This morning my iPod shuffle and the relative solitude of the drive to work provided me with the memory of a distinct moment of my youth. The song was "Time In a Bottle" by Jim Croce.
Jim Croce died in a plane crash in September, 1973. I was nine years old. I knew little at the time about popular music, and cared about it even less. I remember hearing of his death, and knew it was he who had recorded "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," a song played often on the radio, and which I had enjoyed. That was about it.
About seven years later I was discovering the vinyl record albums my brother, nearly six years older than I, had been collecting and storing in the upstairs bedroom we shared. His stuff was generally off-limits to me, so, while he wasn't home, I made sure to be extra careful when handling his record albums.
The distinct moment to which my iPod brought me this morning was when I laid the needle on the first track of one of the two Jim Croce albums in my brother's collection. I lay on the floor with his headphones on so I could play it as loudly as I wanted. Even then I knew only that Jim Croce had recorded a couple of hit songs, plus one or two other popular pieces, and had died tragically while his star was still rising. With his songs piping directly into my ears, I was struck by the poetry in his words, by the emotion in his voice, and the weight of his music. And there, on my back on the hard floor of my shared bedroom nearly a decade after Jim Croce died, the full depth of the loss the music world experienced on the day of his death hit me. And I wept.
°
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
A Bit of a Ramble, Mostly About Death
I was never a huge fan of David Bowie. I've been more appreciative of his music in my middle age than I was in my youth and young adulthood, and I understand the impact his recent death has had on the music industry and on his fandom.
What turns out to be the most disarming aspect of his death is that Mr. Bowie turned it into his final artistic expression. One can't know — at least at this point, one day after his death — if he intentionally timed the release of his new album to be around the date of his death (it was released two days before he died), or if it just turned out to be an ironic coincidence (someone involved with the production of the album has said that Bowie intended it as a "parting gift" to his fans). But what can be known — or at least perceived — is that, during the writing and creation of his final music album, he was fully aware of, and prepared for, his impending death. Aware, and inspired.
One need only absorb the disturbing themes, recurring imagery, and haunting words of two songs from the recent release, Blackstar:
Lazarus
Blackstar
Nobody outside those in his closest circles knew he was dying until word came late Sunday night, January 10, 2016, that he had passed.
Constructive Contemplation
People rarely think of a terminal cancer diagnosis — or terminal anything diagnosis — as a positive thing, but one can imagine that it certainly gives one perspective. Clearly, in David Bowie's circumstance, it gave him the sound and vision for his final curtain (see what I did there...?)
But what about the rest of us? Is there anything we should be thinking about for the rest of our time manufacturing carbon dioxide? Of course, there are life insurance and succession plans and wills and trusts, but those are things that take effect after we die. We tend to put off a lot of living in an effort to secure a comfortable life in our future. But isn't life today worth as much as life tomorrow? Why suffer through the now when tomorrow isn't promised to us? Life ultimately sucks when you look at it from the end of the run: if you had a great life that's ending, that sucks because it's ending; if you had a crappy life, well, that sucks, and now it's ending. Total suckness.
I used to feel that my biggest fear was to die alone. I think that's the top of the list for a lot of people. But I don't fear that any more, because, after all, everyone dies alone. Sure, you may be surrounded by family. You may even go flying off a bridge in a bus with a hundred other people, all fated to cease in the same instant. But even then, you'd be alone. Death is a solitary thing. No one goes with you.
No, my biggest fear is to be the last of my family and friends — but family, especially — to go. Not that I wish it upon any of them, either, but, being the youngest of seven children, I've known all of my siblings for my entire life! With my parents and one sister gone already, I don't think I can take that five more times as I stagger through old age.
What is your biggest fear? Don't you think that you — we — should go about the rest of our days seeing to alleviate that fear? Or at least face it, embrace it to assuage the stress it causes us while we think death is far away?
Does it take death facing us and our stocking feet at the end of a long, polished hardwood-floor, tilted hallway to give us the inspiration to do something interesting with our lives?
David Bowie lived an interesting life. May we all endeavor to express our lives as profoundly and as openly as he expressed his dying.
And my uplifting parting shot for this downer post, a guest-starring appearance by David Bowie on the Ricky Gervais HBO comedy, Extras. I hope you'll have a laugh:
°
What turns out to be the most disarming aspect of his death is that Mr. Bowie turned it into his final artistic expression. One can't know — at least at this point, one day after his death — if he intentionally timed the release of his new album to be around the date of his death (it was released two days before he died), or if it just turned out to be an ironic coincidence (someone involved with the production of the album has said that Bowie intended it as a "parting gift" to his fans). But what can be known — or at least perceived — is that, during the writing and creation of his final music album, he was fully aware of, and prepared for, his impending death. Aware, and inspired.
One need only absorb the disturbing themes, recurring imagery, and haunting words of two songs from the recent release, Blackstar:
Lazarus
Blackstar
Nobody outside those in his closest circles knew he was dying until word came late Sunday night, January 10, 2016, that he had passed.
Constructive Contemplation
People rarely think of a terminal cancer diagnosis — or terminal anything diagnosis — as a positive thing, but one can imagine that it certainly gives one perspective. Clearly, in David Bowie's circumstance, it gave him the sound and vision for his final curtain (see what I did there...?)
But what about the rest of us? Is there anything we should be thinking about for the rest of our time manufacturing carbon dioxide? Of course, there are life insurance and succession plans and wills and trusts, but those are things that take effect after we die. We tend to put off a lot of living in an effort to secure a comfortable life in our future. But isn't life today worth as much as life tomorrow? Why suffer through the now when tomorrow isn't promised to us? Life ultimately sucks when you look at it from the end of the run: if you had a great life that's ending, that sucks because it's ending; if you had a crappy life, well, that sucks, and now it's ending. Total suckness.
I used to feel that my biggest fear was to die alone. I think that's the top of the list for a lot of people. But I don't fear that any more, because, after all, everyone dies alone. Sure, you may be surrounded by family. You may even go flying off a bridge in a bus with a hundred other people, all fated to cease in the same instant. But even then, you'd be alone. Death is a solitary thing. No one goes with you.
No, my biggest fear is to be the last of my family and friends — but family, especially — to go. Not that I wish it upon any of them, either, but, being the youngest of seven children, I've known all of my siblings for my entire life! With my parents and one sister gone already, I don't think I can take that five more times as I stagger through old age.
What is your biggest fear? Don't you think that you — we — should go about the rest of our days seeing to alleviate that fear? Or at least face it, embrace it to assuage the stress it causes us while we think death is far away?
Does it take death facing us and our stocking feet at the end of a long, polished hardwood-floor, tilted hallway to give us the inspiration to do something interesting with our lives?
David Bowie lived an interesting life. May we all endeavor to express our lives as profoundly and as openly as he expressed his dying.
And my uplifting parting shot for this downer post, a guest-starring appearance by David Bowie on the Ricky Gervais HBO comedy, Extras. I hope you'll have a laugh:
°
Monday, December 28, 2015
Star Wars: A Franchise Awakens
A child of the '70s, I was blown over like a corn stalk in an Iowa tornado by Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It was action-adventure like no one had ever seen, the perfect blend of action, drama, romance, comedy, and cliff-hanger, with a devil-may-care attitude toward the physics and science of space travel, that appealed to adults and children alike. I remember when the credits rolled, I wanted to scream, "More!" The film set the bar very high for even its own sequel to reach, and how clever was Star Wars creator George Lucas to make it "Episode IV?" Clearly there was more to come! The end of the film laid out all the loose ends for a second film to tie up ...if it was successful....
I heard somewhere along the way that George Lucas intended the Star Wars saga to be three film trilogies and, though I hoped and dreamed they would all be made, never in the wildest of those dreams did I imagine that I would be well into my fifties before the credits rolled on the final film.
Well, that final film is in development, its future set in motion by the release of the first film of the final trilogy a mere ten days before the writing of this review.
In development since the Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise in 2012, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) has some big shoes to fill. Not only is it the next film in the series, not only does it pick up with the characters — not to mention the actors — we left behind after Return of the Jedi, but it is the film fans have been waiting thirty-two years to see.
Episode VII starts with the familiar, goose bump-inspiring fanfare and the scrolling text that disappears into the infinite distance over the orchestral theme you'll never forget, and one can't help but fear a return to the days of George Lucas-helmed Episodes I, II, and III and the atmosphere of stories so overloaded with information and so rushed one could be led to believe Lucas had a terminal diagnosis and simply had to get them made as quickly as possible! And let the cavalcade of fuzzy, clownish, computer-animated characters remain unmentioned.
Director J.J. Abrams and co-writers Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt continue to stroke us with the pleasantly familiar, as we see names like Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa (a general, now!) float past into oblivion. But the script leans a little too heavily on the familiar, as we see so many themes reminiscent of the original trilogy that at times this film feels like a rehash. Embers of the defeated Empire, now reconstituted as the First Order, search the galaxy to capture Luke Skywalker ...again. A scene in a cantina, replete with all sorts of shady characters from throughout the universe, and a quirky band ...again. The First Order are still in the planet-destroying business with a bigger, better version of the Death Star ...again. A villain wearing a dark helmet with breathing apparatus and voice enhancement set to "sinister." A battle of minds between father and son.
Thematically, Episode VII is a repeat.
But Abrams and company fill the screen with lavish imaginings of worlds and planets and beings, with enough fresh twists on The Force, new and likable characters, family dysfunction, and a few references to the original trilogy with tongue planted firmly in cheek — to make it watchable and — even better — enjoyable.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has been a hot topic of filmgoers' conversation since Disney announced it was moving forward with the final trilogy. And as the release date neared, the hype grew exponentially, prompting many to ponder if the film could live up to it. For Disney and for Abrams and company, the pressure of meeting that hype pales in comparison to meeting the standards that the Star Wars franchise long ago established for itself. After the damage to the franchise and to fans' enthusiasm for it caused by the reception of Episodes I through III, the climb back up to that standard is formidable.
Does Episode VII meet the hype?
Unfortunately, it doesn't. A generation's worth of buzz and anticipation makes that impossible.
But does it meet the standard?
Yes. Yes it does. Each film in the Star Wars original trilogy triggered a response in its fans beyond and deeper than emotional; a gut feeling. In this film, that gut feeling is there, a muscle memory of the response to the original trilogy that is lacking for Episodes I through III. Despite a reliance on the familiar, "The Force Awakens" successfully resuscitates the Star Wars brand.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens — Numb Butt Cheeks® rating of 7.5* — may not inspire you to see it 20-something times like the original film did for many, but you may feel like that kid again, walking out of the theater wondering what could possibly be next for that band of rebels, and wanting to scream, "More!"
("Star Wars The Force Awakens Theatrical Poster" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star_Wars_The_Force_Awakens_Theatrical_Poster.jpg#/media/File:Star_Wars_The_Force_Awakens_Theatrical_Poster.jpg)
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
I heard somewhere along the way that George Lucas intended the Star Wars saga to be three film trilogies and, though I hoped and dreamed they would all be made, never in the wildest of those dreams did I imagine that I would be well into my fifties before the credits rolled on the final film.
Well, that final film is in development, its future set in motion by the release of the first film of the final trilogy a mere ten days before the writing of this review.
In development since the Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise in 2012, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) has some big shoes to fill. Not only is it the next film in the series, not only does it pick up with the characters — not to mention the actors — we left behind after Return of the Jedi, but it is the film fans have been waiting thirty-two years to see.
Episode VII starts with the familiar, goose bump-inspiring fanfare and the scrolling text that disappears into the infinite distance over the orchestral theme you'll never forget, and one can't help but fear a return to the days of George Lucas-helmed Episodes I, II, and III and the atmosphere of stories so overloaded with information and so rushed one could be led to believe Lucas had a terminal diagnosis and simply had to get them made as quickly as possible! And let the cavalcade of fuzzy, clownish, computer-animated characters remain unmentioned.
Director J.J. Abrams and co-writers Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt continue to stroke us with the pleasantly familiar, as we see names like Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa (a general, now!) float past into oblivion. But the script leans a little too heavily on the familiar, as we see so many themes reminiscent of the original trilogy that at times this film feels like a rehash. Embers of the defeated Empire, now reconstituted as the First Order, search the galaxy to capture Luke Skywalker ...again. A scene in a cantina, replete with all sorts of shady characters from throughout the universe, and a quirky band ...again. The First Order are still in the planet-destroying business with a bigger, better version of the Death Star ...again. A villain wearing a dark helmet with breathing apparatus and voice enhancement set to "sinister." A battle of minds between father and son.
Thematically, Episode VII is a repeat.
But Abrams and company fill the screen with lavish imaginings of worlds and planets and beings, with enough fresh twists on The Force, new and likable characters, family dysfunction, and a few references to the original trilogy with tongue planted firmly in cheek — to make it watchable and — even better — enjoyable.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has been a hot topic of filmgoers' conversation since Disney announced it was moving forward with the final trilogy. And as the release date neared, the hype grew exponentially, prompting many to ponder if the film could live up to it. For Disney and for Abrams and company, the pressure of meeting that hype pales in comparison to meeting the standards that the Star Wars franchise long ago established for itself. After the damage to the franchise and to fans' enthusiasm for it caused by the reception of Episodes I through III, the climb back up to that standard is formidable.
Does Episode VII meet the hype?
Unfortunately, it doesn't. A generation's worth of buzz and anticipation makes that impossible.
But does it meet the standard?
Yes. Yes it does. Each film in the Star Wars original trilogy triggered a response in its fans beyond and deeper than emotional; a gut feeling. In this film, that gut feeling is there, a muscle memory of the response to the original trilogy that is lacking for Episodes I through III. Despite a reliance on the familiar, "The Force Awakens" successfully resuscitates the Star Wars brand.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens — Numb Butt Cheeks® rating of 7.5* — may not inspire you to see it 20-something times like the original film did for many, but you may feel like that kid again, walking out of the theater wondering what could possibly be next for that band of rebels, and wanting to scream, "More!"
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Suicide Note
I didn't know you. I never will.
The closest I will come to knowing you will have been the distraught — distraught — woman who passed me several times a day all week through the entrance vestibule two floors below the Critical Care Unit to head outside for a smoke. Never was she far from tears — apparently having just shed them, barely hanging on the edge of them, or outright crying as she sped through. All. Week.
Or the parade of teenagers who came to the hospital today, wide-eyed, a little scared not knowing what to expect. And then, by ones and by twos, they stumbled out of the elevators, faces warped by sorrow, such young, fresh, pretty faces twisted in sad grimace.
A middle-aged woman stood in the the lobby, directing traffic, diverting and dividing the stream of adolescents, sending some to the elevators, some to the chairs to wait. I approached her. "Is it a teacher? A student?"
"Their friend," she said. "He was seventeen."
Was.
Until that moment I didn't know for whom your mother cried through the week. One assumes the loss of an elder, a parent or grandparent, withered by age or ravaged by some nefarious disease.
At that moment, I knew you were still alive. I had overheard it this morning; a man spoke about you in hushed tones into his mobile phone. "Yeah. It's over. They're gonna pull the plug today."
Still alive. Yet the middle-aged woman in the lobby said, "Was."
And so word had gone out that today is it: the technology amassed and arrayed around you in that room somewhere two floors above me, the hums and whirs and beeps that had prolonged your existence for much of the week, would be shut off. And the people who made up the stuff of your life, for whom you were the stuff of theirs, came to say good-bye.
A group of teens — your friends — later shuffled outside to the benches where they could talk, blow off some steam, and have a smoke. And cry.
I stepped outside and approached them. I broke a rule. "What happened to your friend?" I asked.
A young lady, perhaps more world-aware than most her age, said, "I really can't tell you that. I--"
"I can!" A young man spoke with a loud voice and a low threshold for a family's privacy. "He tried to hang himself."
"He did hang himself," said another young man, seated a couple of bodies away from the first. "That's why we're--" An aimless, formless gesture of one hand expressed everything he felt for you that his words couldn't.
I made what I hope looked like a sympathetic expression with my face, and I walked away.
Is this what you wanted? Are these the people upon whom you wished to inflict so much pain? Is their agony worth more than yours in trade? Is what any of them did to you — or didn't do for you — worth what you're putting them through, now?
Did you talk to any of them about it? Could you have talked to them? Were you not aware that so many people loved you? That many of them would have shared your burden? That one of them — just one — might have needed your help to get through?
Did you talk about it to an adult, someone who went through all of the same fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, despair, and pain as a teen, and who came out the other side understanding that you get through it! You get over it! It's not bigger than you! If it's not going to kill you on its own, it's not worth dying over.
But, clearly, you believed it was bigger than you. You made this day one that your friends will never forget. You've opened a hole in your mother that will never close.
I shed a brief tear as I bore silent witness to the heartache your final decision has wrought on everyone who loved you. My tear was for them — your friends, your teachers, your mother — because I know the pain of losing a loved one to suicide, and in that moment I knew your friends and your teachers and your mother.
But I didn't know you. I never will.
°
The closest I will come to knowing you will have been the distraught — distraught — woman who passed me several times a day all week through the entrance vestibule two floors below the Critical Care Unit to head outside for a smoke. Never was she far from tears — apparently having just shed them, barely hanging on the edge of them, or outright crying as she sped through. All. Week.
Or the parade of teenagers who came to the hospital today, wide-eyed, a little scared not knowing what to expect. And then, by ones and by twos, they stumbled out of the elevators, faces warped by sorrow, such young, fresh, pretty faces twisted in sad grimace.
A middle-aged woman stood in the the lobby, directing traffic, diverting and dividing the stream of adolescents, sending some to the elevators, some to the chairs to wait. I approached her. "Is it a teacher? A student?"
"Their friend," she said. "He was seventeen."
Was.
Until that moment I didn't know for whom your mother cried through the week. One assumes the loss of an elder, a parent or grandparent, withered by age or ravaged by some nefarious disease.
At that moment, I knew you were still alive. I had overheard it this morning; a man spoke about you in hushed tones into his mobile phone. "Yeah. It's over. They're gonna pull the plug today."
Still alive. Yet the middle-aged woman in the lobby said, "Was."
And so word had gone out that today is it: the technology amassed and arrayed around you in that room somewhere two floors above me, the hums and whirs and beeps that had prolonged your existence for much of the week, would be shut off. And the people who made up the stuff of your life, for whom you were the stuff of theirs, came to say good-bye.
A group of teens — your friends — later shuffled outside to the benches where they could talk, blow off some steam, and have a smoke. And cry.
I stepped outside and approached them. I broke a rule. "What happened to your friend?" I asked.
A young lady, perhaps more world-aware than most her age, said, "I really can't tell you that. I--"
"I can!" A young man spoke with a loud voice and a low threshold for a family's privacy. "He tried to hang himself."
"He did hang himself," said another young man, seated a couple of bodies away from the first. "That's why we're--" An aimless, formless gesture of one hand expressed everything he felt for you that his words couldn't.
I made what I hope looked like a sympathetic expression with my face, and I walked away.
Is this what you wanted? Are these the people upon whom you wished to inflict so much pain? Is their agony worth more than yours in trade? Is what any of them did to you — or didn't do for you — worth what you're putting them through, now?
Did you talk to any of them about it? Could you have talked to them? Were you not aware that so many people loved you? That many of them would have shared your burden? That one of them — just one — might have needed your help to get through?
Did you talk about it to an adult, someone who went through all of the same fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, despair, and pain as a teen, and who came out the other side understanding that you get through it! You get over it! It's not bigger than you! If it's not going to kill you on its own, it's not worth dying over.
But, clearly, you believed it was bigger than you. You made this day one that your friends will never forget. You've opened a hole in your mother that will never close.
I shed a brief tear as I bore silent witness to the heartache your final decision has wrought on everyone who loved you. My tear was for them — your friends, your teachers, your mother — because I know the pain of losing a loved one to suicide, and in that moment I knew your friends and your teachers and your mother.
But I didn't know you. I never will.
°
Tuesday, December 08, 2015
Nostalgia: It Ain't What It Used to Be
The good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.
--Billy Joel, "Keeping the Faith," An Innocent Man, 1983
We often look back and reflect on "the good old days," a time — or times — in our lives when life was better, smells were sweeter, food was tastier ...whatever. It was better. Unless a life has been nothing but total shit, we all do it; we pine for those days again.
Or do we?
Personally, I don't want to go back. I happen to like my iPhone and my computer and my Blu-Ray player and my TiVO (even though it's been on the fritz for about a year; I need to get that fixed (HAH! Good days to come!)) and cars with reverse assist cameras and selfie-sticks. What I find myself pining for is the feeling of yesterday, because that's what nostalgia really is.
Whenever I think about "the good old days," I remember that, back then, I didn't realize that then was a time I would look back on fondly and miss. Such realization makes me wonder if today is a day, or if autumn, 2015, is a period of my life I'll look back on in 15 years, sighing and smiling.
The passage of time has a way of softening the edges of our memories, shining a golden light on those we cherish, and often sugar-coating the ones we're not so fond to recall. As I think more about the days of yore, I realize that those days weren't any better than any that have passed since. Thirty five years ago our existence was still overshadowed by the Cold War and the lingering threat of nuclear annihilation, but I still got to see all of my friends every day. In the mid-1980s I enlisted in the Air Force and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, but people bought the Yugo. I pursued a career that lasted 16 years, but its bookends were the deaths of my parents. I got married, but it ended in divorce. I'm in love with a wonderful woman, but Donald Trump.
Times are not good or bad. People fell in love and bore children while war raged. Mothers wept over their lost sons while the nation celebrated victory. Nostalgia isn't rooted in a time of our lives or in an historical era. Nostalgia is rooted in whom we surrounded ourselves with at the time and how they made us feel. And, usually, those times are associated with a period in our lives when we had fewer responsibilities and demands on our attention than we have now. It's easier to enjoy the company of friends when you don't have the insistence of a career or a young family pulling at you. The memories are sweeter when you could cuddle under a blanket with all of the kids and watch a silly movie together than when each teenager's attention is wrapped around a hand-held personal entertainment device plugged into their ears in some remote corner of the house while you sit at the kitchen table and crunch the numbers figuring out how to continue to feed them.
I believe we shouldn't pine for times that were great or special or "better." They weren't. You've lost touch with the people that made your existence then more enjoyable.
Reach out. Find those people. If lines were crossed or bridges were burned, maybe it's time for reconciliation. If it's simply that too much time has gotten between you and those people, maybe they're thinking about those "good old days," too, and a word from you out of the blue would make their day. Or their month.
But don't forget the people around you now. Take stock of them. Appreciate the good feelings you can associate with them, for they are the stuff of tomorrow's memories.
°
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.
--Billy Joel, "Keeping the Faith," An Innocent Man, 1983
We often look back and reflect on "the good old days," a time — or times — in our lives when life was better, smells were sweeter, food was tastier ...whatever. It was better. Unless a life has been nothing but total shit, we all do it; we pine for those days again.
Or do we?
Personally, I don't want to go back. I happen to like my iPhone and my computer and my Blu-Ray player and my TiVO (even though it's been on the fritz for about a year; I need to get that fixed (HAH! Good days to come!)) and cars with reverse assist cameras and selfie-sticks. What I find myself pining for is the feeling of yesterday, because that's what nostalgia really is.
Whenever I think about "the good old days," I remember that, back then, I didn't realize that then was a time I would look back on fondly and miss. Such realization makes me wonder if today is a day, or if autumn, 2015, is a period of my life I'll look back on in 15 years, sighing and smiling.
The passage of time has a way of softening the edges of our memories, shining a golden light on those we cherish, and often sugar-coating the ones we're not so fond to recall. As I think more about the days of yore, I realize that those days weren't any better than any that have passed since. Thirty five years ago our existence was still overshadowed by the Cold War and the lingering threat of nuclear annihilation, but I still got to see all of my friends every day. In the mid-1980s I enlisted in the Air Force and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, but people bought the Yugo. I pursued a career that lasted 16 years, but its bookends were the deaths of my parents. I got married, but it ended in divorce. I'm in love with a wonderful woman, but Donald Trump.
Times are not good or bad. People fell in love and bore children while war raged. Mothers wept over their lost sons while the nation celebrated victory. Nostalgia isn't rooted in a time of our lives or in an historical era. Nostalgia is rooted in whom we surrounded ourselves with at the time and how they made us feel. And, usually, those times are associated with a period in our lives when we had fewer responsibilities and demands on our attention than we have now. It's easier to enjoy the company of friends when you don't have the insistence of a career or a young family pulling at you. The memories are sweeter when you could cuddle under a blanket with all of the kids and watch a silly movie together than when each teenager's attention is wrapped around a hand-held personal entertainment device plugged into their ears in some remote corner of the house while you sit at the kitchen table and crunch the numbers figuring out how to continue to feed them.
I believe we shouldn't pine for times that were great or special or "better." They weren't. You've lost touch with the people that made your existence then more enjoyable.
Reach out. Find those people. If lines were crossed or bridges were burned, maybe it's time for reconciliation. If it's simply that too much time has gotten between you and those people, maybe they're thinking about those "good old days," too, and a word from you out of the blue would make their day. Or their month.
But don't forget the people around you now. Take stock of them. Appreciate the good feelings you can associate with them, for they are the stuff of tomorrow's memories.
°
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Magic, Fleeting
I am a morning person. It's not by choice, but by fate; it seems I always have to roll out of bed at oh-dark-thirty to silence a wake-me-up-unwillingly device. Don't get me wrong, though. I do like mornings. The problem is that I also like late nights. The two, it seems, don't get along together too well.
Browsing through some old photos recently, I came across one I took of a group of young men with whom I was in training to be a Security Specialist in the U.S. Air Force. The photo dates to late winter or early spring of 1984 at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and was taken in the morning, probably a half-hour or so after sunrise. There were many such mornings during the first 18 weeks of my brief Air Force career, but I recall a much different feeling about them then than I have now.
The photo that inspired this post.
Lackland Air Force Base • San Antonio, Texas
winter/spring, 1984 (photo: Tony Gasbarro)
Prior to my time in the Air Force, if I was awake before sunup it was because I had either stayed up all night, or I had been dragged out of my bed by my father for some unwelcome assist for which he insisted upon dragging me out of my bed, after which I most likely leaned my head against the window of his truck on the way to wherever and slept until all the normal people were awake.
When the Air Force insisted that I get out of bed while the surrounding world was still dark, I felt a more urgent need to comply. As the old Army commercials used to say, I found myself doing more before 9:00am than most people did all day. No, seriously, when was the last time you drew an M-16 rifle from an armory and climbed into the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck and rode to a firing range, hmmm? But there I would be, in the classic, military "hurry up and wait," standing around with other young men drawn from their bunks by their sense of duty — or their fear of military courts-martial — and looking at the eastern sky.
Back then there was something magical about a sunrise; thick, black darkness, the horizon purpling and then brightening, blending to orange, clouds illuminated from below, puffy reds and pinks against rich blue. It was a sight I had rarely seen before as a diurnal sleepyhead. There was a magic in the stillness of the morning, then, that could even drown out the horseplay of those other young men around me. The air never held a sweeter aroma at any other time of the day than it held in the early hours, nor a sweeter sound than the morning birds as they busied themselves with their tasks. I remember often wishing that, somehow, the day could stay like that all the time and never grow bright and hot and difficult.
But as military training carried into regular duty, and surreal twilight carried into responsibility and routine and real life, that sense of magic wore off somewhere. I trudged along in life, returning more or less to the diurnal sleepyhead that I had been before. Circumstances later in life have brought me back to the oh-dark-thirty game, but now — somehow — it seems easier to do without threat of military courts-martial or the wrath of Dad. Do I require less sleep? Is there some subconscious reasoning, informed from many years of routine, that says, Just get up and get going! Lying here won't make it any easier? Has breakfast become that important to me?
Probably due to that same subconscious reasoning, my return to early mornings has not brought along with it the magical morning feeling. Been there - done that, I guess.
I still look to the east, still regard the dazzle of the sunrise firing up the clouds, still hear the birds singing, still notice the stillness... but no magic.
Maybe it's the fade of youth, the slow ebb of testosterone. Maybe, as morning is to the day as spring is to the year, I realize I'm in the autumn of my life.
Maybe.
Maybe I'm just tired of getting up so damned early.
°
Browsing through some old photos recently, I came across one I took of a group of young men with whom I was in training to be a Security Specialist in the U.S. Air Force. The photo dates to late winter or early spring of 1984 at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and was taken in the morning, probably a half-hour or so after sunrise. There were many such mornings during the first 18 weeks of my brief Air Force career, but I recall a much different feeling about them then than I have now.
The photo that inspired this post.
Lackland Air Force Base • San Antonio, Texas
winter/spring, 1984 (photo: Tony Gasbarro)
Prior to my time in the Air Force, if I was awake before sunup it was because I had either stayed up all night, or I had been dragged out of my bed by my father for some unwelcome assist for which he insisted upon dragging me out of my bed, after which I most likely leaned my head against the window of his truck on the way to wherever and slept until all the normal people were awake.
When the Air Force insisted that I get out of bed while the surrounding world was still dark, I felt a more urgent need to comply. As the old Army commercials used to say, I found myself doing more before 9:00am than most people did all day. No, seriously, when was the last time you drew an M-16 rifle from an armory and climbed into the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck and rode to a firing range, hmmm? But there I would be, in the classic, military "hurry up and wait," standing around with other young men drawn from their bunks by their sense of duty — or their fear of military courts-martial — and looking at the eastern sky.
Back then there was something magical about a sunrise; thick, black darkness, the horizon purpling and then brightening, blending to orange, clouds illuminated from below, puffy reds and pinks against rich blue. It was a sight I had rarely seen before as a diurnal sleepyhead. There was a magic in the stillness of the morning, then, that could even drown out the horseplay of those other young men around me. The air never held a sweeter aroma at any other time of the day than it held in the early hours, nor a sweeter sound than the morning birds as they busied themselves with their tasks. I remember often wishing that, somehow, the day could stay like that all the time and never grow bright and hot and difficult.
But as military training carried into regular duty, and surreal twilight carried into responsibility and routine and real life, that sense of magic wore off somewhere. I trudged along in life, returning more or less to the diurnal sleepyhead that I had been before. Circumstances later in life have brought me back to the oh-dark-thirty game, but now — somehow — it seems easier to do without threat of military courts-martial or the wrath of Dad. Do I require less sleep? Is there some subconscious reasoning, informed from many years of routine, that says, Just get up and get going! Lying here won't make it any easier? Has breakfast become that important to me?
Probably due to that same subconscious reasoning, my return to early mornings has not brought along with it the magical morning feeling. Been there - done that, I guess.
I still look to the east, still regard the dazzle of the sunrise firing up the clouds, still hear the birds singing, still notice the stillness... but no magic.
Maybe it's the fade of youth, the slow ebb of testosterone. Maybe, as morning is to the day as spring is to the year, I realize I'm in the autumn of my life.
Maybe.
Maybe I'm just tired of getting up so damned early.
°
Monday, November 23, 2015
The Power of the Smile
This is purely anecdotal; if you seek documentation on any of this, I will not — CAN not — provide it, however my word is gold and you had better believe it or poo on you.
I've spent most of my adult life rather self-conscious of my appearance; weak jawline, head — in my opinion — too small for my body, two eyebrows that would prefer to be one, and now, for the last nearly 20 years or so, male pattern baldness. I will admit that these drawbacks are, perhaps, perceptions that prevail from my days of low self-esteem as a teenager and young adult. There is one attribute, however, that bothers me more than the others here listed.
Dammit, I AM smiling.
It would appear that I tested the old wives' tale that recalls your mother yelling at your pouting former child self: "Wipe that frown off your face or it'll freeze like that!"
Now, I didn't have a particularly sad or troubled childhood. I didn't have a particularly happy or exciting childhood, either. Admittedly, I was a fairly mopey, moody, pouty child for no good reason. And I think those youthful days of rapid cell-division and lack of excitement and having to take no for an answer and resenting it really did freeze my face into somewhat of a sad pout. It bothered me often whenever a friend or acquaintance would see me engrossed in a task or absorbed in contemplation, and would say, "Hey, cheer up!" or "You should smile more."
It wasn't until about three or four years ago that the old wives' tale stated ringing in my ears. I felt beaten down by four rotten years of pain and loss (separation and divorce, father's death, job layoff, taxi "career," Jon & Kate Plus Eight canceled), and I could almost feel my face collapsing in on itself. The shit show tapered off to a lame revue in 2011, and through 2012 and '13 — despite growing debt while trying to defibrillate the taxi endeavor — things felt like they were turning around. But in photos I still looked sad. Was it true? Could my pain and sorrow of the prior years make me look pained and sorrowful? Always? Did my face indeed "freeze that way?"
I decided that it had. And I decided that if constant moping about the rotten things in my life, if frequent — perhaps perpetual — pouting could "freeze" my face in a permanent frown, then could I not reverse it by smiling? After all, I figured, is it not just muscle conditioning? Could smiling not retrain the muscles? Could the simple manipulation of the muscles of my lower face and jaw train them, strengthen them, to stay that way ...or at least train them not to draw my face downward into the visage of a bitter hermit? I decided that it could. I decided I would try it.
So, alone most of the time in the taxi, I started exercising the smile muscles. As often as I could remember to do it, I did it. At times I smiled constantly for as long as I could, until the muscles in my cheeks began to spasm and hurt. Then I would relax for a while, and then I would do it again. Day in and day out I practiced, alone and with customers in the car; they couldn't see my face, usually, or, if they could, I just looked like a happy guy. Or crazed, maybe. But mostly happy.
Mostly.
After several months I assessed in the mirror the progress of my little physical therapy project and determined that there either was no merit at all to my exercise theory, or it would take much longer for me to turn my frown upside down on my relaxed face. It had, after all, taken 45 years to bring it to that point.
But then I noticed something peculiar.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.
--Joseph Addison
In my previous life — my video career — I spent quite a lot of time on audio/video crews for large business meetings and conventions. Many of the keynote speakers there weren't talking about number crunching or sales goals or building client lists, but rather they talked about the how paying attention to the basic elements of life affected numbers, goals and lists. Quite a few of them talked in varying detail about attitude, and how it affects not only you, but how it affects those around you. A positive attitude, you see, is essential for moving forward, they said. And they said that the first step toward having a positive attitude was to smile.
Wait. What? "Smile?" What a bunch of horse shit, I thought. How can you smile if you're feeling crappy? How can you smile if life just took a dump on your head? But quite a few well-paid keynote speakers delivered that same basic message. Their claim: the physical act of simply smiling releases dopamine in the brain; if you just smile, you instantly feel better; and if you feel better, you perform better; and if you perform better, you serve better; and if you serve better ...blahda yada yada....
Horse shit.
Some years later I found myself assessing my mug in that mirror, bending my face into what had become a most familiar position — a smile — in an attempt to not look so down in the dumps all the time, and, though not particularly happy about anything, I realized that at the moment, and throughout the exercise, I had experienced a peculiar sense of well-being. Even though smiling had begun as purely a physical exercise, the smiles triggered a sort of muscle-memory of happiness, and I experienced happiness that was anchored only in the smile. Doing this daily had truly improved my general mood. Though it seemed I still had a relaxed bitch face, smiles came more easily, more quickly, and they fit my face better than they ever had. My interactions with my taxi customers had become more relaxed; I more easily took the negatives in stride; and my bad moods cleared more quickly after setbacks.
Had smiling really enriched my life? Well, I can't say with any certainty that smiling had a direct impact, but shortly after I retired the taxi, I met Donna, and I've been smiling a lot more ever since.
The words of all those keynote speakers have since faded, but their message has stayed with me:
Smile. It may not make the world a better place, but it will make YOUR world a better place. And what better place to start?
I've spent most of my adult life rather self-conscious of my appearance; weak jawline, head — in my opinion — too small for my body, two eyebrows that would prefer to be one, and now, for the last nearly 20 years or so, male pattern baldness. I will admit that these drawbacks are, perhaps, perceptions that prevail from my days of low self-esteem as a teenager and young adult. There is one attribute, however, that bothers me more than the others here listed.
Dammit, I AM smiling.
It would appear that I tested the old wives' tale that recalls your mother yelling at your pouting former child self: "Wipe that frown off your face or it'll freeze like that!"
Now, I didn't have a particularly sad or troubled childhood. I didn't have a particularly happy or exciting childhood, either. Admittedly, I was a fairly mopey, moody, pouty child for no good reason. And I think those youthful days of rapid cell-division and lack of excitement and having to take no for an answer and resenting it really did freeze my face into somewhat of a sad pout. It bothered me often whenever a friend or acquaintance would see me engrossed in a task or absorbed in contemplation, and would say, "Hey, cheer up!" or "You should smile more."
It wasn't until about three or four years ago that the old wives' tale stated ringing in my ears. I felt beaten down by four rotten years of pain and loss (separation and divorce, father's death, job layoff, taxi "career," Jon & Kate Plus Eight canceled), and I could almost feel my face collapsing in on itself. The shit show tapered off to a lame revue in 2011, and through 2012 and '13 — despite growing debt while trying to defibrillate the taxi endeavor — things felt like they were turning around. But in photos I still looked sad. Was it true? Could my pain and sorrow of the prior years make me look pained and sorrowful? Always? Did my face indeed "freeze that way?"
I decided that it had. And I decided that if constant moping about the rotten things in my life, if frequent — perhaps perpetual — pouting could "freeze" my face in a permanent frown, then could I not reverse it by smiling? After all, I figured, is it not just muscle conditioning? Could smiling not retrain the muscles? Could the simple manipulation of the muscles of my lower face and jaw train them, strengthen them, to stay that way ...or at least train them not to draw my face downward into the visage of a bitter hermit? I decided that it could. I decided I would try it.
So, alone most of the time in the taxi, I started exercising the smile muscles. As often as I could remember to do it, I did it. At times I smiled constantly for as long as I could, until the muscles in my cheeks began to spasm and hurt. Then I would relax for a while, and then I would do it again. Day in and day out I practiced, alone and with customers in the car; they couldn't see my face, usually, or, if they could, I just looked like a happy guy. Or crazed, maybe. But mostly happy.
Mostly.
After several months I assessed in the mirror the progress of my little physical therapy project and determined that there either was no merit at all to my exercise theory, or it would take much longer for me to turn my frown upside down on my relaxed face. It had, after all, taken 45 years to bring it to that point.
But then I noticed something peculiar.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.
--Joseph Addison
In my previous life — my video career — I spent quite a lot of time on audio/video crews for large business meetings and conventions. Many of the keynote speakers there weren't talking about number crunching or sales goals or building client lists, but rather they talked about the how paying attention to the basic elements of life affected numbers, goals and lists. Quite a few of them talked in varying detail about attitude, and how it affects not only you, but how it affects those around you. A positive attitude, you see, is essential for moving forward, they said. And they said that the first step toward having a positive attitude was to smile.
Wait. What? "Smile?" What a bunch of horse shit, I thought. How can you smile if you're feeling crappy? How can you smile if life just took a dump on your head? But quite a few well-paid keynote speakers delivered that same basic message. Their claim: the physical act of simply smiling releases dopamine in the brain; if you just smile, you instantly feel better; and if you feel better, you perform better; and if you perform better, you serve better; and if you serve better ...blahda yada yada....
Horse shit.
Some years later I found myself assessing my mug in that mirror, bending my face into what had become a most familiar position — a smile — in an attempt to not look so down in the dumps all the time, and, though not particularly happy about anything, I realized that at the moment, and throughout the exercise, I had experienced a peculiar sense of well-being. Even though smiling had begun as purely a physical exercise, the smiles triggered a sort of muscle-memory of happiness, and I experienced happiness that was anchored only in the smile. Doing this daily had truly improved my general mood. Though it seemed I still had a relaxed bitch face, smiles came more easily, more quickly, and they fit my face better than they ever had. My interactions with my taxi customers had become more relaxed; I more easily took the negatives in stride; and my bad moods cleared more quickly after setbacks.
Had smiling really enriched my life? Well, I can't say with any certainty that smiling had a direct impact, but shortly after I retired the taxi, I met Donna, and I've been smiling a lot more ever since.
The words of all those keynote speakers have since faded, but their message has stayed with me:
Smile. It may not make the world a better place, but it will make YOUR world a better place. And what better place to start?
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Alimental Journey
I don't know... maybe I should just start a film review blog....
It seems that, ever since Big Night (1996), I've had a soft spot for cuisine films. I never saw public advertisement for The Hundred-Foot Journey; I only saw trailers prior to other films, but even then the film looked delectable. Set in southwest France, the film starts off in India, and tells the story of a family who run a restaurant until political change and unrest make them refugees. Through the eyes of Hassan we see the initial upheaval, the attack by political or religious opponents which kills his mother, and the family's arrival in Europe to begin life anew.
Hassan, the oldest son, is a gifted cook, carrying with him his beloved mother's culinary teachings, philosophies, and instincts, as well as her carry-case full of Indian spices. Nomads in Europe at first, the Kadam family are led around the countryside by their father, who claims to speak to and hear his deceased wife, and he follows her word faithfully. Fate in the form of failed brakes in their junker caravan and a generous stranger lead them to a small French village and an abandoned restaurant up for sale. Much to the disdain of Madame Mallory, the owner of the restaurant directly across the street (played by Helen Mirren), the available restaurant is sold to the family, and they begin to set up shop and make the restaurant and the town their home.
The Hundred-Foot Journey pits the Kadam family against Mme. Mallory's kitchen "family" on three tiers; the aspect of direct business competition first gives way to the arrogance of class, as the French matron d', her chef, and her sous chefs scoff at the Indian cuisine, which they pass off as merely curry. But, with the surprise popularity of Kadam's Maison Mumbai — thanks in part both to Papa Kadam's aggressive marketing technique and Hassan's culinary skill — Mme. Mallory finds herself in a petty "war" with Maison Mumbai. Her chef, however, allows his deeper racial hatred reveal itself in an act of violence. When Mme. Mallory learns that the chef's actions have resulted in damage to Maison Mumbai and injury to Hassan, and that he may have been motivated by her own words, her heart softens, and she offers an olive branch to Maison Mumbai, an olive branch that is a key in a door to new worlds.
This film can easily be described as a love story, but it is about many loves — people, food, culture, country — and how our differences can interfere with our growth or let it blossom. The love story between people is an easy given; we know who we want to be with whom, and the film, quite frankly, telegraphs that. The same can be said of the cuisines at odds; if you love to cook and/or experience cuisines, you can enjoy the journey on which this film has invited you with your mouth watering. The other issues are a bit unexpected and may make you feel a little squirmy, but what is a great film if it doesn't do that just a little?
The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, and Charlotte Le Bon. Numb Butt-Cheeks* rating of 8.0 out of 10. Delicious!
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
It seems that, ever since Big Night (1996), I've had a soft spot for cuisine films. I never saw public advertisement for The Hundred-Foot Journey; I only saw trailers prior to other films, but even then the film looked delectable. Set in southwest France, the film starts off in India, and tells the story of a family who run a restaurant until political change and unrest make them refugees. Through the eyes of Hassan we see the initial upheaval, the attack by political or religious opponents which kills his mother, and the family's arrival in Europe to begin life anew.
Hassan, the oldest son, is a gifted cook, carrying with him his beloved mother's culinary teachings, philosophies, and instincts, as well as her carry-case full of Indian spices. Nomads in Europe at first, the Kadam family are led around the countryside by their father, who claims to speak to and hear his deceased wife, and he follows her word faithfully. Fate in the form of failed brakes in their junker caravan and a generous stranger lead them to a small French village and an abandoned restaurant up for sale. Much to the disdain of Madame Mallory, the owner of the restaurant directly across the street (played by Helen Mirren), the available restaurant is sold to the family, and they begin to set up shop and make the restaurant and the town their home.
The Hundred-Foot Journey pits the Kadam family against Mme. Mallory's kitchen "family" on three tiers; the aspect of direct business competition first gives way to the arrogance of class, as the French matron d', her chef, and her sous chefs scoff at the Indian cuisine, which they pass off as merely curry. But, with the surprise popularity of Kadam's Maison Mumbai — thanks in part both to Papa Kadam's aggressive marketing technique and Hassan's culinary skill — Mme. Mallory finds herself in a petty "war" with Maison Mumbai. Her chef, however, allows his deeper racial hatred reveal itself in an act of violence. When Mme. Mallory learns that the chef's actions have resulted in damage to Maison Mumbai and injury to Hassan, and that he may have been motivated by her own words, her heart softens, and she offers an olive branch to Maison Mumbai, an olive branch that is a key in a door to new worlds.
This film can easily be described as a love story, but it is about many loves — people, food, culture, country — and how our differences can interfere with our growth or let it blossom. The love story between people is an easy given; we know who we want to be with whom, and the film, quite frankly, telegraphs that. The same can be said of the cuisines at odds; if you love to cook and/or experience cuisines, you can enjoy the journey on which this film has invited you with your mouth watering. The other issues are a bit unexpected and may make you feel a little squirmy, but what is a great film if it doesn't do that just a little?
The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, and Charlotte Le Bon. Numb Butt-Cheeks* rating of 8.0 out of 10. Delicious!
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
Saturday, September 05, 2015
A Redemption Most Wanted
A month or so back I watched The Muppets (2011), the first Muppets film produced after Disney company's acquisition of the Muppets franchise. I did not write a formal review of the film, but I was generally disappointed with the writing and with the humor, which in the past, under the helm of Jim Henson Productions, had always been wry and sometimes subtle, a trait which carried on even after Muppets creator Jim Henson's death, so I suggested that it was perhaps actually attributable to Frank Oz, who had been with the Muppets from the beginning, and had continued with Jim Henson Productions beyond Henson. Well, Frank Oz no longer appears to be involved with the Muppets film franchise, and to that I attributed the film's dull thud.
Had I not already long ago entered into my Netflix queue the next film in the franchise, Muppets Most Wanted (2014), I never would have put it there, thanks to my disappointment in the prior film. But there it was in my mailbox, so I figured I would let it kill two hours of my life.
Almost from the first frame it launches into a musical number, set up, actually, by the closing scene of the prior film. Amid the post-wrap let-down, the Muppets turn and notice the camera still on them, and the music rolls up for "We're Doin' a Sequel," which unexpectedly — considering my experience last time — delights with an immediately likable melody and wry, self-effacing lyrics:
We're doin' a sequel
That's what we do in Hollywood
And everybody knows that
The sequel's never quite as good...
And the catchy, clever chorus:
Until the credits roll
We've got another go to show
That we can do it all again!
The plot of the film takes flight from this number as, clueless about what to do next, the Muppets throw around ideas, to include Gonzo's brainstorm for a self-gratifying film starring him and lots of chickens (his personal fetish), a Muppets remake of a timeless classic, only renamed to Gonzo With the Wind!
When a film smacks me in the face and starts talking to me in my own language — pun — I take notice.
Led around the world by their new booking agent, Dominic Badguy — "it's pronounced 'bad-jee;' it's French" — portrayed by Ricky Gervais, their tour is paralleled by a string of art museum heists that Interpol and the CIA link to the Muppets. Meanwhile, "the world's most dangerous frog," the number one most wanted international criminal, Constantine — a perfect double for Kermit, save for a huge facial mole — has escaped from a Russian gulag and made his way to Berlin, where Kermit is duped into going for a lonely walk in the fog at the harbor. In Berlin. Landlocked Berlin. Constantine surprises Kermit, glues a fake mole onto his cheek, and then disappears. Kermit is mistaken for Constantine and captured, and sent "back" to the Russian gulag.
There is more subtle, wry humor here, as the Muppets see a marquee outside the theatre venue touting their upcoming performance. "Die Muppets" gives them uneasy pause until Dominic Badguy points out to them that it's German for "The Muppets." One doesn't have to understand German for that to be funny. When Kermit is captured, he is tossed — literally — into a Polizei van atop which, as if a bus, a destination marquee flips from destination PLOTPOINTBURG to RUSSIAN GULAG.
It was at this point in the film that I realized I had already seen and heard a great deal of subtle things, to include nods to old gags from earlier Muppets days and even "Sesame Street." At the point of Kermit's capture Constantine, looking on through the fog, says, "It's not easy being mean." Later, after he has fooled the rest of the Muppets — with the help of Dominic Badguy, who, it is revealed, is the number 2 most wanted criminal in the world, known as The Lemur — into believing that he is really Kermit, and that his Russian accent is only the result of a cold, Constantine says to Walter in his thick Russian accent, "Let us get on with the show and enjoy our family style adventure during which we shall bond and learn heart-warming lesson, perhaps about sharing, or waiting your turn, or the number three."
The second musical number is Constantine reminding the resentful Dominic Badguy that the latter is number 2. If anyone is surprised by Ricky Gervais singing in a musical, then that anyone does not realize that Mr. Gervais was once one half of a very obscure 1980s New Wave duo Seona Dancing that ...well, was very obscure. But the boy can sing.
It was after the "Sesame Street" dig, and a second cleverly sculpted song that I realized I was watching something special. The Muppets are back. More importantly the essence of the Muppets is back!
The film is chock full of cameo and guest starring appearances, with the likes of Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Ray Liotta, Tina Fey, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Celine Dion, Danny Trejo, and Stanley Tucci, to name just a few, some with hilarious turns!
One of my favorite lines: after Walter and Fozzie Bear have escaped Constantine's clutches, having learned his nefarious plan, Constantine — again, still ignorant of who the Muppets even are, and in his thick Russian accent — tells the rest of the Muppets that "Walter and Fonzie have left the 'Mappets.'" Perhaps it was the Scotch leeching into my bloodstream by that point, but I was literally rolling on the couch from that one (no, literally rolling)!
Plotwise, it's typical Muppets family fare. Lots of funny sight gags and one-liners, and truly enjoyable, cleverly written songs. It's not a spoiler to say that it ends happily.
It wasn't until the credits rolled that I was able to identify one of the Russian gulag prisoners' face, a character that was featured in one non-original song ("Working In a Coal Mine"), played by Jemaine Clement. (More on that in a moment.)
I also learned in the credits that the original songs were written by Bret McKenzie, and I thought, "MAN! That guy is a good songwriter."
Then, in the Blu-Ray Extra Features section was a music video of one of the original songs, "I'll Give You Anything You Want," starring the songwriter himself, Bret McKenzie, and that's when it dawned on me: Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie together are the music and comedy duo The Flight of the Conchords! NO WONDER why the songs were so fun, funny and clever!!
Disney redeemed themselves and the reputation of the Muppets franchise with the production team they hired for Muppets Most Wanted. After 2011's The Muppets, which garnered a level of critical acclaim inexplicable to me, they retained director James Bobin and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller, both on hand for the prior film. The difference here is the absence of Jason Segel, who co-wrote and starred in The Muppets. In addition to directing, Bobin co-wrote this time around, which, in my humble opinion, makes Muppets Most Wanted the far superior film.
Muppets Most Wanted (2014). Numb Butt-Cheeks* rating of 7.8 out of 10 ...with a ±2-point Scotch Intoxication Factor.
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
°
Had I not already long ago entered into my Netflix queue the next film in the franchise, Muppets Most Wanted (2014), I never would have put it there, thanks to my disappointment in the prior film. But there it was in my mailbox, so I figured I would let it kill two hours of my life.
Almost from the first frame it launches into a musical number, set up, actually, by the closing scene of the prior film. Amid the post-wrap let-down, the Muppets turn and notice the camera still on them, and the music rolls up for "We're Doin' a Sequel," which unexpectedly — considering my experience last time — delights with an immediately likable melody and wry, self-effacing lyrics:
We're doin' a sequel
That's what we do in Hollywood
And everybody knows that
The sequel's never quite as good...
And the catchy, clever chorus:
Until the credits roll
We've got another go to show
That we can do it all again!
The plot of the film takes flight from this number as, clueless about what to do next, the Muppets throw around ideas, to include Gonzo's brainstorm for a self-gratifying film starring him and lots of chickens (his personal fetish), a Muppets remake of a timeless classic, only renamed to Gonzo With the Wind!
When a film smacks me in the face and starts talking to me in my own language — pun — I take notice.
Led around the world by their new booking agent, Dominic Badguy — "it's pronounced 'bad-jee;' it's French" — portrayed by Ricky Gervais, their tour is paralleled by a string of art museum heists that Interpol and the CIA link to the Muppets. Meanwhile, "the world's most dangerous frog," the number one most wanted international criminal, Constantine — a perfect double for Kermit, save for a huge facial mole — has escaped from a Russian gulag and made his way to Berlin, where Kermit is duped into going for a lonely walk in the fog at the harbor. In Berlin. Landlocked Berlin. Constantine surprises Kermit, glues a fake mole onto his cheek, and then disappears. Kermit is mistaken for Constantine and captured, and sent "back" to the Russian gulag.
There is more subtle, wry humor here, as the Muppets see a marquee outside the theatre venue touting their upcoming performance. "Die Muppets" gives them uneasy pause until Dominic Badguy points out to them that it's German for "The Muppets." One doesn't have to understand German for that to be funny. When Kermit is captured, he is tossed — literally — into a Polizei van atop which, as if a bus, a destination marquee flips from destination PLOTPOINTBURG to RUSSIAN GULAG.
It was at this point in the film that I realized I had already seen and heard a great deal of subtle things, to include nods to old gags from earlier Muppets days and even "Sesame Street." At the point of Kermit's capture Constantine, looking on through the fog, says, "It's not easy being mean." Later, after he has fooled the rest of the Muppets — with the help of Dominic Badguy, who, it is revealed, is the number 2 most wanted criminal in the world, known as The Lemur — into believing that he is really Kermit, and that his Russian accent is only the result of a cold, Constantine says to Walter in his thick Russian accent, "Let us get on with the show and enjoy our family style adventure during which we shall bond and learn heart-warming lesson, perhaps about sharing, or waiting your turn, or the number three."
The second musical number is Constantine reminding the resentful Dominic Badguy that the latter is number 2. If anyone is surprised by Ricky Gervais singing in a musical, then that anyone does not realize that Mr. Gervais was once one half of a very obscure 1980s New Wave duo Seona Dancing that ...well, was very obscure. But the boy can sing.
It was after the "Sesame Street" dig, and a second cleverly sculpted song that I realized I was watching something special. The Muppets are back. More importantly the essence of the Muppets is back!
The film is chock full of cameo and guest starring appearances, with the likes of Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Ray Liotta, Tina Fey, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Celine Dion, Danny Trejo, and Stanley Tucci, to name just a few, some with hilarious turns!
One of my favorite lines: after Walter and Fozzie Bear have escaped Constantine's clutches, having learned his nefarious plan, Constantine — again, still ignorant of who the Muppets even are, and in his thick Russian accent — tells the rest of the Muppets that "Walter and Fonzie have left the 'Mappets.'" Perhaps it was the Scotch leeching into my bloodstream by that point, but I was literally rolling on the couch from that one (no, literally rolling)!
Plotwise, it's typical Muppets family fare. Lots of funny sight gags and one-liners, and truly enjoyable, cleverly written songs. It's not a spoiler to say that it ends happily.
It wasn't until the credits rolled that I was able to identify one of the Russian gulag prisoners' face, a character that was featured in one non-original song ("Working In a Coal Mine"), played by Jemaine Clement. (More on that in a moment.)
I also learned in the credits that the original songs were written by Bret McKenzie, and I thought, "MAN! That guy is a good songwriter."
Then, in the Blu-Ray Extra Features section was a music video of one of the original songs, "I'll Give You Anything You Want," starring the songwriter himself, Bret McKenzie, and that's when it dawned on me: Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie together are the music and comedy duo The Flight of the Conchords! NO WONDER why the songs were so fun, funny and clever!!
Disney redeemed themselves and the reputation of the Muppets franchise with the production team they hired for Muppets Most Wanted. After 2011's The Muppets, which garnered a level of critical acclaim inexplicable to me, they retained director James Bobin and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller, both on hand for the prior film. The difference here is the absence of Jason Segel, who co-wrote and starred in The Muppets. In addition to directing, Bobin co-wrote this time around, which, in my humble opinion, makes Muppets Most Wanted the far superior film.
Muppets Most Wanted (2014). Numb Butt-Cheeks* rating of 7.8 out of 10 ...with a ±2-point Scotch Intoxication Factor.
*The Numb Butt-Cheeks® scale of zero to ten: a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of zero indicates such a disregard for the film that one could get up to go to the bathroom at any point without worry of missing anything exciting or important; a Numb Butt-Cheeks rating of ten indicates there is no way one would get up and leave, save for a distinct tearing of bladder tissue.
°
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Passions
It was last year, in between the deaths of my friend and former military comrade, Scott Aubuchon, and of my sister, Marie O'Donnell, when I had what I call an epiphany in which I decided that, approaching — at the time — age 50, I was no longer going to put off the things I've "always wanted to do," and just do them. On the horizon at that time was the third annual Wüschheim Air Station 38th Missile Security Squadron reunion in Las Vegas. Prior to my epiphany, I had decided I was not going to be able to make it to that, my second, reunion, but in the throes of the epiphany I decided that I would indeed make it to the reunion, credit card be damned ...and I would DRIVE there!
Also among the things I decided I would no longer wait to do were to get out of the taxi job that was taking up all my time and creative energy, and to find a "meaningless" job which I would not take home with me every evening, and which would allow me the time to pursue my passions, which are writing and acting.
Well, it has been more than a year since that epiphany, and I did accomplish a few of the things I vowed to: I did make a road trip to Las Vegas, and I did get out of the taxi job. The problem now is that the meaningless valet job that I wound up with coughed up a management opportunity, and now I'm stressing and taking it home and — worst of all — I'm not writing. I have been acting, though, but the pursuit of this particular passion requires that I climb out of the trench I seem to have dug myself at Northeastern Illinois University and find companies and venues that can lead to paid work.
It's time for another epiphany, one that tells me it's time to either shit or get off the pot, to put Facebook on a shelf for most of the day and use the free time I have to tackle those passions. Hopefully this desired epiphany won't involve the death of a loved one.
While I haven't been using any free time constructively in the area of writing, I have been successful in breaking away from the Northeastern rut ...in a manner of speaking. At this writing, I am in the middle of a three-week run of "Lounging," a dark comedy in one act. Though it is produced in conjunction with Northeastern, it is at least at a venue other than Northeastern's Stage Center; it's at Raven Theater. Baby steps. And though it is still small theatre, I have received some incredibly encouraging words about my potential as an actor from someone — a theatre professional — whose opinion I regard very highly.
So maybe this is one of those slow-burn epiphanies, as epiphanies go, and I should just lean toward the acting thing for now, and the writing will come later? I have felt the inspiration and the urge to write lately, but it hasn't resulted in any actual writing, yet. ...well, except for this blog post.
HEEEY! Wait a minute!
°
Also among the things I decided I would no longer wait to do were to get out of the taxi job that was taking up all my time and creative energy, and to find a "meaningless" job which I would not take home with me every evening, and which would allow me the time to pursue my passions, which are writing and acting.
Well, it has been more than a year since that epiphany, and I did accomplish a few of the things I vowed to: I did make a road trip to Las Vegas, and I did get out of the taxi job. The problem now is that the meaningless valet job that I wound up with coughed up a management opportunity, and now I'm stressing and taking it home and — worst of all — I'm not writing. I have been acting, though, but the pursuit of this particular passion requires that I climb out of the trench I seem to have dug myself at Northeastern Illinois University and find companies and venues that can lead to paid work.
It's time for another epiphany, one that tells me it's time to either shit or get off the pot, to put Facebook on a shelf for most of the day and use the free time I have to tackle those passions. Hopefully this desired epiphany won't involve the death of a loved one.
While I haven't been using any free time constructively in the area of writing, I have been successful in breaking away from the Northeastern rut ...in a manner of speaking. At this writing, I am in the middle of a three-week run of "Lounging," a dark comedy in one act. Though it is produced in conjunction with Northeastern, it is at least at a venue other than Northeastern's Stage Center; it's at Raven Theater. Baby steps. And though it is still small theatre, I have received some incredibly encouraging words about my potential as an actor from someone — a theatre professional — whose opinion I regard very highly.
So maybe this is one of those slow-burn epiphanies, as epiphanies go, and I should just lean toward the acting thing for now, and the writing will come later? I have felt the inspiration and the urge to write lately, but it hasn't resulted in any actual writing, yet. ...well, except for this blog post.
HEEEY! Wait a minute!
°
Thursday, June 18, 2015
A Sister's Words
To say that losing a loved one — in my case, a sister — is an understatement is itself a gross understatement. There are not enough words to describe the pain and sadness and loss of someone you've known your entire life since even before you knew you knew her.
So, I hope understandably, I can be excused for trying to escape the pain at the time of her death by putting off something that I saw then as only prolonging the pain, exacerbating it. But now I find I have the resolve I lacked then, and I choose the first anniversary of Marie's passing to finally share.
At the funeral I passed out my extensive remembrance piece, a rambling, five-page(?) essay on my sister. But another of my sisters, Denise, stepped to the front of the room and delivered her own sweet remembrance that touched every heart within earshot. I was asked by several family members and friends of the family to transcribe her handwritten tribute, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Until now:
By Denise Gasbarro Snowdon
I work at a hospital and one of the days before deciding on hospice for Marie, I went into the chapel there to pray. I went up to the small altar and found the Bible open to this passage in the book of Ecclesiastes: Chapter 3, verses 1 to 8
A Time For Everything
For everything there is a season;
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant, and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to stop searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.
Life, with its many cycles, is a gift. Sometimes living life is unfair, over-burdened, and just plain hard.
But... LIFE IS GOOD.
We are all born, and we all must die, some sooner than others. What we do with that time between is up to us — our free will. Our main purpose in life is to love and respect God. Then to reflect that love to all those we come in contact with. And that is just what my sister did.
Looking around this room today, one can see all the lives she touched. She raised two outstanding young men that were her true treasures on this earth. I am sure, too, that she played a role in helping to shape the lives of their many "buddies" that entered her home through a door that was always open to whoever came over. AND ...those that did ...she made sure they never left hungry!
Every family has a favorite aunt, and Marie was that — Aunty Ree to all her nieces, nephews and their children, too, always greeting them with open arms and a warm heart. Even their friends called her "Aunty Ree," too.
She had many "families" outside of her blood-related family. Her childhood, lifelong friend, whom she cherished dearly, flew in from Florida the week before Marie went into hospice, spending several hours every day with Marie until she flew back home last Sunday. She flew back this week to be here with us. I hope you know, Glor, how much that meant to Marie and all of us. Thank you for giving her so much love and friendship for nearly 50 years!
She still had a very close relationship/friendship with our cousin, Jan, whom she graduated high school with. Every Sunday morning, up until Marie got sick, they would go out for breakfast, and shop at WalMart. They would even go on occasional day trips together to summer festivals and things like that. Thank you, Jan, for all the love you gave and time you spent with her.
She was a great neighbor, especially while living in South Chicago Heights. She was still friends with those neighbors, many of whom are here today and visited her while hospitalized. Even the now grown children of those neighbors are still friends with her and her sons. In fact, one of those young friends adopted Marie as "Grandma Ree" to his son a couple years ago. And for that, Justin and Violet, I thank you. That little guy brought her so much joy, she loved him so very much. Just seeing him, even on a cell phone screen, would make her face light up!
The many friends she made while riding on the train when she worked in Chicago became another family to her; they actually are a group of people who call themselves the South Shore Train Family. She enjoyed all the parties and gatherings they had. Several of them helped us out so much while Marie was hospitalized, hanging out with her there and keeping her spirits up. To them I say thank you, and I will be eternally grateful.
Those who knew Marie's life story know the many trying times she and her sons endured during their young life. But yet, she carried on, still with that beautiful smile and "infectious" laugh, as our brother Tony called it.
Her illness, I have to say, was the hardest of all, especially for her, but yet, she NEVER EVER complained. She would just look at me, shrug her shoulders, and say, "It is what it is." She fought it as much as she could, but the "demon" cancer took over. God came to her rescue, though, knowing her body could take no more, and He took her home, where she now has a new body, free of pain and suffering. And ...as she met Him, I am sure he said to her:
"Well done, my good and faithful servant."
You will be missed, Marie, more than you will ever know.
--June 23, 2014
So, I hope understandably, I can be excused for trying to escape the pain at the time of her death by putting off something that I saw then as only prolonging the pain, exacerbating it. But now I find I have the resolve I lacked then, and I choose the first anniversary of Marie's passing to finally share.
At the funeral I passed out my extensive remembrance piece, a rambling, five-page(?) essay on my sister. But another of my sisters, Denise, stepped to the front of the room and delivered her own sweet remembrance that touched every heart within earshot. I was asked by several family members and friends of the family to transcribe her handwritten tribute, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Until now:
By Denise Gasbarro Snowdon
I work at a hospital and one of the days before deciding on hospice for Marie, I went into the chapel there to pray. I went up to the small altar and found the Bible open to this passage in the book of Ecclesiastes: Chapter 3, verses 1 to 8
A Time For Everything
For everything there is a season;
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant, and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to stop searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.
Life, with its many cycles, is a gift. Sometimes living life is unfair, over-burdened, and just plain hard.
But... LIFE IS GOOD.
We are all born, and we all must die, some sooner than others. What we do with that time between is up to us — our free will. Our main purpose in life is to love and respect God. Then to reflect that love to all those we come in contact with. And that is just what my sister did.
Looking around this room today, one can see all the lives she touched. She raised two outstanding young men that were her true treasures on this earth. I am sure, too, that she played a role in helping to shape the lives of their many "buddies" that entered her home through a door that was always open to whoever came over. AND ...those that did ...she made sure they never left hungry!
Every family has a favorite aunt, and Marie was that — Aunty Ree to all her nieces, nephews and their children, too, always greeting them with open arms and a warm heart. Even their friends called her "Aunty Ree," too.
She had many "families" outside of her blood-related family. Her childhood, lifelong friend, whom she cherished dearly, flew in from Florida the week before Marie went into hospice, spending several hours every day with Marie until she flew back home last Sunday. She flew back this week to be here with us. I hope you know, Glor, how much that meant to Marie and all of us. Thank you for giving her so much love and friendship for nearly 50 years!
She still had a very close relationship/friendship with our cousin, Jan, whom she graduated high school with. Every Sunday morning, up until Marie got sick, they would go out for breakfast, and shop at WalMart. They would even go on occasional day trips together to summer festivals and things like that. Thank you, Jan, for all the love you gave and time you spent with her.
She was a great neighbor, especially while living in South Chicago Heights. She was still friends with those neighbors, many of whom are here today and visited her while hospitalized. Even the now grown children of those neighbors are still friends with her and her sons. In fact, one of those young friends adopted Marie as "Grandma Ree" to his son a couple years ago. And for that, Justin and Violet, I thank you. That little guy brought her so much joy, she loved him so very much. Just seeing him, even on a cell phone screen, would make her face light up!
The many friends she made while riding on the train when she worked in Chicago became another family to her; they actually are a group of people who call themselves the South Shore Train Family. She enjoyed all the parties and gatherings they had. Several of them helped us out so much while Marie was hospitalized, hanging out with her there and keeping her spirits up. To them I say thank you, and I will be eternally grateful.
Those who knew Marie's life story know the many trying times she and her sons endured during their young life. But yet, she carried on, still with that beautiful smile and "infectious" laugh, as our brother Tony called it.
Her illness, I have to say, was the hardest of all, especially for her, but yet, she NEVER EVER complained. She would just look at me, shrug her shoulders, and say, "It is what it is." She fought it as much as she could, but the "demon" cancer took over. God came to her rescue, though, knowing her body could take no more, and He took her home, where she now has a new body, free of pain and suffering. And ...as she met Him, I am sure he said to her:
"Well done, my good and faithful servant."
You will be missed, Marie, more than you will ever know.
--June 23, 2014
Monday, January 05, 2015
2014: Year In the Rear View
I don't usually write year-in-review messages or blog posts, but 2014 was a particular doozy — for reasons both happy and sad — and I feel compelled to share my thoughts about it.
I came out of 2013 a bit shaken, what with having received news of three friends' passing all within a week near the end of the year, specifically around Thanksgiving. As with all New Years, I hoped 2014 would be better. And so it goes....
January
The year took off to a white, wintry start. We all were assaulted not only with snow and bitter cold, but a new term: "Polar Vortex." No longer is it an "Arctic blast," or just plain "winter," but a "Polar Vortex" to make the weather forecasters sound cool, and the rest of us to sound like idiots.
February
Aside from the unusual temperatures, winter was business as usual for me in the taxi; the worse the weather (especially falling snow), the better the money, though the money was never actually good. Better than crap is better, not necessarily good. The month's take on the Polar Vortex did bring me at least one spectacular sight...
Parhelion, a.k.a. Sun Dog, February 9, 2014
March
Just more treading water. Nothing of note occurred that I can recall.
April
Early in the month I finally gave up on someone I had considered a friend for about a year prior. I realized that while I endeavored to be a friend to her, she put in no such effort and merely used me. Call it a hero complex, but I had convinced myself that I could coach her through the steps she needed to take to reverse the death spiral that her alcohol problem had set into motion. But, alas, the most important person who needed to believe in her chose instead to stay nestled in the dubious comfort of a bottle, and in the company of those who were happy to keep her drunk. I will confess a physical attraction in addition to the instinct to save, but that only served to make more difficult the decision to break away.
The end of the month was also a time of anxiety, as my sister, Marie, was diagnosed on the 29th with adenocarcinoma of the lung, stage 4. She was admitted to the hospital almost immediately and began her battery of chemotherapy. Her prognosis was not good, but there was a chance she could beat it. She wanted to to try.
May
In the following two or three weeks, Marie suffered a mild stroke. Doctors said it was due to a disorder that caused her blood to thicken.
Marie was in the supposedly capable hands of her doctors, and was being nurtured nearly 24/7 by her sons, so, at mid-month, I decided to go ahead with a long-desired road trip to North Carolina.
Seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway, somewhere in North Carolina, May 19, 2014.
Down through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and the Appalachians into North Carolina, and then back up through Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, and Kentucky, I took what felt like a thousand photos and spent way too few hours with friends whose hospitality seemed boundless. During the trip I received word that Marie had suffered a second stroke. Despite her doctors' words to the contrary, her strokes seemed to be direct results of her chemotherapy, as each had occurred shortly after a chemo treatment. Where the first seemed to have momentarily knocked her silly, the second one took a clearer toll, affecting her speech and her vision. An attending neurologist saw months of rehab in her future.
June
Not long home after the road trip, I received news on June 9 that an Air Force friend, Scott Aubuchon, had died suddenly in his home in Rogers, Arkansas. He had only four months prior celebrated his 50th birthday, and had only three months prior married his love, Jennifer. Plans were made hastily and, at the end of the week, I embarked on my second road trip in as many months, this time for the solemn occasion of Scott's funeral.
During the drive home I received a text from Ed, Marie's elder son, that Marie had opted out of any further treatments, out of any further attempt to save her life. She was going to be moved within a day or two to a hospice facility. She was going to die. I drove on through a blur of tears and decided that I was done planning for some day in the distant future when I would have all of my bills paid and enough money saved and my retirement planned. I accepted in those moments that I will never have all of those things. The last five years of my life have destroyed any serious hope I may have had about retirement. I will work pretty much until the day I die or — much like my father did — until the day my body finally gives out. Until that day, I am going to seize every opportunity I can to do the things I want to do and go see the places I want to see, because we are not promised tomorrow, and waiting to do or to go until the time is just right only postpones them indefinitely because the time is never right. Marie had a pleasant retirement planned, just a few years ahead of her. She was waiting until the time was right to sell her house and move into a quiet retirement community, and to make a trip to Italy, a place she had wanted to visit all of her life.
Marie died on June 18th. She was 59.
July
Her passing was, in retrospect, like a switch was flipped on my life. Of the many things I want to do, writing and acting are two of them, and the taxi job was sucking the time away from those and just about every other activity I was interested in. A change had to be made, but quitting the taxi — rather, firing myself from the taxi — and collecting unemployment for six months seemed foolish on the boundary of madness. But then I received an e-mail in response to a résumé I had sent — apparently — a month or so earlier. Long story short, I received and accepted a job offer at HR Imaging Partners to be a school portraits photographer.
But the job was only part-time, and they assured me that the fall semester rush would slow down by mid-October, and I would be hurting for work. I shut down the taxi on July 11 and started at HRI on the 14th.
On the 26th, after a surprise Facebook message — an invitation to a Meetup.com event — from a woman I had found interesting and with whom I had traded comments only a few times, I went to the Northwest Suburban Atheists meetup in Cary, Illinois. By night's end she and I had a date set for dinner later in the week! The Wednesday evening dinner at her apartment went well and before I knew it I had a girlfriend!
August
Just two days later I left for my third road trip of the year, to the Third Annual Wüschheim Air Station reunion, in Las Vegas. It was a trip I had all but decided I couldn't do, but, thanks to the epiphany I had on the road home from Arkansas, I did.
September
On the weekend of my birthday, September 5, Donna treated me to a very nice birthday weekend, with dinner at Bistrot Margot and a late night comedy show followed by drinks, all in Old Town. Niece Ashley and her hubby Steve joined us. Then we spent the night at the W hotel downtown, riding on niece Katie's employee discount, after which we spent Saturday afternoon sightseeing, and the evening at my monthly karaoke do! It was a fantastic weekend!
Later in the month I was cast in Northeastern Illinois University's production of Christopher Durang's Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, without auditioning. It's good to be on a director's short list!
October
was a blur mainly of intensifying play rehearsals and weekends with Donna, with season 5 episodes of The Walking Dead sprinkled in there for variety.
November
As October tilted toward November, I saw the HRI gigs drying up. My option with HRI was to jump into sports and event candids, but that entailed weekends and evenings almost exclusively, and that was absolutely out of the question. One long evening of frantic Craigslist ad browsing and responding yielded an interview with HealthPark Hospitality for a job as a valet. The job paid shit, but they offered an agreeable schedule — day shift, 40 hours. It was the easiest interview I ever had in my life, almost as though they were looking just to see if I would show up! I turned in my notice at HRI to end on November 7, started training with HealthPark on November 10, and started full-time at Northwest Community Hospital, Entrance 2, on November 17. It is surprisingly a fun job, not difficult at all and, best of all, allows me the time once again to do the things I want to do! ...like acting. Why Torture Is Wrong... opened its seven-performance run on the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
December
The last month of 2014 was another blur of work and play. THE play, to be specific; it closed on the first weekend of the month. Weekends were with Donna, in what has become the usual. She is a smart, sensitive, sensual, beautiful woman with a soft voice and a passion for wine and a love of cooking! We settled in to each other very quickly, and our time together is usually spent cuddling, laughing, and watching movies. I have never found easier talking to a woman, and her laugh is unrestrained and delicious.
So 2014 was indeed a doozy of a year! Despite the losses of people I loved, I think I got my brain turned around the right way, and my world turned upside down in the best way. I can only hope the trend continues into 2015.
But I ain't holding my breath.
°
I came out of 2013 a bit shaken, what with having received news of three friends' passing all within a week near the end of the year, specifically around Thanksgiving. As with all New Years, I hoped 2014 would be better. And so it goes....
January
The year took off to a white, wintry start. We all were assaulted not only with snow and bitter cold, but a new term: "Polar Vortex." No longer is it an "Arctic blast," or just plain "winter," but a "Polar Vortex" to make the weather forecasters sound cool, and the rest of us to sound like idiots.
February
Aside from the unusual temperatures, winter was business as usual for me in the taxi; the worse the weather (especially falling snow), the better the money, though the money was never actually good. Better than crap is better, not necessarily good. The month's take on the Polar Vortex did bring me at least one spectacular sight...
Parhelion, a.k.a. Sun Dog, February 9, 2014
March
Just more treading water. Nothing of note occurred that I can recall.
April
Early in the month I finally gave up on someone I had considered a friend for about a year prior. I realized that while I endeavored to be a friend to her, she put in no such effort and merely used me. Call it a hero complex, but I had convinced myself that I could coach her through the steps she needed to take to reverse the death spiral that her alcohol problem had set into motion. But, alas, the most important person who needed to believe in her chose instead to stay nestled in the dubious comfort of a bottle, and in the company of those who were happy to keep her drunk. I will confess a physical attraction in addition to the instinct to save, but that only served to make more difficult the decision to break away.
The end of the month was also a time of anxiety, as my sister, Marie, was diagnosed on the 29th with adenocarcinoma of the lung, stage 4. She was admitted to the hospital almost immediately and began her battery of chemotherapy. Her prognosis was not good, but there was a chance she could beat it. She wanted to to try.
May
In the following two or three weeks, Marie suffered a mild stroke. Doctors said it was due to a disorder that caused her blood to thicken.
Marie was in the supposedly capable hands of her doctors, and was being nurtured nearly 24/7 by her sons, so, at mid-month, I decided to go ahead with a long-desired road trip to North Carolina.
Seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway, somewhere in North Carolina, May 19, 2014.
Down through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and the Appalachians into North Carolina, and then back up through Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, and Kentucky, I took what felt like a thousand photos and spent way too few hours with friends whose hospitality seemed boundless. During the trip I received word that Marie had suffered a second stroke. Despite her doctors' words to the contrary, her strokes seemed to be direct results of her chemotherapy, as each had occurred shortly after a chemo treatment. Where the first seemed to have momentarily knocked her silly, the second one took a clearer toll, affecting her speech and her vision. An attending neurologist saw months of rehab in her future.
June
Not long home after the road trip, I received news on June 9 that an Air Force friend, Scott Aubuchon, had died suddenly in his home in Rogers, Arkansas. He had only four months prior celebrated his 50th birthday, and had only three months prior married his love, Jennifer. Plans were made hastily and, at the end of the week, I embarked on my second road trip in as many months, this time for the solemn occasion of Scott's funeral.
During the drive home I received a text from Ed, Marie's elder son, that Marie had opted out of any further treatments, out of any further attempt to save her life. She was going to be moved within a day or two to a hospice facility. She was going to die. I drove on through a blur of tears and decided that I was done planning for some day in the distant future when I would have all of my bills paid and enough money saved and my retirement planned. I accepted in those moments that I will never have all of those things. The last five years of my life have destroyed any serious hope I may have had about retirement. I will work pretty much until the day I die or — much like my father did — until the day my body finally gives out. Until that day, I am going to seize every opportunity I can to do the things I want to do and go see the places I want to see, because we are not promised tomorrow, and waiting to do or to go until the time is just right only postpones them indefinitely because the time is never right. Marie had a pleasant retirement planned, just a few years ahead of her. She was waiting until the time was right to sell her house and move into a quiet retirement community, and to make a trip to Italy, a place she had wanted to visit all of her life.
Marie died on June 18th. She was 59.
July
Her passing was, in retrospect, like a switch was flipped on my life. Of the many things I want to do, writing and acting are two of them, and the taxi job was sucking the time away from those and just about every other activity I was interested in. A change had to be made, but quitting the taxi — rather, firing myself from the taxi — and collecting unemployment for six months seemed foolish on the boundary of madness. But then I received an e-mail in response to a résumé I had sent — apparently — a month or so earlier. Long story short, I received and accepted a job offer at HR Imaging Partners to be a school portraits photographer.
But the job was only part-time, and they assured me that the fall semester rush would slow down by mid-October, and I would be hurting for work. I shut down the taxi on July 11 and started at HRI on the 14th.
On the 26th, after a surprise Facebook message — an invitation to a Meetup.com event — from a woman I had found interesting and with whom I had traded comments only a few times, I went to the Northwest Suburban Atheists meetup in Cary, Illinois. By night's end she and I had a date set for dinner later in the week! The Wednesday evening dinner at her apartment went well and before I knew it I had a girlfriend!
August
Just two days later I left for my third road trip of the year, to the Third Annual Wüschheim Air Station reunion, in Las Vegas. It was a trip I had all but decided I couldn't do, but, thanks to the epiphany I had on the road home from Arkansas, I did.
September
On the weekend of my birthday, September 5, Donna treated me to a very nice birthday weekend, with dinner at Bistrot Margot and a late night comedy show followed by drinks, all in Old Town. Niece Ashley and her hubby Steve joined us. Then we spent the night at the W hotel downtown, riding on niece Katie's employee discount, after which we spent Saturday afternoon sightseeing, and the evening at my monthly karaoke do! It was a fantastic weekend!
Later in the month I was cast in Northeastern Illinois University's production of Christopher Durang's Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, without auditioning. It's good to be on a director's short list!
October
was a blur mainly of intensifying play rehearsals and weekends with Donna, with season 5 episodes of The Walking Dead sprinkled in there for variety.
November
As October tilted toward November, I saw the HRI gigs drying up. My option with HRI was to jump into sports and event candids, but that entailed weekends and evenings almost exclusively, and that was absolutely out of the question. One long evening of frantic Craigslist ad browsing and responding yielded an interview with HealthPark Hospitality for a job as a valet. The job paid shit, but they offered an agreeable schedule — day shift, 40 hours. It was the easiest interview I ever had in my life, almost as though they were looking just to see if I would show up! I turned in my notice at HRI to end on November 7, started training with HealthPark on November 10, and started full-time at Northwest Community Hospital, Entrance 2, on November 17. It is surprisingly a fun job, not difficult at all and, best of all, allows me the time once again to do the things I want to do! ...like acting. Why Torture Is Wrong... opened its seven-performance run on the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
December
The last month of 2014 was another blur of work and play. THE play, to be specific; it closed on the first weekend of the month. Weekends were with Donna, in what has become the usual. She is a smart, sensitive, sensual, beautiful woman with a soft voice and a passion for wine and a love of cooking! We settled in to each other very quickly, and our time together is usually spent cuddling, laughing, and watching movies. I have never found easier talking to a woman, and her laugh is unrestrained and delicious.
So 2014 was indeed a doozy of a year! Despite the losses of people I loved, I think I got my brain turned around the right way, and my world turned upside down in the best way. I can only hope the trend continues into 2015.
But I ain't holding my breath.
°
Thursday, December 18, 2014
A Rapid Undoing
It was near the end of my day. A car pulled up to the doors to Entrance #2 amid a brief flurry of business and I went out to the driver's door with a valet ticket in my hand. "Do you want valet service today, sir?" He was an elderly man behind the wheel of the late model Honda.
"Yes," he replied. "You staying warm?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "This job keeps me moving; I stay pretty warm!"
"It's okay," he said as he gripped the interior handle of the open car door and slowly pulled himself to his feet, "you don't have to call me sir..."
"Oh, I call all men--"
"I was only a sergeant," he said, cutting me off; he hadn't heard my response. "I wasn't an officer." He offered up a handshake. I took his hand in mine.
"Thank you for your service, sir," I said. "Army?"
"Nineteen-forty-two to forty-five." He had read the next question in my mind.
"My dad was in from '42 to '46. Were you in the Pacific Theater or in the..."
"Europe!" His hearing was perfect, now. "I was with General Patton."
"Now, was he First Army or Third?" My father served in Europe during World War II, so I have the smidgen of European Theater of Operations knowledge I learned from him.
"First," he said.
"Ah," I smiled. "My father was in the Third Army." I couldn't think of the general's name who led my father's neck of the war. "Were you in the Battle of 'The Bulge?'" Another thing I had learned about my father's service. (Patton's First Army was in position to the north of the Belgian town of Bastogne, while General Omar Bradley's Third Army was about equally as far to the south of Bastogne. A thinly defended supply line was established between the two armies, and that supply line is where the German Army attacked in an effort to recapture the harbor of Antwerp, Belgium. The American forces along the line fell back westward in an effort to contain the German offensive, thus forming what the press of the time described as a "bulge" in the line.)
The gentleman smiled slightly and nodded.
I laughed. "You may have rubbed elbows with him!"
"How's your father?" he asked me.
I put my arm high up on his arm, near his shoulder, and said fairly matter-of-factly, "He passed away in 2008."
Then the man said, "I'm 91."
"NINETY-ONE?!" I blurted. The really quick part of my brain — the part that never shows itself for any practical purposes other than avoiding traffic collisions and recalling useless information — momentarily thought he was guessing my father's age, because, in that instant, without having to do any math, I knew 91 would have been my father's age this year. "You're doing good! You're doing GREAT!" I patted him on the arm in the same spot.
He hobbled past me toward the entry door to the medical building. "The good lord gave me a great life."
I walked ahead of him to open the door, and suddenly found myself struggling mightily to hold back tears. In that instant, I missed my dad terribly and I wanted desperately to sit down with this gentleman and ask him a million questions. What a tremendous obstacle placed before the men of his generation that they overcame! Most of them, anyway. And the sacrifice and the loss. The fear and the pain. What images must float up in his mind when he says things like, "I was only a sergeant, 1942 to '45!"
And now they're dying off to the tune of hundreds a day; maybe thousands.
I couldn't regain my composure quickly enough, and as he stepped through the doorway and away from me, my wish to him to "Have a good afternoon, now," came out as a wobbly, warbling croak, which I was grateful he couldn't hear.
Choking on the lump in my throat, I walked back through tear-blurred vision and quickly inspected his car for any prior damage, got in and headed to the valet stalls where I parked his car. And I let it happen. It was brief. I wiped my cheeks and my eyes with my hands, and I trotted back to Entrance #2, happy for the flurry of business that prevented me from dwelling on what had just transpired.
°
"Yes," he replied. "You staying warm?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "This job keeps me moving; I stay pretty warm!"
"It's okay," he said as he gripped the interior handle of the open car door and slowly pulled himself to his feet, "you don't have to call me sir..."
"Oh, I call all men--"
"I was only a sergeant," he said, cutting me off; he hadn't heard my response. "I wasn't an officer." He offered up a handshake. I took his hand in mine.
"Thank you for your service, sir," I said. "Army?"
"Nineteen-forty-two to forty-five." He had read the next question in my mind.
"My dad was in from '42 to '46. Were you in the Pacific Theater or in the..."
"Europe!" His hearing was perfect, now. "I was with General Patton."
"Now, was he First Army or Third?" My father served in Europe during World War II, so I have the smidgen of European Theater of Operations knowledge I learned from him.
"First," he said.
"Ah," I smiled. "My father was in the Third Army." I couldn't think of the general's name who led my father's neck of the war. "Were you in the Battle of 'The Bulge?'" Another thing I had learned about my father's service. (Patton's First Army was in position to the north of the Belgian town of Bastogne, while General Omar Bradley's Third Army was about equally as far to the south of Bastogne. A thinly defended supply line was established between the two armies, and that supply line is where the German Army attacked in an effort to recapture the harbor of Antwerp, Belgium. The American forces along the line fell back westward in an effort to contain the German offensive, thus forming what the press of the time described as a "bulge" in the line.)
The gentleman smiled slightly and nodded.
I laughed. "You may have rubbed elbows with him!"
"How's your father?" he asked me.
I put my arm high up on his arm, near his shoulder, and said fairly matter-of-factly, "He passed away in 2008."
Then the man said, "I'm 91."
"NINETY-ONE?!" I blurted. The really quick part of my brain — the part that never shows itself for any practical purposes other than avoiding traffic collisions and recalling useless information — momentarily thought he was guessing my father's age, because, in that instant, without having to do any math, I knew 91 would have been my father's age this year. "You're doing good! You're doing GREAT!" I patted him on the arm in the same spot.
He hobbled past me toward the entry door to the medical building. "The good lord gave me a great life."
I walked ahead of him to open the door, and suddenly found myself struggling mightily to hold back tears. In that instant, I missed my dad terribly and I wanted desperately to sit down with this gentleman and ask him a million questions. What a tremendous obstacle placed before the men of his generation that they overcame! Most of them, anyway. And the sacrifice and the loss. The fear and the pain. What images must float up in his mind when he says things like, "I was only a sergeant, 1942 to '45!"
And now they're dying off to the tune of hundreds a day; maybe thousands.
I couldn't regain my composure quickly enough, and as he stepped through the doorway and away from me, my wish to him to "Have a good afternoon, now," came out as a wobbly, warbling croak, which I was grateful he couldn't hear.
Choking on the lump in my throat, I walked back through tear-blurred vision and quickly inspected his car for any prior damage, got in and headed to the valet stalls where I parked his car. And I let it happen. It was brief. I wiped my cheeks and my eyes with my hands, and I trotted back to Entrance #2, happy for the flurry of business that prevented me from dwelling on what had just transpired.
°
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Scenes From Entrance #2
I suppose I'm doing this backwards, chronologically speaking, but, with the way these entries post to Blogger, a random, casual reader will read them in some semblance of the right order. This is on my mind right now; I'll get to my "career" ethos in a later post.
With about a month at this new job under my belt, a few thoughts have settled in, and I feel a need to share them. Go get an alcoholic beverage; you may wish you didn't spend time in my brain. The break below this paragraph can last for decades.
I think it's official: I'm a people person. Fourteen years ago I can pretty confidently say I was not. When I took the job at Directions AV, Inc., I was pretty vexed at my agreeing to approach strangers with a video camera and encourage/cajole/plead for their participation in videos as a requirement of my job. But approach them I did and, if I have to say so myself, I became pretty damn good at putting together sight gags and short skits with no scripts and with randomly chosen non-actors. The unexpected by-product of that eight-years-and-change experience is that I can now approach and talk to just about everyone and be my wacky self as though I've known them for years.
Laid off in 2009, and feeling a little desperate after five idle months, I took what I now realize with clear 20/20-hindsight was an ill-advised taxi driving occupation. Despite the money-, time-, and mind-draining aspect of it, I also realize that it further developed my people-person skills. It is in the taxi that I actually realized that I can talk to just about anyone like an old buddy.
The taxi was killing me slowly, and I knew I had to get out, so I did that in July, accepting an offer at an imaging company as a school portraits photographer. There I realized that I can talk to almost anybody. Kids? Not so much. Honestly, it wasn't the talking that I had a problem with; it was the tolerating. Plus, all of the things I mentioned in the prior post.
In the preliminaries to being offered this job, the interviewer — who happens to be the owner of the company — seemed very pleased with my professed people-person skills that carried over from the taxi business. It may be the only reason they hired an old fart like me for a job where they expect their people to run to retrieve the parked cars.
But I digress. In the four and a half weeks that I have been functioning as a valet/parking attendant at this local hospital, I have greeted and welcomed already several hundreds of people. Some of them are repeat visitors, and others are one-timers. It is the repeat visitors who I think about the most. Some aren't visitors at all, but employees of the hospital. They're not our customers, but we are expected to treat them with the same respect and enthusiasm with which we treat the visitors, and enthusiasm is what I have felt since the start. Inside the building, beyond the doors where I am stationed, many of our repeat guests come in for surgery, and some come in daily for various and sundry cancer treatments. Some surgery patients are in and out in a couple of hours, while some go in and spend days in recovery. Cancer patients come in for chemotherapy, radiation, and even laser excision of cancerous skin cells. One gentleman, apparently in his fifties, arrives so precisely every morning that you could set your watch by him: 6:55. One woman was a regular visitor for my first three weeks, and she gleefully told me one Friday that it was her last day of treatment. Another lady — to whom I refer as "the lottery lady" — comes in every morning wearing her fleece skull cap (it's cold outside ...and she's bald!) announcing which day of her treatment today is, and how many days of treatment she has left. It's those numbers she plays in the Illinois Lottery Pick Three or Pick Four game and delivers the ticket she bought for me: day nine of treatment with 19 more to go, so she plays 919; day 12 of treatment? She plays 1216 and brings me a ticket. Today I was a winner, only not in the Lottery. She brought in for me and for my door coworker each a miniature holiday Bundt cake.
Some are very old, some are very young. Some have been preparing for surgery for weeks, while some were admitted under urgent circumstances. I see family members escaping from soulless waiting rooms to the cold freedom of fresh, outdoor air and a cigarette; some quietly shed tears of stress or worry while a loved one breathes upstairs with the aid of complicated electronics and machinery. I hand cancer patients their valet claim tickets and then enter their car and a cloud of lingering cigarette smoke, able when I park their car in the lot to escape the prison of their addiction that they cannot.
It dawned on me a few days ago, a sad realization, that probably half of these cancer patients will not survive that for which they are receiving treatment. The lady earlier mentioned who was so gleeful that she was finished with treatment told me practically in the same breath that, if the treatment doesn't prove successful, she could be looking at hospice in a matter of a few weeks; this was her last hurrah, her Hail Mary pass for big yards. Lottery Lady is happy to mention her forward progress, but she never volunteers how she's doing.
So much hope. So much fear. So much defiant dignity in the face of unpredictable odds, all in brief pauses between the entry vestibule doors.
°
With about a month at this new job under my belt, a few thoughts have settled in, and I feel a need to share them. Go get an alcoholic beverage; you may wish you didn't spend time in my brain. The break below this paragraph can last for decades.
I think it's official: I'm a people person. Fourteen years ago I can pretty confidently say I was not. When I took the job at Directions AV, Inc., I was pretty vexed at my agreeing to approach strangers with a video camera and encourage/cajole/plead for their participation in videos as a requirement of my job. But approach them I did and, if I have to say so myself, I became pretty damn good at putting together sight gags and short skits with no scripts and with randomly chosen non-actors. The unexpected by-product of that eight-years-and-change experience is that I can now approach and talk to just about everyone and be my wacky self as though I've known them for years.
Laid off in 2009, and feeling a little desperate after five idle months, I took what I now realize with clear 20/20-hindsight was an ill-advised taxi driving occupation. Despite the money-, time-, and mind-draining aspect of it, I also realize that it further developed my people-person skills. It is in the taxi that I actually realized that I can talk to just about anyone like an old buddy.
The taxi was killing me slowly, and I knew I had to get out, so I did that in July, accepting an offer at an imaging company as a school portraits photographer. There I realized that I can talk to almost anybody. Kids? Not so much. Honestly, it wasn't the talking that I had a problem with; it was the tolerating. Plus, all of the things I mentioned in the prior post.
In the preliminaries to being offered this job, the interviewer — who happens to be the owner of the company — seemed very pleased with my professed people-person skills that carried over from the taxi business. It may be the only reason they hired an old fart like me for a job where they expect their people to run to retrieve the parked cars.
But I digress. In the four and a half weeks that I have been functioning as a valet/parking attendant at this local hospital, I have greeted and welcomed already several hundreds of people. Some of them are repeat visitors, and others are one-timers. It is the repeat visitors who I think about the most. Some aren't visitors at all, but employees of the hospital. They're not our customers, but we are expected to treat them with the same respect and enthusiasm with which we treat the visitors, and enthusiasm is what I have felt since the start. Inside the building, beyond the doors where I am stationed, many of our repeat guests come in for surgery, and some come in daily for various and sundry cancer treatments. Some surgery patients are in and out in a couple of hours, while some go in and spend days in recovery. Cancer patients come in for chemotherapy, radiation, and even laser excision of cancerous skin cells. One gentleman, apparently in his fifties, arrives so precisely every morning that you could set your watch by him: 6:55. One woman was a regular visitor for my first three weeks, and she gleefully told me one Friday that it was her last day of treatment. Another lady — to whom I refer as "the lottery lady" — comes in every morning wearing her fleece skull cap (it's cold outside ...and she's bald!) announcing which day of her treatment today is, and how many days of treatment she has left. It's those numbers she plays in the Illinois Lottery Pick Three or Pick Four game and delivers the ticket she bought for me: day nine of treatment with 19 more to go, so she plays 919; day 12 of treatment? She plays 1216 and brings me a ticket. Today I was a winner, only not in the Lottery. She brought in for me and for my door coworker each a miniature holiday Bundt cake.
Some are very old, some are very young. Some have been preparing for surgery for weeks, while some were admitted under urgent circumstances. I see family members escaping from soulless waiting rooms to the cold freedom of fresh, outdoor air and a cigarette; some quietly shed tears of stress or worry while a loved one breathes upstairs with the aid of complicated electronics and machinery. I hand cancer patients their valet claim tickets and then enter their car and a cloud of lingering cigarette smoke, able when I park their car in the lot to escape the prison of their addiction that they cannot.
It dawned on me a few days ago, a sad realization, that probably half of these cancer patients will not survive that for which they are receiving treatment. The lady earlier mentioned who was so gleeful that she was finished with treatment told me practically in the same breath that, if the treatment doesn't prove successful, she could be looking at hospice in a matter of a few weeks; this was her last hurrah, her Hail Mary pass for big yards. Lottery Lady is happy to mention her forward progress, but she never volunteers how she's doing.
So much hope. So much fear. So much defiant dignity in the face of unpredictable odds, all in brief pauses between the entry vestibule doors.
°
Monday, December 15, 2014
Arc
For years, now, I have lamented about how my occupation(s) has cramped my writing time, and how I need to find a way to put more time back into my life to give to writing. I finally got out of the taxi in July of this year, walking away from it ...and right into a sporadic, stressful schedule of school portrait photography. At the beginning of the school year I was busy, and the hours were all over the map ...er, clock ...with some days requiring me to leave my apartment at 4:30 am, and other days to leave at 9:00. As the fall semester wore on, the schedule lightened up, and the "part time" nature of the job that had me working sometimes 50 hours a week at the start made itself more evident.
Waning hours — and pay — aside, I remembered soon after I began the job that the part I had really hated about the video job I'd had from 2001 to 2009 was the lugging-around-the-heavy-cases-and-setting-up-so-much-crap-all-the-time part, which was exactly what I was doing again with the photography job. I was promised with the photography that, as the portrait photography aspect slowed down, the sporting event and candid photography aspect would pick up, and I would continue to have somewhat steady work. However, since the other thing I wanted to get back into my life after leaving the taxi behind was acting, I didn't want the sporting event and candid photography to take up my evenings, which is when theatre commitments occur.
I had to find something else.
One evening of feverish and reckless Craigslist searching netted me an interview with HealthPark Hospitality/Advantage Valet, a company headquartered in Barrington, Illinois, a mere hop and a skip from where I live. I never knew I wanted to be a valet; fact of the matter is, I never did want to be a valet, but, in the dark hours of that evening it seemed like a swell thing to look into.
They touted full-time work, steady, regular hours and choice of schedule. The bonus is that the property where the position was open is a hospital a mere ten-minute drive from my apartment. BONUS! But I think I already wrote that.... I started with HealthPark Hospitality on November 10, and — despite how primitive-brain valet work may appear to a reader, I'm having a blast with a job I get home from at the same time every day, that I don't have to bring home with me, that I don't stress over the night before, that I don't have to carry anything to or from, and that there is no expensive equipment for which I am responsible on a daily basis ...if you don't count the occasional $150,000-ish Mercedes Benz I have to back into a parking stall between two other cars.
And now the cows have come home to roost to put the money in the proof pudding where my mouth is. Or something like that. Translation: time is what I wanted; time is what I did this for. It's time to start getting my brain focused again on writing. I was doing so well — at least exercise-wise — prior to the taxi and Facebook. Fucking Facebook. But now, with what little writing discipline I had when fate dumped me into a taxi all but lost, I find myself struggling to get it all back in gear, to observe life and formulate a topic, to concentrate on that topic and to whip words into a coherent pattern to make that topic interesting to a reader, even if it's something about a long-neglected avocation. And then there are the writing projects I long to get back to which have sat on the proverbial shelf for way too long, regardless of how much or how little writing I have done since 2009.
Since 2009. Jeesh. Five years. What the actual fuck?!
°
Waning hours — and pay — aside, I remembered soon after I began the job that the part I had really hated about the video job I'd had from 2001 to 2009 was the lugging-around-the-heavy-cases-and-setting-up-so-much-crap-all-the-time part, which was exactly what I was doing again with the photography job. I was promised with the photography that, as the portrait photography aspect slowed down, the sporting event and candid photography aspect would pick up, and I would continue to have somewhat steady work. However, since the other thing I wanted to get back into my life after leaving the taxi behind was acting, I didn't want the sporting event and candid photography to take up my evenings, which is when theatre commitments occur.
I had to find something else.
One evening of feverish and reckless Craigslist searching netted me an interview with HealthPark Hospitality/Advantage Valet, a company headquartered in Barrington, Illinois, a mere hop and a skip from where I live. I never knew I wanted to be a valet; fact of the matter is, I never did want to be a valet, but, in the dark hours of that evening it seemed like a swell thing to look into.
They touted full-time work, steady, regular hours and choice of schedule. The bonus is that the property where the position was open is a hospital a mere ten-minute drive from my apartment. BONUS! But I think I already wrote that.... I started with HealthPark Hospitality on November 10, and — despite how primitive-brain valet work may appear to a reader, I'm having a blast with a job I get home from at the same time every day, that I don't have to bring home with me, that I don't stress over the night before, that I don't have to carry anything to or from, and that there is no expensive equipment for which I am responsible on a daily basis ...if you don't count the occasional $150,000-ish Mercedes Benz I have to back into a parking stall between two other cars.
And now the cows have come home to roost to put the money in the proof pudding where my mouth is. Or something like that. Translation: time is what I wanted; time is what I did this for. It's time to start getting my brain focused again on writing. I was doing so well — at least exercise-wise — prior to the taxi and Facebook. Fucking Facebook. But now, with what little writing discipline I had when fate dumped me into a taxi all but lost, I find myself struggling to get it all back in gear, to observe life and formulate a topic, to concentrate on that topic and to whip words into a coherent pattern to make that topic interesting to a reader, even if it's something about a long-neglected avocation. And then there are the writing projects I long to get back to which have sat on the proverbial shelf for way too long, regardless of how much or how little writing I have done since 2009.
Since 2009. Jeesh. Five years. What the actual fuck?!
°
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Ghost Post: Psycho Analyzed
Though I have been remiss in posting to this blog, I have not been so remiss in writing for the blog. Here continues a series I shall call the "far·ra·go Ghost Posts," entries intended for publication during my posting drought that I never got around to posting because sleep. And Facebook. Yeah, okay, mostly Facebook. Some entries will be incomplete, as I obviously didn't finish them at the time of their original composition, and I have since lost the gist of the original direction in which I was headed. And so it goes....
Psycho Analyzed
Date of original composition April 5, 2013
Well, Thursday night was a pretty strange night, as they go for me.
Around 9:30 I picked up a young couple from Harry's, a bar in downtown Arlington Heights. The woman came out of the bar first and waited for her boyfriend to pay their tab. I wanted to comment to her that she resembled Mare Winningham in her prime — as I don't know how Ms. Winningham is looking these days —
(Mare Winningham)
but 1) she's too young to know who the hell Mare Winningham is and 2) she was too drunk to care if I said she looked like Steven Tyler.
(Steven Tyler)
A few minutes later her boyfriend got in the taxi seeming a little more sober, and talkative.
I entered their destination address into my GPS and drove off. On the way the boyfriend asked if I could go a certain way so that he could stop at a liquor store to pick up a six-pack of beer, as he was going to continue to watch the Chicago Blackhawks hockey game at home. I obliged.
The girlfriend made herself comfortable by lying down, to boyfriend's protests. She responded, saying, "I'm not gonna do anything," which made me wonder what she though he thought she might do. There. In the back seat of my dark taxi.
It was only a small chatter of words, but I began to think this girl was maybe a bit on the wild side.
We arrived at the liquor store, and boyfriend said, "I'll pop in and pop right back out."
Girlfriend started scooting across the seat to go out the door with him. "I'll pop right in, too. I have to pee."
"No!" said boyfriend. "You can't go pee." Of course he meant that the store management wouldn't let her use the bathroom, but girlfriend apparently heard a challenge.
As soon as boyfriend closed the door, girlfriend said aloud — but, apparently, not to me — "I can too go to the bathroom. You'll pop right out that door, and I'll pop right out this one..." She opened the left rear door and got out. I had first assumed she was just going to enter the liquor store defiantly and press her luck with the clerk, but no. She stepped to the rear of the taxi, hiking her skirt up along the way. I got a shocked glimpse of her bare ass cheeks around her thongy panties as she disappeared into a squat behind the car!
Yup. The wild side.
Psycho Analyzed
About three hours later I received a dispatch to pick up at a local Red Roof Inn. The order indicated that it was a party of 1, but two people came out and got into my car. Mitch and Charli wanted to go to Dick's River Road House, hoping it would only cost them around 15 dollars. They asked me how much it would cost, but I couldn't give them an accurate answer, as I don't know the address of the place (which would allow me to get the mileage from my GPS, which would, in turn, help me figure out the fare). Then Mitch said he needed to stop at an ATM so he could pay me.
They had gotten into the car in reverse order to what Mitch needed in order to use the drive-up ATM, so he opted to walk to the machine, leaving me and Charli alone for a couple minutes. Did I mention she was drunk? She asked me my name, then asked if I spell it with a 'Y' or an 'I,' and then explained that she spells her name with an 'I,' so that's how I know. She told me she's originally from southern Indiana.
I asked her what brought her up here.
"Well, mainly," she drawled mildly, "all the men there are gray."
I pictured her being chased around by a bunch of 60-ish men and getting frustrated.
"But the men here are black and white, you know what I mean?"
I don't, I nodded.
She pointed past the windshield at her man. "Like him! He's black and white. That's my Mitch. I'm gonna marry him!"
Mitch got back in the car and we headed toward Dick's, about a 15-minute ride. They chatted privately for a few minutes. "The machine wouldn't let me get a thousand," said Mitch. "I punched in a thousand, but it wouldn't do it. So I could only get five-hundred."
Yup. And he wanted the ride to cost only fifteen dollars, like they're strapped for cash.
Then they started talking to me. Individually. Two separate conversations. Simultaneously. Charli was right behind me and closer to my ears, so I mainly heard her side of our conversation.
She hit me with a fusillade of questions: when's my birthday, what's my mother's maiden name (I had to double check to make sure they didn't have my wallet!), did I have any sisters, what are their names... She claimed — and Mitch confirmed — that she could "read" me, so all these questions came from that.
This was actually the second time in a week that I had been "read" by a woman, the first ending in the assessment that since all Virgos are assholes, that I'm an asshole. So I had low expectations for myself this time.
Then Charli made a few fairly accurate assessments — one easily deduced: I'm in a sucky job and it affects my attitude. The second: my attitude defeats my ability to get women. Not entirely accurate... my entire being defeats my ability to get women, but okay, I give her half a point. Then she asked me what it was when I was a kid that I liked to do most; what was my passion. I came up with a couple of snarky answers that I didn't voice, and then she said, "Was it sports?" No. "Was it music — do you play an instrument?" No. "Comedy?" Holy shit!
There was a period of my life that I wanted to be a standup comedian, but I was thwarted by a serious disability: I'm really not very funny. But, WOW. That one hit close!
I didn't acknowledge Charli's accuracy — I couldn't get a word in edgewise —
(incomplete)
°
Psycho Analyzed
Date of original composition April 5, 2013
Well, Thursday night was a pretty strange night, as they go for me.
Around 9:30 I picked up a young couple from Harry's, a bar in downtown Arlington Heights. The woman came out of the bar first and waited for her boyfriend to pay their tab. I wanted to comment to her that she resembled Mare Winningham in her prime — as I don't know how Ms. Winningham is looking these days —
(Mare Winningham)
but 1) she's too young to know who the hell Mare Winningham is and 2) she was too drunk to care if I said she looked like Steven Tyler.
(Steven Tyler)
A few minutes later her boyfriend got in the taxi seeming a little more sober, and talkative.
I entered their destination address into my GPS and drove off. On the way the boyfriend asked if I could go a certain way so that he could stop at a liquor store to pick up a six-pack of beer, as he was going to continue to watch the Chicago Blackhawks hockey game at home. I obliged.
The girlfriend made herself comfortable by lying down, to boyfriend's protests. She responded, saying, "I'm not gonna do anything," which made me wonder what she though he thought she might do. There. In the back seat of my dark taxi.
It was only a small chatter of words, but I began to think this girl was maybe a bit on the wild side.
We arrived at the liquor store, and boyfriend said, "I'll pop in and pop right back out."
Girlfriend started scooting across the seat to go out the door with him. "I'll pop right in, too. I have to pee."
"No!" said boyfriend. "You can't go pee." Of course he meant that the store management wouldn't let her use the bathroom, but girlfriend apparently heard a challenge.
As soon as boyfriend closed the door, girlfriend said aloud — but, apparently, not to me — "I can too go to the bathroom. You'll pop right out that door, and I'll pop right out this one..." She opened the left rear door and got out. I had first assumed she was just going to enter the liquor store defiantly and press her luck with the clerk, but no. She stepped to the rear of the taxi, hiking her skirt up along the way. I got a shocked glimpse of her bare ass cheeks around her thongy panties as she disappeared into a squat behind the car!
Yup. The wild side.
Psycho Analyzed
About three hours later I received a dispatch to pick up at a local Red Roof Inn. The order indicated that it was a party of 1, but two people came out and got into my car. Mitch and Charli wanted to go to Dick's River Road House, hoping it would only cost them around 15 dollars. They asked me how much it would cost, but I couldn't give them an accurate answer, as I don't know the address of the place (which would allow me to get the mileage from my GPS, which would, in turn, help me figure out the fare). Then Mitch said he needed to stop at an ATM so he could pay me.
They had gotten into the car in reverse order to what Mitch needed in order to use the drive-up ATM, so he opted to walk to the machine, leaving me and Charli alone for a couple minutes. Did I mention she was drunk? She asked me my name, then asked if I spell it with a 'Y' or an 'I,' and then explained that she spells her name with an 'I,' so that's how I know. She told me she's originally from southern Indiana.
I asked her what brought her up here.
"Well, mainly," she drawled mildly, "all the men there are gray."
I pictured her being chased around by a bunch of 60-ish men and getting frustrated.
"But the men here are black and white, you know what I mean?"
I don't, I nodded.
She pointed past the windshield at her man. "Like him! He's black and white. That's my Mitch. I'm gonna marry him!"
Mitch got back in the car and we headed toward Dick's, about a 15-minute ride. They chatted privately for a few minutes. "The machine wouldn't let me get a thousand," said Mitch. "I punched in a thousand, but it wouldn't do it. So I could only get five-hundred."
Yup. And he wanted the ride to cost only fifteen dollars, like they're strapped for cash.
Then they started talking to me. Individually. Two separate conversations. Simultaneously. Charli was right behind me and closer to my ears, so I mainly heard her side of our conversation.
She hit me with a fusillade of questions: when's my birthday, what's my mother's maiden name (I had to double check to make sure they didn't have my wallet!), did I have any sisters, what are their names... She claimed — and Mitch confirmed — that she could "read" me, so all these questions came from that.
This was actually the second time in a week that I had been "read" by a woman, the first ending in the assessment that since all Virgos are assholes, that I'm an asshole. So I had low expectations for myself this time.
Then Charli made a few fairly accurate assessments — one easily deduced: I'm in a sucky job and it affects my attitude. The second: my attitude defeats my ability to get women. Not entirely accurate... my entire being defeats my ability to get women, but okay, I give her half a point. Then she asked me what it was when I was a kid that I liked to do most; what was my passion. I came up with a couple of snarky answers that I didn't voice, and then she said, "Was it sports?" No. "Was it music — do you play an instrument?" No. "Comedy?" Holy shit!
There was a period of my life that I wanted to be a standup comedian, but I was thwarted by a serious disability: I'm really not very funny. But, WOW. That one hit close!
I didn't acknowledge Charli's accuracy — I couldn't get a word in edgewise —
(incomplete)
°
Ghost Post: Road Rage, a Short Story
Though I have been remiss in posting to this blog, I have not been so remiss in writing for the blog. Here continues a series I shall call the "far·ra·go Ghost Posts," entries intended for publication during my posting drought that I never got around to posting because sleep. And Facebook. Yeah, okay, mostly Facebook. Some entries will be incomplete, as I obviously didn't finish them at the time of their original composition, and I have since lost the gist of the original direction in which I was headed. And so it goes....
ROAD RAGE
a short story
by Tony Gasbarro
(November 25, 2013)
The light was red. Victor Trachtman saw in his side mirror the man from the other car approaching him, anger hunching his shoulders and squeezing his fists. Vic's foot trembled on the brake pedal. His window was open. Panic seized his mind as it replayed the earlier few seconds of his life, and froze his hands from closing the window.
Vic had signaled his intent to change lanes as he waited for the white Dodge minivan to pass on his right. He had checked the right lane in his right-side mirror. All had been clear. The minivan had cleared Vic's front bumper, and he had accelerated slightly and leaned his steering wheel to the right to take the lane. A sudden screaming horn had startled Vic, and in a brief spastic moment he had punched his brake pedal, jerked his steering wheel to the left, and seen in his right-side mirror the sleek grey Lexus — its headlights flashing and its horn blaring — rapidly closing in on his rear bumper.
The man pounded his fist on the trunk lid of Vic's car as he closed the distance to Vic's open window. Vic could feel his heart's rapid beating in his throat.
Vic's first instinct had been to swerve back into the left lane, but in the split second before doing so, he saw that his acceleration had carried him past the rear bumper of the Yellow VW Beetle. So he had accelerated more and eclipsed the speeding Lexus. To make matters worse, the white minivan had then slowed to turn right, into a shopping center parking lot, and Vic had braked hard in order not to collide with the van, thus causing the Lexus to nearly crash into him from behind.
The man was now in his window, in Vic's face, screaming profane insults at him, his own face nearly purple with rage. Vic heard the man's voice, but the throbbing in Vic's ears garbled the man's words. At first, all he knew was the man's rage, and that the man's mouth was inches from Vic's ear.
And then the words started to catch hold onto Vic's psyche. "...cking moron! Didn't you see me in the lane, you stupid motherfucker? HAH? You need a fucking telegram before you move your stupid piece of shit car in front of someone's fucking way?"
Vic's panic began to give way to anger. The lane had been clear. He had signaled his intent. The Lexus had come seemingly out of nowhere. "I had my blinker on," Vic said, his voice tentative at first. With his next breath Vic felt his own rage rise. "You knew I was changing lanes. You need to slow the fuck down, pal!"
In an instant, the man from the Lexus flipped from rage to insanity. "The fuck...!" He reached a hand in and grabbed at Vic's face. "You don't tell me what to do, motherfucker!"
Vic's own hands went up to fend off the man's grappling at his face and shirt collar.
The man pulled one hand free and started pounding at Vic's face and neck, and screaming. "I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"
Vic threw his arms up to cover his head, and reached out to push the man away from him, shoving at his face. He felt the man seize his arm and start pulling at it, and alternately landing fists on Vic's neck and jaw. "Get out the car, motherfucker! GET OUT THE CAR!" Vic pulled back, gripping his steering wheel with his right hand for leverage while his fastened seat belt anchored him to his car.
Each time the man pulled on his arm, Vic's other hand yanked on the steering wheel to pull back, and deep inside Vic's survival instinct was a calm area experiencing a mild frustration with the steering wheel turning under Vic's fight to stay in the car. A slow reasoning started to build that Vic was going to lose this fight under the raging man's terms. The man had the advantage and all the leverage, with his legs beneath him and his feet on the ground. Soon, the solution to Vic's problem became clear in his mind: he must knock the man off his feet.
In a frantic moment, as danger for his life felt imminent, Vic's right hand pulled the top of the steering wheel to the left and around again until he felt it stop at its limit. Then he slipped his foot off of the brake pedal and onto the accelerator, and his car lurched to the left, knocking the man from the Lexus off balance. The startled man now gripped Vic's arm for leverage rather than advantage, but released it all together as he fell under the heaving automobile.
Flight was all Vic could think of, now, and the sensation of the car riding up, and the sickening yelp of the man's voice as its tire rolled over him only came back to Vic when his senses returned to him while he sat in his car in his garage at home.
"Oh, shit, what have I done?" Vic said aloud. He began to tremble Every sense in his body told him he should call the police, turn himself in. "But HE attacked ME!" Vic said, again aloud, but this time in response to an imaginary interrogator.
His mind's eye pictured, as though a third-person eyewitness, his car running over the man from the Lexus, its tires riding up over the man's hips. He feared the man would never walk again. Or was he dead?
"Maybe," Vic thought aloud, "nobody saw it. Maybe," he hoped, as he realized that it was a busy intersection — EVERYBODY saw it — "they saw what an asshole he was, and nobody reported it."
Vic knew that the right thing — the only thing — was to go to the police station and turn himself in. "But how do I explain to them why I ran away? Or — shit! — why I ran him over?!"
"Somebody must have taken down my license plate number. They'll find me."
He waited for nearly an hour in his garage, waited to hear a knock on his door, or to see the door fly open as the police kicked it in, or used one of those battering rams he had seen used in those reality cop shows on TV. But nothing happened. Not even in the next hour.
Vic left his car and went in the house. His fine house. What would happen to it if he went to prison for running over the man from the Lexus?
In the bathroom, in the mirror, he saw some bruises forming on his jaw where the man's fists had landed. There was a small cut on his neck. Vic trembled again as he relived in a second the whole incident. "What's going on there right now?" he asked his reflection. "Do the police have crime scene tape blocking the corner? Do they do that only if it's a murder?"
Vic vehemently deflected thought of going back there to see. "The suspect always returns to the scene of the crime." Crime?! Was he a suspect? "Oh, Christ! WHY did I run away?!"
The news. "The news will know." He looked at the clock. The evening news was on when he ran over the man from the Lexus. That was three hours ago. The nighttime newscasts wouldn't be on for another hour.
He couldn't eat. He didn't want a drink. "I'll just wait."
The phone rang. He stared at it on the wall for several seconds. Its ring seemed surreal, as though its meaning was detached from the phone. He picked it up. He put it to his ear.
"Hello?"
A hollow silence on the other end. Vic had never hoped for a telemarketer before, but if the caller was selling something, Vic vowed in that moment he would buy it.
"Yes," said the deep voice on the other end. "I'm trying to reach a Victor Trachtman?" He pronounced the "ch" like in "church" instead of the correct "k" sound.
"Speaking," Vic said slowly, his mouth dry.
"I'm Detective Bob Gonzales, Bradley PD, Metro division."
Vic closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh.
°
ROAD RAGE
a short story
by Tony Gasbarro
(November 25, 2013)
The light was red. Victor Trachtman saw in his side mirror the man from the other car approaching him, anger hunching his shoulders and squeezing his fists. Vic's foot trembled on the brake pedal. His window was open. Panic seized his mind as it replayed the earlier few seconds of his life, and froze his hands from closing the window.
Vic had signaled his intent to change lanes as he waited for the white Dodge minivan to pass on his right. He had checked the right lane in his right-side mirror. All had been clear. The minivan had cleared Vic's front bumper, and he had accelerated slightly and leaned his steering wheel to the right to take the lane. A sudden screaming horn had startled Vic, and in a brief spastic moment he had punched his brake pedal, jerked his steering wheel to the left, and seen in his right-side mirror the sleek grey Lexus — its headlights flashing and its horn blaring — rapidly closing in on his rear bumper.
The man pounded his fist on the trunk lid of Vic's car as he closed the distance to Vic's open window. Vic could feel his heart's rapid beating in his throat.
Vic's first instinct had been to swerve back into the left lane, but in the split second before doing so, he saw that his acceleration had carried him past the rear bumper of the Yellow VW Beetle. So he had accelerated more and eclipsed the speeding Lexus. To make matters worse, the white minivan had then slowed to turn right, into a shopping center parking lot, and Vic had braked hard in order not to collide with the van, thus causing the Lexus to nearly crash into him from behind.
The man was now in his window, in Vic's face, screaming profane insults at him, his own face nearly purple with rage. Vic heard the man's voice, but the throbbing in Vic's ears garbled the man's words. At first, all he knew was the man's rage, and that the man's mouth was inches from Vic's ear.
And then the words started to catch hold onto Vic's psyche. "...cking moron! Didn't you see me in the lane, you stupid motherfucker? HAH? You need a fucking telegram before you move your stupid piece of shit car in front of someone's fucking way?"
Vic's panic began to give way to anger. The lane had been clear. He had signaled his intent. The Lexus had come seemingly out of nowhere. "I had my blinker on," Vic said, his voice tentative at first. With his next breath Vic felt his own rage rise. "You knew I was changing lanes. You need to slow the fuck down, pal!"
In an instant, the man from the Lexus flipped from rage to insanity. "The fuck...!" He reached a hand in and grabbed at Vic's face. "You don't tell me what to do, motherfucker!"
Vic's own hands went up to fend off the man's grappling at his face and shirt collar.
The man pulled one hand free and started pounding at Vic's face and neck, and screaming. "I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"
Vic threw his arms up to cover his head, and reached out to push the man away from him, shoving at his face. He felt the man seize his arm and start pulling at it, and alternately landing fists on Vic's neck and jaw. "Get out the car, motherfucker! GET OUT THE CAR!" Vic pulled back, gripping his steering wheel with his right hand for leverage while his fastened seat belt anchored him to his car.
Each time the man pulled on his arm, Vic's other hand yanked on the steering wheel to pull back, and deep inside Vic's survival instinct was a calm area experiencing a mild frustration with the steering wheel turning under Vic's fight to stay in the car. A slow reasoning started to build that Vic was going to lose this fight under the raging man's terms. The man had the advantage and all the leverage, with his legs beneath him and his feet on the ground. Soon, the solution to Vic's problem became clear in his mind: he must knock the man off his feet.
In a frantic moment, as danger for his life felt imminent, Vic's right hand pulled the top of the steering wheel to the left and around again until he felt it stop at its limit. Then he slipped his foot off of the brake pedal and onto the accelerator, and his car lurched to the left, knocking the man from the Lexus off balance. The startled man now gripped Vic's arm for leverage rather than advantage, but released it all together as he fell under the heaving automobile.
Flight was all Vic could think of, now, and the sensation of the car riding up, and the sickening yelp of the man's voice as its tire rolled over him only came back to Vic when his senses returned to him while he sat in his car in his garage at home.
"Oh, shit, what have I done?" Vic said aloud. He began to tremble Every sense in his body told him he should call the police, turn himself in. "But HE attacked ME!" Vic said, again aloud, but this time in response to an imaginary interrogator.
His mind's eye pictured, as though a third-person eyewitness, his car running over the man from the Lexus, its tires riding up over the man's hips. He feared the man would never walk again. Or was he dead?
"Maybe," Vic thought aloud, "nobody saw it. Maybe," he hoped, as he realized that it was a busy intersection — EVERYBODY saw it — "they saw what an asshole he was, and nobody reported it."
Vic knew that the right thing — the only thing — was to go to the police station and turn himself in. "But how do I explain to them why I ran away? Or — shit! — why I ran him over?!"
"Somebody must have taken down my license plate number. They'll find me."
He waited for nearly an hour in his garage, waited to hear a knock on his door, or to see the door fly open as the police kicked it in, or used one of those battering rams he had seen used in those reality cop shows on TV. But nothing happened. Not even in the next hour.
Vic left his car and went in the house. His fine house. What would happen to it if he went to prison for running over the man from the Lexus?
In the bathroom, in the mirror, he saw some bruises forming on his jaw where the man's fists had landed. There was a small cut on his neck. Vic trembled again as he relived in a second the whole incident. "What's going on there right now?" he asked his reflection. "Do the police have crime scene tape blocking the corner? Do they do that only if it's a murder?"
Vic vehemently deflected thought of going back there to see. "The suspect always returns to the scene of the crime." Crime?! Was he a suspect? "Oh, Christ! WHY did I run away?!"
The news. "The news will know." He looked at the clock. The evening news was on when he ran over the man from the Lexus. That was three hours ago. The nighttime newscasts wouldn't be on for another hour.
He couldn't eat. He didn't want a drink. "I'll just wait."
The phone rang. He stared at it on the wall for several seconds. Its ring seemed surreal, as though its meaning was detached from the phone. He picked it up. He put it to his ear.
"Hello?"
A hollow silence on the other end. Vic had never hoped for a telemarketer before, but if the caller was selling something, Vic vowed in that moment he would buy it.
"Yes," said the deep voice on the other end. "I'm trying to reach a Victor Trachtman?" He pronounced the "ch" like in "church" instead of the correct "k" sound.
"Speaking," Vic said slowly, his mouth dry.
"I'm Detective Bob Gonzales, Bradley PD, Metro division."
Vic closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh.
°
Ghost Post: English Seeking
Though I have been remiss in posting to this blog, I have not been so remiss in writing for the blog. Here continues a series I shall call the "far·ra·go Ghost Posts," entries intended for publication during my posting drought that I never got around to posting because sleep. And Facebook. Yeah, okay, mostly Facebook. Some entries will be incomplete, as I obviously didn't finish them at the time of their original composition, and I have since lost the gist of the original direction in which I was headed. And so it goes....
English Seeking
Originally composed January 30, 2013
Last summer I made grand announcements on Facebook of an impending change of direction, of the start of a new chapter in my life and yada, yada whatever other cliché phrases one can conjure to imply an attempt to crawl out of a rut.
On July 9, 2012, I began a 12-week, part-time course at Australia-based SEA English Academy to acquire a Certificate IV in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). After a week or two of my classes — in which I was the only student — the course administrators sat down with me and told me that they were going to accelerate my pace to catch up with the class that had started a couple weeks earlier. They felt I could handle it. I already felt slightly overwhelmed because I hadn't been in any kind of a classroom environment for quite a few years, and it seemed my ability to retain the information they were imparting to me was quite rusty. However, the quizzes and tests bore out their assessment that I was having little to no problem grasping the concepts.
Through mid-August and into the first week of September I got the feel of teaching real English students — non-English-speaking adult and elderly immigrants who were attending free classes in their communities (because, honestly, who would want to pay bumbling, fumbling teachers to throw vaguely coherent lessons at them?) I went from serious stage fright — which, going on 35 years as a ham actor, I hadn't felt in years — to a genuine feeling of "HEY! I can do this!!"
After the last practicum teaching session there was a graduation ceremony, and then it was time to start assembling "papers" — renewing my passport, submitting my fingerprints to FBI for a background check, revising my résumé to reflect my English teaching in the foreground of my experience — and to start sending out applications.
I want to go to Western Europe. I have wanted to live there for quite some time, now, inspired by my time in Germany while I was enlisted in the US Air Force.
My list of desired places, in order of preference:
Germany
France
Italy
Spain
Czech Republic
There's a problem, though. As I have been told and — even more importantly — as I am learning on my own, Western Europe is pretty much closed off to job-seekers without European Union passports or without some sort of "in" to a company or school already.
Europe is a beautiful, epically historic place. I recommend to anyone who has never been there to visit soon. But in the summer months. Not in winter. Europe is a bitch in winter. Except in the southern reaches of France, Spain and Italy, I guess.
But I'm a Chicagoan. I'm used to that which Mother Nature can dish out along these latitudes. Europe is the goal.
But, what to do to get there?
Fall back and punt. Common theory is to find somewhere else to go, to teach, to get some good experience under my belt, and then, perhaps, work my way closer to where I wish to go. I have no desire to go to the Far East, to places like China, Taiwan or South Korea. Nor do I care to go to the Middle East, to places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE. Paradoxically, those are the places with the most readily available jobs. Go figure.
Through most of the first decade of this century I had a job for which I traveled extensively, and one of those destinations several times was Hawaii. I don't know of any American mainlander who has gone there and not thought — even if only briefly — "I want to live here!" I admit the thought crossed my mind.
But they already speak English in Hawaii.
So, my plan: I'm willing to take what Western Europe can dish out because that's where I want to be. But if I can't be where I want to be, then I'll try to go to a "paradise" destination and tough it out there until I can worm my way into Europe!
In the past few weeks I have been researching the countries of Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, places I never cared to go before. I have found job listings only for schools in Thailand and Indonesia, though I do need to use more search resources that may offer a wider view.
I do still keep my eyes open for, and send applications off to opportunities in Europe, because you just never know when someone may think I'm the bee's knees. So far I've been turned down by companies/schools in central Germany and Paris, France.
I received a regrets message from a school in Thailand last week.
But today I received a nibble from a school in Jakarta, Indonesia! In response to my application, they wish to set up a Skype interview. I've sent word to SEA English Academy for advice or insight to both the school which has responded, and to the city of Jakarta or the nation of Indonesia as a whole, to see if there are any red flags there or in the wording of the application.
It's a first nibble. It may not pan out, or I may ultimately not be interested, but I think it calls for some excitement...which I've expended on writing this post.
WOO HOO!
Obviously, the life arc has changed. More on that later....
°
English Seeking
Originally composed January 30, 2013
Last summer I made grand announcements on Facebook of an impending change of direction, of the start of a new chapter in my life and yada, yada whatever other cliché phrases one can conjure to imply an attempt to crawl out of a rut.
On July 9, 2012, I began a 12-week, part-time course at Australia-based SEA English Academy to acquire a Certificate IV in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). After a week or two of my classes — in which I was the only student — the course administrators sat down with me and told me that they were going to accelerate my pace to catch up with the class that had started a couple weeks earlier. They felt I could handle it. I already felt slightly overwhelmed because I hadn't been in any kind of a classroom environment for quite a few years, and it seemed my ability to retain the information they were imparting to me was quite rusty. However, the quizzes and tests bore out their assessment that I was having little to no problem grasping the concepts.
Through mid-August and into the first week of September I got the feel of teaching real English students — non-English-speaking adult and elderly immigrants who were attending free classes in their communities (because, honestly, who would want to pay bumbling, fumbling teachers to throw vaguely coherent lessons at them?) I went from serious stage fright — which, going on 35 years as a ham actor, I hadn't felt in years — to a genuine feeling of "HEY! I can do this!!"
After the last practicum teaching session there was a graduation ceremony, and then it was time to start assembling "papers" — renewing my passport, submitting my fingerprints to FBI for a background check, revising my résumé to reflect my English teaching in the foreground of my experience — and to start sending out applications.
I want to go to Western Europe. I have wanted to live there for quite some time, now, inspired by my time in Germany while I was enlisted in the US Air Force.
My list of desired places, in order of preference:
Germany
France
Italy
Spain
Czech Republic
There's a problem, though. As I have been told and — even more importantly — as I am learning on my own, Western Europe is pretty much closed off to job-seekers without European Union passports or without some sort of "in" to a company or school already.
Europe is a beautiful, epically historic place. I recommend to anyone who has never been there to visit soon. But in the summer months. Not in winter. Europe is a bitch in winter. Except in the southern reaches of France, Spain and Italy, I guess.
But I'm a Chicagoan. I'm used to that which Mother Nature can dish out along these latitudes. Europe is the goal.
But, what to do to get there?
Fall back and punt. Common theory is to find somewhere else to go, to teach, to get some good experience under my belt, and then, perhaps, work my way closer to where I wish to go. I have no desire to go to the Far East, to places like China, Taiwan or South Korea. Nor do I care to go to the Middle East, to places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE. Paradoxically, those are the places with the most readily available jobs. Go figure.
Through most of the first decade of this century I had a job for which I traveled extensively, and one of those destinations several times was Hawaii. I don't know of any American mainlander who has gone there and not thought — even if only briefly — "I want to live here!" I admit the thought crossed my mind.
But they already speak English in Hawaii.
So, my plan: I'm willing to take what Western Europe can dish out because that's where I want to be. But if I can't be where I want to be, then I'll try to go to a "paradise" destination and tough it out there until I can worm my way into Europe!
In the past few weeks I have been researching the countries of Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, places I never cared to go before. I have found job listings only for schools in Thailand and Indonesia, though I do need to use more search resources that may offer a wider view.
I do still keep my eyes open for, and send applications off to opportunities in Europe, because you just never know when someone may think I'm the bee's knees. So far I've been turned down by companies/schools in central Germany and Paris, France.
I received a regrets message from a school in Thailand last week.
But today I received a nibble from a school in Jakarta, Indonesia! In response to my application, they wish to set up a Skype interview. I've sent word to SEA English Academy for advice or insight to both the school which has responded, and to the city of Jakarta or the nation of Indonesia as a whole, to see if there are any red flags there or in the wording of the application.
It's a first nibble. It may not pan out, or I may ultimately not be interested, but I think it calls for some excitement...which I've expended on writing this post.
WOO HOO!
Obviously, the life arc has changed. More on that later....
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