Why are the British such excellent actors?  I mean, have you ever seen a performance by an English thespian and said to yourself: "Boy, they really can't act."  I'm guessing it's either a flat out "No" or you're going to have to really rack your brain to think of one.  I mean, even with their famous reserve; and you can see it when you're watching--they still manage to be completely, authentically emotional.  Americans, on the other hand, go running around on stages and in front of movie cameras trying to relive personal trauma to make their acting more "real" and "authentic" while the Brits just sort of go out there and do it without all the fuss and usually out-act their American peers.  Just an observation. 
​And we might observe the young lady above.  She is Jenny Agutter.  She's British.  This a still of her as "Jessica 6" in the 1976 movie, Logan's Run.  Pretty stunning.  And that costume.  She's completely nude beneath it (if you watch the movie, it's quite apparent).  But she's entirely unselfconscious about it.  That is quite apparent too. Now, Ms. Agutter does not strike me as an exhibitionist.  It's more like she said: "Oh, I got cast in this movie about a city full of people who rather run around naked.  Well, I suppose I ought to get comfortable then."
But before I get into more about Ms. Agutter I wanted to examine something that came up in part 1 of this blog.  In the opening credits of Makin' It, there's one of those special credits at end.  You know, like: "...and Carol Channing as The Beaver."  In this case it's "And Lou Antonio as Joseph Manucci."  Lou who?  Why did Mr. Antonio warrant this special credit.  Did I miss something (and I watched a lot of TV)?  If anyone, it was Ellen Travolta who should've received the special credit.  And what about the other actors listed in the cast?  Let's take one, for example: Denise Miller.  Was this the height of her fame.  If it was, why?  Why didn't she go on to the movies and entertainment stardom.  What separates one actor from another?  What is it that takes Tom Hanks to the stratosphere and Peter Scolari to the entertainment hinterlands when both of them were equally good (and I would argue Peter was cuter and funnier than Tom)?  Was it because Tom was taller?

This is an interesting clip; and my hat is doffed to the person who actually had the time (and the interest) to put it together.  It's every actor who "Guest Starred" on the 70's detective show Cannon.  Sure, you've heard about many of them; know who many of them are.  But I would say a good three-quarters of them you'll say?  Who?  You'd never heard of them before Cannon and then you never heard of them after Cannon:

It starts to sound like a high school graduation roll call to oblivion.
But back to Jenny...
OMG, I forgot all about Walkabout​!  

Jenny was just a teenager when she appeared in this 1971 film.  An arthouse hit at the time, which led to Logan's Run.  But after Logan's Run, Farrah Fawcett was the actor from that movie that went on to super-duper-iconic-stardom.  Jenny must've gone back to England.  So, it was five years until she did Werewolf.  She and David Naughton had off the charts chemistry.  So what happened?  I guess we'll never know for sure.  Is it simply fate and luck in conjunction that determines who makes it to what level?  Maybe Jenny simply didn't care whether or not she became a Big Star.  There are people out there like that. Also, Walkabout is a fantastic movie; somehow forgotten now.  I urge you to see it.  And Logan's Run (which is a bit dated but still fun).
I had a friend and room-mate when I lived in Los Angeles.  He was an actor.  He got ​cast in a "featured guest star" role (like all those actors in the Cannon clip) on a show called Reasonable Doubts.  It starred Marlee Matlin and Mark Harmon.

He was a featured guest star.  His name was in the opening credits.  And then...nothing.  He just gave up.  All I ever heard about was his aspiring acting career and wanting to be a star and then he actually gets himself on a major network TV show; and then nothing.  I was actually kind of pissed at him.  Do you know how many actors and aspiring actors and wannabe stars get nowhere close to that point?  Do you know how many actors ever get beyond "extra" (if they're even able to get to that point)?  The answer is: next to none.  Apparently after all those years of struggling; Reasonable Doubts was the apex for him.  But the thing is, he didn't struggle all that long.  A couple of years before that Doubts gig.  Nah, he gave up too soon.  I'm still pissed at him.  I'm kind of pissed at myself too.  All those years of living in L.A. and I never pursued "the acting thing."  It was a submerged desire that I'd submerged because frankly, I had friends who, in a way, actively discouraged me from it.  And I listened to them.  It's amazing what a few well placed doubts from a "friend" can do to you.  It wasn't until I left Los Angeles that I started acting on a regular basis.  Ya live ya learn, I guess.

Actually, in researching this, I've come across a lot of "cheese-cakey" pictures of Jenny.  Maybe she was a bit of an exhibitionist.  Or I think more comfortable with nudity (and not afraid to use it to her advantage).  Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it!  She still works.  Currently she's playing a nun(!) on the PBS show Call the Midwife.  But there's something about her other than a gorgeous body and pretty face.  There's a magnetism.  Watch anything she's ever done.  She steals every scene she's in without even trying.  Your eyes are constantly drawn to her in any scene.  She has "It."  She has The X factor by the bucketload.
Her birthday is December 20th.  So that's it.  She's a Sagittarius.  Well that explains it all then, I should think.  She simply didn't want to be a Big Star. ;)

The other night I caught An American Werewolf in London on the BBC channel.  I hadn't seen it since the early 80's, when it was on heavy cable rotation.  I had always admired the film; but I'd forgotten just how good it truly was.  An American classic (in London), I daresay, by now.  For whatever reason they cut some of the brief nudity.  Mostly shots of the star's butt.  I mean, come on.  Really?  It's 2021.  We've all seen butt-cracks.  Couldn't they at least of blurred his crack like they do on Naked and Afraid?  Or, wait...do they give full butt-crack on that show?  I think they do.  They only blur things when someone bends over and you might see BOBB (back of ball-bag); and who wants to see that?  Am I right?  No, I'm wrong!  But I meander...
So anyway, I'm sure there's a pic out there of said intergluteal cleft.  Let me see if I can find it...

Well, maybe it was just side butt.  That beautiful behind belonged to Mr. David Naughton; the star of An Ameican Werewolf in London.  I think it was his first movie.  And it was a massive hit as I recall.  And then David went on to do...
not much, if anything.  And that's what I want to explore in this blog.  The why?  Because he didn't deserve to just disappear.  Some of you may recall how he got his start:  the old fashioned way.  In a commercial.  But not just any commercial.

He can sing!  He can dance too!  OMG, that's so freakin' adorable I have to play another one!

​Now, this is back in the late '70s.  Back then, an aspiring actor and/or star would start out in commercials, segue into a TV show, then make the leap into movies.  If he/or she was able to do this, then they would hunker down in movies and proceed to try and become a Movie Star.  If that worked, the next stop was Super-Star.  Then he or she would do that until they got old.  Age puts everyone into career decline; so then it's things like guest spots on TV shows and then perhaps, finally, back to commercials.  This entire paradigm has been turned on it's head in 2021.  Now, if an actor is able to break through to the TV/movie level, they also immediately begin appearing in television commercials for as many products as they possibly can.  Actors pushing products used to be called "selling out."  Nowadays, I would say they're "selling in."  Back in the day, at least stars had the decency to slink off to Japan to do commercials; but now they're hitting each other over the heads with their Golden Globes to get as many endorsements as they can; and going for each other's throats with their SAG cards for voice-work.
But back to David.
After the Dr. Pepper ads, which went on for quite some time, David landed a sitcom in 1979.  It was called Makin' It.  Here's the opening credit sequence with it's uber-catchy theme song, sung by David:

​In fact, the theme song was released as a single and made it to the top of the charts.  Here it is, in full:

There is also an "extended version."  As much as I like this song; I'll spare you that.
Makin' It (the TV show) was released in the spring of '79.  It lasted nine episodes.  Perhaps that it came out at the very end of the disco era (the show was a thinly veiled rip-off of Saturday Night Fever) spelled its immediate doom.  That, and that it was not very good.  That summer was the summer they killed disco officially at that "Disco Demolition Night" in Chicago.  I guess ABC saw the writing on the wall and killed Makin' It before it could implode on its own. But that failure would free David up to make the werewolf movie. 
Around this time ABC had two other sitcoms that launched two other actors who were in the same general ball-park as David Naughton.  Around the same age.  Same basic type. Dark hair, Roman noses and sparkling eyes. They were these two gentlemen:

Of course, that's John Travolta from Welcome Back Kotter and Tom Hanks from Bosom Buddies.
John had left his sitcom pretty fast as Stardom was beckoning for him out of the gate.  Within two years or so he'd made Saturday Night Fever which became a phenomenon and launched him into true Superstardom.  John could do whatever he wanted.
Tom didn't leave his show.  It was cancelled after two seasons.  But he was able to move over into movies, starting with Splash, which was a big hit and established Tom as a viable leading man.  But it wouldn't be until Big that Tom would become as big as John had been.  I say "had been" because by 1988, John's career was officially pretty much over after several flops and questions about his personal life. But then he had a comeback in 1989 with Look Who's Talking, the first of many comebacks.  In fact, he's had more ups and downs than Stormy Daniels.  He's currently on a down-turn; but never count him out.  Nobody puts John in a corner.
​But back to David:

Or the back of David's head.  And the front of his leading lady from Werewolf: Jenny Agutter, another amazing actor who never really broke through, despite being in at least two smashes (I'll be writing about her in another entry).
So, American Werewolf comes out, it's a smash hit at the box-office; then, it becomes even more popular because it's on 'round the clock on HBO and everyone in America has just basically gotten cable TV; so it becomes an instant and instantaneously loved favorite.  And then...nothing.  Why was a sequel not rushed into production?  The same cast, same writer, director (John Landis, btw), etc.?  I mean, I know David gets shot at the end of the movie; but it ends so abruptly, we don't know if he's dead or still alive (I mean, he's a werewolf).  Was it set up that way intentionally, so that if it was a success the sequel is set up?  I mean, if he is "dead"--in the fantasy genre, there's a million ways to bring the character back.  Dream sequences.  He wasn't killed.  He's now one of the walking dead.  Whatever.  And of course Jenny has to be pregnant with his werebaby.  An infinity of story ideas.  But nothing.  
So, coming off this mega-smash phenom of a movie, why was David Naughton guest starring on The Love Boat a mere two years later?

Oops. Wrong actor.
That's Tommy back in 1980, guesting on The Love Boat.  ABC must've had some clause in the contracts for their new hires: Employee herewith agrees to no less than one guest appearance on The Love Boat.  Further; employee has zero input into which "vignette" they appear in.  Failure to get on board may result in immediate termination.
Isn't he adorable!  I have often been told that I look like him.  Here's me at around that same time:

Why, we coulda been bruddahs!  This portrait (my high school yearbook, senior year, natch) used to hang in my parent's house.  My niece once told me (she more or less lived with my parents) that a lot of people would comment on the picture and ask if I was a person of color.  And that is NOT a perm.  That is my actual hair.
But back to David, again.
So, why did he have such a precipitous plunge after An American Werewolf in London​?  It doesn't make any sense.  His follow up to Werewolf was a TV movie called, I Desire, which aired on ABC.  Right after that he appeared on The Love Boat.  Did he have some contractual obligation to ABC that was somehow connected to Makin' It?  That they forced him to fulfill; thus, killing any career momentum he might've had going?  Or did he just have incredibly bad representation?  An agent or manager who didn't know their ass from their elbow?  Or was he a hot-head?  Difficult to work with?  Nah, you can tell he's a sweet-heart.  But maybe he wasn't.  People can fool you.
Or, was something more sinister at work?  Something like a curse?

Now, at the risk of sounding silly: I cannot say I do not believe in curses.  Some things just seem to have bad ju-ju.  I'm also an actor.  Actors, although most won't admit it, are a thoroughly superstitious type of people.  Just try going into a theater; any theater in any part of the world; and say "Macbeth" and see how many stink-eyes you get.  Some projects, for whatever reason, seem to have; well, let's just say an inordinate amount of troubles that go on after the production wraps.  Famously, Superman, in any of its incarnations.  The Exorcist.  King Tut's Tomb.  Of course, you can examine the lives of people involved in any project of any type and find misery and tragedy.  Still, some things seem to have more.  An American Werewolf in London deals with the curse of the werewolf.  The movie features a pentagram.  You don't mess with pentagrams.
Or if not curses; how about plain old luck.  David, Tom and John are all excellent entertainers.  John and David can also sing and dance.  I wonder if Tom can sing?  As actors, I would say they were all of equal ability.  But David disappeared, more or less.  John's career has been wildly erratic.  And Tom has steadily risen to the highest plateau of show business.  In fact, he's gone beyond that.  He's officially become "America's Dad."  He plays legends like Mr. Roger's and Walt Disney.  In fact, he's in jeopardy of becoming so iconic and irredeemably saintly that he won't be able to play anything but saints from here on out.  Which is another way of saying he's in danger of becoming boring.  My advice to Tom would be to immediately play a nice juicy villain.  Or at least a cad.  How about Trump: The Motion Picture?  Hey, playing Bill Clinton worked for John; and wasn't that like his ninth come-back?

So, let's light a candle to the good ju-ju.  And say a prayer for actors everywhere.  And maybe, just maybe, we may get to see David's behind again, in all it's unblurred beauty.

In the first edition of my book, 83 In the Shade, I misused the word "prospective" twice.  But I somehow managed to use it wrong in two different contexts.  I wrote: "...in their prospective High School yearbooks..." when I meant "respective" and then, in describing a stage set "...it was one of those forced prospective things..." instead of "perspective."  I know the meanings of all those words; but they came out of my brain as such.  Like when you write "here" instead of "hear" (or vice-versa); but since I at least spelled them correctly, the spelling algorithm didn't alert me.  Then I overlooked them and they got into print.  I fixed the first misuse; but the second one is still in the book.
Now, the character of Michael McNamara is pretty smart.  He's something of a know-it-all.  But even know-it-alls get some things wrong once in a while.  So, I thought, maybe I'll just leave it in and the reader can wonder if it was intentional or not.  That the meaning of "prospective" was something that had gotten away from Michael.  Like, for the longest time I thought "chaos" was pronounced cha (as in cha-cha)-os.
But of course, Michael's brain is also my brain, so I cringe at this mistake.  But quite frankly, I am tired of tinkering around with the book on KindleDirect.  So I'm going to leave it in.  Now, I still get confused about the difference between "prospective" and "prospect"; so I'm also going to dub it a lucky word.  As in, the prospective prospects of my book are practically perfect.  
I hope that puts it into perspective. 

Caution: Blog may contain spoilers for 83 In the Shade (my first novel--but you probably know that by now.  But have you read it?).

I don't know Mr. John Travolta.  I have never met him.  I have never seen him from afar, other than the back row of a movie theater.  But I know I like him.  In fact, I like him so much, I put him in my book.  He's practically a character in it. The book has a lot of references to Staying Alive.  That was a movie from 1983 that John starred in.  It was the sequel to Saturday Night Fever.  It was directed by Sylvester Stallone.  John appeared in a centerfold in Rolling Stone magazine (as well as on the cover) to promote the movie:

When Pauline Kael reviewed the movie, she made an interesting comment: "...Travolta, who's in danger of turning into a laughingstock, if he doesn't put some clothes on and stop posing for magazine covers as though it were Hiawatha night at the O.K. Corral."  She also used the word "flagrantly" earlier in the piece in regards to Travolta.  Clearly, this is her coded way of saying that John is beginning to come off as gay.  But she wouldn't come out and say it.  She was decidedly homophobic, I think.  And I'm not quite so sure she wasn't a little "flagrant" herself.  So, she's basically telling him to get that closet door shut back up tight or it's Star-lights out for John.  But he's proved her wrong.  Time and again.  And again.  And again.
Now, we all know the rumors that have swirled around Mr. Travolta probably since around the time he posed for that cover.  I'm not here to gossip about him (although, let's face it, I am).  I don't know what he does in the privacy of a bedroom.  I don't particularly care.  But a lot of people do; and I understand why.  Especially for gay men.  If a guy becomes a big movie star (and in Travolta's case, cultural icon) and in actuality he's gay; but then he gets married and has kids and says he isn't (although in Travolta's case, I don't think he's ever said he wasn't)--well, the message that delivers to gay men is that it's wrong and it's bad to be gay. This is still commonplace in Hollywood; so for all the talk about diversity and so on; the same message is being sent.  That's why people obsess over it. 

​The concept of the "beard" may very well have been invented by Hollywood.  A beard is usually a woman who dates and/or marries a gay man so that the gay man appears "straight."  There's also the "lavender marriage" wherein a gay man and a gay woman become beards for one another.  Some "lavender couples" (rumored to have been) include Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, Adrian and Janet Gaynor and Vincent Price and Coral Browne... 

But are any of these people actually fooling anyone?  And why is it okay, generally (although it has famously killed careers) for a "straight" guy to play gay?  And why was it some kind of breakthrough when Neil Patrick Harris, openly gay, was cast as a womanizer on How I Met Your Doogie?

When I watch that show, am I sitting there thinking, "I'm not convinced.  He can't play a womanizer!"  Well, actually, I am.  And it's not because Neil is gay.  It's because I think he's completely miscast in that role.  He's simply not the right type.  If it was a young John Travolta, I'd be all in.  When I watch the old Doris Day/Rock Hudson bedroom comedies (which still, miraculously hold up); am I again "unconvinced" (and here is a case where we now know ALL the beans about the man)?  No. I have no problem believing that Rock's cads and Dads are rocking Doris' van.

I mean, even John Wayne, the face of American male--everything--was rumored to have been to sex orgies at Mae West's apartment with the USC football team.  That would've put him in a room with a lot of naked guys where no one was showering. And only one woman.  A woman a lot of people wondered about if she actually was ​a woman. Here he is many years later with Gary Cooper.  What's wrong with this picture?

Or should we ask, what's right with this picture?  Well, what isn't right is that John Wayne would wear that outfit. And I don't think even the famously polymorphously playful Gary Cooper can pull off those espadrilles. And then they went poster shopping...

A picture says a thousand words, doesn't it?  I remember when I first saw this one: (Please see Enquirer cover below).

It was on the cover of The National Enquirer in the early 80's.  The man on the left is Paul Barresi.  He's originally from Massachusetts.  He's kind of known all over Hollywood for a variety of reasons; many a wee bit on the unsavory side.  I met him once.  He was very charming and had an undeniable animal magnetism.  I was working at a video editing company at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, in the Taft building.  The company specialized in editing "adult entertainment."  Yes, I too did a few things that were a wee bit on the unsavory side.  Paul was a client.  He was himself involved in the "adult entertainment" industry.  A lot of it involving spanking.  You can't make this stuff up.  I was the receptionist (I did a lot of receptioning in L.A.!).  We got to talking; not about John.  Apparently Paul will tell you about everything that allegedly happened between him and Tony Manero with near full disclosure; if asked.  I was more interested in the fact that he was from Lynn, Mass.  I think I'd recognized a bit of a Boston accent and asked him about it.  I mentioned that I was from Saugus, a town that borders Lynn.  Lynn is a bit on the sketchy side.  It even has its own Limerick: Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin; you never go out the way you went in!  He grew quite excited when I mentioned Saugus.  He asked me if I knew a teacher there.  I'll call him Jimmy Marino.  Yes, I knew Jimmy Marino.  He had been a teacher and coach at my junior high school.  I also knew that Jimmy was rumored to be a womanizer.  Or should I say, young womanizer.  Really young womanizer.  There were all kinds of rumors floating around about Jimmy and some of his female students.  I didn't mention this to Paul.  He explained to me that Jimmy was originally from Lynn and that the two had grown up together.  Had been boyhood best friends.  Jimmy too had animal magnetism.  He was also drop-dead gorgeous.  I could easily understand how he could seduce, well, anyone he wanted to.  City of Sin indeed.  Paul, though not as gorgeous as Jimmy, had a perfect physique and was the epitome of the "Daddy" archetype.  Here he is during his modelling days:

Paul is on the right, rocking that pair of...whatever he's rocking.  I vividly remember when I first saw the Enquirer cover.  I think it's from 1982 and my friends and I were in the Purity Supreme grocery store.  We grabbed the paper and pored over the article.  We had zero problem believing the claims of that article.  I mean all you have to do is look at the picture.  As I recall there was a lot of legal kerfuffle over this story; perhaps a retraction--not from The Enquirer but Paul.  Some kind of gag order.  I'm sure the details are all out there in the ethersphere.  It's kind of sad.  They looked really great together.

Myself and my best friend were both kind of "into" older men.  I think we were more envious of John than we were of Paul.  So, I guess I'm rehashing this in a somewhat prurient attempt to point out the simultaneously random and yet somehow collated wavelengths of The Universe.  I mean, looking at that picture in 1982 did I ever think I'd ever meet either of those people?  No.  Of course not.  Or that one of them was from one town over and had grown up with a man who'd actually taught me (well, he never taught me exactly; but he was the moderator of a couple of my study halls)?  No.  But then I did. 
​Or that John Travolta would become a muse that would lead me to writing my first book?
I read once about the "magical artifact."  I'm not sure who the author was or even if that was what they called it.  But the concept was, that in many books and stories and so forth; there is usually some thing that propels the protagonist forward through the book.  For example: the painting of the goldfinch in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Or the ring from Lord of the Rings.  There's, of course, "The MacGuffin"; which is a device which merely pushes the plot forward.  The magical artifact is deeper than that.  Like the tree, in A Separate Peace.  I guess the "magical artifact" is perhaps maybe a little more spiritual.  A bit more symbolic.  I see now that John Travolta himself is the "magical artifact" in my book.  Near the end of the book; the protagonist receives an answer to a fan letter that he and his friend had sent to John.  John sends back one of his armbands from the movie.  

Curious, I did a websearch.  I typed in "John Travolta armband."  Sure enough, a link popped right up (see the first image above).  There it was.  Why?  What was this little scrap of cloth still doing in the world?  I mean, at the very least you would think it would be somewhere at the back of John Travolta's closet.  But it's not.  Someone had the foresight to keep it.  Why?  ​The movie was only a modest commercial success.  Today it's remembered as a flop and a turkey.  Why is that piece of costume still around; coming from an industry that is notorious for throwing away its history.  Its history from even its greatest successes?  And it wasn't even a very good costume.  And yet, there it is.  Did The Universe know that some day I'd look for it.  Did The Universe collate it for me?  Is The Universe saving it for me so that one day, if it comes up at auction, I can put in my bid.  And tap into the wavelengths that it still pulsates with. 
​I'd like to think so.

"(Obviously any of my generalizations are subject to numerous exceptions and infinite qualifications; let's assume I know this, and that I use large generalizations in order to be suggestive rather than definitive.)" --Pauline Kael

I love that quote.  So, please apply Ms. Kael's note to the following...

I was recently on my way to see the new documentary, Summer of Soul.  So, I was chatting with my husband.  You know, one of those conversations you have when you're in a car.  I brought up the recent obsession with the planet Mars.  Especially the obsession with Mars that seems to be possessing Rich White Men.  There's a new Space Race; but instead of the moon, this time it's the Red Planet.  Now, I'm all for space exploration and such-like.  But the more I think about it; the more it seems to me to be phenomenal waste of money.  I expressed this sentiment to my husband, who didn't disagree with me.
Now, he has The Shining.  He's a Pisces.  They are prescient.  Clairvoyant.  Soothsaying.  Call it what you will.  And it seems that after twenty some years, his Shining is rubbing off on me.  During the movie, which is set in the summer of 1969, there's a segment where people at the Harlem Music Festival are being asked about the moon landing and why they're not at home watching it on TV.  Many of them express the sentiment that going to the moon is a waste of time and money when the earth already has enough problems "down here"; and that that would be money better spent: on the planet Earth.  We turned to each other in the darkness of the theater.  But of course, we're both kind of used to that now.  But still, it was exactly what we were talking about in the car.
But why Mars?  Don't we have enough war down here? 

So, colonies on Mars?  Correct me if I'm wrong; but the idea is that we go to Mars to establish a residence for humans while we continue to wring the Earth for every drop of resource we can until we're left with a desiccated rind.  So, as we're transforming Earth into an uninhabitable Venus, the idea is that we move to Mars which is only slightly more inhabitable if we live inside bubbles and space-suits?  Is that what you're telling me Jeff and Elon and Richard?  Or are you guys trying to trick everyone into going to Mars so can you have more of the Earth for yourself?  Sounds more likely.  Or, are you just wanting to exploit Mars for whatever untold riches it might have lurking beneath it's crimson crust?

So, lets say, a couple of billion dollars (more or less) was sunk into putting a roving robot on Mars.  So far, it's sent back pictures of a landscape that looks exactly like the Nevada desert.  They could've sent someone out there for about $50 bucks worth of gas and gotten the same thing.  Can you imagine what two billion dollars put towards ocean clean-up or wildlife conservation could do?  
You know, nowadays I'm afraid to go to the grocery store.  No, it's not just the parking lot mass murderers; it's what's inside the store: PLASTIC.

Okay, I'm not a climate scientist.  Many of the following assertions may come across as overly simplified.  Maybe even simple minded.  But I need to express these thoughts because I'm becoming a little obsessive.
Okay.  So, if we look in Andy's shopping cart, the majority of the packaging is paper, metal and glass.  In fact, I don't see any plastic packaging in his cart at all.  I don't see much plastic on the shelves around him.  If you took this same picture today...well, maybe it's not a good example.  The Brillo pads still come in cardboard boxes.  Campbell's soup remains the same.  You can still get Coke in bottles.  The Heinz Ketchup, today, would be plastic.  The point is that almost everything nowadays is packaged in plastic.  If you throw a plastic bottle in the woods, it won't biodegrade for another 400 years or so.  At least paper, glass and metal eventually decay in a somewhat timely fashion.  Toss some broken glass in the sea and you get beautiful sea-glass in a couple of years.  Throw a plastic botte in the ocean and it will be there for several centuries.

When I go in my local Kroger's grocery store I look around at all the stuff.  And most of that stuff is contained in plastic.  Eventually, that stuff will come out of that plastic and then that plastic will have to go somewhere.  Kroger's is one of three large grocery stores within fifteen minutes of my house.  That's one town.  Now, think about how many towns there are in America and even if all of them have just one grocery store; think about all that plastic.  Millions of tons of plastic...which is all going to have to go somewhere.  Except we know that it doesn't go anywhere.  There's a commercial running informing us of how little of the plastic we think we're recycling is actually getting recycled.  So, we've opened this Pandora's Box of Plastic (a plastic box too, natch) and it just keeps coming.  There's this stuff called "microplastic" that has infiltrated the oceans.  We have these plastics in our bodies.  Plastic emits some chemical that can fuck with things like sex hormones and your immune system.  And yet, it still keeps coming.  We have a thing called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  But we shrug and say, "Oh, well."  Out of sight out of mind, right?

My question is, how does THE PLASTIC INDUSTRY get away with this?  They have zero accountability.  Their product is destroying the ecosystem.  Why is this allowed?  And now, it's almost as though we have no choice but to choose plastic.  It's everywhere.  Remember when they tried to introduce that chip bag that would break down in the environment?  And remember when the public rejected that bag because IT WAS TOO NOISY?  I mean, what do people who suffer from plastophobia do?  They can't even hide in their own houses.

Well, I guess the answer to that question is: "Not the American Public."  See, we say want to help the environment but we can't even deal with a noisier potato chip bag.  And so, we just gave up?  I mean, with all the technology we have today, Jeff Bezos couldn't come up with a biodegradable plastic like substance?  No.  I guess he was too busy spending half a billion dollars on a yacht.  And looking to the stars.  And not the dead starfish on the beach who got zapped by global warming.  But I don't want to get too preachy.  I use plastic.  I drive a car that runs on fossil fuel.  I have a carbon footprint.  So, I want to try and be constructive.  So, here's what I would do if I were King of the World...

Give Trees A Chance:
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Trees give shade, right?  And how many trees have been displaced in the name of parking lots across this great nation? Why, there has to be millions of acres of asphalt reflecting heat back into our atmosphere.  So, no shade, hotter temps global warming, right?  Sounds logical to me.  Simple.  Like, remember when we were kids and we sucked down sugared drinks like there was no tomorrow and we never got fat?  And then they replaced sugar with high fructose corn syrup which made beverages so cheap you could drink unlimited amounts at restaurants.  The "free refill."  And then, slowly but surely, people started getting hugely fat?  Well, it's the same logic.  Cause and effect.  So change the cause.  Put the trees back.  You know how people fight for that one parking spot under the tree because they know their car will be nice and cool when they get back in it?  Yeah, kind of a duh moment, huh?
You know that Italian restaurant chain?  The one that has plants and trees all over its roofs?  Carrabbas?

I can't speak to their food; but I like their ideas.  So, clearly, you can plant trees on a roof.  Can you imagine a modern city that had all the buildings swathed in flora?  Why, it would be like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!  Or what if we went one step further and did Hobbit style buildings?

I would happily; nay, merrily; nay, gaily shop at a supermarket that looked like this.  And what about all of the zillions of acres of roadway medians that are cleared of everything but grass?  I mean, I understand in many cases they have to, but it also seems like a lot of times they don't have to.  Is it a conspiracy conspired by the lawnmower industry?

And while we're at it, would it kill us to put in more of those "animal bridges" over and under roadways to help out our fine furred friends?  In the places they've built them, they built them and they did come.  You can watch video of it on Youtube.  And what about those really cool construction cubes you see along the highways in New Jersey of all places.  The ones that foster plant growth?  I mean, why are these not universal?  I mean this stuff is happening; but clearly not fast enough.  Why?  Plants grow pretty damn fast.

Noiseless Biodegradable Plastic

So, the U.S. government came up with Silly Putty pretty quick.  And we already had the biodegradable Sun Chips bag.  So, we can't find a way to develop a malleable product that can be formed into packaging but will also biodegrade?  And that we couldn't go back to the drawing board with the noisy bag and make it less noisy?  I simply don't believe that.  We put a man on the moon a half century ago.  Nobody's trying.  We've drunk the Kool-Aid and also swallowed the plastic container it came in.  Although, Kool-Aid still does come in a paper packet.

​Trash Volcano:

Admittedly, this idea is a bit fanciful.  But what if we could just put our trash into lava?  The lava would instantly vaporize the trash.  The trash would become part of the molten magma.  Now that's recycling!  Of course, you'd have to ship all the trash to a place that was willing to do this, so feasibility is a problem.  But what if we could drill down to the magma and...oh, never mind.  We'd find a way to screw it up.
But, anyways, I'm not the King of the World.  But I can do what I can to help.  I can plant trees. I can join Trees for A Green L.A.  I can recycle plastic, even if its just tears in the ocean.  I can let the property go fairly wild and not try to maintain a lawn. I can spread milkweed seed that I've collected and watch it grow along the roads in my neighborhood; thus, maybe helping a monarch butterfly or two. So I can do small things like that.  And maybe if we all did small things like that, we can bring the temperature down.  
Okay, I've vented.  Time to go plant a tree.