The Best American Poetry

“Schmaltz Alert” [by Amy Gerstler]

Schmaltz Alert

One whole loaf of bread, a baguette
sliced lengthwise in half though of course
they never say baguette in Vienna, they had
other words in that slightly grimy dark bar
where I first saw it displayed in a poorly lit
glass case next to a plate of what I mistook
for burnt chocolate cookies but which turned
out to be thin, crisp slices of blood sausage.
A jar of rubbery pickled eggs, blurred
in murky liquid sat on top of the case.
But I was mesmerized by the sandwich.
What in God's name is smeared on that bread--
I almost said--that translucent goo the color
of pus?!  For politeness sake I asked in my
creaky German What's that sandwich in
the window? Which probably came out
something like: "What is window-bread?"
but aided by my pointing, the guy behind
the bar received the meaning. He looked
as if I'd asked what beer was. That's a chicken
fat sandwich, he replied, as though to a dim
child. Yes, those were chopped raw
onions sprinkled on top of the schmaltz
which was spread thick like peanut butter.
Like so many things my mother cooked
that I gave her grief for and wouldn't eat:
liver, tongue, parts of the animal I couldn't
bear to recognize, let alone ingest--
suffice it to say I was utterly repulsed
by the python-like sandwich sold in sections
at that tavern in the land of my ancestors,
and with my friends at the table, I laughed
at it. Yet, eating to keep warm--what did I
know of that in my privileged existence? What
did I know of pogroms, Russian winters, forced
immigration, of the value of fat, its anti-
starvation richness, of using every bit of a bird,
my pickyeaterhippievegetariancollegeeducated
self refusing to acknowledge any such necessities,
wrinkling my nose at the stink of cabbage cooking,
squinting at Russian writing on the backs
of forebearers' multi-stamped passports slipped
into a photo album, their set, defenseless, nameless
faces peering at me hungrily. Once an uncle
at the wedding of his son, a skinny, hairy kid
who was marrying a Rubenesque beauty said,
"He always did go for those little fatties" as though
this was a delightful remark. Actually, he
used the term "little fatties," as a second try.
First, he said zaftig, but based on what he read
as incomprehension on my face, he figured
he needed to translate for the poor dumb
Jewish girl who didn't know her own language.
But, though I know little Yiddish, I was familiar
with zaftig, lobbed as a compliment among my
relatives to mean a well-padded, curvaceous cutie--
nobody's stomach rumbling here! An aunt took me
aside one afternoon when I was 20, advising,
you should eat more, dear, if you want to catch a husband.
I didn't bother to respond or keep the contempt
off my punim. Anyway, old friend, what I
wanted to say is that on the phone the other day,
when you said Schmaltz Alert!  to warn me
you were about to say something affectionate,
I remembered that gross, noble sandwich
for the first time in years. I thought about how
we both come from Russian Jews who fled first
to Europe, where they perfected that sandwich
as well as an ability to simultaneously embrace
and mock the excessively sentimental, and
for no good reason I found myself in tears.

-- Amy Gerstler
from the Mississippi Review (Vol. 51, issue 3)

Point Counterpoint: Amy Gerstler and David Lehman on Mad Men Season 7, Episode 5

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:03 AM David Lehman Wrote:

Sword Fighting with Golf Clubs

Dear Joan,

Prior to watching the episode, I had three things on my mind:

-- Everyone hates Lou, the boss from hell, whom most of us know all too well, and how awful will he get?

-- Lots of people are wondering “how Don will die,” as if his death were a foregone conclusion and all that is in question is the means: will he jump from a tall building or turn into a drug-addled beach bum wasting away and finally drowning one summer day in some shabby Florida town?

-- Why did the magnificent Jessica Parre, toothily grinning, pose nude in a swimming pool and panty-clad in the kitchen for an Esquire photo shoot?

As you are not featured in the episode, my dear Joan, it was awfully kind of you to come over and watch it with us, knowing, as you did, that questions one and three would answer themselves. Here, as promised, are the notes I took, the observations you and I and Stacey made, so you can share them with Bob Benson.

I notice that Don spells out “strategy” to open the episode, which closes with his unexpected appearance at a strategy session for a cigarette manufacturer at the Algonquin.

Stacey, also present, gets points for noting the symmetry in wifely party-giving: Betty Draper throws one and so does Megan Draper, on different coasts, with different costs, casts, and results.

Speaking of symmetry, when Lou sadistically keeps Don from taking his flight to Los Angeles, he says he’s going to “tuck you in” for the night – the same locution used by Megan’s friend Amy when she initiates the threesome with Megan and Don after the party in LA, where he flies to comfort his niece – that is, Anna Draper’s niece, Stephanie, seven months pregnant – but whom he never sees, because Megan, jealous of the affection her husband has for the girl, sends her on her way, albeit with a check for a thousand dollars. “I know all his secrets,” Stephanie artlessly says, pushing Megan over the edge.

You were right, Joan: when you consider the sexual shenanigans, it’s hard to get worked up over the Esquire photo shoot. Anyway, even at her meanest, Megan is a lot easier to take than Betty, on whom Henry finally loses his temper. Betty remains in favor of the war in Vietnam when even Nixon goes on record wanting it to end.

Lou, sealing his status as a certified asshole, turns out to be a cartoonist (“Scout’s Honor”), who compares himself to Bob Dylan (!), rhetorically asking a room of incredulous associates, “Is he hip enough for you?” And then to clinch the deal: “You’re a bunch of flag-burning snots.” Ugh.

“Hip,” also “out of sight,” “bread,” “solid,” “dealing grass,” are among the week’s linguistic markers, and Amy says she is going  “to split” meaning “to leave” the morning after she and Megan and Don share the connubial bed. As for fashion, there are the hideous plaid sports jackets that even Don dons, and Harry Crane sports an ascot where a tie should go, while a bearded Stan, joint in mouth, wears a bandanna in the same place.

But more on Lou, whom I dislike so much I feel sorry for friends of mine named Lou who spell it that way. Best line of the night comes when Lou, disgusted with his whole staff, asks Don whether he should let them all go (whether for the night or for good). “I’d let you go, Lou,” says our dapper hero (in real life an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan, but we who root for the Dodgers or Mets won’t hold that against him.) The sadistic shithead leaves the office and lets Don know that he can wait until Monday for the work, after all.

Oh, those days of joints everywhere, of Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the radio, of musicians who drop out of Berkeley and get busted for dealing dope, of adult content and sexual situations, of girls wearing hair bands or sword-fighting with golf clubs, and, alas, of guys named Ginsberg who flip out and get carted off to the nut house.  Cutting off one of his nipples and presenting it to Peggy in a gift box takes the cake for sincere craziness.  But in this very satisfying episode, he is also responsible for perhaps the cleverest most ‘69 moment, so to speak. It happens when he spies on Cutler and Lou talking and watches their mouths move, imagining what they are saying – just as Hal the computer reads the astronauts’ lips in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, released in 1968 but on wide screens everywhere a year later.

Joan, I do not think Don is going to jump out of a window, or die on a deserted beach. I think we get a glimpse of his future when he barges into the Algonquin and offers to resign from the firm if it means the Philip Morris account. And then he turns into Don Draper, the man who can sell any concept to any executive, who has worked ten years on tobacco and is the only cigarette man who has conferred with the opposition and arranged a “stay of execution” for the industry in 60, in 62, in 64 and 65. Makes my hand go reflexively to my breast pocket and pluck out an unfiltered Lucky to light up. 

Yours in sincere admiration,

Dapper Dave, author of “The Drape(r)s of Roth”

PS Speaking of nipples, did you see Rihanna’s on Instagram?

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 11:26 PM Amy Gerstler wrote:

Mad Men “The Runaways.”

I am worried sick about Ginsberg. I fear our resident, wisecracking  Jew is going to be subjected to shock treatment, and perhaps thereby be silenced, leaving an entirely goyishe office. He has been descending into something like paranoid schizophrenia since the season began. (Wonderful acting job by Ben Feldman!! Looks like he’s lost weight, his face intermittently flushed as though he were coming down with scarlet fever, and he seemed persecuted even by his own dark, handlebar mustache, as though by some tarantula.) As you recounted, poor Peggy had to be the one to make the call and have him hospitalized, after he sliced off his nipple and offered it to her in a bracelet box. Peggy being an (ex?) Catholic, there was something straight out of the lives of the martyrs about that self mutilation / lovingly proffered body part (which made Peggy scream.) The later shot of her puffy, pink, tearstained face as she watches Ginsberg being rolled down a hospital hallway, strapped to a gurney, still wildly gesticulating and blabbing, gave us a glimpse of a former, more tender-hearted Peggy I have to admit I miss, though I well understand it’s better for dramatic development, for intensity of character and storylike, etc. etc. if she continues on her path of becoming Don’s Dark Sister. But when was the last time Peggy looked sorry for or fond of anyone? It was high time. (There’s still no silver bullet for treating schizophrenia, if that’s how Ginsberg ends up getting diagnosed, and back in 1969 options were fewer and grimmer. Will he be forcefed Thorazine? (Lit Footnote, just cuz I looked this stuff up: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published in1975, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar didn’t come out in the US till 1971, after it’d appeared in England at first under a pseudonym.) I was hoping it would to come light that Ginsberg had merely been dropping tons of acid. Alas, it appears to be something more insidious. (All this evokes, as you so rightly note, another family of highly verbal, east coast Ginsberg’s travails.)

Mad magazine (who can resist this confluence of Mad Men and Mad magazine) but felt that the most spot-on reference, to George Baker’s Sad Sack, remained unmentioned. There’s a giddy, cruel, boyish, schoolyard atmosphere that pervades these scenes. The school bully (Lou) is found out to have a vulnerable point (his secret life as a comics artist) and for a while the younger boys of the creative team take merciless, giggling advantage, unable to stop mocking him behind his back (or so they think) even while taking a leak (the revelation of the sketches being an inadvertant “leak” of another sort, I suppose.)  

AND: Here’s a toast to Betty’s contribution to the ‘progressive dinner,’ where guests move from house to house to sample various courses (at which she demonstrates her decidedly unprogressive politics! as you noted, situating herself to the right of even 1969 vintage Richard Nixon, not to mention her politically ambitious husband.) Oh! but I drink here to the fussy and disgusting foods of the era: crab louie on toast points (not so bad), rumaki (one of the grossest culinary inventions of all time, in the opinion of this lifelong liver-hater) and “little franks in barbeque sauce” (not recommended by the surgeon general). For the uninitiated, since I’m old enough to remember rumaki and to have been severely traumatized by it (“Just taste it! That’s all you have to do…”) here’s a typical ingredient list for that dreaded hors d’oeuvre (in case you think I’m harshing Betty’s buzz unnecessarily.)

         a 4 oz. can of water chestnuts, drained and sliced
            1  cup teriyaki sauce
             1/2 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
             12 ounces fresh chicken livers, halved
             a teaspoon of minced garlic
             12 slices bacon
             1 quart oil for frying

There are recipes aplenty online if this appeals to you. ENJOY!

Sally’s broken nose seems a symbolic precursor to loss of virgnity. Was she telling the truth about how it happened? I liked the intimate scene between her and younger brother Bobby if for no other reason than we’ve never really seen them join forces before. Sally’s escaped to boarding school but poor Bobby is stuck watching his beautiful, angry, twisted up mother smolder and fume through the ides of her second marriage and grow restless in the throes of a kind of incipient feminism which is not reacting well with her knee jerk reactionary tendencies. “I have a stomach ache all the time” Bobbie says to his big sister in a small voice, and “the other night they were really screaming at each other.” Poor kid.

I am jonesing for more Joan. Not happy when she’s absent. I am wondering if the appearance of Don’s pregnant hippie “niece” (speaking of plot harbingers) is somehow a teaser for the fact that Megan will find herself pregnant before the series is through. I hope Don doesn’t die at all, and especially that he doesn’t die of lung cancer. I LOVE the way he whistles for a taxi.

Till next week! I am already having withdrawal symptoms! How can there be so few episodes left this season????

Point Counterpoint: David Lehman and Amy Gerstler on Mad Men Season 7 Episode 3

L to R: Jim Cutler, Joan P. Harris (nee Holloway), and Bert Cooper

On Monday, April 28, 2014 at 2:11 PM David Lehman wrote:

 

Dear Future Professor of "Mad Men" Studies,

This is the voice of Don Draper offering you "exceptional deals" on the Mercedes of your dreams. Our "breakthroughs in design" are sure to capture your custom in competition with the other cars that are paying for our time this week: Audi, the Ram 1500 truck from Dodge, Lincoln town cars, and 2013 Hondas. Take that, fat vulgar Jersey Jaguar-dealing fucker of Joan.

Speaking of cars, I see Trudy getting into a town car just to go half a block home. Still the princess, and what glorious heels, and did I really hear her order "a deconstructed martini"? From one point of view, any martini using vodka rather than gin can be said to have been deconstructed but that's a technicality. She's selling Smirnoff though I think it would be as true of Belvedere and Grey Goose. But that's just me. I believe Roger drinks vodka martinis. Back in the day (before "back in the day" was idiomatic) he specified Wolfschmidt's as his brand of choice. Imagine that.

The inevitable happens right on schedule. The marriage cannot last, but Don, content to let things be, makes Megan announce the demise just as he had done previously with Betty and Sylvia. He does reject Faye, of course, but usually he likes it when the girl says goodbye and cries on the phone and looks as elegant and cool as Megan Draper in Los Angeles.

Is Don back at the agency? He has done what anyone wanting a raise is advised to do: get an offer from another firm. I have never seen Roger Sterling so animated as when he speaks in passionate defense of Don. He resorts to legalisms. We didn't fire him, we put him on leave. It is up to the partners and they will vote against Don except for the clinching argument: money. As a partner Don must be bought out, and the others can't afford that. Besides (Roger shrewdly adds) how would you like to court a client and pass Don in the hall with Mary Wells on his lap?

 

So Don is back in the firm. Bert says so, leaving the "stipulations" for Joan to enumerate: No drinking in the office ("outside of client hospitality" -- a nice loophole). You must stick to the script (which must be approved by the partners) in presentations and you are never to be left alone with a client. Worst of all, you will report to Lou. To Lou!

 

What can he say but yes? He will (as Stacey observes) make short work of Lou.

There is an undercurrent of melancholy. Stan: "What are you doing here?" Joan: "What a pleasant surprise. . .What are you doing here?" The carousel in Central Park reminds one-eyed Ken Cosgrove of Don -- a reference to the latter's greatest triumph: the "carousel" wheel for Kodak. Peggy, defiant: "We didn't miss you." To which he sighs, and what else can he say but Thank you?

My prediction. The elegies are premature. Whatever happens now will feel original but will secretly repeat something that has already happened -- just as, when he dines with prospective employers, a beautiful blonde appears, announces her name ("Emily Arnett") and her hotel room ("top floor next to the elevator"). Just his type, too.

But when we see him enter a hotel room it is not hers but Roger's. He is intent on going back to the firm and being the genius that everyone else in advertising wants to be. He even sheds his hat and dons a hatless raincoat look.

 

Meanwhile, some things don't change, even though the daughters of farmers have shed their bras. Betty Draper's kids will always hate her.

Love,

Harold (Harry) Crane, head of media, the most dishonest man in Jim Cutler’s entire experience of advertising, and will I lose my job as a result?

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Amy Gerstler wrote:

TEN Questions for the Holder of the Honorary Sorbonne Professorship of Les Hommes Fous, (david, please correct my french?):

Do you believe Megan Draper is the “new woman” and Betty Draper-Francis the old, foundation garment wearing model?

What movie is Don Draper watching at the opening of this episode? It looks like an Antonioni movie, but there is also a whiff of San Francisco about it, n’est-ce pas?

What do you think will happen to Dawn if she EVER EVER puts Don on hold again???

Is there a more heart squeezing sound and sight on television in the year of our lord 2014 than Don Draper apologizing during a late night coast to coast phone call?

Does Stan have a crush on Peggy, regardless of how nasty, brittle, self concerned, competitive and vindictive our once innocent Peggy has become? He is nicer to her than anyone else can bring themselves to be, and seems to have a hide as thick as a rhino’s when it comes to withstanding her increasingly caustic, withering remarks.

Is it a surprise or to be expected that Don is a terrible flower arranger? The impatient way he flops into a vase the bouquet he bought Megan after he flies to LA and is waiting to surprise her in her LA hideaway made the Japanese Ikebana-ist within this student of Les Hommes Fous shudder uncontrollably.

Was there something weirdly sexy about watching Betty Draper-F. drink a sip of warm, just-squirted-from-the-cow milk out of a NOT pristine galvanized metal farm pail and then hearing her murmur shyly, after wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, with a hint of surprise in her voice, “it’s sweet!”

Are not loving a parent and hating a parent the same thing (re Betty’s saddest of the sad questions to her second husband about her children: “Why don’t they love me?”)

Will Megan end up on a Twilight Zone episode, due to her frazzled chance encounter, when assailing a director she’d auditioned for, with Rod Serling?

If so, will Matt Weiner treat us to a scene from said T. Z. episode as part of an upcoming installment of Les Hommes Fous? One can only hope.

Sincerely,

Adjunct Professor of Mad Men in Training (on her year of study abroad)

Point Counterpoint: David Lehman and Amy Gerstler on Mad Men Season 7 Episode 2

On Monday, April 21, 2014 at 12:27 PM David Lehman wrote:

 

Dear Megan, Betty, and Henry, and hello to Harry Crane,

You were absent last night so I thought I'd let you know what you missed.

It is Valentine’s Day 1969. There will be two declarations of love and a lot of flowers. The amorous blonde real-estate agent, a California girl in the Beach Boys sense, tells Pete she loves his flowers and him. He's luckier than he knows. But unhappy.

The unhappiest of the lot is Peggy, who doesn’t know it’s Valentine’s Day until teammates Stan and Ginsberg point this out in the morning elevator. She thinks the roses sent to her secretary (Shirley) by her fiancé (Charles) are meant for her and must have been sent by Ted. Wishful thinking takes the form of hysteria and she sends messages to LA-based Ted  -- as morose and enigmatic as ever – that he must find incomprehensible and so he ignores them. It made me review the history of her love life: Pete, Duck, the leftwing journalist she calls “the Jew” when she and her mother have a fight. That’s it.

Now there are two black secretaries. No one can tell them apart so Shirley calls Dawn Shirley, and Dawn calls Shirley Dawn. The symmetry of their situations on this day (each is transferred, but not fired, by disgruntled bosses) makes its point about the evolution of racism: from segregation and exclusion to marginalization and suspicion. I hate myself for using the word “marginalization” but am too lazy to think of something better.

Joan gets an office of her own. On relations of bosses and secretaries: “Scarlett and Harry are practically married.” Getting it on with his secretary is a longtime Harry trait. For the first time it occurs to me that Harry Crane has the same name as Harold Hart Crane but has nothing else in common with the author of “The Bridge.”

Roger gives off an air of defeat.  In the street someone has said to him, “Mind your own business, Kike.” Was it because he was wearing a homburg? Who still wears a hat in 1969? Only the Jews.

Lou or Lew (who occupies Don’s office) remains clueless, insensitive. What does he do all day?

Memorable lines: “Keep pretending. That’s your job.” (Dawn).  “No one feels my existence” (Pete). “Just cash your checks. You’re going to die someday.” (Ted).

Sally Draper, beautiful in makeup, remains the truth-teller. “Do you still love Megan?” “Why don’t you tell her you don’t want to move to Los Angeles?” On the car radio as her dad drives her back to her prep school: “Eleanor” by the Turtles.

Don sleeps late, watches “The Little Rascals” and sit coms on TV, measures how much Canadian Club he’s drinking per day, pays Dawn for office info. Writes note to excuse Sally’s absence. What should he write? The truth, she says. And when she asks why he is not working, he says he told the truth about himself – but at the wrong time and place, to the wrong people. And what is the truth? “Nothing you don’t know.”

The old Don, poker-faced, tells Sally that they are going to leave the diner without paying. But it’s a joke, and they smile in recognition of the rogue impulses that link them.  So when she tells her dad, before closing the car door, “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you,” it is not just a formula she utters but. . .the truth.

Love,

Trudy [Campbell]

(I wasn't there either but turned up in a Smirnoff's commercial: "Done and done.")

On Monday, Apr 21, 2014 at 4:57 PM Amy Gerstler wrote:

Dear Trudy,

Excellent summary of the show. You did look fetching in that Smirnoff commercial (though, SORRY!, the wisdom of choosing that cheap muscle rub over, say, grey goose, absolut, Stoli, or many others (almost any other self respecting vodka!) escapes me. You truly looked grand , pretty, and relaxed with your long hair, half dancing down the liquor store aisle, and you’ve slimmed down since the baby. All this proves that you’ve only prospered since giving that philandering Pete the boot (at least we can cling to this belief till a new episode contradicts us.) Hope Tammy is doing well. Off in the wilds of distant, uncharted california, Pete’s looking jowly, paunchy and dressing like an over the hill golf pro , in case that gives you a secret twinge of vengeful pleasure.

Sally Draper wins an emmy for darkest eyebrows on a female on tv, except on occasions when a Frida Kahlo biopic is being shown. The heavy black brows suit her, and seem to be a direct genetic reference to how intensely she is spawn of Don. Yes, Sally is shaping up to be quite a beauty, not surprising given her pedigree, and at bottom, daddy’s girl.

Bout time Joan got her own office!!

Will someone please find Peggy a handsome, kind, calm, understanding, patient boyfriend? Before she brings a pistol to work or starts having to mark her liquor bottles as Don is doing, just to keep track of personal consumption. Maybe she’ll get addicted to valium?

Funny tech difficulties with coast to coast intercoms of the era, waaaaay pre Skype.

 Great double entendres about dating and sex flying across the table during Don’s well lubricated lunch with another ad man who might woo him away from his current position, eg “Don’t spoil the mood,” “I’m just looking for love” etc.

Sally’s private school pals cram into a little femmy dorm room, envying their classmate whose mother has just died...with Sally allowing as how she’d give anything to “get Betty underground.”

Lou is so repugnant (that actor is doing a great job making us hate him, with very little, few lines, no backstory at this point) that I am looking forward to some kind of horrendous disgrace befalling him soon, hopefully at the hands of a woman.

Did Roger send Joan flowers on valentine’s day, saying they were from her (their!!!) son? Were we ever given a plot twist that dispensed once and for all with Joan’s inept armed forces surgeon husband? How is her little boy? How’s her love life?

Oh Peggy! You haven’t found the way to be a generous, fair, good tempered boss. You’re channeling all the wrong parts of Don. Your innocence is turning to brittleness too soon.

Till next week,

Megan, Betty, and Henry

 

Find "Point Counterpoint" Season 7 Episode 1 here.

Point Counterpoint: David Lehman and Amy Gerstler on Mad Men Season 7 Episode 1

Betty Draper shoots birds (from “Shoot” — Season One, Episode 9)

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 4:16 PM, David Lehman wrote:

Dear January Jones,

How did you like last night's doings?

Here are my observations:

(1) "Poor Peggy." Some things don't change.

(2) So Don is ghosting, and his replacement at the firm is a dullard.

(3) Pete is in a surprisingly good humor. Maybe the 70s, that awful decade, will be good for the likes of him.

(4) Poor Megan. Some things do change.

(5) Do you think we will see more of the passenger who sat next to Don on the flight back to New York?

(6) I agree entirely with the lovely grown-up daughter who forgives her daddy at brunch in the Plaza (but hold, please, the eggs benedict.)

(7) With how many bodies does Roger share his (or whose) bed?

(8) Is Don still living in the NYC flat he owned with Megan -- only it has fallen into disrepair to the extent that he can't close the terrace doors?

(9) Don't throw your lighted cigarettes on the terrace, Don. Only you can stop forest fires.

(10) In transition: Ted; Joan. Absent: Betty, Sally, Bert Cooper. What is Ginsberg thinking?

I love your gin, which I am sipping this very evening.
Love,

David

---

On Friday, Apr 18, 2014 at 8:08 PM Amy Gerstler wrote:

 

Hi David,

Due to several categories of glitches, I was not able to watch the mad men episode till last night, hence my delay in responding to your vital 10 part query. And now we viewers have the second episode almost upon us.

1. Poor Peggy indeed. And poor Joan. When will the Mad Men bra burning/Gloria Steinem/1st wave feminist episode be aired?

2. Don's replacement is worse than a dullard, and hopefully will do something really outrageous to get himself run out of the company on a rail so Don can return, UNLESS the move is going to be to have Don start his own renegade agency, maybe in California, rescuing Peggy and Joan and a few other worthies in the process. Likely?

3. Pete is ever vile and deliciously snarky. And he looks horrid in golf shirts! Which is perfect! (or was it a tennis shirt?) How soon will Don boff the blonde real estate babe Peter had his arm around?

4. Poor Megan in so many ways! Which will destroy her first? Her marriage to Don or her having willingly walked into the maw of deepest darkest Hollywood?
5. I would like to see more of the woman on plane. What are the chances?
6. I'm a little fretful about what moves Roger's daughter is going to pull now that she has "forgiven" him. I smell membership in a cult or weird religion on the horizon as the reason she's so "forgiving" now. Maybe born again?
7. Those orgies are going to sap Roger's strength. But I like his spirit of inquiry about everything.
8. I share your confusion about where Don is living now...since he's still being paid maybe he kept that swank flat? Yet with Megan's rent in Laurel Canyon or Hollywood Hills, or wherever she moved, and her not seeming to be employed in movies and TV quite yet, perhaps he's had to take a smaller cheaper place where the doors stick? What are those doors a metaphor for?
9. Yes, forest fires and coyotes...this is what passes for a portrait of California.
10. I wish you and Stacey were bi-coastal as Mad Men now seems to be!

Going to a Dodger game tonight. They are playing the Diamondbacks. Hope they squash them.

much love,

a.