I’ve made a couple of trips to San Francisco recently, and on my way home, I keep thinking about the Mork from Ork rainbow suspenders I had when I was a kid.
When you’re heading into San Francisco from Sonoma, there’s a quick tunnel that’s dedicated to Robin Williams. Whenever I’m going into the city, popping out of the tunnel is so exciting because it’s the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge — especially if I happen to be driving in the morning when the fog is hovering under the bridge like a cloud.
It’s so beautiful.
But on the way home, there’s a sweet rainbow painted over the entrance of the Robin Williams Tunnel that seems so fitting, and for me at least, the rainbow always makes me think of my favorite sitcom as a kid, Mork & Mindy. I loved that show!
I thought Mindy was so pretty — and I liked how she wore her hair. Instead of using clips or barrettes, she had two mini-ponytails holding back the side pieces of her hair. I used to ask my mom to pull my super-fine, super-thin hair into “Mindy-tails.” Then I’d tie ultra long ribbons onto the “tails” so it would feel like I had longer hair.
And I liked how Mindy accepted Mork — this oddball alien from the planet Ork who probably drove her crazy, but she loved nonetheless. Mindy always went out of her way to help the world understand Mork, and so Mork could better understand Earth.
I guess my mom understood how much I liked that show because without even asking, one year for Christmas, I got a pair of Mork’s famous rainbow suspenders with these awesome buttons on the front straps! One button was a white-gloved hand balled up with a pointer finger pointing to the other strap button, which had a moon and stars on it.
I loved looking at those suspenders — mostly because wearing them was not the best experience. The clips were kind of cheap and so they did less suspending than I needed them to. So if I decided to wear them, I’d have to pull my pants or shorts up really high (creating a terrible wedgie) just to keep the clips hooked onto my waistband.
But when I was remembering my days as an honorary “Orkian” with a hostile wedgie, I wondered how Mork would explain America to the leaders of Ork if he was submitting one of his episode-ending reports today. In my memory of that sitcom, every episode found the best punch lines in the double-standards Mindy would have to try to explain to poor Mork. Things that were obvious to the viewer as an accepted form of hypocrisy or perhaps one of those classic moments where people live by the credo, “do as I say, not as I do,” were quite confusing for Mork.
And all kidding aside, some of those same double-standards are still quite confusing for me sometimes, too.
I could openly question some of the biggest forms of hypocrisy on my mind in this post, but just like Mork & Mindy, I prefer to keep things light. However, sometimes I wonder if “keeping things light” is the reason our world gets so confusing and so many things in our culture don’t make sense. People aren’t asking the questions anymore about “why does this look like a double-standard,” and “why is this or that really happening?”
I suppose the reason people like me avoid going public with too many of my “wondering” thoughts is because it can be quite dangerous to be curious these days. And, there isn’t a single “Mindy” voice out there that is unpacking the complex and nuanced issues of the day in a way that everyone is willing to listen to or believe. It’s very noisy with opinions and defensive explanations, but in all of that, it’s not easy to find clarity.
One of Mork’s other big challenges was keeping his inner monologue to himself, and so some of the things he’d honestly ask or say would often create the climax of the episode. Luckily, the unraveling would be corrected within 22-minutes or so — and if necessary, there would be a “TO BE CONTINUED” situation to give Mindy a bit more time. But by the time the episode ended, Mork would be giving Orson a pretty good explanation of things here on Earth, and everyone would just feel better by the time the credits would start to roll.
I think a lot of people miss Robin Williams. He was an incredible actor, and boy did he make me laugh on that show! But I think I also miss the idea of a simple explanation for complex things. I miss the belief that it’s possible to sum up every contradiction and complicated reality using simpler words that even an outer-space being can accept just so you can keep moving through life in a productive and hopeful way.
