{"id":5916,"date":"2023-09-04T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5916"},"modified":"2023-09-04T13:42:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:42:08","slug":"oh-not-that-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5916","title":{"rendered":"Oh Not That Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not that Guy, the Other Guy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During my recent visit to my family\u2019s home, I was of course required to align some sort of succor to soothe my nerves at the end of the day. This, lest I would currently be sitting in a cell in an orange jumpsuit awaiting trial, my shoelaces and belt a jumbled mess in a deputy\u2019s drawer some yards away. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Succor was needed. But what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years ago that wasn\u2019t even a question. The home away from home away from home was a place called The Langhorne Hotel, a bar that sat as a merciful oasis about 50 yards from my parents\u2019 porch. When they began dangling on my nerves like chunky Tarzans, I\u2019d plod across the street with a book and come back when I was rereading the same paragraph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as I get older, drinking isn\u2019t as much an enjoyable escape from reality as much as an escape into a skull throbbing four-day hangover. Thus, I\u2019d need something a little milder. There\u2019s medication for that, you say? True. But in general I have found that pooping every day is a good way to go through life and pills such as those have a way of, oh, collecting the troops and keeping them pinned inside in a vat of concrete. Mix that tendency with the pasta, pizza, sandwich diet I take on during each August visit, and you have a bout of constipation that could last through November. Just in time for the Christmas rush. Or, as it were, not rush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I elected for TV. Specifically British TV. More specifically British crime TV. Really specifically Endeavor.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endeavor is the prequel to Morse. Morse was my first British detective love. He is a cranky old sod who loves his crosswords and who calls beer \u201cbrain food.\u201d I watched all of Morse back in the early 2000s. Lewis was Morse\u2019s sergeant and after Morse died, Lewis had his own show (that\u2019s how it is with these British detectives). I watched Lewis with glee and then when they ran out of people to kill for Lewis to investigate, they decided to go back to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endeavor is a series about the grumpy Morse as a young man in Oxford in the 60s and 70s. It details his climb up the rungs as a misanthrope and a drinker and as one who has the ability to put off even British people. It\u2019s impressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so each night, after a day of family fun at top volumes and after wiping away my tears of rage and unchoking my throat of contempt, I would settle into my air mattress, shut off the lights, and put on the show. Soon, I\u2019d be in Oxford, family far away, and nothing but a series of grisly murders to contend with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While relaxing to a crime show, I like to choose a character to be. Because I am a nonconfrontational wimp I always choose to be a character that doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the crime. They answer the questions then go off on their day. I choose one of those. Usually, however, the murderer in Endeavor turns out to be one of those very people. The cab driver who found a shirt, the schoolteacher who was roommates with the beslaughtered, the manager of the chocolate store who sold a girl her last lollipop. And if one of those guys aren\u2019t the murderer, then they have so many skeletons in their closet that it\u2019s like a pool in a pool in a Spielberg film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I chose a sideline character, I\u2019d sit back, relax, and bombard my throat with carbohydrates. Then I\u2019d watch in horror as my sideline character, my cabbie, doctor, tax collector, ice cream man, turned out to be psychopathic murderer the whole time. In week two I began dreaming of being grilled by Morse and Fred Thursday, and not in the fun it-wasn\u2019t-me-so-ask-away way that I\u2019d always fantasized about. It was scary. Well, I guess it\u2019s better than drinking.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not that Guy, the Other Guy During my recent visit to my family\u2019s home, I was of course required to align some sort of succor to soothe my nerves at the end of the day. This, lest I would currently be sitting in a cell in an orange jumpsuit awaiting trial, my shoelaces and belt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1xq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}