings song like "Good Day Sunshine," or "Band on the Run," but the energy level of the Energy Center took a dive when a lesser known song was played. Yet it was in those moments that I absolutely enjoyed the concert more than any other I've seen in a long long time. I never thought I'd get a chance to be in the same room when Paul sang songs like "Til There Was You" or "Helter Skelter" or "Please Please Me."

As I was getting more and more into the concert it struck me that more than any other artist, Paul McCartney has written a song that has been the soundtrack to just about all of the significant moments that have made up my life. As he sang an energetic "I'll Get You" I couldn't help but remember how that song was the one I heard in my noggin in 9th grade math class as I secretly snuck glances at Sue Weiss, the girl I was madly in love with at the time, as she worked on her problems. "Imagine I'm in love with you, it's easy 'cause I know/I've imagined I'm in love with you, many, many, many times before..."

I was glad he sang my three all time favorite Beatle songs, "Hey Jude," "For No One," and "I've Got a Feeling." "Hey Jude" has been his sing along closer since 1990 and for me it never loses its power as Paul aptly shows (and tells) how to make a sad song better. This evening's version of "For No One" was stunning and inspired. Accompanied only by his piano playing and Paul Wickens' synthesizer (recreating the wailing french horn part) I again was taken back to a moment from the past when I heard the song for the first time and was grateful how it captured so clearly my feelings for another Weiss lass, Sue's younger sister Karen. "And in her eyes you see nothing. No sign of love behind the tears cried for no one..."

"I've Got a Feeling" was a song Steve Olson, my best friend in junior and senior high and I used to belt out at the top of our voices on bus trips in the dark. "I've got a feeling, a feeling I can't hide" I'd sing as Steve sang the counterpart "Everybody had a hard year..." part.

There were other highlights as well. I loved Paul's live versions of "I Will" and "I'll Follow the Sun" which are essentially the same song only with different words. The latter featured four punchy coda/reprise endings that Paul explained were because the song was so short.

The song that made the price of admission more than worthwhile however was "Too Many People" from Paul's 1971 LP, Ram. It's long been one of my favorite McCartney songs because it's full of anger, an emotion he doesn't express very often. "Too many people holding back this is crazy and not like me..." Fans and critics took the lyrics of the song to be a slap at John Lennon (among them Lennon himself) especially the line, "Too many people preaching practices, don't let them tell you what ought to be..." especially since the cover of the LP featured a picture of one beetle fucking another.

The live treatment of the song was full of venom and joy. God I was glad I was there to hear it.

The live versions of the four new songs he did from his latest CD Chaos and Creation in the Backyard were full of an intimacy and immediacy lacking in most of the rest of the show. He dedicated "Follow Me" to his wife Heather and the song expressed the inspiration and guidance she has provided in the years that have included significant losses to a man who has always been about getting back, and yesterday, and finding a way back home.

I even enjoyed yet another performance of "Maybe I'm Amazed." This time I appreciated how the lyrics accurately reflect how I feel about the one I'm currently in love with- the one that has taught all about feeling the power. "Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you/Maybe I'm amazed at how you pulled me out of time/Hung me on a line/Maybe I'm amazed how I really need you..."

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I was in the still new to me upper wing of my house (formerly known as the attic) listening to the new Bob Dylan song "Tell Ol Bill" from the North Country soundtrack. The song is a foot tappin' country stomp. I broke out into an impromptu jig as my three cats all sat wide-eyed watching me. Diego-san was closest, standing by my bed. Thompson was further away standing outside the bathroom and Thelonious stood farthest away at the head of the stairs. The boyz couldn't take their eyes off of me. "This is new" their perplexed faces seem to say. As I sashayed over near Thompson he bolted away in fear. I guess it was a little too new and thus scary to him.

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Liz Phair and Paul McCartney may not seem like they do but they do share a lot in common. Both had extreme early success that they have ever since tried with mixed success to overcome. In other words their early work has haunted and shaped every thing they have done since. Liz's first CD Exile in Guyville received so much deserved critical acclaim and fan devotion that every thing she has followed with seems lacking in every way.

That Liz's Thursday First Ave show featured so many songs from her first CD and only three from her newest effort Somebody's Miracle was more than a little surprising. That the older songs display so much more power and depth can't be lost on Liz. She did open with a sterling "Everything to Me" from the new CD and in its live context it was a compelling choice for an opener. "I bet it makes you laugh/Watching me work so hard to reach you/You never gave a damn/ About all those things I did to please you..." The CD version of the song to me seems like an insipid broken hearted love song to a lost love. By opening her show with a song that features the chorus "Do you really know me at all?/Would you take the time to catch me if I fell..." she framed the song in a whole different light- a slap at her fans/critics who don't seem to appreciate her music anymore.

The acoustic arrangement of "Everything to Me" featured Liz alone with her guitarist. The following song, "Baby Got Going" with similar backing was a great example of how if you listen to Liz's voice you can't help but marvel at how perceptive she can be (even in moments like last Saturday's dreadful off tune version of "God Bless America" at the first game of this year's World Series). After "Polyester Bride" Liz made a point that her guitarist had been singing the wrong words to the song for a couple of years. She may have been justified when she accused the male portion of the human race of not caring about the lyrics of songs. Given the reaction towards her new CD one has to wonder if those listening are really hearing what she is singing or if the gloss of the production leads to selective deafness. Her performance of the new songs (and she didn't even do my favorite- "Got My Own Thing") demonstrated that although the artist is in a very different place in her life- her ability to express what she is thinking about is as skilled as ever.

Standing with the Blue-Eyed editor in the (thankfully) non-smoking First Ave crowd I felt like we were with an old friend again. The only part of the show I didn't like so much was standing next to the world's two worst dancers, two women who were not only jerky but who didn't seem to have a clue about moving to the beat of the music. I wished I had a video recorder so I record them and show Thompson the three legged cat that in comparison I'm a blippin Fred Astaire. It's all about perspective. These women were there with a man/woman, a hulking being dressed in a dress and no adam's apple and with very masculine hands and features who kept backing into my dear friend who was doing her best to get into the concert

Perhaps the best part of the show was the seemingly off the cuff moments like when Liz sang a great version of "Girl's Room" without her band as her guitarist was taking care of some technical problems and her acapella version of Sixpence None the Richer's song "There She Goes."

Liz closed the show with a mesmerizing version of "Chopsticks" that contains the, this is an artist with something clever to say, about "doing it backwards" and the devastatingly confessing that after all is said and done, deep down she is "secretly timid."

Good Grief

Talking last week at the Fitzgerald Theater about her new memoir, The Year of a Magical Thinking, Joan Didion said that the reason she started writing in the first place was that she needed to figure out what she was thinking.

It was one of the many times during her book reading/interview that her words spoke volumes to me. Didion's book, which is getting rave reviews and major coverage in the press, chronicles a year in which her daughter became gravely ill, and her husband died from a massive heart attack. Didion admitted that in trying to deal with her grief that her thought process was more than slightly crazy. She said that the title of the book came from the childlike belief that one controls actions beyond their control- that children for example, think that if they just hadn't spilt the milk at dinner that their parents wouldn't be getting a divorce.

Thus the book earns its metaphysical title as Didion describes how months after her husband's death, she couldn't part with his shoes because she felt that he would need them when he returned home. In many of the book's most devastating passages, Didion details how in the days and weeks following her husband's death she was obsessed in gathering all the details- attending the autopsy, trying to discover the exact time of death- as if she had done something differently she could have saved his life.

What added weight to Didion's appearance at the Fitzgerald as part of MPR's "Talking Volumes" series was that her daughter just recently died from her illness. Looking thin and frail Didion spoke in a quiet but sure voice, as if talking about her work was another necessary step in her grief process.

Reading The Year of Magical Thinking I couldn't help but think about how little of the art I know deals with such a basic human emotion as grief. Love, anger, depression, and confusion all have been examined from every which direction. Musically John Lennon's "Mother" is about the only song I can think of that directly deals with grief. Some of Brian Wilson's sadder songs like "God Only Knows" certainly hit some of the same psychological places as grief.

Reading Didion's memoir I was also struck that the words she shares seem universal and unique at the same time simply because we're all likely at some point going to have to deal with the death of a loved one. She said she wrote the book quickly (she started writing the day after her husband died and finished a few months later) because she wanted to capture the rawness of her emotions. The book does exactly that- sparing the reader none of the overwhelming emotional territory that comes with grief. Didion said that in the months following her husband's death she would walk the streets and could see others who were grieving. Asked what she saw, Didion said that looking in people's eyes she could tell if someone was grieving by the size of their pupils. That was exactly the insight I noticed when a lost love lost her brother shortly after my Mom died.

Hearing the author read clipped passages from her book was not an easy and certainly not a comfortable experience. The reading was broken up by cello music provided by two local musicians. As they played my mind drifted to the best piece of art I know about grief- the still amazes me every time I watch it- episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy's mom dies.

The stark and quiet episode captures both the overwhelming confusion, sadness, anger and shock and loss of what it feels like to have someone vital to your life die. If you're lucky, friends reach out to you as if to cushion the fall but you realize that there isn't anything they can really do to help you deal with that which can't be dealt with.

In the Buffy episode a lesser character (Tara) finds herself alone with Buffy and she tells Buffy if there is anything she can do- just ask. Then she tells Buffy that she knows it's an empty offer- she knows because her own Mom died. And for a moment Buffy snaps out of her stupor and feels a brief connection with the world again.

Reading The Year of Magical Thinking was exactly like that moment for me. Gratefully delving into such a great piece of writing makes one want to reach out to the author and share what one thinks is an instance of a similar feeling. Yet having gone through the experience of grief a time or two myself I learned if there is but one lesson to be learned it is none of us grieves in the exact same way. It's a hard lesson to learn but in grief one learns that much as we try to make every little thing mean something, in the end it all can be simultaneously meaningful and meaningless as one comes to realize how senseless a death can be. At the same time if you stop and think about it the very next breath is something to behold and not to be taken for granted ever again.

One Eyed Ingenue

Even though I majored in college in TV, movies, and music, I've never claimed that I have my finger on the pulse of this country's pop culture. I'll be the first to admit I never know why some things hit the public jackpot and why others seem to strike the fancy of the nation's many cultural critics.

Take for example the continued employment (and therefore seeming popularity) of FOX's top baseball analyst Tim McCarver who has now maintained that exulted position since the 1980's as Major League Baseball has moved from ABC to CBS to Fox. McCarver clearly knows the game well but his reliance on puns and his redundant analysis has even made me long for the more palatable Tony Kubek or Jim Kaat.

So the other night as I was watching the Chicago White Sox play the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and I was getting ready to go to bed, I decided I couldn't listen to McCarver anymore so I turned down the TV sound and plopped my iPod in to listen to the new Liz Phair CD, Somebody's Miracle, for the first time. So unimpressed was I that I nearly turned the sound of the TV back up to hear what McCarver was saying about a horrible call that allowed A.J. Pierzynski to go to first base despite striking out, ultimately causing the Angels the game. But I didn't. I stayed with Liz. And I thought to myself, "God this is awful."

The next day at work I put the CD on again and this time I cut the gal some slack. Somebody's Miracle like last year's Liz Phair is slickly produced and thus all but erases Liz's claim to the throne of one time Indi-Queen. The songs all but sound exactly alike and there's not one of them that hit me between the eyes (or legs) like say, "Divorce Song" or "Perfect World." Yet unlike her last effort (an effort some accused her of trying to be a much older Avril Lavigne) at least this time Liz isn't singing about her favorite pair of underwear or favorite human secretion. This time she's singing about some much sadder stuff albeit at times with nearly Spector-ish bombastic production to cover it all up.

Paul McCartney has recently been praised up and down by music critics for stripping his sound down bare and releasing an album that seems deeper and more intimate. But his CD, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard doesn't reveal as much as Liz poetically does on Somebody's Miracle. Her CD's opening track, "Leap of Innocence" sets the tone for all that is to follow. The singer is expressing remorse for so enjoying an affair while admitting that while you're having fun things can't last "like love in California." And then the chorus is laid out for all to hear. "Anyone can tell you were my instrument/He said, 'I understand you/You want to play me...'" How devastating.

The ultra-polished production is unfortunate making some decent songs sound as if they could have been anonymously written/sung by anyone from Shania Twain to Sheryl Crow. And what's up with such a bland CD title? Liz has previously been four for four in that category with cocky CD names like Exile in Guyville, Whip Smart, whitechocolatespaceegg, and the ironic Liz Phair that revealed less (except for some sexy girly photos) than Dylan's ultimate match this for awfulness cuz you can't, throwitallaway Self Portrait. This time there are shrapnel wound inducing lines that would have made a great CD title scattered throughout like "One Eyed Ingenue" or "Sometimes I Am Inspired." So just what the heck is one supposed to make about Somebody's Miracle?

My favorite track is the playful "Got My Own Thing" that is Liz at her clever best. You gotta smile when she delivers sly lines like, "They say I'm pretty as a song..." or "I don't have to save for a rainy day I know that something comes along... IT ALWAYS comes along..." and "Everybody changed when I do what I do... CUZ I DO WHAT I DO..."

Bottom line may be that I'm in love and may always be with Liz Phair. Sure I may love Bob Dylan's music but I am in love with Liz Phair. Good looks, good luck, cheeky music and that attitude, how can one resist a package like that?

Calm and Constipation in the Well Landscaped Front Yard

Everyone should know by now that Paul McCartney and I have a lot in common. Besides the early fame, the boyish charm and good looks, the billions of dollars, we both share the uncertainty of not knowing just where to go to next.

The Beatles' music was among the first music that changed my life and I always appreciated that so many McCartney-penned songs were piano based enhancing my own struggling keyboard tinkling (extremely accurate use of the term in this instance) repertoire.

McCartney's latest CD, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard has gotten quite a few good reviews. Clearly with Radiohead and Beck producer Nigel Godrich (recommended to Paul by Sir George Martin) at the helm Macca clearly was seeking to do something more significant than just his next CD. It's one of his most introspective CDs from start to finish and the fog of melancholy (unusual in a McCartney effort) lingers throughout.

Upon first listen I was reminded of the spring of my senior year of high school when I was driving with my two best friends at the time, Steve and Jay, and we were discussing Macca and what he had to do at that time to restore some of the luster to his rapidly becoming irrelevant career. I suggested that Paul record an all acoustic LP that would force him to concentrate on his words as much as he did the ever increasing need to show he was the experimental force of the Beatles.

Macca's next release Pipes of Peace was released the fall of my lost freshman year of college. I meandered down to my neighborhood Cheapo store and picked it up the day it was released. On a gloomy, grey fall day when it was my turn to pick the music in our room my two roommates suffered through this insipid music (although in my defense it followed listening to Dr. Pete's choice of the Police's Synchronicity, and Alcoholic Bruce's pick of Cheap Trick's One on One so it wasn't like my choice was that out of line). I remember how after the first listen I commented how Paul seemed to have lost all inspiration altogether to which Dr. Pete for the one and only time in our time together offered some words of sympathy. "It's not that bad and you have to keep in mind he's been writing music for so long..."

So the next time Steve, Jay and I got together was around Thanksgiving time and we tried to analyze Pipes of Peace and tried to find all the hidden meanings. We got stuck on the song "The Other Me" that contained the somewhat confessional yet entirely made up on the spot lyrics "The other me would rather be the glad one/The other me would rather play the fool/I wanna be the kind of me that doesn't let you down as a rule..." It wasn't that Paul wasn't trying, it seemed he was trying too hard- something I've done once or twice.

It is now some 22 years after that forgettable CD and one of the songs on Paul's latest mostly acoustic (maybe he heard me!) CD is a little nugget called "Jenny Wren" (that some of us might disturbingly relate to another Jennie with an animal name). This latest lament about spreading one's wings, a certain flight for freedom doesn't exactly inspire the same release that one might have felt all those years ago but it's still a darn fine song.

It's my favorite song on the CD. Like many of Paul's greatest songs ("Hey Jude," "For No One," "Little Lamb Dragonfly," "Hope of Deliverance,") it's a song about one soul consoling another. And the lasting feeling created is that the singer is singing the song to console the writer beyond the literal meaning of the words.

Chaos and Creation... suffers and yet benefits from the fact that all the songs sound somewhat alike. One of Paul's trademarks over the years has been that most his CDs inevitably feature a somewhat impressive yet equally annoying tendency to trip from idiom to idiom (see London Town) as if he just has to show off how many different styles of songs he's mastered. The CD may lack the big traditional McCartney ballad yet it's clear that Paul has reached the point where he doesn't really want to be just a nostalgia act and he wants his music to still matter. This CD may not quite get there but I for one relate to the effort.

If I Were a County Attorney

Supposing that scientists were to develop cloning techniques so that humans could be cloned. I'm not saying it's gonna happen or anything but just suppose it did. And say that maybe I had been cloned and I'm not saying I would be, but if I was and for a freakish reason my clone, let's pretend, was the exact same age as I am. I would have to say if all that happened my clone might have enjoyed a pretty spectacular week pop culture-wise.

I'm not saying it's a given that my clone would have the exact same taste in things as I do, but supposing he did? Let's just say, for the sake of all this that he would have watched the PBS documentary No Direction Home about Bob Dylan. I'm not saying that one of the reasons he would have admired Dylan was Dylan's ability to turn expectations of him inside out- how when his fans were berating him for not being who they thought he should be, he channeled that anger into his music and made something lovely out of it. I'm not saying my clone would have cared one whit about that but if he did, No Direction Home might have impressed him for its capturing of this process.

I'm also not saying my clone would rely on music to get him through his life as much as I do but let's just say he did for a moment. If music mattered that much to him and he, let's just say, bought Ike Reilly's new CD Junkie Faithful and now accepting that the clone had made the exact same choices in CD purchases over the past few years, and I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case, but let's just say it is, maybe he would find too, that Junkie Faithful is the best CD he's heard since Dylan's 2001 Love and Theft. Matter of fact the clone, maybe just maybe might not be able to stop playing Junkie Faithful over and over because the music cuts through the other crap of his life like a cat's paw cuts through the fabric of the nearest couch. It maybe would be enough, and I'm not saying this is written in stone, to raise the clone's deflated spirit, if he had one, just a notch or two.

Let's just pretend for a moment and say that the clone would have agreed (and who knows if he would?) that Reilly's music is best played loud, like blasting out of a car stereo on a sunny summer day. Maybe despite this the clone would listen really carefully to the lyrics on Junkie Faithful and understand that when critics heap praises on Ike Reilly the comparison to Dylan often comes up and let's just say that the clone, like me for example, has never before understood that comparison until listening to the songs on Junkie Faithful.

The clone may or may not, but let's just say he does, think that the opening song "22 Hours of Darkness" depicts the state of depression better than anything he's heard since the songs on Dylan's misunderstood Street Legal. Maybe even just maybe, the clone would understand that the refrain that wails about 22 hours of darkness and two of light just about sums it all up in a neat little ball that often unravels uncontrollably. And maybe just maybe he'd understand thoroughly the line about love not being enough.

Let's also just say for the fun of it that the clone finds the second song on the disc, "The Mixture" to be spine tingling stuff. When in the chorus Ike calls out in desperation "Where were you?" the clone might also just relate to that very question about some necessary friends who disappeared when his mother died. Not that a clone would have a mother.

The clone also might, just might, snicker at the dirty little "Farm Girl" that not only contains clever little lyrics dripping with sexual innuendo but also how farming can be a dirty little business. "Squatting down telling me my top soil's gone/I'd rather die than pack up my farm/Squatting down telling me my beans won't grow, that my plows won't plow and my hoes won't hoe..."

I'm also not suggesting that the clone would so terribly miss the brilliance of his all time favorite TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer that left a hole in his heart as big as the void in his TV watching, and he hasn't found anything since remotely close in its emotional impact. And I'm also not suggesting it's a given that the clone would have been a fan of Buffy's creator/writer, Joss Whedon's next TV show, the never given a chance Firefly. Let's just say he would have been though, and thus he would have also maybe just maybe had made the effort to go and see Whedon's movie Serenity, the big screen version of Firefly.

I'm not sure how the clone would have responded to going to Serenity if he even had. Let's just say he did for pretends sake. Maybe the clone, and maybe he wouldn't have, just celebrated and enjoyed the humor and wit of the movie even though it reminded the clone, and I'm not saying it would, of a sense of humor that's been missing ever since Buffy left the airwaves. The clone may, and let's just imagine he might have, loved Serenity with it's rollicking action packed plot and it's quiet moments of sadness and reflection and insight. If we could somehow accept all this might be a possibility then the clone maybe just maybe could comprehend that not all weeks can be this good.