11:00 AM - Weds 7.08.20
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I've been watching a lot of NYPD Blue lately (For the uninitiated, NYPD Blue was a cop show on ABC that ran 12 seasons, from 1993-2005).
The "H&I" channel on Antenna TV runs four-episode marathons weeknights starting at 1 a.m. - I don't watch it all night long (Though I'm tempted), but I frequently watch that first episode at 1 a.m. (And since I don't think it's helpful for me to be up that late, since I tend to wake up early anyway and it makes for a foggy day, I've started watching a lot of episodes on YouTube, to try to curb my late-night viewing habit).
Whether this is or isn't a waste of my time - It's a great show in my estimation, but I have seen it. And there are other, perhaps more productive, things I could be doing - it's struck me again how much I like Dennis Franz's work as "Sipowicz" (He started out being a supporting character on the show. But when David Caruso left after the first season - over the years, replaced by a series of actors in the "lead" role - He became the real heart of the show).
Over a 12 year run, Franz got to play as complicated and flawed a character as I've ever seen on TV. And was great at it.
And while it's extremely unlikely anyone's going to cast me as a racist, alcoholic bulldog-of-a-cop struggling to be a good man (I don't read as a "tough guy" to casting folks. Besides, I think, at this point, I'm closer to Franz's age when the show ended than when it began), I'd love to have someone cast me in something where I got to play a character with so many "colors".
These days - I'm an old white man in a time when that's of no interest to anyone (And we're in a pandemic that's shut down "The Business" for four months now, with no clear end in sight) - it seems like an increasingly-unlikely pipe dream.
But it's the pipe-dream I've got.
I have been thinking a lot lately about Christianity.
Not just "lately" really - "Christianity", particularly the loathsome Fundamentalist/Evangelical wing, has been high on my list of answers to the question "What's wrong with our society?" for most of my adult life - but particularly lately with their embrace of, in my estimation, the worst human being who's ever occupied the Oval Office.
It's made me think about my own "journey" regarding "Faith" and my journey out of it.
I am an Atheist.
For years after I rejected Christianity, I identified as "Agnostic" because I thought it was the "intellectually honest" view to hold, thinking Atheism was a stated-as-fact belief that there is (or are) no God (or "gods")
But now I identify as Atheist, accepting the definition of Atheism as being "A lack of a belief in God or gods", not as a stated-as-fact assertion that "There is no God" (In certain Atheist circles, I might be described as a "Soft Atheist")
And since Agnosticism is saying "I don't know" that means, by default, you don't "believe".
(The above is just an opening - I've been meaning to write about my former Christianity, my mid-life Agnosticism, and my current Atheism for years now - but Jane R. is coming over soon so this "opening salvo" will have to serve as a placeholder for a longer entry in the very near future.)
Right now, I'm just grateful to the God-I-Don't-Believe in that I didn't actually delete this entry the way I thought I did a short time ago.
Anyway, till next time...
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