Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy

JUST SITTING HERE DOING TIME

2012-01-30T10:21:00.000-06:00

Walking down the corridors of a hospital at night, the thing that immediately stands out is the blue TV light shining from patient rooms, and the sounds of different channels wafting into the halls.

The mix is always pretty mainstream. Sports. Religious broadcasts. Sitcoms, both old and new. Shitty Ben Stiller movies that would have been comfortably forgotten had they not been repurposed into basic cable staples. Nothing really demanding of anyone's time or attention.

That's the point, of course. People in a hospital, whether patients or visitors, are a captive audience, but they tune into these shows for the same reason people at home do: Because they're there, and there's nothing else to do.

This sort of TV is often described as the audio-visual equivalent of comfort food, but that's not quite true. A meatloaf and mashed potato dinner may be full of calories and starches, but it will still provide some form of nourishment. This sort of TV doesn't do that--quite the opposite. It deadens the mind and senses.

Sometimes that's needed. There are times in our lives when there is literally nothing else to do, and all that's left is to kill some time. That's the job of most TV, and it does it well.

THE NAMES HAVE ALL CHANGED SINCE YOU HUNG AROUND

2012-01-28T04:21:00.000-06:00

Since this will only be my fourth post for the month, it doesn't seem possible that I could become less prolific around here, but enormous changes in my work schedule are likely to have some sort of trickle-down effect on my writing time.

What this means, I can't really say. It's going to take some time to readjust all the other patterns of my life, and quite honestly, writing isn't as much of a priority as it used to be. I'll presumably pop back here from time to time, but it may take some time before that happens.

For now, let me just note the passing of Robert Hegyes, Juan Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter, my favorite sitcom when I was eleven. It's funny how the clips of Brooklyn street life in the opening credits look vaguely hellish today, but when I was a kid, I longed desperately to go there, to be anywhere away from the isolation of the country. Now, of course, I'd give anything to go back to the life I once had, the life I once hated, the life that is gone forever.

Sorry, did I say "funny"? That may not have been the word I meant...

IS THIS SAD? YES. YES, IT IS...

2012-01-25T04:00:00.000-06:00

The thing is, I get up absurdly early every day in order to give myself time to write. And great googly moogly, it's not as though there's nothing to write about.

The baffling persistence of Newt Gingrich, for instance, and the stunning hypocrisy of the Republican party. The post-death treatment of Joe Paterno by the press, which may make a few concessions to his "tarnished legacy" but still insists that the greatness of being a winning football coach somehow trumps looking the other way as his assistant fucked little boys. Or even the Oscar nominations, which...seriously? Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close? Did anybody like that?

But, as always, I find something--anything--to do with my time to avoid writing. Playmate Of The Apes was on cable, and who can resist the lure of fake tits and bad puns? That was followed by The Pope Of Greenwich Village, the movie that by itself derailed the career momentum of Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke. Neither of these movies are remotely worth watching, despite either abundant nudity or a fine cast that includes Geraldine Page, Kenneth McMillan and M. Emmet Walsh, and yet I sat through them anyway.

Then sat down and knocked this thing out in a couple of minutes, just to reassure myself that, yes, I'm still writing. Sort of.

OH LOOK, CHILDREN, IT SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THOSE RANDOM THOUGHTS POSTS WE'VE HEARD TELL OF

2012-01-12T16:17:00.001-06:00

1) I really don't want to turn this space into a series of musings over songs heard on my cable company's "Seventies Gold" music service, but once again I had it on in the background this morning while I was doing other things (by "other things" I mean reading the Wikipedia entry on Mamie Van Doren), and this came on in the background.

And the thing is, it took me awhile to realize what it was. It sounded like just another sensitive singer/songwriter from an era loaded with 'em, and as such, it didn't really seem, you know, bad. Then at some point I realized, "Oh my God, it's David Soul," and I remembered I was supposed to treat this song with the sneering condescension I regularly bring to clips of Lynda Carter variety specials and whatnot, but honestly, it really isn't bad.

Also, honestly? David Soul's a pretty good actor.

2) So I'm wandering around a department store today and I keep running into the same little kid, who is being chased everywhere by his mom, who keeps calling him by name: "Xander! Come back here!" "Xander! Put that down!" "Xander! This isn't a playground!"

Though I realize there are any number of reasons why she might have named her kid Xander, I prefer to conclude that she's a big fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Because it makes me happy.

3) Janie's dozing in the other room, the TV tuned to back-to-back showings of Young Guns and Young Guns 2. Periodically I feel the need to try watching these things, to see if time has been kind to them, as programmer Westerns from the fifties starring the pretty boy likes of Rock Hudson and Robert Wagner have aged better than might have seemed possible at the time.

Of course, those fifties movies had the advantage of the occasional Douglas Sirk or Nick Ray directing, whereas the Young Guns movies were helmed by the auteurs of Gone Fishin' and Freejack. And even though Emilio Estevez's stock has risen in recent years by simply not being as awful as Martin Sheen's other kid, he's still absolutely terrible in this movie, as are his fellow "guns"--Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christian Slater. Also, dropping in better actors (Alan Ruck, Jenny Wright) or authentic cinematic icons (Terence Stamp, Jack Palance) does its stars no favors.

And seriously, Young Guns 2--you really want to throw a cameo from James Coburn into your crappy Billy The Kid movie? Because anything that makes a viewer think how they could be watching Sam Peckinpah's magnificent Pat Garret & Billy The Kid instead of this piece of shit would seem to be a thing to avoid. But what do I know? It's not like I directed Freejack.

4) To be fair, it's not that basic cable perennial Freejack is a bad movie (though it is) so much as the single laziest, most unnecessary thing ever projected on a screen. Literally every single aspect of this thing had been done before, and better. As bad as movies are now, I sometimes forget just how bad things were in the late eighties and early nineties. (Newsies--enough said.) Next time I'm sitting through the trailer for the latest Resident Evil sequel, I'll try to remember there was once a time when Hollywood thought we all wanted more Emilio Estevez or singin' and dancin' Christian Bale, and be, for lack of a better word, grateful.

5) Cats and dog. Are they adorable? Of course!

EVERYTHING WE ARE WILL NEVER DIE

2012-01-07T07:51:00.003-06:00

Janie's sleeping in the other room, cats gathered all around her. The dog is at my feet, and music plays softly in the background.

Specifically, Music Choice, courtesy of my local cable channel. The choices are broken down according to genres and moods or, in this case, eras--I've got Seventies Gold playing, for no better reason than the hope some song will unexpectedly pop up that sparks a frisson of recognition, conjures a memory so vivid that it can't be shaken.

Because I haven't been having any of those lately. Last Saturday, for instance, was the seventeenth anniversary of my wedding day. The fact that the marriage has been dead for years is beside the point--it was still a milestone in my life, and you'd think, given my nature, I'd spend time ruminating over loss, impermanence, regret, what have you--that's what I do here, after all, to the extent I do anything at all.

Instead, it flashed through my mind once as I sat down to watch New Year's Rockin' Eve and that was that. A good thing, I suppose, moving on and all that, but again, it just doesn't seem like me. I obsess over things that were that will never be again. A passing shrug? Is that all I've got? Really?

I'm eating Fudge Rounds and drinking Sprite for breakfast (because what's the point of living to adulthood if you can't do everything you wanted when you were six?) and when I finish, I take my empty glass to the kitchen. Suddenly the mellow horn intro to the Bee Gees' Too Much Heaven wafts from the TV, and it happens. I have a vivid memory of this song drifting from the radio as my brother John and I drove down 141 heading from the farm to Des Moines on yet another record-buying spree. I'd just seen Brian DePalma's Obsession on TV, with its great, brooding Bernard Herrmann score, and I knew Music Den in Merle Hay Mall had the soundtrack, because I knew everything they had in regular stock, and where everything was, the details assembling in my head with remarkable clarity...

...Until CLANG! Isabella has used her front paw to flip her water dish upside down, and it hits the linoleum with a reverie-shattering sound. She looks at me, head tilted, tail wagging, big brown eyes in full-out soulful mode. "You're in the kitchen," she seems to say. "That means snacks, right? I love snacks. Also, I seem to have spilled my water. Can you do something about that?"

As I get out a biscuit, refill the water and give the dog a big hug, the Bee Gees fade to background noise, and I realize any vivid memories of thirteen-year-old me are...well, only memories. They matter, sure, but they don't--can't--define me. Isabella scampers off, perfectly satisfied, briefly chasing Delmar and Staley, who'd come to the kitchen to see what all the noise was about. I move quietly back to the bedroom and rest my head next to Janie, glad that I've learned to live in the here and now.

COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY

2011-12-31T04:00:00.000-06:00

My brother and sister had vague plans. They had sodas and snacks, and they planned to stay up until midnight. Why, I asked Mom, were they doing this?

"They want to celebrate the new year."

Why?

"Because that's what people do."

I was six, my brother and sister thirteen and eleven--enough older than me that I figured this must be some vaguely grown-up thing. I never stayed up until midnight, but I saw the footage on TV every year of people who did, people crowded together in cold weather, wearing fancy clothes and silly hats, raising glasses in honor of...something.

To me, the new year only represented the end of Christmas vacation. In a couple days I'd be back in school, my brief, glorious period of freedom ended. It wasn't a new beginning, it was an ending. The good times were winding down.

Guess I've always been that way. I've never put much stock into the promise of a bright and shiny new year. Arbitrary markings of time aside, it's just another day. Sure, as I got older, my brother and I took to ironically watching New Year's Rockin' Eve, an act of condescension that eventually became a full-blown ritual, so maybe the joke was on us all along.

Also, of course, I got married on New Year's Eve, and we joked that we picked that date so we could remember our anniversary, but five years later, we'd have no more anniversaries to mark. And for some time after that, I'd try to pretend the evening had no significance, just another night, not a reminder of failure and regret.

But hey, don't let my sourness ruin your mood. I'm doing okay as this year draws to a close. I have to work, so no midnight celebrations here, but let's face it, I probably wouldn't stay up anyway. Still, let me offer wishes to anyone who happens to read this:

Happy New Year.

SUBSTITUTE "BEAGLE" FOR "GUN", AND "BOUNCE AROUND ADORABLY" FOR "FIRE IT"--IT'S JUST LIKE THAT CHEKHOV QUOTE!

2011-12-27T03:53:00.002-06:00

Ordinarily I wouldn't go see a family-friendly crowd-pleaser like We Bought A Zoo, but hey, it was Christmas, Janie and I wanted to go out and, frankly, if you're looking for a relaxing good time at the movies, there aren't many choices.

And really, it's not bad at all. You can sense writer-director Cameron Crowe trying to put a more personal spin on the original script, by Aline Brosh McKenna, author of such by-the-numbers claptrap as Morning Glory and (ugh) 27 Dresses. There are formulaic elements, but Crowe does his best to ignore them, aided immeasurably by Matt Damon's fine performance as a grieving widower trying to do right by his kids while still trying to sort out his own emotions.

So things happen--you might be surprised to learn that Damon buys a zoo--and the whole thing glides along nicely thanks to likeable actors and Rodrigo Prieto's shimmering cinematography. There is, however, one serious flaw that makes the whole movie unwatchable, in my opinion.

The family owns a beagle. There's an early, pre-zoo-buying scene in which Damon's adorable daughter is fixing a sandwich at the kitchen table while the dog just sleeps pleasantly in the other room. I'm not saying that's impossible, but in my experience, any self-respecting beagle is going to be right there at the kid's feet, just in case any food drops onto the floor.

But where the movie just turns into some sort of alternate-universe science fiction crap is when they get to the zoo. And the dog, again, just kind of sits on the porch, or otherwise completely ignores his surroundings.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't possible. This is a scenting dog! In a zoo! He's going to be going nuts, chasing down all the assorted animal smells. For crying out loud, there are foxes at this zoo, and he's a hunting dog. That's a plot point just waiting to happen, and the movie inexplicably ignores it in favor of a wandering bear, a dying tiger and some manufactured fake suspense over whether or not the zoo can be brought up to code.

I realize the vast majority of people could care less about this sort of thing--when I ranted about this to my brother, he said, "I didn't realize beagle owners were even more self-righteous than Mac users"--but I think it should be a good rule of thumb for all filmmakers: If you're going to bring a beagle onscreen, you'd better find something for it to do.

Or at least give it a few more close-ups.

AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

2011-12-26T03:35:00.001-06:00

I take Isabella out for her morning walk, my mind racing through the list of things I have to do before I even go to work: Finish the laundry, wash dishes, plan the week's breakfasts and lunches. Then there are things for later, like deciding which bills to pay first.

It's the day after Christmas, and life goes on.

Whether we mean to or not, we all invest too much in this particular holiday. We carry some ideal of what it should be, or memories of a perfect past that can never be recaptured, and on some level, there is always disappointment. But that feeling of melancholy--is that the right word?--never fully kicks in until the day after.

That's when we shuffle back to work, or return the disappointing gifts, or otherwise realize that our dreams once again didn't quite come true. Nice things happen, good things, yes, but that elusive magic we recall from childhood just never quite reappears. And it will be a whole year before we can reach for it again.

Ah, but we become more aware of our own mortality with each passing year, and more aware, too, that the perfection we seek will never happen. Things are put in better perspective, a hard-won wisdom that tells us that our dreams and disappointments are both equally fleeting. Things don't mean what they once did because they simply can't, there's no time to dwell on what might have been or what once was. Life goes on regardless.

Isabella picks up a scent and pulls on the leash. For her, there is only here and now. That should be enough for anyone.

I HAVEN'T LONG TO STAY

2011-12-23T03:56:00.000-06:00

Back in the day--as recently as the mid-seventies--this thing used to pop up on local stations whenever their programming would run a couple minutes short. And...well, yeah, okay, even as a kid I was prone to depression. But honestly, is there any mood to be conjured by this other than overwhelming despair?

Is it the unaccompanied voices of the Norman Luboff Choir, apparently recorded in a public restroom? Is it the cheap design and animation, which tries to conjure visions of an enchanted wonderland while suggesting nothing so much as a Christmas pageant performed by the residents of an underfunded mental hospital?

Or is it the song itself? Specifically, Suzy's reminder that she hasn't long to stay? "I'll be your best friend," she says, "but don't get too accustomed to me, don't let messy emotions get involved, don't love me, dear God, no, because soon I'll be gone, like a dream before the breaking dawn."

Why was this even produced? Surely it was conceived with one purpose in mind: to introduce kids to the concept of mortality, as a plodding reminder that our time is brief, that all the wonders of creation are ultimately impermanent.

That's what they were going for, right?

NO ADULTS ADMITTED WITHOUT CHILDREN

2011-12-22T03:46:00.000-06:00

Sure, this is depressing on so many levels.

Made in 1964, this thing was still being played in theaters at least until the late seventies, these ads playing during every commercial break on local afternoon kids' shows. (I remember my brother and I trying to work the word "funtastic" into everyday conversation.) And even when I was a kid, I thought this thing looked like crap, and some part of me resented how the huckster creators of this thing used the goodwill of the holiday season as an excuse to peddle their shoddy goods, to take money from audiences while giving them absolutely nothing in return.

That was then, this is now.

And though this, too, seeks to exploit the good feelings of this time of year for a quick buck, it maybe seems at first to be a little less vile in intent. The audience being fleeced by this movie is at least made up of adults.

Except...the economy is still in the toilet. The vast majority of the country must think twice before spending their money. Sure, it's fun to go out to the movies, but if you're going to pony up the dough for not only the price of tickets, but also snacks, dinner before or after, parking, a baby sitter...well, you're talking a substantial investment. Which is fine, if the movie's any good. But come on...there's no way anybody involved in this thing thought they were making a good movie. They simply wanted to separate you from your money, money that could have been spent buying presents for loved ones or giving to charity. This movie is the work of millionaires who feel they aren't rich enough.

MARVELOUS, MAGICAL...AAUUGGHH!!!

2011-12-14T03:30:00.000-06:00

Haven't been around here much. Life goes on, and sometimes gets in the way. I gave some thought to posting a recollection of a particularly vivid dream I had the other night--it involved a right-wing cabal reanimating Bill Cullen's corpse to spearhead an incredibly misconceived bid for world dominance--but whenever I'd sit down to actually write, some distraction would raise its head. (Those Wikipedia entries on Patrick Hernandez and Jeff Altman won't read themselves, y'know.)

So, um, yeah...I've got nothing. Thus, lacking any real entertainment here, let me present an ad for what has to be the worst imaginable Christmas present. Enjoy, I guess.

WARMTH

2011-12-02T03:44:00.002-06:00

Mom's here, so I know it's a dream. Still, I follow her as we go wherever it is we're going. She moves quickly and without a walker through masses of people standing around or sitting at cheap tables--Is this Ryan's Steakhouse?--until we find a place in a corner. "Finally," she says, sitting down. "We have a few minutes to talk."

My eyes snap open. Again.

I don't believe in messages from the other side or crap like that, but it's become a disturbing pattern that Mom will appear to me in dreams, announcing she has something to tell me, and I wake up before she gets a chance to talk. It's the same every damn time, and the return to the waking world always comes with a tightness in my chest, a sense of loss so overpowering it seems nothing could heal it.

Right on cue, Staley appears.

When she first came into my life, Staley seemed odd and a bit reserved, the exact opposite of a pet me-pet me cat. She'd hide a lot, only occasionally appearing in corners of rooms, then venturing up onto the foot of the bed, or maybe sitting in chairs for a few minutes, only to disappear to whatever secret hiding place she'd chosen.

Lately, though, she seems to sense my moods, and is always there when I need her. As I wake from this dream with a sense of emptiness, she burrows in close to my chest, purring loudly. "You're not alone," she seems to be saying. "I'm always here." She stretches a front leg, the white toes on her otherwise gray paw gently stroke my open hand.

Most nights, I go to bed before Janie does, and Staley bounces in with me. She's always wherever I go. Cats aren't allowed up on my desk, but Staley is. She follows me to the door when I leave for work, and Janie says she frequently yowls for a few minutes after I leave.

The tightness in my chest is gone. I'm relaxed and feel myself drifting back to sleep, comforted to know that I have a fuzzy gray protector, that Staley's soul is here to give comfort to mine.

I HOPE THAT SOMETHING BETTER COMES ALONG

2011-11-28T03:57:00.002-06:00

I really, really wanted to love The Muppets, the new big-screen attempt to bring Jim Henson's beloved characters some current pop culture cachet, and...well, I just couldn't.

Not that I hated it, mind you. This isn't a shameful misunderstanding of everything that makes the characters great, the Space Jam of the Muppet world. If anything, it's too reverent, tries too hard to evoke warm and fuzzy memories, attempting to coast on a sentiment it simply hasn't earned. It's made by fans, obviously--the primary fan, in this case, being co-writer and star Jason Segel, who has publicly stated over and over how much the Muppets meant to him--but as a result, it feels like glorified fan fiction. The real Muppet crew would never have made this.

That crew is scattered to the winds, of course. Jim Henson, Richard Hunt and writer Jerry Juhl are dead, Jerry Nelson has largely retired and Frank Oz...honestly, it's kind of hard to know what's up with Oz these days. Of the old guard, only Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire are involved, and too many of the characters lack their old spark. Henson, Nelson and especially Oz were renowned for their ability to give their characters distinctive physical mannerisms, odd bits of business that brought them to life, but all too often, the characters now just seem to move from Point A to Point B without any real sense of life.

Then again, there's not much life to the script by Segel and Nicholas Stoller. It cleverly riffs on many beloved Muppet tropes and gags, and has some genuinely funny moments--the sight of Wayne and Wanda making out gave me great delight--but it just tries too hard. Most disastrously, the catalyst for the story is a new Muppet named Walter, who is blessed with not a single interesting feature. Favorites like Gonzo and Rowlf are given nothing to do so this character can go through a Screenwriting 101 Character Arc, and why? It's like making a new Peanuts movie and sidelining Charlie Brown and Lucy in favor of Shermy.

The most exasperating thing about Walter is that he's not remotely funny, but you know who else doesn't have a single decent laugh line in this movie? Kermit The Frog. Sure, he's the starry-eyed dreamer and all that, but Kermit's always gotten some of the best gags. But he spends the entire running time of The Muppets (that is, when he's not reminding the audience what an awesome new character Walter is) being mopey. And when he finally breaks into The Rainbow Connection...

Look, if you've spent any time at this site at all, you've seen countless vintage Muppet clips posted, you've read all sorts of stories about how my Mom cried for days on end when Jim Henson died, how Bein' Green was the one song she stipulated had to be played at her funeral, and, for crying out loud, I went through a period there where most of the titles of my posts were taken from Muppet Movie lyrics. All I have to do is hear the banjo-plucking intro to The Rainbow Connection and I immediately tear up.

And yet, its performance here did nothing for me. Instead of an Applause sign, it felt like the filmmakers were using a Sentimental Tears sign. The honest emotions that Jim Henson and company could evoke effortlessly just isn't there anymore. I wouldn't presume to say that the time of The Muppets passed with Henson, but it's been twenty-one years since the man's death, and the characters still seem trapped, unsure where to go. Despite the brilliant efforts of his fellow puppeteers, designers, scriptwriters and songwriters, maybe the only person who truly understood what made The Muppets work was Henson. We know it was probably magic.

The Muppets is an honest attempt to bring back that magic, but a failed attempt just the same. Still, if nothing else, it proves that audiences still have great love for these characters, and maybe next time they'll get where they're going. Or, as Gonzo so eloquently put it, they're going to go back there someday.

IT'S JUST A SHOW

2011-11-24T04:27:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving, right? I should list all the things I'm thankful for (my health, my home, my friends, the cats, beloved beagle and, of course, Janie), I could reminisce about holidays past, I could do any number of things.

Or I could tell a story I've told before.

Because this is November 24th, the day when, twenty-three years ago, a scrappy UHF station in Minneapolis first broadcast a crudely-produced program entitled Mystery Science Theater 3000, a vehicle for local comedian made good Joel Hodgson. The premise was simple: Hodgson played a guy trapped in space, forced by his evil overlords to watch terrible movies. He did, with the help of his two robot pals, and the three of them would crack wise all through the movie.

Simple, and potentially awful. But somehow, MST3K (which got a lot better than that original intro would suggest)transcended its simple premise, ultimately running for ten seasons on two different cable channels, and bearing a profound influence on the world of comedy. It has provided its fans with an alternate way of looking at the world, has encouraged, in its small way, its viewers to never accept what is given to them, to talk back, to question. And it has provided comfort.

As on that Wednesday night, when I stumbled home dead tired from working late. When I got to my apartment, I found numerous messages on my answering machine from my sister Ann, informing me that Mom was in the hospital. Finally, a message from Mom herself, assuring me that she was okay, I could call her or stop by to see her, but she understood if I was busy.

I went up to see her. She'd fallen, and had...never mind. You don't need to know the details. The point is, she looked so small, so fragile, so...mortal. But she was still Mom, and we talked, though her voice was weak. "Have you eaten yet?" she asked, always more concerned about others than herself. No, I said, I'd probably just go home and have a pizza. "Oh, yes, it's Wednesday, isn't it? Are you going to watch an MST?" (She was, obviously, aware of my weekly ritual.) Yeah, maybe, I said, but I can stay here. "No," she said. "I have to watch Lost."

So I went home, fired up the pizza and the VCR and chose an episode of MST to watch. I hadn't seen the episode where they mock Roger Corman's Gunslinger in awhile, so that's what I picked, completely at random. Halfway through the show, there's this sketch:

I thought nothing of it, or any of the other odd reminders of mortality in this particular episode. Why would I? It's not like Mom was dying or anything. I enjoyed the episode, laughed myself silly, and went to bed.

The next morning, Ann called early. Someone from the hospital had let her know it would be a good idea to get up there and see Mom. Wait, what? She just fell. How could that lead to...to...Dear God, no.

If you've spent any time at this site, you know what happened, since this space was originally conceived as a way of working through my grief. The days after her death were spent dealing with the usual things, but it was funny. She died on a Thursday, the funeral was the following Monday...but by Tuesday, I felt cried out. I didn't want to be sad anymore.

So I turned again to MST3K, and it did the trick. I laughed, and it was as though my whole world hadn't changed, as if things would be okay again. It reminded me that there was still joy in the world, and that life, not unlike Celine Dion's heart, would go on.

When I think of my favorite TV shows of all time, I think of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or Columbo, or Wiseguy or Batman: The Animated Series or The Simpsons or so many more. But I never think to include Mystery Science Theater 3000 on that list, because, no matter what the theme song says, it's never been just a show. It's part of my life.

THEN THAT ELEVATOR STARTS ITS RIDE

2011-11-19T03:26:00.003-06:00

Isabella pulls on her leash, the same walk we take every morning. Down the sidewalk, across the street, through the parking lot of the neighboring restaurant. It's closed, but even at 3 AM, there's music coming from within--Louis Prima and Keely Smith, That Old Black Magic. We stop for a minute, Isabella's nose snuffling the ground, me listening to the music.

I try to remember.

My ex-wife loved Louis Prima. This song makes me think of her, but only in the abstract. When I try to conjure details of our time together, there's often nothing there. I remember, for instance, her love of Prima, and I remember buying her a documentary about him, and that we watched it together. I know we did that, but I don't remember how it felt.

She and I still talk, usually once a week, and we remain as close as two people who profoundly hurt each other can possibly be. She fills me in on the broad details of her life, and I do the same. On occasions, these conversations spark a certain detail, a shared inside joke, a memory only the two of us would share.

Mostly, though, I don't recall specifics. When I think of our time together, mostly what comes to mind is the anxiety, the sense that it was all somehow going to end. I can't even remember the no doubt terrible arguments and incidents that produced this mindset, just the general feeling, the state of flux.

The wind picks up, frustrating Isabella. The breeze carries so many different scents, too many for her to pick out. She skitters about, wanting to follow her nose in all directions at once.

I pull on her leash, leading her back home. My life with Janie is different from the life I once led, different from anything I ever imagined. For maybe the first time in my adult life, I've learned to accept things as they come, and I finally know contentment. Isabella's pace quickens as we approach the house, and she bounds up the steps happily. Because, you know, we're home.

IS THE CALLER THERE?

2011-11-16T04:16:00.001-06:00

1) Wow--an authentic Random Thoughts post. Formerly one of my regular go-to pieces (along with clips of Lynda Carter singing) when I didn't feel like doing any actual writing and just started knocking out whatever crap popped into my head at the moment.

In the present case, however, there's slightly more thought put into this effort--mostly these are scattered premises, things I wanted to write about in a little more depth, but just never had the time. Or energy. Or will power...

2) I'm pretty sure I claimed somewhere along the line that I wasn't going to say anything more about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, and well, I tried, but our old friend Julie Taymor has been at it again, and I just can't resist.

Taymor has been exceptionally busy, what with filing a lawsuit against the show's producers and giving a monumentally self-pitying interview to Esquire in which she claimed to be shocked, shocked I tell you, at her dismissal from the show, which she thought was just swell.

Of course, the terrible reviews for Taymor's version of the show, and the fact that she refused to even consider dropping elements that clearly weren't working, and her increasingly incoherent public statements about the show, which suggested she considered the whole thing to be some sort of workshop for her private vision, even though the thing was bleeding investors dry to the tune of almost a million bucks a week--none of these things had any bearing on the decision of the producers to fire her. They were just philistines who didn't care about Art.

As for the lawsuit, Taymor is demanding a share of profits (which, despite the fact that the show sells out nightly, it still hasn't earned a dime, mostly because Taymor burned through SIXTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS while in the process of finding her "vision") and, more amusingly, claiming copyright infringement for using elements she created in the show.

Obviously, I don't know the details of her contract, but that's pretty much how big Broadway musicals work--nobody is irreplaceable. Creative personnel are constantly brought in and let go, but they're doing for-hire jobs--producers have every right to use elements of their work, because that's why they were hired in the first place. More talented people than Taymor have been fired off shows, only to see work they did used on stage, often without credit.

In the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark--have I mentioned that's the worst title for anything in history?--Taymor is actually listed in the credits. If anything, the producers indulged her for way too long. Is she actually trying to get people to feel sorry for her? Because I'm pretty sure it's not working.

3) Alexander Payne's new film The Descendants opens this week, a mere seven years since his last feature, Sideways, which opened two years after About Schmidt. He's not terribly prolific, is what I'm saying.

I'm a big fan--Sideways hit me where I lived--but it's not like he's Stanley Kubrick. He makes humanist comedies somewhat in the manner of Paul Mazursky, only Mazursky could really crank 'em out. (Have I mentioned Harry And Tonto is one of my favorite movies ever?) But Payne, like Paul Thomas Anderson and David O. Russell, is a major filmmaker with a disappointingly thin filmography. All three cite the great directors of the seventies as inspiration, but they seem to not realize that those guys worked constantly.

Sure, studios aren't keen to produce odd personal efforts these days, but the financing is obviously out there--Joel and Ethan Coen are able to make whatever pops into their head, and they were managing the Woody Allen trick of knocking out a movie a year for awhile there. Payne, Anderson and Russell seem to only want to work when the muse strikes, but even Robert Altman made Quintet. It's okay to fail--just keep working.

What I'm basically saying is, I love these guys' stuff, and I selfishly want more than they've given me.

4) Hey, are there any long-time readers of this thing still around? Remember when I used to go off on long-winded political screeds? No, I don't miss those things either, but still...Occupy Wall Street, Rick Perry's memory lapse, the whole Penn State thing...you'd think I'd have something to say. Sometimes this space seems a little hermetically sealed, cut off from the real world, like late period Woody Allen. (Zing!) I kind of regret that, and kind of not. Maybe I'll reengage with the real world soon.

5) Ordinarily, I'd say something about all the critters here, about Cookie's continued reluctance to play nice with the beagle, or about Staley's odd habit of head-butting me in the middle of the night. Certainly I don't need to say anything about Delmar, because I'm always going on about him here.

Except yesterday morning, Del was sitting in my lap as I read the funnies when he suddenly, for no reason, reached up and slashed my nose. Blood poured everywhere, including into my eyes, leading me to temporarily think he'd blinded me. And, needless to say, it hurt like hell.

And yet, he's back on my lap as I write this. I'll never learn.

THESE MEMORIES LOSE THEIR MEANING

2011-11-11T03:55:00.002-06:00

Not a lot of snow, but enough: Branches down, and others cracked, hanging dangerously low over some wires.

Oh Lord, has it come to this? Am I really using snow-covered branches as some sort of metaphor for my emotional state? Isn't that the most tired literary device imaginable? Has my writing become this trite?

Still. It's not a cheap use of a tired trope when it's actually true. The branches really are hanging, and so is my mood.

Some back story might be helpful at this point, yes? I got an email from my brother John the other day informing me of the death of our uncle, Ronald Dean Hegstrom. John was quite sad, remembering the last family reunion (which--ominous chord--I did not attend), and how Uncle Deanie, in John's words, "looked like Dad, only different."

But this news didn't make me feel sad, just numb. For so long, I associated Uncle Deanie and Aunt LeDora with the family reunions I actively hated as a kid, which were attended by people so much older than me, and there was never anyone for me to hang out with, so I'd just sit there, isolated and lonely. It never occurred to me to, you know, talk to anyone. They all seemed to know each other so well.

So I never got to know Uncle Deanie, and reading his obit, how he served in the military in Greenland and worked as a repair man, things I knew but didn't know, or didn't appreciate, because I never took the time, but damn, I was just a kid, what do you want from me? Yeah, I could've taken the time as I got older, but, well...I didn't, and...

Look, that's not even what has me feeling so numb. It's John's description of our uncle as looking kind of like Dad--because even my memories of Dad are starting to fade. There are fleeting images, things I remember, still these become less concrete with each passing year, with each passing minute.

How can this happen? Not just dad, but Mom, too, and everything about my childhood. I can remember specific things, doing this and that, but the details of the faces that accompanied these activities, the sounds of voices, the smells and colors--all are going, all are past.

But I do remember the summer I turned seven, before I had my own room. I slept on the couch in the living room, and when I went to bed, Dad would come over and kiss me goodnight. His breath smelled like Grain Belt and he barely said a word, but it was a small gesture of love that meant the world to me. Maybe it's why I make a point of saying goodbye to the dog and all the cats whenever I go somewhere.

So I have that to hang onto. Maybe I'm not as numb as I think. Maybe the branches can be easily trimmed. Maybe there's nothing broken that can't be fixed.

KEEP A PENCIL HANDY

2011-11-05T04:24:00.002-05:00

Ah, I should never have posted that Bert Parks clip yesterday. It served as a virtual portal to hell, a hell long-time readers of this site (both of you!) know all too well: The seventies variety show.

It seems utterly inconceivable that in 1976, the year the Sex Pistols recorded Anarchy In The UK, the year Taxi Driver was released to theaters, a year in a decade in which everything changed at tremendous speed, TV executives still held so tenaciously to what had worked before. Except it didn't work anymore; the variety format was obviously dead if the best it could muster was Telly Savalas. It's a terrible idea even in theory. Did they really need to produce this thing--and worse, put it on the air?--to realize this? Did they think anyone could possibly enjoy this?

'76 must have been the year TV executives just collectively decided to throw anything on to see what would happen. If Telly Savalas could have a variety special, why not Paul Lynde? Sure, and why not feature musical guests KISS and--the horror! the horror!--Florence Henderson? People will watch, won't they? Won't they?

Also in '76, The Captain And Tenille got their own regular series! So they could do things like this, thus scarring an entire nation.

And it's not like this celebration of sub-mediocrity was limited to variety shows. You could be innocently watching your favorite large-breasted action heroine when suddenly you're forced to ask yourself, "Why is Wonder Woman singing? And how can I make it stop?"

And then the horror would escalate, because if she could sing as Wonder Woman, suddenly someone thought it would be a good idea to give Lynda Carter her own variety special. And then they gave her another, and another, like she was good, like they were entertaining, when it should have been obvious that, Lordy, no, this was not entertaining in the least.

THE DRUMS ARE IN THE DAWN, AND ALL THE VOICES GONE

2011-11-04T03:54:00.001-05:00

Go to Blogger Dashboard, hit New Post, tap out a few words, delete them, tap out a few different words, delete them, pause and idly wonder if the topic I've picked to write about is even all that interesting...which means I'm second-guessing myself...which means I no longer have the confidence that what I'm doing is worthwhile...which means...what?

No idea. That whole paralyzing writer's block thing, which inconveniently struck once before just as I was starting to actually get stuff published and, you know, earn money, and which decided to hang around for a decade or so--has it returned? Have I run out of things to say, or interesting ways to say them? Are there no more tortured Star Wars analogies for me to make?

Again, no idea. But hey, in the interest of (barely) fulfilling the minimum daily amount of entertainment one can expect from this site, here's a clip of Bert Parks performing a Paul McCartney song during the 1976 Miss America pageant. Regarding this, for lack of a better word, performance, I would note two things: 1) Those background dancers are staging what Crow T. Robot once referred to as a "mince-off" and 2) Back in '76, people watched this sort of thing in huge numbers, and mostly not ironically. Even at the time, I couldn't understand.

OH GOOD, I LIKE BUSTLING!

2011-10-30T08:47:00.000-05:00

Paul had already seen this dreadful-looking new Three Musketeers, and wanted to see it again. "Nothing you'd rather see?" I asked, figuring literally anything would be better.

"No. You'll like it. It's really good."

OK, fine, but I demanded a price: Before going to this thing, he'd first watch Richard Lester's absolutely peerless 1973 adaptation of Musketeers. I explained that it's one of my favorite movies, which is usually a good way to get Paul reasonably intrigued. (He trusts my opinions, except about James Bond.) I started the movie and...

...He loved it. Well, why wouldn't he? Between an absolutely perfect cast (Charlton Heston's splendidly villainous Cardinal Richelieu is like a miniature acting class in itself), George MacDonald Fraser's witty script and some truly sumptuous settings, Lester is given free reign to make this material his own, and the result is not only a first-rate adventure tale, but one of the greatest comedies ever made.

I don't know how Lester did it: Hackneyed bits of physical comedy become gaspingly funny purely through his staging and cutting. That sort of thing almost never works; usually when a director fusses over a gag, it becomes notably less amusing. (The sheer visual invention Steven Spielberg brought to 1941 is admirable, but it won't make you laugh.) But here Lester repeatedly stages a scene in a seemingly deadpan manner, then cuts to a reverse angle which reveals its absurdity, and damned if it isn't funny every single time. And he knows just how long to hold a shot, just when to cut, just when o move the camera. He's just really good is what I'm saying, and The Three Musketeers (like its equally vital sequel, The Four Musketeers) is a world-class work of cinema.

Which is a pretty good thing o introduce a twelve-year-old to, don't you think? We went to the new Three Musketeers the next day--and just an aside here, but boy do I wish contemporary moviemakers would stop ending their movies with setups for sequels nobody will ever want to see--and Paul still claims to like this one better. That's understandable--it's pitched to contemporary kids, with explosions, wirework and whatnot. (Also some of the phoniest looking CGI you'll ever see.) It's all about immediate sensation.

But as for which one he'll actually remember, well, I have a feeling I know.

THE SOW IS MINE

2011-10-28T04:28:00.001-05:00

Started and abandoned two different posts recently. One was just a silly generic thing, but the other was somewhat more personal in nature, and my inability to make it work disturbs me. I just haven't been feeling the writing thing lately, although annoying computer glitches haven't really helped. (When the screen freezes as you type, it kinda interrupts your train of thought.)

Anyway, just to post something, and in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd post something scary. Regular readers might expect me to follow that up with a clip of Linda Carter singing or David Naughton extolling the virtues of Dr. Pepper, but no, I'm serious.

I could (and probably have, and no doubt will again) go on for some time about The Exorcist, which freaked me the fuck out like no movie ever has. I was eleven when I saw it the first time--well, saw part of it; my brother wound up carrying me out of the theater because I was literally paralyzed with fear--and I think the reason it got to me was because it creates such a believable reality. The sets, the costumes, the lighting show no trace of artifice. Everything looks so lived in, seems so natural, and when things go to hell (more or less literally), the impact is...well, again, as I watched the scene embedded above, I felt my limbs going numb.

Oh, and you know what else scares me? This.

MAD LOVE

2011-10-21T05:45:00.001-05:00

There is a slightly aloof, not-quite-there manner that defines feline behavior. Cats may be wonderful companions, but they always exist in a world of their own, somehow unknowable. They may share this world with you, but they are always a step removed.

Except for Delmar.

Whatever Del feels is always right there on the surface, and whether it's utter adoration or inexplicable rage--he has no middle ground--you will damn sure know about it.

He will sit on your lap and smoosh his face into your chest, his half-wheezed purr so intense his whole body vibrates, and one of his gangly legs may slither around your wrist, his paw caressing you, drawing your hand to him, making sure you will pet him even as he hugs you, his devotion so overpowering it almost terrifies.

Or he'll hop on your lap with his half-tail twitching, a growl already forming somewhere in his chest, and that same paw that lovingly stroked your hand will slap down on your wrist, a solitary claw sinking deeper and deeper until blood bubbles to the surface, and his fiery eyes will burn into you with a terrible anger.

Your instinct at this point would be to throw this wretched beast to the ground, but if instead you take your other hand--the one that isn't streaked with blood--and gently rub Del between his ears, those terrifying eyes will gradually close and something resembling bliss will pass across his sharply-angled face. His claw may or may not leave your hand, which has likely gone numb by now anyway, but one of his other paws may reach up to stroke your face.

And maybe sink a claw in there, too, but more gently, and compared to the pain in your hand, it's nothing. Maybe it will bleed as well, but that's part of the price you paid when you let him into your heart. He is in your heart, after all, because no matter what, you know how much he loves you, and if you didn't love him, who else ever would?

THE BEST I CAN DO

2011-10-18T07:15:00.000-05:00

There was a time when there would have been a reason for me to mention that I'm going on vacation for a few days. That is, my usual daily postings here would have been interrupted, so I felt the need to provide some sort of explanation.

Now, of course, I'm lucky if I knock out ten posts in an entire month. I could be hospitalized for a week and you, the theoretical reader, would never know. It's weird how much effort I used to put into this site, and how indifferent I seem to be these days. It's not that I don't have the will to write, it's just that sitting down to do it is so, like, hard and stuff. And, well...

Ah, screw it. I'll be back here when I get back. In the meantime, here's Marshall Crenshaw with one of my favorite covers of all time.

FADE LIKE MAGAZINES

2011-10-09T03:39:00.002-05:00

The official reason is simple: I plan to turn the second bedroom into a kind of entertainment center. With my recently-acquired plasma TV, blu-ray player (wi-fi compatible) and surround sound system, it will be a place to retire from the world, to immerse myself in whatever sounds or images I crave at the moment.

To make room for all this, the bedroom had to be cleared of all the accumulated stuff that had piled up over the years. Most of it had been ported over from the apartment, where it was all dropped in boxes and moved to the house in order to save myself the time and trouble of actually sorting it. But this time, for whatever reason, I felt the need to decide what would be tossed and what would go down to the basement.

Some of this was easy. Did I really need to keep the program for Reefer Madness: The Musical? Nah--throw it away. And some of the work Psychokitty Delmar had done for me--he'd slept in some of the boxes and ripped up, for instance, the 1941 Des Moines Register with a beautiful Ding Darling illustration commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. I'd meant to have it framed or something, but now it was an easy toss.

Then there was...everything else. Family photos, drawings made by my ex-wife's niece, home-dubbed VHS tapes, calenders with important dates from my past marked on them, goofy cartoons drawn by my mom. These are things I dare not throw away, the only links I have to a life I once led. But what are they now?

They are of no real significance except that which I give them. Even examining them now, they draw me back, but there is something ultimately destructive about their siren song. There is no returning to the time from which they sprang, and no point in longing for it. My life now doesn't depend on any of this.

Or so I tell myself as I tape the boxes shut and lug them down to the basement, where they sit on shelves or piled on pallets on the floor to keep them dry. They still exist down there, but soon they'll just be more stuff that exists in the background, like the empty boxes of laundry soap I keep forgetting to put in the garbage, as forgotten as the memories they represent.

DON'T DISAPPEAR NOW

2011-10-04T03:23:00.002-05:00

WUMP!

Bella's on the floor, trembling, her legs flailing. She's having a seizure, something her vet has said is not uncommon with beagles. As long as they don't get more frequent, everything will be fine.

I pick her up and cradle her in my arms, as I always do. We know the drill. She'll shake violently for a few minutes, then stop. I'll plop her down on the ground, she'll walk, still a little shaky, to the door. She knows the seizure has made her lose control of her bodily functions, and she doesn't want to poop in the house.

Which is what happens. But after bringing her back in, she has another seizure. Then another, more violent. Her limbs twist as I hold her, the ferocity of her shaking causing my own body to tremble. Her mouth foams, she pees on me, and I cuddle her tighter, convinced at this moment that there is no greater love than what I feel for her.

Janie watches, and says she'll pray for Bella. I find myself doing the same, making every conceivable promise to God in exchange for this dog's life. I bawl like a fucking baby, pulling Bella tighter to my chest, mumbling, "Precious baby, love you, baby girl" over and over like a mantra, as if my words can make somehow make this stop.

Still. Somewhere my mind shuffles awful thoughts. Vet bills, meds, money I don't have. The credit cards are maxed out. How am I going to pay for this? What does she need? Can she be cured, or is this going to be a permanent condition? If she's like this all the time, will she...that is...can she live like this?

Her tremors become more intense, each worse than the last, and then her body goes limp, followed by an awful stillness. "Oh God, no!" I cry, my tears dropping onto her matted fur, already sopping wet with drool and pee.

Big brown eyes peer up at me. She inhales deeply, the tail half-heartedly wags. She raises her head and licks away my tears. I place her gently on the ground and she marches unsteadily to the door, then turns and looks at me, one long ear flopping over her tilted head, as if to say, "Come on! I gotta go!"

I grab her leash and we head outside. She takes the steps down from the deck carefully, but her stride becomes more certain as she moves through the grass. She does her business, then marches forward, head down, nose working overtime.

Scenting. Something has been in the grass, and she means to track it, tugging hard at her leash, doing what she was meant to do, as all good beagles must. I pull her leash in a different direction, back to the house, and she doesn't put up a fight.

She knows we both need rest.

MOTORIN'

2011-09-29T04:10:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine was once afflicted with what he called The Seger Curse. That is, whatever store he'd walk into, any store of any kind, would always be playing some Bob Seger song or other. Whether it was the by-the-numbers rock star posing of Katmandu or the sleepy-time introspection of Night Moves--or worse, the faux-sensitive, let's-fuck-because-what-else-have-we-got-to-do treacly-creepy ballad We've Got Tonight--the tedious ubiquity of the hirsute Detroit legend came to represent everything stale and unimaginative about radio programming: You could play any song in the world, and you actually choose to play Against The Wind?

The curse was eventually passed to me, though in a somewhat milder form (although if I ever hear Old Time Rock & Roll again I may turn violent), then...it was over. Whoever programs the piped-in music for retail establishments and classic rock stations suddenly decided that was enough Seger for a lifetime, and the world was a better place.

Briefly. While seemingly dormant, The Curse was in fact mutating, and turned into a Night Ranger Curse. Which is to say, the radio at work now plays Sister Christian at every conceivable opportunity.

Kind of cute, for awhile. To the extent that I think of it at all, I associate the song with the Rahad Jackson sequence from P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights. Specifically, I think of this:

And hey, who doesn't want to be reminded of one of their favorite movies during a long, tedious work day?

But they keep playing the damned thing. And it doesn't even matter what station is on. Our resident surly Boston sports fan tunes the radio to the local AM sports station, and in between incredibly convulted analogies and half-baked theories, there is commercial time. Specifically, a commercial for an upcoming concert from...Night Ranger. And seriously, what the hell other song are they going to play during this commercial? For a supposedly rockin' band--as they reminded us with the helpfully titled You Can Still Rock In America--these guys will always be known for this wimpy power ballad, and not much else.

And I, apparently, will have to listen to the damned thing pretty much every day. Or at least until I get a new musical curse. Right now, I'm starting to miss bob Seger.

I'M SO TIRED

2011-09-20T03:37:00.001-05:00

A restless night; periods of sleep, followed by fifteen minutes of bleary-eyed waking time, followed by sleep, followed by...you get the idea.

During the waking moments the mind will wander. Times like this, I often start half-hearted writing projects in my head: random bits of dialogue, character sketches, whatever. Nothing ever comes of these brainstorming sessions, because ideas that sound great running through a grungy head at 1 AM prove to be utter crap in the unforgiving light of day.

But even by these standards, what the hell was my problem last night? Did I eat the wrong thing before bedtime? Because every time my eyes would snap open, I'd immediately start composing what, in my mind, was the most lucid essay ever.

About the movie Anaconda.

Now, because this was a terrible idea occurring to me in the middle of the night, I'm a little fuzzy on what may have been the substance of this piece. I suspect it may have had something to do with the surprisingly fine cast and tech crew assembled for what is, after all, an amazingly stupid exploitation movie. If that was my argument, it's severely undercut by the fact that I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN ANACONDA IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Sure, I've seen chunks of it--to subscribe to a basic cable channel is to have seen bits and pieces of all sorts of movies you'd never normally watch--but I've never done it the courtesy of watching straight through. So really, how could I fairly judge it?

I couldn't. And I have no desire to judge it, or to see it, for that matter. I don't care about it one way or the other. So why was I thrashing about in bed last night, convinced that I alone could compose the definitive treatise on Anaconda?

Ask me when I'm half-asleep. The answer won't make sense to you, but in my mind it will be brilliant.

MIND GAMES

2011-09-19T04:11:00.001-05:00

A small part of this past weekend was spent trying to explain to Paul (who does not read comics but will run out to see the latest superhero epic on the big screen) that Stan Lee, despite his jokey cameos in all Marvel Comics movie adaptations, really doesn't deserve sole credit for these characters, and that Jack Kirby's dynamic artwork and character designs really had much more to do with their iconic status.

Which is all well and good, but as a kid in the early seventies, I didn't give a rat's ass about superheroes, and read almost nothing from Marvel. I was all about DC, and even then, only their war comics, which were presided over by writer/editor Robert Kanigher and a rotating stable of artists, which generally included the unfailingly great Joe Kubert and Russ Heath. I saw the ads in these books for Kirby's now-legendary New Gods and Kamandi, but since they didn't feature Panzers or Spitfires, I didn't care.

Then, out of nowhere, Kirby was handed one of the books I did read, Our Fighting Forces, featuring the hard-luck squadron known as The Losers. This was my first real introduction to the work of one of the most influential comic book artists of all time, and holy crap, I became a fan for life. Though Kirby was a World War II vet, his depictions of the front lines bore no trace of the carefully researched realism Kubert and Heath depicted, resembling nothing so much as clashes between gods and demigods on some abstract Olympus.

The thing that struck me most about Kirby's artwork was his depiction of the cigar-chomping character Sarge, and how that cigar almost always drawn in such a way that it was pointing out towards us, the reader, its tip burning with the black-dotted pattern I would later come to know as "Kirby krackle". I was so obsessed with how he drew that thing that I soon filled countless Big Chief tablets with characters smoking cigars, just so I could try to get the same effect.

A bit of research tells me that Kirby's run on that title was relatively brief, stretching from late in '74 to the end of '75. I was nine turning to ten. And the thing is, when the clear, fully-formed memory of trying to draw my own Kirby krackling cigars popped into my head, I tried in vain to recall anything else from my life in that era. The best I could come up with was a distinct memory of reading one of these books on a blisteringly hot summer day, siting on one side of the davenport (because back then we called it a davenport, not a couch) absorbing as much of the breeze from the big box fan in front of the screen door as I could. But who else would have been in the room, what they may have looked like at that time, or even the sound of their voices--no, that seems to have faded, at least for the moment.

As much as I love Jack Kirby's work, part of me wishes my mind had not decided to retain this particular memory, not if it means losing the images and sounds of people I loved much more.

MY MIND IS ON THE BLINK

2011-09-16T03:38:00.001-05:00

I won't give you all the details about the pinched nerve in my lower back, I'll just mention that it's there and hurts like a sonofabitch. Pain unfortunately leads to irritability--as Janie puts it, I'm Mr. Grumpypants--and also, somewhat more fortunately, to medication.

Oh, sweet narcotic relief!

When the label clearly specifies that meds are to be taken only at bedtime, well kids, it can only mean one thing: Seriously weird-ass dreams will follow. And sure enough, on this occasion my slumbering form found itself sitting through an entire endless Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Christina Aguilara, who occasionally morphed into Cyndi Lauper because fine, whatever, but more to the point, she was the center of the whole episode. There were literally no other cast members, just Christina (or sometimes Cyndi) mugging her way through endless solo sketches that inevitably led to singing. And it just kept going on and on and on until...

...Until I woke up and stumbled out of bed. At first it felt like my pain was gone, but all at once it returned, shooting down my leg, making my foot tingle. Hard at this point to say which hurts more, reality or my dream state, but at least in the real world I won't have to suffer through any more punishingly unfunny attempts at comedy.

At least, I hope not.

I HAD TO SEE FOR MYSELF

2011-09-10T04:03:00.001-05:00

It's strange--I spent nearly a year living in the suburbs of D.C., and in all that time it's almost impossible to remember many days that were gray or overcast. It snowed maybe twice in the winter, there was occasional rain. Mostly, though, the sky remained a dazzling blue.

After that terrible day in September, of course, even that beautiful sky seemed threatening.

The ten year anniversary of 9/11 is playing out in depressingly predictable fashion, with trite retrospective TV specials and memorial events that just go through the motions and, most ludicrously, t-shirts and placards proclaiming ridiculous homilies like "We Remember" and "Never Forget".

Like it's even possible to forget. Even more terrible than the day itself was the lingering fear, still in the air for days and weeks and months thereafter. Constantly scanning the sky just in case, or flinching at every backfiring car, or steering clear of every unattended package in Metro stations.

Just living through those days took its toll. Our hearts beat faster, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And if anyone I knew had died in the attacks, even a pacifist lefty like me would have been in full "Let's kill those dirty bastards" vengeance mode. But through it all, I was never so naive as to think that what happened was somehow unprovoked. While we in this country believed we were under attack, many people in other nations simply thought of it as retaliation.

How could we go around meddling in the affairs of other countries without thinking it would eventually come back home? This nation has done some pretty unsavory things, ostensibly for the cause of freedom and democracy--though just as often for profit--while too many of its citizens remained unaware. We've made a lot of enemies. Can we honestly claim surprise when some of them decide to fight back?

At the time, asking such a question was considered tantamount to treason. To this day, some would claim my views as part of the "Blame America" crowd. Except...I'm not claiming there's any blame to be had. No one would ever say we deserved to be attacked. But it happened anyway. Sometimes, to quote that great American icon Clint Eastwood, deserve's got nothing to do with it.

FROM THIS MOMENT ON I KNOW

2011-09-07T03:12:00.001-05:00

Mom again, casually sitting in a crowded cafeteria.

I don't even see her at first. I'm talking to some friends, then excuse myself to use the restroom. As I walk by her, she looks up and smiles, nodding slightly. Trying to think of something to say, I ask, "Is there anything I should know?"

She doesn't say a word--very unusual for Mom--but stands, laboriously unfolding her walker, and hobbles out of the now empty cafeteria. I follow her not even five feet down a hallway. Suddenly we're in a living room.

Not one I recognize, but it seems familiar anyway. The TV--huge and hi-def, but still a Quasar!--is tuned to the latest Fast And The Furious entry, Dad sits in the corner laughing at some of the most outrageous stunts, a stack of empty Grain Belt cans on the shelf beside him. There are children sprawled throughout the room, and I instantly recognize them as my brothers and sisters, but younger than I have ever known them. Some watch the movie in rapt attention, some play, some tussle, but all seem to be having a good time.

In the middle of it all stands Mom, smiling warmly. She doesn't say anything, but I understand.

The ambitions I might have once had in my life never quite materialized. Where's that novel I meant to write, or the next book, or anything substantial? Why don't I live in New York or Seattle or even Minneapolis? Where are all my quick-witted hipster friends?

Turns out, none of that is needed. I romp around the house with my dog while Janie watches Dancing With The Stars, or she'll read some historical romance while I watch Mitchell on Mystery Science Theater 3000 for roughly the five hundredth time. Whatever we're doing, we'll stop now and then to hold each other, to say, "I love you."

Back in the living room, Mom nestles in her chair, perusing her copy of The Murder, She Wrote Companion. She glances at me, says something. The noise level in the room makes it hard to hear, but it sounds very much like, "This is life. Enjoy."

PATHETIC EARTHLINGS!

2011-09-05T06:39:00.002-05:00

It's just a trailer, so this may not reflect the finished film at all. Still...

When John Carter Of Mars first went into production, there was reason to be excited. It was officially produced under Pixar's auspices, with Finding Nemo's Andrew Stanton directing what was promised as an ambitious mix of live action and CGI animation. Soon, it became a Disney production, Of Mars was dropped from the title, and we got this trailer, which just doesn't look like much of anything.

It's not bad, but boy, is it ever familiar. And not because Edgar Rice Burroughs' books have been freely ripped off by so many filmmakers over the years, but because this movie looks to be using any number of familiar tropes from those very same movies, from the dreary blue-and-orange lighting scheme to the live action hero facing numerous weightless CGIed foes. Even with digital enhancement, the Martian landscape looks suspiciously like Monument Valley. (The two movies that immediately pop to mind watching this are Prince Of Persia and Cowboys And Aliens, which doesn't speak well for box office prospects.) And with Peter Gabriel's Arcade Fire cover droning away in the background, the whole thing seems a bit somber.

I mean, it's great that they're taking the material seriously, but shouldn't an adaptation of a pulp classic seem a little more fun? Obviously this movie wasn't going to contain the abundant nudity found in Burroughs' books, but couldn't it include some of its lurid, overripe sensibilities?

Couldn't it, in other words, be more like this?

Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon was widely ignored or openly hated by audiences and critics back in 1980, but its reputation has grown over the years, largely because there's no other movie quite like it. The campy attitude of its script (by Lorenzo Semple, who was largely responsible for the tone of the Adam West Batman series) is overcome by the brilliantly out-there sets and costumes of Danilo Donati and the gorgeously saturated camerawork of Gilbert Taylor. You can quibble with its tone or rue the unfortunate lead performance of the anti-charismatic Sam Jones, but there's no denying that this movie looks like the cover of a pulp novel come to glorious life.

If the makers of John Carter had looked to it for inspiration, while finding a more serious tone of their own...ah, well. It's just a trailer. Maybe the movie will be better. Maybe.

NOT SINCE MICKEY ROONEY TEAMED WITH BUDDY HACKETT HAS SUCH HILARITY BEEN SEEN!

2011-08-31T03:54:00.001-05:00

So I had this dream last night, about which I mostly recall nothing, except that I repeatedly found myself in the lobby of a somewhat rundown theater. For some reason, I would suddenly have to leave, and instead of going out the front door, as any normal person would, I'd head down a narrow hallway with a dim EXIT sign at the end. Along the way, I'd pass a young woman talking on a pay phone. As I'd get to the door, she'd turn to me with some unintelligible words of advice. "What?" I'd ask, just as I stepped out the door--right into a puddle. Or snow bank. Or passing garbage truck.

Hilarity! Because the same thing keeps happening, you see, with slight variation, and, uh...

Okay, look, I know it's not that interesting. I wouldn't even bring it up, except for the fact that I've always maintained that the running gag is one of the lamest bits in the comedy repertoire, and yet here I am dreaming of one. But the point is, it's not funny in the least. So that's, you know...something?

Sigh.

Fine. Here's some actual entertainment: Marshall Crenshaw performing one of the songs I know I want played at my funeral.

TELEVISION LIGHT

2011-08-28T03:40:00.001-05:00

2:30 in the morning, and I'm walking dogs. Isabella, of course, and Brody, who's staying here temporarily. A beagle and a rat terrier. She's spayed, he's neutered, but if they weren't they'd have the most adorable offspring.

Not that I'd have the energy to deal with puppies. Sometimes I even wonder if I'll always be able to deal with the dog I've got. The fact is, Bella's only two years old. Beagles have an average life span of fifteen years. She'll still be around when I'm sixty.

Which seems not as old as it once did, really. And not as far away. There was a time when I couldn't imagine being in my forties. For that matter, I could never have imagined a lot of things that have happened in my life.

Brody pulls hard on his leash, Bella yanks in the opposite direction. I try to assert my balance, and in the process stomp my foot. Hard. Pain shoots through me, I moan in agony. The dogs stop and look at me with "You okay, man?" expressions. Even when they're annoying, they mean well.

I stomped too hard on my bad foot, the one with a steel plate instead of a heel, the one that I broke in a suicide attempt when I realized my marriage was irrevocably broken. That would be another thing that I would never have been able to imagine happening to me.

Not the suicide attempt or the divorce, but the marriage itself. I drifted through my twenties filled with profound self-loathing, and the notion that anybody would want to be with me seemed...well, inconceivable. I literally couldn't imagine such a thing happening.

Somehow, it did. That it didn't last almost doesn't matter. (Except for, you know, the physical and emotional scars that took forever to heal.) Because eventually, having discovered that someone could stand to live with me, that maybe I wasn't so terrible (and despite the divorce, Sue Ellen and I remained friends), I somehow had the courage to wade out into the world again, to actually live.

Then things got weird, and good and bad. A life was lived, almost without me realizing it. I discovered that I could be a good guy, or an asshole, or sometimes utterly indifferent. And I fell in love again, and got my heart broken again, but that's how it goes, I guess.

Still. Things get better. Janie's in my life, and everything's different. She's my age, and we've both had eventful lives. We've both lost our parents, for one thing, so we've had that defining moment of it-can't-get-any-worse. Things still hurt, but not as deeply. But we can still feel, and still love.

Brody's ears pop up and down as he looks around, all his sense firing. Bella is onto some scent, her nose low to the ground. I gently tug their leashes and they turn, following my lead. "Come on, guys," I say. "Let's go home."

CLIMB, BABY, CLIMB!

2011-08-20T16:51:00.002-05:00

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on the evening of April 22nd, 1978, until I stumbled across this clip on YouTube.

Then the evening started reconstructing itself. Dad and I were home alone that night. Mom and Julie were presumably doing something together--possibly school related?--but were was John? Odd that he would have been off somewhere without me.

But, regardless, that was the case. Dad, me and Saturday Night At The Movies. The weird thing is, watching this was my idea. I remember that, but I have no recollection as to why I would have wanted to watch. It wasn't to make fun--Dad wouldn't have been the proper viewing partner for that. But I remember actively reading Dad the TV Guide listings for everything else that night and making a strong case for Airport '75. I guess...I was in the mood to watch Chuck Heston in shades?

Anyway, it started, and Dad and I were enjoying--he laughed at some of the corny humor involving George Kennedy, and he actively watched, instead of leafing through a magazine as he sometimes did during evening TV hours. Maybe he sensed this was a rare opportunity for the two of us to bond over something, however unlikely?

Maybe forty minutes in, conveniently during a commercial break, we heard a car coming down the lane. Not Mom, not John, too early for them to be home--though I have no memory of where they were, they must have told us when they'd be back--so it must be...company? Sure enough, it was my brother Keith and his family, which meant visiting, which meant not seeing the rest of the movie.

"OK if I finish watching this upstairs?" I asked Dad without waiting for the response and headed to my room, swinging through the kitchen and scooping beloved cat Farrah off the kitchen counter on the way. (TV is always better with a viewing companion, even one that's furry, multi-colored and barely senient.) I pulled my door shut, plopped the cat on the bed and watched the rest of the movie on a small black-and-white screen. It wasn't as good as the Quasar in the living room, but then again, Airport '75 isn't exactly noted for its bold use of color. I had a good time watching it, although it failed to keep Farrah awake.

Why do I remember this evening? Or more to the point, why had I forgotten it completely until stumbling across this promo? What other memories reside perfectly-formed in my head, waiting only for the proper trigger to release them?

THE POWER AND THE GLORY

2011-08-09T03:56:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday, a church in my neighborhood hosted what its signage referred to as "A Michelle Bachman Event". Since the event took place on a Sunday, in conjunction with regular services, would that not mean the church was offering a tacit endorsement of Bachman for president? And if so, shouldn't that immediately cause the church to lose its sweet, sweet tax-exempt status?

The law is pretty clear on that, but the Republican party increasingly believes itself to be above the law. And not just the laws of man; clearly, it has no use for the laws of God, or at least for the intent of the man all Republicans loudly proclaim as their savior, Jesus Christ.

Consider Michelle Bachman. She was absolutely, fanatically opposed to raising the debt ceiling, whatever the consequences may have been. Her oft-stated mantra is, we don't need to borrow and spend more, we need to cut and save.

Oh, but what would Michelle cut? The same thing all the other Republicans would cut: "Entitlement" programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start. Programs, obviously, designed to help the neediest among us, the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged. No Republican is quite brazen enough to come right out and say "Fuck the poor" but they don't really need to: Deeds speak so much louder than words.

These people, again, stridently proclaim their Christianity. But how do they balance their tireless advocacy for the wealthy, their blatant disregard for the poor, with the actual words of Jesus, as found in Matthew 25: 31-46. We'll use the King James version, for the sake of tradition:

31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

I mean, that's not the least bit ambiguous, is it? The meaning is clear, right? So if you claim to live your life according to the teachings of someone, and blatantly ignore everything he stood for just to further your own personal agenda...

I guess what I'm saying is, enjoy your everlasting fire, Michelle.

NEW CONTENT, OF A SORT

2011-08-04T03:45:00.000-05:00

Oh, I've meant to post stuff. It's not like there's nothing to talk about. But whenever I felt like discussing, say, the whole debt-ceiling debacle, I'd find myself getting more and more depressed and...well, who needs that? Not you, faithful reader. And certainly not me.

Still, as a way of generating some sort of new content here, we turn--as we haven't for awhile--to out old friend YouTube. This interstitial from the first season of Sesame Street handily displays everything that made that show such a watershed for developing young minds--it has a dreamy, free associative quality that allows a viewer's mind to wander where it will, and (thanks mostly to the music) a somewhat melancholy feel as well. Nothing made for kids these days is like this anymore--certainly not the current incarnation of Sesame Street--and we're all poorer for that.

All well and good, but let's face it: I'm including this mostly because it has a beagle.

BUT HEY, AT LEAST HE DIDN'T COMPARE ANYONE TO EVA BRAUN

2011-07-30T04:29:00.003-05:00

So Jerry Lewis was at some TV critic's confab or other, there to promote a cable TV documentary about his career, and, as usually happens when he makes a public appearance, he took the opportunity to reveal his essential Jerry Lewis-ness, his uncanny ability to deliver a few observations that are undeniably cogent and wise, but mixed with a noxious egotism and a profound inability to understand when too much is way more than enough.

He railed against reality TV: "The medium is busy knocking its brand out to display the fat lady at 375 pounds who in two months is gonna be 240. Who gives a shit?"

He railed against the movie industry, technology and pretty much anything that popped into his mind: "The industry has destroyed themselves. It's no longer relevant because it puts all its product on a stupid phone. You're going to put Lawrence Of Arabia on that goddamned stupid sonofabitch? [Social media] are wonderful technical advances, but once people see how much its cluttering up their life, they'll figure it out for themselves. We're not going to have human beings in twenty years. People won't be talking to other human beings."

All well and good, and pretty much dead-on (although, hey Jerry, why do you have to work blue?), but the problem is, who the hell is Jerry Fucking Lewis to complain about people not talking to other human beings? This guy's whole life has been spent holding grudges against people who dared to contradict him, or told him something he didn't want to hear, or simply asked him a question. (My favorite part of the DVD commentary tracks of Lewis' Paramount titles were his muttered passive-aggressive asides about journeyman cinematographer Wallace Kelley, who shot most of Lewis' films. I gather Kelley once may have made the mistake of actually taking credit for a lighting effect or something, thus giving the impression that they weren't personally crafted by The Total Filmmaker himself.)

As happened, for instance, at this very same event, when someone asked him about his self-announced plans to retire after this year's Muscular Dystrophy telethon. "Who told you that? I never read it. Anything you read, read it twice."

Lest you think Jerry was just being coy, making with the funny and the ha-ha, when another reporter asked him what his exact role would be on this year's telethon, he responded, "It is none of your business."

Geez, Jerry. "I didn't mean to sound rude, but on September 5th, the day after that program, I will have an international press conference, and I will have plenty to say about what I think is important, and that is the future, not the past."

Now see, this is where this almost gets poignant, or would if it weren't kind of creepy, like a Krusty The Clown remake of Sunset Boulevard. Here's Jerry Lewis at 85, faced with the prospect that his annual 24-hour telethon, once a beloved national institution, has been cut down to six hours, a sure sign that the world has moved on, but he can't quite deal with reality. No, he'll hold an "international press conference" to clarify his role in this thing that nobody cares about. Clearly, in Lewis' mind, the world still revolves around him. He's still as big as ever, it's the telethon that got small.

IF YOU MUST RETURN IT, YOU CAN SEND IT HERE

2011-07-19T14:20:00.002-05:00

Every Friday, I picked Sue up from her van pool. We'd never go home; we'd go out to eat somewhere, usually someplace quick and cheap, a KFC or a Subway. It might have been nice to go someplace better, to linger over fine food, to laugh and share our thoughts.

No time for that, though. She saw her therapist on Friday evenings. She liked to get there a little early, to sit in solitude and gather her thoughts. Me, I had my own ritual: I'd keep driving up the Rockville Pike to the Borders bookstore in Germantown.

It was an unnecessary drive in a way, since we had a Borders in our own neighborhood. The one in Germantown had a different vibe, though. The cafe area dominated the entire front section, and on weekends it featured live acoustic music. I'd linger in the magazine section--every Borders seemed to stock a different lineup of magazines--listening, reading, relaxing. It was, in a way, my own form of therapy: with that weekly ritual, I purged whatever demons I may have been wrestling at the time. I began to relax, to be still.

During those waning months of my marriage, I had any number of Borders stores I haunted with some frequency. The one in Northern D.C. had the best selection of DVDs and graphic novels, the one at White Sands had the most eclectic lineup of fiction and media studies. Still, I wondered, why so many stores? Why not have one huge location combining all the best features of every store?

Indeed, the seemingly insatiable need for expansion, to place an outlet in every conceivable market, was one of the factors cited in the decision of Borders' corporate overlords to shutter the entire chain. There were other reasons--the tanking economy, the rise of e-books--but expansion overkill was almost certainly the last straw.

For consumers, however, the signs of the end had come in the form of the chain's reaction to slowing sales of recorded music and movies: the once substantial (if overpriced) music and movie sections were reduced by half or more, if not eliminated entirely, and replaced by a bizarre assortment of pop-culture gewgaws. The Borders here in the Des Moines suburbs carried so many Nightmare Before Christmas-themed figurines and board games, it felt more like Hot Topic, albeit a brightly-lit Hot Topic that sold a metric ton of Tom Clancy novels.

That particular location closed a few months ago, and though I had spent many, many happy hours there over the years, in the end, I wasn't sorry to see it go. It had turned into nothing more than a delivery system for the latest best-sellers, and the author most likely to stop by for a book signing was Sarah Palin. It was no longer a place for me, or anyone who cares about books, and it never would be again.

ALL THESE PLACES HAD THEIR MOMENTS

2011-07-15T04:11:00.004-05:00

I sit on top of the passenger car, surveying the nocturnal landscape. The outskirts of a small town--a meatpacking plant, a filling station, a river snaking through the night. Just as I'm figuring out my surroundings, I hear noise at the end of the train.

I climb down. A family--an old woman, two distracted adults and several small children--of indeterminate ethnicity insists that I participate in their ritual. Glowing rings appear in their hands, are tossed in the air, and all family members catch them, expertly. One ring is flipped to me. I catch it, barely, but it tries to pull from my hand. I let it go, and it flutters briefly, then clatters to the ground. Only now it is no longer a ring, its hollow center is full, like a bottle cap. All other rings, their centers also full, fall to the earth, their magical glow extinguished.

The old woman regards me with great sadness. "Death," she says. "Death will follow you."

"Follow me where?" I ask, climbing without much enthusiasm into one of the elegantly-appointed cars of the train.

"Everywhere." She pulls the door shut.

Cats and dogs, some remembered, some unknown, crawl through the car. I ignore them, drawn to the rickety steps with the railing around them, illuminated by a single bulb. A shelf runs along one side of the stairs, filled with old board games--Clue and Monopoly, sure, but also Dark Shadows and Mr. Ree! and Planet Of The Apes. That last one was mine, of course, and I want to stop and linger over it, but I continue down the stairs. There should be a little dresser at the bottom, with the bathroom on the other side, and the familiar clutter of the dining room all around--this is the house I grew up in right? Something long dead and all that?

But no. I get to the bottom of the stairs and it's just another car in the train. The club car, and really? This is the death following me? Skeletons and cheesy-looking zombies dressed in old-timey suits? This is supposed to represent what?

I slide open the door of the club car and continue on to the front of the train--or possibly the back, since I have no idea which direction I'm going. There's a car full of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and kind of like the cats and dogs, some are more familiar than others, but I focus on a screened-in area beside this car, filled with diffuse, unearthly sunlight. I enter, making awkward conversation with more people I barely know.

But I recognize them. They're musicians who worked briefly with my ex-wife. Some of them are perfectly cordial, some are pissy and bitter, holding inexplicable grudges against me. One is particularly vocal, and I cut him off by saying, "Hey, I just wanted her to make a halfway decent album, and you couldn't deliver."

"Yeah," he says, "but what about what she wanted?"

Death. Yeah, I get it. My marriage. Ha. Very symbolic, like that stupid MASH episode where we see everyone's dreams. Next thing you know I'll be floating in a river of severed limbs, just like Hawkeye, and please, God, can I never think of that again, or any episode of MASH from the BJ-with-a-moustache era?

The train stops.

Or simply ceases to exist, since I don't actually disembark. I stand at some sort of crossroad--ooh! symbolism!--deciding which way to go. The landscape looks vaguely familiar--kind of like the bottom of Cemetery Hill, but not really--so I just pick a direction at random and start walking.

Soon enough, I'm joined by Paul, who greets me with his usual, "Hey."

"Hey. How was the new Harry Potter?" I ask.

"Do you want me to tell you? I'll be seeing it again with you..."

"Yeah, I know, and that's why I'm thinking this whole 'death will follow you' thing just isn't making much sense. I mean, yeah, I dated your Mom, and that didn't work out, so sure, another failed relationship, another 'death'"--I make sure to deploy ironic air quotes--"but you and I still hang out."

"Yeah, we're hanging out right now."

I stop walking. "But you're not actually here."

And indeed he's not. The road has stopped at a large white house, with a neatly-trimmed lawn and a river running beside it. People sit on the steps, people I should know, dressed like cast members from The Waltons in their Sunday-go-to-meetin'-time clothes. They're portrayed by ex-cast members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 because why the hell not, but they're passing around old photos and mementos and things I should know. They're talking about Mom, but they're getting the details wrong.

"You can't know," I say. "You weren't there. I wasn't there, either, I wasn't there, even though she asked me. She wanted me to come up that Monday night, to crash at her place before I took her to the doctor the next day, but I begged off because I was tired, and so she fell and when I got there Tuesday she had that horrible bruise on her head and she was hallucinating and...Maybe if I'd been there, maybe if I'd been there..."

My tear-filled eyes make the sun-dappled water in the river shimmer more than usual, then it twinkles, and I realize there is no river, it's just an elaborate video display, and the image changes to a wall of ads for nineties hip-hop albums. There are shelves all around, books and DVDs and old LPs. Mom sits beside me in a plush leather chair.

"I'm afraid I could spend some money here," I say.

"Do you have money to spend?" Mom asks.

"Some, yeah."

She smiles. "If you see something you want, you should get it. If you wait, it may not be there when you come back." Her words hang in the air, fading. I realize I'm coming back into the waking world.

There's a cat on my pillow and a cat at the foot of the bed. Janie is in my arms. I pull her a little closer as she sleeps, feeling her breathing. The fan gently blows the cord of the window blinds, and I listen as it bounces against the wall, clack, clack, clack.

KINDA LONELY HERE, ISN'T IT?

2011-07-12T04:12:00.000-05:00

Wow. It seems as if new posts here, already decreasing in frequency, are becoming as rare as Bigfoot sightings. I haven't died, and I haven't officially decided to vacate this space.

I just...don't have much of an urge to write anymore. This could very well pass, but it could take some time, and whatever readership I may have actually built up here (Ha!) will likely grow bored and move on. And who could blame them? There's nothing here to read!

But you're still here, aren't you, Theoretical Person Reading This? You decided to show up, and for your effort, you deserve some kind of entertainment. Since I'm not capable of providing that myself, here's a typically lurid TV spot from a late seventies slasher classic. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.

A STEADY HAND TO PULL THAT LOAD BEHIND

2011-07-01T04:08:00.002-05:00

Flipping the channels yesterday, I unexpectedly came across an episode of this.

I hadn't thought of this show for...geez, decades, I suppose. It ran for a season and a half back in the mid-seventies, and it never really lived on in syndication. Like most TV, it was there briefly, then gone forever.

But seeing it again, with that montage-heavy opening, so typical of its era, and Merle Haggard's theme song, and Claude Akins' craggy face and Frank Converse's epic moustache, I was suddenly transported back in time, to a very specific and vivid memory.

I'm sitting on one end of the couch with comic books scattered on the floor around me, and my oldest brother Keith sits on the other end, a paperback in his hand, though he's watching more than reading. Dad is in his recliner, his ever-present can of Grain Belt beside him, and Mom in her chair. My brother John, sipping an iced tea in his rocking chair, watches as well, though perhaps ironically. My sister Julie sits at the old school desk beside the couch, a textbook and paper in front of her.

The TV is tuned to Movin' On, of course, and it's still the old black-and-white Philco, not the Quasar color set we'd acquire by the time this show reached its second season, when we could see Akins' Kenworth rig in all its green glory. Dad and Keith keep a running commentary going about that Kenworth, about how they show it doing things it simply wasn't capable of, and Keith uses the phrase "Hollywood jive" to describe the show more than once.

Mom watches intermittently, looking up whenever Converse is onscreen, returning to her cozy British mystery novel whenever the focus shifts back to Akins. Julie is completely disengaged from the whole thing, scribbling furiously at her homework.

Me, I'm just sort of there, zoning in and out, happy just to have a moment with so many of us together. My brother Mike is already married, my sister Ann off to college, but here the rest of us sit, gathered around the cathode-ray fireplace, everything else in the world miles away, and I am content.

SERIOUSLY, HONESTLY, NO SHIT, REALLY...THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'LL WRITE ABOUT THIS THING

2011-06-20T04:21:00.000-05:00

Despite my ongoing obsession with the astonishingly misconceived musical Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark, I didn't bother writing anything about the official opening of the show last week. Since the ousting of its formerly "visionary" director/co-writer/co-designer Julie Taymor, the show, according to most critics, turned out exactly as anyone could have predicted: Instead of Taymor's batshit insane down-in-flames grab for glory, the show instead became dully respectable, a competent salvage job of something that shouldn't have been salvaged.

So okay, we saw that coming, nothing more to say...except Taymor, who should have shut up and moved on a long time ago, felt moved this weekend to talk about what became of her baby.

Speaking to a conference of theatrical types, she proclaimed her disgust with her Spider-man producers, who, in a desperation move as Taymor's show missed numerous opening dates, used focus groups to try to salvage something from the show. "It's very scary if people are going to move towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show. Shakespeare would have been appalled. Forget about it.It would be impossible to have these works come out because there's always something that people don't like."

Sure, Julie. Except Shakespeare cannily tailored his plays to the audience of the time, mixing his deeper themes with low comedy specifically designed to appeal to the groundlings. Also, he could write--once the script was set, it was rehearsed and performed. There was no "process" to "discover" the show, no endless reworkings of crazy theatrical concepts at the expense of coherent storytelling.

Besides, Taymor's producers only turned to the focus groups after she was fired from the show. She was given months and months and months and months to "find" her show, and she never did. She wasted seventy million dollars of investors' money on her ridiculous notions--Spider-man as a supporting character in a show about the power of myth, or some fucking thing--and she would have been perfectly happy to keep spending, with no regard for what her producers needed (that is, a profitable show) or an audience might have wanted (some kind of entertainment).

Of course, those pesky audiences were part of the problem, according to Taymor: "Twitter and Facebook and blogging just trump you. It's very hard to create. It's incredibly difficult to be under a shot glass and microscope like that."

Well, granted, it would be hard to be under both a shot glass and a microscope, but inexplicable metaphors are nothing new for Taymor. But again, much of the online chatter about the show's astounding non-quality came once previews started. Once you're asking audiences to pay for tickets--at full prices, mind you; there were no discounts during the preview period--they're going to respond. That's how the process works. And if the audience is overwhelmingly telling you that your show has problems, you fix them. If you can't do that, your producers have every right to fire your ass.

Sure, I'm usually all about the artist here, but Taymor was working on a Broadway musical, where the rules have always been in place. And the first rule has always been: It's all about the show. Directors, songwriters, authors, even big-money stars have all been replaced when shows are in trouble. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but Taymor acts as though it's all brand new.

The biggest mistake the producers of Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark made was not dumping Taymor much earlier in the process. Like, for instance, when she submitted an incoherent script that had very little to do with the title character. Or after the first, say, ten million bucks were spent with nothing to show for it. After sixty million more was spent, firing Taymor was a mercy killing.

Now if they'd just close the show altogether, we could all pretend this never happened, and I'd finally shut up about it.

KILL ME NOW

2011-06-18T04:10:00.001-05:00

When you see the headline Arizona Town Cashes In On Rock Song, there is no need to click on the story because OF COURSE it will be about the citizens of Winslow taking advantage of the town's fleeting mention in that stupid, stupid Eagles song.

And sure enough, Winslow has installed a bronze statue of a "floppy-haired man with a guitar" (this description, like the story itself, comes from The New York Times, the Arts & Entertainment section of which has clearly seen better days)on a corner near--sigh--Standin' On The Corner Park, which is odd because unless I'm mistaken the actual lyrics of the song are, "standin' on A corner in Winslow Arizona" but why split (floppy) hairs? Once you've decided to name a park after a line in an overplayed country-rock groaner from the seventies, you've already taken leave of your senses. Oh, and hey, there's an annual Standin' On The Corner Festival that draws "thousands" (according to the Times, which I suspect didn't do a lot of fact-checking on this particular story), so...dear God, I can't go on.

The notion of thousands--or even dozens--of people reorganizing their lives just so they'll have time to attend something called the Standin' On The Corner Festival fills me with a sense of overpowering despair. Everybody is entitled to their own obsessions, and it's not like I, with my Jerry Lewis obsession, have any room to question anybody's taste. But still, people making a pilgrimage to a town just because of its mention in a fucking Glenn Frey song...

Seriously. Kill me now.

WHEN ALL HOPE SEEMS LOST, WHEN DESPAIR BECOMES OVERPOWERING, THERE WILL BE A BLAND, BLAND LIGHT

2011-06-14T03:57:00.001-05:00

This headline from the Associated Press says it all: Pretty In Pink's Andrew McCarthy Writing Memoir. And by "says it all," I mean the AP used the headline to remind us who McCarthy is, or more accurately, was--a guy who was in a semi-loved movie, though he's not the reason anyone liked it. They could also have said Weekend At Bernie's Star Andrew McCarthy Writing Memoir, but then readers would be scratching their heads trying to remember which of the two remarkably uninteresting leads from Bernie's was McCarthy and which was the other guy.

Anyway, the point is--Andrew McCarthy is writing a memoir? Seriously? According to the AP story, which reads suspiciously like a slightly-reworked press release, it will reveal how McCarthy's "journeys helped him defeat his fear of love and commitment." All well and good, but hopefully there will be room for discussions of his distinguished film career, including, um, Pretty In Pink. And Weekend At Bernie's. Plus that all-time box-office smash Fresh Horses, and of course that awful Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas thing he was in. And Weekend At Bernie's 2!

When a megastar of McCarthy's magnitude decides to sit down and spill the beans, it behooves us all to pick up a copy. And take a nice, refreshing nap.

WE WERE ONLY HERE FOR AWHILE

2011-06-13T04:15:00.000-05:00

It wasn't so much that I made a point of avoiding a family reunion this past weekend as...oh, okay, I did avoid it.

In fairness, I had things to do. Paul had a baseball game, then we had to see Super 8 (which we both enjoyed) and, for about a minute during the day, it did occur to me that the two of us could drive to Dawson and take part in this big family whoop-de-doo, but it occurred to me also that I'd have to keep explaining to everyone who Paul is, because aside from my brother John and my sister Ann, nobody would have any idea.

Which is kind of odd, because he is of course mentioned here quite a bit, and in status updates of Facebook, and various other places where I hang out online. Paul, Janie, the dog and cats, assorted exes and various friends--there's a regular cast here (even though some of them are kinda like Jeff Conaway on Taxi and disappear once it becomes obvious they're not working out), and regular readers of this site are presumably as familiar with them as viewers of MASH were familiar with Hawkeye, Colonel Potter and that guitar-wielding guy Loudon Wainwright played in three episodes.

But--well, look, I was going to go off on a pissy little tangent about how nobody in my family reads my blog, but that's not really the point. The reason I avoided this thing is, I hate--HATE--family reunions. I'm five years younger than my closest sibling, and my cousins are older still, and whenever I'd get dragged to one of these things as a kid, I felt profoundly alone and abandoned because there was nobody for me to talk to, nobody paying attention to me, nobody comforting me as my sense of isolation overwhelmed me and sent me off to cry alone. Also, even though I was only five or six or seven, I still sensed the weird stifled emotions that were always present when everyone tried to play nice. (I couldn't really give you all the details, but my oldest brothers hated each other--I recall one epic Quiet Man-style donnybrook that raged down the stairs, through the dining room and living room and out the front door--but at family get-togethers, they always smiled and talked to each other. Knowing what they were like at home, and being too young to understand the protocol of events like this, the disconnect fried my tiny brain. It was like they'd been replaced with pod duplicates.)

It sounds facetious, or like a too-pat TV-movie style explanation, but the family reunions I was forced to attend as a kid probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wound up in therapy by the time I was in seventh grade. That is, they took the feelings of isolation and despair I already had as part of my day-to-day existence (again, five years younger than my closest sibling, plus parents who were already into middle age by the time I started school, plus an isolated rural home surrounded by abandoned, rusting farm equipment, the type of heavy-handed symbolism that would cause any rational viewer to roll their eyes if they saw such nonsense in some shitty indie picture) and ramped it up to unbearable extremes. I remember kicking and screaming, begging Mom and Dad to let me stay home, I hated family reunions so much. I dreaded them for weeks in advance, my heart pounding, unable to sleep. And nobody seemed to realize just how profound that dread was, any more than they noticed me at the actual functions, sitting in a corner glassy-eyed, sinking in a Bergman-esque well of despair.

So, yeah, I'm an adult now, and presumably better-equipped to deal with these things, but you know, the last time the tribe gathered en masse was at Mom's funeral, so it just seems that these things are destined to have depressing subtexts for me. In other words, I could have sucked it up and gone to this thing, or I could have spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon hanging out with an eleven-year-old who makes me laugh and gets all my John Williams references.

I'll stand by my choice.

IF I FELL

2011-06-10T03:28:00.000-05:00

The dog barks at car tires hissing on the rainy streets. The cats mostly sleep, waking occasionally to acknowledge my presence. I've got some Warren Zevon playing, milk and donuts ready to be consumed, and a weekend on the way. Everything is exactly as it should be, except for one thing.

Janie's not here.

No, no, it's okay. She's just visiting her sister for the week. We've talked everyday since she's been gone, and she can't wait to get back. To her recliner, her bed, her cats. And me, presumably.

I can't wait for her to get back, either. She belongs here. Her voice, her laughter, her everything. When I bought this place, I thought...well, honestly, I'm not sure what I thought. I wanted a place of my own, someplace to call home. But it turned out to be just another place to live, no different from the anonymous apartments that had come to define my existence.

But now, when I walk through the front door after a brutal day at work and Janie is here, and we kiss and we laugh and we love, I finally feel like I'm coming home.

WARMTH

2011-05-29T10:31:00.001-05:00

I've got a co-worker who still has a rotary phone, who has no idea what a debit card is, who grumbles whenever the radio in the stockroom is tuned to a station that plays a lot of eighties stuff like Bon Jovi or The Thompson Twins because he can't stand that "new" music. He'd probably be happy to have any of the items advertised in this commercial.

But really, who wouldn't want that couch? And it comes with a free portable TV! There's no technology you have to master with these things--with that TV, you could take it anywhere. You'd plug it in, flip the on switch and there it was. Maybe you had to play around with the rabbit ears to get reception, but you didn't need a decoder box, your house didn't need to be wired, you didn't need a router or a wifi card or a minutes plan or anything back in those days. Life was good.

Even the pitchman in this ad is straightforward: Here's the merchandise, here's what it does, this is how you get it. No irony, no flashy graphics, just a simple, effective spiel. You'd never see such a thing these days. But why not? It works. (Again, I really want that couch, hideous seventies burnt-umber color and all.)

Obviously, we'll never go back to a pre-digital world. But I've noticed that some of the people most likely to mock how we looked and acted back in those days are people who were around then. Have they forgotten their own past? Have they forgotten how much better-built merchandise was, and how well it all worked? Have they forgotten how happy we were with what we once had?

IT CAN'T BE WRONG WHEN IT FEELS SO RIGHT

2011-05-23T04:23:00.002-05:00

Pop cultural history seemed already to have forgotten Joseph Brooks. His most famous achievement, the lugubrious pop song You Light Up My Life, was a massive hit back in 1977, winning an Oscar and a Grammy, but it quickly became a thing to be mocked, then, soon enough, ignored--even radio stations that regularly program "the biggest hits of the seventies" usually leave it off their playlists, though it was the top-charting song of its year.

The odd thing about Brooks, though, was that he kept doing things, whether anyone wanted him to or not. He'd become a millionaire cranking out commercial jingles, and he used his money to fund a number of vanity projects. He wrote and directed the movie You Light Up My Life, designed as a showcase for his songwriting, and it was a modest hit, largely due to the popularity of the title song. But it was enough to convince him he was an auteur--he followed it with If Ever I See You Again, a drippy romance about a successful pop songwriter forcing his way back into the life of his ex--Brooks starred, despite having zero screen presence and a vaguely reptilian appearance--and Headin' For Broadway, about a group of hopeful kids willing to do whatever it takes to find stardom.

These were movies nobody could possibly want to see, and predictably, they flopped. Somehow, Brooks kept working. A few years ago, he became something of a laughing stock with his Broadway musical In My Life, a misguided semi-romantic trifle which he wrote, scored, produced and directed. Stage musicals are usually collaborative affairs, but Brooks refused any kind of assistance for his terrible show--he would do exactly what he wanted, and he wasn't going to let anyone tell him no.

Not that he would have listened. The word "no" clearly meant nothing to Brooks, who was due to stand trial for sexual assault on over a dozen women he had lured to his Upper West Side apartment with promises of some kind of work in some unspecified project. He posted ads online and held private auditions. When the naive young hopefuls appeared at his door, he offered to show them his Oscar, he poured them wine, asked them to perform a scene he'd devised. Then he raped them.

Even in the New York tabloids, Brooks' unfolding legal saga was never front page news. He just wasn't big enough, famous enough. No matter how hard he tried, how much money he made, he was always a show-biz also-ran. He killed himself over the weekend, a miserable end to a worthless existence, and The Post and The Daily News both buried the story in the back pages. Nobody cared about his fucking Oscar.

THOUGH YOUR DREAMS BE TOSSED AND BLOWN

2011-05-17T03:58:00.002-05:00

What are you going to do, get all weepy about Louis Prima and Keely Smith? Or Buddy Hackett, or Johnny Carson, or even The Beatles, for God's sake? It was just a place where people did some stuff, a piece of a past that can never be recovered.

It's not like it's real history we're talking about here, only show-biz history. But it's long been part of the peculiar nature of Las Vegas that it preserves its past in amber, or at least an amber-colored (but heavily watered-down) drink. How else to explain the continued existence of The Sahara Hotel & Casino, which still sat at the north end of the strip like an aging madame, full of stories about the nearly-forgotten greats she used to escort? (And she'll always refer to her gentlemen friends as escorts, not johns. What the hell do you think she was, some two-bit hooker?) The former "Jewel Of The Desert" shut down yesterday, but it had been closing bit by bit through the years, serving as some sort of reminder of the past in a town that barely has a present.

For the pleasures offered by Las Vegas are, by design, fleeting. Times change, people move on, no one remembers. Really, why should they? Oh, so the Sahara was for many years the home base for Jerry Lewis' Labor Day telethon? That's nice, but so what?

After all, Lewis himself is retiring from that institution after this year. Though he has yet to find a cure for Muscular Dystrophy, there is no question that Lewis' time in the spotlight is due to end. He was once as big as anyone, and he and Dean Martin could pack 'em in like nobody's business, but to watch him continue year after year, unwilling and unable to change with the times, diminishing his own reputation every time he referred to the likes of Jann Carl as a "marvelous" talent, abandoned by the few relevant celebrity friends he still has...well, it was a sad, sad spectacle, like watching the suckers being chased out of the Sahara on its closing day, all of them wanting one more chance to play their lousy dollar slots.

I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD

2011-05-15T10:17:00.001-05:00

1. This title, of course, comes from T.S. Eliot. That is, it originated with Eliot, but for me, it comes from the old National Lampoon parody The Love Song Of J. Edgar Hoover, which served as my dramatic reading in a freshman speech class. After I finished, the teacher asked me if I'd even heard of Eliot. Since all I really knew were the few lines from The Hollow Men referenced in Apocalypse Now--sadly, I had no idea what the Lampoon piece was parodying--I said no. My teacher was disappointed.

It was at that moment that I came to believe, as I still believe to this day, that I'm not nearly as smart as I want to be.

2. The two paragraphs above repeatedly featured the words "I" or "me"--twelve, counting variations. One of the reasons posting around here has become less frequent is because I'm trying to make this space less relentlessly self-centered. Many posts in the past were devoted to painfully detailed retellings of awful (and, far less often, joyous) occurrences in my life. All well and good when there is some larger point to be drawn, some fondly-recalled universal moment we've all shared, or even when there's some catharsis to be had by exorcising old demons. Sometimes, though, I resorted to just offering tediously detailed descriptions of bad dates, things that weren't even interesting as I experienced them.

So, you know, sorry about that.

3. All well and good, but hey, today's my birthday, so I get to be a little self-indulgent, right? Problem is, I've got nothing to say. I'm forty-six today, well past the halfway mark--presumably, at least; yeah, you never know how long you'll live, but neither of my parents lived to see eighty, so the odds aren't exactly in my favor--and past the point of taking stock but not to the point of looking back.

My life is still unfolding, in other words. I was in my forties when I decided to become a homeowner, and in the last year alone I've acquired an actual, permanent girlfriend and a small flock of critters. I still have no idea how to do basic things around the house--thank God Janie knows how to set a mousetrap!--but there's time to learn.

But not all the time in the world. There is a definite sense that, even as it unfolds, life is still winding down. I'm aware that my body can no longer do certain things I used to take for granted, and I'm more aware than ever that everything I see and know could be gone tomorrow. These aren't bad things, really--they just make me appreciate what I've got.

4. Obligatory Moment Of Delmar: I love all my cats very much, and will go to my grave insisting the late and much-missed Scotchie was the best cat ever, but there's no question that my beloved little ball of rage Del is my favorite cat in this world or any other. He's been by to rub against me repeatedly as I've been writing, and at one point reared up on his hind legs to begin chewing on my elbow. Sure, he has dozens of psychoses, but more than anything else, he's fiercely devoted to me. Plus, he's adorable!

Though not, it must be said, as adorable as the beagle, who has also been over to say hi repeatedly as I've been writing. Four-legged creatures love me!

5. The first time I wrote a birthday post it was a fairly dismal day, spent buying tires or some such. The pattern repeated from then on, assuming I took note of the day at all. This year...I dunno. Why bother complaining? I'm alive, I'm happy. Life is good.

SOME THAT YOU RECOGNIZE, SOME THAT YOU'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF

2011-05-07T03:45:00.001-05:00

There's no point in arguing that Yvette Vickers was an underrated actress, that she deserved better than Attack Of The 5o Foot Woman and the similar Z pictures associated with her name. Sadly, there's not even any use in commenting on her achingly carnal beauty.

Because now, when she's remembered, it will be as that ancient pin-up queen whose mummified remains were found by a neighbor. So she's officially a freak now, a has-been who never quite was, and the ghoulish circumstances of her death are all anyone will ever talk or care about. The fascinating life she led--she was discovered by Billy Wilder, Russ Meyer shot her Playboy spread, she was a fringe player on the Hollywood scene for years--will be forgotten.

Still. At her peak, studio execs treated her as just another blonde in a town full of them, and audiences failed to make her the star she should have been. But now, at last, people will remember her. As befits a mummy, she has become immortal.

STILL AND STRANGE

2011-05-02T04:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah, of course I remember life in suburban D.C. in those awful days and months following 9/11, that horrible feeling of looking up, looking around, squinting into the beautiful blue sky, waiting for the next attack.

Not that we had to wait long, because the attack came from within. Osama Bin Laden and his associates surely knew that the attacks on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and wherever the fourth plane was supposed to hit were only the first step. Sure enough, paranoia on a massive scale erupted, and we as a nation were all too willing to surrender our civil liberties, to support a baseless war, to do whatever in the name of...what?

What was the goal? Was it to get Bin Laden? Because if it was, why the hell were we in Iraq? Why did we do half of what we did? Why...Ah, forget it. It's four AM, I need to get ready for work and Osama Bin Laden has been stopped at last. Yes, we know he was more a figurehead than anything else, and we know his associates are still out there, plotting revenge.

There'll be a sequel, in other words. But at least, for now, the story has an ending.

DEFINITELY NOT RACIST

2011-05-01T13:02:00.002-05:00

I've been rereading Mark Harris' mostly-exemplary book Pictures At A Revolution, which examines the genesis and cultural impact of the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the 1968 awards. Harris' point is that two of those movies, Bonnie And Clyde and The Graduate, represented what was about to come, the New Hollywood of the seventies and early eighties, while two of the others, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Doctor Dolittle, represented the staid Old Hollywood that looked increasingly clueless as social and aesthetic changes swept the nation. (The fifth nominated picture, In The Heat Of The Night, was kind of somewhere in between, and as a well-crafted, well-intentioned but essentially dull enterprise, it's the type of Oscar bait that still shows up every year.)

Reading the book now, the most interesting section by far is director Stanley Kramer's experiences schlepping Guess Who's Coming To Dinner through the studio pipeline. This is a movie that, in its pro-interracial marriage premise, seemed daring in the development stages, but by the time it was released, felt instantly dated. The civil rights era had gone a long way to change America's views of race.

Hadn't it? By Kramer's stated intent, he wanted "the black bridegroom to be so exceptional that if anyone objected to him, it could only be due to racial prejudice." Harris wryly points out how far Kramer would go to make this character exceptional: he wasn't just successful in his field, "but an Ivy League-educated potential Nobel laureate who worked for the United Nations on worldwide health missions."

Uh, you can probably see where I'm going with this, right? There are, Lord knows, plenty of reasons to rue Barack Obama's presidency, from a cabinet full of Wall Street insiders to his seeming inability to hold to a simple policy position. But to suggest that he's somehow not entitled to the office, that he's just not smart enough, that he didn't deserve his Ivy League education...well, to paraphrase Stanley Kramer, those objections could only be due to racial prejudice.

The obvious offender would be Donald Trump, whose increasingly offensive string of claims about Obama reveal much more about his need to be constantly talked about than anything else. Trump almost certainly doesn't believe this shit, but he knows if he says it, the media will cover it.

And they do, every word of it. Trump is not the problem, any more than Sarah Palin or Sean Hannity or any other far right nutjob. The problem is the way the story is inevitably framed by the media overlords. They present Trump's blatherings as if they represent some sort of coherent point of view, as if there's some validity to them. There is none, of course. Even the most ideologically rigid exec at Fox News knows how smart Obama is--after all, they used to claim he was some sort of elitist snob, out of touch with every Johnny Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat in this great nation. Yet they bring on experts to "debate" Trump's claims, when they know very well there's nothing to be debated. The man is lying. Call him on it and move on. Ignore the motherfucker, deny him the attention he so nakedly craves, and he'll go away.

No mainstream reporters are quite willing to come right out and say the obvious: If Trump's remarks are racist, then his sudden popularity among Republicans must say reveal much about the party's rabidly anti-Obama stance. But they're not quite willing to say that. Until they do, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner will continue to seem weirdly relevant. Which seems impossible, of course, but there's a lot of things going on these days that shouldn't be happening, but somehow are.

A PROFOUND SENSE OF LOSS, NARROWLY AVERTED

2011-04-26T05:29:00.001-05:00

There are days that we all remember, days that change everything. The Kennedy assassination. The Challenger explosion. 9/11.

And, most sobering of all, the day Ryan Phillippe suggested he may or may not quit acting.

When The New York Post--certainly one of the nation's finest news-gathering organizations--reported a half-assed quote from Phillippe about being so sick of the paparazzi surrounding him twenty-four hours a day that he was thinking of getting out of the acting game, the first thought that crossed the minds of every right-thinking citizen was, "NOOO! We can't live in a world in which Ryan Phillippe's shimmering star presence no longer illuminates our hearts and movie screens."

Well, okay, maybe that wasn't our first collective thought. First it was, "Who the hell is Ryan Phillippe again?" Then, after a quick stop at IMDb, just to confirm that, Flags Of Our Fathers aside, the guy hasn't really been in much of note, we thought, "Wait, paparazzi are stalking this guy?" Then we went about our business. Come to think of it, we didn't really care about Phillippe one way or the other.

But if we had, his rep was quick to inform Access Hollywood--a show so distinguished it should have won a string of Peabody awards by now, assuming they're giving out Peabodys for total crap these days--that no, no, Ryan's cool, he doesn't want to quit acting, he's just looking to branch out. Maybe some producing, directing, that sort of thing. So, sort of like his one-time director Clint Eastwood, only with zero screen presence and marginal talent.

The point is, despite our momentary panic at the thought of losing this vast talent, our screens will continue to be filled with all the Phillippe we can stand, whatever form it may take. Breathe easy, America!

AMBULATORY PENIS: A CAUTIONARY TALE

2011-04-23T04:56:00.001-05:00

You could feel sorry for him, up to a point. Life as a giant walking dick couldn't be easy, after all. He was what he was, and sometimes--again, he couldn't help it--his cream would spurt all over the place. That was the nature of things for Ambulatory Penis.

No one said he should hide himself away. But hanging around the playground? Not only asking kids about his cream, but forcing them to taste it?

There are rules to society. Ambulatory Penis found out too late, sobbing uncontrollably as he was hauled off in handcuffs, his only words to the press a hushed, "I'm only as God made me." Despite the rumors of his dalliance with Fruit Pie The Magician, he was a first-time offender, and the judge was prepared to be lenient. Still, after all he'd been through, Ambulatory Penis kept babbling at the arraignment about his creamy, creamy filling, and the punishment was harsh: Chemical sterilization.

His jail time was relatively brief, but as a registered sex offender, he found housing hard to come by. He was seen rarely in public, his circumsised head hung low in shame. His enforced flaccid state made him physically unattractive, and when he passed away, his very name was a joke.

Still, some people recall...well, perhaps the details are too painful. But if they try, they see him as he was, and remember.

I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING I POSSIBLY CAN

2011-04-23T02:55:00.002-05:00

They're bad songs, most of them--Macho Man, Hold The Line, Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad--but they still get played with alarming frequency, in department stores or waiting rooms or dozens of different places. They're just sort of there, part of the collective consciousness.

Yet hearing them now, in pristine digital sound, doesn't seem right. These songs were made to be heard on AM radio. Specifically, they should be wafting from a transistor radio carried by someone on the bus, or the tinny factory speakers in my brother's Chevette. I should be moving forward, past endless barren cornfields, the sky overcast, all branches bare.

Where would I be going? To school, to a movie, simply for a ride? No matter. The important thing is, sooner or later, I would be returning to the house where I lived, to the fuel-oil stove and a casserole-based dinner, to the 19" Quasar which was always on, even when nobody was watching, to the sounds of conversation. Whatever I was doing, eventually I'd go home.

What was I? Twelve? At that age, I still seemed to be living the life I always had, the life I assumed would continue. It seemed as though the warmth and comfort of this particular place would always exist. Yeah, sure, there was a wider world out there, and some day I'd be hurled into it, but that was so far away it was beyond imagination. This was my life, my world.

Things changed. Gradually at first, and I tried to hold tight to the only things I knew. Soon enough, though, the ground erupted and I fell, consumed by overpowering depression , unable to function in any meaningful way until my late twenties. Then I got better. Sort of. I reentered the world.

Marriage. Divorce. Sleepless nights and the occasional doomed relationship. Another relationship, this one I thought for real, but it ended, too. My dad died, and my oldest brother, then Mom. That home I once knew was well and truly gone. Images from the past would blip into my brain and I'd chase them away, unable to process them.

Through it all, I endured. I found a path and took it, winding up here, with a house of my own, three cats and a dog. And Janie, of course, who accepts me for what I am, even when I burst into song for no particular reason. There are familiar rituals, constant conversation, things to do. There are ups and downs, but through it all, there is love.

At long, long last, when I walk through the door every night, it feels like coming home.

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR CHILDREN WILL ASK HOW WE AS A NATION ALLOWED JONAH HILL TO BECOME A STAR, AND WE WILL LOOK AWAY, ASHAMED OF OUR COWARDICE

2011-04-20T08:02:00.002-05:00

Say, remember that box-office smash and all-time classic movie Get Him To The Greek? Do you remember seeing it and thinking, "Ah yes, Russell Brand and Jonah Hill. Now there's a comedy team for the ages"? Or do you, more likely, remember seeing the ads for it and thinking, "Yeah, maybe I'll catch up with it on cable or something"?

Get Him To The Greek wasn't a flop, but it didn't exactly set the world on fire, either. And considering that it cost way more than necessary to produce, and a whole lot more to market, you might think that Hollywood studios would be in no hurry to offer ridiculous deals to its two stars. You would, obviously, be wrong--why else would I be writing this thing?

Thus, the portly, non-photogenic Hill is currently shooting 21 Jump Street, a presumably comedic updating of the painfully earnest Johnny Depp TV series from the late eighties. This project has been in development forever it seems, and at no time has anyone connected to it bothered asking why the fuck they're bothering with a movie version of a TV show that nobody really remembers. More to the point, no studio execs have ever bothered asking why they're funneling obscene sums of money into Hill's production company in the first place. (He's not just bringing his unique brand of anti-charisma to 21 Jump Street as an actor--he's writing and producing the damned thing as well.)

Nothing against Hill, who was reasonably funny in Superbad, but that's just it--his entire career seems to be based on the success of that one movie. On the basis of that, I can understand giving the guy some gigs as a character actor. But starring roles? And his own production company? Nobody ever gave anything like that to the guys from Porky's, and that movie made a lot more money than Superbad. But then, that was made when studio execs had some sense of perspective. (When the sweaty, coked-out mindset of eighties Hollywood seems like model of common sense, things have deteriorated beyond salvation.)

Even more baffling than the ascent of Hill is the treatment given to his one-time co-star, Russell Brand. When Get Him To The Greek opened, we were deluged with articles treating Brand as a star. Not as someone on the brink of stardom, but a full-fledged movie star, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything. (Yeah, he was a big deal back in England, but so was the guy who played Selwyn Froggitt, and nobody ever put him on the cover of Rolling Stone.) And sure enough, Brand was soon given the lead in the remake of Arthur, a movie even more deeply unnecessary than a redo of 21 Jump Street. When that movie was released two weeks ago, Warner Bros. made a half-hearted attempt to inflate the weekend grosses, but to no avail: it's a flop.

Rather than admitting their mistake, or at least pretending the whole thing never happened, Warners is reacting to Brand's lack of success by offering him a production deal of his own, as well as the lead in a comedy in which he'll play an arrogant soccer star who, through tiresome plot mechanics, has to--wait, you've never heard this one before--coach a team of rag-tag youths.

It's perhaps unfair to single out Hill and Brand as examples of everything wrong with movies today. The problem isn't with them as performers so much as the mindset of the studio functionaries who keep greenlighting this shit. There's virtually no way any of the announced vehicles for these two gentlemen could possibly be any good, and audiences have consistently shown indifference to their presences, yet here they are, or others like them, taking up space at the multiplexes with movies nobody wants to see.

Ticket prices keep going up, ticket sales keep going down. Can't anybody in Hollywood read a graph?

ALL NECESSITIES PROVIDED

2011-04-15T03:37:00.001-05:00

I remember reading an interview with the great director Sidney Lumet, who died this weekend at the age of 86, in which he was asked if he had a particularly identifiable style.

No, he said, because he believed every story had a particular way it needed to be told, and his job as director was to find it. As example, he cited one of his best-known movies, Network. Many scenes he chose to shoot in an almost verite style, the better to establish the reality of the world he's presenting. He realized, however, that certain individual scenes would seem ridiculous if shot in a naturalistic manner. So these scenes have their own style, whether over-the-top flamboyant, or rich with the shadowy menace of classic noir, or whatever.

The trick was deciding how far to push these individual scenes for maximum impact while not allowing the different styles to clash with each other, to make sure the film stood as its own fully-integrated entity, not just a collection of scenes. And if you've seen Network, you know Lumet more than met his goals. You can dislike the movie itself, mostly due to Paddy Chayefsky's declamatory script, but it's impossible to quibble with Lumet's handling of it--purely as a piece of filmmaking, it is absolutely brilliant.

As was so much of what he did--Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince Of The City, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. He was incredibly prolific, and he made a few also-rans, as well as a number of outright losers. (If you have a few spare hours sometime, ask me what I think of The Wiz.) Good, bad or great, everything he did was the work of a man who above all had the intention of telling you a story. He was something rarer and more valuable than an artist. He was a professional.

WOOFS OF SORROW, WAGS OF JOY

2011-04-10T03:38:00.002-05:00

It was a year ago today, on what would have been my mom's eighty-second birthday, that I somewhat reluctantly drove down to the Animal Rescue League to see this beagle puppy Tabbatha had told me about. I had no intention of bringing it home with me, but as we all know, the puppy had other ideas.

And Isabella T. Beagle (there's nothing excessively cutesy about that name, is there?) has brought me more joy in that year than I would have thought possible. She does this in all the standard dog ways--bouncing, rolling, barking unexpectedly, deploying the big brown soulful eyes to get whatever she wants.

Mostly, though, she's just there when I need her. I mean, cats are great and all, and for that matter, so are girlfriends, but there are some problems in life that can only be solved by hugging a dog. And the great thing about Bella is, after a minute or so of hug-time, she starts squirming furiously, as if to say, "OK, sad time's over. Let's go play." And she's right, of course--after hugging her, I always feel better, and playing with her always makes me happy.

Which isn't to say she can't be a pain in the ass, because she can. Janie and the cats would all be perfectly happy if she wasn't around. On the other hand, there was the time Janie was scared to the point of crying, and Bella gently climbed onto her lap and carefully licked away her tears. And though Staley--who, incidentally, is one of the greatest cats in the history of the species--doesn't exactly like the dog, the two of them are nuzzling each other even as I write this.

The main thing bout Bella--look, I'm kind of reluctant to bring this up, because it sounds like so much sentimental bullshit, or feel-good semi-mystical hooha, or something. But it's to do with the day she came into my life. I'm quite sure Tabbatha wasn't giving any thought to the fact that I was going through my annual Mom's Birthday Sadness when she called to tell me about this adorable puppy. That was on a Friday night, and I didn't care to head out that night, waiting instead until the next day to take a look--April 10th.

As I drove home with this tiny, helpless beagle snuggled against my side--the last time she'd be so calm in my presence!--the day was suddenly transformed. No longer would April 10th be a signifier of the loss of the most important person in my life. It would be a day celebrating a new chapter, a day of joy, of happiness.

Of life.

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

2011-04-05T03:20:00.000-05:00

I'm no prude, okay? Nor am I some Bill O'Reilly conservative type, or a fundamen6talist Christian nutjob. Nonetheless, I must ask: Do we need jokey cameos from Hugh Hefner in a movie aimed at kids?

I'm speaking, of course, of Hop, the new animated/live-action mongrel that is, as the ads proclaim with a certain level of pride, "from the director of Alvin & The Chipmunks," which you may remember as the movie in which semi-beloved characters from an earlier era are reduced to eating shit and conspiring to get their human buddy laid. So expectations are already low.

Still, this is a movie about the Easter Bunny, which is one of those childhood concepts that ceases to have any significance once you reach the age of, I dunno, seven or so. So presumably, if you're making a movie about the Easter Bunny, you're setting your sights on really young kids as your target audience.

Now I realize that when millions and millions of dollars are spent on a movie, it has to try to reach as large an audience as possible. Presumably the filmmakers wanted to provide some sort of entertainment for the adults who are accompanying all those kids. They could have done this by creating a well-crafted, witty film that would enrapture everybody, the kind of thing Pixar can do without even trying.

Or they could take the most cynical route imaginable and make a bunch of cheap semi-dirty jokes, trot out the likes of Hefner and the deplorable Chelsea Handler, and give audiences a cameo from David Hasselhoff because...wait. Why would you do any of that? Even for b-level celebrities, haven't Handler and Hasselhoff long passed their sell-by date? Would anybody in any audience conceivably welcome their presence?

Probably not, but it's not like the maker of Hop give a sweet shit. If they did, they would have made a good movie.

CATS! ALSO, DOG!

2011-03-29T09:08:00.001-05:00

Do any of you--specifically, the two remaining readers I still have--remember the old days of this site? When leftist political screeds (laced, sadly, with frequent Star Wars analogies) would alternate with painfully detailed explorations of the minutia of my personal life? Man, with a surefire combo like that, no wonder this thing took off!

I mention this because, first of all, it seems weird that I never even mention things like the assault on Libya by The Coalition Of The Still-Willing, or the non-existent economic recovery, or radiation leaking over from Japan. The world could end tomorrow, and I'd still spend all my time here complaining about that stupid fucking Spider-Man musical.

What's even more mystifying is my inability or unwillingness to write about my life. That is, my life now; God knows, I've spent plenty of time turning over the rocks of my past. (Talking about past suicide attempts: a positive way to embiggen your readership!) I mean, for crying out loud, she's been here for weeks now and I still haven't said a word about new cat Cookie.

Cookie is Janie's cat--because Janie has officially moved in, and hey, I haven't mentioned that, either--and, man oh Manischewitz, she's the furriest cat I've ever known. But the thing is, unlike other recent feline addition Staley--who I should also talk about more often, because she's awesome--Cookie barely sheds at all. If she sleeps on my pillow, I'll be able to get up the next morning breathing clear. If Staley's next to my head all night, I'll spend the day hacking up hairballs.

Since there are now three cats roaming around the house (beloved malcontent Delmar is still here, of course, and dealing with all this as best he can), the poor beagle is forced to spend more time in her kennel, just to allow the cats some wandering around time without a rambunctious dog trying to stomp them.

At first, I was kind of opposed to this idea. Isn't it terrible to confine a dog for long periods of time? But actually, as many dog trainers can tell you, it is in fact a good idea. Isabella loves her kennel--she jumps into it willingly, and immediately curls up. It's kind of her home inside her home, and more importantly, it helps establish a routine for her. There are rules around here, just like any other household, and this is one Bella is expected to follow. When she obeys, she is rewarded with love. And biscuits, which frankly count for more in her world.

It occurs to me that if Bella has rules she is expected to follow, and if Janie and I have certain responsibilities we have to carry out each day, the cats are pretty much free to do whatever the hell they want, any time of day. As they would no doubt tell you, this is part of the natural order of things.

PRETTY SURE I'VE USED THIS AS A TITLE BEFORE, BUT THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO SAY: AAIIEEEE!

2011-03-23T04:01:00.001-05:00

Looking back, it seems kind of impressive that I used to post here every day, but let's face it: Much of what appeared here was merely padding. There were lazy, single paragraph posts, there were lame "can't think of a premise" posts and there were shitloads of clip jobs.

And many--too many?--of those clips showcased random numbers from TV variety specials of the seventies. And yes, many of those numbers featured the barely competent Lynda Carter, because she served as a shining exemplar of seventies celebrity. Enormous breasts aside, she had no particular reason to be a star, yet there she was on TV anyway, and worse, she was singing.

One might have thought I had exhausted the available library of Lynda clips, and even I thought I had, but the internet is a bottomless pit of unnecessary things, so there's always the dreaded More: More Lynda, More singing, More dancing, More campy Peter Allen songs that aren't even very good on their own terms.

But hey, enough with the talking. Take it away, Carter Miranda!

IN WHICH I GO OFF ON ANOTHER WEIRD TANGENT

2011-03-17T03:47:00.000-05:00

Look, I have no control over the types of things that pop into my head. That's the only way I can explain why I found myself wandering around the other day singing The Hut Sut Song.

If you, quite sensibly, wonder what the hell I'm talking about, you clearly didn't know my mom, who would break into this from time to time. As to how or why the damned thing ever came to exist, as Dr. Floyd said of the monolith in 2001, its origin and purpose remain a total mystery. Posting this on St. Patrick's Day makes no sense whatsoever, but what do you want? At least I'm not going on about El Brendel again.

CAN'T SEE NO SKY

2011-03-14T03:50:00.001-05:00

There was never blood, not any of the times I slashed my wrists. Oh, I wanted there to be: rivers of crimson, my very essence visibly departing. I wasn't some fucking cutter. This wasn't done for cheap effect. I wanted to die every single time.

Unfortunately, as the great philosopher Daffy Duck once observed, pain hurts. Sure enough, the more pressure I applied to my wrist, the greater the pain. Well, I'd think, what if I mess this whole thing up? What if I don't die, but somehow lose the use of my hands, or otherwise have to continue to live in a state of unbearable agony?

The fact that I could never take that permanent step raises the possibility that I didn't, if fact, want to die. Okay, maybe a few of those times, when I was just trying to send some kind of message to my mom and dad, or my wife, or whoever was unfortunate enough to be in my orbit at that particular time. Maybe. But there were so many other times when I floundered all alone with my despair, when the only shred of hope I could cling to was the promise of sweet oblivion--oh yes, those were the times when I did indeed wish to leave this world permanently.

Funny, though...like so many things in my past, I remember the details--my cat Monika sitting at my feet, the mocking sunshine outside the window, the tender flesh of my wrist growing whiter and whiter as I drove the blade down harder--but I can't recall the context. What overwhelming depression could have led me to such feelings? What could have prompted me to want to say The Big Adios? What emotions were so intense, what could have gone so wrong, what was my fucking deal?

I can remember plots of TV shows from thirty years ago. I can remember details of aimless car trips my brother and I took when I was in junior high. I can remember a thousand voices and songs and conversations. But the circumstances and emotions that made me want to kill myself--sorry, no. Those are the things I can't recall.

So I continue to live, relatively happily. There are plenty of down days, sure, but the thought of ending it all never crosses my mind. Why would it? That's not a rational way of thinking. Still, from time to time I'll notice the scars on my wrists, up and down and crisscrossed like a subway map, and I'll wonder what it felt like to hate myself so much.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE TURN OFF THE DARK

2011-03-10T16:27:00.001-06:00

Of all the unfortunate things to come from the whole Charlie Sheen affair, the worst by far is that it has stolen the nation's pop cultural spotlight away from that godawful Spider-Man musical.

Really, they might as well start billing it as "That God-Awful Spider-Man Musical" but until they do, it's still called Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, which, as I've said over and over again, is the worst title of anything conceived in human history. Turns out, the title was contributed by Bono, who is perfectly happy to have people call him Bono, so the sheer stupidity of it becomes a bit more understandable.

But not acceptable. The annoyingly pretentious Irishman dreamed up the title based on a story he vaguely recalled about a kid who said "Turn off the dark" instead of "turn on the light". Ha, ha. That's cute, Bono, but what the fuck does it have to do with Spider-Man? By that logic, I could write a terrible musical adaptation of Taxi Driver and call it "Travis Bickle: Masho Peetato" and explain that the title comes from my inability as a child to properly pronounce "mashed potatoes". Would that have anything to do with the character at hand? Of course not. Does "turn off the dark" have anything to do with Spider-Man? Of course not.

Bono's indulgence is clearly typical of the show right down the line. Seriously, read this synopsis of the plot. Sure, a typical Marvel Comics plot could be ridiculously convoluted, but it would at least be straightforward. This...this makes no damned sense. And worse, it's obvious that Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a hapless bystander in his own show, that director Julie Taymor (who was referred to in every story about this thing until previews began as "visionary director Julie Taymor") is more interested in the whole Arachne/mythology thing and grafted some shit she was already working on onto the Spider-Man show because there was funding for it.

Taymor deserves all the mockery she's been receiving--did I mention the show includes a supervillain fashion parade?--but to offer a half-hearted defense of her position, the show as it stands is only partially her fault. Sure, the creative debacle is entirely her doing, but there's no way anyone should have let the show get that far. Once anybody with any business sense read her script, they should have clearly said, "Thanks, not what we're looking for." Nobody could have thought that fake-poetic hooha about Greek mythology was a good idea in a show about a contemporary superhero. Maybe they were waiting around to get some idea of Taymor's staging concept--her, uh, vision, if you will--but again, once they saw this crap in rehearsals, the producers should have either pulled the plug or started over with an entirely different concept. All the wirework in the world can't save a bad idea.

Now that Taymor has been shown the door (or metaphorically snapped her cable and plunged to the stage) it's unclear how the new creative team can possibly salvage this thing. They are so far only being given a three-month window to work this into shape, so there's no time to start from scratch. (Everyone who has seen the damned thing agrees that the whole Arachne thing needs to be dropped, but given how much of the physical production is built around her, that seems unlikely.) And really, why should they change it? Taymor's show is already considered one of the worst things in Broadway history; bringing it to the level of respectable competence would reduce a legendary disaster to a merely dull failure.

REFLECTIONS IN THE WAVES, OR SOME DAMN THING

2011-03-07T03:59:00.001-06:00

Oh, this is a crappy song.

I was twelve when this came out, and I hated it then. I hated the neo-classical piano and the whooshing synthesizers and the whole aliens-and-shit angle, which just comes out of nowhere and...everything about it, basically.

Except. That whole "reflections in the waves spark my memories" bit. "Some happy, some sad/I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had." When I'd hear this song in the middle of the night on the AM radio in my bedroom, those lines seemed authentically rueful, the lament of someone who'd been around, a message to me that everything in life doesn't always turn out for the best--after all, if Dennis DeYoung's friends could miss out on the pot of gold, what hope did the rest of us have?

These days, obviously, I realize that part of the song is just as phony as everything else. But once upon a time it served its purpose--it injected a bit of melancholia into a profoundly stupid pop song, and it made me realize that even the most placid surface could mask troubling depths. Which means on some level I'll always be grateful for a Styx song. My life, consequently, has been lived in shame.

HOW I SPENT MY WEDNESDAY

2011-02-24T06:25:00.001-06:00

Standing with the other suckers roped into jury duty for twenty minutes or so, waiting for the court house to open. When the doors are finally unlocked, we shuffle obediently through the metal detectors, find the restrooms, make note of all the vending machines and finally make our way to Room 303.

"We'll validate your tickets when you're dismissed for the day. Please take a badge and have a seat," says the pleasantly efficient blond in the surprisingly low-cut silver top. She'll say it a hundred times or more as the jury room continues to fill. It is now a quarter to eight, and the wait begins.

And how lucky for me. Though most people in the packed room sit quietly, reading or messing with their phones, I'm sitting in front of two right-wing nutjobs. They don't seem to know each other, but they feel amazingly comfortable sharing their noxious world views with each other.

It starts out with one of them going on about the "cowardly" Democrats in Wisconsin, which leads nicely into some anti-union bullshit, and then it goes downhill from there. By the time one of them is waxing nostalgic for the eighties--"We had a good president, and kids could fight. None of this fucking stuff about bullying. Who is some committee to decide what a bully is, anyway?"--I start to loathe the criminal justice system. Imagine having your guilt or innocence decided by these goofballs.

Fortunately, the Donald Westlake/Richard Stark book I brought along provides excellent distraction--damn, that guy could write!--at least until the person in charge appears at the front of the room and instructs the right side of the room to follow her for orientation. Unfortunately, I'm on the left side, which means I get to listen to more pearls of wisdom from the cornfed Glenn Becks behind me. It's not even eight-thirty. Shit.

I'm already up to page 50 in my book when the person in charge--who tells us her name, and it confirms that she is not in fact the woman I once had a mild crush on many, many years ago--reappears and leads us down the hall to a surprisingly disheveled courtroom, with boxes piled in one corner and a rack of folding chairs against a wall. She rolls out a vintage Zenith, pops in a VHS tape and our orientation begins.

As befits a tutorial presented in an obsolete format, the video walks us in the most dated way imaginable through the essential stuff we need to know about being a juror. One of the most important things it stresses is to avoid reading newspapers or watching TV. Uh, right. This tape is being played to a room full of people with cellphones and iPads, who can easily find out anything they need to know in seconds, and we're being told that we can have loved ones cut out any relevant stories from newspapers before we read them. I know that Polk County has had to make some pretty severe budget cuts, but would it be too much to ask that our orientation material be produced in this century?

The tape ends, and we're addressed by a judge, who reiterates half of what we've already heard, then apologizes for the age of the video. The idea of skipping the video altogether and merely having the judge address us from the get-go apparently never occurred to anybody. After all, that would speed up the process, and God knows we wouldn't want that.

Back to the jury room, where names are called for potential jurors for specific trials. I'm one of thirty potential jurors for a trial being overseen by Judge Rosenberg, whose name is mentioned half a dozen times, as in "Judge Rosenberg jurors, please line up in the hallway," or "Judge Rosenberg jurors, please wait to the left of the jury room," or "Judge Rosenberg jurors, please wait."

So we wait in the hallway. And wait. And wait. Conversations start, then peter out from lack of interest. People lean against walls or marble columns, walk around briefly, the lean some more. All thirty of us watch, mesmerized, as an elderly gentleman polishes the balustrade, and shortly after wondering whether "polishing the balustrade" works better as a euphemism for oral sex or masturbation I realize it has been years since I've been quite this bored.

What was supposed to be a fifteen minute wait stretches to an hour. It's obvious that the case we were to hear is being settled, but nobody keeps us informed. Finally some functionary who is different from all the other functionaries we've seen this morning gathers all the Judge Rosenberg jurors together and tells us the obvious: The case is settled. "However," she adds, "this does not mean you are being released from service. There is one other trial scheduled, and we may yet need alternates for the two other trials getting underway"--and here she checks her watch in an absurdly theatrical manner--"shortly, so please return to the jury room and wait."

Which we do, for another hour or so, until another yet another functionary appears, telling us to go home. I wait for the line to thin out before having my parking ticket validated by the blond in the surprisingly low-cut top, which is now covered by a white shirt buttoned to the neck.

Someone must have said something.

NOTHING'S GONNA CHANGE MY WORLD

2011-02-16T03:12:00.002-06:00

Suddenly, it's five years.

I'm forty-five. Five years is a long time, a considerable chunk of my life. And yet five years is how long I have lived in this world without Mom.

LiFe without her comforting words, her wise counsel, her fiercely-held opinions? It once seemed unbearable. And how I would miss her sense of humor--she could make me laugh anytime I talked to her. She was--and I hesitate to use the term, but there's really no better description--a life force: everyone who came into contact with her was better for knowing her. She was the center of my life, my world, my universe. Life without her would be no life at all.

Still, here we are. Life has gone on, and I might make note of the fact that the first sentence of this paragraph was a lift from the Bob Seger song We've Got Tonight, which has nothing to do with what I'm writing about. In fact, I hate Bob Seger, and I particularly hate that song, and maybe it only popped into my head because I'm trying to think of something, anything, to distract me from the subject at hand, because I don't want to start grieving all over again.

Or maybe it popped into my head because I'm frankly kind of bored. I don't want to be writing another tribute to Mom. What else is there to say? This site came into being as a way of dealing with my grief, but it quickly became something else, because after all, how long could the grieving process last? I still remember so many little details, and still do all I can to honor Mom's memory, but the simple fact is, that memory doesn't mean as much to me now as it once did. It just doesn't. It can't. If it did, I'd live under it every single day, unable to move forward.

It is, after all, the nature of all things to move forward. And so I have--I rarely think of Mom anymore. Life goes on, things in their season, and all that. Letting go is a natural and inevitable part of the process.

Still, something stings my eyes. Couldn't be tears, though. Not after five years.

NOTHING SO APPALLING IN THE ANNALS OF HORROR!

2011-02-15T14:11:00.001-06:00

More passings of people I'd always hoped would be around forever.

Betty Garrett, for instance, has died at 91. She was a mainstay of MGM musicals in the late forties and fifties, but the famously conservative studio cut her loose when her husband, Larry Parks, was blacklisted for pro-Communist sympathies. (He named names, which made him a pariah of the right and the left.) Garrett found work at other studios, she and Parks did a ton of summer stock, and she finally became a much-loved character actress. I couldn't find my favorite moment Garrett had on film (her performance of It's Fate, baby, It's Fate from the otherwise undistinguished Take Me Out To The Ballgame) but this will do nicely, as she effortlessly takes charge of an amazing ensemble including Tommy Rall, Janet Leigh and Bob Fosse in a number from Richard Quine's wonderful 1955 musical My Sister Eileen.

Pancreatic cancer took the great character comedian Kenneth Mars at 75. Like Garrett, he made anything better simply by being in it, whether it was an episode of Murder, She Wrote, the cult favorite Fernwood 2Nite, or, the roles that granted him immortality, Mel Brooks' The Producers and Young Frankenstein. That last film, in particular, has a cast full of great comic performers, but Mars, in a relatively small role, steals it from them all.

Finally, heart failure finally took producer David Friedman, the distinguished impresario behind some of the finest films ever made.

That was, of course, Blood Feast, one of several movies Friedman produced for writer-director Herschell Gordon Lewis. The almost-competent cinematography and dime store effects came courtesy of Lewis, but that patently insincere warning at the top of the trailer was pure Friedman, a master of selling the sizzle without the steak. So many of his titles--Trader Hornee, The Erotic Adventures Of Zorro--sound entertaining, but most of the inventiveness was spent on the titles and ad campaigns. Still, they generally at least delivered on their promise to show gorgeous naked babes, so there's that. Friedman flourished during a more innocent time of exploitation cinema, though he later produced the notorious Ilsa, She-Wolf Of The S.S., from which he removed his name, as well as some hard-core porn. But he always had a sense of humor about what he did, and never took himself seriously.

And it was a sense of humor that united Friedman, Mars and Garrett. The world is worse without them.

DON'T TRY TO FIGHT IT

2011-02-13T03:50:00.001-06:00

It was called the music room, mostly because it was the only available space left in the whole school for the band and choir to rehearse. No one was fooled, though. The awful acoustics and overhead door on the north side marked it for what it originally was--a garage.

It was, therefore, the only sheltered area in the entire building that could temporarily house a pickup, and so that was where we gathered: seventh and eighth graders being allowed for the first time in school history to build a float for the homecoming parade. This honor had previously only been bestowed on freshman and up, and the significance wasn't lost on us. It meant we were practically in high school, which meant we were practically adults.

Normally we would have been outside working on this, but a furious rain pounded the ground, as it had the whole previous night, as it was scheduled to do all day. If it continued, the parade and all related events scheduled for that afternoon would be canceled, but none of the twelve and thirteen-year-olds gathered inside the music room were thinking of that.

Most concentrated on the papier-mache figure taking shape on the back of the pickup, some sort of angry bird wearing a YJB Raiders helmet. Others, less ambitious, hung on the periphery, happy just to have been granted a period full of extended goof-off time, free from the burdens of the classroom. I was one of those, though I wasn't all that celebratory about my freedom. I hated gatherings like this, feeling perpetually isolated from most of my classmates, so non-social it hurt.

Still, somehow I found myself leaning against the driver's side door of the pickup when Dale, one of my classmates, and Marty, a grade ahead, slid into the cab from the other side. They motioned me inside, handed me the key--how had they gotten hold of it?--and Marty said, "We need some music."

I turned it to auxiliary. Dale punched buttons on the radio until he came to KIOA, the local Top Forty station, the one station everyone listened to. We suffered through some commercials and the top of the hour newscast, then, finally, music.

Well I was sixteen, sick of school
Didn't know what I wanted to do
I bought a guitar
I got the fever
That's rock & roll

I was twelve, and I already knew Shaun Cassidy was nothing but a TV pretty boy, that this song, this product, had nothing to do with real rock & roll. But Dale and Marty were bopping their heads in time to the music, and damned if I didn't start pounding out the beat on the steering wheel. By the chorus, we were all three singing along.

Come on everybody, get down and get with it
Come on everybody, get down and get with it
Come on everybody, get down--that's rock & roll

We kept swinging our bodies back and forth in time to the rhythm, and pantomimed playing along to the cheesy sax solo. For three minutes, we freed ourselves to wild abandon.

That song ended, some Neil Diamond crap came on, we emerged from the pickup. Dale and Marty went off to do something else, and since I wasn't explicitly invited to join them, I crept back to the periphery. I had briefly glimpsed something new and different, a kinship with people I barely even knew, but now I stood in the corner by the big windows, watching the rain, falling, falling.

PUSSYCATS

2011-02-06T10:22:00.000-06:00

A friend was moving, she couldn't take all of her pets with her, so please welcome to the stage another player--new kitty Staley. I don't really need another critter around here, what with the cat and the dog I already have, and Janie's cat, which will presumably be joining us shortly.

But Staley is fuzzy and gray, and darned if she doesn't look a bit like much-beloved and still much-missed Monika and...and she's just insanely lovable, is what she is. She's already shown she can hold her own against a leaping Beagle, and even though Delmar hates her, that's not too troubling, because of course Del hates everyone. (Except me, of course.) It's a little disconcerting to be reading in bed and suddenly have a fuzzy gray presence appear in my peripheral vision--for one brief moment, I think Monika's still around--but there's comfort in that presence, as well.

So again, welcome to Staley, but a sad farewell to Tura Satana, the iconic, magnetic star of one of Russ Meyer's greatest films, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Unfortunately for Satana--her real name, incidentally, which is one of the many awesome things about her--that film was released in 1965, a time when nobody in the filmmaking establishment was paying any attention to the disreputable likes of Russ Meyer, so her amazing performance, which should have led to a long, well-earned career, pretty much led nowhere.

She wasn't a great actress, but she was an astonishing presence--would it be too much to compare her to Cyd Charisse?--and she certainly deserved better than the Al Adamson crapfests she wound up doing. Later in life, as appreciation for Faster, Pussycat! became more common, she became famous for simply being, adored by fans for one great role.

And while it would have been great if she'd done more, what she did was more than enough.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

2011-01-23T08:53:00.000-06:00

Some time ago, in the wake of multiple posts lamenting the punishingly dull, relentlessly self-important botch that was Superman Returns, I mentioned my regret that the shift toward dourly serious superhero movies meant it was extremely unlikely that we'd ever again see a movie like Richard Lester's Superman 3, which is a whole lot worse than Superman Returns but a lot more interesting, as Lester's obvious contempt for the genre and discomfort at handling a summer tentpole were palpable. The days had long passed, I thought, when a studio would hire a director as obviously incompatible with this kind of material.

I was wrong, apparently, although in the case of The Green Hornet, it's hard to know who is more incompatible with the mechanics of superhero machinery, director Michel Gondry, more noted for his decidedly low-tech whimsy, or co-writer/star Seth Rogen, whose slacker/stoner persona is rapidly approaching its sell-by date. To their credit, neither men seems remotely interested in making a big dumb action movie. In fact, they don't quite seem to know what the hell they're doing.

That's mostly intended as a compliment. It would be impossible to describe The Green hornet as a good movie, exactly, but it's a lot of fun, with some of the go-for-broke inventiveness of Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, albeit without the visual and thematic unity of that film. Half of what happens, plot-wise and character-wise, seems utterly random, and not always intentionally so, but that makes it wonderfully free of Screenwriting 101 conventions. A late scene where Rogen puts together the motivations of the two main villains is the closest it even comes to pretending to care about the storyline.

So the movie rises and falls on its individual scenes. Some of them, particularly anything involving Rogen or co-star Jay Chou hitting on Cameron Diaz, are pretty squirm-inducing. But the scenes revealing Chou's abilities as a crackpot inventor as well as an ass-kicking martial artist (and incidentally, Gondry shows a real flair for filming and editing action scenes; who knew?) are delightful, everything involving Christoph Waltz's insecure villain Chudnofsky (or Bloodnofsky, as he later decides to call himself) is solid gold, and how can you not love the fact that Gondry sticks a homage to the sped-up threeway scene from A Clockwork Orange into this would-be franchise movie?

The Green Hornet did unexpectedly well in its opening weekend, but I suspect it won't have legs, and any kind of sequel seems unlikely. That's okay. It's reassuring to know that the Hollywood development process even allowed something this eccentric to get made in the first place.

I REALLY LOVE TO WATCH THEM ROLL

2011-01-17T16:01:00.001-06:00

This is a not-untypical day off: Janie and I went out for breakfast, we came home and hung out, took epic-length naps...That's about it. Right now she's watching Underworld on cable, a movie I don't care for but which I'm finding to be a perfect zone-out movie, something that can be on in the background and I can dip in and out of without any concern that I'm missing anything.

That's kind of the point of my life that I've reached, and honestly, I'm good with it. I'm no longer nagged by the feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something else. I haven't seen as much of the world as I might like, I've never finished, much less published, any of those novels I started, and I've sentenced myself to a life with a job, not a career, which means I'll never earn as much money as I thought I needed to be happy.

Thing is, though, I am happy. Mostly, anyway. It doesn't matter how worldly we are or what our income level is, life will always be made up of small, individual moments. And if more of those moments are joyous than sad, well, that's a life well-lived. As long as Janie and I can inexplicably burst into songs from Mary Poppins while snuggling in bed, as long as beloved beagle Isabella leaps like an overgrown bunny through snow banks, as long as Delmar growls, hisses and finally purrs when curled up on my lap...At times like those I feel love, both given and received. And what could produce greater happiness than that?

DISTURBING, SURE, BUT STILL CRISPLY

2011-01-14T04:28:00.000-06:00

In the past, I've tended to use terms like "Lovecraftian nightmare" to describe vintage TV commercials that featured edible objects coming to terrifying life. I mean, a talking, disembodied hand or a lumbering pitcher of fruit-flavored drink would be, if we saw them in our everyday lives, a horror beyond comprehension.

Still, you know what? I say, good for Mr. Salty!

Though I doubt he ever really served in the Navy, he at least found someone willing to rent him a costume, and through sheer pluck, and without actually accomplishing anything more than being "crisply"--which, you know, he's a pretzel; it's like congratulating a human for having skin--he manages to get the all-white citizens of this anonymous city singing his praises. Of course, presumably after the ceremony, everyone will gather 'round and consume him, and his bland smile won't be enough to cover the unbearable pain, but at least he had his moment.

GRAY

2011-01-09T16:08:00.000-06:00

A great day yesterday, spent almost entirely in the company of Paul--we went to a movie, we ate out, mostly we made each other laugh. (Yes, my sense of humor is like an eleven-year-old's.) In all we did, the radio and computer were barely utilized, and the TV was used for entertainment purposes only.

It wasn't until this morning, glancing at the headlines at The New York Times, that I even became aware of the shootings in Arizona. And the horrifying details filled me with...nothing, really. A vague sadness, a faraway sense of despair.

But no grand emotions. Just made me feel sort of numb, and the feeling continues. I'm all alone here now, Paul is back with his mom and Janie's gone for the weekend, so I hunker down here with the beloved cat and dog, staring out the window at the gray day, waiting for the snow.

MAYBE I'M CRAZY TO SUPPOSE

2010-12-31T05:08:00.000-06:00

The darkness is always there, always visible. I know myself well enough to know it will never go away, not completely.

Still, there is light and warmth, more than I've known for so long. There is Janie, the woman I've been looking for without even realizing it, so full of love and acceptance. There is wonderful Isabella, the greatest dog in the history of dogs. And, as always, there is my beloved little malcontent, my heart and soul, my psychokitty Delmar.

There are great friends and nodding acquaintances, there is music and movies and long drives on lazy days. There is a sense that I've found something like my place in the world, and there is a feeling of contentment.

So what am I doing New Year's Eve? Probably not much, but whatever it is, I'll be doing it with the knowledge that I'm loved, and that I can love back.

I'M REALLY OVERTHINKING THIS

2010-12-29T05:18:00.000-06:00

I originally wanted to post this commercial break from ABC's 1976 Saturday morning cartoon lineup as an excuse to go on about the second ad here, for the long-forgotten (and little-missed) cereal Grins And Smiles And Giggles And Laughs, possibly the most misbegotten breakfast food of all time. Seriously--"the cereal that smiles back at you"? Happy little faces piled in your bowl, waiting to be eaten? And, if the commercial is to be believed, vomited up by some large-brained supercomputer? What a wonder that this thing didn't go over!

Possibly even more disturbing, if only as a comment on the state of the nation in the year of the Bicentennial, is the McDonald's ad. Everybody wants to go out for a morning meal, but only Ronald seems to know that McDonald's is now serving breakfast. Most baffled of all is Mayor McCheese himself...but wait! Mayor McCheese presumably runs McDonaldland. How can he be unaware of this seemingly momentous change in restaurant policy? Did he not sign off on it? Was it drafted by others? A secret cabal, perhaps, working in shadows to ensure that things would go the correct way? Was Mayor McCheese even duly elected, or did he merely assume the position when McDonaldland's previous ruler was forced to resign in disgrace, perhaps fearing impeachment?

Not that I spent any time thinking about any of this when these ads originally aired. I wasn't that cynical as a kid. Still, I remember all these things, so they obviously had an impact on me, though I dearly wish they hadn't. There must have been plenty of time spent on weekends back in '76 when eleven-year-old me was outside playing with the dog or having adventures or...I dunno, something. But any such memories are lost. But puking computers and badly-costumed politicians ruling fast food empires...that stuff's with me to death.

THE WORLD IN SILENT STILLNESS LAY

2010-12-25T04:00:00.002-06:00

The day grew short, as winter days will. It was late in the afternoon when my brother John realized he needed to do some last minute shopping, so I rode along as he drove into Perry and headed for Gibson's Discount Store, the only place open so late on Christmas Eve. He found what he was looking for, and bought himself a present as well--Simon And Garfunkle's Greatest Hits on 8-track, which he listened to on the way home.

It was nearly dark when we got back to the farm, the sky turning ever darker shades of blue. Mom had turned on both the yard light and porch light, which we didn't really need to find our way, but the gesture was appreciated. John immediately vanished to his room, as my oldest brother Keith had already spent the day in his, and my sister Julie was in the kitchen talking to Mom, who made last-minute preparations for the next day's feast. Dad and I were the only ones in the living room, numbly sitting in front of the television, watching without interest the typically awful animated specials run endlessly in syndication, killing time until dinner was served.

After eating, there was some wrapping to be done--I was used mostly to tear off pieces of tape, while Mom and Julie did most of the real work--and then...well, and then, I just couldn't wait to go to bed. I was all of ten, too old for Santa Claus, but not too old to enact the comforting ritual of snuggling in the darkness, anticipating all the wonders the next morning would bring. I could hear voices downstairs, and the TV, and the hum of our fuel oil stove. My family was here, and the next day was Christmas. For the moment, at least, all was right with the world.

TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!

2010-12-23T04:19:00.000-06:00

You know, there are so many reasons to slog on the truly dreadful-sounding Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, it almost seems unnecessary to list them. You can start with the fact that it recently endured its fourth injury of a cast member, continue with the practice of charging full ticket prices for preview performances of a show that is nowhere near completion (its creators cheerily admit that they STILL don't have a final act), continue by pointing out that its songwriters, Bono and The Edge (who, incidentally, continue to call themselves Bono and The Edge, a fact which calls their very intelligence into question), are touring with U2 and are thus unavailable to provide the new material a preview period might demand, and of course, there's no overlooking the fact that it's called Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the stupidest title of anything in recorded history.

The greatest venom would have to be reserved for the show's director and co-writer, Julie Taymor (or, as she's apparently contractually required to be called, "visionary director Julie Taymor"). While it is undeniably true that the producers of this thing deserve some of the blame for indulging her too long--the budget is still listed at sixty-five million, though that was the official count on opening night, and numerous revisions (and hospital stays) have no doubt driven the costs up considerably since then--it is Taymor's inability to see the show as anything other than a monument to her own hubris that is so infuriating. Whatever fans may want or expect from a Spider-Man musical (and I'm not sure many of them would want one in the first place, but whatever), that is not want Taymor intends to give them. She apparently is determined to use the character as a jumping-off point for a fantasia on Greek mythology, pop culture and whatever else pops into her head. Such basic concepts as "story" or "characterization" or even "entertainment" seem foreign to her.

Which is all well and good, and I'm not at all opposed to Taymor's ambition (except when, you know, it could cost the life of a cast member), but, boy, is it misplaced. She's not making some semi-avant garde piece to be seen by the season's subscribers at BAM this time out, she's making a fucking Broadway musical about a superhero. Given that, yes, she does have an obligation to meet an audience's basic expectations. She could exceed those expectations, go beyond them, yes, but only if she shows any understanding of what people like about the character in the first place.

But we're talking about the director of Across the Universe here, so...

I'M EASILY DISTRACTED

2010-12-18T04:16:00.001-06:00

I had a long piece in mind about director Blake Edwards, who died this week at the age of 88. Basically, I intended to state my deeply-held belief that A Shot In The Dark is one of the best comedies ever made, that Days Of Wine And Roses, Experiment In Terror, Wild Rovers and That's Life are damn good movies, that Darling Lili is crushingly underrated...and that almost everything else Edwards ever did (and he was nothing if not prolific) was incredibly problematic. But there are serious gaps in my viewings of Edwards' films (I've never actually sat through Breakfast At Tiffany's, mostly because as soon as Mickey Rooney's buck-toothed Japanese caricature appears, I bail), and the whole thing never quite came together and...

Then yesterday came the news of the death of Captain Beefheart, and again, it seemed like I should have something to say about one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century, but I was busy last night, and the computer was acting screwy again, and...it didn't happen.

Then...hey! This morning I wake up and discover Neil Patrick Harris and Eric Braeden are having a feud on Twitter, and suddenly life is good. Apparently Braeden was set to do a cameo on How I Met Your Mother, then bailed, prompting Harris to call him a D-bag. Braeden offered some mildly caustic rejoinders, Harris half-ass apologized...and that's about it, really.

But it's Neil Patrick Harris and Eric Braeden, people! Dr. Horrible vs The Actor Formerly Known As Hans Gudegast! The cool, funny guy with the beautiful singing voice for whom geeks everywhere have a (metaphorical and strictly hetero, thank you) boner is squabbling with that guy from The Young And the Restless who used to play that Nazi on The Rat Patrol who kind of became the only sympathetic character on that show, because who could blame him for wanting to kill a dick like Christopher George?

So it's not really a big deal, and not really worth writing about, especially when I couldn't bother to summon any thoughts on Blake Edwards, but it amused me.

JUST LIKE STARTING OVER

2010-12-13T03:45:00.000-06:00

The other night I dreamed I stood in a buffet line at some small town community center. I accompanied Mom, and it was somehow understood that when we got through the line and sat down, we had important but unspecified matters to discuss. The line was slow, and food kept piling up on my plate. Mashed potatoes and dressing, a high pile of tuna casserole, a grilled cheese sandwich, comfort food staples of my childhood. I wondered what Mom and I would talk about, but I was also distracted by the dessert table, which featured brownies and chocolate chip cookies and all manner of cakes--

--Then, suddenly, I woke up. And, in those few moments of altered perception experienced between the dream state and the real world, I did not find myself wondering what Mom and I needed to discuss. All I could think was, I didn't get to eat.

Which means...well, it could mean any number of things, but for now I'm going to use it as a metaphor for this site. It started out as a way to grieve Mom's loss, but it quickly turned into whatever the hell it is now, a forum for me to rage or observe or purge whatever feelings I had at the moment. For awhile there, I needed this space, the compulsion to write every day was overpowering. And invigorating.

Lately, though, that urge to fill space is no longer there. My life has undergone some major changes, and I find that I am--for lack of a better word--content. There are still any number of free-floating anxieties, but they no longer overwhelm. As I look back at so much of what has been written here over the past four and a half years, it seemed to reflect my quest to find a place in the world, to somehow belong somewhere.

And I think I've accomplished that, more or less. So what is there to write about? Lots of things, of course--but specifically, what to write about here? Is this site even necessary anymore? I honestly don't know. I still love writing, on those increasingly rare occasions when my ability and my interest combine to produce good work. I enjoy it, but no longer feel the need to do it.

So--again--what does this mean? I'm not shutting this down, I'm not signing off. I'm honestly trying to figure out what this space needs to be, how it can keep me interested, what it will become. I would like to post more frequently, but I would need to find a reason to do that, and so far, I'm too busy doing other things. But soon enough, I'll be back here doing whatever the hell I do.

Say, what DO I do around here, anyway?

ISN'T IT INSPIRING HOW A MAN BORN WITHOUT A SPINE CAN BECOME PRESIDENT?

2010-12-07T07:57:00.000-06:00

Let us say there is a political party determined to preserve tax breaks for the super-wealthy at the expense of benefits for the nation's most desperate, wretched souls--hard to believe, I know, but let's pretend--and if such a nakedly rapacious force existed, it shouldn't be difficult for anyone with even a bit of imagination and a mere trace of rhetorical skill to depict them as, you know, kind of villainous.

Or they could do what President Obama has done, and make a deal with them. He gave them everything they wanted and more, and all they had to do in return was promise to extend unemployment benefits for barely more than a year. So the downtrodden will continue to eke out a miserable existence, and the obscenely wealthy are free to fill up their swimming pools with gold coins and dive right in, Scrooge McDuck-style, and even the faintest glimmer of "hope" and "change" fades a little more, a faint memory of a promise we once naively believed, or tried to believe.

WHAT IS THIS AUTOSAVE OF WHICH YOU SPEAK? AND WHY DO YOU WEEP WHEN IT FAILS?

2010-12-05T06:10:00.000-06:00

So I had this thing I was working on here, and it's not like i was that far into it or anything, just a couple paragraphs, but still. The point is, I managed to start cranking out something halfway decent at a pretty good clip, when suddenly--

DA-DA-DUUUMMM

--my computer froze. Which it's been doing a lot lately, and it's getting pretty damned--oh, look, let's not get into that. The point is, Blogger is supposed to autosave these things, but when I returned, it was gone. Gone! As though my thoughts had never stirred, as though...well, again, it really wasn't that big a deal. Just kind of annoying, really. Hardly worth mentioning.

You know what? Let's just pretend this whole thing never happened. Instead, enjoy this...the most disturbing thing you'll ever see.

LIVING IS EASY WITH EYES CLOSED

2010-12-02T16:50:00.000-06:00

I remember the details of individual moments surrounding my father's death--the foggy morning, the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulance, already lined up at Mom and Dad's apartment building before I even arrived, the dread coiled in the pit of my stomach as I called various siblings to tell them the news--but I can't recall the bigger picture, the larger context.

What did I do that night, or the next day, or the day after that? What was on TV, what music played on the radio, what did I eat, how did I feel? These are the kinds of things I can recall without even trying. I can conjure vividly not only the superficial details from when my mom and my brother died, but the continuity surrounding those events. I can still replay in my mind tiny details of the days before and after, the life I led that was disrupted by these awful circumstances, and the time spent after trying to make sense of that which makes no sense: Conversations ignored, music half heard, minutes dragging on and on, as though time itself had stopped. And the better parts of those events, time spent with family and friends, memories shared and laughter erupting at unexpected times.

In other words, these are things that happened to me. I remember; I was there. Dad's passing seems more like a dream, arrived at without beginning or end, viewed like a movie but not actually experienced, certainly not felt. Maybe I was simply in shock from the first Big death of my adult life, or maybe I was unmoved because Dad's condition had deteriorated long before he died, or...

Or maybe there are no reasons. Details that have been forgotten can't be simply remembered. There's nothing to do, except to carry on every day with the odd, faintly disturbing feeling that a milestone in my life remains unmarked, and to perpetually wonder what that means.

AND HARDER TO CLIMB

2010-11-24T03:43:00.000-06:00

The memory just appeared fully-formed. The other night, while talking on the phone with my brother John, I mentioned how hearing certain songs could trigger a very specific memory, even if that memory was unconnected to anything else.

For instance, I could very specifically remember hearing the Bee Gees' Too Much Heaven while we drove lazily along in his '76 Chevette, just before we reached a certain hill along Highway 141.

"And that's all you remember?" John asked.

Well yeah, I answered, then corrected myself: No. It was overcast, it was a Sunday, we'd left home a little later than we usually would have. We didn't have a movie we were going to see, we were just going to hit the record stores in the malls. I remember I was fired up to buy the soundtrack to Taxi Driver...

I stopped. John paused for a second, then asked, "And you remember all this why?"

I didn't have an answer. I still don't. For whatever reason, the past is becoming more vivid to me every day. Memories are becoming more distinct. Maybe I've become unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim, or maybe I'm just learning to appreciate all the little things that made me who I am.

In any event, I'm wondering if such things are going to become the focus of this site, as much as this site has any focus. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

SHE SERVES THE SMOOTH RETSINA

2010-11-10T03:53:00.000-06:00

Just taking a moment to be by myself, to reflect and be grateful.

I've only mentioned her in passing, but I seem to be spending all my time with Janie. She's here pretty much non-stop, and though she hasn't formally moved in, she's always here in spirit.

It's odd because on paper, this all seems wrong. She doesn't like The Simpsons, for crying out loud. And she can only name three Beatles! And for God's sake, she watches reruns of Little House On The Prarie--not ironically, either, because I don't even think it's possible to watch that show ironically. She just, you know, likes it.

Which probably tells you something about her personality--she's a genuinely nice person. Good, kind-hearted, warm. She's supportive of me no matter what I do, and she's there for me because...well, because she loves me. And, whatever else has been going on in my life for God knows how long, I haven't been in a mutually loving relationship, and, to quote the sage poets Peaches & Herb (or, alternately, Chuck Mangione), it feels so good.

So whenever posting is light around here, it's because, good times or bad, I'm busy living my life.

SERIOUSLY? THAT'S THE TITLE YOU WANNA GO WITH?

2010-11-05T04:06:00.000-05:00

Originally I was going to structure this as one of my increasingly-rare Random Thoughts posts, complete with a fake Larry King quote for a title and everything. I thought it would be a good catchall way to mention a few things in passing, like the death of writer Monica Johnson (who co-wrote most of Albert Brooks' films and contributed scripts to the best sitcom of all time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and the results of Tuesday's election. But the more I thought about those election results, particularly here in newly-Red State Iowa, the more depressed I got, and that's the kind of thing I'm trying to get away from, in my writing and my life.

Besides, there's something much more important to talk about. Like this Spider-Man musical.

The mounting disaster known as Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is nicely detailed here, but the brief version is: Thanks to an incredibly drawn-out conceptual period imposed by "visionary" director Julie Taymor, who is apparently uninterested in such niceties as telling a story or keeping actors safe, this seemingly foolproof money-spender is burning through millions of dollars a week even as its opening date keeps getting pushed back. It was supposed to open in a few days (hell, it was originally supposed to open last February, but whatever), but apparently Taymor and the show's composers, U2's Bono and The Edge, haven't even figured out how to integrate the songs into the thing yet, which would seem to be Priority One for a musical, but again, whatever.

Now I could use this story as a pretext to indulge my irrational hatred for Bono and The Edge. It's nothing compared to my seething contempt for Jason Mraz or Marc Fucking Cohn, but aside from the fact that one's a pretentious, self-important douchebag and the other one has been recycling the same damned riff for decades now, there's the sad fact of guys in their fifties calling themselves Bono and The Edge. Face it, guys, even Johnny Cougar is a less embarrassing rock star name.

And I could point out that whatever alleged innovations Taymor has in mind seem wildly misplaced, because really, who gives a sweet shit? It's a Spider-man musical; get the Flying By Foy guys to figure out how to make him climb walls, write a stirring power ballad that includes the phrase "with great power comes great responsibility," market the whole thing to families and comic book geeks and call it a day.

But what really pisses me off about this show is the title: Turn Off The Dark? What does that even mean? And why should anybody care? I mean, yeah, Marvel Comics manages some hilariously overwrought titles on their own, but this is just ridiculous. It's the kind of would-be poetic nonsense you'd expect from some cheap poseur who desperately wants you to think he's much deeper than he is.

But again, it's co-written by Bono, so I guess it's appropriate after all.

SAY, I REALLY HAVE WASTED MY LIFE, HAVEN'T I?

2010-11-01T04:28:00.000-05:00

You know what's really sad about this?

This ad campaign ran back in '79, and yet my brother and I will still find ourselves occasionally, and for no reason whatsoever, saying, "Dave Parker's turning 7 Up!" When we say this, and other things like it, to each other, it kind of makes sense--a shared ironic take on a bit of ephemera from the past.

But the thing is, we'll say it to other people, too, fully realizing that they won't have the slightest idea what we're talking about. After all, most people don't remember what their lives were like over thirty years ago, much less commercial that served only to fill in gaps between TV shows. Some of us, unfortunately, do remember, because, well, this was the only life we had at the time.

Actually, what's even more depressing is, I only stumbled across this ad because it came up as a sidebar recommendation while I was looking for this:

Had no life then, have no life now.

SOMETHING'S GONNA HAPPEN

2010-10-24T03:45:00.001-05:00

I forget sometimes. To me, it's Sunday morning, and I have to leave for work before long. But to the rest of the world, it's still Saturday night. The bars have all closed, but the traffic still flows, a steady stream of cars making their way down my street as I walk my dog.

The faces can't be seen as they speed by in darkness, but I know them. Some are young and some are old, most are male, black, white, Latino, all of them chasing the promise of the night, hoping that one more drink, one more bar, one more visit to wherever they're going, one more anything will be the magic bullet, the elusive and indescribable something that will make everything better, at least for the moment and maybe beyond.

There's an appeal to it, maybe, and I almost feel like jumping in one of these cars as it passes, to go where it will take me, to live in a moment utterly unconcerned with the future, to live, however briefly, in a world in which consequences are never considered.

But no car, no drink, no nothing could ever take me to such a place. I'm always thinking ahead, I'm always aware of the fallout to my actions, I'm never able to just relax and enjoy the moment for whatever it is. Sure, the Saturday night crowd sometimes only find happiness in superficial ways, and it may be fleeting, but at least it's there. They know a bliss not attainable to me, not quite, not really. What am I missing, and how can I find it?

Isabella pulls at her leash. She's caught a scent of something and means to follow it. She turns to me, wondering why I simply stand, why I don't run with her to track down her prey. She tilts her head as she regards me, one ear flopping inside out, her nose quivering.

Oh, I think as I bend down to hug her. This is what happiness feels like.

WHILE THE POOR PEOPLE SLEEPIN' WITH THE SHADE ON THE LIGHT

2010-10-18T04:35:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a link provided by The Huffington Post (the only news source you'll ever need if you're vaguely liberal and kind of shallow), I found myself at People magazine's website, where I learned that Jenny McCarthy is determined to be totally honest with her new boyfriend.

Honest? As in, "It will be creepy to watch my plasticized face and tits stay firm and unyielding even as the rest of my body inevitably decays"? Or, "My theories about autism have more in common with the writings of Joe Mengele than reporters for infotainment-related websites are quite willing to admit"? Because, yeah, if she was willing to come right out and say either of those things, she'd deserve credit for honesty, if nothing else.

But no, it's all about the little things, according to Jenny: "If he wants Chinese food and I don't, I say it."

Ah. Thanks for the insight, which is the sort of profundity one might expect from somebody who is, as near as I can tell, still famous primarily for an MTV dating show from a decade-and-a-half ago. But really, I'm not here to bash McCarthy so much as note that her new Chinese-food-loving boyfriend, Jason Toohey is, according to People's breathlessly bland prose, a "Las Vegas-based pirate performer."

I'd make a joke about that, except a) a joke would be redundant and b) Toohey will almost certainly parlay his brief semi-fame as a guy who is fucking a has-been publicity whore into some sort of career, a reality show, a book deal, something.

Once Toohey inevitably dumps her, McCarthy will make more sad faces--to the extent that her plastic surgery allows her to register any emotion at all--and People will be there to write about it, The Huffington Post will link to it.

And yeah, I'll probably click on the link.

THIS SITE HAS MORE UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCES THAN A PINTER PLAY

2010-10-14T03:44:00.000-05:00

Things happen, life continues. Milestones and mundane things. Lennon's birthday, passings of well-loved public figures. No comments appearing in this space.

Don't know what to say. I don't have an iPhone or a laptop or any kind of mobile device that would allow me to post thoughts here when inspiration strikes. I still just have my clunky old home computer, and I find myself spending less time in front of it than I used to.

Why? Well, probably because much of my time is focused on Janie. I should be writing about her, or composing odes to the transformative powers of love, or some damned thing, but when I'm with her, I'm happy just to be with her, and when I'm not with her...well, I'm just kind of here.

Not that, you know, this space will remain a void forever. I've been struck into silence before, and I always come back. Sooner or later the Associated Press will run yet another brain-dead interview with Pete Wentz, and I'll go on and on about it at needless length.

Because, hey, that's what I do.

STILL I REMAIN TIED TO THE MAST

2010-10-06T03:20:00.001-05:00

Again, it's been awhile--hasn't it?--since new content appeared in this space. Heaven knows, it's not like there's been a shortage of things to discuss. There were, for instance, the deaths of the brilliant film editor Sally Menke, the great director Arthur Penn, astonishingly prolific TV genius Stephen J. Cannell (who created everything from the legitimately great The Rockford Files and Wiseguy to guilty pleasure favorites like Hardcastle And McCormick, as well as the entirely forgotten Broken Badges, and for those of you who never had the pleasure of hearing my mom go on and on about the transcendent stupidity of that last one, I pity you), not to mention Tony Fucking Curtis. There's the nation's stunned disbelief that Christine O'Donnell can even remember to breathe, much less be nominated to high office. There was a health scare involving my beloved puppy Isabella, who apparently has epilepsy. Oh, and there's Janie, the current (and hopefully future) love of my life.

I really intend to go on and on about here sometime, especially since women I've barely dated or merely slept with have received more space here than seems necessary. But for now, let me just say she is probably the main reason there have been fewer postings here lately. With her, I'm finally learning to--what's the word?--relax. I'm finding some measure of calm and, if I may, contentment. And I'm finding that much of my writing in the past was fueled by melancholy, or anger, or feelings other than joy. Not always, of course, but often enough.

So if I'm entering some sort of mellow phase here, the obvious challenge to my writing life is to figure out how to balance happiness--and by happiness I mean the lack of crippling depression--with creativity. I'm not used to feeling more good than bad, and who knows how long the feeling will last, but for now it's a whole new journey. Hopefully, I'll file reports along the way.

YOU MIGHT THINK I'M CRAZY

2010-09-28T09:26:00.001-05:00

Even classic rock stations don't play The Cars' You Might Think as often as they used to, and that's good. Not for aesthetic reasons, but because as soon as I hear the very eighties keyboard riff that kicks it off, I'm immediately transported to the day room of the psych ward at University Hospitals in Iowa City, where I half-glimpsed the video for the song in one of my few forays out to mingle with my fellow inmates.

I couldn't even tell you when this was, exactly. '85, I remember, probably late summer or early fall. You Might Think was no longer a new song, it had been released much earlier, probably around the time of my first suicide attempt. Evidently it was still popular enough to see airplay on MTV, because it is the only concrete memory I have of my time there.

Oh, there are other memories, but they've become so vague. There was a cute girl who actually tried to talk to me a few times, though I was too messed up to respond, but I don't remember her name, or what she looked like, or anything about her, really. There was a brooding Sean Penn-in-Bad Boys type, who seemed to have been there awhile. There was my assigned counselor, most likely a grad student, who was so fucking earnest I found myself making stuff up just to get more sympathy from her.

And there were windows, which offered views of not much, but beyond the trees and institutional buildings of the immediate area there was much more out there, I just knew it. I didn't know Iowa City, had never been there, but as Mom drove me to the hospital I caught glimpses of restaurants and book stores and record stores, and I thought if I could just move into one of those, if I could stay there and never leave, I wouldn't have to be making this trip. My life would be magically better somehow, somehow.

Those windows were temptations, a possible exit, a way out. And if instead I cut myself on the glass, if I bled and died, well, hey, that would have been okay, too. I didn't want to be there, in the hospital or in my skin, or anywhere, really.

I was utterly, unbearably miserable, and yet when I heard You Might Think on the radio the other day, I found myself overwhelmed with nostalgia for a time I barely remember. It seemed at the time that life was a constant downward drift, misery endured only to be ultimately, blessedly ended. But now it seems my lost years were some sort of necessary crucible, forming me into the whatever-it-is I'd become. I didn't know it then, but a future awaited, experiences wonderful and terrible, and very soon I'd learn to live.

OR MAYBE THIS IS IT

2010-09-26T03:59:00.001-05:00

Uh, yeah, new content is becoming increasingly rare around here, innit? I'm hoping that will change here soon--I have ideas! Honest!--but first, for regular readers (both of you!), a bit of an explanation for the silence.

First of all, there's Janie, who really deserves to be mentioned in more than passing, but for now I'll just say that when there's a sweet, warm presence sharing time with you, it makes it harder to excuse slipping away to a keyboard to tap out a few hundred words on whatever the hell it is I usually write about. So there's that.

Also, beloved puppy Isabella is suffering from a not entirely diagnosed medical condition. She's mostly fine (and adorable, of course), but trying to get to the bottom of it will involve spending money I don't really have, which brings on financial stress, which is already triggering something vaguely resembling depression, an old friend I'd hoped to never again encounter, but there you go.

Anyway, posting will presumably resume on a more regular basis at some unspecified point in the future. Or, you know, not. That's about as solid a promise as can be made right now, and hey, you can hold me to it. Or, again, not.

DON'T YOU CRY NO MORE

2010-09-23T16:00:00.000-05:00

You don't think I enjoy this sort of thing, do you? You don't think I have nothing better to do than monitor the Associated Press' entertainment news wire, waiting for goofy stories that are easily mocked? Don't I have better things to do? Don't I have a life?

To answer these questions: No, kind of, sadly, no and...I'm sorry, what was the question?

Anyway, the Pulitzer=chasing scribes at the AP have done it again, this time with a story imaginatively headlined Rockers Kansas Carry on, Play With College Groups. (I have no idea why the good folks at the AP failed to capitalize "on" but there it is.) And it is indeed about Kansas, regarded by decent people everywhere as one of the worst bands ever, and their pathetic attempt to stay down with the kids by playing with college orchestras.

There's a Noble Cause at the heart of all this--the concerts raise money for the schools' music programs--which is all well and good, but who gives a sweet shit? I mean, this is Kansas. The highlight of their miserable existence was Carry On, Wayward Son, which--I've mentioned this before, right?--is simply the worst song of the rock era. I realize it has plenty of heavy-duty competition, what with the entire songbooks of Journey and Panic! At The Disco and whatnot, but between the idiotic lyrics, preening vocals, cheeseball keyboards and THE worst guitar solo ever recorded, its crown will likely remain in place forever and ever.

Anyway, now they're back. Well, not so much back as still around, and willing to pander to anyone who will play their music. And the Associated Press, which didn't spend a whole lot of time getting to the bottom of that whole Weapons Of Mass Destruction thing, did assign a reporter to cover this story.

Who says journalism is dead?

WHAT A SHAME ABOUT ME

2010-09-20T05:03:00.000-05:00

Randy Quaid Arrested For Squatting In Old Home reads the somewhat inelegantly phrased headline Reuters has chosen for this story, and viewers who know Quaid primarily as Cousin Eddie, his character from the National lampoon's Vacation series, would be forgiven for assuming Quaid was squatting to take a dump.

But no, he and his wife were arrested for squatting like hobos in a bad thirties social realist play, living in a house they no longer own, claiming they belong there despite all evidence to the contrary. It's the latest in a string of bizarre incidents involving Quaid, who seems to be working to erase all memories of the great actor he used to be. He was the sad, sad heart of Hal Ashby's magnificent The Last Detail, a member of Peter Bogdanovich's stock company back when that meant something, and a welcome player in such cult favorites as The Long Riders, Quick Change and The Ice Harvest.

Unfortunately, his dickish real-life behavior and apparent readiness to accept any script he's offered (Balls Out? Seriously?) threaten to infect his career like a virus, making his very presence a cause for groaning, and retroactively making even his best previous work seem lesser in stature. He's turning into latter-day Dennis Hopper, only at least Hopper's history of self-immolation was spectacular, whereas Quaid's is just kind of pathetic.

Still, The Last Detail--man, that's a great movie.

STOP THE PRESSES! WE'VE GOT AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SPENCER PRATT!

2010-09-15T04:24:00.000-05:00

I've saluted the excellent entertainment reporting from the gutsy journalists of the Associated Press before, but somehow, they always manage to top themselves. Sure the obits they ran over the weekend for the great filmmaker Claude Chabrol and wonderful character actor Kevin McCarthy were short and seemingly uninformed, in their brevity almost dismissive of each man's considerable accomplishments.

But yesterday they came through like champs, taking the time to let us know the really important stuff. First, they broke the story that John Mayer has shut down his Twitter account--well, not so much his Twitter account as an account set up exclusively to promote his new album, which has apparently run its course, commercially--and then came the really big news, a breathless interview with fast-fading reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who spoke excitedly about a possible reunion with his soon-to-be-ex, pop culture footnote Heidi Montag, after they were both detained in Costa Rica for possession of firearms and...oh hell, you know what? I just read the story, and I can't remember the details.

Well, of course I can't, because who gives a sweet shit about Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag? The Hills was precisely the type of show destined to be forgotten as soon as it left the air, and while it's perfectly understandable that Pratt and Montag may have a hard time dealing with their sudden, crushing drop to obscurity, it is wholly inexplicable that a supposedly respectable news gathering organization like the AP would do anything to prolong their moment in the sun. Just because a chucklehead like Pratt calls a news conference doesn't mean you need to cover it, folks.

Besides, the AP needs to get back to covering real news: What's Pete Wentz up to these days?

THEY ARE ALL THAT'S UNCHANGED

2010-09-11T17:47:00.001-05:00

What the world would come to call 9/11 happened, as nearly everyone remembers, on a Tuesday. I can recall that day, that evening, the next morning as everyone else can, as a continuous loop of time spent trying to make sense of something that seemed utterly incomprehensible. But it's funny--I don't remember how the rest of the day after played out, or the day after that, or the day after.

I mean, I lived in the D.C. area, so the next few days were certainly infused with an increased sense of paranoia, a feeling that the other shoe could drop anytime. But that feeling lingered for months, especially with the anthrax scare that followed so soon after. But the actual specifics of the days that followed The Day That Changed Everything...no, I can't recall those at all.

My memory is gone, until the following Sunday. My wife and I were newcomers to the area, had in fact only lived there a little over three months when the attacks occurred. But we had carved out our little place in the world, and certain rituals had evolved. And one of those rituals involved me rising much earlier than her, and carrying out some of the day-to day necessities of life. I'd do laundry while she still slept. Or wash dishes.

Or shop for groceries. Heading out to the market on those dark, slightly chilly mornings of early autumn meant choosing between the Food Lion a few blocks away, or the Safeway just down the street. Food Lion had more varieties of frozen pizza--always an important consideration!--and the prices were slightly cheaper, but Safeway had the advantage of being closer. I'd usually alternate. On the morning of September 16th, I chose Safeway.

Not many people out that early, and the aisles were piled with merchandise waiting to be stocked. I shopped according to the usual script, picking up the same items I always picked up, and one I only occasionally bought: The Sunday Washington Post.

The tired-looking woman at the register scanned the items, and the clerk bagged them. He was the same guy who usually worked there on Sunday mornings, a doughy, shapeless middle-aged guy with thinning white hair. He looked like he might have come from a fairly rough-and-tumble background, but he was always unfailingly polite and talkative.

This morning, though, he paused briefly to examine the cover of The Post, which inevitably featured a photo of the rubble that had once been the Twin Towers. "3000 people," he said softly, as though to himself. "3000 people. Christ. In America. We..." He shook his head, as if snapping out of a dream, and rolled the paper and placed it in a bag. His eyes glistened as they peered into mine, as if searching for answers he'd never find. "How could that happen? How...here?"

I just shrugged, and said something non-committal. I took my bags and headed to the car, where I sat for several minutes, crying so hard it seemed the tears would never stop.

INSERT OBSCURE LYRICS HERE, THEN CALL IT A TITLE

2010-09-10T04:14:00.000-05:00

According to the calender, it's been--zoinks!--two weeks or so since any kind of new content appeared in this space. There are reasons for this, the most prominent among them being named Janey, who is occupying a lot of my time, and about whom I'll no doubt be writing in the future. Then there are various little hiccups involving Blogger, which sometimes makes even attempting to post here a pain in the ass, and the slowness of my computer, which...eh, I don't even wanna get started on that.

And then there's the other reason I haven't been doing much here, the real reason, which is that I seem to be having a paralyzing bout of writer's block. It's happened a few times since I started this site, but the feeling this time is different. I can't even get words down without growing disgusted with the tone and wiping them all away. There have been aborted posts here that I deleted in draft phase, consisting of no more than a paragraph or two, which is all the further I could get before I deleted them from memory. More than likely, they will never be missed, but who knows? Writing doesn't seem to agree with me now.

But, you know, that's just for now. Presumably this will pass, and I'll be back to...whatever the hell it is I do around here. And if this site still has any readers at all, my sincere thanks for sticking with it, even when nothing is going on. I'll try to make it more interesting soon. Honest!